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Wednesday 21 March 2012

The Prometheus Trailer



For the past few months the teasers and trailers for Ridley Scott's Prometheus have been drip fed to a salivating audience until the release of the official trailer this week, which looks mind blowing. Backed by a clever viral campaign featuring the character Peter Weyland from the Alien universe (played by Guy Pearce) giving a TED talk, the build up has been outstanding for Prometheus and the trailer has only bumped my anticipation up further. The trailer gives us plenty of fevered talking points but without allowing us to connect too much together, and there are tantalising glimpses of how Prometheus ties into Alien. For example the carving of what looks unmistakeably like the xenomorph into a temple wall, the eerily familiar shots of eggs which may or may not contain the forms of facehuggers, and the shot of what we assume to be the Space Jockey, fossilised into the throne which the crew of the Nostromo would go on to encounter in Alien. According to the most recent issue of Empire magazine, it has been tentatively suggested that the closing minutes of the film will thread Prometheus into the events of the 1979 sci-fi horror classic, and if that is so there is still the possibility that Giger's infamous monster will make an appearance. Questions abound until June 8 when the film is released, and I for one am charged with excitement about seeing how Mr Scott unravels the plot and attempts to capture the imagination of audiences the same way he did in 1979.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

The Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet


A favourite among many TZ aficionados, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is memorable for starring a young William Shatner, and being one of the most thrilling episodes of all 5 series. Bob is a recently discharged sanitorium patient returning to the original scene of his mental breakdown aboard a plane, which happened over a year ago. His sanity supposedly cured, it is immediately jeopardised when he thinks he has seen something on the wing of the plane, but whenever he accosts someone to look, it mysteriously disappears. Set amidst a storm, the episode is a masterclass in suspense from the Twilight Zone's frequent contributor, Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend), and the dichotomy between madness and sanity is played brilliantly by Shatner, whose character is so convinced he has seen something, but fears the possibility of being accused of insanity and having a mental breakdown again, thus fulfilling a recurring nightmare.