Ridley Scott for Alien 5

you're crazy lumpenprol. and stop trying to psychoanalyze everything, you're not any good at it and it just leads to lol worthy misinterpretations of posts. what you just tried to pick apart wasn't even anything i was pointing out as a strength. the characterizations and plot in that film are very old fashioned and that isn't why i like it. it's a beautiful looking film and it has a very interesting portrayal of saladin. why can't there be an honorable arab character in a film? do they all they need to sport rocket launchers?

i don't think that is what he's pointing out .. it's just a weak film or something like that with oodles of hollywood cliches ... you know what i would have like to have seen with that film ... the saladin side exclusively from the point of view of the dramatisation and character development .. juxtaposed against a backdrop of a mindless european zombie hoard exiting their local strongholds for a spot of raping and pillaging ... this is what i thought would be on offer when i went to see this .. the long hoped for other side of the coin ... it didn't happen so i was pissed ...

yeah cinematography was nice ... but whatever ... even on a superficial storyline level the thing blew ... but i am rather anal when something bugs me .. hehe .. so like whatever you want .. maybe it has some value .. but i'll never admit that ;-]

well, it's a hollywood movie so a muslim perspective, during the crusades, is nearly impossible for them to pull off. and then your interpretation of the crusades is unfortunately colored by a lot of misinformation and politically correct bias. you might even be able to argue that they pc'd saladin, in that he never allowed people to just leave jerusalem without paying something and had sufi mystics execute a number of knights. families that couldn't pay an exit toll were put into slavery. so it's not like a movie from his perspective would somehow be this super positive and enlightening experience. both sides were pretty barbaric.

what i liked about the film was its sentiment, although i would prefer to see that sentiment put into a modern context (this is what i was hoping body of lies would be). and maybe my area of study affects my view of that film, more than someone who works in videogames or whatever.

i wasn't asking for pC .. it's an hollywood blockbuster .. i just wanted a clear good guy ala saladin .. champion of the people .. magnanimous to a fault .. appreciated by flora and fauna alike .. clean perfect and noble with nairy an hair out of place .. versus ..the european skumtrolls .. creeping across the landscape bringing their foul brutish mudstained air of arrogance corruption and malevolence whereever they trod ...

yanoe .. be easypeasy .. and pleasurable viewing experience .. shame that that would never get funding .. unlike the opposite of what i just described which of course would in a newyork minute ... 'so you wanna knock arabs, sure here's my number, lets do treats'

but...they didn't knock arabs...that was the whole point of the movie. did you guys just turn it off after five minutes or something?

i'm not saying that the movie knocked anyone .. read what i wrote not what you thought that i wrote .. did you just stop reading after five seconds or something .. hahahah ;-]

Cool, I just watched Alien for the first time in over a decade last night. It's still awesome.

What did Scott do recently that was so terrible?

Alien is a masterpiece, they should hire Dan O'Bannon to write the prequel

so is anybody familiar with the back story of the first film, this whole "Space Jockey Race designed the Xenomorph ( The Alien ) as a biological weapon" is this prequel really going to be about this race of aliens ? if so how could they pull it off without doing an entirely cgi or experimental stop motion animation thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Jockey_(Alien)

  On 8/2/2009 at 3:01 AM, zaphod said:

you're crazy lumpenprol. and stop trying to psychoanalyze everything, you're not any good at it and it just leads to lol worthy misinterpretations of posts. what you just tried to pick apart wasn't even anything i was pointing out as a strength. the characterizations and plot in that film are very old fashioned and that isn't why i like it. it's a beautiful looking film and it has a very interesting portrayal of saladin. why can't there be an honorable arab character in a film? do they all they need to sport rocket launchers?

The Honorable Arab™ I was referring to was Bashir from Deep Space 9, not the other one. I agree, Saladin had nice eyes and a pleasingly craggy face. Which is apparently exactly what Scott saw in him, and nothing deeper.

On a less snarky note, I've watched the film twice - both original and extended cut - so I don't hate it all that much. It's appealing for the production values and the fact that it's a relatively unexplored chunk of history. But the characterization and dialogue make it fall way short of being a good film imo.