‘It’s the best monster ever invented’: Noah Hawley on bringing Ridley Scott’s Alien to TV

The writer-director defied expectations to turn the film Fargo into one of the best TV shows of the decade. Now he’s taking on an even bigger franchise. Can lightning strike twice? When it was first announced in 2013, the thought of Fargo being reimagined as a TV miniseries felt practically sacrilegious. The 1996 neo-noir starring Frances McDormand as a kindly Minnesota police chief was a singular film that had won two Oscars. Surely its distinctive Coen brothers vibe would get shredded in the woodchipper of TV adaptation? Back then, Noah Hawley, the screenwriter who took on the job, would have agreed. “It seemed like such a terrible idea,” he says via video call from a Long Island holiday bolthole. “Which is sort of why I liked it. The risk/reward was really high.” Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/yFGRncx via IFTTT

Alien: Romulus review – grungy, back-to-basics instalment goes over same old ground

Fede Álvarez’s effort is scrappier than Ridley Scott’s grandiose efforts – but everyone involved would have been better employed working on something new

Fede Álvarez’s new instalment in the Alien franchise presents as a younger, grungier, back-to-basics effort, moving away from the grandiose cosmic reach of Ridley Scott’s films Prometheus (from 2012) and, five years later, Alien: Covenant while attempting a return to the downbeat conspiracy paranoia and anti-corporate satire that made the original so unforgettably good. It also, very startlingly, brings back a major character from the 1979 Alien, the actor involved having perhaps signed away CGI image use rights at the time, or conceivably their descendants have been paid a royalty fee.

The resulting movie is a technically competent piece of work; but no matter how ingenious its references to the first film (let down, however, by borrowings from the A Quiet Place franchise) it has to be said that there’s a fundamental lack of originality here which makes it frustrating. There’s isn’t a single person involved, from director to stars to people on craft services who wouldn’t have been better employed actually working on something new.

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