ALIENS (1986) & GALAXY QUEST (1999)



Life will be more stressful in the future, partly because of the ravenous extraterrestrials and tyrannical galactic tyrants we’ll encounter, but mostly because the ticking clocks in our race-against-time adventures will be replaced by soothing female voices announcing our impending doom every few seconds. That’s the case in Aliens anyway, a movie Roger Ebert called “so intense that it creates a problem for me as a reviewer: Do I praise its craftsmanship, or do I tell you it left me feeling wrung out and unhappy?” How’s this for suspense: not only does Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley find herself trapped in a space colony infested with slimy, ravenous xenomorphs (and the equally slimy Paul Reiser), but following a mishap with a nuclear reactor, the whole joint winds up on the verge of self-destruction!  And then the evil Alien Queen grabs Newt (Carrie Henn), the sweet little orphan girl Ripley’s been trying to save for most of the movie!!  And then, just when Ripley and Newt finally escape to the roof of the burning, exploding complex, they discover their ride is gone!!!  And then it turns out the Alien Queen knows how to use elevators!!!!  And she’s got David Fincher with her!!!!!  And that damn soothing female voice won’t stop reminding everyone how close they are to death!!!!!!  Aiiiieeeeee!!!!!!!!!  Later, in the smartly high-concept Galaxy Quest, Weaver once again winds up in a desperate space race against time, trapped with co-star Tim Allen in a real-life starship designed by a much friendlier bunch of aliens to mimic the specs of their old TV starship...including the standard issue self-destruct gizmo that always counts down to zero in the most suspenseful possible way. (AO)

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Well, it’s the holidays again, and that means that Christmas movies are back in season. But while Christmas movies have long been an annual tradition, in the last few decades the market for new holiday-themed classics has grown by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when scruffy little movies like A Christmas Story would do decent business in theatres only to become classics on video and cable. Today, Christmas movies are big business, and rare is the big budget holiday movie that doesn’t clean up at the box office. For my next three Yesterday’s Hits columns, I’ll be taking a new look at three of the biggest holiday hits of all time, to get you all in the spirit of the season. This week, I’ll begin with the 1994 blockbuster The Santa Clause.

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TOM HANKS



I know, I know...this list is called “Stars We Hate,” and it’s hard to work up any real vitriol against Mr. Hanks: after all, he seems like a peach of a guy, he’s turned into a pretty good producer and he established an eternal place for himself in the cinematic canon as the voice of Woody in Toy Story 1 & 2. But let me ask you something: do you consider Tim “Buzz Lightyear” Allen a truly iconic movie star?  The Cary Grant of his generation?  No?  Why not? Like Hanks, Allen also rose to fame as a likeable lug in a dumb sitcom, then made the leap to movies with a series of mostly terrible high concept comedies, give or take one undeniable classic apiece (Galaxy Quest for Allen, Big or Splash for Hanks, depending who you ask). And, like Hanks, you totally wouldn’t believe Allen as a dangerous tough guy mobster in Road To Perdition...although, wait, actually, I take that back: considering Tim Allen was busted with a pound of cocaine back in 1978, ratted out 21 drug dealers to avoid a life sentence and spent more than two years in prison, I’m guessing he’s got more than a little bit of a dark side, which makes him an interesting performer even though, for some reason, he’s mostly chosen to squander his talent on crap over the years. Hanks, on the other hand, is more ambitious and, in the “serious” half of his career, has generally chosen better material (three movies with Meg Ryan notwithstanding)...but the problem is there’s no there there: he’s just not that great an actor, no matter how many Best Actor awards he wins. Sure, he pulled the “lose a lot of weight” gimmick for Castaway, which puts him on par (at best) with Ethan Hawke and Christian Bale, who pulled the same trick for Alive and The Machinist, respectively (though neither of them won an Oscar for their efforts). Playing gay was just another award-winning acting gimmick for Hanks in Philadelphia: I never believed his performance for a second, just as I failed to believe his grizzled tough guy act in Perdition or Saving Private Ryan. At his best, in light comedy or light drama like Apollo 13, Hanks is akin to the guy who got all the starring roles in your high school drama club...appealingly bland in productions the audience is predisposed to like. But a modern-day Jimmy Stewart (as people who should know better insist on calling him)?  Hardly. For one thing, Jimmy Stewart would never have subjected us to Bachelor Party or Forrest Gump.

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So, according to our very own Scott Von Doviak, Star Wars: The Clone Wars may not exactly be on the short list for this year’s Best Animated Feature Film Oscar, although, to paraphrase Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman, awards, critical praise and boffo box office were never really the point, since the movie, essentially, "was targeted to a specific audience for specific reasons [i.e., to promote the upcoming Cartoon Network series of the same name]. We accomplished that mission, and it will continue in another medium."

That crazy dreamer! Just goes to show that, when it comes to animation, even studio execs can get swept up in the magic that happens when pencils, paint, pixels, Plasticine modeling clay or paper cut-outs meet persistence of vision and insane amounts of patience.

According to our old friend, Wikipedia, “The earliest form of animation is a 5,200 year old earthen bowl found in Iran in Shahr-i Sokhta which has five images painted along the sides. When the bowl is spun, it shows a goat leaping up to a tree to take a pear.”  (And, ironically, scientists have since determined the bowl actually received better reviews and a higher per-screen average than The Clone Wars...but I digress.) 

Anyway, the aforementioned bowl may or may not be included in NEXT week’s list of The Screengrab’s all-time favorite animated shorts, but in-between then and now (get it?  get it?  I’m here all week!  Try the veal!) please join us for a very special Screengrab salute to the greatest animated features of all time!

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In his recent, attention-getting Village Voice article proclaiming himself to no longer be a "brain-dead liberal", David Mamet chided those who fail to appreciate how great it is here in the land of the free and who sit around trying to think up reasons to be dissatisfied with democratic capitalism, just so they can have something to be sore about. In Redbelt, Smiley Mamet's latest stab at writing and directing a movie, the hero, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a hard-working, incorruptable black man who's trying his damndest to make an honest living running a martial-arts academy that does its bit for society by training police officers in methods of self defense. But when we meet him, he's already in danger of going out of business, and then evil Hollywood types steal his technique of pitting combatants against each other after selecting one to be "handicapped" for the bout. Robbed of the only thing he has that may have monetary value so that these sharks can cheapen it by using it in circus-like arena ring competitions, he's ultimately reduced to agreeing to compete in one of the bouts in hopes of at least winning some prize money, and then he discovers that the contests are fixed. ("Whenever two guys are fighting for money," mewls the crooked promoter played by Ricky Jay, "the fight is never fair.") Does Mamet ever see any of the plays and movies he signs his name to, or is he so committed to the capitalist system that he has a bunch of cranks hired off park benches staffing a sweatshop where they grind this stuff out by the yard?

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When I first heard about this, I wasn't sure how it would work — I mean, David Mamet taking on the world of mixed martial arts? And now, seeing the trailer, I still don't know what to think. On the one hand...

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