Alien

Starring: David Fincher, JeanPierre Jeunet Director: James Cameron, Lance Henriksen, Ridley Scott Dvd Release: 15th May, 2000 Number Of Discs: 5 Format: Box set, PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding

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Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, is an extremely popular & influential science fiction / horror film that spawned several sequels & imitators. Although the title characters are the highly aggressive extraterrestrial creatures, the real connecting thread is the saga of Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, a human woman who finds herself the principal opponent of the species throughout the series. This makes it the first major American film series with a female action hero. Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm & Yaphet Kotto. The films visual imagery was designed by H,R. Giger, for which he won an Oscar. The story begins when the crew of the commercial transport ship Nostromo receive a transmission which might be of nonhuman origin. They land on a deserted planet & find a derelict spaceship with a dead alien & many large eggs. When one of the crew is attacked by a newly-hatched alien, the creature is brought aboard the Nostromo, where it methodically wipes out the crew. Posters Of Alien

This deluxe five-disc package shows off not only the merits of the films on offer but the wide possibilities of the DVD medium. Even if youre among the many that only rate two or three of the Alien films, this is still an essential purchase.

Although more than 20 years old, Ridley Scotts Alien has hardly dated. Its a film of suspense & terror rather than action & excitement, as disturbing as ever, thanks to Swiss-artist HR Gigers visionary monster design, rooted by a clutch of interesting Anglo-American actors . Weaver, making her career breakthrough here, slowly emerges from the pack as the survivor, but the sequel, Aliens , really puts her acting skills centre-screen, as the maternal warrior-woman whose compassion makes her fitter to survive than the gung-ho space marines. Titanic director James Camerons action chops are demonstrated best in the series duel between Ripley & the bad mother alien queen. Watched back-to-back, even the less-satisfying later films work as developments of Weavers Ripley character, as she becomes a tired martyr in Alien 3 & is reborn as a part-alien clone in Alien: Resurrection .

In this box set, all four films are presented in widescreen aspect ratios derived from pristine prints allowing you to discern more in the shadows than you get in even the best video editions. The imaginatively designed interactive menus flash the logos & computer codes of Weyland-Yutani helping you to access transmission. The digital English soundtrack can be augmented with optional subtitles in English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Polish, Czech, Hungarian & Icelandic . Alien has an informative audio commentary by Ridley Scott . Also included are deleted scenes & outtakes , several trailers, tons of production paintings & stills, the storyboard, an alternate music track & the original score in isolation.

The sequels all have trailers, but the extras diminish with each disc. The Directors Cut included on Aliens has an interview with Cameron & some backstage footage. Alien 3 contains a making of documentary that actually covers all three films, while Alien: Resurrection only has a brief making-of featurette . An extra fifth disc, free with the set, contains The Alien Legacy, an hour-long documentary on the making of the first film, concentrating on the script, design, effects, production & direction.

David Fincher is a film director. Born in Denver, Colorado, Fincher started as an animator at Industrial Light & Magic in 1980 & stayed until 1984. In 1986, he founded the video-production company Propaganda Films. He directed big-budget videos for artists such as Madonna, George Michael, Aerosmith & the Rolling Stones, as well as commercials. Like a number of other video directors, including Julien Temple, Russell Mulcahy & Spike Jonze, he then moved into film. His debut was Alien³, which was then the most expensive picture by a first-time director, but was a financial & critical disappointment. Despite this initial failure, Finchers career rebounded with his next film, the dark thriller Se7en. This film, along with the complex & controversial Fight Club has put Fincher in the forefront of his post-video director contemporaries. Even Finchers more conventional work, such as The Game & Panic Room contains his distinctive dark photography with innovative uses of computer graphics. Posters Of Panic Room

Editors Choice: Panic Room, Fight Club, Madonna, The Game, Seven, Alien 3, Alien, Alien Quadrilogy, View DVDology

James Cameron was a prominent British journalist, in whose memory the annual James Cameron Memorial Lecture is given. Cameron was born in Battersea, London of Scottish parentage. He began his career as an office dogsbody with the Weekly News in 1935. Having worked for Scottish newspapers & for the Daily Express in Fleet Street, he was rejected for military service in World War II. After the war, his experience reporting on the Bikini nuclear experiments turned him into a committed pacifist & a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He continued to work for the Express until 1950, briefly joined Picture Post & then spent eight years with the News Chronicle. In his last years, he wrote a regular column for the Guardian. With the advent of television, Cameron became well-known as a broadcaster, presenting several BBC series including Cameron Country. Posters Of Titanic

Editors Choice: Titanic, Ghosts Of The Abyss, Dark Angel, The Muse, True Lies, The Abyss, The Terminator, Aliens, View DVDology

Lance Henriksen is an American actor & potter  . He was born May 5, 1940 in New York City. Henriksen first appeared in the film It Aint Easy in 1972 & made his first major appearance in Dog Day Afternoon a few year later. Later films would make him much better known as an actor, especially his role in as the android Bishop in Aliens. He later played Charles Bishop Weyland, the man Bishops appearance was based on, in Alien Vs. Predator. In 1996, Henriksen starred in the popular TV series Millennium, produced by the creators of The X-Files. He played Frank Black, a former FBI agent who can see into the minds of murderers. The series was cancelled in 1999. Reason for Living. The Jill Ireland Story. Posters Of The Last Samurai

Editors Choice: Millennium, Unspeakable, Mind Ripper, Cinema Of Vengeance, No Escape, Jennifer 8, Pit And The Pendulum, The Last Samurai, View DVDology

Sir Ridley Scott in South Shields is a British film director & producer. Scott studied photography at the Royal College of Art & helped establish the film department there in the mid-1960s. After graduation he secured a traineeship with the BBC leading him to work on the popular television series Z Cars. Along with Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson & his younger brother Tony Scott they estalished an advertising company. Having cut his teeth on UK television commercials in the 1970s he graduated to Hollywood, where he produced & directed a number of top boxoffice films. His striking visual style, incorporating a detailed approach to production design & innovative, atmospheric lighting, has been tremendously influential to an entire subsequent generation of filmmakers — many of whom have simply imitated him outright. Scott is notable for his versatility. He rarely makes two films in the same genre & many of his films are popularly rated as some of the best examples of their genres. Posters Of Black Hawk Down

Editors Choice: Kingdom Of Heaven, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, Gladiator, White Squall, Thelma And Louise, Black Rain, View DVDology

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