David | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On David as the Monster in “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant”…

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Darren

I published a new piece at Escapist Magazine this evening. This week, Ridley Scott explained that he wanted to “re-evolve” the central monster from the Alien franchise.

This is an interesting argument, particularly given Scott’s long-standing criticism about the xenomorph, and his argument that the creature has perhaps outlived its relevance. Indeed, one of the most interesting facets of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant is the way in which David essentially updates many of the core thematic elements of the xenomorph. David takes the creature’s threat of sexual violence, and updates it for the twenty-first century.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: alien, David, escapist, Michael Fassbender, Movie, Prometheus, ridley scott, xenomorph | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Tooms (Review)

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Darren

Tooms offers us the show’s first returning monster, not counting the recurring alien menace that has appeared in episodes like Deep Throat or Fallen Angel or E.B.E. In fact, it arguably offers us two recurring monsters, with Eugene Victor Tooms putting in his second appearance, but also featuring the second official (but third possible) appearance of the Cigarette-Smoking Man.

Appropriately enough, Tooms doesn’t just bring back the eponymous serial killer, it begins to tie various loose ends together, and to fashion a sense of continuity and development from the various character moments and implications of the first season, suggesting that forces are moving in the background, behind the scenes of everything we’ve watched unfold.

They’ve got him boxed in…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Dana Scully, David, David Nutter, Deep Throat, Erlenmeyer Flask, Fox Mulder, List of Monster-of-the-Week characters in The X-Files, Mitch Pileggi, Morgan, Skinner, The Smoking Man, Tooms, Walter Skinner, William B. Davies, William B. Davis, X-File | Leave a comment »

Star Trek (DC Comics, 1989) Annual #2 – Starfleet Academy!

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Darren

This August, to celebrate the upcoming release of Star Trek: Into Darkness on DVD and blu ray, we’re taking a look at the Star Trek movies featuring the original cast. Movie reviews are every Tuesday and Thursday.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the movies with tie-ins around (and related to) the films. We’ll be doing one of these every week day. This is one such article.

Multimedia franchises tend to have very strange lives. These iconic pop culture characters rarely seem to ride off into the sunset in any real way. Their story might end, but there’s always a new beginning just waiting for them. When veteran Star Trek writer Ronald D. Moore took charge of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, he even wove the idea into the fabric of the show. “All of this has happened before and will happen again,” the characters repeated.

It’s been a Hollywood fad for the last decade, with high-budget reboots like Batman Begins and The Amazing Spider-Man suggesting that icons never die, they just get reinvented. However, it has always been a feature of the pop culture landscape. Think of how many adaptations of Batman have run their course, or how many times in how many different media Sherlock Holmes has played out his game of wits. Life for these iconic properties is something of a spinning wheel. It seems that no sooner are you off one side than you are back on the other.

So, with the release of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country in 1991, it seemed the ideal time for Star Trek author Peter David to venture back to the very beginning, and to explore Kirk’s time at Starfleet Academy!

“By the way, I like David as a name…”

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: Ben Finney, Carol Marcus, David, Faster-than-light, kirk, List of Star Trek characters (G–M), Marcus, peter david, spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, star trek vi: the undiscovered country, Starfleet Academy, StarTrek, Where No Man Has Gone Before, William Shatner | 1 Comment »

House of Cards (US, 2013): Chapter 4 (Review)

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Darren

So you lied to his face?

No. I revised the parametres of my promise.

Which is lying.

Which is politics.

– Bob Birch and Frank Underwood

After spending three episodes lining everything up and getting all the plot points and characters to where they need to be, it looks like House of Cards is finally ready to kick into high gear. There’s still a sense that show isn’t as comfortable with its amoral and sociopathic lead character as it should be, but there’s finally a sense of what Frank Underwood is capable of. We’ve seen him topple the incoming Secretary of State using just a college article that the man didn’t write, but that sort of politicking should be second-nature to Underwood at this point. Here, Frank is a bit more ruthless, a bit less concerned about collateral damage.

That’s really the key here. House of Cards needs us to root for Frank despite his drive for power at all costs, without excusing it. It looks like we’re getting to where we need to be.

Speaking Frankly…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: bbc, Bob Birch, David, david fincher, Francis Urquhart, Frank, Frank Underwood, Freddie, House of Card, House of Cards, kevin spacey, netflix, Republican, republicans, Underwood, United States, Zoe | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: The Oranges

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Darren

There’s an interesting film in here, somewhere. The Oranges teases the possibility of brutally exposing the seedy underside of suburban life, as we follow an affair between a married man and his best friend’s daughter, but The Oranges is far too shallow to land anything resembling a killing stroke. The adult cast is composed of talented veterans, but the script doesn’t give them much to do – instead The Oranges treats their children as the focal point, misjudging the talent of young actresses Leighton Meester and Alia Shawkat. It all feels too light, too cosy, and too willing to pick the low-hanging fruit to really create an interesting study of life in the ‘burbs.

Keeping it in the family…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Alia Shawkat, Catherine Keener, christmas, Conditions and Diseases, David, film, Food, Fruit, Health, hugh laurie, Leighton Meester, Movie, Neurological Disorders, non-review review, oliver platt, oranges, review, stroke, United States | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Darren

In many respects, The Creature From the Black Lagoon feels like a brass band funeral for the golden age of the Universal monster movies. The subgenre would continue ticking over for quite some time. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy would be released the following year, The Creature From the Black Lagoon would spawn two sequels for the two years following, and Universal would try a spate of monster movies up until The Leech Woman in 1960. However, it’s clear that – by 1954 – the golden age of the Universal monster movie was well over.

And I think that part of the reason that The Creature From the Black Lagoon works so well is because it’s almost a mournful eulogy for the genre.

Out of the depths…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Amazon, Biology, Black Lagoon, bride of frankenstein, creature from the black lagoon, David, Departments, film, frankenstein, Gill-man, Human, invasion, James Whale, Loreto, Love triangle, Mark, Meyer, Movie, non-review review, Peru, Pet Sematary, review, Richard Denning, Ricou Browning, South America, universal, Universal Monster | 4 Comments »

Dancing on the Edge of a Blade (Runner): Prometheus & Hyper-Intertextuality

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Darren

Prometheus arrived on blu ray last week. I’m a big fan of the movie, despite the palpable sense of disappointment generated on its arrival – I suspect that I was wise not to expect answers, and instead to enough the movie for what it was. I’m not alone in considering the film’s ties to Alien to be among its weakest elements, forcing the movie to tie into something that had been a massive movie mystery for decades, rather than allowing it to be its own thing. However, it has emerged that Ridley Scott apparently hoped the movie could go further than that. Reportedly, the director had hoped that it could serve as something akin to “connective tissue” to tie together two of his most definitive science-fiction universes. Apparently, the director wanted to set the film in the same world as Blade Runner.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: alien, blade runner, David, inglourious basterds, List of Blade Runner characters, los angeles, Prometheus, quentin tarantino, ridley scott, science fiction, Steven Soderbergh | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Prometheus

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Darren

Prometheus is an impressive science fiction thriller. Indeed, its weakest link is its attempt to “line-up” with Scott’s original Alien, as its own interesting ideas end up caught up in an attempt to throw knowing winks and nods towards an overly eager audience. “look! green gooey possibly acidic blood!” the movie seems to cry or “gee! that illustration looks familiar!” The problem is that these feel like distractions from a plot that is compelling and fascinating when explored on its own merits. Still, it feels like a worthy science fiction film in its own right, a fitting hybrid of Scott’s Alien with his Blade Runner, daring to pose interesting existential and philosophical questions about humanity’s place in the universe.

David is a piece of work…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: alien, blade runner, Dallas, David, film, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender, Movie, non-review, Noomi Rapace, Prometheus, review, ridley scott, science fiction, Scott, Shaw | 13 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Rope

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Darren

Rope occupies an interesting place in Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography. The director himself was less than fond of it, allegedly quite happy that it remained out of circulation for some time after its initial release. Jimmy Stewart has apparently been critical of his own performance in the film, although I think it’s a wonderful example of a beloved actor playing against type. In the years since, however, it has been somewhat re-evaluated. While most film fans would be hesitant to describe it as an unqualified success, it’s certainly a technically ambitious little film, and the tight script and set-up allow Hitchcock to indulge his knack for creating suspense.

I hope nobody choked with all those ten-minute takes…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: alfredhitchcock, arts, Brandon, Cut the Rope, David, film, games, Health, hitchcock, James Stewart, John Dall, Movie, murder, Murder Mystery, Necklace, non-review review, OpenSky, People, Performing Arts, review, Rope, Skipping rope, tom hanks, White Shadow | 10 Comments »

To Play the King (Review)

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Darren

The wonderful folks at the BBC have given me access to their BBC Global iPlayer for a month to give the service a go and trawl through the archives. Read my thoughts on the service here, but I thought I’d also take the opportunity to enjoy some of the fantastic content.

You’ve got the King against the Prime Minister, the Lords against the Commons. The bishops are in now, you’ve got “don’t blame the royals”, and – in particular – you’ve got Urquhart’s plan to bring down the monarchy for good and all. And they’ve all played the personal morality card. Every one of them. Which means, in my book, that everybody’s private life is now up for grabs. And I mean everybody’s!

– Sir Bruce Bullerby sums it up

The second part of the House of Cards trilogy has some fairly interesting subject matter. While Francis Urquharts Machiavellian rise to power was enough to ground the first four-part serial, it does occasionally feel like To Play The King has just a bit too much going on. Of course, Andrew Davies’ tight scripting ensures that all the necessary subplots are tidied up before we reach the end credits of the final episode, but things do occasionally feel just a little bit too packed. Still, it’s hard to blame a television show for having too much substance, and there’s a compelling issue at the heart of To Play The King, as novelist Michael Dodds takes the opportunity to explore Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and the possibility of friction that a proactive King might present.