In An Art Gallery, Everyone Can Hear You Scream

On This Day In History
1979: Alien was released

Quote Of The Day
Ash: You still don't know what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. It's structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. 
Lambert: You admire it.
Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor ..... unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality. 
Parker: Look, I am ..... I've heard enough of this, and I'm asking you to pull the plug.
Ash: Last word.
Ripley: What?
Ash: I can't lie to you about your chances, but ...... you have my sympathies.
(Alien, Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett)

Take a hefty dollop of H.P. Lovecraft motifs, - to be expanded upon in the prequel movies - relocate the action into outer space, then call in visionary artists like H.R. Giger, Moebius, Chris Foss and Ron Cobb, assemble a heavyweight cast including John Hurt, Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Tom Skerrit and an aspiring soon-to-be superstar named Sigourney Weaver, put them all under the direction of supremely talented Ridley Scott et voila you have one of the greatest S.F./Horror films in cinema history.

What's the bonus all about? Well, I went to the The Greats exhibition at the Kobe City Museum Of Art today. Francois Boucher's A Pastoral Scene triptych was one of the many fabulous paintings on display, a painting which, of course, greatly informed Ridley Scott's vision of Alien. Here we see Ripley asleep in her hypersleep chamber with Jones on her lap, unaware of the alien creeping up on her (at this point, the alien was going to crawl back in through the vent of the Nostromo's shuttle, the Narcissus.)

Loving The Alien