• Lorenzo Odone (1978-2008) - ALD Patient - His story inspired the film Lorenzo's Oil, in which he was portrayed by child actor Zack O'Malley Greenburg and others. He died May 30 in Fairfax, Virginia. (Washington Post)

• Cornell Capa (1918-2008) - Photojournalist - Founder and first director of NYC's International Center of Photography. He was also a still photographer on the set of The Misfits. He died of Parkinson's disease May 23, in New York City. (AP)
• Alexander Courage (1919-2008) - Composer - Oscar-nominated for co-scoring Doctor Dolittle and The Pleasure Seekers (both with Lionel Newman) and best known for composing the original Star Trek theme. He also wrote original music for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Arthur Penn's The Left Handed Gun and André de Toth's Day of the Outlaws. As an orchestrator, he worked on Singin' in the Rain, Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Annie Get Your Gun, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Guys and Dolls, The Band Wagon, Funny Face, Porgy and Bess, Gigi, The Big Country, Hello, Dolly!, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Legend, Basic Instinct, Jurassic Park, Hook, L.A. Confidential, The Mummy, Mulan and many, many other films. He died May 15 in Pacific Palisades, California. (Variety)
• Bo Diddley (1928-2008) - Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist - Blues and Rock legend whose songs "Who Do You Love?" and "Mannish Boy" have appeared on multiple movie soundtracks. He also appears in Trading Places, Blues Brothers 2000, Rockula, Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! and a number of documentaries, including D.A. Pennebaker's short Keep on Rockin' and Taylor Hackford's Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. For info on his death, see Monika's full post.

The Strause Brothers -- or Brothers Strause, as the directing duo insists on being called -- have created a weirdly meta film in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. I can't recommend it as a good movie on its own merits, stocked as it is with cardboard cutout characters and a barely coherent plot, but it's miles more interesting than the last Alien vs. Predator film and fans of the Alien and Predator film series may find it so strangely reference-heavy as to be entertaining on at least one level. This is a movie that starts out with the premise of 'Several Aliens and a Predator invade a small town' but ends up as a partial rehash of Aliens, complete with undisguised Ripley and Newt clones trying to escape an impending nuclear explosion via air transport and military guys getting picked off one at a time. It references entire shot sequences from Predator and a major plot device of Predator 2. It even references Yutani (!) in such a way that if you don't know what that is, you won't have a clue what's happening in the scene.

The first five minutes of the film that were released online before opening weekend turn out to be a poorly edited version of the film's first ten minutes -- that 'plot stuff' is trimmed down considerably -- and we get to see an Alien-infested Predator ship crash into the woodsy hills of Colorado while a father and son on a hunting trip look on in wonder (wouldn't you?) Pretty soon Dad's arm is being melted off by Alien acid blood and Junior has a face-hugger attached to his face, in a nice bit of non-family friendly killing. The main idea of the film will be to have one Predator arrive in Colorado to face off against several Aliens. It's a good choice, since the Predator is easily humanized, but once that decision has been made, why do the Strauses devote so much of the film to setting up bland human interactions? The title isn't Aliens vs. Predator vs. Humans, after all. If the film was truly brave, it would eschew a human perspective all-together, and simply deliver what the title promises.

'Tis the season to get away from your family, bundle up with a gallon of moonshine (preferably one with "XXX" written on the label), and watch endless hours of movies! What follows is not a comprehensive or "Best Of" list. These are simply seven DVD box sets that any film buff would be thrilled to find in his or her stocking this Christmas. Most of them were released in the past few months, and a couple have been out a while but just got amazingly cheap. Have a few gifts left to buy? Consider picking one of these up. You don't even have to get off your fat ass, if you click on the titles you'll be taken to the links on Amazon. I've included items to suit every budget, and they've been arranged in order of price. Naturally, the more expensive the set you purchase, the more you love the person you're buying it for. That's just the way it works.

The Alien Quadrilogy ($33.99)

Pretty much the gold standard for DVD box sets. This collection's price recently took an incredible drop. It was worth every penny of the $80 bucks I paid for mine years ago, so you can better believe it's worth $34. The set gives you several versions of each film in the beloved Alien series -- Alien (one of the best suspense movies ever made), Aliens (one of the best action movies ever made), Alien 3 (David Fincher's misunderstood take is a stronger movie with each viewing), and Alien: Resurrection (Nobody's perfect). An unprecedented amount of extra goodies that includes the amazing Director's Cut of Aliens, extremely cool fold-out packaging, and the absence of Alien Vs. Predator make this set a must-own. I've owned it for four years, and still haven't seen everything in there. Plus, don't you just love the word "Quadrilogy?"

Last Thursday I caught the last local theatrical screening of Blade Runner: The Final Cut and it took my breath away. Landmark's Inwood Theatre in Dallas is a grand movie palace, dating back to 1947; the auditorium has been refurbished in recent years but the auditorium retains its gently sloping floor and old-style seating. Sitting close to the very large screen, I became enveloped in the visuals and felt myself transported to its dark vision of the year 2019.

When I first saw the film in 1982, I was a young adult still enamored with science fiction novels and stories that I'd read growing up. I was sorely disappointed by the very narrow type of science fiction stories that were being told cinematically; space wars are fun, but where were the movies that challenged my perceptions of the universe? Blade Runner felt like a huge step forward, though even then the original ending and other elements felt like compromises of Ridley Scott's vision.

Revisiting Blade Runner after so many years, I was struck again by its anti-narrative leanings, but I was even more caught up in the splendid visual details. As much as Blade Runner's graphic schemes have been appropriated by and influenced others, the original maintains a great deal of authentic power, a bold mix of past, present and future.

Looking around the auditorium, I was glad to see that I was probably the oldest person there. When I first became fascinated by film, way back in the Mesozaic Era (i.e. pre-VCR), I was living in Los Angeles and could attend a multitude of repertory theaters to catch up with movies from past decades. Nowadays, the opportunities are few and far between. Dallas does not have a single repertory theater and screenings of older films are usually limited to the acknowledged "classics," overly familiar warhorses that are, presumably, more likely to draw a crowd that will enable the exhibitor to break even or perhaps earn a small profit.

The first few lines of dialogue in Alien vs. Predator: Requiem include "take your time" and "slow down," which is pretty ironic considering how impatient the movie comes off in its initial five minutes. Thanks to Yahoo! you can now watch those five minutes and see for yourself. You'll agree that at least in the opening, the sequel is not trying to waste any time. Right away we see an Alien pop out of a Predator's chest, which leads to a quick Alien-Predator battle, which immediately results in the Predator's ship crashing down onto Earth. At this point we meet father and son hunters, the former of which utters those first words.

Oh, and that's when it gets awesome: the hunter shoots one of the baby Aliens, which bleeds acid on his arm, which then falls off. Then another baby Alien jumps onto his face and another baby Alien jumps onto the kid's face. Satisfied yet? Well, you still have the beacon, which is picked up on the Predator home planet, where the last few minutes' events are given an instant replay, which is viewed by another Predator, who abruptly gets into another spaceship and heads to the rescue. And then ... we see the title sequence.

Yeah, in case the red-band trailer hadn't been enough, I have to reiterate that I've never been so excited about a movie I've had such a low expectation for in my entire life. Will Alien vs. Predator: Requiem suck? It's possible, but if it continues with such disregard for pauses, it's going to at least be a quick and painless shot of entertainment.

Lots of things are scary: walking dead people, dudes with chainsaws, aerosol cheese (it's just wrong, I tell you). Sometimes, though, the chills can come from outer space, another dimension or a laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong. The greatest fear is a fear of the unknown, and what's more unknown than an alien life form or the endless expanse of space? Let's take a look at seven movies whose scares come from the world of science fiction.

Alien (1979)
"In space, no one can hear you scream," or so they say. I guess this is the obvious one to start with. Isolation is a key element of horror, and can you get more isolated than a space ship light years from home? The crew of the mining vessel Nostromo are awakened prematurely on their return trip to Earth to investigate a transmission from an alien world. The crew finds an ancient alien spacecraft, the mummified remains of one of its non-human occupants, and several large eggs. The creature inside one of the eggs gains entrance to the Nostromo by latching onto one of the crew members. Once aboard, the little beastie quickly grows into one of the most horrific and memorable monstrosities the screen has ever seen. I saw this one when it first hit theaters, I've seen it many times over the years, and I recently watched it again. Like Dorian Gray, this film just refuses to age. The effects are just as magnificent as ever, the story is tense and fast paced, and the cast is excellent. More importantly, though, this is one scary ride.

The Thing (1982)
A lot of people took me to task for not including this one in my Cinematical Seven: Cool Horror Films of the 80s. With a list of only seven you're not going to please everyone. Regardless, John Carpenter's The Thing is a remarkable film for a number of reasons. Not only is it one of the greatest horror films of all time, it's also one of the rarest of the rare: a remake that surpasses the original. Based on the novella "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell, Carpenter's version of the story is more faithful to Campbell than 1951's The Thing From Another World. In Carpenter's film, the members of an Antarctic research station find an alien space craft that's been buried in the ice for centuries. A creature with the ability to absorb and mimic other life forms gets thawed out and infiltrates the camp, creating one of the greatest combos of isolation and paranoia in horror history. Kurt Russell is one of the great movie bad asses as MacReady, the helicopter pilot who becomes the de facto group leader. The creature's pre-digital transformations are a thing (pun definitely intended) to behold, to say nothing of seriously gross.

Ridley Scott, or Sir Ridley Scott depending on how you feel like addressing him, made a fairly provocative comment at the Venice Film Festival on August 30th. The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, in yet another director's cut, in anticipation of a 5 (five!) disc DVD release of the same this fall by Warner Brothers. (The previous link includes some reviews of the newest version at the Venice festival, including EW's Owen Gliberman's comment that Blade Runner is "the only science-fiction film that can be called transcendental." Hey, Owen, what about this Fritz Lang classic, or this Russian masterpiece, or even this small-scale but extremely effective version of the Ursula K. Leguin novel ... eh, what's the use.) To get back to the original point about sweeping generalizations, Scott was in a no doubt expansive mood, and started to discuss the great films of sci-fi.

Here's how it went down, according to The Times of London on-line. In Scott's opinion, science fiction films are not just dead, they're "as dead as westerns...there's nothing original. We've seen it all before. Been there. Done that." Scott celebrates 2001: A Space Odyssey as the pinnacle of sci-fi and says that "over-reliance on special effects" and weak story lines are the culprit. Responses from the blogosphere came fast and furious; one correspondent, Donald Smith, pointed out that Shane Carruth's small-scale film Primer had been "low-key and highly intelligent" while being completely without high-tech bloat. What I haven't been seeing is someone making the point that Blade Runner is film noir dressed in a sci-fi costume, just like Scott's other famous sci-fi film Alien, is a monster movie set in outer space. When it comes to the essential matter of sci-fi -- what humans are, where we are going, and when will we cease to exist -- Scott is only slightly interested ... especially when compared to the Philip K. Dick novel upon which Blade Runner is based. Watching it, you have to recall Pauline Kael's comment that almost everyone in the film would flunk the Voight-Kampff empathy test that ferrets out skin-jobs. As the director of such a high-tech, low-emotion film, is Scott really in a position to nail shut the coffin of an entire genre?

After watching the first Alien vs. Predator, I made myself forget the whole terrible experience. So, it isn't surprising that I can't remember the surprise appearance of a little Alien/Predator hybrid popping out at the end. But I guess if I'm going to try and enjoy the sequel (it is pushing for a harder rating ... ), then I need to recap what happened in the original (spinoff anyway). For now, I'm at least back up to speed on the hybrid, thanks entirely to the good people over at RopesofSilicon.com, who share with us some images of the grown 'Alienator' (what would you call it?). The pics they've got are of a model (technical term: maquette), presumably used for the film*, which they got off the site of a company called 3D Custom Foam Inc.

Personally, I'm a bit disappointed with the design, if only because it doesn't have enough Predator features. Yeah, that's probably what happens in the biology, but I don't care. If that is the case then have the hybrid mouth and lose the prickly spikes all over its body. I don't even get that. It makes me think there's some new-style Megatron genes mixed in there or something. I much prefer this photoshop, which I found while doing an image search. Don't you? Anyway, it isn't as bad as the Alien/Ripley hybrid from Alien: Resurrection, and since I actually kinda like that movie, there's a good chance that I can still enjoy AVP2 despite what I think of the creature design. I've always been a fan of alien invasion horror films set in small town America, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I won't have to erase my memory after watching this one, too. Alien vs. Predator: AVP2 comes out this Christmas; maybe it will be what I've always wanted.

*Update: According to JoBlo, this design was not the one used for the film after all.

I'll admit I'm probably one of the few people who actually enjoyed the first Alien vs. Predator movie when it hit theaters a couple years ago. What can I say, I'm a big Lance Henricksen fan. Sure, I'm not the only one who saw the film, as it did make a few bucks at the box office and on DVD -- which is why we are now expecting a sequel. But still, many hardcore fans regarded the first film as a pretty lame attempt to cash-in on whatever hype was left in the Alien franchise. But whatever the motivations behind the new film are -- love of the franchise and the genre or maybe just good old-fashioned greed -- like it or not, Alien vs. Predator 2 is on the way.

Previously here at Cinematical, we've given you some info about the upcoming film including pics, news of a rather disappointing script review and some pretty negative comments by our own Erik Davis, in which he calls the proposed sequel "another trip to planet crapola." And now, thanks to the folks over at the Alien Experience website, we can add an interview with one of the film's creative-types to our growing list of good and bad news about the film. Sadly, this interview, while interesting, is not with a person particularly high-up in the chain of command of the production like the writers or one (or both) of the directors.

Instead, the interview features Q & A with Andrew Li, assistant art director for the film. Now before you snicker and turn away, as positions on a film go, the assistant art director is a pretty important one and carries with it a great deal of responsibility and inside knowledge. So, let's give Mr. Li a chance, shall we? In the interview, Mr. Li drops a few tidbits about himself and the film. He talks about his big love for Sci-Fi/Horror films -- which he considers AVP2 to be -- and talks about how one of his favorite aspects of the film is its atmospheric lighting which, he says, helps enhance the horror aspects of the film and that this time around, the aliens will be invading someplace we've never seen them invade before: small town U.S.A. Hey, it could end up being good. Although, without Lance being in it I can't say I'll be there on opening day.

There aren't too many movies that necessitate sequels. Unless a movie is part of a pre-proposed series or is an adaptation of a series of books, it should probably be able to stand alone. But a lot of sequels come from movies that are perfect by themselves -- sometimes the sequels compliment nicely; sometimes they are easily ignored; occasionally they actually take away from the previously regarded original.

It isn't often that a movie screams out for a sequel, but I think I've come up with seven that at least whisper a request for one. Two actually have source sequels that they would be adapted from. One has a lot of history to mine material from. Three of them have been discussed at length at different points in time by makers of the original(s). The problem is that none of these sequels is likely to ever grace your DVD player let alone your local theater. For whatever reason, they simply have too much against them in the minds of studio execs. For now, though, we can dream.

1. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Even with the incredible cast and the surprisingly faithful-enough script, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was not the epic that I was hoping for. It also wasn't the blockbuster that Disney was hoping for. The filmmakers, Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith (aka Hammer and Tongs) and the necessary actors had signed on for the sequel, to be adapted from Adam's follow-up, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but it appears to be dead in the water. Despite my few reservations with the first film, I would love to see the sequel, as well as the rest of the series (they could end before The Salmon of Doubt, I guess). I remember being bored with some of the prehistoric Earth sequences in Restaurant, but I think they'd make for great cinema. In any event, I think Martin Freeman and Mos Def were a great duo in the original, and they alone should have been propelled to stardom following its release. Maybe they can appear in something else together.