Going back to happier times in the oeuvre of Ridley Scott, the British filmmaker started out as a trainee set designer and TV director in his homeland before establishing Ridley Scott Associates with his brother Tony. The production company achieved prodigious success in the field of commercials, but both brothers would soon seek to make their mark in motion pictures. Alien was Ridleys second outing as a feature director, and its perhaps still the first film that springs to mind when his name comes up. The sci-fi horror follows the seven-member crew of the Nostromo spacecraft as they respond to a distress signal and find themselves battling a deadly alien life form. A landmark moment in the sci-fi genre, Aliens influence can still be felt 35 years later. You would have to dig deep into spoiler territory to find out whether or not Interstellar also includes any evidence of nonhuman life, but Chris Nolan has name checked Scotts 1979 movie as a direct influence on the aesthetic of his latest outing, commenting: the reality of the grit and the grime of films like Alien, or the first Star Wars, those always stuck in my head as being how you need to approach science-fiction. Alien, among other films, inspired the functional, tactile set design of Interstellar and lived-in feel of the Ranger spacecraft, and if youve never seen Alien, now is the perfect time to catch up on an old classic in preparation for what could be a new one.
I watch movies and I watch sport. I also watch movies about sport, and if there were a sport about movies I'd watch that too. The internet was the closest thing I could find.
