PASTA ON A PETRI DISH

After considering all the kind tips I got for watching films I opted for safe ground and chose something I enjoyed a few years back. Sometimes I bottle it with new films. 

So with the second half of my gloopy Chinese takeaway and a Morreti beer and a large chew for Blue, we settled down drooling for a another slice of LIFE.

LIFE is a modern version of ALIEN. Three of the letters are the same in the names even! Yep, its about a nasty critter chomping on a tasty crew. There are those mysterious sub-plots about protocols and that very topical problem of quarantining threatening thingies. It starts with an innocuous blob in a petri dish at which point everyone in the film should have ran!

Like ALIEN LIFE takes the matter seriously. Its an earnest effort at depicting the messy world of spaceships, new lifeforms and the risk to all life on Earth. It rings bells with the current pandemic consuming the world. 

Comparing the two, I think LIFE is more realistic than ALIEN, the creature more plausible, an expanding multi-cellular entity rather than an acid-for-blood multi-mouthed dragon. Don't get me wrong, the Xenomorph in ALIEN is scary as hell and has managed to be the mainstay of a decades-gobbling monster franchise, which LIFE won't be. I can't see a sequel called Calvin anytime soon. In fact LIFE wouldn't look out of place within the ALIEN series. Calvin does have that tentacled look of the beasty battling the Engineer in Prometheus after all. So, there you have it, A L I E N: L I F E.

Next on last night's double-bill was something I would have normally run a mile from from I overcame my dislike of the sub-genre and dived in. I'm talking about that shaky hand technique called Found Footage, a gimmick popularised by the budget juggernaut the Blair Witch Project. In fact the last found footage film I saw was Cloverfield, which I enjoyed but I would have enjoyed it more if the footage hadn't been found but rather played straight.

Anyway, I watched something new and shaky, The Dyatlov Pass Incident and I have to admit I liked it. The camera work was less wobbly than most and the storyline sequential and strong with decent acting and plenty of action.

Dyatlov is essentially Blair Witch in Siberia. Based on true events of the same name [its got its own Wiki page] the films follows - or they follow themselves, its found footage don't forget - a group of American students who wish to follow in the footsteps of a doomed hiking group who all died mysteriously on the pass in the 1950's. And there you have it. Cue irate Russians, lots of clear alcohol, stunning Urals, tent sex, bumps in the night, loud close-up screams and lots and lots of hiking and .... running. The avalanche scene is particularly well-filmed by the falling camera. 

The ending, well, I didn't see it coming because of Schrodinger's cat. I won't go into it suffice to say parts reminded me of the infamous Russian Sleep Experiment, which high school students went crazy for about five years ago. An urban myth - now known as creepypasta among the young - The RSE, like Slender Man, has its own momentum and there's even a new flick coming out this year called the Sleep Experiment. But I digress.

So, what I'll watch tonight could be anyone's guess. As it happens I shall be eating pasta!

What have you seen of late readers?