Displaying items by tag: Aliens

I’ve been fortunate to attend a number of great film industry events over the last thirty years, but I can tell you... none of them is more fun than the Saturn Awards.

While the Oscars, Golden Globes, and SAG awards tend to get all the mainstream media coverage, the Saturns are the sort of nerdy-fun party that Hollywood filmmakers actually like to attend.

Founded in 1972 by the late Dr. Donald A. Reed, a film historian, educator, and longtime scholar of genre entertainment, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror is a non-profit organization that has a single goal: to support and encourage filmed genre entertainment.

What makes the Saturns so great is that there’s no ego—people attend because they love the work they do, and they love each other’s work even more. Things tend to be very relaxed, everyone mixes together before and after the awards—even during dinner—and you can easily find yourself unexpectedly chatting with people you’ve admired for years.

This year’s event was a whopper; in attendance to either present or accept awards were Tom Cruise, George Lucas, James Cameron, William Shatner, Mark Hamill, Christopher McQuarrie, Kathleen Kennedy, Guillermo del Toro, Bryan Fuller, Laurence Fishburne, Terry Matalas, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, and many more. The Star Trek franchise was recognized for its 60th anniversary, as was Aliens for its 40th, and the TV series The Boys was given a Spotlight Award. It was definitely a fun evening. [Read on here...]

“It’s a fun film that also demanded you to take it seriously. I think some people missed all that and just wanted to indulge in the ‘bug hunt’ war porn of it all. But beneath its rollercoaster surface, Aliens is a pretty sophisticated genre classic.” — Documentarian Charles de Lauzirika

The Digital Bits and History, Legacy & Showmanship are pleased to present this retrospective article commemorating the 30th anniversary of the release of Aliens, the action-packed follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror classic featuring Sigourney Weaver (Ghostbusters, Working Girl) in her Saturn-winning and Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated reprisal of Ellen Ripley, the lone survivor of an Alien attack on her ship, the Nostromo. In the sequel, after several decades in hypersleep, she returns to exomoon LV-426 along with a team of Marines — and awesome sound and visual effects — to destroy the Aliens.  [Read on here...]