The Incredible Suit's 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge #9: Aliens

The 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge is a futile, inane experiment which judges a film's merits entirely on how good it looks at 30-minute intervals according to arbitrary and indistinct criteria applied by The Incredible Suit. For previous challenges, click the links on the right.

This week's 30MFFC was suggested by The Incredible Suit viewers J Mac and Edward G Murrow, who mentioned it so long ago that they've probably long since stopped reading the blog and have grown old and hairy and maybe even died of old age. So in their memory, this is for them. It's Aliens, directed in 1986 by James Cameron when he knew how to mix a clever story with tension, terror, awe and various other emotions entirely absent from the smurf movie.

To be clear, these shots are taken from the 154-minute Special Edition, which is really the only version worth watching unless you've only got 137 minutes to live, in which case watch the original cut. But don't pause it because you'll die before the end.

0:30:00 This shot, as you should damn well know, is from the scene where Bishop does 'the thing with the knife'. I don't know if it's good enough to pass the Challenge, because despite being from an iconic scene, in and of itself it's not all that, is it?

1:00:00 I could stare at this picture for hours.

1:30:00 This one, not so much. I do like the lighting though. It's Ripley in literal and metaphorical Hell, innit.

2:00:00 I don't know about this one either. Again, in the context of the movie it's a great scene, but the image is a bit gloomy and I can't see Ripley's perfectly sculpted face clearly enough. What's an Incredible Suit to do?

Result:

I'm just not sure. The pressure's too much. I'm leaving it to you lot to decide if Aliens passes or fails the 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge. The frustratingly vague rules are buried somewhere in this post if you need them, or you could just make it up based on your own guts. That's what I do.

Aliens: Pass or Fail? Vote here!

A Week-Old Potato Peeling

Youse guyses have well and truly soiled Patrick Swayze’s memory by ditching his Orange ad in favour of John Cleese’s as the least irritating, like, ever. I hope you’re happy. Incidentally word reaches The Incredible Suit from the mysterious ‘Duncan S’ of a new Orange cackommercial featuring Sigourney Weaver apparently “playing a snake queen in a movie that’s only going to be shown in Spain”, which sounds like the funniest thing I’ve ever heard ever.

In unrelated twaddlism, yesterday I proposed Blood And Thunder as the title of the new James Bond film, which was almost certainly an exercise in pointlessness if ever there was one. But The Incredible Suit exists only to pleasure its viewers, so tell me: what do you think of Blood And Thunder as a Bond title? Does it make you want to soar over the rooftops in unbridled joy, or does it make you weep uncontrollably until your very being shrivels up like a week-old potato peeling? Or, most likely, do you just not care? Vote now! Or go out and live your life. Either is fine with me.

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