Way back on August 15th I pre-ordered Prometheus (DVD + E-copy) from Sainsbury's (they had an offer on and I had some e-vouchers and discount-codes to use, so it cost me next-to-nowt).
The official release date is October 8th.
Today's date is only October 4th, yet Sainsbury's have just sent me an email to say that they've already put my pre-ordered DVD in the post.
How does that work?
More Prometheus stuff...
Do you remember the following?
Fox studio chief TOM ROTHMAN: "This I can tell you and I can tell all the fans, not one frame will be cut. The movie will be what it should be. We will not cut a frame of the film," he promised. "We will stand behind it 100 percent and if that means it's an R, then so be it, because not an ounce, not a percentage are we going to compromise the film."
Well, now director RIDLEY SCOTT is talking about an extended version...
SCOTT: This is fundamentally the director’s cut. But there will be half an hour of stuff on the menu because people are so into films - how they’re made, how they’re set up, and the rejections in it. That’s why it’s fascinating. So this will all go on to the menu.
Well I’m curious about the deleted scenes. Specifically in this film, Noomi Rapace mentioned maybe there was a fight scene... [I've omitted the next bit as it's a spoiler]
SCOTT: The [spoiler] fight scene was pretty good. It will definitely go on the menu. It won’t go on the long version... [I've omitted the next bit as it's a spoiler]
You’re going to do an extended cut on the Blu-ray/DVD. Is it a lot longer?
SCOTT: Twenty minutes.
Of course, they could both be telling porkies.
There's a fair few in-movie and promo references to the epic Lawrence of Arabia movie, maybe Rothman and Scott should give thought to Mr. Dryden's words:
"A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it."
A movie with brilliant effects but this great opportunity was spoiled by a less-than tense ending following after a plot that was a tad weak. Not as good as Alien or the much-better Aliens, probably on a par with 3 and much better than Resurrection. Mind you, of the five it's the only one not rated "18" so maybe we should have expected less anyway. The AvP stuff isn't canon so there's no comparison.
I should mention that the scenic shots of Skye and Iceland were excellent.
I'll not post any more so as to not let loose any spoilers, but I'd guess that most of the folk at the same screening as us left during the credits and so would have missed the easter-egg at the utmost end... the Weyland logo followed by the words "Building Better Worlds since 10.11.12"... I suppose I'll have to get sad and find out what that's all about, after I've sussed if the date format's UK or Yankee.
On the bright side, the trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey looked good.
There's an interesting/nerdy story about the design-evolution of the wheels on NASA's Curiosity Rover. The tale goes something like this...
An early suspension-test prototype rover was equipped with metal wheels which prominently featured "JPL" in raised letters which would imprint the company's initials onto the surface of Mars:
According to one of the scientists on the project, NASA was extremely upset by the "JPL" raised letters on the wheels, wanting them to read "NASA" instead. JPL assured NASA that this was merely a prototype and that the letters wouldn't appear on the final model.
Eventually the design was finalised and approved, and the wheels were made and fitted:
I'd imagine that the NASA folks would have felt that they'd won a little victory over JPL - all of the lettering on the wheels had been designed-out.
And I'd imagine that JPL's lot would have felt far more victorious because they'd got their initials in there anyway in the form of Morse Code which NASA, apparently, didn't notice:
🙂
Well, they launched Curiosity back in November 2011 and it's scheduled to land on Mars in August 2012 so there's no chance that they'll call it into the pits for a tyre-change. JPL will leave its mark on Mars despite NASA's objection. And those marks will be useful - the regular Morse patterns in the wheel-tracks will act as index marks, Curiosity's camera will count them to judge the distance travelled across the surface.
I reckon that's a cool story.
Of course you don't want to read too much into these things or you might start to believe that this pattern:
bears some similarity to this logo:
Building Better Wheels Worlds
😉
The Prometheus International Launch Trailer is out.
There's so much in it that some folk are calling it a spoiler, so you might not want to set the thing running.
Here's what Fox have to say about the movie:
"This I can tell you and I can tell all the fans, not one frame will be cut. The movie will be what it should be. We will not cut a frame of the film..."
That's good, at least there'll be no dog/cow confusion like there was in the Alien3 releases, and no choice of endings like in the Alien: Resurrection releases.
There is some confusion, though - this latest trailer states that the movie release date is June 1st, one whole week earlier than stated in other trailers and on the website.
Whatever, it still looks good!
