Tag: Ridley Scott

Shout Out to Ellen Ripley: How Regular Heroes Inspire Us in Our Darkest Times

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Ellen Ripley stands holding Jones the cat against the backdrop of spaceship mechanicals.

|Allison Vincent| When I initially pitched this idea for Alien to Perisphere, I intended to write a snarky, humor-laden essay about the trope of smart women who are ignored in horror/sci-fi films until the very loud, usually mustachioed men who did the ignoring succumb to their dumb, … Continue reading

Human Enough

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A shirtless Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) holds a dove on a rainy rooftop

|Harry Mackin| “Did you ever take that test yourself?” Whenever an institution of power has wanted to exploit, enslave, or just murder another group of people, they’ve gotten away with it by convincing everyone else that group isn’t really human. There have been… Continue reading

I Feel You, Man: Ridley Scott’s The Duellists

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Harvey Keitel as Feraud standing on a cliff overlooking a river and fields

|MH Rowe| Of course we’re supposed to condescend to the idea of a duel. To imagine two people—two men—agreeing to mortal combat with guns or swords over a breach of honor strikes the contemporary and perhaps cynical observer as so fussily absurd, so absurdly dramatic, and so male, that we… Continue reading

Harvey, the Haughty Hussar

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Feraud (Harvey Keitel), a light-skinned, brown-haired man with a mustache and two skinny hair braids, is sitting down with a person on his right whose face is obscured by Feraud's hand. He is wearing a white shirt with a thick black collar, and looking slightly off-camera.

|Alex Kies| In 1977, two years after Stanley Kubrick released Barry Lyndon, Ridley Scott made his filmmaking debut with The Duelists, his own artfully shot Napoleonic epic about the inner lives of petty European men played by incongruously cast Americans. Last year, Scott made… Continue reading

If Women Talked About Pride and Prejudice the Way Men Talk About Blade Runner

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Sean Young as Rachael, a light-skinned woman with dark, made-up hair, wearing bright-red lipstick and nail polish, is encircled in a cloud of smoke from the cigarette she holds in her fingers while gazing into the camera.

|Veda Lawrence| Our unsuspecting man will be minding his own business, drinking a lackluster old fashioned at the bar, reading a book, likely taking a day off of his more literary endeavors and winding down with some fluff, perhaps Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or some other light, beachy read. Just then, his peace will be disturbed… Continue reading

Twice Quit—Blade Runner and the Reluctant Noir Protagonist

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Deckard is sitting at a noodle restaurant, facing us, with his eyes turned downward. Behind him, Edward James Olmos’ Gaff stands menacingly.

|Timothy Zila| There’s a knock on the door or a ringing phone or, quite often, a stranger waiting in the detective’s office. The noir protagonist doesn’t seek trouble out; trouble seeks him. So it goes in Chinatown and The Maltese Falcon. And so it goes, too, in Blade Runner. When we meet Deckard… Continue reading