{"id":1348,"date":"2012-06-16T00:45:19","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T18:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2012-06-16T00:45:19","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T18:45:19","slug":"prometheus-at-a-cinema-in-santa-fe-an-experience-in-intensity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/16\/prometheus-at-a-cinema-in-santa-fe-an-experience-in-intensity\/","title":{"rendered":"&quot;Prometheus&quot; at a Cinema in Santa Fe, An Experience in Intensity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So while I was in Santa Fe I caught Ridley Scott&#8217;s prequel to <em>Alien<\/em> (1979), the flashy and eye-catching <em>Prometheus<\/em>, which is certainly trippy, even if it doesn&#8217;t all add up. I guess if I were rating it as such, I&#8217;d give it 3 1\/2 to 4 stars\u2014that is to say, I did like it, had fun watching the film, for all its flaws. What I didn&#8217;t like: it seems to end with a begging for a sequel, though Ridley Scott took so long to do the prequel, I doubt if he really plans for another: But who knows? He might be casting a glance at the <em>Harry Potter<\/em> franchise and thinking why not. Some catty Hollywood observations are easy: It&#8217;s like <em>2001<\/em> meets <em>Alien<\/em> meets <em>Chariots of the Gods<\/em>, with an homage to Werner Herzog&#8217;s <em>Cave of Forgotten Dreams<\/em> (2011) in the early scenes, plus a little spritzing of David Lean&#8217;s <em>Lawrence of Arabia\u2014<\/em>and Michael Fassbender does resemble Peter O&#8217;Toole<em>.<\/em> What I liked: It throws in enough complexity to make you think and wonder, ponder over the implications of this or that scene. The opening, for instance, is gorgeous and puzzling, when an alien\/human on a distant planet swallows a mysterious liquid, falls apart and dissolves in a river, the final shots of the scene showing his DNA recombining to another life-form, which most likely becomes the precursor of the badass arthropod in <em>Alien<\/em>. The alien\/humans who seem to have &#8220;terraformed&#8221; Earth and to have seeded humans here later appear to change their minds and decide to destroy us (as happens in Arthur C. Clarke&#8217;s novel of <em>2001<\/em>), but why? It begs a philosophical question, and an interesting one, at that. Perhaps because we are only one stage in a creative\/destructive cycle of intelligent beings in the universe? Maybe.<br \/>\nBut the film was only part of the megaplex cinema experience. The trailers were so over-the-top I was exhausted by the time the film started. Even the bathroom was intense: The hand blow-dryer practically took off two of my fingernails. To regain some sense of normalcy, I ended the night taking pictures of the cool neon signs along Cerrrillos Boulevard, like this one:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/SFNeonsign.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1349\" title=\"SFNeonsign\" src=\"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/SFNeonsign-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"614\" height=\"409\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So while I was in Santa Fe I caught Ridley Scott&#8217;s prequel to Alien (1979), the flashy and eye-catching Prometheus, which is certainly trippy, even if it doesn&#8217;t all add up. I guess if I were rating it as such, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/16\/prometheus-at-a-cinema-in-santa-fe-an-experience-in-intensity\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,16,24,29],"tags":[135,139,143],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-booksfilm","category-film","category-photography","category-the-west","tag-photography","tag-prometheus","tag-santa-fe"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}