Felicity stars as a mom who notices weird stuff happening around the house like groceries stacked to the ceiling, lockjaw, branded flesh, and birds flying into the windows by the hundreds. Proof of extra-terrestrial visitation or good reason not to stockpile bird seed? I say Column A and Column B.

This leads me to three questions. 1) Who lives on this planet? 2) Do they intend to eat us? 3) If not, are they delicious?

The way I see it, the life on this planet could be anything, but here are seven very real options. We need to get to know our enemy before we travel 600 light years to f##k their shit up.

Apes

We can’t assume that the lifeforms on this weird, new Super Earth look and sound like we do. That would be arrogant. However, that’s not to say that we can’t learn about our own humanity from their civilization. Should the planet be overrun with talking apes, NASA’s scouts will have to be careful not to be caught and imprisoned. Better bring an ape mask like the one Danny McBride wore in 30 Minutes or Less just in case.

Amazon Women

Should scientists discover that the planet could be inhabited by a race of sexy, Amazon warrior women, I’d like to volunteer for the mission. It will be a big sacrifice and I’ll miss my life here on Earth, but you see, I grew up mere miles from two all-female colleges and still had a tough time getting any. I’m owed this.

But seriously, that’s a lot of kids. And though having children is an enriching experience, there has to be a point where having that many is an impediment on a functioning life. It can cause financial, emotional, and vaginal strain. Not to mention the fact that they’re ineligible to appear on Family Feud.

However, the large family trend is growing in popularity with many Americans opting to raise a shitload of children. This is thanks in part to The Duggars, but also to the film families listed below.

Xenomorphs – Aliens

When it comes to movie moms, the Alien Queen really gets around. She has hundreds of children, all of which were conceived with a different partner. Her self-esteem must really be in the toilet. Alien Queen’s dad really messed her up.

Gremlins – Gremlins

Stripe the Gremlin probably has the biggest family in film history. Think about like this, if a spilled glass of water caused Gizmo to birth five offspring, just imagine what Spike’s jump into a YMCA pool yielded. Hundreds, if not thousands. When you factor in his babies having babies, that’s a ton of Gremlins. It must be really rough for them around Christmas.

I beleive the technical term is “predalien”. Or is it “pedalien”?

In 1987, Japanese game publisher Square, who later created the RPG series Final Fantasy, which we’re sure has inspired more than one chocobo furry sex orgy at Dragon*Con, got the license to make an Aliens game. Unfortunately, the game was never released on the NES, only on the Japanese Famicom Disk System.

The recently rediscovered game is documented in the video above from 1up. It shows us what we’ve all been missing. The biggest thing, in my opinion, is the super-sexy Sigourney Weaver sprite. She has ducked and float-leaped into my heart. If the 8-bit version of Ripley came into my bedroom wearing a pink jump suit and big boots, brandishing a laser gun, I wouldn’t turn her down. Maybe that’s partly because of my fear of laser guns, but still. 5-year-old me would have declared 8-bit Ripley his girlfriend, and once again, nobody would talk to me at recess. (1up)

AICN hosted a contest where fans could enter their videos of other movies getting the Tron treatment for a chance to win a seat at the upcoming Butt-Numb-A-Thon at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Austin, TX. Harry Knowles has picked the winner and posted a few worthy runner-ups. Tronitized Aliens, the champion, certainly earned its title. Great FX work, not only with the addition of the neon circuitry, but also the spinning vortex just beyond the hatch. I’ve also included the Tronitized version of Hard Target starring the one and onl JCVD sporting a mullet while balancing atop a light cycle. In the real world, no one could perform a move like that and not derez. Nope wait, that doesn’t make sense.

Check out the videos below.

Every time the Alien series comes out again on DVD, or now Blu Ray, we always focus on Alien and Aliens. We kind of know everything there is to know about the classics. Wouldn’t it be interesting to really find out what went wrong with Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection?

More after the jump…

Now that the Blu Ray set is coming out, Sigourney Weaver is talking about Alien 3 specifically. “Every day we’d shoot all day and then at midnight David [Fincher] would have to get on the phone and defend shooting the next day’s work,” she said. “You shouldn’t hire someone like Fincher unless you’re going to let them go. So I think it was very difficult for him, really difficult for everybody. Yet I think the film is really good what he did. It was a very specific vision that Fox wanted him to do. It was not his take on it which I think made it more complicated for him, but it made a difficult film that much more difficult certainly. Certainly whatever issues were there were complicated by the distance and the time change. It was hard to have a coherent conversation in those circumstances. I thought Fincher was amazing. I think that with Social Network, everybody now is going to be able to recognize Fincher for being one of the great directors of our day. Certainly that was true after Fight Club, etc.”

If Alien 3 had problems, people hate on Alien Resurrection a lot more. Maybe it’s worth a second look. “I really enjoyed a lot of Alien Resurrection. I thought that the scientists were really wonderful and the company was more detestable than ever. As we become more and more of a corporate planet, I think that the lessons from Alien have not really been paid attention to. I think it got harder for Jean-Pierre [Jeunet]. The story is much more about the science and about the corporations. I think it’s difficult for us to watch the fourth one because it seems like yesterday or tomorrow. It’s not happening far away. It seems like something we read about in the papers, cloning or BP and all this stuff. So I think it makes people more uncomfortable but I think they all really stand up. I’ve heard people arguing over their favorites and three and four have a lot of fans.”

Now that Ridley Scott is making his Alien prequel, he’s revealed that he was never asked to do a sequel. He kind of seems bitter about it, but Weaver assured he never got screwed out of anything.

“Well, you know, what happened was they never set out to make a sequel. Jim Cameron wrote Aliens on spec. He was being interviewed by our producers for something else and he said, ‘I’ve written this script of Aliens. Would you read it?” They hadn’t even thought about doing it. So it was his baby from the beginning and he did such an amazing job. It would have been fun to go back to Ridley to do another one but in those days, you didn’t do sequels. He was busy doing whatever he was doing.”

The Alien Anthology, with behind the scenes features, interviews and screen tests, comes out October 26.
 

Ridley Scott discussed plans for two Alien prequels on Sunday while closing out the first ever Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Film Festival. According to Scott, the films will take place long before the original and will focus on "The Space Jockey," otherwise known as the giant skeleton encountered by Kane (John Hurt) in the first film.

The legendary director said he was upset about not being asked to participate in the original sequels, noting that he was unaware of Aliens until after James Cameron began filming. Had he been given the chance, he would have focused on the origin story of “The Space Jockey,” as he is now.

While he was tight lipped with details, Scott did mention that the plot will focus on the "untold story of how ‘The Space Jockey’ became a legend," including his exploit fighting the French in the south of England and his involvement with the drafting of the Magna Carta. (Collider)