Are we ready for another Event Horizon, only with more impregnation? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Are we ready for another Event Horizon, only with more impregnation?

S

Because it sounds like that's what we're going to be getting. Rufus Sewell is in talks to star in Animus, a movie that's described as Event Horizon meets Alien, about an astronaut who gets an alien infection and then turns into the "ultimate alpha male" who "dominates and impregnates" all the women.

[Update: Now with official synopsis.]

According to MovieHole, which broke the story, Animus is written and directed by commercials director Thomas Konkle. And here's the synopsis from the film's official site:

A group of scientists who have become a dysfunctional family are on the return journey from exploring Saturn's and Jupiter's moons, hoping to have found life. Their mission was unsuccessful. They are struck unexpectedly by micrometeorites, one of which infects one of the scientists, John Link, with proto-life, causing him to evolve. As the alien corruption takes hold, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde battle ensues within Link. As "Hyde" takes over with increased intelligence and strength, he becomes the ultimate alpha-male, threatening the family– killing the men, while dominating and impregnating the women. As they hurtle through space towards earth, the Captain, his wife and the remaining crew must fight to destroy Link before he brings this monstrous, evolved contagion back to our home world.

Thanks to Hotscot for finding the official synopsis!

Bear in mind that you can't really make any solid judgments about an early plot synopsis for a film that hasn't even started shooting yet. And still... ugh. I'm assuming "the women" on this ship are scientists and professional space explorers, and not just along for the ride or whatever. So it's not clear why they would end up being passive victims, who get dominated and raped by the infected crewmember.

At first, I was assuming Sewell would play the infected crewmember, because he seems to gravitate towards monstrous roles, but he could actually the heroic captain.

In any case, at first blush, this sounds like a throwback to the impregnation horror movies that came out in the wake of Alien, only with more explicit misogyny. [Movie Hole]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Are we ready for another Event Horizon, only with more impregnation?

The 10 Best 'Monster of the Week' Episodes of All Time onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The 10 Best 'Monster of the Week' Episodes of All Time

S

The "monster of the week" episode is an endangered beast. Once upon a time, television was full of single-episode stories, in which the heroes faced an unstoppable threat and won, all in about 43 minutes. Here are 10 "monster of the week" episodes that pack more storytelling power than a season-long arc of most TV shows.

Note: To help narrow things down, let's set a few conditions. We'll only include standalone "monster of the week" episodes where the monster in question appeared only once, and was never heard from again. So for example, Doctor Who's "Blink" is disqualified since it was arguably the first episode in a long-running arc involving the Weeping Angels. With that out of the way, here we go...

S

10 Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "Self-Made Man"

When the Terminator TV show started, the creators said they wouldn't be doing "Terminator of the week" episodes — but then they did just one, featuring a random Terminator who goes back in time to kill a politician and overshoots, becoming Myron Stark, a big wheel in the 1920s gangster scene. Cameron, the friendly Terminator, figures out that Myron Stark is coming back, and manages to be there to greet him. It's a lovely, creative take on Terminator lore that uses time travel in a uniquely clever way.

S

9 Red Dwarf, "Polymorph"

It's sort of a weird version of Alien set on the Red Dwarf, in which the crew is hunted by a shape-shifting creature that steals their negative emotions to sustain itself. And it's often mentioned as one of the best Red Dwarf episodes, because the monster radically changes all of the characters and their dynamic winds up becoming very different before they deal with the monster. Often, the best monster-of-the-week episodes are the ones that change the regular characters in some way, or help us see them in a new light.

8 Cowboy Bebop, "Pierrot Le Fou"

This is the one where Spike gets his ass kicked, by a killer who targets him after Spike sees Pierrot commit a murder. Spike and his crew have to figure out who Pierrot is and what his weakness is, before he finishes the job. We discover that Pierrot is the result of strange experiments, which turned him into this abomination. This episode gets a lot of praise for its amazing visuals and intense atmosphere — but also for putting Spike in a position where he's already lost a fight at the beginning of the story, for once.

S

7 Xena, "A Day in the Life"

The monster this time around is the world's biggest giant, who's going to crush a village, and meanwhile some bandits are going to raid another village. But really, it's about exploring the Xena-Gabrielle relationship, while also introducing us to Minya, a young woman who feels threatened by Xena's awesomeness. In the course of the story, Xena has to outwit the bandits and giant while also empowering Minya — and the giant, whom we only meet this one time, is a particularly great foil in an episode about outsized personalities.

S

6 Supernatural, "What Is and What Never Should Be"

This is the one where a Djinn traps Dean in a dream world wherehe has everything he ever wanted, including his mother back from the dead. Like a lot of the episodes on this list, it's about illuminating the characters, as a way of presenting them with an even bigger no-win situation.

S

5 Star Trek, "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

The "monster" in this episode is Captain Kirk's friend Gary Mitchell, who gets godlike powers after being bombarded with a strange energy — and Kirk has to sacrifice his friend to save the ship. The real focus is the interplay between Kirk and Spock as Spock tries to convince Kirk that sometimes you have to make the impossible choice for the good of everyone else. Never does Spock seem more chillingly emotionless.

S

4 Angel, "Smile Time"

We praise this episode a lot — but it really deserves all the praise. Ben Edlund's hilarious story of Angel being turned into a puppet actually features a great monster, in the evil puppets that try to suck the life essence out of children through their television screens. It's one of the show's most fun episodes, but presents Angel with a unique adversary during his "tool of the man" phase: cute puppets that use mass media to get their own way.

S

3 Doctor Who, "Midnight"

The fact that we've never met the creature from this episode again, or learned more of its secrets, is part of why it still has so much power. The Doctor is on a tourbus in the middle of nowhere, when one of the passengers becomes sort of possessed by a mysterious presence — and then it targets the Doctor. Like most of the episodes on this list, this shows the Doctor in an extreme situation that paints him in a new light, but it's also an intense tale in which there's no easy win.

S

2 The X-Files, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"

We almost put "Tooms" here, because of intense horrible creepiness — but Tooms actually appears in two episodes. And Jose Chung does feature a monster of the week, the alien that's abducting fake aliens. The whole thing is the setup for a strange metafictional tale, in which Jose Chung gives us a very different look at Mulder and Scully, and their entire world. Check out Crave Online's great exegesis of why this might be the best X-Files episode.

S

1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Hush"

We had to put this up top, because the Gentlemen are another great example of a monster that never reappears and starts getting overexposed or overexplained. They show up, steal the voices of everyone in Sunnydale, and nearly complete a terrible ritual — until Buffy and Riley figure out a way to stop them. In a show that's all about characters who have the gift of gab, using their voices to figure out everything together, the nearly silent episode is the creepiest thing ever.

So what did we miss?

Thanks to Genevieve Valentine for the input!

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The 10 Best 'Monster of the Week' Episodes of All Time

Pluralistic ignorance makes idiots of everyone onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Pluralistic ignorance makes idiots of everyone

There's a reason why you should embrace being the stupidest, most obnoxious, loud-mouthed, stick-in-the-mud of any group. In some cases, you're providing free entertainment. In others, you're saying what absolutely everyone else is too shy to say.

Tell me if you've ever had this experience. You're with a group of friends at a certain place or event. You didn't particularly care for the venue, but it was close enough and cheap enough and you agreed with an internal sigh. Now, as you're all sitting around on uncomfortable chairs, perhaps picking at clever little food nuggets inspired by some Eastern Bloc country, or maybe listening to a hipster play an ocarina, you notice the strained smiles and the dead eyes around you and realize, "We all hate this."

You've just found yourself in the thrall of pluralistic ignorance. It's what happens when everyone fakes happiness, or enthusiasm, or understanding so well that that they fool, well, everyone else. Pluralistic ignorance rears its head when most people, and in some cases all people, do not agree with the general opinion, but aren't willing to speak out.

One study exposed pluralistic ignorance on college campuses and exposed college students as surprisingly anti-lush. Students were asked to assess their own attitude towards drinking culture on campus and asses the general student body's attitude towards drinking. For the most part, the students themselves thought that drinking culture was over-the-top and problematic, but believed that the other students on campus were in favor of it. Even in close groups of friends, each person believed that they were more concerned with alcohol abuse than their friends were. Yet another study showed that students would sit through lectures they didn't understand without asking questions because they believed everyone else had understood. They were willing to be stupid, but not to own up to it in order to stop being stupid.

Those of us who are out of college like to think we've learned a thing or two, but have we? How many times, recently, have you done something you weren't interested it, or stayed quiet about something you were, because you were sure that your attitude didn't sync up with the attitudes of people around you? Who knows, you may have suffered through something unnecessarily, and made your friends suffer through it as well. Perhaps being a stupid, negative, querulous, reluctant jerk is the way to make everyone in your group happier. And if it isn't, what are the odds that anyone would call you out on it?

[Via Pluralistic Ignorance, Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Abuse on Campus.]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Pluralistic ignorance makes idiots of everyone