Alien Vs Mockbuster [Review: Alien Vs Hunter]

Isn't copyright law interesting! It seems you can copyright and therefore protect the name "Predator" but not "Alien." This gives me hope for the future of the cross-over spin-off: I'm looking forward to "Alien Vs Mega Shark" "Alien Vs Forrest Gump" and "Alien Vs Thomas The Tank Engine" in 2011.

Alien Vs Hunter is an Asylum-produced film with a DVD cover designed to mimic Alien Vs Predator - while the film bears almost no relationship to the original. So it's a mockbuster of a cross-over spin-off from two movie franchises. The plot is simple - two meteorites land, and a small town is caught in the crossfire between a giant spiderlike creature and a mysterious armour-clad human figure. The staff of the town newspaper form an uneasy truce with the local NRA survivalist militia to defend themselves.

The film is mildly enjoyable in places. Rare praise from me, I know. However by rights it should be unwatchable - rudimentary special effects, an overwritten script, and some dodgy cardboard sets. As in some other Asylum productions it's made bearable by strong performances from the main actors - particularly Hillary played by Dedee Pfeiffer and Valentine played by Randy Mulkey.

I particularly enjoyed the making of mini-doc on the DVD extras, something that would usually bore me to death. Instead of a mutual congratulatathon, this mini-doc gives you a glimpse of the Asylum approach to filmmaking - the twelve day shoot. I wonder if, paradoxically, something about this pressurized process actually brings out the best in some actors.

Tellingly, Randy Mulkey lets off steam by making fun of the director, albeit in a good natured way, while Dedee Pfeiffer talks about the challenges of the project. Dedee's professionalism is also inspiring - treating this hit-and-run production as a job like any other, and holding tight to her character's thinly written backstory (Hillary is apparently an ex-biker chick trying to get away from her past) to give a good performance on the first or second take. There's rarely time for a third take on an Asylum set.

Great D12s of Fire [Review: Bender's Game]

District 9 update: there's a link to Neill Blomkamp's short film "Alive in Joburg" here - (thanks Molly Brown).

Bender's Game is a feature-length Futurama episode. The plot revolves around waste-of-space robot Bender who becomes addicted to Dungeons and Dragons and starts to confuse reality with the game. Meanwhile Fry and the crew are searching for an energy crystal that could end Ma's domination of the Universe's fuel supply, which has naturally enough been disguised as a D12.

This episode is enjoyable and witty enough but suffers from the same problem as the Simpsons Movie - it differs from the regular episodes only in length. This could easily have been compressed to the regular length without too much loss, and there's no sense of either higher production values or of the greater scope that you might want from a feature. Half-way through, having lost their battle with Ma, the crew are transported into an alternate universe where they get to fight the battle again through D&D analogues of the previous events and characters - this is a clever structure but in places the repetition skirts a little too close to the boring frontier.

As with other Futurama and Simpsons episodes, the best parts are often the throwaway comments or scenes least relevant to the plot. Here, an early sequence where Layla participates in a spaceship demolition derby sees Lego and Meccano spaceships collide, while the heads of George Takei and Scott Bakula argue over who has done the most damage to the Star Trek franchise; later Bender's D&D addiction takes him to a robot psychiatric hospital for a brief parody of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - the robot versions of individual and group psychotherapy are hilarious.