Prometheus
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green
****
The trouble with prequels is that, by their very nature, they're designed to strip away the mystery. Last year's The Thing, for example, set out to join the dots right up to the point John Carpenter's 1982 icy alien classic of the same name began. It's merely part of a larger Hollywood trend that sees screenwriters taught to explain, to answer, to solve riddles, to leave the audience without a shred of doubt.
So any trepidation that Alien fans may be feeling towards Ridley Scott's Prometheus is understandable, particularly as Scott has promised that, 33 years since his film Alien changed the face of science fiction movies, he will return to the franchise he started, to answer some burning questions. Not least, the origins of the so-called "Space Jockey" - the creature whose carcass is glimpsed briefly in Alien.
While Prometheus does indeed provide answers, at least the script by Jon Spaihts and the Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof makes a virtue out of this. Set primarily in 2093, some 30 years before Alien, the crew of the ship Prometheus, led by the archaeologist couple Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), are travelling to distant moon LV-223 to uncover the origins of mankind and, quite literally, meet our makers.
Funding the trillion dollar trip is the Weyland Corp - the insidious "Company" from the original films - led by the ageing CEO Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), who has an agenda of his own. His agents on the ship include the mission director Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and the lifelike android David (Michael Fassbender) - one of several reminders that while Sigourney Weaver's heroine Ripley is absent, we are very much still in the Alien universe.
For all the tangential links to the franchise, there are differences: the crew of Prometheus (led by Idris Elba of The Wire) is more A-list than Alien's cast ever was, and the tension and dread of the original is largely absent, simply because this is not a film full of acid-spewing, dome-headed aliens munching through the crew one by one. But if it's more sci-fi than horror, there are some shocking sequences, one involving a nail-biting self-surgery that will turn you inside out.
Performances are first-rate - particularly an eerie Fassbender - but what really impresses is that Prometheus is a film about ideas. Expanding on Alien's preoccupations - the very male fear of reproduction - Scott's return to this bleak, forbidding future world asks big philosophical questions about the responsibility of creation. As forensic as it is frenetic, it's as thought-provoking as blockbusters get.
SPECS
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
TWISTERS
Director:+Lee+Isaac+Chung
Starring:+Glen+Powell,+Daisy+Edgar-Jones,+Anthony+Ramos
Rating:+2.5/5
if you go
The flights
Fly to Rome with Etihad (www.etihad.ae) or Emirates (www.emirates.com) from Dh2,480 return including taxes. The flight takes six hours. Fly from Rome to Trapani with Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) from Dh420 return including taxes. The flight takes one hour 10 minutes.
The hotels
The author recommends the following hotels for this itinerary. In Trapani, Ai Lumi (www.ailumi.it); in Marsala, Viacolvento (www.viacolventomarsala.it); and in Marsala Del Vallo, the Meliaresort Dimore Storiche (www.meliaresort.it).
'Dark Waters'
Directed by: Todd Haynes
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, William Jackson Harper
Rating: ****
Mobile phone packages comparison
Quick facts
- Storstockholms Lokaltrafik (SL) offers free guided tours of art in the metro and at the stations
- The tours are free of charge; all you need is a valid SL ticket, for which a single journey (valid for 75 minutes) costs 39 Swedish krone ($3.75)
- Travel cards for unlimited journeys are priced at 165 Swedish krone for 24 hours
- Avoid rush hour – between 9.30 am and 4.30 pm – to explore the artwork at leisure
THE SPECS
Engine: 3.6-litre V6
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 285bhp
Torque: 353Nm
Price: TBA
On sale: Q2, 2020
Dubai World Cup Carnival Card:
6.30pm: Handicap US$135,000 (Turf) 1,200m
7.05pm: Handicap $135,000 (Dirt) 1,200m
7.40pm: Zabeel Turf Listed $175,000 (T) 2,000m
8.15pm: Cape Verdi Group Two $250,000 (T) 1,600m
8.50pm: Handicap $135,000 (D) 1,600m
9.25pm: Handicap $175,000 (T) 1,600m
'The Ice Road'
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh
Stars: Liam Neeson, Amber Midthunder, Laurence Fishburne
2/5
MORE ON THE US DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES
Sarfira
Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal
Rating: 2/5
KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY
July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington
July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon
1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share, which has grown about 1,000 per cent at present. Its highest closing price was $197.85 on June 27, 2024
1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs
2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website
2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006
2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black
2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year
2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video
2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started
2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products
2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013
2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS
2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa
2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition
2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone
MATCH DETAILS
Liverpool 2
Wijnaldum (14), Oxlade-Chamberlain (52)
Genk 1
Samatta (40)
Kill
Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Starring: Lakshya, Tanya Maniktala, Ashish Vidyarthi, Harsh Chhaya, Raghav Juyal
Rating: 4.5/5