Tagged: X-Files

Picture of the Week: Gillian Anderson for Esquire, by Rankin

It just occurred to me, while I was cleaning my kitchen, that we generally don’t do a lot of pictures on here except for the rare occason where my mind runs wild with a 60-picture movie re:View. Which is a shame really, especially because my hard drives are stuffed to the last byte with images I adore. So, I thought from now on I’ll make an effort to share one of them every week.

All right, let’s bring on the pretty pictures.

Picture of the Week #1:
Gillian Anderson, shot by Rankin for the Esquire Augst 2008 issue.

Gillian Anderson by Rankin, Esquire August 2008

(View the full set in HQ)

Why this picture?
Well, first of all, because IMHO Gillian Anderson is one of the most beautiful people on the planet. And I love what they did with this shoot with regard to her, uhm, intense efforts to distance herself from her legendary X Files character Dana Scully. (She tends to be a bit funny about her most famous of roles and won’t even sign X Files stuff at times.) But clearly, as Esquire ran these pictures along with an interview to coincide with the release of the second X Files movie in August 2008, they had to do *something* X Files-related.

I think Rankin’s photos are fabulously playful about Gillian’s X Files history – they’re a sweet little parody of her obsession with avoiding being typecast as Dana Scully for the rest of her life. I love how they captured her nature in this shoot – which, away from the X Files set, is all contagious laughs and goofing around. The woman in the pictures, with the mischievous smile and the wild curly hair, couldn’t be further from the character on the show. And then they give her all those wonderfully cheesy props, kind of like a geeky inside joke – et voilà, we’ve got some of the most stylish and yet comic X Files promo pictures ever made.

Chosing a favourite from the shoot is almost impossible. I went for the Tentacles from Outer Space picture because it was the first that made me gasp when I opened the magazine and that wasn’t even because of the side boob…well, not only. But the picture had to fight off some tough competition from the Alien Facelift and the Naughty E.T. Nailbite!

Check back next week for picture #2. I promise it won’t be about Gillian Anderson and I will keep the rambling bit short.

Where are Mulder & Scully when you need them?

Here’s one hell of a mystery for you:

Let’s set the scene with some atmospheric Mark Snow whistling.

Okay. If this whole thing wasn’t fucking freaking me out, I’d be in absolute bliss over having my first X File here; my very own unsolved case – mysterious, unexplainable, and bordering to the paranormal.

A little more than a week ago, I came home late (and considerably drunk) from work one night and found a parcel waiting for me on my doorstep. Expecting one of my eagerly-awaited Ebay purchases (or maybe not expecting anything in particular, given the fact that I was drunk enough to not even fully remember my journey home) I opened the parcel – and found a book tumbling onto my lap.

A big, heavy, hardcover book covered in dust and shelf marks. A book I had never seen before, or even heard of.

“Sushi for Beginners,” the cover said to me, while two maki rolled up and down in front of a crossed set of chopsticks and two headless crabs waved their tails at me from their nigri deathbeds.

(I admit that this particular occurrence might have been a product of the day’s alcohol consumption.)

As I tried to pluck the book from my lap, careful to prevent any more dust settling on my dress, a piece of paper came fluttering out from under the front cover.

“With compliments”, it said. From a school in Surrey. A school I had never been to, or even heard of.

Unsettled, I checked the envelope again. It had my name printed on it in capital letters, big and clearly, and my address. The new address of my new flat – known only by a handful of people.

Increasingly unsettled, but also incapable of forming any theory due to the low concentration of blood in my wine, I mumbled “WTF?!” at the book about twenty times and fell asleep.

The next working day I called the number printed on the compliment slip, without getting an answer. On the third working day it occurred to me that the school would be closed during half-term week.

Today I called the school again and explained the situation to the secretary. She promised to investigate. Just now, she called me back, informing me that she spoke to every member of staff in the school and that nobody knew anything about me, or the book, or where it had come from, or why it had been sent.

So how did a used, dusty copy of a book I never ordered, apparently sent by a school where nobody knows anything about me or sending the book, end up at my doorstep, in an envelope with my name and address on it?

I think some more atmospheric Mark Snow whistling is appropriate here.

And it’s still fucking freaking me out!

re:View – The X Files: I Want to Believe (that this is not the film I’ve waited for for six years!)

The story
Some FBI agent goes missing. Some psychic creep goes all psychic about it. Let’s call Agent Mulder. Much stalking through the snow sans plot ensues. Oh, and there’s some dodgy Modern-Day-Dr-Frankenstein-Thing going on. And dog tranquilizer. For the sake of this re:View, however, we’ll focus on the aspects of the film you’ll actually (possibly) be bothered about.

Act One
No-Longer-Special-Agent Dr Scully works in a Catholic hospital and has a bit of a faith crisis because The Church Folks won’t let her do some Really Totally Radical Risky Brain Surgery to save a little boy’s life. Xzibit Special Agent Mosley Drummy shows up, somewhat inappropriately, asking for Mulder.

Scully tells him to go screw himself cause, ya know, they’re no longer FBI and all. She also kind of annoyingly stresses the point, throughout the film, that she’s a DOCTOR now.

Also, The Creator tries to shock us for a sec by making Scully talk about Mulder like he’s History. But then she totally goes home to convince Mulder to get on the case. With the F-B-I. And the audience goes

“I’m happy as a clam hiding away from the world and cutting out newspaper articles all day”-Mulder says the FBI can go screw themselves. Also, he’s got a beard. Well, not any kind of beard. Maximum eeew!-level kind of beard. He tries an eyebrow wiggle that used to be sexy in pre-beard times on Scully–

and they both go all awkward and you can tell they’re WAY beyond frustrated. And just in case we still don’t get that point, there’s THE PENCILS™!

The audience goes

(The Pencils™ = Universal X Files Symbolism for Frustrated!Mulder – and consequently Frustrated!Scully – since February 8, 1998.)

But somehow The Pencils™ work their magic and Mulder agrees to be airlifted to DC.

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