here's always more to a movie than what makes it to the screen, as Alien Legend proves with its apt dissection of the Alien quadrilogy. Starting with Ridley Scott's original Alien and concluding with 1997's Alien: Resurrection, the site folds back its subjects' cinematic skin with exacting attention to detail, extracting slivers about on-screen bloopers, behind-the-scenes information, deleted scenes and more.
Of these, the "Deleted Scenes" section for each movie provides the most surprises. While many of the coveted deleted scenes for Alien and Aliens were released with their DVD editions, most of those shot for the last two movies never made it into cinematic format. In particular, the site's treatment of Alien3's deleted scenes is stunning. Even longtime fans may not realize just how much they didn't see, such as the alien queen embryo migrating from Newt to Ripley (in the script, but not necessarily filmed), the crash of Ripley's escape ship, discussions among the prisoners of Ripley's identity, a longer Alien entrapment scene and more conversations with the Company.
Most of the deleted scenes are available as downloadable media files—visitors need to jump through a few hoops to view them, but they're worth the effort. Alien: Resurrection is the exception to this; it has detailed notes about the missing scenes, but no video.
When fans are done salivating over the deleted scenes, they can check out write-ups on each movie's storyline, awards, characters and vehicles, check out toys, games, comics and other memorabilia based on the series and sign a petition for an uncut version of Alien3.
—Ken Newquist
Site of the Week—July 14, 2003
ox may have failed to renew Futurama, but fans of Matt Groening's animated science-fiction comedy can still feed their insatiable desire for all things Bender & Co. by visiting Can't Get Enough Futurama.
The site offers everything fans expect to find, and plenty that they don't. The first stop for newbies (or for anyone who wasn't able to follow Fox's chaotic Futurama scheduling practices, which at last count was everyone) is the episode guide. The guide's broken down
by season, and each episode's listing provides its formal name, production code, air date, fan rating and a brief synopsis. Rounding out the entries are convenient links to related information, including episode reviews, frame grabs and sound clips. The average fan rating—provided by site visitors—is a particularly nice touch, one that other fan sites would do well to emulate.
Like its more popular Simpsons sibling, Futurama is filled with running gags; the site itemizes them under its "Lists and References" category. Included are all of the cartoon's opening subtitles (including "This Episode Has Been Modified to Fit Your Primitive Screen" and "Touch Eyeballs to Screen for Cheap Laser Surgery"), lyrics for Futurama's various songs (like "Robot Hell Bonanza" and "Fry Crack Corn") and the official series timeline. The "Freeze Frame" category has a similar premise, but lists all of the series' in-jokes and bloopers on an episode-by-episode basis.
All of this is good stuff, but it's what folks would expect to find. What they won't expect are guitar tabs for the Futurama theme song, Nokia ring tones, ASCII artwork, Winamp skins, fan-created Flash games, fonts, interactive "choose your own adventure"-type stories, PocketPC themes and a bunch of other extras that die-hard fans will devour faster than Fry chugging a can of Slurm. The quality varies, and some of the games are works in progress, but overall these
eccentric extras are enjoyable tributes.
— Ken Newquist
Site of the Week—July 7, 2003
oetry featuring SF and fantasy themes is flourishing like never before, thanks to the relatively low cost of setting up specialized journals on the Internet. Sidereality is one of the newest of these 'zines, a low-key and attractive site that is gradually building itself into an archive of appealing offbeat poems and related non-fiction.
So far this magazine has published six issues, each filled with a complex range of poems with titles like "Vigils of the Fire," "Down in Tampa, Wine Intoxicated," and "Kali Appears With a Necklace of Flavored Heads." There are reviews, articles and interviews to read on the site, too. And—a mandatory perk with online journals—everything is archived. Each new issue adds depth to the still-evolving identity of Sidereality, while the forums allow readers to engage in conversation about works already published.
For those who like some visuals with their verse, Sidereality features an entire sequence of poems linked to the artwork of Matthew P. Schuster. Schuster's 10 pieces, co-written with poet Michael Arnzen, are entitled "Gentle Monsters," and each is presented with one of his illustrations. Additionally, the cover art for each issue of Sidereality is weird, delicious and thought-provoking—not the point of the magazine, to be sure, but not to be overlooked either.
— A.M. Dellamonica
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