Phursday Photos: Phight the Phuture

In the spirit of X-Files mania that has gripped, er, me, here's a couple of old photos I dug up from the last time Mulder & Scully hit the big screen:

Agent Mulder believes we are not alone...

Agent Scully believes there is a rational explanation for everything.
Even a Mini in a ginger wig.

The future they are fighting is, of course, the sinister Millenium Mini...

More pictures from the Christian Mini Owners Club going a bit X-Files mad back in '98 here.

And if anyone has a Mini and fancies doing a sequel this September, well, Yoda and I will be up for it!

Tuesday Tunes: Fight the Future

It probably hasn't escaped the notice of readers that there is a new X-Files flick out this week. No, really, there is.

So I figured I would dig out the album from the last time round. Not the film score, 'The X-Files: The Album', which apparently features music inspired by the first X-Files film.

It's a mix of big names (The Cure, Foo Fighters, Noel Gallagher, Sting) and slightly more obscure artists (Soul Coughing, anyone?).

The European release opens with a variation on the X-Files main theme in the style of Tubular Bells, which actually makes more sense when you hear it, and closes with The Dust Brothers rendition, both of which I think are pretty cool in their own ways.

In between you get a selection of post-grunge rock tracks (although the Foos are in melancholy mode for Walking After You), pretty typical Bjork fare in Hunter, and the slightly more ethereal vocals of Sarah McLachlan's Black. Noel Gallagher's contribution is an (overlong) instrumental piece, so thankfully no annoying Mancunian whining. (Yes, I was definitely a Blur person.) More Than This is not The Cure at their most depressing, but it's no Friday I'm in Love.

Only a couple of the songs appear briefly in the film or over the end credits, but there's actually not much that brings the X-Files directly to mind, except possibly Filter's One, and One More Murder by Better Than Ezra. But it's a nice selection of tracks, with some great artists who lurk on the fringes of my music collection - The Cure and Foo Fighters in particular are sadly underrepresented in my CD cabinet. The only track I would skip is Sting doing Invisible Sun with Aswad. I don't need Sting in my life, I'm afraid.

Oh yes, and there's a subtle hint on the cover: 'Hear the truth revealed at 10:13' which points you to a bonus track revealing some of the mythology behind the movie.

Sci-fi Song of the Week

So, which track from the album am I going to add to the mixtape this week? Well, actually I'm not. I'm going to throw in another alternative version of the X-Files theme which I quite like, by Rugby psychadelic rockers Spiritualized. I haven't heard the Version from UNKLE yet, but currently Spiritualized is my favourite X-Files theme.

The Tunguska Event at 100

It is 100 years since the Tunguska event, when a meteor/black hole/badly piloted spaceship crashed into Siberia, and exactly what happened remains a mystery.

Which is convenient for science fiction, because you can plausibly have a micro black hole floating around under the Earth's core, or the Death Ray experiments of a mad scientist. (Steampunk meets World War 1 on the Eastern Front, anybody?)

Most popularly, of course, Tunguska has become an integral part of UFO mythology, including being involved in the 'black oil' arc in the The X Files.

I have no idea where this is leading in terms of Christian sf, except that I kind of like the idea that when Lucifer fell from heaven, he landed in early 20th Century Siberia. (If I'd been a little more on the ball I would have actually written that story already, but I've been excercising my gift for procrastination instead.)

The whole UFO thing, though, has facinated me since I was a yoof, so I may explore that a bit. Or I may just sit and watch some X-Files. Yes, I think that's more likely.

Spooky coincidence

Last night I was being industrious, and getting some long overdue web updates started elsewhere in my virtual empire.

I was uploading these photos, and decided I should try and find a suitable link to serve as a reminder of what the X-Files movie was all about and what it had to do with Minis.

But I couldn't track down the official movie web page because of all the chatter about the sequel. Well, let's hope that drags some more custom round my little corner of the webbiverse, eh?

I haven't seen the X-Files in a long time. I kind of lost interest in that last season, the one without Mulder, and I think it went on a bit too long. Surely Mulder finding his sister, and Scully becoming the believer, keeping the X-files going with a sceptical partner, surely that was the end?

I dare say I'll go see it, or if Her Babyship doesn't allow, watch it on DVD. Who knows, maybe it will even have the desired effect and send me scurrying out to amazon to get the TV series on DVD...