Word: holmes
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...cast is full of interesting character actors who have no chance to do their thing. Those who applaud Alien for featuring a "liberated, non-sexist" heroine-Signourney Weaver, who proves to be the strongest and most resourceful crew member--should take another look at her brawl with Ian Holm; at last we have a heroine sturdy enough to be elaborately bashed and pummelled, slammed and kicked with enough intensity to give sado-masochists wet dreams for millenia to come...
...everyone's worst fantasies about shellfish, and his sole aim is to devour each of the crew members. Once this narrative pattern is established, the only suspense involves the question of who will be eaten next. Since the movie's generally good actors (among them Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Sigourney Weaver) all play equally bland technicians, it is hard to make an emotional investment in the alien's pecking order. Indeed, the film's characters are so lifeless that one begins to wonder whether they might not be parodies of space...
...extermination program. We also meet doctors, technicians and clergymen who lend their aid to the Nazi cause. These characters, like the famous Nazi leaders who appear (Eichmann, Heydrich, Himmler), are played without German accents by such skilled actors as David Warner, Robert Stephens, T.P. McKenna and Ian Holm. They, too, invite audience identification-and so force us to wonder whether we might ever collaborate with an immoral government for the sake of opportunism and self-preservation...
...cast the mini-series with big-name actors came early on. "People want to see this show or they don't," explains Klein. "It would have been ludicrous to star-stud it." Instead of celebrities, the audience will see prominent actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company (Ian Holm), the New York Shakespeare Festival (Meryl Streep) and Broadway (Rosemary Harris, George Rose). The Nazis are mainly played by British. Says Berger: "We did not want any comedic overtones of Hollywood." Most of the cast members accepted their roles as soon as they saw the script. One of the two actors...
More important, Arab Leader Holm denounces the mission of both men-the soldier as well as the archaeologist-as "a rape of our heritage." But nobody pays much attention to what Holm says after he emerges as an opportunist who is only using the colonialist issue to unite the desert tribes in his own drive for power. This is a pity. In view of some of the tacky beach-front resorts that have since been built with foreign money along the Moroccan coast, one cannot help thinking that the fellow really had a point there...