Links post: Test footage from Alien, jewellery by Salvador Dali, behind-the-scenes photos from The Hollow Crown, and more.

Alien: Test footage of the original xenomorph actor in Alien, Bolaj Badejo, has surfaced on youtube. A while ago one of my friends said that one of the good things about Prometheus was the fact that Ridley Scott could now afford to do something "better" than just have a really tall skinny guy wearing an alien costume, and I was like WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is like the first commandment of movie costuming and special effects, and most of cinema's most impressive and sneaky tricks have been invented by people working on comparatively low-budget movies like Alien. In my opinion that tall skinny guy in an alien costume is still as creepy as all get-out, and certainly better than most CGI monsters up until very recent times.  

Dali jewellery, 1950. From How To Be A Retronaut.

Kehinde Wiley. This artist paints strikingly intense, colourful portraits -- his homepage can be found here. I love the mixture of very modern contemporary models and this almost glowing, Renaissance-era background in some of the portraits.

Londoners! Or people who will be in London on the 16th, 17th and 18th of August! If you like comics, awesome stuff, or awesome stuff about comics, then you should go to see Full Stage Splash: A Comic Look at the Comic Book. It's a show about the history of comicbooks in the style of the Horrible Histories BBC sketch show or the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and I highly recommend it. Tickets are £7.50 (less than a movie, if you're in London!) and you can get them HERE. Were I not working at the Edinburgh Fringe right now I'd be at the Camden Fringe for sure, watching this play. ;)


Behind the scenes of The Hollow Crown. Related to my earlier posts about the BBC's Hollow Crown series of Shakespeare adaptations, here are some backstage photos by Charlie Gray.

DYI comicbook high-heels tutorial. I haven't tried this yet, but it looks pretty easy and if you do it right, the results should be awesome. All you need are some cheap high-heeled shoes and a bunch of old comics!