I saw District 9 with P-Doug and G yesterday. I was impressed with it and enjoyed it thoroughly. Aside from Disney/Pixar's Up, it's one of the few movies I've seen this year that wasn't disappointing.
Set in 2010, District 9 postulates an alternate history, in which aliens arrive at Earth in the early 1980s, at Johannesburg in South Africa (a nice change from the typical L.A. or Washington, and the movie itself makes a point of saying so, provoking a smile and a wink from me). Like in the movie Alien Nation (which was, of course, set in California), the beings on the ship are workers. Unlike Alien Nation, these aliens don't look especially human and don't simply merge into the community to become slick and enthusiastic wanna-be Americans (or in this case, South Africans). They become just what one would really expect: slum-dwelling refugees eking out a crude living, barely suffered to live by the humans around them and authorities over them (in some cases, not suffered to live at all).
The aliens are portrayed as, by and large, uneducated and unsophisticated, either easily duped by human authorities or fearful and suspicious of them. Not unintelligent, just out of their depths. Humans, wondering at the disparity between the advanced technology of the aliens (called by the epithet "prawns" throughout the movie) and the relative simpleness of the aliens themselves, speculate that a ruling class on the ship had somehow been lost. Despite the fact that they are larger than humans and physically stronger, it becomes clear that they have become a form of prey for humanity: they have a biologically-keyed weapons technology that humanity cannot operate but, of course, covets.
Enter Wikus van der Merwe, played deftly by Sharlto Copley. Wikus is a young administrator, obviously in over his head, put in charge of the forced relocation of the alien population of 1.8 million because he is the boss's son-in-law. Wikus is a bumbler; a nice guy who's deliberately not quite as sharp as the audience, who quickly see the convenient holes in his moral fabric (and by extension, that of the society in which he lives). The audience is witness to some appalling acts of cruelty on the part of Wikus, which he himself, in his ignorance, sees as simple light-hearted hi-jinx. In the course of the movie, a transformation comes over him — one aspect of it physical, one spiritual — that ironically make him both less, and more, fully human. This is at the heart of the movie. There's no missing that this is, at the bottom of it all, a comment on the rot that Apartheid set into the soul of white South Africa.
Wikus first persecutes, and then later befriends (at first provisionally, then finally sincerely), an alien re-dubbed Christoper by the authorities. Christopher, it turns out, has a far better grasp of things than most of his fellow aliens; he is portrayed as more sophisticated and sensitive, somewhat unprepared for what he is forced to learn about humanity during the movie. He and his young son become the key to the full blossoming of Wikus's humanity — but only after Wikus breaks faith with Christopher on more than one occasion. The movie times Wikus's redemption perfectly: it occurs at the very moment the audience finally gaves up on Wikus and is about to lose all sympathy for him. Only at this moment does Wikus finally come to understand what he can and cannot do.
The movie ends with appropriate question marks, as it should, leaving the audience to draw its own conclusions and speculate about the consequences. I really hope they don't make a sequel; the movie makes its points forcefully and effectively, and anything more would honestly be gratuitous.
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Bolt 3D
Yesterday I was downtown with P-Doug to liberate some beer from its confinement in cold, sterile pub taps, and we went to see Bolt, the new Disney movie. If you don't know, it's about a dog who is the star of an action-based TV show. Special effects give him his powers, but for the sake of "sincerity" on the show, the producers see to it that Bolt believes it's all real. It's only when he's accidentally shipped from Hollywood to New York and has to make his way back (with the help of a fanboy hamster and an initially-reluctant stray cat) that he learns the nature of reality and comes to grips with not being a "super" dog.
The version that we saw, down at the Scotiabank Theatres, was the 3D version. I went in hopeful, but honestly not expecting much. I have to say, I think I saw the future of the movie-going experience yesterday. The 3D is believable, and it's all in fully colour... none of that red and green stuff. It's done with circuluar polarizing lenses in glasses with opposite 'spins', and projection at 144 frames a second that alternate the view 72 times a second, far too fast for the human eye to register. The effect is a completely believable 3D environment -- so believable that I think the highest compliment is that after a while, you don't notice it... you just feel it. Not to give too much away, but there is scene near the end in which a building is on fire and two of the characters are trapped at floor level with a sea of smoke just above them. I'd seen stuff like that in fire prevention movies as a kid, but I never had a full sense of just how horrifying that is until yesterday. In faking it, they made it real for me. P-Doug paid it another fine compliment; he said to me that they never forced the 3D on you. There's only one, tiny, instantaneous "gotcha" 3D moment in the movie; otherwise, they were conservative with the effect. It was there to make a convincing environment for convincing characters, and that's exactly what it should be.
The movie itself is good, traditional pulls-at-the-heartstrings Disney fare. It's worth repeated seeings... but see it at least once. And see it in 3D. Even the flat, traditionally-animated closing credit sequences are given new life with the technique. It gives you an idea of just how much more is possible.
The version that we saw, down at the Scotiabank Theatres, was the 3D version. I went in hopeful, but honestly not expecting much. I have to say, I think I saw the future of the movie-going experience yesterday. The 3D is believable, and it's all in fully colour... none of that red and green stuff. It's done with circuluar polarizing lenses in glasses with opposite 'spins', and projection at 144 frames a second that alternate the view 72 times a second, far too fast for the human eye to register. The effect is a completely believable 3D environment -- so believable that I think the highest compliment is that after a while, you don't notice it... you just feel it. Not to give too much away, but there is scene near the end in which a building is on fire and two of the characters are trapped at floor level with a sea of smoke just above them. I'd seen stuff like that in fire prevention movies as a kid, but I never had a full sense of just how horrifying that is until yesterday. In faking it, they made it real for me. P-Doug paid it another fine compliment; he said to me that they never forced the 3D on you. There's only one, tiny, instantaneous "gotcha" 3D moment in the movie; otherwise, they were conservative with the effect. It was there to make a convincing environment for convincing characters, and that's exactly what it should be.
The movie itself is good, traditional pulls-at-the-heartstrings Disney fare. It's worth repeated seeings... but see it at least once. And see it in 3D. Even the flat, traditionally-animated closing credit sequences are given new life with the technique. It gives you an idea of just how much more is possible.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Buildings, beer, budgets
I haven’t kept my blog up the way I used to… it used to be partly about recording the little things I did, mostly so I’d remember them more distinctly as time goes on – for me, they tend to blur together into a big common pot of “travel outside the city” or “had a beer downtown” or “saw a movie”. They’re of only passing interest to most people, I know, if that, but I think it’s important to keep it up.
Well, last Saturday, P-Doug and I went out to Streetsville at my prompting. I’d seen a little video of the place from about 1960, and I wanted to compare what I saw with what I remember with what’s there today. As it turned out, we didn’t really stop there; we just blew through on our way back to town.
Where we went first was a service station on the side of the 401 that was in business for about 15 years. I knew it well; the only Wendy’s for miles was there and I got gas there fairly often (yes, yes, pun intended). It closed about two years ago, at the end of September, 2006, and I can remember seeing the notice on my way back from somewhere one weekend, just before it actually closed. I’m not sure why it closed… it was always doing good business.
I was out of gas by the time we arrived and P-Doug volunteered, right out of the blue, to by me a fill-up. I was quite taken by it, since it’s not really the custom on our trips.
We got there and parked just off Argentia and crossed the street to a way through the fence I’d spotted on GoogleMaps. On one of the light poles, there was a cross in purple flowers, and a little shrine to some young driver killed at the spot (presumably). Someone who would always be their “monkey”, according to the writing on the photo. It was heavily wrapped in cellophane against the weather, though, so the sun shining on it made it very difficult to read.
We got to the station and wandered around the gas bar for a few minutes. It was strange to see it without the gas pumps or brand insignia. As is out wont these days, we took 3D paired shots of the place. Coming around to the other side, we saw a beat-up little Chev with Downsview plate frames… we took it to be abandoned, possibly stolen. Then P-Doug noticed a porta-potty. He made a sly joke about it being a cheap TARDIS that I got immediately but laughed at late because it grew increasingly funnier the more I thought about it. We didn’t put two and two together just yet. We headed toward the main building.
As we often do in these cases, we split up. He went along the north side and I went south because I wanted to see the abandoned drive-thru I’d patronized so many times. It was a weird thing to see it boarded up. Took some panos of the parking lot and the building’s main entrance, then we sort of switched sides.
When I came back to the gas bar, I noticed a guy with Sikh head gear wandering around. He’d noticed me, but he took his time coming forward. I hung back, waiting for P-Doug, who arrived pretty much at the same time as this other fellow – the security guard, as I’d imagined – came up. It was a nice enough chat, though I confess the man’s accent made following him unusually difficult. He seemed convinced the government was vastly wasteful, and of course we agreed politely. He struck me as rather starved for attention, for it must have taken us the better part of half an hour to cross the gas bar and finally say our good-byes.
After that, we blew through Streetsville without seeing anything compelling enough to stop for, and made our way down Mississauga Road to the QEW. P-Doug had mentioned visiting the Great Lakes Brewery, and while he waved it off, I felt driven to visit because we were so close, I wanted to see the place, and he’d indulged me in floating around an abandoned gas station and drifting through scenic but unengaging suburbia. It was not easy to get to the place. It’s down right north of the QEW where the street configurations are discontinuous. We did finally get there, sampled a couple of beers, ate a few shortbread cookies, and looked over their visitors’ book. They had people visiting from the States, and even from Britain – one from a brewery over there, which impressed me above all.
Off to Bryden’s. Again, not easy, because the Kingsway North was closed. But we did get there. Had a few pints, decimated a plate of what we mutually agree are the city’s best nachos (the ground beef is done in a jerk sauce whose recipe was given to the bar by the Jamaican aunt of one of the staff, and it’s incredible), took home a glass, entered a contest we didn’t win, and simply enjoyed the place for a few hours. The idea of going to a movie came up and we looked in a handy copy of NOW and P-Doug suggested seeing I.O.U.S.A. at the Carlton, so off we went.
Now that was in an interesting movie. There’s not much point in going into it, except to say it’s about the debt burden of the United States, with a historical perspective, and some ideas about how it can be turned around – and why it must be. They’re showing a condensed, 30-minute version online for free that focuses a bit more closely on the stats – brilliantly communicated using compelling animation sequences – and you really ought to take that in at least. Hey, it’s free, and it’s right here.
Well, last Saturday, P-Doug and I went out to Streetsville at my prompting. I’d seen a little video of the place from about 1960, and I wanted to compare what I saw with what I remember with what’s there today. As it turned out, we didn’t really stop there; we just blew through on our way back to town.
Where we went first was a service station on the side of the 401 that was in business for about 15 years. I knew it well; the only Wendy’s for miles was there and I got gas there fairly often (yes, yes, pun intended). It closed about two years ago, at the end of September, 2006, and I can remember seeing the notice on my way back from somewhere one weekend, just before it actually closed. I’m not sure why it closed… it was always doing good business.
I was out of gas by the time we arrived and P-Doug volunteered, right out of the blue, to by me a fill-up. I was quite taken by it, since it’s not really the custom on our trips.
We got there and parked just off Argentia and crossed the street to a way through the fence I’d spotted on GoogleMaps. On one of the light poles, there was a cross in purple flowers, and a little shrine to some young driver killed at the spot (presumably). Someone who would always be their “monkey”, according to the writing on the photo. It was heavily wrapped in cellophane against the weather, though, so the sun shining on it made it very difficult to read.
We got to the station and wandered around the gas bar for a few minutes. It was strange to see it without the gas pumps or brand insignia. As is out wont these days, we took 3D paired shots of the place. Coming around to the other side, we saw a beat-up little Chev with Downsview plate frames… we took it to be abandoned, possibly stolen. Then P-Doug noticed a porta-potty. He made a sly joke about it being a cheap TARDIS that I got immediately but laughed at late because it grew increasingly funnier the more I thought about it. We didn’t put two and two together just yet. We headed toward the main building.
As we often do in these cases, we split up. He went along the north side and I went south because I wanted to see the abandoned drive-thru I’d patronized so many times. It was a weird thing to see it boarded up. Took some panos of the parking lot and the building’s main entrance, then we sort of switched sides.
When I came back to the gas bar, I noticed a guy with Sikh head gear wandering around. He’d noticed me, but he took his time coming forward. I hung back, waiting for P-Doug, who arrived pretty much at the same time as this other fellow – the security guard, as I’d imagined – came up. It was a nice enough chat, though I confess the man’s accent made following him unusually difficult. He seemed convinced the government was vastly wasteful, and of course we agreed politely. He struck me as rather starved for attention, for it must have taken us the better part of half an hour to cross the gas bar and finally say our good-byes.
After that, we blew through Streetsville without seeing anything compelling enough to stop for, and made our way down Mississauga Road to the QEW. P-Doug had mentioned visiting the Great Lakes Brewery, and while he waved it off, I felt driven to visit because we were so close, I wanted to see the place, and he’d indulged me in floating around an abandoned gas station and drifting through scenic but unengaging suburbia. It was not easy to get to the place. It’s down right north of the QEW where the street configurations are discontinuous. We did finally get there, sampled a couple of beers, ate a few shortbread cookies, and looked over their visitors’ book. They had people visiting from the States, and even from Britain – one from a brewery over there, which impressed me above all.
Off to Bryden’s. Again, not easy, because the Kingsway North was closed. But we did get there. Had a few pints, decimated a plate of what we mutually agree are the city’s best nachos (the ground beef is done in a jerk sauce whose recipe was given to the bar by the Jamaican aunt of one of the staff, and it’s incredible), took home a glass, entered a contest we didn’t win, and simply enjoyed the place for a few hours. The idea of going to a movie came up and we looked in a handy copy of NOW and P-Doug suggested seeing I.O.U.S.A. at the Carlton, so off we went.
Now that was in an interesting movie. There’s not much point in going into it, except to say it’s about the debt burden of the United States, with a historical perspective, and some ideas about how it can be turned around – and why it must be. They’re showing a condensed, 30-minute version online for free that focuses a bit more closely on the stats – brilliantly communicated using compelling animation sequences – and you really ought to take that in at least. Hey, it’s free, and it’s right here.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Run over by a train
P-Doug and I were exploring a railroad bridge about to be replaced a little while back, and while we were up on the tracks, we noticed a freight approaching slowly. We determined to film it passing over our cameras... his S80, and my already battle-scarred G9. We set them on adjacent ties, back to back; the G9 facing the train and the S80 down the track away from it. Between the two cameras, this is the view we got.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
No Country for Old Men
SPOILER ALERT I will be revealing details of the movie No Country for Old Men in this review, since it will be around a long time after the movie is on the shelves at Blockbuster. If you haven't it, and going in fresh is important to you, please don't read this review.
**********
I saw No Country for Old Men yesterday. It really wasn't what I expected. Hollywood usually spins tales of bad guy does bad thing and good guy sets universe right.
This isn't that kind of movie.
Bad things happen in this movie. Really bad things. Some of them for understandable reasons, but many not. In that alone, it's a disquieting movie. Set in 1980, at its heart, it's a movie about four men. Three of them think they're smart and give their adversaries due respect. The scary thing is, they are. To a "t". And yet each one is defeated by the fourth, because his methods are utterly overwhelming. It's a frightening idea that you can make all the right moves and still lose.
Pursuit movies usually start with the One Big Mistake. Oddly enough, it's not the one that it appears to be. When Josh Brolin's character Llewellyn Moss comes across a massacre in the Texas desert, a drug deal gone wrong, and takes off with the two million dollars, effectively, he's scott-free. Later on, it's demonstrated that there's a tracking device in the case, but the odds of anyone successfully discovering it just by roaming up and down Texas are remote. No, Moss's big mistake is going back, apparently to give water to the dying man he confronted at the scene. When he arrives, the man is dead, and others are waiting. His truck and its various registration information will ultimately be his undoing, and that of a half dozen others, directly and indirectly.
Tommy Lee Jones is Sheriff Bell. Bell is the narrator as the movie opens, so indications are he'll come out on top. He's a man nearing retirement who's seen the society he understood and served erode away, leaving just the ugliness beneath the civility; the kind of man who pines, openly, for the days when a sheriff could maintain order without a gun, by sheer force of personality and the weight of civilization at his back. Bell sees in the escapade one last chance to defend the right, protecting a man (with whom he as only a passing acquaintance) from himself and the force he has unleashed. But events are always just ahead of him... sometimes by moments, or inches.
Woody Harrelson appears, although fairly briefly, as Carson Wells, an obvious closer used by the mob. His fate is perhaps the most distressing of any of the principal characters, because he goes in fully aware of the capacities of the man he's opposing, and is of no small ability himself, and yet he still falls prey.
The perfect storm on legs with which all these men are dealing is Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurn, a guy who looks deceptively like a beefed-up Emo Phillips. This is a man who seems to need to kill the way other people need to eat, and any person will do; a man who has honed murder to a hobby with his preferred method a skull-busting pneumatic hole-punch attached to a high pressure air tank. Hired to recover the two million from Moss, Chigurn goes rogue and sets out on his own course, for his own ends. Chigurn does not emerge from the movie unscathed, but he does emerge, after having (apparently) killed Moss's wife simply on a point of principle, long after he has killed Moss and, presumably, recovered the money. Like a child destroyed in the fire he started, even the men who first dispatched Chigurn on his mission are ultimately his victims, punished for the lack of faith betrayed in sending out Carson Wells.
Likewise, Sheriff Bell emerges alive, but not unscathed, though his wounds are psychological rather than physical. Bell has the skills to track down and confront Chigurn, but never the timing. Even at the end, in a heart-stopping moment of anticipation when it seems everything will now come to a head and justice will prevail, Chigurn manages to silently slip away, unconfronted and unseen, denying Bell even martyrdom. Chigrun gets away with it, all of it, leaving behind him dead bodies, corrupt and innocent alike, and Bell in an anticlimactic retirement of brooding regret and distracted preoccupation from which he will likely never emerge; possessor of a full career boiled down to a bitter residue of failure. Worst of all, he's not surprised and seemed to see it coming, in spite of all his best efforts. There's portent in his closing remarks, made to his wife in the wake of dreams, but I'm at a loss to identify of what, exactly. It will take repeated viewings, I think, for me to really get my head around it. It's an excellent movie, if a deeply unhappy one.
**********
I saw No Country for Old Men yesterday. It really wasn't what I expected. Hollywood usually spins tales of bad guy does bad thing and good guy sets universe right.
This isn't that kind of movie.
Bad things happen in this movie. Really bad things. Some of them for understandable reasons, but many not. In that alone, it's a disquieting movie. Set in 1980, at its heart, it's a movie about four men. Three of them think they're smart and give their adversaries due respect. The scary thing is, they are. To a "t". And yet each one is defeated by the fourth, because his methods are utterly overwhelming. It's a frightening idea that you can make all the right moves and still lose.
Pursuit movies usually start with the One Big Mistake. Oddly enough, it's not the one that it appears to be. When Josh Brolin's character Llewellyn Moss comes across a massacre in the Texas desert, a drug deal gone wrong, and takes off with the two million dollars, effectively, he's scott-free. Later on, it's demonstrated that there's a tracking device in the case, but the odds of anyone successfully discovering it just by roaming up and down Texas are remote. No, Moss's big mistake is going back, apparently to give water to the dying man he confronted at the scene. When he arrives, the man is dead, and others are waiting. His truck and its various registration information will ultimately be his undoing, and that of a half dozen others, directly and indirectly.
Tommy Lee Jones is Sheriff Bell. Bell is the narrator as the movie opens, so indications are he'll come out on top. He's a man nearing retirement who's seen the society he understood and served erode away, leaving just the ugliness beneath the civility; the kind of man who pines, openly, for the days when a sheriff could maintain order without a gun, by sheer force of personality and the weight of civilization at his back. Bell sees in the escapade one last chance to defend the right, protecting a man (with whom he as only a passing acquaintance) from himself and the force he has unleashed. But events are always just ahead of him... sometimes by moments, or inches.
Woody Harrelson appears, although fairly briefly, as Carson Wells, an obvious closer used by the mob. His fate is perhaps the most distressing of any of the principal characters, because he goes in fully aware of the capacities of the man he's opposing, and is of no small ability himself, and yet he still falls prey.
The perfect storm on legs with which all these men are dealing is Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurn, a guy who looks deceptively like a beefed-up Emo Phillips. This is a man who seems to need to kill the way other people need to eat, and any person will do; a man who has honed murder to a hobby with his preferred method a skull-busting pneumatic hole-punch attached to a high pressure air tank. Hired to recover the two million from Moss, Chigurn goes rogue and sets out on his own course, for his own ends. Chigurn does not emerge from the movie unscathed, but he does emerge, after having (apparently) killed Moss's wife simply on a point of principle, long after he has killed Moss and, presumably, recovered the money. Like a child destroyed in the fire he started, even the men who first dispatched Chigurn on his mission are ultimately his victims, punished for the lack of faith betrayed in sending out Carson Wells.
Likewise, Sheriff Bell emerges alive, but not unscathed, though his wounds are psychological rather than physical. Bell has the skills to track down and confront Chigurn, but never the timing. Even at the end, in a heart-stopping moment of anticipation when it seems everything will now come to a head and justice will prevail, Chigurn manages to silently slip away, unconfronted and unseen, denying Bell even martyrdom. Chigrun gets away with it, all of it, leaving behind him dead bodies, corrupt and innocent alike, and Bell in an anticlimactic retirement of brooding regret and distracted preoccupation from which he will likely never emerge; possessor of a full career boiled down to a bitter residue of failure. Worst of all, he's not surprised and seemed to see it coming, in spite of all his best efforts. There's portent in his closing remarks, made to his wife in the wake of dreams, but I'm at a loss to identify of what, exactly. It will take repeated viewings, I think, for me to really get my head around it. It's an excellent movie, if a deeply unhappy one.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Right to the Moon
Last night, a friend and I took in In the Shadow of the Moon, a newly-released documentary about the Apollo Program. It was everything I hoped for, and more. It was interesting from a technical and historical aspect... but moreover, it was deeply, deeply human.
A little background here... it's about me, but this is my blog, after all. When I was a really little boy, seven or eight, I was very interested by the planets of our solar system. These huge, distant, foreign places, so different from Earth. This was a time when space exploration (at least from a Western perspective) was being done by robots. The Pioneers and Voyagers were sending back photos of Jupiter and Saturn. The Vikings had shown us Mars close up. But no Westerner (read: American) had been in space since Skylab. It was a drought in manned space flight for the Western world. So I had little context.
At my age, I was alive for the first Moon landing, but I not old enough to remember or understand it. I vaguely remember Apollo 17, the last moonshot... not the particulars, just the event. I was four years old, and I still remember looking up at jet planes and having the impression that people went to the Moon about as regularly as they flew in planes. It just seemed that commonplace.
Fast forward nearly a decade. When I was twelve, I began to become interested in manned space flight (this was in the days just before the shuttle resumed the American presence in space on a human level). I was reaching adolescence, and human stories were beginning to appeal to me... not merely the mechanics and nifty aspect of things, but the romance, the risk, the adventure of it. So I began reading up on the history I'd lived but did not remember. I used to spend lunch hours in the school library, pouring over books and issues of National Geographic nearly as old as I was, full of pictures and names. I can still remember being amazed to discover that twelve, and only twelve, Americans had walked on the Moon, and only twice that number had ever been to it, either to its surface or in orbit. I had imagined hundreds of people had done so. Even more amazing still was the discovery, when I went looking for a list of Soviet names, that the Soviet Union had never sent any human being to, or landed a human being on, the Moon. These 24 Americans were it. Period. Full stop. The only human beings who had ever left the gravity of Earth and gone to another world.
And so they remain, to this very day. Only two dozen.
And they have begun passing. God forbid, but it must be said: one day, reasonably soon, living memories of the Moon from close up will be gone. The men (and they were all men) who visited the Moon between 1968 and 1972, in their 30s and 40s then, are in their 70s and 80s now. And that's what makes this project and ones like it so very, very fundamental to humanity. No one has been to the Moon in 35 years now. Experience, know-how, even some of the technology is lost to us. Some of it rusts away... some of it dies. Recording every nuance is so important, if we are to go back, spread out, take our destiny beyond the cradle and into our universe.
Okay... enough of that. :)
The movie is gorgeous. Humourous. Nail-biting. Moving. Directed by Ron Howard, this movie puts us face to face with a handful of the people who did the actual work of going to the Moon. The warm, honest, self-effacing wit of Mike Collins. The breathtakingly-expressed wonder of Gene Cernan. The down-to-Earth (no pun intended) humanity of Alan Bean. The approachability and openness of Jim Lovell. Buzz Aldrin's joy in the technical, Charlie Duke's memories of mundane made amazing, Harrison Schmidt's pride in the achievements of science...
I find it amazing that a movie made nearly 40 years after Apollo 11 can still make me anxious, watching Walter Cronkite remind me that an hour and twenty-nine minutes from "now", Apollo 11, seen behind him, will lift off to do something long ago accomplished, but when he spoke the words, still something we had not yet achieved. I know how it turned out; we all do... and yet, I felt that pang in the pit of my stomach. It's almost like being able to remember it.
The sadness of the Apollo 1 fire; even the shock at the ugliness of the images. The needless, but probably unforeseeable, loss of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffe. The wondering, at the time, were they 'burying the program along with their buddies', to paraphrase.
There's a shot in the movie, taken from long distance... I'm not sure exactly how... of one of the astronauts, standing on the grey of the Moon. Beyond him isn't the blackness of space, but more grey. As the camera pulls back, you are shown immense lunar mountains beyond him; then space. He becomes a tiny presence; one of only two inhabitants of the Moon... the camera pans away to the right, taking in the vista. If your jaw doesn't drop open when you see that... you're too cynical and jaded for me.
A profound moment (one of many) comes when Mike Collins tells us of orbiting the Moon while Neil and Buzz are on the surface. On the far side, out of touch with all the rest of us, he looked down at the Moon and knew... beyond it, was all of mankind, "plus two" on the near side of the Moon. And he, alone among all our kind, was on the outside. Him, and all the rest of the universe, whatever and whoever else. And how much he exalted in that knowledge. People feel sorry for Mike Collins because he didn't walk on the Moon... but clearly, he and all the six other CSM pilots have their own unique experiences.
I'm a bit disappointed that Neil Armstrong didn't participate. He was born in 1930. One day, all too soon... twenty or thirty years from now at most... it will not be possible for anyone to ask him, "What was it like? What frightened you? What moved you? What do you remember?" I wish this project had had his participation. But a couple of the astronauts, notably Buzz Aldrin and Alan Bean, expressed sympathy with Armstrong's position. He was the first... the first of our kind to touch another world. For that to be fate of the rest of your life must be a heavy burden... each of these men has been, almost literally, elevated to the status of a Greek or Roman god among us. But that name, Neil Armstrong, is the hardest of all to live up to. His self-imposed isolation is a regrettable, but understandable, outcome of all that came before. So rather than focus on my disappointment, I choose to celebrate the great gift of hearing the words and experiences of those astronauts who did sit before the camera, tell the stories, share the memories, and make that long-ago moment of excitement and amazement accessible to people like me, who did not really share in it at the time. And for all those who will come after them.
If we don't destroy ourselves in some mindless war, it is essentially inevitable that we will return to the Moon, and probably beyond. One day, a few centuries from now, going to the Moon, living on the Moon, may become commonplace, as life for Europeans in the New World became. I hope people then will be able to watch this movie, and ones like it, and recapture the wonder of what it was like when this was not ordinary, when this was not easy or to be taken for granted, when there was an elect few — two dozen, no more — given the privilege, responsibility, and honour of representing all who will set foot on other worlds forever after. Of all our kind, they were the first, the very first. No matter how long we exist or how far we may range, that will always be true.
See In the Shadow of the Moon.
A little background here... it's about me, but this is my blog, after all. When I was a really little boy, seven or eight, I was very interested by the planets of our solar system. These huge, distant, foreign places, so different from Earth. This was a time when space exploration (at least from a Western perspective) was being done by robots. The Pioneers and Voyagers were sending back photos of Jupiter and Saturn. The Vikings had shown us Mars close up. But no Westerner (read: American) had been in space since Skylab. It was a drought in manned space flight for the Western world. So I had little context.
At my age, I was alive for the first Moon landing, but I not old enough to remember or understand it. I vaguely remember Apollo 17, the last moonshot... not the particulars, just the event. I was four years old, and I still remember looking up at jet planes and having the impression that people went to the Moon about as regularly as they flew in planes. It just seemed that commonplace.
Fast forward nearly a decade. When I was twelve, I began to become interested in manned space flight (this was in the days just before the shuttle resumed the American presence in space on a human level). I was reaching adolescence, and human stories were beginning to appeal to me... not merely the mechanics and nifty aspect of things, but the romance, the risk, the adventure of it. So I began reading up on the history I'd lived but did not remember. I used to spend lunch hours in the school library, pouring over books and issues of National Geographic nearly as old as I was, full of pictures and names. I can still remember being amazed to discover that twelve, and only twelve, Americans had walked on the Moon, and only twice that number had ever been to it, either to its surface or in orbit. I had imagined hundreds of people had done so. Even more amazing still was the discovery, when I went looking for a list of Soviet names, that the Soviet Union had never sent any human being to, or landed a human being on, the Moon. These 24 Americans were it. Period. Full stop. The only human beings who had ever left the gravity of Earth and gone to another world.
And so they remain, to this very day. Only two dozen.
And they have begun passing. God forbid, but it must be said: one day, reasonably soon, living memories of the Moon from close up will be gone. The men (and they were all men) who visited the Moon between 1968 and 1972, in their 30s and 40s then, are in their 70s and 80s now. And that's what makes this project and ones like it so very, very fundamental to humanity. No one has been to the Moon in 35 years now. Experience, know-how, even some of the technology is lost to us. Some of it rusts away... some of it dies. Recording every nuance is so important, if we are to go back, spread out, take our destiny beyond the cradle and into our universe.
Okay... enough of that. :)
The movie is gorgeous. Humourous. Nail-biting. Moving. Directed by Ron Howard, this movie puts us face to face with a handful of the people who did the actual work of going to the Moon. The warm, honest, self-effacing wit of Mike Collins. The breathtakingly-expressed wonder of Gene Cernan. The down-to-Earth (no pun intended) humanity of Alan Bean. The approachability and openness of Jim Lovell. Buzz Aldrin's joy in the technical, Charlie Duke's memories of mundane made amazing, Harrison Schmidt's pride in the achievements of science...
I find it amazing that a movie made nearly 40 years after Apollo 11 can still make me anxious, watching Walter Cronkite remind me that an hour and twenty-nine minutes from "now", Apollo 11, seen behind him, will lift off to do something long ago accomplished, but when he spoke the words, still something we had not yet achieved. I know how it turned out; we all do... and yet, I felt that pang in the pit of my stomach. It's almost like being able to remember it.
The sadness of the Apollo 1 fire; even the shock at the ugliness of the images. The needless, but probably unforeseeable, loss of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffe. The wondering, at the time, were they 'burying the program along with their buddies', to paraphrase.
There's a shot in the movie, taken from long distance... I'm not sure exactly how... of one of the astronauts, standing on the grey of the Moon. Beyond him isn't the blackness of space, but more grey. As the camera pulls back, you are shown immense lunar mountains beyond him; then space. He becomes a tiny presence; one of only two inhabitants of the Moon... the camera pans away to the right, taking in the vista. If your jaw doesn't drop open when you see that... you're too cynical and jaded for me.
A profound moment (one of many) comes when Mike Collins tells us of orbiting the Moon while Neil and Buzz are on the surface. On the far side, out of touch with all the rest of us, he looked down at the Moon and knew... beyond it, was all of mankind, "plus two" on the near side of the Moon. And he, alone among all our kind, was on the outside. Him, and all the rest of the universe, whatever and whoever else. And how much he exalted in that knowledge. People feel sorry for Mike Collins because he didn't walk on the Moon... but clearly, he and all the six other CSM pilots have their own unique experiences.
I'm a bit disappointed that Neil Armstrong didn't participate. He was born in 1930. One day, all too soon... twenty or thirty years from now at most... it will not be possible for anyone to ask him, "What was it like? What frightened you? What moved you? What do you remember?" I wish this project had had his participation. But a couple of the astronauts, notably Buzz Aldrin and Alan Bean, expressed sympathy with Armstrong's position. He was the first... the first of our kind to touch another world. For that to be fate of the rest of your life must be a heavy burden... each of these men has been, almost literally, elevated to the status of a Greek or Roman god among us. But that name, Neil Armstrong, is the hardest of all to live up to. His self-imposed isolation is a regrettable, but understandable, outcome of all that came before. So rather than focus on my disappointment, I choose to celebrate the great gift of hearing the words and experiences of those astronauts who did sit before the camera, tell the stories, share the memories, and make that long-ago moment of excitement and amazement accessible to people like me, who did not really share in it at the time. And for all those who will come after them.
If we don't destroy ourselves in some mindless war, it is essentially inevitable that we will return to the Moon, and probably beyond. One day, a few centuries from now, going to the Moon, living on the Moon, may become commonplace, as life for Europeans in the New World became. I hope people then will be able to watch this movie, and ones like it, and recapture the wonder of what it was like when this was not ordinary, when this was not easy or to be taken for granted, when there was an elect few — two dozen, no more — given the privilege, responsibility, and honour of representing all who will set foot on other worlds forever after. Of all our kind, they were the first, the very first. No matter how long we exist or how far we may range, that will always be true.
See In the Shadow of the Moon.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Reservoir Dogs
It's that kind of Saturday afternoon for me. Listen... here's how it is.
Today I was supposed to walk a few miles along the Humber and then visit a favour pub with P-Doug but he wasn't in when I called. Instead, I worked on my reminiscences of our trip to Ottawa a couple of weeks ago, long overdue (in fact, I'm uploading the images as we speak, as it were). Once that was done, I decided to do a solo ersatz mission... I walked up to a plaza Scarborough where I bought some overproof rum, Diet Pepsi, and rented some movies at Blockbuster. It took me nearly two hours of walking, which I'm moderately proud of, and I think I earned the buzz I have right now.
Anyway, one of the movies I rented was Reservoir Dogs. A little background here. In my mid to late 20s, Iused to work in the animation industry, in-betweening television commercials. The work trailed off in October of 1997 and for 18 months, I was unemployed... chronically, crushingly, living-in-my-parents'-basement unemployed. I used to take long walks by myself up Tenth Line in Mississauga to the 401 and back in the spring, summer, and autumn of 1998, trying to imagine a future with anything remotely brighter in it. At some point during that summer, I bought a VHS copy of Reservoir Dogs, which I'd heard a lot about but never seen.
I was hooked. Really hooked. I've rarely seen a movie as tight as this one, as innovative, as compelling. These are all bad guys in their way — even the cop Freddy Newendyke has some flaws — but every one of them has something that makes them compelling. This is an almost perfect movie, and like a handful of others that gild my soul, I've seen it over 50 times. I can quote whole passages from memory. I can't tip a waiter or waitress without thinking of the opening of this movie. It was one of those emotional crutches that got me through a hard point in my life and inspired me with the breadth and depth of the writing. The situation and action are a bit unlikely and over the top, but these actors breathed real life into these characters. It's a masterpiece. I imagine you've seen it, but if you haven't, rent it. Let it wash over you. Turn out the lights, unplug the phone, have a drink, and plug in. Become part of this movie. Grit your teeth and take the ride. It's amazing.
Today I was supposed to walk a few miles along the Humber and then visit a favour pub with P-Doug but he wasn't in when I called. Instead, I worked on my reminiscences of our trip to Ottawa a couple of weeks ago, long overdue (in fact, I'm uploading the images as we speak, as it were). Once that was done, I decided to do a solo ersatz mission... I walked up to a plaza Scarborough where I bought some overproof rum, Diet Pepsi, and rented some movies at Blockbuster. It took me nearly two hours of walking, which I'm moderately proud of, and I think I earned the buzz I have right now.
Anyway, one of the movies I rented was Reservoir Dogs. A little background here. In my mid to late 20s, Iused to work in the animation industry, in-betweening television commercials. The work trailed off in October of 1997 and for 18 months, I was unemployed... chronically, crushingly, living-in-my-parents'-basement unemployed. I used to take long walks by myself up Tenth Line in Mississauga to the 401 and back in the spring, summer, and autumn of 1998, trying to imagine a future with anything remotely brighter in it. At some point during that summer, I bought a VHS copy of Reservoir Dogs, which I'd heard a lot about but never seen.
I was hooked. Really hooked. I've rarely seen a movie as tight as this one, as innovative, as compelling. These are all bad guys in their way — even the cop Freddy Newendyke has some flaws — but every one of them has something that makes them compelling. This is an almost perfect movie, and like a handful of others that gild my soul, I've seen it over 50 times. I can quote whole passages from memory. I can't tip a waiter or waitress without thinking of the opening of this movie. It was one of those emotional crutches that got me through a hard point in my life and inspired me with the breadth and depth of the writing. The situation and action are a bit unlikely and over the top, but these actors breathed real life into these characters. It's a masterpiece. I imagine you've seen it, but if you haven't, rent it. Let it wash over you. Turn out the lights, unplug the phone, have a drink, and plug in. Become part of this movie. Grit your teeth and take the ride. It's amazing.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Sunshine on my shoulder...
On Saturday night I saw a movie called Sunshine. In Toronto, it's showing in just one theatre. I asked my friend at the outset why that was, and he too was flabbergasted.
By the time the movie was over, I kind of had my answer.
Sunshine is not really a bad movie, as movies go. But there wasn't much about it I thought was good, either. It's not something I'd rent to see again, and given my nature, it's rare for me to say that. I'd characterize my experience of the movie as ambivalent to bad. Since this is the internet, and since this is what people do on it, I will now regale you with my wisdom on the matter.
Flawed premise
If I go to see a movie about dragons and elves, or ghosts, or cartoon characters, or anything else largely divorced from everyday reality, I'm a lot more willing to suspend my disbelief. I have -- I think we all have -- a higher standard for movies that purport to be about "real" life, like political thrillers, slice-of-life, or hard science fiction. This one kind of let me down from the start. The premise is that, about 50 years from now, the sun is "going out". Period. No explanation. To me, this suggestion is only slightly more plausible than basing a movie on the idea that the sun won't come up tomorrow. If you're going to ask me to sit still for the next two hours on that basis, you should at least provide a mechanism I can mull over.
Here's the problem. Big as it is, the sun is, at the bottom of it all, an extremely simple object. In composition, it's essentially the same as all the rest of that gas floating around in space at large. The only difference is, there's a whole lot of it in one small little space. The sun is driven by pretty much just one thing: gravity. The sun is what hydrogen does when there's a large mass of it in one place. When there's enough of it that its combined gravity is stronger than the force of the electrons pushing back against each other, the hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium, and you get the phenomenon we all know as a "star". That's all there is to it. All that mass isn't going anywhere, as so neither is the gravity that drives the fusion. As long as the sun still has hydrogen to fuse, there's hardly any force in the universe that can stop it, in fact. And I checked... by various measurements, the sun is still 92% composed, by volume, of hydrogen. It won't stop shining for a long, long time. Ultimately, "the sun is dying" was just a plot device to get a bunch of people out into isolation. A better one could have, should have, been devised. So for me, the milk was a little off to begin with.
Anyway, this plot device sets the crew in motion on a mission to the sun with an object reputedly the size of Manhattan designed to "restart" the sun (by making Tesla coil sparks, apparently). It's a big bomb. How apropos. :)
Who cares?
The next problem I had was there was no set-up. I've heard it said that the best way to write a story is to write all the lead-up to the first big action scene, then shred all the lead-up. Sometimes, sure. Would have made for a confusing experience in On Golden Pond, I think. But I can see times where you'd want the opening scene to be one that gets the blood pounding.
Too bad that didn't happen in Sunshine. And yet, neither did any exposition that would make us care about the crew or the mission. We're dropped into a space ship a long way from Earth on a mission of vital importance, but there's no suggestion of how or why it's important. This isn't the beginning, and it isn't where the action starts. It's the coda between the two. Okay, yes, I know the sun going out would be a big deal, and I can imagine the ramifications. But this is a movie. The whole idea is for the movie maker to show you something. Something incredible, something profound, something you're paying money to see because you didn't or couldn't think of it yourself. Sunshine, though, just puts you in space with a bunch of people you're supposed to care about, but don't. What happened on Earth? What kind of desperation put these eight people in space at the likely risk of their lives? What's going on back home that nags them, constantly reminds them of why they have to stay sharp, dedicated? Nothing this movie shows you (at least not till the last ten seconds).
This was, so I'm told, a low-budget movie. Well, they blew the budget on outer space CGI, so I don't see why they couldn't have devoted five minutes at the start of the movie to The Terrible Conditions On Earth That Sent Us Into Space. You want to do it cheap? Fine, I'll tell you how. Opening scene, exterior. New York skyline in winter. Two people sitting on a park bench. They look pensive. Maybe they're breaking up. Conversation reveals one of them is about to go into space on a long mission. They're going to miss each other. But the other person understands why this is so important. Brief pause in the conversation. One of them suddenly muses about how Memorial Day Weekend used to be about heading up to the cottage in the Adirondacks and opening up the cottage, shorts, flip-flops, the first drip in that freezing cold lake. Imagine how cold that lake would be now... Audience goes: Ah ha! So this is New York in May! Wow, this is serious. You film this in January, it costs you a pittance, you get the point across with little or no computer enhancement.
Instead we had eight people butting heads, and it was hard to care about most of them. It works pretty well because they turn out to be highly, highly expendable. See? Even the writers didn't care.
Danger, Will Robinson! Spoiler! DANGER!
Warning warning warning if you actually want to see this movie and don't want to know the McGuffin, stop reading now. Because I'm gonna tell. Because it was, well, dumb.
Haunted house movies are scary. Crazy sickass murder guys are scary. This was kind of both. Except the ghost isn't dead, despite all common sense. It turns out there was a first mission, and it turns out its captain went nuts. But the captain was apparently so sure this wouldn't be the last word on the matter that he actually in one scene, in a broadcast sent back to Earth years before, refers to his ship as "Icarus One". Apparently he had ESP or something and knew not only that there'd be a second mission years in the future, but the name of the ship, too. Anyway, it turns out the captain went nuts, decided humanity's time had come, and bakes the crew in the solar observation room. How ironic! But here's my question. Given that we don't even let guys this unstable command nuclear submarines, river ferries, or even tugboats, what are the odds that the future of the entire human race would be entrusted to a guy with a one-in-ten-million predelectation for wanting our entire species to die to make room for the roaches? You'd think they might, oh, run a Rorschach test or two... "Just say the first thing you see in the ink blot." "Mankind burning to death in hellfire... mankind drowning in its own sewage... mankind freezing to death in its own inhumanity..." "Ummmm... thank you, we'll get back to you, Captain." Guys like this usually don't go off the rails in a couple of months or something. No. They usually write poems like "All Must Die" in grade ten and stuff, and most of the people around them know not to let them run, walk, sit, or even be in the same room with scissors. Oh, but not in the future. Any nut will do. I can only imagine Haliburton was running this mission and Captain Pinbacker put in the lowest bid.
So, anyway, this is a haunted house movie in space. The car breaks down, the kids decide to hole up in the abandoned mansion, and they disturb That Which Should Not Be Disturbed.
But I mean, maybe the captain of the first mission was a ghost, because despite the fact they show cameras everywhere, and the computer can tell them where everyone is on board, they didn't catch the fact that the airlock between the ships was being opened, and then being sabotaged. No, their first indication anything strange was going on was when the airlock between the ships was blown up. It's a wonder the crew didn't try to blame Canada for letting the terrorists on board.
Schmuck of the Irish
Cillian Murphy, who may have been around a while but strikes me as an up-and-coming actor (probably because he's younger than me) is central to the movie. He's Irish. But of course, he can't be Irish in the movie. The Asian people can't be Asian. No, everybody has to be American. Or put on their best attempt at an American accent. The captain of the mission to save all mankind might have a Japanese name, and he might look Japanese, but it better be plausible or even likely he grew up in Seattle at worst. Really, have we come no further than this? If so, maybe Capt. Nutbar is right, and it is time for us to make way for a better species. Okay, I don't mind that everyone was speaking English, even though in 50 years it might more likely be Mandarin. But can't they at least speak English in manners suggesting they really did come from different places around the world, as you'd expect in a mission of this magnitude? Can't the goddamn Irish guy really be a goddamn Irish guy? Is that so hard to believe? Jesus, the last thing in the movie you see is a transmitted message of him talking American to his American sister... who turns out to be sitting in Sydney, Australia! For God's sake.
What I liked about this movie
Well, they did do a good job of getting across just how dangerous a place space would be to live and work in, especially in proximity to the sun (maybe too good; once the first thing went bad, it never seemed to stop). The technology they showed was believable, a little more advanced than what we'd expect today, nothing outrageous... which is pretty much how it usually turns out (compare an article from 1950 about what your life will be like in 2000 with how different life in 2000 really did turn out from 1950; not all that much in most respects). The characters seemed for the most part believable with the exceptions of Captain Fruit Loops and Harvey, the second in command on Icarus II, who again strikes me as unlikely to have passed the second or third hurdle in a battery psych tests for a mission like this... even Mace might have been a little too tightly wound, but he was interesting.
There's not all that much that actually appealed to me, but that's not the same thing as saying it was badly done entirely. There were things that really didn't work for me and if you've read this far you know what they are. But I can also see enough of quality in it that I can understand how it could work well for others who don't have the same issues with the film as I do. Just didn't work for me.
By the time the movie was over, I kind of had my answer.
Sunshine is not really a bad movie, as movies go. But there wasn't much about it I thought was good, either. It's not something I'd rent to see again, and given my nature, it's rare for me to say that. I'd characterize my experience of the movie as ambivalent to bad. Since this is the internet, and since this is what people do on it, I will now regale you with my wisdom on the matter.
Flawed premise
If I go to see a movie about dragons and elves, or ghosts, or cartoon characters, or anything else largely divorced from everyday reality, I'm a lot more willing to suspend my disbelief. I have -- I think we all have -- a higher standard for movies that purport to be about "real" life, like political thrillers, slice-of-life, or hard science fiction. This one kind of let me down from the start. The premise is that, about 50 years from now, the sun is "going out". Period. No explanation. To me, this suggestion is only slightly more plausible than basing a movie on the idea that the sun won't come up tomorrow. If you're going to ask me to sit still for the next two hours on that basis, you should at least provide a mechanism I can mull over.
Here's the problem. Big as it is, the sun is, at the bottom of it all, an extremely simple object. In composition, it's essentially the same as all the rest of that gas floating around in space at large. The only difference is, there's a whole lot of it in one small little space. The sun is driven by pretty much just one thing: gravity. The sun is what hydrogen does when there's a large mass of it in one place. When there's enough of it that its combined gravity is stronger than the force of the electrons pushing back against each other, the hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium, and you get the phenomenon we all know as a "star". That's all there is to it. All that mass isn't going anywhere, as so neither is the gravity that drives the fusion. As long as the sun still has hydrogen to fuse, there's hardly any force in the universe that can stop it, in fact. And I checked... by various measurements, the sun is still 92% composed, by volume, of hydrogen. It won't stop shining for a long, long time. Ultimately, "the sun is dying" was just a plot device to get a bunch of people out into isolation. A better one could have, should have, been devised. So for me, the milk was a little off to begin with.
Anyway, this plot device sets the crew in motion on a mission to the sun with an object reputedly the size of Manhattan designed to "restart" the sun (by making Tesla coil sparks, apparently). It's a big bomb. How apropos. :)
Who cares?
The next problem I had was there was no set-up. I've heard it said that the best way to write a story is to write all the lead-up to the first big action scene, then shred all the lead-up. Sometimes, sure. Would have made for a confusing experience in On Golden Pond, I think. But I can see times where you'd want the opening scene to be one that gets the blood pounding.
Too bad that didn't happen in Sunshine. And yet, neither did any exposition that would make us care about the crew or the mission. We're dropped into a space ship a long way from Earth on a mission of vital importance, but there's no suggestion of how or why it's important. This isn't the beginning, and it isn't where the action starts. It's the coda between the two. Okay, yes, I know the sun going out would be a big deal, and I can imagine the ramifications. But this is a movie. The whole idea is for the movie maker to show you something. Something incredible, something profound, something you're paying money to see because you didn't or couldn't think of it yourself. Sunshine, though, just puts you in space with a bunch of people you're supposed to care about, but don't. What happened on Earth? What kind of desperation put these eight people in space at the likely risk of their lives? What's going on back home that nags them, constantly reminds them of why they have to stay sharp, dedicated? Nothing this movie shows you (at least not till the last ten seconds).
This was, so I'm told, a low-budget movie. Well, they blew the budget on outer space CGI, so I don't see why they couldn't have devoted five minutes at the start of the movie to The Terrible Conditions On Earth That Sent Us Into Space. You want to do it cheap? Fine, I'll tell you how. Opening scene, exterior. New York skyline in winter. Two people sitting on a park bench. They look pensive. Maybe they're breaking up. Conversation reveals one of them is about to go into space on a long mission. They're going to miss each other. But the other person understands why this is so important. Brief pause in the conversation. One of them suddenly muses about how Memorial Day Weekend used to be about heading up to the cottage in the Adirondacks and opening up the cottage, shorts, flip-flops, the first drip in that freezing cold lake. Imagine how cold that lake would be now... Audience goes: Ah ha! So this is New York in May! Wow, this is serious. You film this in January, it costs you a pittance, you get the point across with little or no computer enhancement.
Instead we had eight people butting heads, and it was hard to care about most of them. It works pretty well because they turn out to be highly, highly expendable. See? Even the writers didn't care.
Danger, Will Robinson! Spoiler! DANGER!
Warning warning warning if you actually want to see this movie and don't want to know the McGuffin, stop reading now. Because I'm gonna tell. Because it was, well, dumb.
Haunted house movies are scary. Crazy sickass murder guys are scary. This was kind of both. Except the ghost isn't dead, despite all common sense. It turns out there was a first mission, and it turns out its captain went nuts. But the captain was apparently so sure this wouldn't be the last word on the matter that he actually in one scene, in a broadcast sent back to Earth years before, refers to his ship as "Icarus One". Apparently he had ESP or something and knew not only that there'd be a second mission years in the future, but the name of the ship, too. Anyway, it turns out the captain went nuts, decided humanity's time had come, and bakes the crew in the solar observation room. How ironic! But here's my question. Given that we don't even let guys this unstable command nuclear submarines, river ferries, or even tugboats, what are the odds that the future of the entire human race would be entrusted to a guy with a one-in-ten-million predelectation for wanting our entire species to die to make room for the roaches? You'd think they might, oh, run a Rorschach test or two... "Just say the first thing you see in the ink blot." "Mankind burning to death in hellfire... mankind drowning in its own sewage... mankind freezing to death in its own inhumanity..." "Ummmm... thank you, we'll get back to you, Captain." Guys like this usually don't go off the rails in a couple of months or something. No. They usually write poems like "All Must Die" in grade ten and stuff, and most of the people around them know not to let them run, walk, sit, or even be in the same room with scissors. Oh, but not in the future. Any nut will do. I can only imagine Haliburton was running this mission and Captain Pinbacker put in the lowest bid.
So, anyway, this is a haunted house movie in space. The car breaks down, the kids decide to hole up in the abandoned mansion, and they disturb That Which Should Not Be Disturbed.
But I mean, maybe the captain of the first mission was a ghost, because despite the fact they show cameras everywhere, and the computer can tell them where everyone is on board, they didn't catch the fact that the airlock between the ships was being opened, and then being sabotaged. No, their first indication anything strange was going on was when the airlock between the ships was blown up. It's a wonder the crew didn't try to blame Canada for letting the terrorists on board.
Schmuck of the Irish
Cillian Murphy, who may have been around a while but strikes me as an up-and-coming actor (probably because he's younger than me) is central to the movie. He's Irish. But of course, he can't be Irish in the movie. The Asian people can't be Asian. No, everybody has to be American. Or put on their best attempt at an American accent. The captain of the mission to save all mankind might have a Japanese name, and he might look Japanese, but it better be plausible or even likely he grew up in Seattle at worst. Really, have we come no further than this? If so, maybe Capt. Nutbar is right, and it is time for us to make way for a better species. Okay, I don't mind that everyone was speaking English, even though in 50 years it might more likely be Mandarin. But can't they at least speak English in manners suggesting they really did come from different places around the world, as you'd expect in a mission of this magnitude? Can't the goddamn Irish guy really be a goddamn Irish guy? Is that so hard to believe? Jesus, the last thing in the movie you see is a transmitted message of him talking American to his American sister... who turns out to be sitting in Sydney, Australia! For God's sake.
What I liked about this movie
Well, they did do a good job of getting across just how dangerous a place space would be to live and work in, especially in proximity to the sun (maybe too good; once the first thing went bad, it never seemed to stop). The technology they showed was believable, a little more advanced than what we'd expect today, nothing outrageous... which is pretty much how it usually turns out (compare an article from 1950 about what your life will be like in 2000 with how different life in 2000 really did turn out from 1950; not all that much in most respects). The characters seemed for the most part believable with the exceptions of Captain Fruit Loops and Harvey, the second in command on Icarus II, who again strikes me as unlikely to have passed the second or third hurdle in a battery psych tests for a mission like this... even Mace might have been a little too tightly wound, but he was interesting.
There's not all that much that actually appealed to me, but that's not the same thing as saying it was badly done entirely. There were things that really didn't work for me and if you've read this far you know what they are. But I can also see enough of quality in it that I can understand how it could work well for others who don't have the same issues with the film as I do. Just didn't work for me.
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