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New SF Movie: MOON
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On Sun, 5 Jul 2009 21:50:55 +0100, "Cosmic Gnome" <...@fastmail.fm
This just-released $5m British hard SF movie is likely to attract some
interest, combining a mashup pastiche homage to numerous SF films from the
late 60s to the early 80s, featuring a robot-computer (voiced by Kevin
Spacey) that mimics HAL from 2001, replicant simulacra from Tarkovsky's
Solaris, quotes from Silent Running (effects artists from that film worked
on Moon, building the lunar rover that's featured), Alien, and Outland
(designers from it worked on Moon too). Perhaps the only reason Nic Roeg's
The Man Who Fell To Earth isn't referenced might be because the film is
directed by Duncan Jones, son of musician David Bowie, who starred in Roeg's
milestone SF movie from 1976 (and Moon is also produced by Sting's wife,
Trudie Styler).
This HD youtube trailer makes all of these homages crystal clear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0j_ONmVcXA
And no CGI either: it was all filmed on a giant 90 by 70 foot set at
Shepperton studios in London.
[Apparently, the film recently attracted the attention of NASA, where it was
screened, a woman in the audience during the Q&A after the screening with
the director, in response to a question as to why the film's moon base is so
solid and bunker-like, stating that she's currently developing "Mooncrete",
a building substance that "mixes lunar regolith and ice water from the
moon's polar caps".]
Brief reviews below:
Moon, Edinburgh International Film Festival
(Rated 4/ 5 )
Bowie's son lands a man on the moon
By James Mottram
Monday, 22 June 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/moon-edinburgh-in ternational-film-festival-1712245.html
Don't be fooled by the generic-sounding title: Moon is one of the most
original sci-fi films in years. Better still, it's British and made for the
sort of budget - $5m - that wouldn't pay for half a Transformer in
Hollywood.
Far more satisfying than Danny Boyle's Sunshine - the last time the British
film industry tried to crack the genre - Moon is the first film from Duncan
Jones, son of David Bowie. Produced by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, any
thoughts that this might be some music industry vanity project are swiftly
banished as its compelling story unfolds.
Helium 3, a real but rare substance used in nuclear fusion research, is
being harvested from the Moon, providing 70 per cent of the world's power.
Cut to Mining Base Sarang, an isolated unit on the Moon run by a crew of
one, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell). For company he has Gerty, a battered-looking
computer, voiced by Kevin Spacey, who keeps the base running smoothly.
Coming towards the end of his three-year contract, Bell is desperate to get
home to his wife and child.
"I'm talking to myself on a regular basis," he half-jokes. His only
entertainment seems to be watching re-runs of Bewitched and carving a model
village out of wood. When Sam sees a hallucination of a girl in the base, it
becomes clear he's beginning to endure some sort of meltdown. By the time he
sees her again, this time causing him to crash his buggy, it's evident he
isn't just suffering from a bad case of cabin fever.
Any further revelations would ruin what is a delicious plot that bears more
in common with the themes of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner than, say, Stanley
Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It deals with perennial sci-fi staples -
from alienation to the morality of scientific advancement - in a way that
reinvigorates the genre without being po-faced about it.
When the isolated Sam wakes up to the sound of Chesney Hawkes wailing "I Am
the One and Only", there's a black humour there that becomes increasingly
poignant as the film progresses.
Scripted by first-timer Nathan Parker, and based on a story by Jones
himself, what makes Moon so impressive is that it never follows the path you
expect. Take Gerty for example: with a little monitor displaying a smiley
face that shows different expressions for its state of mind, the obvious
comparison is HAL, the rogue computer in 2001. Indeed, Spacey, with that
indifferent lilt to his voice, brings to mind Douglas Rain's vocal patterns
in Kubrick's film; but Jones and Parker never let Gerty become a HAL clone.
As for Rockwell, this is his Cast Away performance - though he's far more
convincing and credible than Tom Hanks' showy turn ever was. Without giving
away spoilers, his work also has elements of Nic Cage in Adaptation and
Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers, though Rockwell trumps them all.
If the role is hardly new territory for the actor, he's fully convincing as
a man who begins to realise his company has betrayed him. Shot at
Shepperton, what Jones and his team achieve is remarkable. It's not that the
special effects are anything spectacular (the story doesn't require it),
it's just that creating a credible-looking Moon setting for next-to-nothing
is an achievement as ambitious as the script itself.
---------------
MOON
Rated PG-13
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
Directed by: Duncan Jones
Official Site IMDb
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_35756.aspx
When astronaut Sam Bell is about to wrap up a three-year solo job on the
moon he finds out he's not alone after all.
Brian's Take
**** out of 5 stars
It'd be easy to compare Moon to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. But
when I left the theatre I had the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky film Solaris on the
brain. And when my cohort below and I got to talking about what we had just
seen, Silent Running came up (starring the great Bruce Dern). Then I heard
it straight from director Duncan Jones's Twitter voice; his biggest
inspiration for Moon was the 1981 Sean Connery/Peter Boyle feature Outland.
Outland? I don't recall that being any good? Doesn't matter, the point is
that all of those films had vision and helped shaped what Moon is, and all
those films deserve to be watched at least once (just like Moon).
After spending close to three years alone on the moon mining Helium-3, a gas
used to create energy on Earth, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) begins to see
someone else on his base with him. Someone who looks identical to him.
GERTY, his computerized assistant (voiced by Kevin Spacey) claims he doesn't
see anyone else. Is GERTY programmed to lie? Or is Sam losing his mind from
the isolation?
Although the low-fi moon set is impressive (budget was around $5 million),
the film is all Rockwell all the time. Let's start the Oscar race early and
put his name down as a nominee now (put the movie and Duncan Jones down
while you're at). His portrayal of the solitary Sam Bell is outstanding.
When he shows up again as a different version of himself it's like watching
two different actors onscreen and you forget they're both Rockwell. The man
is a genius and I have an entirely new level of respect for him.
Being the son of David Bowie, arguably one of the most creative musicians on
the planet, probably helped open Duncan Jones's imagination up to an entire
new level as a child. Even though Moon is his first feature film he was a
celebrated commercial director for many years. His vision and style puts him
in a league of his own (like Kubrick or Tarkovsky). The one question I do
have is why he kept his father out of the film. Spacey did a great job as
the HAL 9000 inspired voice of GERTY but it would have been a whole other
ballgame if Bowie took it on.
Moon proves that a good movie is made from a compelling story with solid
directing and acting and not from a ton of cash. Like the films it's
inspired by it's sure to leave an impression with the audience for a long
time to come. It might not sit well with you at first but once you digest it
you'll see how powerful it is and will want to tell everyone to see it.
Suzanne's Take
**** out of 5 stars
Moon is a spare, haunting film in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Solaris, and Silent Running - the kind of thoughtful sci-fi that's painfully
absent from movie screens of late.
Set in the near future, when Earth relies on Helium-3 harvested from the
moon's soil for its energy needs, one man is stationed on a lonely lunar
outpost to make sure the operation runs smoothly. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is
nearing the end of his three-year contract, over the course of which his
only real communication with other humans has been recorded video messages
from his wife and daughter, and he's counting down the days (and probably
the hours and minutes) until he flies home to be reunited with them.
Sam does have one companion - the computer GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey.
GERTY is an obvious nod to HAL 9000 from 2001, and Spacey even seems to be
channeling his inner Douglas Rain (who provided HAL's voice in the Stanley
Kubrick film) in his unnervingly calm delivery, made somewhat comical by
emoticons that pop up on the computer screen, which run the gamut from
happy, to quizzical, to sympathetic.
As Sam approaches his end date, his health begins to deteriorate - from
headaches and stomach problems to hallucinations, and one such vision causes
him to crash his transport vehicle. Things really start to take a turn for
the bizarre when, during his recuperation, he discovers another version of
himself. Suddenly, he has questions, lots of questions, and GERTY is either
unable or unwilling to answer them.
Moon is essentially a one-performance film, and as the increasingly confused
Sam, Rockwell is phenomenal. The scenes where he's acting opposite himself
are utterly believable, and he shows an emotional depth and range that he
arguably hasn't had the chance to exhibit before now. It's by far his
meatiest film role to date, and could very well translate into a nomination
come Oscar time.
The major discovery in Moon, however, is that of writer-director Duncan
Jones. Jones, who happens to be David Bowie's son, wrote the story for Moon
with Rockwell in mind (the actor is apparently a sci-fi nut), and passed it
along to Nathan Parker who wrote the screenplay. There's not a lot of
dialogue, but there doesn't need to be in such an intimate story, and thanks
to Jones's keen sense of direction, the suspenseful film moves along at a
good pace.
This is Jones's first feature-length picture, and it's an impressive one all
around especially given that shooting was completed in 33 days. It's also
hard to believe in looking at the finished work, from the coldly beautiful
lunar landscapes to the beat-up space station, that it only cost US$5
million to make.
The references here are obvious, from the aforementioned 2001: A Space
Odyssey, Solaris, and Silent Running, to Alien, Blade Runner, and Outland.
But where in a lesser film they could have seemed like rip-offs, here
they're more of a homage to what Jones calls the golden age of sci-fi (the
'70s and '80s). Moon's future is a grimy, imperfect one - the spacesuits are
dusty, the walls scuffed, plants grow in makeshift pots made with aluminum
foil. And the whole film has a washed-out look to it. Adding to the sense of
foreboding, Clint Mansell's eerie score, which stayed with me long after the
film ended.
Moon feels familiar, yet fresh -- a loving tribute to the classics of
sci-fi, but a film that deserves to stand on its own.
----------
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)
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On Sun, 5 Jul 2009 17:21:04 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 5, 1:50 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
<...@fastmail.fm
Might be good. We shall see.
dc
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On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 04:42:42 +0100, "Cosmic Gnome" <...@fastmail.fm
Vanity Fair interview with Moon's director ...
Control to Duncan Jones, Director of Moon
by Frank DiGiacomo
June 8, 2009, 11:45 AM
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/06/ground-control-to-duncan-jones- director-of-moon.html
Sam Rockwell as a lonely astronaut in Duncan Jones's directorial debut,
Moon.
When did the science fiction genre of filmmaking devolve into science
fission-movies in which the nuclear-size explosions and destruction came to
matter more than character development? I suspect the White House
destruction scene in the 1996 film Independence Day was a pivotal moment, as
was the bing-bang-boom chaos of Michael Bay's 1998 space soap opera
Armageddon. Since then, too many writers and directors of science fiction
movies seem to have forgotten that the classics of the genre have more to do
with society and humanity than pyrotechnics and even special effects. And if
you agree with this premise, then I urge you to see an independent film
called Moon that Sony Pictures Classics will release beginning Friday, June
12, in New York and Los Angeles and nationwide over the next few weeks. If
you haven't already heard a lot about the picture, which generated a lot of
buzz at Sundance and other film and other film festivals, then you will in
the coming weeks because it marks the directorial debut of Duncan Jones, who
in the nutty 70s was known as Zowie Bowie, the son of David Bowie. In fact,
Jones's interest in science fiction may be hereditary, Bowie pere having
brought us Major Tom, the doomed astronaut in the songs "Space Oddity" and
"Ashes to Ashes," and played a spaceman himself in Nicolas Roeg's out-there
1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth. Despite the family resemblance-Duncan
looks a bit like pop did during his late 60s mod period-there's little that
connects the two men's work except that, like his father's best music,
Duncan Jones' first film depicts a fully realized world that sucks you in
from the opening scene.
In Moon, written by Nathan Parker based on a story by Jones, Sam Rockwell
plays Sam Bell, a lone astronaut manning a Helium-3 mining facility on the
dark side of the moon. He periodically drives his lunar rover to a number of
computer-guided trawling machines to retrieve canisters of the isotope,
which have been cooked out of the powdery lunar surface, and shoot them back
to earth where the gas is used as a clean form of nuclear energy. Sam's only
companion on the moon base is GERTY, a HAL-like computer that monitors his
every move. Due to a communication malfunction, the astronaut cannot
communicate directly with earth, including his wife and daughter, except via
increasingly anguished pre-recorded video messages. Sam has also begun
suffering from blinding headaches, nosebleeds and hallucinations and his
sole source of comfort is the knowledge that his three-year shift is just
weeks away from ending. That is until Bell suffers a hallucinatory spell
during a Helium-3 collection run and wrecks his rover into one of the
trawlers. When he awakes back at the moon base, he realizes that his rescuer
is a younger, fitter carbon copy of himself. Although you've probably
guessed that cloning is involved, how Bell and his doppelganger unravel the
mystery of just who they are is something you should see for yourself.
Moon pays homage to the best science fiction films from the last 40 years,
but it does something completely original and unexpected with those
references. The science behind the fiction is also plausible, and for both
of these reasons, I think Moon is destined to become a future classic. So,
when Jones came to New York recently to promote his film, I sat down to talk
with him. Since our interview, Variety has reported that his second film
will see the filmmaker shifting from outer space to inner space to direct,
Escape from The Deep, about a World War II sub stuck on the ocean floor.
Q: I'm a big science-fiction fan, and I loved your movie.
If you are a science fiction fan, then I'm sure you recognize a lot of the
films that I was sending my love to.
Q: I thought I was the only fan of Silent Running, but clearly so are you.
It's one of the lost gems; Outland as well. It's High Noon in space.
Q: I also recognized references to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and
the Alien movies.
Ridley Scott is watching the film right now. I'm waiting to hear what he
thinks of it.
O: One thing you do really well is convey what Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz
Aldrin called the "beautiful desolation" of the moon. How did you accomplish
that for under $5 million?
Knowing our budget, we weren't able to create the whole thing in computer
graphics, and we decided right at the start that we would try to replicate a
lot of the effects that were used in those old films from the late 70s and
80s that we loved. So, for the exteriors of the moon we did a lot of model
miniatures. We had two soundstages at Shepperton Studios [in Surrey,
England]; one where we built the interior of the moon base and then another
one, where we just built a big chunk of lunar terrain. It was just shovels
and sand and coughing up dust for weeks afterwards. And we were literally
pulling around these little lunar rovers with fishing line.
The whole idea of having computer-guided trawlers collecting Helium-3 on the
moon and then sending it back to earth to be used as nuclear energy-was that
all your idea?
As a piece for science fiction it is, but there's a book called Entering
Space by author and engineer Robert Zubrin. He wrote a blueprint, basically,
for what he believed would be a fiscally viable way to colonize the solar
system starting with the moon. And Helium-3 mining was his first step. It
was a pretty small chapter in the book, but it made a big impression on me.
The idea of Helium-3 as a natural resource that we could harvest on the moon
is something that NASA is actually working on, and we were invited to screen
the movie at the NASA Space Center.
I'd heard that. What was NASA's reaction to your movie?
It was terrific. About 80 percent of our audience was either NASA employees
or retirees. A lot of them were working on Helium-3 and something called
Mooncrete, which is basically a way of making concrete out of lunar
regolith-the dust on the surface of the moon. A lot of the time you see
these designs of what a moon base would look like, and they're these little
white sheds. But actually it's cheaper and more effective to build them out
of Mooncrete when you get up there.
In your film, the mining base is on the far side of the moon. Is there a
reason for that?
There is. Some guys at NASA said, 'You do realize that there are higher
concentrations of Helium-3 on the near side of the moon?' And I had an
answer for them. When you harvest the lunar regolith, you cook it, and
collect the gases that are released. My theory was that cooking the lunar
regolith might change the actual color and consistency of it and so when you
kicked it back out onto the surface you're going to change the reflectivity
of the moon. A lot of things here on earth depend on the moon and its
phases, and so you're going to want to do that mining where it's not going
to affect any wildlife on earth.
What did NASA say?
They said it made sense-so one point for me. [Laughs] NASA liked me.
How did Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, come to be involved in the production?
We were already making the film, and there was a little bit of a hole in our
finances and Trudie came in and rescued us. She's the fairy godmother. She
also was the one who got the script into Kevin Spacey's hands.
He's perfect as GERTY.
I think so. The audience comes in with its own baggage, and with Kevin
Spacey's voice to give them that final push, they expect GERTY to go one
way.
One thing that impressed me about Sam Rockwell's performance is that
although he's essentially acting opposite himself, there really seem to be
two distinct versions of him.
Before we started shooting, Sam and I had the opportunity for just over a
week to do rehearsals here in New York. We worked with one of Sam's actor
friends, and we basically just went through the whole script with Sam
playing one version of his character and his friend playing the other. And
then they'd swap and go through it again. But yeah, the differentiation
between the two characters was absolutely essential. What I was trying to
address in the film is the idea that something is cloned in no way takes
away from its own individuality. You may have two identical humans, but the
moment one of them has any experience of his own, a kind of Butterfly Effect
occurs. From that moment onwards, he is completely individual.
There's a question in my mind as to whether the deterioration of the first
version of Sam Bell that we see is caused by space sickness or some kind
of...
There's a planned obsolescence.
Like an iPod?
Oh God, I hope not. I rely on my iPhone so much!
Is there anything else you want moviegoers to think about when they see
Moon?
One of the questions Moon asks is: if you met yourself, would you like
yourself? It's not a science fiction question, but it's perfect for science
fiction, because it's a human question. Would you only see the faults or
would you see the good things about yourself? The other thing I would add
is that as Sam and I were making this movie, we were both going through
long-distance relationships, and I think the emotions we were experiencing
as a result became a really important touchstone for the film: what it is to
miss someone or some place and how, over time, it can make you paranoid and
how those feelings can become something they weren't originally. That gave
us a real emotional center.
You refer to yourself as an "international mutt" in your bio. I guess that
means you movedaround a lot.
I was here in New York at a place called the Little Red Schoolhouse for a
year. And then we traveled around: I was in Japan for a little while and
tutored in Australia for a while. I was at boarding school in Scotland. I
was at military army school for a little while in Berlin, back when the cold
war was going on.
Has your father's music influenced you at all?
There's obviously some kind of reflection there, but it's not something I'm
consciously doing. It was around me when I was growing up, and obviously
when you're growing up you're defined by your experiences and surroundings.
Do you have any great desire to experience space flight?
It's funny, the older I get, the more scared I am of just being on planes.
But one of the producers of the film, Trevor Beattie, is one of the first
passengers slated to travel on Virgin Galactic.
You and he worked together on the "Fashion versus Style" commercial for
French Connection. That commercial is nothing like Moon. I'd love to see you
do an action/adventure comedy.
Oh, that would be brilliant fun. About that commercial, those were two stunt
women. French Connection was trying to push actual models on me-not that
that's a bad thing-but it was never going to work. Obviously, you saw the
fighting. It's real.
Have any other filmmakers besides Ridley Scott seen the film?
Terry Gilliam, who loves the film. That was very exciting. He was deep in
postproduction for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. So, we had a little
talk and we're going to meet up again after he's gotten that out of the way.
And Neil Gaiman. He's a friend of mine and obviously is doing incredibly
well in the film industry. We've been talking a little bit about what things
he's written might be cool for me to make in the future.
Has your Dad seen it?
Yeah, he saw it. He actually came out to Sundance. I was shocked. I didn't
know he was going to be there. So, that was lovely.
What did he say after he saw it?
Aw, he was just being a proud dad. I don't think he knew what to say other
than just patting me on the back and 'That's my son.'
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On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 03:42:59 +0100, "Cosmic Gnome" <...@fastmail.fm
[Gee, this forum is indeed UNDEAD - the first serious hard SF movie in
years, in the tradition of all those from 2001 to Blade Runner ... and ...
nothing --- tranquility moon base]
Speaking of Blade Runner, Moon is indeed returning to the human-replicant
ambiguity themes of Ridley Scott's film, so let's recap a little:
------------------
Deckard to Tyrell: 'How can it not know what it is?'
"The great Cold Rationalist lesson is that everything in the so-called
personal is in fact the product of impersonal processes of cause and effect
which, in principle if not in fact, could be delineated very precisely. And
this act of delineation, this stepping outside the character armour that we
have confused with ourselves, is what freedom is.
Zizek puts this brilliantly in Tarrying with the Negative, in his analysis
of Blade Runner:
" 'Blade Runner ... gives a double twist to the commonsense distinction
between human and android. Man is a replicant who does not know it; yet, if
this were all, the film would involve a simplistic reductionist notion that
our self-experience qua free "human" agents is an illusion founded upon our
ignorance of the causal nexus which regulate our lives. For this reason, we
should supplement the former statement: it is only when, at the level of the
enunciated content, I assume my replicant status, that, at the level of
enunciation, I become a truly human subject. "I am a replicant" is the
statement of the subject in its purest - the same as in Althusser's theory
of ideology where the statement "I am in ideology" is the only way for me to
truly avoid the vicious circle of ideology (in the Spinozean version of it:
the awareness that nothing can ever escape the grasp of necessity is the
only way for us to be truly free). In short, the implicit thesis of Blade
Runner is that the replicants are pure subjects precisely insofar as they
testify that every positive, substantial content, inclusive of the most
intimate fantasies, is not their own, but already implanted.** In this
precise sense, the subject is by definition nostalgic, a subject of loss.'
(40-41)"
It is for this reason that Deleuze-Guattari say that the subject arrives 'at
the end' - the product of a machinic process which misrecognizes itself as
the process's final cause. Kapitalism requires you to identify with yourself
as 'the subject of loss', the crippled neurotic who lacks the power to act,
sentimentally attached to an interiority which was never there.
Theism has retreated, not vanished. The conviction that there is a Factor X,
some inexplicable, ineffable residue over and above genetics, neurology and
social coding that makes you you - this is the 'soul supersition' that
Nietzsche rightly exoriated. It is the belief that the human is ultimately
explicable in biographical and personal terms which Cold Rationalism
emphatically rejects, maintaining, rather, that the personal and the
biographical are only explicable in machinic and impersonal terms.
The danger, the great temptation, is to retain the dualism between the
impersonal and the personal that Freud had so expertly dismantled. Ray put
this to me very well once: we cannot think in terms of an opposition between
the personal and the impersonal, as if granny doing her knitting was the
personal, and the impersonal was the remorseless, gleaming wheels of the
Kaptitalist megamachine. No. Granny too is impersonal, and the Kapitalist
megamachine produces personality alongside cars and computers.
-----
Embodiment does not underwrite subjectivity; far from it. Gross organic
persistence is no guarantee of continuing identity, as Spinoza, in a
moment of pure cyberpunk, establishes. "It sometimes happens that a man
undergoes such changes that I would not be prepared to say that he is the
same person. I have heard tell of a certain Spanish poet who was seized with
sickness, and although he recovered, he remained so unconscious of his past
life that he did not believe that the stories and tragedies he had written
were his own." (ETH IV, Prop 38, Sch: 177). It's possible to forget who you
are, or, as in the case of Blade Runner, to remember who you are not.
In one of Blade Runner's most affecting scenes, Deckard, having tested
Rachael and found her to be a replicant, tells her that her memories are not
her own; they belong to the niece of the corporation's head, Tyrell.
Deckard:
-- Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty
building through a basement window. You were gonna play doctor. He showed
you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran. Remember
that? You ever tell anybody that? Your mother, Tyrell, anybody huh? You
remember the spider that lived in a bush outside your window? Orange body,
green legs. Watched her build a web all summer. Then one day there was a big
egg in it. The egg hatched-
Rachael:
The egg hatched...
Deckard:
And?
Rachael:
And a hundred baby spiders came out. And they ate her.
Deckard:
Implants! Those aren't your memories. They're somebody else's.
They're Tyrell's niece's --
In Blade Runner's 21st century-capitalism, identity has decoded into a
matter of engineering. Memories and dreams - psychoanalysis's ostensibly
private and unique bio-security access codes - have been decoded via lab
synthesis: the Tyrell corp (re)produce Rachael's memories just as they
(re)produce her eyes, by copying the carbon. In a materialist parody of
Russell's famous conjecture, now that they can remember it for you
wholesale, you really could have been born yesterday.
Reversed, this same issue echoes throughout Blade Runner, in the metallic
irony of Deckard's question to Tyrell in respect of Rachael: "How can it not
know what it is?" Deckard, "a machine that thinks but thinks it is what it
is not, certain that it is not what it is" "ironically answer[s] his own
question."[78] The debate surrounding the Director's Cut - is Deckard a
replicant? - misses the Gothic Materialist implications of the film (in any
of its versions). Since, in Blade Runner, the criteria for rating the
human above the replicants (and anything else) have now evaporated,
Cartesian epistemological questions have been obsolesced by functional
(Wiener)/ operational (Baudrillard) criteria. Since you could be a
replicant - which is to say, since replicants can do anything you can, and,
in some cases, have the same beliefs about themselves that you do - it is
already as if you were a replicant, a desiring-machine. Becoming-replicant
is therefore not a matter of identifying oneself as a technical machine; it
is not a question of identification at all, but of recognising all identity
as construction. It is to decode the false memory chips of anthropocentrist
Oedipalism, to recognise that because everything has been produced, nothing
is given.
"Cosmic Gnome" <...@news.doubleSlash.org...
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On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 01:29:37 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 5, 7:42 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
<...@fastmail.fm
Please believe me I want to be blown away by the film. Just going by
the odds of that happening.
Its a very short list of hard Sci-Fi masterpieces. One has to settle
for the occasional, good sci-fi fantasy-comic throwaway film.
I hope i'm pleasantly surprised.
dc
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On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 05:32:49 -0700 (PDT), MP <...@hotmail.com
This film is getting a lot of good reviews. Terry Gilliam and Ridley
Scott are also name dropping it alot.
It could all be calculated hype, though. A british film in a dead
genre with no stars and a low budget needs all the promotion it can
get.
But has this film even been released yet? I don't see it in any cinema
listings.
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On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 15:02:48 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 7, 5:32 am, MP <...@hotmail.com
Apparently the film came out to limited release June 12th. It's
playing 15 minutes from me now....and more theaters Jul 10th.
dc
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On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 01:05:25 +0100, "Cosmic Gnome" <...@fastmail.fm
"MP" <...@37g2000yqp.googlegroups.com...
As a rule, the more hype a film receives, irrespective of production
logistics (budget, studio/indie, genre, personnel, etc), the more suspicious
I am of it's pre/post-release claims. And vice versa. But I think we also
need to discount for and dissociate from such anxiety-provoking pleas (the
fear-inducing engine upon which paranoic consumer culture runs): on some
occasions the film exceeds the dumb hype.
But every movie markets itself by acquiescing to this viral selling culture
of calculated cleverness. I haven't seen the entire movie yet, just a number
of clips, extended write-ups and commentaries and background material, so it
could for me well prove as ultimately disappointing. But this is a debut
film from a director with no established track record (apart from one short
and some commercials), so I'm prepared to cut him a little slack (if Kubrick
had been 'evaluated' on the basis of his debut feature he would have given
up and returned disillusioned to glossy photography)
Yeah. I'm not sure I'd yet dismiss science fiction (and its numerous
sub-genres) as 'dead'; actually, it's one of the most influencial and
progressive genres around at the moment. Have you seen Terminator Salvation?
Ironically, it's much better than its three prequels. Thought you're right
about 'hard' SF having been in limbo for decades (thanks to the
child-consumer-centred mass-market, hypercommodified success of fantasy
space westerns like Star Wars, etc); I think a resurrection of hard SF is to
be welcomed, even if it might be a short-lived, failed one ("Fail again.
Fail Better").
What low budget film doesn't want 'all the promotion it can get'?
It premiered at Sundance in the US last Jan and at Scotland's Edinburgh Film
Festival last month. It went on general release in the US in early June. It
is set for release in Britain and Ireland on Friday, July 17th, with
releases in other European countries shortly after. Don't know about other
markets yet.
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On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:10:25 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 7, 5:05 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
<...@fastmail.fm. Have you seen Terminator Salvation?
I was very disappointed. Action--crazy action--but no heart and
soul. I found it annoyingly digital and grainy, grey and white, cars
flying at you one after another, no new story developments, little
characterization. Shaky camera with the in vogue, old comic book
spielberg style of non-stop actionX10, The Star Trek redux was far
more sucessful at actions sequences and the film had some heart and
soul to it.
The TV show, "Sarah Conner Chronicles" (so-so) was/is better.
Thought you're right
I am trying not to read any further about Moon, but i did see mention
of a capsule plot and in the first two sentences it was ripping off
Clarke again.
So I went ahead and looked at the trailer. Looks more of a liteweight
Solaris ripoff. That will really annoy.
I don' know......
Sceptical.
dc
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On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 05:15:06 -0700 (PDT), MP <...@hotmail.com
On Jul 8, 1:05 am, "Cosmic Gnome"
<...@fastmail.fm
Terminator Salvation was good? In what way? I stayed clear of it when
I learnt the director did the two Charlie's Angels movies.
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On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:14:45 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 8, 5:15 am, MP <...@hotmail.com
To me it was essentially unwatchable crap and I liked the first one
and loved the second--even the third was was okay-----this one was
just the pits. Maybe good in 3D for a speed freak.
dc
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On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 22:40:31 +0100, "Cosmic Gnome" <...@fastmail.fm
"MP" <...@q11g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
On Jul 8, 1:05 am, "Cosmic Gnome"
<...@fastmail.fm
"Terminator Salvation was good?"
Yes it was, actually. [The fact that it was panned by most critics is always
a good sign too, all sentimental about the absense of that cardboard cut-out
fuckwit Schwarzeneger :-) ].
"In what way? I stayed clear of it when
I learnt the director did the two Charlie's Angels movies."
Imagining that the 'auteur' theory still applies to the Hollywood
megamachine is a little quaint. Isn't it the very death of the
director/death of the author that has given rise to the nostalgic obsession
with 'auteur directors'? It's pointless attempting to pre-judge any
Hollywood product by making reference to the biographical details of its
'directors for hire'. Consider A.I. Who 'really' directed that film? It
certainly wasn't Kubrick, but it wasn't 'really' Spielberg either: it was
the latter's flawed and vain attempt to make "A Stanley Kubrick Film", ie a
performative contradiction, with the result that the film seemed derivative,
'empty', visionless, a branded commodity, Spielberg ridiculously imagining
what a Kubrick film is 'supposed' to be like. In interviews, Spielberg was
even (cynically) convinced of this, delivering such spin as "It's not my
film, it's Stanley's! You're watching a Kubrick film up there on the
screen!". Trans: "It's Kubrick's film, but I directed it! I'm the NEW
KUBRICK!!!!!". Maybe Kubrick's ghost will eventually come back to haunt
Spielberg for making such pathetic ego-maniacal claims.
I really couldn't give a shit who actually 'directed' Salvation, as if it
was a vital, essentializing key to the film's relevance or worth - that's
about as relevant as demanding who the gaffer was, or who the continuity
girl was. Hollywood is a mega-capitalist machine, it has no 'auteurs', no
'guiding artistic intelligence', so for me it's films are only relevant to
the extent that they portray the mega-machine that is contemporary global
capitalism, and what they can tell us about ourselves, (as for instance,
HEAT, did, even though it's insular director is a reactionary, neo-fascist
prick), that directly reveal the political unconscious of the present and
how this (might) connect to the pulp unconscious of today's movie audiences.
In short, I evaluate a Hollywood movie in a very different way to that of an
auteur film. In this way, yes, Salvation is crap in the sense, in the way
that ALL Hollywood movies are crap, as cheap money-making rackets,
manipulating and infantilizing audiences with banal thrills, manic escapism,
conservative ideology, and chronic sentimentality, etc. But what's
interesting and urgent about Salvation is that (probably unknowingly) it is
about the NOW of human affairs.
Some notes from K-punk:
VITAL SIGNS: NEGATIVE
[Ultra-compressed notes on T4]
If you're reading this, you are the resistance.
And right on cue: Terminator: Salvation delivers the scorched earth
mythscape for our year zero. Earth as ground zero, an ultramilitarized zone
in the grip of an ongoing catastrophe. Everything in ruins: a fictional
diagram of Now. CGI finally codes for CyberGothic, the battered future
returning as an infernal landscape bolted together out of Black Metal
nightmares, Apocaplyse Now choppers, towering War Of The Worlds-like
megacidal machines and videogame ballistics.
Accelerationism as thrill-ride, deep-cooled in cold libido, which the final
few minutes of sentimentalism can't recuperate for humanist overcode.
Narrative compressed into speed blips. Dialogue as junglistic soundbites.
'What just happened?' 'Judgement Day'.
'It really believes it's human.' (Like you do.)
'You are a good man.' (Echoes of Roy Batty's taunt to Deckard: 'aren't you
the good man.')
Cyborg catatonia.
Symbolic exchange and machinic death.
The difference between us and the machines is that we bury our dead.
There is no fate.
--------------------
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On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 15:03:02 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 8, 2:40 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
<...@fastmail.fm
I don't think there is any subtext or meaning to the film at all. it
was pure noise, crashing and flying metal objects.
dc
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On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:40:22 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 8, 3:03 pm, kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
Saw the film at the Laemle theater in Encino at the 9:50 pm show.
I give it a "C+"
Save your money and see it on cable. of course there are nints of
2001, Solaris and Silent Running, THX 1138 Outland, Aliens, but "Moon"
is not in the same class with any of them. It is at the level of a
TV production---seems like a mix of a couple Twilight Zone and Outer
Limits episodes.
Very slim plot. An ending that is easy to guess, Not a profound
conception in the film. Some decent writing and the actors is pretty
good. The sets are a decent effort but has a fake quality to them.
The Luner wasteland scenes are scientifically defunct and silly. The
vehicle models look a little like toys and the backdrops look like
altered photographs, but it's such a beginner's project it deserves
some crediyt for being fairly decent----Kevin Spacey sounds very
bored.
All in all I wish I had gone to see Public Enemy, instead of this
little film, that would have been fine watching on cable some nite 3
months from now.
Where it excels , is in the lowly budgeted marketing and manufactured
buzz, and the fact that some newcomers managed to make a decent little
Sci-Fi film at the level of a run of the mill Twilight Zone story.
Originality--C-
Story---------C-
Ending ......C-
Acting--------B
Depth.........C-
Watchability.C
Memorable...D+
Hype ......... B
dc
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On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:45:53 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
The film is 97 Minutes and feels too long, Nuff said.
dc
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On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:23:57 +0100, "Cosmic Gnome" <...@fastmail.fm
"kelpzoidzl" <...@gmail.com
Originality--C-
Story---------C-
Ending ......C-
Acting--------B
Depth.........C-
Watchability.C
Memorable...D+
Hype ......... B
-------------------------------------------
Review .... F-
dc
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On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:00:32 -0700 (PDT), kelpzoidzl <...@gmail.com
On Jul 12, 11:23 am, "Cosmic Gnome"
<...@fastmail.fm
I am not going to try to ruin the film by giving away any details of
the film. There is precious little to give away anyway, but the film
is no better then a C+ and that is mostly to do with the fact that it
is 'sci-fi" making it above average to begin with.
It's just another case of marketing trying to make associations with
2001 etc. and use of Kubricks name and memory.
Given my expectation for the film based on believing the hype it tried
to generate, it deserves and F-.
Sry. No cupie doll here.
dc
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