listening to "What's going on - Marvin Gaye" on Blip

It's sort of cliche, but I can't help but think of this song today #Iranelection

Review of Moon (Spoiler Free)

Moon is a difficult movie to talk about without giving away too much. No, it's not one of those movies with a twist, but half of the fun is the discovery and watching how the plot unfolds. The premise is simple: in the near future, a company has discovered a way to "mine" limitless power on the dark side of the moon. A man named Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) works at a mining station on the moon; he is near the end of his three-year contract on the station, where he has lived in near isolation. The satellite communications are down, so the only outside contact he has are occasional videos sent from the company and his family. His only companion is a cumbersome robot name Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). While checking on a malfunctioning harvester, Sam gets into an accident. And while he is away from the station, his replacement arrives.

What makes the film so compelling is Sam, both the character and the actor. For most of the film, Sam Rockwell is alone on screen and his haggard appearance is mesmerizing. In the same moment, he can be hilarious and heartbreaking. He makes you feel Sam Bell's loneliness and desperation to go home. We get to meet and really learn about a character, something that is rare in films. The film is so beautifully well-written that even Gerty the robot is a complex character. Gerty is supposed to be a helper on the station, but ends up being more of nanny, reminding Sam to eat or suggesting he take a nap when he is agitated. On a small screen is Gerty's face, a simple yellow smiley face, which changes appropriately to frowns or other "emoticons" as needed. It would be easy to create a robot character that was simply comic relief or worse, another evil robot like HAL from 2001, but Gerty is neither. He actually makes choices within the frame of his programming, showing that he can follow the spirit of the program if not its literal intention.

The other beauty of this film is in its cinematography and design. The station is grubby, well-lived-in and full of little details: photographs, magazine cuttings, scrawled writings on sticky notes everywhere (including on Gerty), a whole garden planted in food packaging. Outside, the moonscape is silver and black, stark and alien. The earth is always in the sky, tantalizingly close but so far away.

Something I've noticed is that in the last 5-10 years, most of the best science fiction films have been low-budget, independent ones like Moon. Sometimes we can confuse scifi with special effects and explosions, but like great scifi novels, the best scifi films are really about us and our relationship with science. Moon is one of those unusual films that can make you think and feel without being heavy-handed or self-important and be fantastic and visually interesting without being overblown.

27 April 2009

Had a dream that my friends Terry and Lisa were having a second wedding. They lived in a huge Victorian house with lots of rooms, some of them strange and whimsical. They set up a theater-in-the-round using risers in their living room and dressed in a pseudo-medieval style. All of their friends (of which hundreds of them attended) were invited to perform skits, songs, etc. Someone even used puppets.

Although we were having a great time there was some drama. In the dream, Lisa had three sisters and four half-sisters (this is not the case in real life). The half-sisters were jealous of Lisa and Lisa was angry at them because they took advantage of her. Also, a mutual friend of ours was banned from the wedding (I won't say who because I don't want to hurt any feelings); apparently I had gotten into a very bad fight with this person and banned them from my life(!). To my surprise, Terry and Lisa decided not to invite them either. Suddenly this person was stalking around, trying to sneak into what was becoming the wedding party of the century, but the bouncers at the door (!) saw they didn't have an invitation and wouldn't them in.

A Death in the House

Fans of the TV show House got a pretty big shock this week (Monday, 6 April was when the episode aired). If you haven't still seen the episode, you have no business reading blogs right now.

So Dr. Kutner committed suicide. And judging by comments on popular web sites, people are pissed. "Kutner's suicide came out of nowhere" seems to be a common complaint. It seems like a cheap ploy by the writers.

I can respect that opinion. It does seem like stunt, to get viewership and make things happen when the writers don't know what else to do with a plot or a character.

But I was actually moved by the episode. It felt real to me: seeing the shock of Foreman and Thirteen finding his body, the way she recoiled from him when she realized she was too late to save him. I was stunned. I felt blindsided.

Suicide is like that. Sometimes it does come out of nowhere. Sometimes it does seem out of character, because, lord knows, depressed people can be really good about hiding their pain. They are very good at hiding who they really are as well. They can come off as generally likable, but aloof or shy. That was Kutner: a generally nice guy who was in always in the background, the guy you took for granted.

Strangely, one of the things I loved about the episode was one of things people hated the most; House's reaction to Kutner's death. He tried to make sense of it. He went through denial, preferring to believe Kutner was murdered. Then, worst of all, his angry, awful blaming of Kutner's parents for their son's suicide. I can remember a lot of the horrible things I thought and said when my mother died, things that I still feel ashamed of. I felt a lot of sympathy and embarrassment for House then, more than I have all season, as well as a good helping of thinking he was a total asshole.

(Yes, I am fully aware that I am projecting my feelings onto a character.)

I think it was something of a brave move to do this to a character. The writers could have simply had Kutner quit and move away, sure, and everything would have continued on as it had. But now, the characters, House included, will have to face that they never really knew him and they will never know why he did it.

I'm interested in seeing where the writers take this and what happens next. I just hope they don't fuck this up.

Totally in love...

I only remember a part of this dream. In it, I was myself, but I was also the Green Hornet. I wore a dark suit with a green mask and bowler. My Kato I think was played by Chow Yun Fat, though it was difficult to tell because he wore a black mask. I remembering kissing him and it was so thrilling, I woke up in love, as if it actually had happened.

listening to "Dirty Business - The Dresden Dolls" on Blip

Sometimes I get this song in my head at inappropriate times