The Fredösphere

I don't like to link to Tor.com twice in a row, but sometimes the mission of this blog compels me: Dexter Palmer puts a sci-fi spin on a Blu-Ray recording of the La Fura Dels Baus staging of Wagner's Ring. He claims that kids raised on Star Wars and Harry Potter will eat it up, so long as they are kept in the dark about this being, you know, an

S P O I L E R   A L E R T

opera, and I'd like to believe him and give the experiment a try. . .but he don't know my kids.

Palmer also gives a nod to: Anna Russell's mangling of the plot (which I've never bothered to listen to); the graphic novel treatment of the Ring by Dark Horse Comics; and the introduction written and recorded by Deryck Cooke, which is—let's be perfectly frank—an absolutely essential starting point for anyone who aspires to understand the Ring on a musical level.

Labels: GraphicNovel, movie, Opera, sci-fi

At Tor.com, Dexter Palmer urges us to give the movie Speed Racer a second look. As with Mel Gibson's Passion, it seems the magic incantation is "art film." They are the words that have the power to transform a confusing cinematic experience into an aesthetic one.

I link to Mr. Palmer mainly as a hat tip, however, because the main interest lies in his link to blogger Into The Abyss, who writes compellingly about the rising menace of teal and orange. Compellingly. . .but not convincingly, I'm afraid. I happen to like teal and orange. Love 'em, frankly. My home's interior is strongly, yea even overwhelmingly, oppressively governed by a teal and orange color scheme. Teal is my favorite color. Do not mock teal. We'll be seeing a lot more of teal in movies in the coming years. This is a good thing.

Labels: Design, movie

I'm very pleased to introduce Chris Lawless, a true expert on the Planet of the Apes films. Chris saw my old posts on POTA, which focused on the church choir scene from Beneath the POTA. Chris emailed me with additional information and has kindly agreed to let me pass these golden nuggets on to you, dear reader.

The quotes in his passage are from my POTA posts, with his reactions following. Note that in one case, he misunderstands (understandably) my reference to French modernist composer Pierre Boulez, thinking I meant POTA author Pierre Boulle. In any case, the video clip he links to is something you should not miss. It's liturgical choir music sounds not so dissonant nor stridently high as I remember from the final version.

Take 'er away, Chris:

Hi Fred,

Thanks for the link. As a die hard fan of the Apes films (and BENEATH in particular), I thought I'd share some information with you about the production. Reading through your posts, I think you might have misinterpreted a few things.

First off (quoting your blog):

"This is supposed to be offensive and shocking and full of penetrating social commentary. One out of three ain't bad, I guess."

"My, wasn't that blasphemous? Well, as blasphemous as anything can be when it is irredeemably silly."

The lyrics themselves were written (or maybe adapted is the better word) by screenwriter Paul Dehn. He was a bomber pilot in WWII, and as such, he developed an intense hatred for war in the years subsequent to his military service. His antinuclear sentiments were not only apparent in Beneath and the other Apes sequels he was involved with, but also such films as Goldfinger. I don't believe they were intentionally blasphemous or intended to be shocking as much as they were intended to be social commentary. Back then, there was this concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) that—of course—makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and his idea was that the existence of a Doomsday bomb wasn't even enough to deter the original war from happening.

His antinuclear sentiments would also appear in a book called Quake Quake Quake: A Leaden Treasure of English Verse.

"The music is not quite atonal, but it is dissonant, and it has some high passages that would make it vocally taxing. Yet this congregation pulls it off. Indeed, when you watch it, you see them standing among the pews, not making much effort at all. The visuals don't match the audio at all and the whole effect is surreal."

Film composer Leonard Rosenman set the words to music, and atonal/dissonant were often his trademarks. I'll let you in on a little secret not known by a lot of people- when the scene was originally filmed, the actors portraying the mutants sang everything. But during post production when the score was being recorded, a professional choir came in an did a new recording. Check this video out to hear how the mass originally sounded.

On the topic of the believability of the film:

"The nuclear blast melted the rock, but left the organ console unharmed."

Well, part of this is suspension of disbelief, and the other is the fact that the Mutants clearly found ways to partially reconstruct St. Patrick's Cathedral as a functioning church. I mean, it's implied in the film that they still have functioning electrical generators (I can give you examples if you need them), so if you're going to accept that as well as the fact that they have a 2000 year old functioning atomic bomb, the intact organ isn't much of a stretch at all.

I have one thing to add. A while back I became aware of a fascinating news report from Russia, revealing that the USSR has had a doomsday device for years which they, in true Strangloveian fashion, chose never to announce to the world. Apparently the device was designed to deter trigger-happy generals in the Soviet army! The idea was, an impulsive decision to launch would never need to be made, since the doomsday device would ensure any attack would result in the ultimate reprisal. MADness, indeed.

Labels: Choral, movie, PlanetOfTheApes

All evidence indicates (Untitled) is not currently showing in any theater in the Ann Arbor area. (Perhaps the Michigan Theater, our local art house, will get to it eventually.) That's sad because the film promises to be the best thing since my beloved Art School Confidential, a film the review of which I would link to had I ever bothered to write such a thing. (I'm shocked to discover its absence from the Fredösphere.)

(Untitled) must be great; it has inspired so much brilliant writing about it. First there's this from Eve Tushnet:

I get that art can go beyond beauty; I just want it to go beyond beauty into sublimity. [Emphasis Eve's.]

. . .and also this:

[W]hy some media and not others? Why are painting and "orchestral" or non-pop music so incredibly conflicted and self-doubting, so willing to accept narratives about the death or dearth of meaning... while novelists continue to churn out adultery stories, and movies continue to do more or less everything, and even comics seem to be recovering from a late-'90s period in which they were swallowed up into the maelstrom of their own navel? Seriously... if the Weakerthans are doing something new-enough; if The Wire did something new enough; where does anyone get off saying that painters, sculptors, and non-pop musicians have exhausted the possibilities of meaning?

Can we all agree now that the expression "tempest in a teapot" has been made obsolete by Eve's genius, and that "maelstrom in a navel" is its replacement?

Then there's Roger Ebert:

It's easy to take cheap shots at conceptual art. (Untitled) doesn't do that. It takes expensive shots.

Then he goes on to admire the remarkable quality of the art made up for the movie (mostly visual and musical), describing it as plausible. Eve agrees, saying the movie avoids the lazy perspective of someone who says "my kindergartener could do that." Oooh, these are good signs. If nothing else, I'm sure my local library will get the DVD eventually, so I'm sure to see it. I can't wait.

Labels: Artsy Fartsy, movie

Rejoice, Eveölators!  Her Tushness hath spoken on the Watchmen question.  Many links, and a fair amount of negative analysis, can be found, but she (like me) felt an initial, visceral joy in the movie that she refuses to repudiate.  Upon mature reflection, I agree with her complaint about the use of Mozart's Requiem and the Helicopter Ride of the Valkeries, and I would add the one-millionth appropriation of Phillip Glass to the list—so I guess the movie disappoints in my area of specialty.  (That would be high-brow music, in case you couldn't tell).  And, yes, the love scene was regrettable to say the least.

In a sort-of-related developement, I really enjoyed this 9-minute, 150-Euro movie my friend Jeremy told me about:



Here's the official website.  (But how do I enter the site???  Apparently, you have to dig for the treasure.)  Jeremy tells me the rumors of viral marketing have been denied, and with that, I have officially entered spreading-rumors-about-rumors territory.

Finally, moving from science fiction to science maybe-fact, we learn that cold fusion is back, baby!

Labels: movie, sci-fi, VideoClip

The Grand Rapids Symphony and Chorus will perform Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls and also music from Wagner's Ring this weekend.  This is an impressive program I wish I could hear.

City Journal wanders into a strange (for it, not for me) neighborhood:  religion in science fiction.  Author Benjamin A. Plotinsky sees the genre shifting away from its more political focus during the years of the Heinlein hegemony.  Hat tip goes to He With Whom I Butt Heads, Gabriel McKee of SF Gospel, who says the article is a bit sloppy (and he has a point).  Meanwhile, McKee also dismisses Watchmen in three short sentences although the movie inspired in me much the same reverent (no joke) feelings that the book did and that completely swamped all my (legitimate) artistic, political and philosophical complaints.  I guess we'll have to settle for snippy snarking until the appeals process culminates with a ruling handed down from the magisterial Eve Tushnet.

Speaking of magisterial, Positive Liberty (how did I find you, PL?  I'm sorry to say I've forgotten) found Allan Bloom in two forms:  on video re Socrates and audio re Nietzsche.

My newest friend is Gareth Stack, a mercurial and intellectually peripatetic Irish being who sometimes adopts the nom de blogge "Professor Byron Frump" who nevertheless dares to call himself "confounded" by my "astrolabe of wingnuttery."  So, Prof. Frump, what do you make of today's goulash of themes and links?

Labels: Choral, Culture, movie, sci-fi

From the Watchmen viral website The New Frntiersman comes this archival footage of a color presentation of the NBS Network Nightly News:



What's up with those Canadian accents, eh?

Watchmen.  Oooh, I am so ready to see this movie.

Labels: GraphicNovel, movie, sci-fi, VideoClip

We got word from the Ann Arbor Boychoir that our son, Der Drübermensch, would be needed for a special recording session on a Sunday afternoon.  The choir had been hired by John Higbie, a veteran visual effects specialist from Hollywood.  John recently moved to Michigan and is wrapping up post-production of his first directorial effort, a science fiction movie called Magic Mentah (previously called Amsteroid).  He wanted the boys voices to add Ligetiesque spookiness to some of the space scenes.

Science fiction and choirs?  In my own backyard?  Of course I wanted to find out more.  I attended the recording session and met John, an incredibly sane, likeable person (i.e., not what you expect in a movie director).  John's movie has been in post for some time now and he hopes to release it in 2009.  He'll work the festivals and he expects the movie to be available on DVD.  (When that happens, I'll let you know.)

I asked him why he chose science fiction as a subject.  He told me his experience in visual effects can be best put to use in that genre.  Since the movie's plot involves dead Egyptian gods as well as spaceships, I suppose a more precise categorization would be science fantasy.

The still you see here shows an asteroid in the shape of a human figure; that's one of the gods.  To the right is a transparent green brain.  In the clip John showed me, the brain rotates and approaches the camera, until you are close enough to see a live actor inside.  John has done an excellent job marrying the CG and live-action coordinate systems here; the two are linked seamlessly.  Clearly, the guy is a pro.

The big green brain is accompanied by the boy's voices:



If you had heard the original, you'd be especially impressed by John's mixing and filtering of the sound tracks.

John will be in Ann Arbor this Thursday for some filming.  If all goes well, I'll be interviewing him for the Starship Sofa podcast.  I've already discussed Magic Mentah on an earlier episode (Round Table No. 6; scroll down).

I'm terribly excited to see this kind of production happen in Michigan.  Magic Mentah is just the latest example of movies with modest budgets having a fighting chance at commercial success.  It reminds me of Primer, another SF film made on a budget of a few thousand dollars.  (Although, Primer did not have any visual effects that I remember.)   Definitely see Primer if you don't mind extremely obscure SF-al concepts bandied about with minimal explanation.

I'll be reporting again on Magic Mentah.  Watch this space.

Labels: local, movie, sci-fi, SoundClip

Somebody's seen significant parts of the Watchmen movie and liked it a lot.

Eve Tushnet's impressionistic take on the book was my first (and, come to think of it, still my only) encounter with serious Watchmen criticism and hints at layers I didn't notice.  Must.  Read.  Watchmen.  Again.

Here are some nibbles:

Characters even present more than one opposing worldview within the book, while remaining believable, consistent characters. Jon's affirmation of the worth of an individual human life, when he speaks with Laurie on Mars, conflicts with his remote, utilitarian acceptance of Veidt's scheme at the book's climax; but both these moments feel like they came from the same character, a being shifting between Jon Osterman and Doctor Manhattan. Rorschach's denial of any intrinsic meaning to the patterns and suffering in life, in his speech to Malcolm, is more obliquely in conflict with his actions at the climax (in which he seeks to uphold an absolute vision of justice that implies conformity to a preexisting, objective pattern), but again both moments feel utterly true to life.

[...]

The pirate comic is the most obvious example of linkage. It doesn't function in Watchmen's plot as "The Mousetrap" does in "Hamlet," but it does or should affect readers' understanding of Veidt's plan and the role of hope in the book. The pirate comic is a story of despair as a self-fulfilling prophecy: The castaway assumes that the black freighter's crew has devastated his hometown, and so he himself causes the carnage he feared. Veidt assumes that without his hideously gory intervention, the world will end, and so he himself causes the book's greatest destruction.

Tushnet links to a couple of posts at "Unqualified Offerings" whoever that is.  One is interesting in light of the political season we are in (here in the USA).  Alan Moore is strongly anarcho-communist; maybe it would be fair to call him a neo-trotskyite.  That's my understanding, anyway.  A reader writes in:

I found your comment that Watchmen "as with many leftist critiques of the Cold War the Soviet Union is strangely invisible" to be interesting for two reasons. Mostly, I'm a leftist myself (most would say "far leftist") and my initial reaction to Watchmen was that it was a critique of the left from the right. Veidt is clearly one of those on the far left who would be willing to do anything at all to avert war. Rorschach, on the other hand, is clearly of the right wing and is also clearly the story's ultimate hero. I thought that his final words about "one more body in the foundations" was a particularly telling comment about many leftist's view of what it takes to achieve peace. More than that, I saw it as a comment on the Soviet Union's bloody purge policies.

...and the blogger replies:

Me, I think Moore sees both the despicable and admirable aspects of Rorshach and regards him, mostly, with fascinated horror. But respect. (Rorshach is damned clever, and can be droll.) I think it's a deliberate irony that Kovacs turns out to be right about so much that is going on.

Exactly.  Rorschach's conservativism is a highly truncated kind (and maybe more to the point, his humanity is truncated) and Moore knows that.  Rorschach's heroic role in the story is unconventional and equivocal to say the least.

Labels: Culture, GraphicNovel, movie

A musical ... a sci-fi comedy musical ... released on the web?  I admit, I was grossly derelict in my blogging duties by not telling you to go watch Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog while it was available for free download.  (The DVDs will be on sale soon, with--wait for it!--a sung commentary track.  Geniuses.)

Anyway, I just found out the good Doctor is available for one more day for free.  Today.  What are you waiting for?

Oh, yeah.  You're waiting for the link.

Labels: fun, movie, Opera, sci-fi, VideoClip

I wanted badly to comment on this post over at 2Blowhards but I was prevented from doing so for some reason.  So I'll post it here.  The post and comment thread described various algorithms for culling movies quickly when flipping through them at the DVD store.  The post was an excellent excuse for me to mention something that I've been noticing for a while now.  Read the post, then imagine the following as one of the comments:

Gil is on the right track: there is no longer any excuse to be using other movie-selection algorithm now that collaborative filtering is available.  (I recommend Movie Lens.)

But to answer the question, I hate what I like to refer to as the ol' Hierarchical Head Size movie poster.  The cheesy painting where the top stars have huge heads, and all the other actors (or, in some cases, sheep) in the movie peer over their shoulders with heads sized according to how much they were paid. Its a reliable sign the movie is a middle-of-the-road, big studio, focus-grouped ending, super-safe, five-credited screenwriters kind of movie. (Although, I admit the first Star Wars movie poster suffered from Hierarchical Head Size, and I loved that movie--but in retrospect the artwork obviously doesn't belong, what with Princess Leia's slinky pose, don't you agree?  Yet, later [earlier??  Gaah!] installments of the series definitely do deserve the Hierarchical Head treatment.  Oh, and speaking of Star Wars posters....)

Labels: movie

Cobly Cosh thrills to the news that a near-complete print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis has be discovered in Argentina.

USB wine.  Le wow.  Also, we speakers of English may be losing control of the language--oh frak!  And those alien spacecraft just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Steve Hicken's fantasy life is pretty similar to mine, and I mean more than just the win-the-lottery part.  He's got the musicians, the new compositions, and even the bathtub filled with chocolate pudding.  At least, that's the way I remember it.

Labels: Composer, fun, movie, sci-fi

Many people have commented on Stanley Kubrick's brilliant choice of music for 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  By using classical standards, Kubrick maintained more personal control over his movie.  These pieces--Zarathustra, Lux Aeterna and the Strauss waltz and all the rest--were originally placeholders, music Kubrick inserted into early drafts of the film while he was waiting for the commissioned score by Alex North to be written.  (In a shameful episode, North did not find out his music was axed until he saw the film just before its release.  North's score was eventually released as an album.)

Here's a take on the film that's new to me:  2001 as a kind of visual music in three movements.  Experts discuss the film, its music, its musical nature, and what the heck the ending is supposed to mean, anyway.  (Short answer:  anything you like.)

Labels: movie, sci-fi, SoundClip

The title says it all:  The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized.  (Hat tip 2Blowhards.)

Meanwhile...

Rene's Apple will have what Ann Althouse is having:

I'd rather see a show where philosophers descend on a woman with a perfect exterior and rip into her for her intellectual and spiritual failings, put her on some kind of internally transformative regime, and turn her into a human being of substance. Can we get that?

...and furthermore...

Man Babies.  Plus, have a look at Nazis on the Moon.

Labels: Culture, fun, Futurism, movie, VideoClip

In an earlier post I commented with pleasant surprise on a Swedish composer's attempt to create an opera on a science fiction theme.  Commenters assured me this was hardly the first composer to attempt such a feat.  Daniel Wolf cited as ancient an example as Haydn, which impressed me to no end.  Those of you familiar with my Haydn animus won't be surprised my mental picture of Haydn as a space opera-tor is that of the salt vampire of Planet M-113.

Anyhoo, I'm pleased to add another work to this growing list:  Jacques Offenbach's adaptation of Jules Verne's Le Voyage dans la Lune.  Wikipedia has the details, including a wonderful photo showing costumes and a set from the original lush (but to the modern eye, goofy) production.  Kudos is due (hey!  I conjugates that verb real good!) to io9 for dredging up this information (especially considering that deep historical perspective is not what you expect from a Gawker-related site) in a terribly interesting roundup of info on Georges Méliès' groundbreaking 1902 SF film A Trip to the Moon, which itself was recycled in a trippy music video by The Smashing Pumpkins called Tonight, Tonight:



And I suppose I'll have to comment on The Man that Fell to Earth if I ever get up the courage to watch it.

Space.  And opera.  What else have I overlooked?

Labels: Composition, Culture, Futurism, movie, Opera, sci-fi, VideoClip

I am so looking forward to Prince Caspian.  First, because it's my favorite of the seven Narnia books.  Indeed, the opening sequence--when the Pevensie children dig through ruins to learn that their own castle, and even their own past lives, are now relegated to half-forgotten legends--is the spookiest, most melancholy thing I've ever read in all of fantasy literature.  It is my sword Rhindon; with it I killed the Wolf.  Ooooh, yes!

I'm also hoping this movie will not disappoint as the previous one did.  I'd like to see a little more compelling performances and a little less cringe-making dialog (but the trailer does not inspire a lot of hope along those lines).  I'd also prefer no more of the kind of scene we saw in the first movie, where Aslan comes to the underground lake, and the White Witch emerges from the water wearing little more than stiletto heels and a thick layer of gold paint, and I'm like, whoa, dude, I don't remember this being in the book.

Watch the trailer and hear our hero introduce himself:  "Ah im Printz Gespian!"  What's with the vaguely continental accent?  Is it an artifact of the trailer, or does he talk like that all the time?  Here, the ugly head of linguistic nit-picking opens its Pandora's box:  how is it that 20th century English is spoken in Narnia--over a period lasting many centuries?  Did the filmmakers decide to throw in a little weirdness in the Narnian accents to slightly cover their hienies on the issue of linguistic drift?  I really doubt it, but it's fun to imagine they did.

Labels: movie, VideoClip

Via SF Signal, it's High Noon exactly as you remember it.  Well, as I remember it anyway:



Via Ionarts (who got it from Boing Boing, who got it from Laughing Squid), it's a cat playing a theremin.  I definitely detect the influence of Messiaen, although I'm thinking not so much the Turangalîla Symphonie as some of the more pointillistic moments in Des Canyons aux Etoiles:

Labels: fun, movie, VideoClip

No doubt I'm the last to find out.  The new movie Jumper was partially filmed right here in Ann Arbor.

Labels: local, movie

I emerge from my blogging hibernation with an important message.

The kids and I saw Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium with the Maharincess' friend Lydia and her dad, my good friend, Thad.  The movie was good enough, although I've never been much of a fan of Peter Panesque paeans to pre-pubescent precipitancy.  Nevertheless, it was clearly worth the price of admission, considering we were at a one-dollar movie theater that had no truth-in-labeling issues--a ticket really cost only one buck.

What got my attention was Natalie Portman's scene at the climax.  She plays a young woman whose precocious talent as a pianist was sidetracked when she took a job as a clerk in a magic toy store.  She and the store are transformed when she accepts her new role as store owner; she understands a toy store may be as worthy an object of her creative efforts as a concert stage.  (Fine, fine; I'm not buying it, but whatever, it's just a movie.)  What happens in that scene is that Portman waves her arms as various toys in the store come to life.  The strings are cued and the soundtrack soars...and suddenly you realize Portman is conducting the music.  More precisely, Portman is portraying someone who is conducting music.  And she's doing it very, very badly.

This is hardly the first time I've seen this phenomenon.  Actors are asked to fake all kinds of stuff; why is conducting, of all things, so commonly botched?  Why, on the other hand, are musicians so commonly (although not universally) able to do it?  In particular, is there something about experience in ensemble playing that provides the missing, uh, magic?  I really want to know.  Why isn't conducting like falling off a log for these people?

Labels: movie

What's the coolest thing about the latest CD by English vocal composer John Tavener?  It's been reviewed at scifi.com.  It seems Sir John wrote "Fragments of a Prayer" for use in the futuristic movie Children of Men.  To be clear, he's not the composer of the full soundtrack, which includes music from diverse sources, but his music "is used sparingly throughout the movie during scenes of hope or sorrow."

"Fragments" delivers the gorgeous tone bath we expect from a Tavener song, and it's presence in the movie signals the composer's willingness to provide a bit of class to the film where it's wanted.   Just as we expect 5 percent of all music sales to be classical, it seems nowdays we expect 5 percent of each movie soundtrack to be classical as well.

My favorite part of the review is the summary at the end.  The reviewer assures us that time spent getting the album's strange music into our ears "will be amply repaid."  Something about this pain-gain observation cracked me up -- maybe it was the implication that the typical reader would find the concept novel.

That's all I have to say, except to note smugly the confluence of vocal music and science fiction is so utterly my topic, and that in the whole internet it is at the Fredösphere alone you find the exhaustive analysis you crave of the liturgical music found in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (to cite the most perfect example).   It's the reason you, my loyal fans, keep coming back for more.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled lives.

Labels: movie, PlanetOfTheApes, sci-fi, Tavener, vocal

Today's topic is Invasion of the Body Snatchers in its original 1956 incarnation, which starred Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.  But first, let's set the mood by heading over to The New Criterion and reading "A science fiction writer of the Fifties," a poem by Brad Leithauser.

I really regret that my youth was misspent on a too-steady diet of Isaac Asimov when it could have been misspent on more varied science fiction fare.  Yet I can testify that, in the old books, the women are indeed "keen / To fix the meals and be the secretaries."

Anyway, part of our weekend was spent staying with old friends over in Grand Rapids.  Through a long process that involved some tense negotiations, finally resolved by means of a stochastic algorithm (we drew names from a hat), we chose to watch the Body Snatchers movie.  Yes, it contains its share of plot holes and logical inconsistencies, and yes, we could argue all day whether its message is anti- or anti-anti- communist (or even anti-immigrant), but the real point is that the old flick still packs a nice horror punch.  (This in spite of the change of ending ordered ironically by pod people from studio management.)  The movie succeeds in part because it does not rely on elaborate futuristic visuals.  Nevertheless, I was stunned by one special effect:  Dana Wynter's wardrobe.

"I'm so glad to see you again, Miles.  In fact, I filled my dress with Reddi-wip just for the occasion."

Kevin McCarthy is quite old now, but still hard at work, and not too vain to have some fun appearing in a retro-future film.  His website has the story.

Labels: movie, sci-fi

Ten years after making Metropolis, near the end of the silent era, Fritz Lang directed a sci-fi film called Frau im Mond.  To the modern eye, its a salad of astonishing prescience, laughable retro-futuristic anacronisms, compelling achievements in special effects, compelling (because amusing) crudities in special effects, some great action sequences, and long stretches of boooooring dramatic developement -- just as you would expect.

The first plot points Lang wants to establish is that a certain Professor Manfeldt has determined the mountains of the moon are loaded with gold; he now lives alone, impovershed and bitter because his ideas were mocked by his peers.  That's it.  It takes Lang eleven minutes to lay that out.  Shoot, in a modern sci-fi action movie, we would have seen all that in the first eleven minuts plus seen the professor build a rocket, fly it to the moon and back, invent a new weapon system, use it to blow up some aliens, travel back in time so he could become his own father and mother, then have the only-mostly-dead alien come back to get its butt kicked one more time.

This film is nearly three hours long, so it is not like the thing needed padding.  Honestly, I almost gave up on it about three different times.  For the first two whole hours Lang laboriously introduces Manfeldt's disciple, Wolf Helius, who decides to vindicate the professor by attempting a moon landing.  Eventually it becomes clear the movie is all about Helius and the love triangle he shares with his assistant, Hans Windegger, and Windegger's fiancée; why the irrelevant Manfeldt wasn't cut from the story, I'll never understand.  We also meet the evil Mr. Turner, who works for five of the richest industrialists in the world.  They use threats of violence to take over the project, in order to maintain their control of the world gold market.

Note the extrordinarily repulsive Mr. Turner's English name.  Could that be a bit of continental hostility to Anglo-Saxon capitalist savvy?  It turns out, however, membership in the club of five big shots shows almost James Wattian-levels of sensitivity to diversity:  the group includes one Asian, and one of the white guys is in a wheel chair.  There's one important demographic group that remains shut out, however.

Non-smokers not welcome.

New music was composed for this DVD release of Woman in the Moon.  It's a disappointment -- it's just some guy and a synthesizer.  During the stirring scenes, the music seems to rise to the occasion, but during the dull parts, the music becomes unfocused and only serves to make things duller.  Honestly, I've been to silent film screenings with music improvised live by organists that demonstrated more immagination and sympathy for the flow of the action.

Lang seems to have an aspergery love of diagrams.  I didn't expect a movie from 1929 to have such a geeky engineering thing going.

An animated diagram of planetary gravity fields.

This flawless beauty mesmerizes me -- and that broad on the right ain't half bad either.

If you watch this movie, consider skipping to the last hour.  Once they start rolling out the rocket, things become, dare I say it, exciting.  Lang loves his toy models.  They don't fool the modern eye, but generally they don't embarass, and they're fun to watch.

A fly-over of the outdoor model.

A peek inside a demonstration model of the rocket.

The least convincing model:  cheesy bread, anyone?

Lang makes a stab at hard sci-fi, and the result is only sometimes wildly wrong:  that's quite an achievement for a 1929 film.  For example:  the rocket is emmersed in water just before takeoff, because it is so lightweight, it can't support its own weight otherwise.  Compare this genuinely inspiring scene with a real-live NASA rollout:  not bad!

Just before takeoff, all the men in the audience doff their hats.  It's quite moving, and it seems like a million years removed from today's sensibilities.


Half way to the moon, they find a boy stowed away.  Of course.  To our eyes, the boy's outfit seems vaguely military, and his hair is flipped to the side in a way that stirs some uneasy associations.  Our mind wanders a bit, and we start to think ... no, no, this was 1929.  Those people came along a few years later.  There couldn't possibly be any connection to ... uh oh.

Hail ladder!  I mean, leader!

The boy insists he knows all about rockets.  To prove it, he pulls out a sci-fi pulp magazine from his napsack.

A woman at the mercy of an alien insect.	30 years later:  some things never change.

Labels: Futurism, movie, sci-fi

I taped that Earthsea miniseries that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel, and we've been watching it over the last few nights.  A month ago, I asked, "is there any possibility that this mini-series will not be a crashing disappointment?"  Apparently, the answer is:  no.

Why didn't they decide to cover only the first book?  Instead they overlapped the plots of the three books into one time frame.  To make the overlapping work, the plot of the second book was completely scrambled.  You will not be shocked to learn the changes did not result in a net improvement to the story.  The book had priestesses from competing temples playing a deadly game of cat and dog in a very believable context of religious politics (or politicized religion).  In the miniseries, we get a reverend mother burbling on about how the strength of the faith of her fellow priestesses holds the evil Nameless Ones at bay.

Memo to screenwriters everywhere:  people of faith don't talk about their faith - they talk about the object of their faith.  Religious people have things called gods.  One's God is the principle focus of religious activity.  There is a hint that this is true, in the way verbs are used that ought to receive subjects:  Faith in what?  Prayers to whom?  The dialog in the Earthsea miniseries sounds like it is written by someone who doesn't understand religion -- or maybe someone prevented from representing it truthfully, either due to P.C. constraints or some other Hollywood "logic."

Speaking of goofy movie depictions of religion:  the promised Choir Music In Sci-Fi post is coming soon.  It's going to be big.  Real big.  Here's a tease:

Hi. My name is Bruce. I'll be your worship facilitator today.

It so perfectly fulfills the mission statement of this blog, I may have nothing to say once it's done.  In fact, it may fulfill the Meaning of my Life.  There may be no reason for me to stay on this earth once I've posted it.

Labels: movie, PlanetOfTheApes