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peteryoungHaving been around 6,000-odd miles from Chester I was unable to go to Contemplation which, from having read about a week's worth of my FL, seems to have been an all-round success, and I would love to have been there. Congrats to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_magician and the rest of the committee for saving Eastercon!
Instead, my self-appointed fannish activity of the week was to go see Sunshine in Bangkok (and subtitled in Thai... writer Alex Garland's first novel was the Thai backpacker/crime novel The Beach, from many accounts a rather suspect book I have yet to read and make up my own mind on).
As for Sunshine, I was impressed. Yes, it's two movies in one, something that has drawn some press and TV criticism mostly for the way Danny Boyle has delivered the film you didn't think you were going to get, or perhaps some were hoping they wouldn't get. One film is nested inside the other, and a classic 'what should you do?' scenario is what yanks the inner action movie, kicking and screaming and Alien-like, out from a more ponderous exterior. When an original SF movie comes along that can pull you into the cinema instead of waiting long months for the DVD to come out, one thing fans are wary of, unless it's written in big daygo-green Comic Sans on the tin, is cliché. Sunshine has cliché, but it's kept subtle. The architecture of this kind of movie has itself been cliché for decades, in that respect it has no remove from It Came from Outer Space, Alien, 2001, Dark Star, Event Horizon, even Silent Running. In that environment only a limited number of interesting visual things can happen; any criticism to be made of the setting shouldn't extend to the quality of the script or the performances, which here are all more than adequate. Sunshine quite deliberately becomes a different kind of movie at one fixed point because that's obviously what Boyle and Garland wanted. If it had happened earlier in the film it would be too resonant of Alien, and Boyle and Garland are aiming more for 2001 in trying to tell a story of inner space, in that the question is asked what if you had a chance to be the last human being alive? It's a movie with knowing nods in all directions. It probably helped when casting Cillian Murphy as Capa in that he possesses that same haunted look as a 2001-era Keir Dullea, and the image of him suited up for EVA in a gold spacesuit will probably never be as iconic but is a defining connection to 2001, as is the impressively shot in-space-without-a-suit sequence. There is also a quite specific Dan O'Bannon/Dark Star reference that not everyone will spot, and it's not the bloody obvious one about being stranded in space with a huge bomb.
Sunshine doesn't set out to be as thoughtful as Steven Soderbergh's start-to-finish SF art movie Solaris (a film I have seen four times now and which gets 9/10 from me); it sets out to entertain, holds to its ambition and delivers quite impressively. As a study in the extremes of sanity it's quite compelling if necessarily a little OTT, visually it can only be described as quite beautiful, and thankfully does not come anywhere close to an over-reliance on meaningless CGI. The sun and the Icarus 2 are the real stars of the show. Michelle Yeoh is underused, Cillian Murphy is very engaging and Cliff Curtis is impressively convincing. And it was made in London's East End for many millions less than it would have cost in Hollywood. This is a film that doesn't deserve some of the knocks I've seen it getting from some less SF-literate critics, though generally reviews have been right to receive it with enthusiasm, as I do. One to see on the big screen. More please.
the_magician and the rest of the committee for saving Eastercon!Instead, my self-appointed fannish activity of the week was to go see Sunshine in Bangkok (and subtitled in Thai... writer Alex Garland's first novel was the Thai backpacker/crime novel The Beach, from many accounts a rather suspect book I have yet to read and make up my own mind on).
As for Sunshine, I was impressed. Yes, it's two movies in one, something that has drawn some press and TV criticism mostly for the way Danny Boyle has delivered the film you didn't think you were going to get, or perhaps some were hoping they wouldn't get. One film is nested inside the other, and a classic 'what should you do?' scenario is what yanks the inner action movie, kicking and screaming and Alien-like, out from a more ponderous exterior. When an original SF movie comes along that can pull you into the cinema instead of waiting long months for the DVD to come out, one thing fans are wary of, unless it's written in big daygo-green Comic Sans on the tin, is cliché. Sunshine has cliché, but it's kept subtle. The architecture of this kind of movie has itself been cliché for decades, in that respect it has no remove from It Came from Outer Space, Alien, 2001, Dark Star, Event Horizon, even Silent Running. In that environment only a limited number of interesting visual things can happen; any criticism to be made of the setting shouldn't extend to the quality of the script or the performances, which here are all more than adequate. Sunshine quite deliberately becomes a different kind of movie at one fixed point because that's obviously what Boyle and Garland wanted. If it had happened earlier in the film it would be too resonant of Alien, and Boyle and Garland are aiming more for 2001 in trying to tell a story of inner space, in that the question is asked what if you had a chance to be the last human being alive? It's a movie with knowing nods in all directions. It probably helped when casting Cillian Murphy as Capa in that he possesses that same haunted look as a 2001-era Keir Dullea, and the image of him suited up for EVA in a gold spacesuit will probably never be as iconic but is a defining connection to 2001, as is the impressively shot in-space-without-a-suit sequence. There is also a quite specific Dan O'Bannon/Dark Star reference that not everyone will spot, and it's not the bloody obvious one about being stranded in space with a huge bomb.
Sunshine doesn't set out to be as thoughtful as Steven Soderbergh's start-to-finish SF art movie Solaris (a film I have seen four times now and which gets 9/10 from me); it sets out to entertain, holds to its ambition and delivers quite impressively. As a study in the extremes of sanity it's quite compelling if necessarily a little OTT, visually it can only be described as quite beautiful, and thankfully does not come anywhere close to an over-reliance on meaningless CGI. The sun and the Icarus 2 are the real stars of the show. Michelle Yeoh is underused, Cillian Murphy is very engaging and Cliff Curtis is impressively convincing. And it was made in London's East End for many millions less than it would have cost in Hollywood. This is a film that doesn't deserve some of the knocks I've seen it getting from some less SF-literate critics, though generally reviews have been right to receive it with enthusiasm, as I do. One to see on the big screen. More please.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-12 01:41 pm (UTC)And he's fun to talk to too!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-12 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 08:34 pm (UTC)But yes, we need more sci-fi films like Sunshine. Perhaps they can do a sequel, sentering on planet Earth's return from the brink of destruction? It could be a sequel entirely different from its original, but set in the same fictional world.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 09:16 pm (UTC)And yeah, I also thought that the brightness of the star he'd created should have made him blind from that close a distance, but... whatever. I guess some scenes can't adhere to complete scientific accuracy and still get their message across.