SpaceGypsies

Dear Mr. Lucas,

I would like to thank you for your tremendous contributions to the entertainment industry. Star Wars has a legacy of fans that will truly transcend time and space, and Indiana Jones will forever be a timeless treasure. It seems that you truly want to please your fans with films like Star Wars I, II & III. And it seems you continued to try and make your fans happy with the digitally remastered original Star Wars Trilogy that included unfortunate CGI rendered extended scenes. You teamed up with Mr. Spielberg to make Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which, I assume, was supposed to make fans of that franchise happy as well.

You’ve been met with criticism for your choices lately. Your decision to use CGI characters over the more expensive old school animatronics was met with harsh criticism. Fans weren’t shy about their hatred of JarJar Binks in Episode I and South Park devoted an entire episode to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, implying that you and Spielberg were “raping the franchise” for money. Now I see you are re-releasing Star Wars Episode I- The Phantom Menace into theaters in 3-D and I’m unfortunately not surprised. After all, isn’t Disney doing the same thing with Beauty and the Beast?

While part of me thinks seeing Darth Maul swing his lightsaber in 3-D would be beyond awesome, another part wonders if this is simply an effort to milk more money out of an already successful franchise. Will the 3-D be realistically used throughout the film as a means to enhance an already iconic experience? Or will we once again be subjected to the same old 3-D tricks that are used as a means to jack up the ticket price? Are you doing this for the money or for the fans? I suppose you’re the only one who knows the answer to that.

Mr. Lucas, I hope when you make the decisions to alter your already popular films you are honestly doing it for the right reason…the fans. Your fans have been very good to you. They’ve supported you and spoiled you in a way only sci-fi fans can, with unbridled adulation.  And despite your repeated application of new-fangled Hollywood gimmicks to your beloved films, the fans have stood by you. They’ve forgiven you for JarJar Binks, CGI Jabba the Hut, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. For you are the man who gave them Princess Leia in the Slave Girl costume. Please don’t make us have to forgive you again.

Sincerely,

GreenEggsNSamm

That’s the title of the new sci-fi comedy movie that stars Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne.

According to Fanshare.com:

Space Milkshake centres around four space workers on a rundown orbital sanitation station, who run into a few problems when they salvage a strange device from a space ship wreckage.

The film, directed and written by Arman Evrensel, is set to be released in late 2012 or early 2013.

With a name like “Space Milkshake” how can it not be good?

October Sky, in which he played the author and real-life NASA rocket scientist, Homer Hickam, provided my first movie encounter with Jake Gyllenhaal (as a lead). A dozen years later, in his Source Code character, Colter Stevens, we find the same kind of everyday guy – someone we might go to school or work with – in difficult circumstances racing to overcome obstacles to pursue his scientific (and personal) desires. To carry the comparison further, both characters have encouraging, supportive females present and have a difficult relationship with their father.

Gyllenhaal’s Homer Hickam blossomed under the tutelage of a beautiful and sweet, though sickly, high school teacher Miss Riley, who (along with his mother) supported his teen exploits into rocket science in the age of the cold war era race to the moon. Colter Stevens, an army helicopter pilot, pursues a different explosive science.

Stevens awakens from the last thing he remembers – flying a mission in Afghanistan – to find himself in the body of another man named Sean Fentress, aboard a commuter train to Chicago. Moments later an explosion detonates, killing everyone on the train. Stevens awakens again, this time inside a pod of some kind, strapped into his seat as he would be on an aircraft. We hear a disembodied voice trying to communicate with him; eventually Air Force Capt. Colleen Goodwin, played by Vera Farmiga, identifies herself and reminds him who he is. The Source Code project allows him to participate in the last eight minutes of another person’s life, sending him on a mission – no choosing whether to accept it or not – to identify the terrorist responsible for blowing up the train because the same party will activate additional devices later in the day. Goodwin urges Stevens to complete his mission as the Source Code thrusts him repeatedly back into the last eight minutes of Sean Fentress’s life.

While the story line and multiple renditions of the same event beg the inevitable comparisons with such recent flicks as Dennis Quaid’s Vantage Point and Denzel Washington’s Déjà vu or even the older Millenium (airplane crash investigator meets time-travelers), Source Code weaves its own, unique tale. Gyllenhaal hasn’t the same je ne sais quoi of those older actors, but this dis-ease in his own skin lends credibility to his jumping into another man’s life. He doesn’t know it all; he *questions* it all – what Goodwin and the “mad scientist” project head Dr. Rutledge tell him, where he is, and what he can or cannot accomplish. He shows no complacency or acceptance of his supposed fate. Between the deft direction of Duncan Moore, the editing and the other aspects of the story – future bombings to prevent (not just resolve the train bombing) and Stevens’ personal story merging with that of Fentress – the repetitive nature of the plot created a great, building tension rather than becoming tedious.

Source Code is a timely, not-too-distant-future sci-fi story that does not disappoint. If you like mystery/suspense as well as sci-fi, you probably will enjoy Source Code. This review is based on a DVD viewing rather than theatrical release.

Hello fellow travelers!

This is a very special week for the SpaceGypsies. We recently discovered Operation Speak Out with your Geek Out and it was something that really spoke to us. We’re proud to be geeks and we’re proud to be fans. And we’re not afraid to show it!

Geeks have spent far too long being teased and stereotyped. But instead of combating negativity with harsh words, Operation Speak Out with your Geek Out proposes that we invite those that pick on us to “sit at our table and share our interests.”

“Let us combat being used as pawns for internet gaffes with the reasons why we’re awesome, why we love what we love, and why it’s good to be a geek.” -Operation Speak Out with your Geek Out

SpaceGypsies is proud to join Operation Speak Out with your Geek Out this week, September 12th- 16th by posting about the things we geek out for and why we’re proud to be geeks.

Do you want to join the revolution and geek out too? Post your geeky story in our comments section this week and let us know what you geek out for!

Never be afraid to let your geek flag fly!

SpaceGypsies

In 2007, a movie named Sunshine slipped past me with little ado. Having just watched it –  and let me state this unequivocally – I would classify Sunshine as one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last 10 years and one of only a small handful that I wanted to watch again immediately after it finished.

Sunshine stars, among others, Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, and Mark Strong as members of a mission sent to restart our dying sun. If you smirk at Sunshine‘s setup one more time, I’ll slap that smirk off your face and send you to bed without dinner. From across the internet. Yes; there’s a stench emanating from Sunshine‘s premise that smells alarmingly similar to The Core but I assure you, the premise of this movie is irrelevant.  The premise serves only to isolate the crew in a very dangerous and inhospitable place. The acting and the masterful story telling are the thing. Sunshine is a genuinely good movie with believable characters and no manufactured melodrama. It doesn’t rely on a soundtrack by Aerosmith and cheesy montages to lend gravity to character deaths.  It doesn’t need to. The barely contained emotion conveyed by the cast of Sunshine lends each event all the gravity it needs.  Contained because these are professionals chosen expressly for their capacity to execute a very specific responsibility but barely so because they are still humans bearing an impossible burden.

A screencap for the ladies: Robert Capa (played by Cillian Murphy) records a message for his family.

So why was Sunshine largely ignored? In a word, flavor.  Sunshine expresses itself much more like an art film than your typical Hollywood sci-fi/thriller.  The pacing and writing challenge what we’ve become accustomed to for a film of this genre, making it very easy for someone to issue a premature “tl:dr”* and move on. Understand, I’m not saying that Sunshine has returned to <sarcasm> the golden age of movie pacing from the ’70s</sarcasm>. I’m saying that Sunshine recognizes that you can use negative space to express details that do not then need to be manhandled by the writer and thrust upon the unsuspecting head and shoulders of the viewer though dialogue that might as well start with, “in case you’re too stupid to figure out what you just saw”.  It embraces the idea that pictures really can speak a thousand words and that some times “show me” works better than “tell me”. Sunshine even challenges the boundaries of its genre through judicious use of obscuring visual effects that *GASP* actually leave something to the imagination.

Really, get your hands on Sunshine and watch it.  I can’t promise you’ll come out the other end as enthusiastic as I am but I’m fairly certain you won’t walk away wanting 107 minutes of your life back.

*too long, don’t read