Start Your 2010 Hugo Watches

Well, I guess I will have to buy a supporting membership in Aussiecon4, so as to be sure to nominate for the Hugos. Because if Moon does not win a long-form Hugo for best dramatic presentation next year, it will not be my fault. Damn. What you have here is that rarest of combinations: good story telling, excellent performances, and genuine science-y science fiction, in a movie. Boggles the mind. Word of warning to space opera fans: what you will not find in Moon: ray guns, interstellar dreadnoughts, dogfights in space, car chases, brass bikinis, or explosions. And, despite being a story about an employee of a mining company in space, there are no chest-exploding aliens, and no High Noon in Space either. It's not SciFi (or even SyFy), in other words.

( Cut for Not-Terribly-Spoilery commentary )

Pan on Knowing

On the other hand, Knowing, the SF/Suspense/Thriller with Nicholas Cage, was deeply disappointing. Hal and I saw it at the local cheap theater, owing in part to having recently watched Next (also a genre film with Nick Cage) and found it surprisingly clever and free of gaping plot holes, and also owing to a lone positive review by Roger Ebert, and his inexplicable likening of the film to Alex Proyas's earlier film, Dark City.

( Knowing is no Dark City. )