Start Your 2010 Hugo Watches

[akirlu]

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.



Sam Rockwell won the Best Actor title at SIFF recently, and deserved every bit of it. He delivers two different stages of a lonely, taciturn man with an anger-control problem, and the script gives him enough room to bring touches of sweetness and profound vulnerability to the performance.

The film has been described as having a pre-Star Wars look and feel, and I think there is some truth to that. Living in a mining station on the dark side of the Moon is a lot more austere and less fantastical than racing land speeders on Tatooine, though, so it fits. And, as in so much of the film, the look and feel deliberately echoes back to the classics of the genre. The director cites Silent Running as an influence, and the spoor of 2001 is everywhere. Some of the finest story-telling is found in observed details of the background: the smiley face hash marks in the latrine, counting days of Sam's contract, the names of the remote mining rovers on their monitors (they're named after the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, only one name has been crossed out in marker and re-labeled "Judas"), and the "Kick me" post it on the back of the primary remote for the station's robotic caretaker, Gerty.

Kevin Spacey plays the lipid-neutrality of Gerty's voice with just the right near-lilt to remind us of HAL 9000 in 2001, and the script plays off that resemblance in clever ways. I particularly liked the way the invoked ghost of HAL in our minds is a foil for telling a very different story. They tell me this film is a bit hard to find, but if you are a fan of actual science fiction, I recommend going the extra mile to see it.

Comments

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

Janna and I saw that Saturday night and had the same impression. Moon is the first 'real' Science Fiction movie I have seen in years. It was like watching a damn good Novellete. I have no clue who Duncan Jones is, but you can bet your ass I'm going to be looking for other work he has written and/or directed.

Note to Seattlites: Moon is playing at the Harvard Exit. DO NOT MISS IT!

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Duncan Jones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Jones), né Zowie Bowie, is Davie Bowie's son.

Moon is his directorial debut.

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

That's a creative branch that didn't fall from the tree then.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Clever use of the Mixmaster 2000 on your metaphors, there.

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do that. I also have this perverse habit of mispronouncing many words, but correctly speaking the words most often mispronounced by other people. It's a sickness.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, they do say that the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

From comments in his Q&A, he and his dad seem to have a really strong relationship, and it was making Super 8 movies together which sent him along the track to Moon.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It's also at the Grand Cinema in Tacoma, which is more accessible both in terms of easy parking and lack of stairs.

[eddvick.livejournal.com]

Ditto y'all. We saw it last night and emerged impressed. I'll definitely be nominating it for the Hugo.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

We haven't gotten it here yet but I'm looking forward to it. Someone quoted a six-word movie review of it that went something like "Great story line but no atmosphere" :->

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No atmosphere. Arr, Arr. Very cute.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, I actually do have a supporting membership in Aussiecon4, so I'm set. Good visual design and a nicely structured story. (Though why they needed a human for that mining operation when they had such advanced robots ... ) Anyway, it'll be nice nominating this and Sleep Dealer, although my guess is that Star Trek is a lock to win at this point, what with everybody and their dog wanting to have sex with the new Spock.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree that wondering why there needed to be a human caretaker at all was a bit of a distraction. But thinking about it now, the station seems to have two orders of robots: physically independent, but not very adaptable/capable/smart ones, such as the big mining remotes, or physically dependent ones like Gerty, who can do a great many things, but only along pre-existing tracks inside the station -- anyplace that does not have a physical track in place for 'him' to send one of his appendages is not available to 'him'. What is implied by the story line is that exterior station repairs, machine repairs, and anything that requires simultaneous independence of movement and thought is what Sam is there for.

And I'm sure you're right that the new Star Trek will be a heavily vetted favorite, but at least I can do my bit by making my pitch. I liked the Trek movie just fine, and all, but it's Just Another Space Opera.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

I thought Gerty was a terrific character (yes, character), and its loyalty to Sam drives the plot forward.

Rockwell's performances are key to the film's believability, though. One of the best I've seen this year (and I've seen quite a few).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, and the tension between the knowledge of how HAL 9000 ended up choosing between conflicting priorities in his programming and not knowing whether to trust Gerty's self-professed loyalty, is part of what creates suspense in the film. I loved that part.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Moon was THE film we really wanted to see when we went to Sundance this year, but it was showing the second week, and we were only there the first week. SO, we finally got out to see it three weeks ago. Fan-freakin'-tastic. Agreed!

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Speaking at the NFT last week, Jones discussed how the writers' strike closed down every production at Shepperton bar his, so he suddenly had top class sfx technicians knocking at his door because they'd heard it was an interesting project. He also had input from some of the best of the old generation of modelmakers and sourced old film stock to give the movie a retro look. When you consider there are 400 sfx shots, the $5m budget sounds even more astounding.

There's another in-joke with the names of the plants: Ridley, Douglas...

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah, I hadn't put together the plant name gag. Nice. And what a stroke of luck with that strike, in a weird way...

[sandial.livejournal.com]

Lise, Andy Porter and I saw "Moon" last night. I'd been lukewarm about searching it out, but it conveniently turned out to be playing in Lise and Andy's immediate neighborhood. Lise told me about your enthusiasm for it and that clinched it.

I'm sorry to say we were all disappointed. I won't go too far in speaking for the others, but I think it's safe to say we all thought it was well made and well acted and very stupidly written. We did have some fun afterward comparing our count of the plot holes.

It's a shame really, since the director's statement of his intentions for the film (available on the movie's website) are highly honorable. I just wish he'd had a knowledgeable SF editor look over the script before he filmed it.

The protagonist's predicament is truly tragic and affecting, but it's so artificially set up or 'forced' for that very purpose by the illogical situation that the emotional impact is much diminished.

For me, the annoying dumbness of the whole thing can be summed up by the fact that after stressing repeatedly that the base is isolated on the far side of the moon (not "dark side," Ulrika, there is no dark side), the protagonist only has to go for a short drive to see the Earth hanging in the sky.

There's no way I would nominate this film for a Hugo.