March Lineup @ The Trylon microcinema: "Titans. Will. Clash. - The FX Magic of Ray Harryhausen"

Weekends in March @ the Trylon microcinema:

March 5 & 6

JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963)

7:00 PM & 9:00 PM

Tickets

 

"The classic Greek myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece comes to life under Ray Harryhausen’s creative guise. The iconic skeleton battle scene, topping out at three minutes, took four months to produce. His first “A” list film, it was regarded by Harryhausen as his best film."

 

 

 

March 7

EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)

5:20 PM & 7:00 PM

Tickets 

 

"It’s all out war when a U.S. space mission rashly fires upon a mysterious alien spacecraft. Part classic sci-fi in the vein of War of the Worlds and part low-budget fun similar to Plan 9 From Outer Space, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers relegated Harryhausen’s talents to the less animated, but no less fantastical, effects of flying saucers destroying national monuments."

 

 

 

March 12 & 13

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)

7:00 PM & 9:00 PM

Tickets 

 

"Although many film adaptations exist of Jules Verne’s novel, this version was by far the most popular. A small group of Union soldiers escape from a Confederate prison camp via hot air balloon only to find themselves stranded on a volcanic island inhabited with mammoth crabs, birds and bees. Presented in “superdynamation!”"

 

 

 

March 14

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955)

5:20 PM & 7:00 PM

Tickets

 

"Driven from its natural habitat by hydrogen bomb testing, a giant octopus sets its monstrous sights on San Francisco, and the military is forced to pull out all its nuclear age gizmos to defend the west coast from ruin! Harryhausen did his best to disguise the fact that there was only enough money in the budget to construct six legs for the octopus that he jokingly referred to as the “hextapus.”"

 

March 19 & 20

FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964) 

7:00 PM & 9:00 PM

Tickets 

 

"Three intrepid turn-of-the-century voyagers are jettisoned to the moon via hair-brained science and DIY space travel. Not only do they discover a strange race of large bipedal insect aliens known as Selenites, but they also uncover their evil plan to conquer the earth! Harryhausen, a fan of the H.G. Wells novel, was personally responsible for persuading Columbia to fund this unique adaptation."

 

March 21

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)

5:20 PM & 7:00 PM

Tickets 

 

"Humans unwittingly unleash the rage in the Ymir, a giant sulfur-loving reptile brought back from Venus and one of Harryhausen’s most iconic creatures. Shot on location in Italy—because Harryhausen wanted to vacation there—the film’s finale features the most unique death match the Roman Coliseum has ever seen."

 

March 26-28

THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958) 

Fri/Sat 7:00 & 8:25 PM; Sun 5:20 & 7:00 PM

Tickets

"Often regarded (with "Argonauts") as Harryhausen's masterpiece, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad proved so popular it spawned two sequels. This one features battles with a Cyclops, a roc (the two-headed eagle), a fighting skeleton, and a dancing, four-armed cobra-woman, Harryhausen's favorite creature."

 

 

 

Tickets for all shows can be purchased online. Remember, there are only 50 seats so these go quickly. Additional film series run during the week (Trash Film Debauchery, Dreamland Faces, & Sound Unseen) - check the full calendar here.

Coming soon to the Trylon...
April: Alfred Hitchcock: Across the Decades
May: Before Tokyo: Comedies of Bill Murray

The Trylon microcinema is located at:

3258 Minnehaha Avenue S

Minneapolis, MN 55406

Info Line: 612.424.5468

 

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300 Words About: Moon

[Moon opens this Friday at the Landmark Uptown Cinema. These thoughts follow the preview I wrote after seeing Moon at MSPIFF, followed by a Q & A with writer-director Duncan Jones.]

Like driving in Minnesota in January...

As I mentioned in that meme thing a while ago, one of the things I love about movies set in the future is that the imagination can run completely wild. Even when this blank slate leads to perhaps overly ambitious ideas, it's still fun to consider the possible delights. Or in the case of a movie like Moon, consider the possible horrors. It's not a frightening movie to watch, but the core elements of the story are enough to keep any technophobe up at night, possibly terrified of impending developments in biomedical engineering and astrophysics.

Based on its production budget alone (if not also your ticket price), Moon is likely the biggest bang for the buck you'll see all year. Working with a paltry $5 million, writer-director Duncan Jones constructed an astonishingly impressive lunar surface by using the ancient technique of scaled models. I'm of the opinion that for the most part, bigger budgets and bigger CGI developments have led to less impressive and less realistic effects, and I'm even tempted, for example, to argue that the effects in the original Star Wars trilogy are better than the prequels. But I refuse to spending enough time watching the prequels to find that evidence. Anyway, in addition to appreciating the story potential and the high production values of Moon, I was bowled over by the elegant, haunting piano score by Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain).

Unfortunately, what Moon boasts in technical achievements it lacks in emotional depth. Our protagonist is Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell, a personal friend of Jones for whom the part was specifically written), a contract employee of Lunar Industries who is finishing a 3 year-term living alone on the moon - that is, aside from the a sentient computer, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). His work mining Helium-3 from the lunar surface is monotonous and isolating, and as he begins to prepare for his trip back home to his wife and child, Sam makes a highly disturbing discovery.

While Rockwell does his best to bear the emotional burden of his character, there was something missing at a deeper level of the story for me. Maybe Jones felt that more involvement from Gerty, for example, would make Moon more of a knock-off of 2001 than it already is. Whatever happened, Moon ultimately didn't horrify or disturb me nearly as much as I expected, or, to be honest, as much as I hoped.

Jones is next directing Mute, "about a woman whose disappearance causes a mystery for her partner, a mute bartender. When she disappears, he has to go up against the city’s gangsters." He has $25 million to work with this time, and considering he made Moon look so good for so little, I hope he invests more resources this time in somehow developing a little more emotional "oomph" from another promising premise.

300 Words (x2) About: WALL*E

Just another swing through Saturn's rings...

I can't imagine being a member of the Pixar team. Your movies are expected to capture children's hearts, warm over the coldest critics, top $300 million domestically at the box office, win Academy Awards, cure cancer, and do my laundry. Pixar's 2008 film, WALL*E, has succeeded on the first two of those tasks. The third and fourth are a foregone conclusion, and the last two, well, we'll see.

At the very least, WALL*E is the best animated film and the best romantic comedy of the year. I expect its mention in Best Picture discussions will peak and eventually fade by January, but the fact is, we might want to set the Pixar people loose on some of the world's real problems, because all they do is make magic happen.

Our hero, WALL*E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class), is a lonely little robot stranded on Earth. Humans left centuries ago when our consuming ways caught up with us: waste, garbage, and a lack of natural resources made the planet uninhabitable. We now live aboard a giant spaceship, still addicted to technology and fast food. Our species has adapted and evolved, and the human body now resembles that of a walrus. Our captain has sent a probe robot, Eve, to search for signs of life on Earth. Eve finds WALL*E, who presents her with a plant as a simple sign of friendship. Her mission accomplished, Eve is called back to the ship. WALL*E stows away and finds his world turned upside down.

The animation in WALL*E shocked me for two reasons: 1.) metal is literally brought to life, and 2.) I didn't think I could be shocked by computer animation anymore. Garbage has never looked so beautiful, and WALL*E's curious excitement as he drifted into outer space (above) was not just my favorite moment of the movie, but the one that might make WALL*E my favorite Pixar movie. As with last year's installment, Ratatouille, the Pixar-animated landscapes and brilliant details are making it increasingly difficult to trust what your eyes are seeing.

Although the romance in WALL*E is both believable and touching (I can't believe I just wrote that), I wouldn't call the story entirely perfect. Somewhere aboard the spaceship I felt a little stutter in the momentum, as if the movie didn't know if it wanted to continue its love story, shift gears and focus on the humans and earth, or further explore WALL*E's character. It makes it through to a nice ending while doing all three of those, but if there is any criticism to be directed at this movie, it's in that fact: WALL*E tried to lift too heavy a load.

Part of the reason the misguided backlash against WALL*E's "green" message surprises me is that the story was written back in the early 90's, when green was a color and fluorescent bulbs were the ones used in awesome neon signs. Writer/director Andrew Stanton (also responsible for Pixar's Finding Nemo, recently named one of the best animated films of all time) wrote WALL*E simply asking this question: "What if humankind left earth and somebody left the last robot on, and it just kept doing the same futile thing forever?"

Of course, it says something about Pixar that its movies are receiving enough serious attention to be accused of influencing society in some way. For my well-spent money it was just a funny little story, but maybe that says something about me, and maybe the people offended by WALL*E (thanks to Matthew Lucas for the link) need to go take out their trash. Permanently.

REVIEW: In the Shadow of the Moon (A)

Background: In the early 1970's, NASA's lunar program ended and space travel was replaced by space fantasy, with the Star Wars trilogy and the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative of the Cold War. Then, in 1995, Ron Howard's excellent Apollo 13 struck a nerve with the American public, and a new generation was awe-inspired by the idea of landing on the moon. In the Shadow of the Moon is the latest of a string of related documentaries that have followed since then (many produced by Howard), and it features interviews with the surviving astronauts from the Apollo program, including those on Apollo 11 & 13, two of the most famous missions. The film is directed by David Sington (PBS's NOVA) but "presented" by Ron Howard (with no production credit - ?), and it is meant to give us the first-hand experience from the Apollo astronauts, many of whom you may not even know. Do you know many Americans have traveled to the moon? 24. I had no idea there was a period of time when the U.S. was landing on the moon every six months.

Synopsis: Beginning at the height of the space race in the late 1950's, Sington makes it clear that beating the Soviet Union was a major priority, urgently outlined in JFK's goal (in 1961) to have a successful U.S. manned lunar landing by the end of the decade. We see the early struggles, tragedies, and triumphs, culminating in a detailed recounting of the Apollo 11 mission, which was the first to land on the moon on July 20, 1969. Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins take us through the training, launch, landing, and return to earth. Later Apollo astronauts describe their lunar experiences, hopes, dreams, and spiritual beliefs. By the end, we have a much better sense of what it would feel like to be an astronaut, but still no clue as to how we actually figured out how to visit other planets. It's mind-boggling.

I Loved:
+ The incredible, mostly never-before-seen archival footage, from training sessions at NASA to shuttle cameras to lunar landings.
+ That the focus was on the astronauts' experiences, and not on technical aspects of space travel or history lessons or conspiracy theories.
+ The last section of interviews, when the astronauts share their deeply personal philosophies on life and spirituality, and how they were influence by the experience of being on another planet.

I Liked:
+ The excellent musical score.
+ The quality of some of the footage, so clear that it's hard to believe it was filmed with the technology of the era - really, it's hard to believe...

I Disliked:
- That Neil Armstrong, the first human in history to set foot on another planet, is not interviewed. His fellow astronauts speak so highly of him that you are desperate to hear what he was experiencing. Apparently, he is "reclusive" and has been reluctant to bear his soul to the public.
- The intermixing of tense and possession - all of the astronauts are saying "we" and "I" even when their mission is not being discussed, so it's hard to remember who was doing what with whom on which mission.
- Not learning more about the astronauts' current circumstances, or why the Apollo mission program ended so abruptly.

I Hated:
- That the moon landing conspiracy theory was even addressed. I thought it was completely unnecessary and below the dignity of the film and the astronauts interviewed.

Grade:
Writing - N/A
Acting - N/A
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 9
Music - 5
Significance - 5

Total: 28/30 = 93% = A

Last Word: Full disclosure - outer space has always fascinated me, more so than the deepest seas or highest mountains or thickest jungles. I'm the only person I know who was really excited to see the first pictures from Mars, and I love to look out at the stars. I'm not a big alien guy or science fiction aficionado or Trekkie, and I don't even know any constellations other than the Big Dipper. I just like to think about how tiny earth is in comparison to the universe, and the fact that humans have somehow figured how to get to that little night light in the sky amazes me. That being said, I was of course interested to hear about how those humans actually felt about the whole experience. Though Neil Armstrong is desperately missing from the group, I'm glad these men were interviewed before it was too late. Though it's difficult to argue for space travel to be a priority right now (and I don't think it should be), I think it's worth reflecting on the unbelievable fellowship that the U.S. enjoyed with the rest of the world after the first moon landing. It was apparent, at least from the archival footage, that it was a truly a global celebration for an incredible achievement we shared with the world and for which we were deeply admired. Looking at our current reality, it almost feels like we're on a different planet. The tagline for In the Shadow of the Moon is poignant: "Remember when the whole world looked up?"