The Martian (2015) : The science of deliberately piercing a hole in a space-suit...

At one time, probably an expanding group of Tweets about The Martian (2015)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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28 September

At one time, probably an expanding group of Tweets about The Martian (2015)

The film has one visit : http://t.co/nUgg9ZfhZm That didn't look like 0.375 of Earth's gravitational pull ? And a day of only +41 mins.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 28, 2015

From : http://t.co/PjqHiLdknK pic.twitter.com/bxcKuYLO7j

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 28, 2015

[Of The Martian (2015)], 'but Ridley Scott's latest space adventure is an uncommonly intelligent spectacle' and 'an ode to science'. ->

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 28, 2015

-> Odd, as the science is hardly it's strong point, and where it works best is on the level of the poetic, or of a message in a bottle...

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 28, 2015

One of the film's strengths, 'The sounds of space – Harry Gregson-Williams on his score for The Martian' (2015) : http://t.co/JNbAavol0u

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 30, 2015

Some external links...

http://www.universetoday.com/77070/how-cold-is-space/

The AstroCritic: What 'The Martian' Gets Right About Astronauts


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Who remembers The Tichborne Claimant (1998)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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8 August

I saw the film in its time, because I was fascinated that one of the pieces contained in A Universal History of Infamy, by Jorge Luis Borges, shared its subject-matter (not so, as yet, the tale of Widow Ching, Lady Pirate).

I remember little about it, but see that Stephen Fry was in it, which is plausible. It came to mind, because I was reading promotional material for The Imposter (2012) plus Q&A, and it seemed, as does The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), a better reference-point than The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) - even if Matt Damon is in it - or the other feature that it mentioned.

But maybe not...


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A very delayed excuse for a review of Red State (2011)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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10 March

Yes, well... What follows - more of an excuse of a review, than for one - has been lurking on my desktop* for a very long time, and, when I opened it just now, didn't even turn out to be the limerick that, I thought, was the best part of my response to this screening at last year's Festival (yes, some six months ago).

I have tidied and tarted it up, but it remains what it is: incomplete (if only I had that limerick!)


* Contains spoilers *

Can one ever be prepared for Kevin Smith? I don’t think so. (He probably isn’t himself.)

So I don’t think that, just because I hadn’t done my homework and managed to watch Clerks (1994) my companion at the screening was at an advantage: the world into which we were plunged was one of proud intolerance, casual killings, being right (in more than one sense) in the face of everything, and prepared to fight to the death. Not much scope for humour there.

My friend enjoyed what Smith, despite all odds, did wring from the situation by way of comedy at the end, but I was less sure – being unsure is not a good foundation for comedy, unless it is one involving a nervous kind of tittering.


Where will I go next, if I feel in need of searching out Smith? Well, I could investigate Dogma (1999), the one whose poster owes more than a little to (the work of) Gilbert and George, but why should I watch Damon team up again with Affleck? That said, Alan Rickman and Salma Hayek are both in it…


End-notes

* Which we know doesn't mean that thing that the computer - or part of it - stands on, because we call that 'my desk', and 'top' never has anything to do with it!


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The Future or How do you choose a satisying film? (Part 2)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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26 January

Take Birdy (1984), for instance. What decided me to see it, when it was released?

* Well, it had not been created then, so it was not the phenomenon of Nicholas Cage. (For some, it might even have started with cult film Rumble Fish (1984), for others, maybe, with - also from that year of release - The Cotton Club.)

* For me, it also was not knowing of the actor playing Birdy, Matthew Modine (born in 1959, and so older than Cage, although their film careers have run in parallel). Amongst the things that one knows Modine's acting from, he has also appeared in shorts such as:

§ Jesus was a Commie (2011) - perhaps balancing up playing Jesus in Mary (2005), which, although it looks crazy, perhaps isn't that interesting, and anyway passed me by.

§ Santa, the Fascist Years (2008)*

§ I Think I Thought (2008)


* Alan Parker's work, on the other hand, one already had reason to respect and expect things from (e.g. Bugsy Malone (1976) and Midnight Express (1978)).

* I am sure, also, that Peter Gabriel, who produced the music, was already in my consciousness - in my opinion, the CD of the soundtrack (even if one knows nothing about the film) is a worthwhile Gabriel album in its own right, well worth taking a chance on if found somewhere (which I never have, since buying my copy, and I have no idea of availability / price).

For the film itself, along with the flight sequences, it is truly remarkable!

* The album's insert has an image that I believe to be a still from the film - disturbing, haunting, as the film poster itself was.

* And last, by no means (as one has to say) least, would have been that write-up of around 140 words, on the basis of skim-reading which I have almost exclusively decided what to watch in the independent cinema world for the last eight years.


That had, for a long while, been my practice, prior to the days of seeing Kevin Spacey talk on t.v. about K-PAX (2001), I think both Matt Damon** and Ben Afleck Good Will Hunting (1997), and Geoffrey Rush Shine (1996) - none of which, I have to say, I even slightly regret having seen.

Possibly it was the trailer that led me up the garden path in those days (a bit like the film's pig), but, in any event, I was not spared Michael Palin and co. in what I found the disappointingly dire A Private Function (1984).


But there are write-ups in which one can have (or feel) confidence, and there is the one (from a local free paper) from which I quote a few choice phrases (or, in one case, whole sentences). (I don't need to identify the film, which becomes strikingly obvious - even if some of the things written didn't occur to the writer - or compiler - as such to the reader.)

in 1979, grocer's daughter Thatcher became the UK's first - and to date only - female prime minister

the film focuses on Thatcher's rise to power, right through to the present day

There are, however, a few flaws. The story contains a few boring scenes and the flashback sequences are a little muddled in places.

A great back-up cast includes Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent [etc.]


Lack of energy alone at this moment prevents me from scorning the infelicities, but:

Would you want to trust this 'review' to guide you on your way, either into the auditorium with Meryl, or off to catch Luc Besson's The Lady (2011)?


And we're not done with how The Future (2011) was falsely set up, or what one might make of this new Thatcher voice - concerning which Part 3 might have things to say...


End-notes

* Why am I, for some reason, reminded of the notorious home-movies for the private consumption of a certain Disney?


** Of whom, of course, more elsewhere at 'You're now as famous as Matt Damon!', and even New allegations: Matt Damon opens my post, which have now become compulsory reading in the blog world (and, no, I won't be calling it the blogosphere - in my lifetime).


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Tired old nag of a film (1)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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21 January

Anyone who may already haunt the web presence of New Empress Magazine will know that I have already been scathing about the premise, amongst other things, of Spielberg's latest, War Horse. (I think that I admitted there that I did not ever see Private Ryan, but truly never felt the need to do so.)

Well, I saw the trailer again in full and thought the same, but another NEM posting has softened my attitude to the origins of the piece, if not to the film itself, or to making a film of it, for two reasons: it still does not render it of any greater worth, to my mind, than the Disney true-life adventures that rather irritatingly punctuated my childhood, when I had most wanted from the week's Disney spot that evening was the adventures of Donald Duck or the like, but the esteemed British children's writer Michael Morpurgo had originally written it, and he had adapted it, in a highly successful way, for the stage.

So those, for me, are the parameters of the work, and, as for Spielberg's daughter - or somebody - loving horses and the play, that is really neither here nor there, except that you can be sure that (and no sour grapes, honestly), if I shared my liking for a very good pork-and-stilton pâté that I buy from my local farm shop, Steven wouldn't dreamwork up a treatment about the people who make it. The basis is a children's story, and so fits with much of what he directs, with its corny, schmalzy emphasis that somehow diminishes the big picture for the small story of some indviduals.

Oh, life is about individuals, and, in this and in Ryan, the idea of looking out for your mates in the theatre of conflict (why ever do we call it that?) is part of it, as in Band of Brothers (whose executive producers include, of course, the selfsame Spielberg and Ryan's own leader of a smaller such band, Tom Hanks), but not everything: militarily, sacrifices do need to be made, and deploying even eight men (at the risk of their lives) to save one man - for whatever reason - would have to be seen as one to be made an objective.

After all, the film of The Cruel Sea, as Simon Heffer has recently argued on Radio 3's late-night slot The Essay, tellingly depicts men in the water who think that they are to be rescued. However, the wider perspective is that it appears from sonar that a U-boat is underneath them, and dropping depth-charges, rather than saving them, has, hard though it is, to be the decision to make.

So, much as Matt Damon has become my mascot on these pages, he'd have to go. If children want to see a story about a horse, that's fine, but don't bother me with your take on it, Steven!


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Contagion and what is contagious

This is a Festival review of the Surprise Film, Contagion (2011)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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8 October (Tweets added, 21 July 2015)

This is a Festival review of the Surprise Film, Contagion (2011)

I’m not imagining that I understand, not having looked at it, much about the spread of disease and its control. However, I cannot believe the following sort of scenario, without seeing some credible evidence that it makes real biological sense:

If a fox, detected in a chicken-run, drops something that it has been eating in its flight, and that food is not only palatable to the chickens, but is also infected with a virus that the fox has had, the chicken (or chickens) that eats its, merely by having eaten that food, will give rise to a fox/chicken-type virus (whose genotyping will show origins in both the fox and the chicken).

If the chicken is then, sadly, run over, its blood will be infected with the virus, and another species that comes into contact with it will (or could) contract the virus that it contains.

As I say, it may be that I know nothing about the matter, but this seems about as simplistic as thinking that, because certain foods contain more anti-oxidants than others, because anti-oxidants will react with and neutralize free radicals, and because free radicals can react with cells to give rise to ageing and cancer, eating those foods will reduce one’s liability to those undesirable effects.

-> It is gathered that the mechanisms both of initial infection and of its transference were criticized.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 21, 2015

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Meditating about Lars

This is a review of Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

More views of - or at (or before) - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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13 September

* Contains spoilers *

This is a review of Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

I am still musing about this film, not just because I delayed until to-night to watch the special features, and not even because of most of what was in them. So what causes me to continue to muse?

The answer may partly be in the title (as I don't think that 'the Real Girl' refers to Bianca), and where it locates this film. Undeniably, whatever the cast and crew say about her in the so-called featurette, it would not have worked if Ryan Gosling, too, hadn't been good - and he is very good.

In order not to meet the film head on, although I do not really believe that it has any hidden depths, I find myself thinking about the therapy sessions in Good Will Hunting: when I saw the film, nothing could detract from or diminish the fact that Matt Damon's character was there with that of Robin Williams on account of the improbability that - despite the obvious problems posed by the notation alone - he had just been able, in a casual way, not only to pick up advanced mathematical learning from blackboards, but also to become a highly competent practitioner. (The impudent memory that lingers is of the joke that is told about the old couple, when all is said and done.)

Or I reflect on A Beautiful Mind, and what that film wants to suggest about the nature of experiencing schizophrenia, and how it seeks to set academic life, honour and achievements against discordant behaviour. (One could go on to mention Shine, though some disputed that it dealt with mental illness as such.)

I continue musing, knowing that the film gets the viewer to credit certain things, but at the same time - largely - presenting such a utopian picture of acceptance and understanding of another's needs that, if there were any truth in it and it is not to make us feel better about what could be, we would not face so many struggles that seem bound up with life, but, rather, people would bend when they saw how we were hurting.

In a world where people sometimes label one another as 'needy', a word that laughably seems to suggest that the labeller has no needs, I rather doubt it...


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