“I’m gonna dip this potato in some crushed Vicodin... and there’s nobody who can
stop me.”
The Martian has more than its share of quotable lines, but that one stands out.
Not having read the book, I don’t know if it comes from Andy Weir’s 2011 novel, Drew Goddard’s screenplay, or even an on-set brainstorm, although Goddard — writer for Angel, Buffy the Vampire, and Lost on TV; co-writer and director of the highly recommended meta horror film The Cabin in the Woods — is a good bet. Matt Damon, as the NASA astronaut stranded on the surface of Mars in the year 2035 after his mission teammates evacuate, delivers it to the camera of his character’s video log perfectly.
Damon is excellent and the stagecraft amazing. Only about 40 minutes from the end
did I find myself realizing that, of course, the exterior Mars scenes weren’t filmed on Mars. The buy-in on verisimilitude for me was that high.
The Martian was directed by Ridley Scott of Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, and Gladiator renown and is now available on DVD.
Screencap © 2015 Twentieth Century Studios.
Related: Luna Ranger • Past of Future Days • Here
Am I Sitting in a Tin Can, Far Above the World
Gravity was spectacular.
I saw the film two weeks ago, and whenever it’s brought to mind I’m right back in the absolute sense of wonder I experienced in the theater.
Starring the quietly magnetic Sandra Bullock as a civilian mission specialist sent up
to work on the Hubble Space Telescope and George Clooney as the veteran commander of her shuttle, Gravity demands to be seen not only on as big a screen as possible but in
3D. If you’ve heard me talk (or read me write) about 3D, you know that I seldom recommend it.
Here we go with a good old link-blogging post for the first time in too long.
I know it’s been making the rounds at warp speed the past few days, but Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy in Audi’s “The Challenge” has at least one moment too priceless not to keep sharing. It’s a commercial, obviously — so if you have a hard policy against watching such things, here’s your warning. [2:56]
We’ve lost Neil Armstrong to the stars at the age of 81.
Neil Armstrong in the Eagle module after the moonwalk.
Photo: Buzz Aldrin for NASA.
An obituary up on the NASA website includes excerpts from and links to statements from the Armstrong family, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, and President Barack Obama. The page also has embedded video of Armstrong and links to information on the historic moon landing of July 20th, 1969.
My last post was about the moon. This one is about the new film Moon, directed by Duncan Jones.
It opens with an in-story promotional video explaining that an isotope of helium abundant on the moon is now mined there to provide much of Earth’s power. The lone human monitoring the collection of the isotope is Sam Bell, played by Sam Rockwell. A robotic apparatus called Gerty is his only company; with satellite communications down Sam can’t even talk to his employers at Lunar Industries, let alone his wife and daughter, in real time. Thankfully his three-year hitch, darn near driving him crazy, is almost up. Or maybe it’s driven him crazy already? (Gerty is voiced by Kevin Spacey in
a tone akin to that of 2001’s HAL, adding to its potential menace.)
