"Work" on the magazine is going well. We're always looking for new talent, and the thing I'm looking for right now is a decent photographer. Apparently, that takes gear. Maybe I'll look up some low-budget lighting techniques, or pair a crewless pro with an art school student's access to lights. We've got some exciting writers and some really cool stuff on the horizon, for sure. I think our slogan should be "Edge Magazine: What do you want for nothin'?"
I saw Once yesterday, and I really liked it. I'm not really big on musicals, but I really liked the way the songs came from the song writing/singing process and the emotion that each performance contained. Highly Recommended, unless you don't like heartfelt music*. My only regret is that the Miracle 5's soundsystem is wiggity-wack.
I also saw the return of Harry Potter and crew, and I enjoyed it very much. This is the first time I felt an emotional connection to the material, aside from Azkaban. I'm looking forward to the next, especially since the same director is doing it. And she's in it, which helps.
Last week I watched a 70's flick called Silent Running, an early outing by some dudes who worked on Blade Runner and Star Wars. Douglas Trumbull--definitely an early innovator of special FX and the things we take for granted today. Anyway, Silent Running's about this space station that's home to a lot of shipping containers and three large, organic forests--the last ones in existence, I believe. In charge of the forests is Bruce Dern, an actor that's been in many a classic film, mostly playing the conceited, smarmy jerk. He's so good at it! Anyway, he's pretty much a jerk in this movie, a hippie-type who is all smug about winning at space-poker** and being able to grow stuff well. The other 3 dudes, all shippers don't suffer him lightly and zip around his gardens in their sweet go-karts when they get a chance.
Anyway, Home Base gives word that the shippers and everybody can come back to Earth (which is apparently some sort of super-regulated place where all temperature is the same and everything is made from synthetics), and they can also get rid of those forests, while they're at it, too. Everybody's all about going home, except for our man Bruce, who is obviously Not Having It. Upset over the decision, he argues with one of his shipping friends, and ends up killing him in self-defense. Unable to morally turn back, he sends two of the forests out to be nuked, along with the other shippers. From there, he gets the drone robots to fix the injuries he sustained. He also renames the robots Huey, Louie, and Dewey...and they rock.
They're all played by multiple amputee little people - a pre-cursor for r2-D2. He teaches them to play poker and tend to the gardens--most of the movie is him hanging out. **The whole thing is a tough posit--do you side with a bunch of cargo-carrying dudes who just want to get back to a crappy homogeneous Earth, or what could possibly be the Biggest Hippie Jerkass in the Entire Universe? I still don't know. Even he can't get over how much of a jerk he's been, so he sends Dewey to tend to the last remaining forest as he waits for home base to pick him up. He destroys the space station with him inside via nuclear detonation-a very 70's ending, I might add.
Now why did I write all that just then? Hm. It's a pretty good social commentary for sure (two of the songs in the movie are sung by Joan Baez, go fig) and it's got a good (if overbearing) message. However, what really struck me as odd is that 1972-Era Bruce Dern...
looks uncannily like Michael Bay!!!
Don't tell me you don't see it. I think it's odd that Jerky Bruce Dern pretty much does the exact opposite of what Mr. Bay does with his latest movie, which is take pretty great care of the robots and only blows up himself. If only the reverse had been true for ol' Mike...
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Everybody's leaving town and growing up/doing something, it seems. I'm cool with having a job here and all, but it's gonna come time for me to find some new hangout buddies and I'll be on the lookout, so hit me up!
Also, next week marks a big blow-out housecooling party at John's. It's also a My/Paul's birthday celebration, and should be great. Also, The Lookout is playing at SLB this weekend. If anybody has a wad of money lying around, I'll ask that you please check out my
and see if you'd like to hook me up. Might I add that my birthday is also my Cancerversary? I think this will be the last time to milk this coincidence of ailment and birthday. *coughguilttripcough**or, Irish people.
**It's really just regular poker, in space.
***Has anybody ever seen a movie where people in space pretty much just hang out? I'd love to see that. A lot of my favorite sci-fi movies involve people doing ordinary stuff, just in space--then some alien/entity/disaster breaks out. Let's write something!
