Moon

I watched Moon a few nights ago, based on Buzz's rec:

This is very high on my list, and for many reasons, of all the sci-fi I have seen in this exercises, Moon brings the most classic material to the table. It's well acted and has a plot the keeps one entertained, it does suffer from a few gimmes, where the plot got thin or was handed out, but none of this really hurts the story. In the end it makes its statement as all good sci-fi does, and then flies out the airlock with a giggle. Go watch it already.

Seconded, for the most part. I didn't really feel like the plot went thin, but I do understand the criticism. I got into a fight with an English teacher once (a few times, actually), trying to say that sometimes something is what it is. Something maybe be just as simple as it is, or as obvious as it is, and that's okay. With this movie, I think that pushed the focus of the movie further onto Sam Rockwell's reaction to the plot.

This movie really was Sam Rockwell's, and he carried it brilliantly. He's one of my favorite working actors, but will never get the credit he's due, because his looks are so ... not A-list, and definitely not leading actor. He delivered on Moon, though, and he's done it before. If you haven't seen them, check out Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Choke. Box of Moonlight is another favorite of mine, from his earlier days (part of that mid-90s indie film explosion that was so awesome). Also, look for him in a tiny part next time you watch Ninja Turtles.

The movie really does reach into the scifi classics, too. The most obvious is a big slice of homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the form of the robot. The robot was, by the way, brilliantly written and acted by Kevin Spacey. It plays a delicate and subtle game around corporate asshole-ness, in the model of Alien and Rollerball, though... and the territory has been gone over so many times, I think they really played with it in a new and brilliant way. Very, very clever.

Yeah, go watch it already.

Male English Professor Syndrome (MEPS): A defense mechanism used by people to overcompensate for spending all their time doing stuff that doesn't actually matter, particularly academics working in the arts or humanities. Presents as an insistence to analyse art, literature and film to the exclusion of aesthetic appreciation, and an inflexible insistence that disagreements must be resolved through rational discourse. Early research suggests a cause in "method envy," in which study of fundamentally subjective subject matter leads to resentment and an attempt to emulate the hard sciences by making art, film, and literature equally boring and even more obnoxious. 80% of cases present in males.

Alien

I did want to clarify something I said yesterday:

She has a lot to say about how the entire thing is framed as what "audiences want," while characters like Ellen Ripley and Sarah Conner are habitually rejected as one-off flukes. Though, interestingly, those characters fail the test too--that even though they are bad ass female characters, they don't have any female characters around them to interact with, essentially a definition of "token minority."

The first Alien movie really was its own thing, and I don't think this statement applies to it.

Interestingly, the script was written with a male lead in mind for the Ripley character (keeping very much in the pattern that was detailed in my previous post). They did something different though: the screenwriters were careful to write all the characters, including the lead, as being totally gender neutral. And why not? You've got professional spacemen who are going to work, they get into trouble, and they get eaten. Their interpersonal dynamics aren't a big factor, neither is who they are deep down... it is a movie about people responding to stress. And cultural factors aside, men and women don't actually respond to stress that differently.

Then they cast Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, and an interesting thing happen... there were (at least) two additions to the script, both of which ended up being cut. The first was a sex scene between Ripley and Dallas--I'm not sure if they ever even shot. The second was a bit of dialog between Ripley and Lambert (the other female character in a crew of seven)... where they ask each other if either has fucked Ash and how he's kinda weird. I am pretty sure both things were included with the intention of femininizing both characters, and I wonder how conscious they were in cutting it to come back to that original, gender-neutral script.

I don't want to get too much further into analysis of Ellen Ripley, though... there was a definite lack of other female characters in Aliens, and no other female characters in Alien 3. I admit, though--Vasquez was a great female character, and she breaks the Bechdel Test. No one is running out to give James Cameron any PHL awards of any kind, as far as I know, bet it for environmentalism in Avatar, pacifism in Abyss, nuclear proliferation in Terminator, feminism in Aliens (exception of me), or breaking the Nipples-in-a-PG-13-Movie Barrier.

But he might be due a couple.

Honestly, I would have preferred it if Vasquez had been male and they'd played up his sexual relationship with Drake even more. I don't really have any idea how the modern military works, or to what extent existing sexual tension is a problem, with same-sex soldiers serving together (or opposite-sex soldiers), carrying on overt or covert relationships. Though I suppose I could look it up if I wanted to (the Prime Minister of Britain said exactly that--"if the Americans are worried about repealing DADT, just look at us, we did it ten years ago"). The truth is, I look at the ancient Greeks and quickly decide that cocksuckers should be perfectly capable of slaughtering brown people in between White Parties. That, and I want more movies that make Dudes uncomfortable in the theater.