DVD: Sunshine (2006, ***); Danny Boyle on space travel, futurism and the red bus rule

SCOTS-BORN DIRECTOR DANNY BOYLE’S PROTEAN IMAGINATION TENDS TO THE TACTILE, THE IMMEDIATE, THE BLOOD-RUSHING, THE TRIPPY: think Trainspotting, Millions, 28 Days Later and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later, which he supervised. His latest, Sunshine, is no different. [Sunshine is now available on Region 1 DVD.]
A crew of astronauts, some fifty years in the future, is headed toward the sun. “Set the controls for the heart of the sun,” goes a 1968 Pink Floyd title. A vast bomb is being ferried as the heart of the solar system seems in danger of expiring. But they’re the second crew: Icarus II is following the path of an earlier Icarus, lost, presumed destroyed. Shipboard or in space for almost the entire duration of the film, Sunshine puts a physicist (Cillian Murphy) at the center of its story, appropriate for a production that counts a particle physicist among its consultants. A psychological officer is also on board, mediating the battles that grow in intensity as they near their destination: can they not know that there’s little likelihood they’ll return, even if they save mankind? Hardly a gram of philosophy is spoken: they’re practical, pragmatic, all in thrall to the nearing fire, fire with the character of viscous fluid, heavy sultry water.
“The biggest problem of psychology is just surviving long-term space travel. Everything is designed to kill them,” the 50-year-old writer-director tells me. “Everything! Like a in a battle zone. Everything is waiting to kill them. There’s a wonderful book if you’ve never read it, by a British journalist named Andrew Smith. He had this idea that I think has been copied in a documentary, of going and talking to the remaining Apollo astronauts. He got to talk to some of them, there are only like twelve left. They were all marked by the distance and especially the dark side of the moon, when they lose radio contact with earth. Especially the guy who’s left alone when the other two went down to the surface. That guy represents the most alone you can get. It’s only forty-five minutes around the dark side, but… They were also pretty confident they would get them there but it was only fifty-fifty they’d ever get them back. And they knew that, the astronauts. It’s astonishing they got them all back.”
Sunshine unfolds fifty years from now, but it doesn’t traffic in futurism, but a variation on today, which is what the canniest designers most often work from. Would the pinch-and-squeeze function of the iPhone have looked ridiculous in a film five years ago? “The problem with futurism is that it becomes the be-all, end-all of the whole film, then, the design, your impression of what things will be like in a hundred years time, becomes more important than the film itself,” Boyle says. “The designer [Mark Tildesley] had this rule, the ‘red bus rule’ to connect with the past. In London fifty years ago, there were red buses. There’re still red buses, they’re a bit different, but they’re basically the same! That’s the way the future comes on you, y’know. You evolve into it.”
Boyle admires how personal, and how drawn from the past, Ridley Scott’s future landscapes are, such as in Blade Runner.

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I drink your milkshake.com plus Filmbrain's jots of Blood

A new discussion board from Jürgen Fauth: “I Drink Your Milkshake! I drink it up!” “We have oil and it seeps through the ground. Discuss Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood or just keep hitting the play button to hear Daniel Day-Lewis bark the line that has already been called (by me) “the new ‘Say hello to my little friend!'” For a limited time and while supplies last, I’ll set up free idrinkyourmilkshake.com email accounts for anybody who wants them and leaves a post about the movie. To get one, just sign up with the username of your choice and drop me (jurgen at this domain) an email. Now go play and don’t come back!” Also: Filmbrain’s “There Will Be Blood: Sketches, Fragments, and Other Half-Baked Ideas.” “What follows are notes I’ve jotted down at various moments, thoughts that occurred to me while in the shower, or connections I thought of on the subway. I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments, even if it is to tell me I’m completely insane about any of this. I’m treating this as a work in progress, and I may add or remove sections over the next few days.” (The Kubrick stuff is especially fun.)

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Jams Run Free, Claire Denis (2008, ****)

Sweet chirp of the day: Ebert, again, on Juno

“I would argue that the dialogue in Juno mostly works because Ellen Page sells the tone so convincingly. She wins us over. Think of Diablo Cody’s words in the mouths of Page’s contemporaries, and you cringe. Yes, her parents talk that way: Where do you think she learned it? As for the drugstore clerk and Juno’s best girlfriend, it’s as if she affects the linguistic weather when she enters a room.”

The Mamet-Pinter correspondence re: Oleanna

The BBC surveys an exhibit of Harold Pinter’s papers: “[T]here’s a fascinating correspondence with the American playwright David Mamet, whose controversial play ‘Oleanna,’ about sexual harassment, Pinter directed in London. He discovered that Mamet had changed the play’s original ending. Pinter decided he wanted to keep the original version, calling it “dramatic ice”. Back came Mamet’s reply by fax from the Bel Air Hotel in Beverly Hills. “You’re right. Go ahead and rehearse the sodding thing with the ending you like – you flatterer.”

Speared in the sky, Highland at Melrose, Los Angeles

Dr. Uwe Boll: Word!

A message, apparently from Dr. Uwe Boll about why people should go see In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: “Now a few days before IN THE NAME OF THE KING gets out in USA I have to tell whats going on in the filmindustry. If you dont get out with a MAJOR company the exhibitors and the tv and radio stations are not supporting you. This is the reason that independent movies are like self fullfilling prophecies and they almost bomb all. Our competitor in USA FIRST SUNDAY with Ice Cube is a piece of shit and for NOBODY nearly so interesting as IN THE NAME OF THE KING. We have a better movie and a bigger movie with a better script, better cast and we proved in europe that our movie has the power to stay 3 weeks in the TOP TEN and that we can get at least 50% good reviews. FIRST SUNDAY is a direct to DVD title in europe but in USA Sony puts 40 mill. $ in advertising to win that weekend. And this is completly absurd. Sony will not even recoup the advertising costs with that movie. The MAJORS own the TV Stations and the Radio Stations and they use that for free advertising and so the wide audience believes at one point that FIRST SUNDAY is the movie of that weekend – and they go and buy a ticket. The biggest problems in todays market is that nobody believes anymore in word of mouth or gives a film a chance without seeing upfront all 5 seconds in TV a spot. So to all my fans in America or everybody who like Jason Statham or our other actors or loves fantasy or period piece movies or action movies or videogame based movies: go on january 11 in IN THE NAME OF THE KING and show that its not only advertising.”

Hi, I'm George Romero

Mr. Romero and a trailer.

40 minutes with Into the Wild's Hal Holbrook…

Argument To Beethoven's 5th, Sid Caesar, Nanette Fabray (ca 1952, ****) [With five more clips.]

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S08: The Sundance Channel's countdown to P.C.

Prosperity for 2008, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2008, ****)

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40 minutes with Tim Burton…

Robbie Baitz's "Leaving Los Angeles: Part Two"

Playwright and now former Californian Jon Robin Baitz etches his piercing envoi to life as a Los Angeles-centric writer of television after his ouster from the writing staff of a series. “Like many of the people I met who write about TV, (most of whom can be bought for the price of a single commissary crepe-suzette, a keychain with the show’s logo on it, and a set-visit with its grimacing star), he was possessed of the winning duo of wild arrogance and a staggering un-athletic ignorance of all life outside of prime time, the culture of which depends on low-rent journalistic toadies penning breathless wooze in exchange for future favors and future keychains, and handshakes with future stars. When I left for New York in 1985, I was a young playwright with the residuals of the South African accent acquired in my teens. My friends were a boozy-druggy lot of Bohemian wrecked hipsters who made up the vibrant LA theater scene, which was exceptionally fecund back then. There was heroin, there was methadone, there was booze in spades, and fragile bits of sobriety to frame it all. When I returned to Los Angeles, in late 2002, it was as a member of the “writing-establishment,” a decade and a half older, no more accent, just the slightly false schoolboy manners remained, manners which had done me no good, and with the goal of finally putting away some money, just a bit, so I would never have to think about lucre much ever again, (artists dream of money, etc.) for the remainder of my playwright’s life… The online thing is not just an LA thing by any means. However, in New York, the life of the street, the flirtation and ebb and flow of strangers getting off of the bus, makes for a perpetual energy machine. New York is just sexier, smarter, and better dressed, less vulgar, more diverse, filled with accident, and unexpected encounters, as a rule. There is the Neue Gallery across from the Met, down the street from the Guggenheim, which is up from the Whitney, just a twenty minute walk to MOMA, across Central Park, etc, etc, forever and ever. You will see, smile at, spy on, talk to, stare at, be enchanted by any number of utterly different kinds of people within twenty minutes of leaving your apartment in NYC. A barrage rather than the white noise of the undulating palms and brackish skies of the dream coast.” [Much much more at the link and the earlier installment at the link.]

David Lynch in "The Case of The Scary Rat Paw" [BONUS: Lynch's classic Lumiere + Co. short (NSFW)]

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