Auf Wiedersehen Ken

Four Play

LoFi SciFi FlyBys

Earthling is an ambitious low-budget scifi movie about a bunch of people bound together by a strange reaction to an anomalous event in Earth's orbit. The main character loses her unborn child in a car accident and struggles to put her life and mind together, it doesn't help that she's hallucinating and seems to be stalked by strangers suffering similar problems. Nicely acted and with the confidence to tease out the plot gradually there's some Cronenberg-esque body horror and some dreamy Lynchian influences throughout. It's not without it's flaws but it's a nice quiet, examination of alienation and the human experience and with a bigger budget and maybe with some extra polish this could have been brilliant. An assured debut.

Love, is another low budget/large ambition feature debut only this time set in orbit. It's the tale of a lonely astronaut stranded on ISS Mk 2 struggling to maintain his sanity after an unspecified calamity separates all contact with Earth. Despite the titchy budget there's plenty of nice looking effects, some decent set pieces and few wisps of atmosphere along the way. The film is interestingly framed by a Civil War era tale but it's woefully underused and the director prefers to punctuate both with wholly unnecessary talking head snippets discussing the nature of human relationships, life etc. I dunno it's a nice, if derivative, little film with an excellent central performance it's just shamefully squandered by the uneasy mishmash of styles, a limp 2001 inspired end and a foolish, pretentious final few frames.

Thompson Double Barrell

A husband and wife bank robbing double act jettison their psychotic partner and go on the lam with the cash in Jim Thompson's callous thriller The Getaway. The screen version starring McQueen and McGraw can't hold a candle to the casual violence and quick wit that Thompson has soaked into these 160 pages with it's snare drum tight plot and it's devastating, surreal conclusion in El Rey. It's a tribute to Thompson's writing that despite his spartan style and his amoral, calculating characters that when the duo eventually reach their end you actually feel sorry for them. A thrilling masterclass in cynicism.

The Grifters is not quite up to the previous couple of Thompson noirs I've read but it's still a thrilling, nasty read about a low-key con artist and his possessive mobster linked mother. After perfecting numerous short cons our protagonist suffers a serious assault and finds himself at a career crossroads. The sudden reappearance of his mother and her subsequent feud with his girlfriend muddy the waters and he finds his life slipping from his iron grip and spiralling towards violence. Thompson's lean, mean prose keeps the pace clipping along but the denouement misfires a little with a stuttering series of events that was fairly disappointing, maybe with another couple of chapters things could have improved.

Sights with Sounds

Human Highway is a psychedelic slice of nonsense directed by Neil Young & Dean Stockwell. Set in a failing diner/garage a cast of weirdos bumble along with their lives unaware that their unfulfilled dreams are about to get steamrolled by a planet devouring dose of radiation. Dennis Hopper joins in the fun as they all goof about in between musical numbers which are handled by Young himself and some band called Devo who also play an amusing, glowing work crew from the nearby nuclear power plant. I certainly couldn't recommend this as it's mostly rubbish with some patchy acting & so-so script and the plot makes the Beatles Mystery Tour seem coherent. Still it's certainly got something - there's a few genuine laughs, some lovely lurid colouring and a great musical/dream sequence towards the end that caps this surreal romp off nicely.

Animated Latin Jazz romantic dramas don't come along very often so I was eager to see what Chico & Rita had to offer. Told mostly in flashback in pre-revolutionary Cuba it follows the stormy relationship of a pianist and a sultry vocalist trying to crack the big time and find fame and riches in America. The music is brilliant with some exuberant, joyous set pieces and the animation is stylish though a little uneven - the landscaping is excellent but occasionally the characters awkward and under drawn. It's main failing however is the trite plot, a fairly basic hackneyed romantic arc with simplistically drawn lovers who meet, part, reunite and part again & finally it their last reunion I found particularly unlikely and simplistic. Still if you let the music sweep you away it's an enjoyable 100mins.

Lovely Lapses

Firmament Foci

Cassini snaps a monstrous storm on the surface of Saturn. ScienceDaily.

That faster than light Neutrino result still stands despite a couple of weeks of further observation. New Scientist.

Shackleton Energy are planning to be the first company to mine the Moon. Wired.

Cygnus X-1 is the first Black Hole to have it's 'history' charted from it's inception 6 million years ago thanks to VLBA. ScienceDaily

Bad Astronomy has a splendid explanation of the optical/cosmological effects behind this stunning pic of the Moon taken from the ISS.

Seems like Europa's peculiar domes/depressions are where liquid water has approached the surface. New Scientist. And there's some new evidence for giant lakes of water under it's surface, Wired.

China's Shenzhou probe successfully returns to Earth after docking with it's minilab, another step towards the goal of an orbiting manned space station. BBC

While Russia's failed Phobos-Grunt probe is, according to scientists, due to fall into our atmosphere sometime in January. It's payload of toxic fuel is still a concern apparently. New Scientist.

The problem of orphan supernovae may just be because their surrounding galaxies are not visible. Physorg.

NASA have released their most accurate relief map of the Moon yet. BBC

Historical Histrionics

Perfume by Peter Suskind is a dark, squalid tale set during 18th century Paris. Highly acclaimed and subsequently adapted for the screen the book follows the life of an odorless psychotic born into abject poverty whose blessed with a preternatural sense of smell. His gift lifts him from destitution and cultivating his skill in the perfume trade and he begins to plan his own nefarious apotheosis. Suskind's prose is quite light, almost flippant at times but he brings a life and a surprising richness to the olfactory world of Grenouille and his dark, cold hearted character. It's a decent read, if occasionally a little florid, but it spins along to a rather unexpected climax

Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf, like Perfume, follows the life of a wretched, poverty born child from birth to his eventual ascent to great power. Peppe, the diminutive central character is the son of a hawker of gut rot wine in Florence in the 17th century but a chance encounter brings him under the spell of beautiful Gnostic and his life is forever changed. His subsequent education, arrest, circus indenture and eventual escape are all just preludes to his position as adjunct to Pope Leo X and a life of power and luxury. While Perfume hinted at the filth and debauchery of the past the author David Madsen isn't nearly so circumspect with orgies, burnings, prostitution, assasination, torture and rape drawn with such zeal and vigour it's occasionally quite nauseating. Despite all the depravity its a surprisingly touching and humourous novel, with a nice description of the gnostic faith and a swirling, thrilling examination of the decadence that surrounded the Catholic church at the time of the reformation. Well worth your time if you can find it.