Lataa Ohjelma (MP3)

Eeppisen mittaisessa juhlajaksossamme esitellään uusi tunnari, palkitaan kommentoijia ja ennen kaikkea käydään läpi panelistien Top 10 suosikkielokuvat kautta aikojen. Mittaa jaksolle tosiaan venähti melkein kolme ja puoli tuntia, mutta älkää säikähtäkö. Annamme tämän kuunteluun kuuntelijoille muutaman viikon kuunteluaikaa ennen uusia jaksoja ja podcastia voi kuunnella vapaavalintaisissa osioissa.

Juhan Top 10 elokuvat:
- Modern Times
- Amélie
- Seven
- Pulp Fiction
- Á Bout de Souffle
- Apocalypse Now
- Dr. Strangelove
- Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä
- Annie Hall
- Requiem for a Dream

Henrikin Top 10 elokuvat:
- WALL-E
- The Great Dictator
- Metropolis
- The Incredibles
- Galaxy Quest
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Manhattan Murder Mystery
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- Finding Nemo

So, for the past week or so I’ve been reading this Arthur C. Clarke book. It’s my bathroom reading, so I’ve only been picking away at it. It’s a sci-fi book (duh) that I bought at an old used book store at the coast. “Childhood’s End” is the title. It involves large alien ships forcing the human race to smooth out the problems. Long story short, I was just reading it in the can. I finish, walk to my room, and turn on the T.V. I scroll around the channels for a bit, and I settled on the most random movie, the 1993 John Goodman flick, “Matinee.” I really only put it on as background while I typed away, but I watched a few minutes of it. Eventually it came to a teenager reading Horror magazines in his room. He’s surrounded by books and magazines, but one random one caught my eye: Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhoods End,” just behind the kid, almost out of focus. I think it was kind of crazy.

Capolavoro assoluto della storia del cinema, il film 2001:Odissea nello spazio del geniale regista Stanley Kubrick(1928-1999), rappresenta ancora oggi un’ esperienza visiva affascinante, un viaggio nello spazio che diviene viaggio interiore alla scoperta del conoscibile e del trascendente, un film di fantascienza che travalica il genere, mantenendone le caratteristiche essenziali, per affrontare temi complessi, catturando l’inconscio dello spettatore.Sceneggiato da Kubrick insieme allo scrittore Arthur C. Clarke, ispirandosi al racconto di questi, La sentinella, il film vinse nel 1969 l’Oscar per gli effetti speciali visivi, tuttora stupefacenti, specie considerando la loro realizzazione in un periodo in cui la manipolazione delle immagini era ancora sperimentale.
L’alba dell’uomo:un gruppo di scimmie antropoidi è atterrita dall’apparizione di un monolito nero; dopo un po’ avviene in loro un cambiamento, apprendendo come un semplice osso possa divenire tanto un utensile che un’arma; un rapido salto temporale ci proietta nel futuro:su una base lunare è stato scoperto un monolito nero, di circa quattro milioni di anni, che genera un forte campo magnetico e invia segnali verso Giove; 18 mesi dopo:in missione verso Giove: un’ astronave è in viaggio verso Giove, con a bordo due uomini in attività e altri tre ibernati e, soprattutto, HAL 9000, calcolatore elettronico a prova di errore che sovrintende a tutte le funzioni del mezzo spaziale e che durante il viaggio segnalerà un ‘avaria che risulterà inesistente.
I due astronauti decidono di disattivare HAL, ma questi, capite le loro intenzioni, attua un ammutinamento, provocando la morte degli ibernati e di uno dei due, mentre l’altro riesce a disattivarlo e a proseguire la sua missione; Giove e oltre l’infinito: l’astronauta sopravvissuto, superato Giove, è in rotta verso lo spazio profondo, attraversa galassie e pianeti, in una sorta di trance psichedelica, per poi ritrovarsi in una stanza stile ‘700, dove riconoscerà sé stesso invecchiato e poi a letto morente indicare il monolito nero che gli sta davanti, attraversarlo e rinascere in forma di feto, proiettato nell’Universo, verso nuove scoperte, verso nuove speranze.
Grande prevalenza delle immagini sul dialogo, commentate da splendide musiche( J. Strauss, R. Strauss, G. Ligeti, A. Katchaturian), per una profonda allegoria dai toni filosofici e metafisici sull’evoluzione dell’uomo, le sue origini, le sue conquiste, la ricerca continua nel dare un significato alla sua esistenza, confidando in un’ Entità che lo sovrasta e lo ispira, ottenendo come unica risposta la necessità non spiegabile razionalmente di un eterno fluire, nell’universo e oltre l’infinito, dei cicli di nascita, morte e rinascita, per poi dover sempre fare i conti con se stesso e i propri limiti, pur con tutto lo scibile acquisito durante il cammino.

Nach ein paar Tagen Pause vom Internet, zumindest von diesem Blog, wieder zurück. Man hat eben auch als Halbrentner viel zu tun. Eigentlich wollte ich nahezu täglich meinen Alltag bloggen, aber manchmal schafft man’s nicht oder ist zu luschig, setzt andere Prios, etc. Vielleicht sollte ich mir vornehmen, morgens nach dem Frühstück ein paar Zeilen zu schreiben. Werd’s mal probieren.
Meine Teilnahme an der Quodlibet, der hamburger Antiquariatsverkaufsmesse, habe ich sehr genossen. Nicht übermässig viel verkauft, aber doch zufriedenstellend. Die gemachten Erfahrungen, den direkten Umgang mit Kunden und Besuchern, Kollegen usw. fand ich sehr erfrischend. Insgesamt bestärkte mich der Ablauf der Messe darin, dass das Gutenbergzeitalter seinem Ende entgegengeht. Viele Kollegen wollen das nicht wahrhaben, aber die Zeichen hierzu scheinen nicht nur am Horizont auf, sondern verwandeln sich in gleissende Spots, denen man nicht mehr ausweichen kann. Es wird mich dennoch nicht aufhalten und entmutigen, meiner Nebenbeschäftigung mit dem gedruckten Buch nachzugehen.

Gestern abend war eine tolle Runde bei Beckmann mit sehr interessantem Thema: Internet und wie es uns und unsere Welt verändert, der gläserne Mensch und die Allmacht des Netzes.. Die öffentliche Diskussion über diesen “Machtkampf” zwischen Mensch und System wird spürbar stärker und findet Eingang in sonst flaue Talkshows. Ich bin überzeugt, dass es nur noch wenige Jahre dauern wird, dass das Internet-System noch  rasantere Geschwindigkeit aufnehmen wird zur Vervollkommnung und Entwicklung eines eigenen Handelns und Bewußtseins. Vielleicht wird es schrecklich werden für uns Menschen oder segensreich, noch kann man das nicht sagen. Aber der Weg zur allumfassenden Verselbständigung und Mächtigkeit ist weit beschritten und nicht mehr aufzuhalten.
Karl Olsberg hat eine mögliche schreckliche Variante in seinem Thriller “Das System” vorweggenommen.

Wahrscheinlich sind die Zeiten nicht mehr fern, wo die beiden Google Gründer Sergey Brin und Larry Page sich nichts sehnlicher wünschen, sie könnten die Büchse der Pandora, die sie mit ihrer Suchmaschine und allen Konsequenzen, Entwicklungen daraus geöffnet haben, wieder schliessen. Aber diese Lawine wird weiterlaufen und vieles begraben. Die Firma Google hatte die besten Absichten, wird es eines Tages heissen.
Aufregende Zeiten in denen wir leben; man braucht wirklich keine SF mehr zu lesen, wenn sich in der Realität mit der Entwicklung des Internets und allen damit zusammenhängenden Themen eine Entwicklung zeigt, die weit über die Phantasien von Philip K. Dick oder Arthur C. Clarke hinausgehen. Bei mir formen sich auch einige Themen und Ideen für aktuelle SF-Geschichten; vielleicht sollte ich mir Zeit nehmen und versuchen, es zu Papier (haha) zu bringen.

Heute stand im Hamburger Abendblatt, dass die Post ihr normales Briefgeschäft bald einstellen wird, zumindest ein völlig neues Konzept anbieten will, nämlich eine Umstellung der besonderen Art: angeboten wird dann, dass E-Mails postalisch auf Papier den Empfängern zugestellt wird. Damit ist dann das Schreiben, das Anfertigen eines papierenen Briefes oder Dokumentes völlig out, aber man kann dann über die Post dem Empfänger noch etwas Materielles zustellen lassen. Ich glaube durchaus, dass dieses Konzept erfolgversprechend ist, aber es wird zu  einem Nischendasein führen, zumal sich die Post das bezahlen lassen will/muss. Damit ist für mich das Schicksal der Post auch klar. der Konzern wird sich auf diesem Sektor zum Nischenbetrieb entwickeln, mit der Folge von unzähligen Arbeitsplatzverlusten. Howard Rheingold, ein sehr kluger Internetbeobachter und Autor,  hat schon vor mehr als zehn Jahren derartige Entwicklungen (völlige Digitalisierung/ Virtualisierung) vorausgesehen.

Leo

One thing Arthur C. Clarke wants to make sure his readers know is that humanity has not proven itself to be worthy of much praise, and especially not for intellectual ingenuity. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, he wanted the reader to know that without the intervention of the alien monoliths, prehistoric men would still be throwing feces at each other and jumping around like apes. We are lowly beasts: expendable, transcendable, unremarkable.

In the Odyssey series, the meager intellectual reasoning capabilities of mankind, and mankind’s physical form limitations, are brought to the forefront. Dave Bowman becomes a beam of light, the monoliths devour Jupiter, and one day in the distant future they will presumably return to destroy us. This is how the 4th book ends…who can guess, really, what will happen after the narrative has ended. My best guess is that in 4001, the Monoliths come and eat up Earth too.  The evidence from the series suggests this is a high probability.

In Childhood’s End, which actually precedes 2001 by a good 10 years, Clarke presents the reader with yet another instance of how humanity has managed to wear itself out. A space ship appears out of no where, “manned” by unseen alien “Overlords” who force Earthlings to be ethical and humane, and who never reveal their true reason for coming. By the end, the truth is told and it is a grim truth.

(Note to the reader: assume that all posts are spoiler alerts!)

The truth is that humanity is being purged of its telepathically sensitive children and once they’ve been assimilated into the collective “Overmind” from another planet, Earth will implode.

It’s a bummer, yes. Earth is destroyed. All of the people, plants, and things on the planet will be gone within 100 years of the Overlords landing. This is why they did not state their business at the interstellar border crossing.  Customs & Immigration must’ve been on hiatus that day.

So…humanity’s gone…ok…there was NOTHING they (we) could do about it…it was going to happen whether anyone knew about it or not…better not to know it’s coming, maybe.  Ultimately, it was pointless for humanity to struggle against anything.  The Overlords had fixed all of the planet’s woes and tendencies toward unethical behavior. Life was good. But life was also over. The Overlords knew this. They knew their mission. They knew what the fate of the Earth was.  It wasn’t their first mission.

So, as it turns out, this story isn’t about humanity and Earth. It’s about the Overlords. It’s about the Overlords who are being used to perpetuate this interstellar telepathic wrangling of minds.  It’s about how they’re being forced to do this under duress. It’s about how they’re waiting, biding their time until they can figure out a way to be free. It’s about always struggling, constantly struggling against a system that is intent upon oppression. It’s about waiting until the right moment, when you’re fully prepared to fight, to pull out your secret weapon. It’s about never giving up. It’s about never truly admitting to yourself that 2+2=5 though you’ve been in and out of Room 101 for your whole life.

I feel sorry for humanity as a whole. But I have a lot of hope that the Overlords, whoever they (we) are, will one day find the tool they need to break their bonds, to ascend from the cave and into the light of day. I have hope that one day the Overlords won’t be working for the man.  Hope.

One last thing I’d like to add is that after reading this novel, the Odyssey series, and the first two RAMA books, I am noticing some major tropes: museums (the importance of collections and artifacts), telepathy, Destroyers-of-Planets/Planet Eaters, the ubiquity of human ineptitude, the use of interlocutors, prehistoric alien visitations, and superior alien intelligence.  For what it’s worth, Mr. Clarke is telling us something.

Arthur C. Clarke

Trees For Life

TownHall Los Angeles

I came across this piece in the Oxford Young People’s Guide to Film, or the Young People’s Oxford Guide to film, or the Oxford Film Guide for Young People. One of them. It was published in 1995, pre-IMDb, and you can tell.

Here is the entry for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968: dir. Stanley Kubrick), a film I love (SPOILERS I guess). I’ve pointed out all mistakes below.

2001: A Space Odyssey is based on a novel

Wrong. It’s inspired by a short story called ‘The Sentinel’ written by Arthur C. Clarke. The novel was developed alongside the movie by Clarke and Kubrick.

by sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. The complex storyline starts four million years ago,

Wrong. It starts at ‘The Dawn of Man’, helpfully pointed out in the movie.

when peace-loving apes

Wrong. They’re just normal apes. The whole point of the opening scene is that they’re not self-conscious enough to be anything.

discover a black slab of stone,

Wrong. It’s never revealed to be stone. Also it’s called a monolith, but I’ll cut the writer some slack, this is meant for Young People.

which somehow causes them to evolve into violent hunters, prepared to kill to protect their territory.

Wrong. It causes them to evolve into humans. Again, see the title at beginning of the section.

Then, sometime in the distant future,

Wrong. It’s definitely set in 2001. Clue’s in the title.

the slab begins signalling from the moon

Wrong. It’s a different monolith that’s been buried on the moon.

and a craft, controlled by a computer called HAL, is sent to investigate.

Wrong. It’s sent to Jupiter. This segment has the title ‘Jupiter Mission’.

In mid-voyage, HAL starts to malfunction and wipes out the crew before one astronaut manages to disconnect it

Looking good so far.

and return safety to earth.

I don’t think he’s seen the movie.

2001 transformed special effects and inspired many later sci-fi blockbusters. Viewed today, the effects are still startling. It took over three years to shoot at a cost of some £10.5 million. Echoing many of the themes popular in the 1950s,

It doesn’t really. 1950s sci-fi was full of cold war paranoia metaphor (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951) and creature features (Creature From the Black Lagoon, 1954, et al), with the occasional 1984 (1955) and Village of the Damned (1960) that dared to think outside the sci-fi conventions.

However, these were both based on books, as was the spate of H. G. Wells adaptations (The War of the Worlds, 1954, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 1959, The Time Machine, 1960, etc.) and the big stand out, Forbidden Planet, which was of course based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I see none of these films’ themes in 2001.

the film shows that although humanity has become increasingly greedy and brutal, it still has the power to reform.

This isn’t what the movie’s about. No-one reforms in this movie, literally or metaphorically. Likewise there’s no greed or brutality on display. Kubrick deliberately went for cold, emotionless performances from his actors.

Maybe what he means is mankind’s arrogance in thinking that they’re top dog in the universe, and thinking that they can explain the whole universe. That ties in with the HAL plot – often mistakenly made the focus of discussion on this film – with mankind thinking they can create a sentient machine and have everything all work out.

(Side note: I heard somewhere that the reason HAL malfunctions is because, for secrecy reasons, he’s asked to lie about the purpose of the mission before they set off, and so his values and principles are all distorted.)

Let’s let the Film Guide take us home:

Audiences either loved or loathed 2001, and to this day books and articles are published which try to explain its meaning.

Esse post vai ser complicado, porque gosto é que nem cu – cada um tem o seu e o de bêbado não tem dono. O fato é que volto a escrever neste empoeirado blog após fazer algo bizarro: ouvir os audiobooks da série Crepúsculo, de Stephanie Meyer.

Você, caro nerd, lembra do seu primeiro livro lido (sendo obrigado ou não) que realmente gostou, despertando seu gosto à literatura? Eu comecei com Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, do glorioso Machadão, e desde então tenho devorado livros regularmente.

Eu sei que sou meio bizarro, mas a maioria dos livros que são a porta da literatura para as pessoas são aqueles de temática infanto-juvenil. Quantos nerds não começaram com os livros de Pedro Bandeira? A Droga da Obediência, Brincadeira Mortal, Um Crime Mais Que Perfeito e por aí vai. Mas isso foi pra uma geração, e as coisas mudam bem rápido.

Um exemplo mais recente é a série da J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, que ainda teve o mérito de amadurecer a temática dos livros e os próprios personagens no mesmo ritmo do público, construindo uma legião de fãs totalmente alucinados e fiéis à autora.

O meu ponto é: esses livros, se bem analisados, não apresentam nada surpreendente. Suas histórias são simples, comuns e com uma linguagem que segue a mesma linha. Porém, é uma leitura fácil.

Minha irmã leu toda a série da Stephanie; logo depois, começou a ler As Crônicas de Nárnia, de C.S. Lewis, amigão do Tolkien. É por isso que eu digo, literatura “porca” pode servir ao lado bom da força, desde que o leitor queira essa evolução. Já os nerds pasteurizados, que se acham megaboga cultos por ler os clássicos hypados e cult, poderiam muito bem se lembrar de que livros medianos podem render uma leitura prazeirosa e despojada, para dar uma “respirada” no cérebro entre Isaac Asimov e Arthur C. Clarke.

Pense nisso.

“Like a glowing jewel, the city lay upon the breast of the desert. Once it had known change and alteration, but now Time passed it by.”

Another far future city, Diaspar, a utopia surrounded by the great desert of a ruined earth, where the near-immortal remnants of humanity have shut themselves away. An important novel, but the writing style leaves something to be desired and what should have been haunting is often reduced to the matter-of-fact. It does however include an encounter with Vanamonde,  a galaxy-spanning being of pure intellect,  builds nicely towards an almost mystical, transcendent conclusion, and leaves a powerful, lingering sense of loss.

Besides, I need little excuse to include a piece of wonderful cover art by the incomparable Richard M Powers.

Richard Powers cover art on flickr

The Powers Compendium

Artist's concept of a space elevator viewed from the geostationary transfer station looking down at Earth. Image credit: NASA/MSFC/Pat Rawling

Popularized by Arthur C. Clarke, space elevators have long been a staple of science fiction, but a three-day competition in California’s Mojave Desert is focused on bringing the space elevator into science fact.  Three teams are in the running for a total of $2 million in prizes in this NASA-sponsored contest:   LaserMotive, The Kansas City Space Pirates and The University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team.  On the first day of competition, LaserMotive’s laser-powered robot qualified for the 2nd place prize of $900,000 by successfully climbing up 1 kilometer of cable at an average rate of just over 2 meters per second.  The first prize of $1.1 million is still up for grabs.  To qualify for first place, the entry must climb the kilometer at an average rate of 5 meters per second.  For more on the competition, check out the website for the 2009 Space Elevator Games.

Space elevator + pop culture irreverence = scitechilarity

[xkcd.com]

The best things happen when you least expect them. Yesterday evening, there was this special screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the movie theater very near my house. A local movie club was organizing it. I went there expecting just to see my most favorite film, and unarguably one of the greatest films ever made, one more time on the big screen. But not in my wildest dreams, I had imagined to see among the audience the famed Dr David Bowman of 2001, the Hollywood actor Keir Dullea himself! Mr Dullea was actually invited by the movie club to be a part of this screening.

And, there he was; all agile, animated (looking at least a decade younger than his actual age) and excited to answer the questions after the film ended. How I wish I had known about this and brought my digital voice recorder, something which I generally carry with me most of the times, but didnt carry it yesterday!!  He talked about the film and answered quite a few questions from the audience. The questions ranged from the extremely articulate and profound ones (from people who had obviously seen, read and thought about the film a lot before this screening) to some trivial ones, posed by few first timers among the audience. I have myself read quite a bit about this film’s making and about the various interpretations associated with the film’s ending. So, there were no surprises in that regard. As Mr Dullea reiterated again yesterday, the film, like the monolith in the film, remains a mystery and is open to interpretation all the time. According to him, and something which is very well-known now, Stanley Kubrick didn’t just want to thrill us with this film but instead he wanted to inspire our awe for the unknown and force us to look for our own answers from the film.

Nevertheless, Keir Dullea shared some interesting tid bits about the film, about it’s making and about Stanley Kubrick which are not that well-known and which I wanted to share here.

1.The first segment of the film, The Dawn of Man, was actually shot in the end during the actual shooting. But, the more interesting part is that the segment was shot in Africa without Kubrick ever setting his foot there!! It’s well-known that Kubrick had a fear of flying, so he directed all that segment over the trans Atlantic phone line giving minute instructions to his assistant director and cameraman; Kubrick had studied all that area geographically through pictures.

2. All the special effects in the film, designed by Kubrick himself and for which he also got an Oscar, were done mechanically and there were absolutely no computer graphics etc involved in their production.

3. During the scripting of the film-which took almost 2 years-, Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke never emphasized on the philosophical and the allegorical dimensions of the story during their discussions with the main protagonist Dullia and the other actors. Even during the actual shooting, actors were just told to act their parts keeping the basic plot and the basic characterizations in mind.

4. Contrary to popular perception, Stanley Kubrick was not a dominating or a controlling director. Neither did he insist on tens of retakes for every scene, as it’s generally believed. According to Mr Dullia, in his long career as an actor, he found Stanley Kubrick to be the most prepared director on the sets and a genius in every sense. Dullia mentioned how he never saw Kubrick raising his voice or being tough with actors.

After the Q & A session, Keir Dullia went to the main lobby for an informal chat with people and to sign autographs etc. I wanted to tell him there that how much this film means to me and that how much this film has affected me over the years as a person & as an aspiring filmmaker and so many other things I wanted to say and thank him for…But, when I went up to him and shook hands with him, I got tongue-tied and could only mutter “Thank you very much Sir”. Still I’m glad that I had the presence of mind to take my cell phone out from my pocket and request an old lady standing near by to click a picture of us. Mr Dullia put his hand on my left shoulder and the lady clicked the picture. I’m generally not star-struck and would not insist on clicking pictures with them- except for the very few perhaps if I ever meet them-, but this was a different matter. I mean, this man had acted in 2001 and worked with the greatest film director ever!!! By shaking hands with him, I almost touched Mr. Kubrick!!

I know the pic below is very badly lighted and not a kind of picture which one would like to show to people. But, what the heck man; I’m still standing with the man who, on an ultimate journey into the unknown, triumphed over one of the smartest villains in cinematic history,  HAL 9000!!! And, I’m certainly not ashamed to show off that.

And the goose isn’t the only bird that’s getting fat.

It usually takes me ten months to work off the excesses of the previous Christmas. This morning, out of a sense of curiosity and with time on my hands, I set about calculating the calorie content of my Christmas Day’s food intake. A full English breakfast to begin the day, followed by mince pies and cream, then assorted nuts and savoury snacks, a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, before roast turkey with all the trimmings under lashings of gravy, Christmas pudding with brandy sauce, cheese and biscuits, half a family tin of Quality Street, turkey sandwiches with the crust removed, more mince pies with cream, more nuts, finish the other half of the family tin of Quality Street, another sherry and perhaps an advocaat night cap.

14,222 calories!  ”Shit a brick!” as my Joe used to say. I could hardly believe it and yet, it did offer a plausible explanation for my festive pneumatic thighs.

Next, I worked out how much exercise was required in order to burn off my Christmas Day binge.  As you can imagine, I’m no Usain Bolt. My PB for crossing the floor of Doris Brazil Ladies’ Wear is thirty seconds, a distance of twenty feet. I calculated, walking at the pace I do, that I burn off approximately one hundred and fifty calories an hour. To burn of 14,222 calories, therefore, would take me ninety four hours and fifty minutes, or almost four days of non-stop walking.

Every Christmas Day, after the Queen’s speech, weather permitting, Flo and I go for a stroll around the Prince Albert Memorial Gardens although, as verbs go, stroll implies a little too much speed. It’s something we’ve always done, to work off some of the day’s excesses we tell ourselves. Only now, I’m not sure why we bother. I calculated Flo and I would have to walk to Exeter and back to stand any chance of working off our excesses!

Now here is the most curious thing. Answer me this; when I wake up on Boxing Day, why do I always feel sooooo hungry? Over to you Arthur C. Clarke.

Lolita es primero que todo una novela de Vladimir Nabokov, hay dos versiones de la peli pero sólo un guión fue escrito por el mismo Nabokov.

Esta entrada tuvo como intención principal hablar sobre esa Lolita, la de Stanley Kubrick filmada en 1962 y protagonizada por James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon y Peter Sellers. Kubrik acostumbró a basar sus pelis en novelas escritas, lo hizo con The Shinning de Stephen King en 1980, lo hizo con A Clockwork Orange de Anthony Burgess en 1971, con 2001: A Space Odissey de Arthur C. Clarke y lo hizo con Lolita. Pero no sólo se basaba en ellas, acostumbraba a escribir los guiones con sus camaradas novelistas y ya sabemos que cuando un director escribe tiene el control completo sobre lo que quiere mostrar.

A medida que pensaba en escribir esta entrada, se me fue ocurriendo que sería divertido hacer un pequeño paralelo con la otra Lolita, la de 1997 dirigida por Adrian Lyne y protagonizada por Jeremy Irons, Melanie Griffith, Dominique Swain y Frank Langella.

La Lolita de 1997 tiene algo positivo y es que no es una copia fiel, es una interpretación y como tal tiene sus puntos positivos y negativos.

En ambas, las actuaciones de Mason y Irons interpretando a Humbert son excelentes. Manejan el mismo dilema y al final se crea la misma reticenci,a del espectador, hacia la perversa dominancia del adulto sobre la adolescente que lo lleva a una psicótica paranoia.

En ambas, las actuaciones de Winters y de Griffith interpretando a Charlotte Haze son espectaculares aunque me inclino más por una menos sobreactuada Griffith; Winters maneja más una argumentación lírica basada en su capacitación teatral en el Actor’s Studio de Nueva York.

Las Lolitas son particularmente sensuales ambas, no se puede distinguir cuál es más perturbadora o cuál desempeñó un mejor papel. Aunque la historia habla y Swain se llevó todas las nominaciones y premios de su obra, no hay que negar que su Lolita es un producto creado a partir de Lyon que tiende a ser mucho más escalofriantemente perversa sin ser tan insinuante.

La gran diferencia al parecer entonces son los Clare Quilty’s de cada una de las obras. Mientras en la Lolita de Kubrick este personaje es un vivaz y polífacético escritor que ha perseguido a Lolita toda su vida, ha tenido un perverso amorío con ella mucho antes de sus dieciseís años y tiene el poder de domarla a su antojo, en la Lolita de Lyne el Quilty es un señor más entrado en años, mucho más calmado sedentario. Mientras el Quilty de Sellers es acompañado por una extraña femina que induce a una perversión más ordinaria donde se implica tríos sexuales con menores, el Quilty de Langella está acompañado de un gato (o gata, magnífico chiste de interpretación), su aspecto es mucho más homosexual y su perversión tiende a ser más pedofílica donde el sexo de sus efebos al final no es un item importante de discusión. El Quilty de Sellers es más divertido, más protagonista, es un elemento importante en la obra, su caracterización devela un desarrollo psicológico del personaje; el Quilty de Langella es un accidente no muy claro para el espectador, por lo que, se podría concluir entonces que con una mejor dirección el papel de Langella hubiera podido ser mejor aprovechado.

Para mi, personalmente, es más perturbadora la peli de Kubrick que en 1962 con el sólo planteamiento del tema estaba siendo bastante agudo en su polémica. Lyne por el contrario en aras de trascender esa polémica le dió más importancia al personaje de Dolores Haze con insinuanciones más provocativas y alusiones mucho más agresivas sexualmente.

Fue muy divertido observarlas pero fue sobretodo muy divertido la grata sorpresa de Sellers que al final fue un consentido de Kubrick en un par de pelis suyas más.

Laskar Pelangi by Andrea Hirata. Making my way through the tetralogy again. So far the first one is the best. Somehow his writing lost his charm when the first book was successful. Anyway, anything from Andrea Hirata better than nothing, beggars can’t be choosers.

Was planning to read Laskar Pelangi earlier but was distracted by two Arthur C. Clarke books: Rendezvous With Rama and Childhood’s End. Rendezvous was written after he did 2001: A Space Odyssey; his most famous work. I find it interesting and full with wonder. It’s only weakness is the dialogue. Somehow stilted and seems added upon the story, to somehow make a connection with the reader. So as not too lose the humanness of the people in the story.

I find Childhood’s End the better of the two even though it’s was written in the late fifties much more earlier than Rendezvous With Rama. The people in it seems much more human, they have frailties,they are sad, happy, curious. The late Sir Clarke seems to succeed making these characters human without trying to. Though who can tell what the rough drafts read like?

The story does have a weakness too though. I find the ending a bit underwhelming and there were some parts that seems disconnected to the whole. Though understandably the story is divided into parts of different time scopes so as to make it clear to the reader that the story is going on a much longer timeframe, much longer than that which is usually understood as a lifetime. several lifetimes in fact.

The point I’m getting at is that, there seems to be a lack of cohesion between the parts. The same plot, some recurring characters but when reflected upon, it feels that Sir Clarke combined a few stories together to make the whole. As a whole the book feels like a multiple storied building that have a different architectural style for each floor. The first floor a modernist reminder of the cold war, the second floor art deco, the third classical chinese and so on.

The ending and the view of the whole one would get after finishing the story, with it’s diversions into the ideas of utopia and the prediction that some of humanity would reject this utopia with a counter utopia; mentions of Jung’s racial memory; and the idea of a transcendent post humanity that would be unrecognisable to a normal human is a bit hope crushing.

Next, after the Laskar Pelangi tetralogy, I would be diving again into Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. WW2, psychedelics, Pavlovian conditioning, sexual pervesrsion, rockets and a dude killed while wearing a pig suit. Hell yeah!

What do “Love Actually” and “He’s Just Not That Into You” have in common? They both contain interlocking stories about falling in love, but only one contains characters you’d actually want to meet.

Borrowing the mega-romance model (i.e. one where more than two sets of characters fall in love), “Into You” aims depict a series of condensed chick-flick romances, despite being based on a book about why you stink at dating. The perfect romantic comedy!

While “He’s Just Not That Into You” is unquestionably about romance, a very small subplot seems to suggest that infidelity is more permissible than the occasional cigarette.

In the 1990 Arthur C. Clarke book “The Ghost from the Grand Banks,” one of the characters works at a job that meticulously erases any reference to tobacco use in films like “Casablanca.” Now it appears this view of the near future is not far away.

There was once a time when the main character lighting up was the essence of cool. Imagine Bogie or James Dean without their iconic cigarettes. Even Sherlock Holmes’ character was all the more developed by his ever-present pipe and occasional cocaine habit. But see a character now enjoying America’s first cash crop and you know he must be up to something.

Here, a character in a loveless relationship sleeps with Scarlett Johannsen. Granted, the guy’s a bastard, but hey, since he smokes he must be evil too.

This trend isn’t restricted to chick flicks. In “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones,” Obi-Wan Kenobi sends a would-be drug dealer home to “rethink his life.” Had “Empire Strikes Back” back been made today, Luke would’ve been tempted by the Dark Side with a pack of Marlboroughs.

But back to the promiscuity.

The point “Into You” seems to make is that love isn’t enough unless it’s on your terms.

The Live-In Couple – I know you are devoted and you love me, but I’m leaving unless you marry me.

The Unlucky Girl – I’ve decided I love you and I won’t leave you alone until you think so too.

The Just Friends – I am devoted to you and love you, but if you don’t I’ll start dating Drew Barrymore.

The Home Wrecker – I love you, but only when you’re married to someone else.

The Rocky Marriage – Despite cheating on me I still love you, but I’m leaving if you keep smoking.

Let me save everyone 2 hours and 12 minutes of their time. “He’s Just Not That Into You” the book: no means no. “He’s Just Not That Into You” the movie: no means yes.

After all, how can almost all the character send up happy at the end when the source material is about coping with romantic rejection. Say what you want about that other Jennifer Aniston movie “The Breakup,” at least it told you what you were getting.

As most end up together in the end, the title the title more likely refers to someone telling the movie what he male half of the audience thought. Oh yes, and if you want to be in a happy relationship, don’t smoke.

This film, directed by John Carpenter, has all of the elements of an exquisitely-made, cheesy, outer space, science fiction film. It really reinforces the notion that just about ANYBODY can make a film, with pretty much any prop they have lying around the house, and have that film be distributed and cultified throughout the generations.

I’m a big fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey (the film and the series of books), and this parody of 2001 was a real treat. But the term parody is used quite loosely because the part of Dark Star that was trying to imitate 2001 was a very short segment that ended quite differently than the Kubrick/Clarke endeavor. 2001 had the super computer, Hal. Dark Star had, I guess we could call them, ’smart bombs.’  The crewmen would talk to the bombs (they were interstellar detonation devices), ask how they were doing, and ask them to arm themselves. Of course, one bomb developed a sort of self-awareness (due to none other than a human mistake) and ended up blasting the ship to bits along with one of the crewmen (oh, wait, two of the crewmen: one was in cryo-freeze).

Speaking of cryo-freeze, John Carpenter also capitalized on another theme from another SF great: Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel, Ubik, in which talking to individuals in cryo-freeze was part of the narrative.

The absolute best part of the entire film, besides Lt. Doolittle surfing into the atmosphere of the planet they were going to blow up ontop of a surfboard of spacecraft debris, was the gas-bag alien that Sgt. Pinback had an extended scene with.

This gas-bag alien was just an orange beach ball, probably 2 feet in diameter, that someone airbrushed a bunch of brown spots onto, and attached monster feet to. The gas-bag alien was unusually nimble and dextrous, able to move around quickly and in tight quarters. It also was quite smart and led Sgt. Pinback almost to his own death.

It is props like this that make the not-so-special effects in this film remarkable. It’s pure. It’s unadulterated. It’s silly. It’s brilliant. It’s simple.

There isn’t much to say analytically about this film other than to point out that Carpenter appropriated elements from other successful SF texts into this one. As far as the plot and dialogue goes, it was a relatively simple film. But it induced a lot of laughs and stupefied moments of perplexity.