Moon

Moon is an entertaining psychological thriller with a slightly Gattaca'esque feel to it.

The movie is, unsurprisingly, set on the moon, and features Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell. Sam has two weeks left of a three-year stint overseeing the mining of Helium 3 from the far side of the Moon.

Sam longs to see his wife and daughter again, but in the meantime is cared for by an over-protective computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Before his stint ends, there is an accident, and when Sam re-awakes he is startled to encounter another Sam…

The movie got great reviews from At The Movies and an impressively high 90% rating at RottenTomatoes - and I've got to say I rate it highly as well, both for the acting and for some of the ideas explored (although I thought the ending was a little weak).

127 Hours

127 Hours was inspired by the true story of Aaron Ralstron, an adventurous young man in his 20's who went on a solo trip through Canyonlands National Park in Utah and, low on water and food, got his arm caught between a boulder and a wall of rock.

Ralstron wrote a book about his experiences (entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place) and received considerable publicity at the time, so the story wasn't a mystery to me, however given that it was showing at the Open Air Cinema I thought I'd check it out.

While the venue was (as always) awe inspiring, the film itself felt flat - Crikey sums it up:

While 127 Hours impresses on a technical level the film’s bouncy aesthetics and restless energy don’t do its psychological depth any favours. The film lacks the emotional core it desperately needed for the story to resonate. It should have felt inspiring as a triumph over adversity human interest story but, sadly, it doesn’t.

Tony Blair's Ghost Writer

Guy Rundle has a meandering piece of commentary at Crikey looking at the minority governments in the UK and Australia which closes with a note about the cancellations of Tony Blair's planned signing of his auto-biography at Waterstones in London - Faith, hope and clarity? Nah, it’s faith no more.

Desperation and bad faith is the leitmotif of our final contestant, Tony Blair, who has just announced that he will be pulling out of his anticipated huge book signing at Waterstone's on Piccadilly, after a Dublin signing was turned into chaos by protesters.

The Waterstone's signing, with a page of security instructions, was to b a late fixture in the protest calendar; hundreds if not thousands would have turned up to bear witness against this delusional mass murderer one last time. By tonight, Blair must have realised that that was all it would be remembered for. There is already a proliferating campaign to reshelve his portentous work in the "crime" section. Blair's response to the gathering storm: he was cancelling his signing because of the possible presence of British National Party protesters.

Yah, right. Faith gone bad is the word.

Tony Blair figured prominently in Roman Polanski's latest film, "The Ghost Writer", which I saw recently and thoroughly enjoyed.

The movie is based on a novel by Robert Harris, involves an unrepentant former British prime minister who took the UK into the war in Iraq.

It includes thinly disguised portraits of Cherie Blair and the late Robin Cook and floats an interesting theory as to why Blair was so unconditionally supportive of the neoconservative war in the middle east, mentioned glnacingly here in this HuffPo review:

The novel by Harris -- he was a friend of Blair who broke with him over the Iraq War -- is very good. As is the basic story, good enough for me to know the novel well and still enjoy the twists and turns of the film.

Blair, the only Labour Party leader in the history of Britain to win three national elections -- beginning with his Obama-like popular ascension to the office of prime minister in 1997 -- was well on his way to becoming the global statesman of the age before he fatefully threw in with with the seemingly far more conservative Bush/Cheney White House. Together, they invaded Iraq and pursued ruthless tactics in what was called the war on terror.

Which, in the end, left many wondering in astonishment and anger how Blair could have been such a down-the-line, uncritical partner in disastrous policies. And which left Blair himself, struggling to explain, saying that he would have invaded even had he known that the intelligence he'd had spun up to present an imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction was illusory, dodging angry crowds of protesters to testify before an official inquiry into the origins of the Iraq War in late January.

But before that, Blair, long the favorite to become the first president of the European Union, found himself last fall in the same city as Polanski. The director was in Zurich because he was in jail there following his shock arrest on a three decade-old sex charge. Blair was in Zurich to meet with Swiss financial and corporate power brokers to try to save his candidacy for the European presidency.

While Polanski, to the surprise of many, was able to complete the production of The Ghost Writer while incarcerated, Blair's time in Switzerland proved less successful. He delivered a speech to appeal to leaders of the continent's dominant center/right faction, arguing that government intervention into markets should not go too far. But leaders from the right still found him too liberal and leaders from the left could not forgive his tight alliance with Bush and Cheney on Iraq and the war on terror.

Harris's story (he co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski) provides an answer as to why Blair, Adam Lang in the thinly fictionalized version, threw in with Bush and Cheney. It may be outrageous balderdash, but it is quite logical.

And for many, as Blair undoubtedly knows, a logical explanation will do.

Which is why he, along with Polanski, is quite likely a ghost of what he'd been.

Cross posted from Peak Energy.

Get Him To The Greek

"Get Him To The Greek" features Jonah Hill as Aaron Green, as a junior executive at "Pinnacle Records", who is sent by his boss (played by Sean Coombs) to fetch notoriously unreliable British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) to play an anniversary concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.

Once Aaron reaches London he finds himself trapped in a fairly debauched version of the mis-matched guy travel movie (think "Midnight Run" or "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", but with a lot more gross-out humour involved), as they sample the delights of London, New York, Las Vegas and LA on the way to the gig.

The movie made me laugh out loud more than anything I an remember in recent years and in the aftermath I've decided I've got to get a furry wall for my house.

The ending is a little flat (but I guess mandatory for Hollywood) but definitely worth watching.

Bangkok Tattoo

I just returned from a visit to South East Asia and, as luck would have it, had taken John Burdett's book "Bangkok Tattoo" along with me, which proved to be both entertaining and provided some interesting background material for the Sukhumvit Road area I stayed in in Bangkok a couple of time during my travels.

Bangkok Tattoo is a murder-mystery story featuring a slightly corrupt Thai policeman, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, and his rather less upstanding superior officer, Colonel Vikorn, and their efforts to first cover up, and later solve, the mystery of an American found dead near one of Bangkok's red light districts - Soi Cowboy, where a go-go bar they own is located - while grappling with a range of unsavoury characters ranging from drug smuggling army officers to CIA agents to Islamic fundamentalists.

The novel functions as an interesting tourist guide to Bangkok (with a bit of Buddhist philosophy thrown in for good measure) as well as providing a rather jaded view of the American "war on terror" - worth a read.

Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

Irvine Welsh is the master of tales of the grotesque, and in spite of his books all being set in the same milieu, amongst the alcoholic and drug abusing working class of Edinburgh, he usually manages to bring enough new ideas to each story to make them worth reading, in spite of the regular feeling of deja vu.

The main characters of this story are food inspectors working for Edinburgh council, with one of their "customers" being an obese celebrity chef who is, in part, famous for his book "Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs".

The food inspectors quickly grow to loathe one another, but find themselves tied by a magical bond which seems destined to lead one or both of them to their demise.

If don't mind having to interpret Scottish and enjoy an endless stream of foul language and gross imagery, then you'll probably find the book entertaining.

Into The Wild

Into The Wild is based on Jon Krakauer's 1997 book of the same name, chronicling the adventures of Christopher McCandless. The film was directed by Sean Penn (who also wrote the screenplay).

The movie has a pretty low key, documentary type feel to it, telling the story of McCandless's early adult years and his troubled relationship with his family via a series of flashbacks, interspersed between the story of his venture into the wilds of Alaska, where he lives alone in an abandoned bus, tryig to build up sufficient wilderness skills to be able to survive on his own.

Its an interesting story, albeit a slightly depressing one, and the film is well executed.