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52 up!
Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, 1972)
Stately ecological film from the special effects maestro of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A polluted Earth has sent out arks of various habitats into space for preservation, but now they are to be scrapped and destroyed. Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) sees red and bumps off his crew mates, before sailing through Saturn's rings, further away from the Sun.
I know Mondyboy is not a fan, and in fact I started watching this before his post, only finishing today. But rather like Colossus, this has been one of my favourite sf films. It's sort of doomed, mind. The script, cowritten by Steve Bochco, Michael Cimino and Deric Washburn - Bochco focused thereafter on TV, the latter two then worked on The Deer Hunter - was messed about with, probably in production, and has to have a tension between getting on with it and establishing Dern's motives for bumping them off. He has to become Adam rather than Cain, and then needs to be cut off from other contact. Maintenance droids then become his confidents - with some nice touches of tapping feet and worried exchanged glances as Dern descends into sort-of madness. Whilst I'm fairly sure that Danny Boyle saw this before making Sunshine, I'm guessing this influenced the influx of cute robots in Star Wars, Buck Rogers, The Black Hole and so on (Robbie the robot was cute-ish, but not cat like).
Trumbull went back to special effects after this - aside from Brainstorm, which I haven't seen. It is perhaps a little ponderous, and the Joan Baez songs stick out like hippies in a board room - the scenery is not as pretty as 2001.
Totals: 52 - [Cinema: 15; DVD: 34; Television: 3]
Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, 1972)
Stately ecological film from the special effects maestro of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A polluted Earth has sent out arks of various habitats into space for preservation, but now they are to be scrapped and destroyed. Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) sees red and bumps off his crew mates, before sailing through Saturn's rings, further away from the Sun.
I know Mondyboy is not a fan, and in fact I started watching this before his post, only finishing today. But rather like Colossus, this has been one of my favourite sf films. It's sort of doomed, mind. The script, cowritten by Steve Bochco, Michael Cimino and Deric Washburn - Bochco focused thereafter on TV, the latter two then worked on The Deer Hunter - was messed about with, probably in production, and has to have a tension between getting on with it and establishing Dern's motives for bumping them off. He has to become Adam rather than Cain, and then needs to be cut off from other contact. Maintenance droids then become his confidents - with some nice touches of tapping feet and worried exchanged glances as Dern descends into sort-of madness. Whilst I'm fairly sure that Danny Boyle saw this before making Sunshine, I'm guessing this influenced the influx of cute robots in Star Wars, Buck Rogers, The Black Hole and so on (Robbie the robot was cute-ish, but not cat like).
Trumbull went back to special effects after this - aside from Brainstorm, which I haven't seen. It is perhaps a little ponderous, and the Joan Baez songs stick out like hippies in a board room - the scenery is not as pretty as 2001.
Totals: 52 - [Cinema: 15; DVD: 34; Television: 3]
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