GalacticMu

It is no secret that I’m an atheist, though other members of GalacticMu vary. And this shouldn’t matter, except when I am doing something like watching this astonishing clip of a title sequence of a movie called 3:19 (and no, not the western, like I also briefly, sleepily, thought - 3:10, 3:19, what does nine minutes matter?).

I was sent into a fugue state watching the first half of the animation, enjoying it for one of those moments where, because I expect nothing at all, I am startled to my very core. And then I started to notice the religious implications. Oh, that 3:19, as in Genesis (no, I didn’t read the sidebar for the link until afterwards). God’s great mechanism, I get it. Everything of infinite and divine plan. Yawn.

From what I’ve read the movie itself is not religious as much as “faithy”. It sounds unappealing to me on a lot of levels, but largely because it apparently succumbs to the neo-dramatic mechanism of having everything connect, making for lumbering, interconnected failures such as Crash and Babel. I’d like to watch a movie about how nothing happens for a reason, about how no one action any of us takes affects the lives of anyone else around us. I’d like to see how the poor black girl working at the White Castle does not affect a affluent Swiss banker whose father was shot in the street by a cop who mistakenly identified him. That’d be a good movie.

Via Dark Roasted Blend

I am predictably obsessed with Pixar cartoons. An art-student Seattleite once said to Halcyon and myself after we’d just been to see Cars, “Isn’t that a children’s movie?” Yes, and mostly no. I asked her not to make my latte too hot.

Children, as you may know, are underdeveloped human beings. They have an underdeveloped stature, an underdeveloped taste in beer and an underdeveloped sense of what constitutes as entertainment. Through what I can only assume is torturous experimentation, Pixar is one of the few production companies ever to exist who have managed to make compelling, artful and genuinely touching movies that children manage to enjoy anyway. And while the subject matter has been only marginally of interest to me as of yet (though the recent Ratatouille veered the closest ), the up-coming WALL•E makes me tear up, and these are just the trailers. I have a bad feeling about the fate of my mascara when I get around to seeing the entire film.

As an aside, a true story: I went to see The Iron Giant in the theater, and I cried so hard I scared the children in front of me. Truth.

This is by no means breaking news, but it’s good enough to keep sharing: Pixar has made an absolutely GORGEOUS fake website for the fictional company that produces the eponymous WALL•E.

Called ‘Buy n Large’, the website is more a masterpiece of social commentary than a background for an upcoming movie. A children’s movie, if you recall. Aside from being visually flawless, the site is deep: every link goes somewhere, and almost every page has something worth reading on it. If you know what is good for you, you’ll read the tiny link to the Privacy Policy at the bottom of each page. Even if you are someone that has ever had to work on corporate websites or use stock photography of “perfect” employees, something about Buy n Large will make you want to simultaneously applaud for Pixar and shoot horse tranquilizers directly into your heart. Because the comedy? Very, very close to reality.

Dear Sunshine,

Hi. We’ve never met, but I’ve seen you around. Actually, I’ve seen you around a few times. I hope it’s not creepy or anything, but… I just can’t stop watching you. You don’t have to say anything, but, I think I love you.

spoilers ahoy!

Think what you will of M. Night Shyamalan, but the trailer for his most recent endeavor gave me delighted chills (Quicktime is required).

Starring Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, The Happening is about a final, worldwide apocalypse triggered by the environment. The trailer corroborates rumors that the movie is presented as a confused unfurling, where people are given only fragments of information and society breaks under the strain of an unseen, unknowable foe. This is where my apocalypse boner says hello. Hello! Additional rumor claims the movie will be rated R due to it being a movie about the apocalypse, which I pray involves a lot of people dying. A PG-13 apocalypse movie is sadder than a kitten with no front legs.

I should put on record that Shyamalan’s Signs scared the holy motherloving shit out of me (until the end, when the everpresent questions of faith were subjected to a dose of unbelievable optimism). It used each of my major fears/obsessions against me:

• apocalypse
• alien invasion
• bunkering down
• home video (I’ll believe anything on home video, especially supernatural things)
• weird noises

Jack Finney’s classic novel The Body Snatchers is re-re-re-made in this science fiction thriller starring Nicole Kidman and the delightful Daniel Craig. Kidman plays the role of Carol Bennell, a psychiatrist on the run from emotionless drone-people seemingly infected with some kind of extraterrestrial virus after the crash of the space shuttle Patriot. Car chases ensue.

Spoilericious review after the jump.

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No time for model making? Testors sniffing days long gone? Ok, here are some downloadable pdf models. awesome.

Here’s Away Team member Aargh’s delorean:

I like anime. I’m not a cosplay meganerd or anything, and admit to being overwhelmed by anime culture in general. I couldn’t even tell you which directors I like. I do, however, have a favorite anime composer: Susumu Hirasawa.

The mind behind the outstanding musical accompaniments to Millenium Actress (2002), Paranoia Agent (2004) and Paprika (2006), Hirasawa writes what I can only describe as orbital-colony mall beats. Orchestral, bombastic and melodic, Hirasawa is as much a performance artist as a musician: in one famous display he encouraged audience members to call cell phones on stage that had ringtones designed to sound in harmony to his music.

I think his finest work may be the theme song to Paprika, called “The girl in Byakkoya - White Tiger Field”. It is available for free download at teslakite.com: http://www.teslakite.com/freemp3s/e/paprika/

Teslakite doesn’t mention the best part: Hirasawa wants some of his music distributed for free as a protest against “the nations that are headed towards carnage while ignoring international law,” and specifically notes American’s war on Iraq.