I remember first watching the movie version of 2010, the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, when I was a kid and thinking about how far off that was, how ridiculously deep into the future that was. Oh, science fiction. How you captured and enraptured my stupid little brain even back then. How you can give me such enticing glimpses of a far off tomorrow (not that 2010, the movie, was all that enticing), and through it all, I don’t stop to actually notice how similar tomorrow is to today.
It really hits me now, especially, since tomorrow is now today.
This is our science fictional future? I want more. And who knows, maybe more is right around the corner. This is “the year we make contact,” after all. Right? And if it’s not, then why can’t it be? Why can’t it be the year that we make contact?
And I think we will somewhere in the vicinity of the next 365 days. We’ve been hovering around a vein, I think, us humans, us earthlings, and I think we’ll tap into it in some way. Maybe not with aliens, but with something. With science. With space. Maybe, and this is more importantly, maybe with something within ourselves, something beautiful and precious. Or maybe something deep and dark.
Sitting here and reading this right now, you, maybe you’ll be the one who makes contact with something. The next act of your journey. Maybe one of our readers will win the lottery or finish their novel or self portrait or get their blog-to-book deal that they’ve desperately longed for. Maybe we will, but who knows, it might be you. Maybe this is the year you find inspiration, or inspire someone else to greatness. Maybe we’ll meet the love of our life. Or, more importantly, the love of our life will meet us.
But “The Year We Make Contact” shouldn’t be about “maybe this” or “maybe that.” It’s not just about new understandings and expanding. It’s about conquering. When you’re done reading this blog, quietly minimize the internet, and go do. Go be. Become something.
Two things, and stay with me just another few paragraphs even though I know you’re hungover, but two more things and then I’ll finish my say and let you have yours. One is slightly raunchy: I have this aunt, old as shit and half crazy, I’m pretty sure, but she’s always had this ridiculous saying. She’d always say, “At some point you have to stop jacking off and start coming.” A dirty little bit of wisdom, that.
And secondly, and lastly, like the song says, this will be our year. And it took a long time to come. Make it worth it. Earn it. Go make contact.
Speaking of games, last night when I got home, The Game was on.
So I plopped down on the couch and watched about a half an hour of the excellent 1997 David Fincher movie starring Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, and Deborah Kara Unger (who probably played every mysterious and slightly off blonde in 90s cinema).
What an excellent movie, and very underrated as a nice little thriller.
I have it on DVD somewhere and hope to watch it properly again soon.
There’s a great joke in there about Ethel Kennedy too.
Random film fun facts: It was originally to star Jodie Foster (as the Sean Penn character), who was dropped by the studio. She then sued the pants off them. But it made it especially nice that she was then able to do The Panic Room (after Nicole Kidman dropped out due to injury) with Fincher. Spike Jonze cameos at the end as an EMT. And the script had a polish done by Andrew Kevin Walker, who probably does some script doctor work on every film Fincher does.
In other, unrelated viewing news, looking for the pilot of Virtuality on Hulu this morning, I instead found the much talked about pilot to The Philanthropist, the new show from Tom Fontana, starring James Purefoy (best known not just as Marc Anthony in Rome, but the guy who who did a full frontal nude scene and had them digitally enhance his penis, and was also the guy fired as V from V From Vendetta), Jesse L. Martin (I mention that just for you, Benjie Light), Neve Campbell (apparently back from exploring the Where Are They Now? voidspace), Lindy Booth (that’s for both of us, Light), and Omar from The Wire.
I dig the premise: Essentially a jackass of a rich man, think Tony Stark-lite, going around the world trying to soothe his demons and solve the world’s problems with money. Brilliant! Unfortunately, the show is incredibly mediocre and Purefoy is the television equivalent of watching paint dry in an empty room in a brothel.
This show belongs on USA or TNT or wherever dreck like Burn Notice dazzles the mediocre and undiscerning.
And man, they write Omar’s character as possibly the worst bodyguard in history. Plus, when Purefoy gets lost in Africa and surrounded by some bad dudes, who great would it have been to have heard, “Hey Africa… OMAR COMIN!’”
Omar fun fact: Michael K. Williams actually got his start dancing in Janet Jackson videos. That’s just awesome.
Lindy Booth was gorgeous as always though.
Okay, back to whatever you were doing. Happy Saturday night.
Here we are again with part four of our films that we love, and perhaps even adore, that we feel should make the jump over to the Criterion Collection, if, for no other reason, just to make ourselves a little happier. Or maybe we just want to talk about them because we like them. Or because we’re sick, sick people…
August Bravo:Taxi Driver, 1976, directed by Martin Scorsese.
Travis Bickle is probably one of the most astonishing film characters in the history of movies. Martin Scorsese directed this palme d’Or winning masterpiece. The first time I watched it, I really didn’t care too much for it. It wasn’t until I felt lonely and full of despair that it made a lot of sense. What drives a man to do what he does? One of the most deperessing movie’s I’ve ever seen, maybe. How can a man just slip through the cracks so easily? And how could Scorsese potray it so damn well? Travis seemed like a simple guy, but he’s just disgusted. Disgusted with all the scum and trash that fill the city. With himself as well, maybe? A man so devoid of attention he resorts to talking to himself in the mirror in probably one of the most memorable scenes in film history.
What spirals this movie into a need for Criterion fame is his desolation. I think that’s what really drives him mad, and what drives him do after going mad. It’s a haunting image to see Robert DeNiro sitting there towards the end after his attempt to rescue child prostitute Jodie Foster, blood everywhere, holding a makeshift gun to his head just wanting to pull the trigger. By far the best line from the movie: “Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man…”
Marco Sparks: I’m ecstatic that you picked this movie, which as distasteful as it can be, is a true American classic, and not something like… I don’t know… Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, which people are always trying to tell me is a “classic.” Scorcese has a winning formula here and I feel like he basically remade it in 1983 with The King Of Comedy, a film that I like a hell of a lot more.
For my pick today I am going to happily suggest: Chinatown, 1974, directed by Roman Polanski.
This is another movie that I’m almost afraid to start talking about for fear of talking way too much about it. If you haven’t seen this film yet, then I have to assume that you’re still a toddler. But unless you’re a blind toddler, or in a coma, then you need to be seeing it. If you’re an adult or near the age of making adult mistakes and you haven’t seen this yet, then… put simply, you don’t deserve cinema.
“My sister! My daughter! My sister! My daughter! My sister! My daughter!”
Polanski, despite what anyone may think of him personally, is a master filmmaker, and he’s particularly good with one single element of life: That sense that something is off and just not quite right. Sometimes it’s paranoia, and suspicion of one’s surroundings, but that’s if you’re lucky to nail the feelings his films inhabit so perfectly down into words. Repulsion had it, as did Knife In The Water. The Tenant had it, and of course Rosemary’s Baby had it, as did Death And The Maiden to a fair degree. Hell, his pure amazing shlock demonic thriller The Ninth Gate had it in perfect, crazy overabundance. It worked perfectly in all those films and especially here in this neo-noir masterpiece.
The film, with it’s brilliant script by the always excellent Robert Towne, was based on the real life water wars in California, but is so twisted and wonderful and captures that perfect essence of feeling like it could be a true story word for word.
If you truly have never seen this, then part of me wants to show up at your house with this and maybe a bottle of wine. In fact, let’s do that. I’ll be over next week sometime. Which goes better with popcorn, white wine or red?
Personally, I love that August picked a movie about how fucked up New York is and that I followed up with a film that says essentially a lot of the same things about Los Angeles. I’d love to counter that with something sweet and sentimental about either town or tell you that no matter where you live, home is where the heart is, but let’s face it, you’re just going to get your heart broken no matter where you go. So instead I’ll just say… We’ll see you next time.
Well, let me rephrase that: I can’t believe they’re remaking it so poorly. Oh. Wait. Yes, I can. I totally can. Ugh.
And Don Draper’s in it, ha ha! Awesome. According to the wikipedia article on the remake, Keanu only did it (he considers it to be a re-imagining, not a remake) because he was such a fan of the original as a kid and glad that they removed Klaatu’s “big stick” speech from the end. Color me surprised that Keanu is against the big stick.
I’m not going to talk about the film that much, because… well, if you haven’t seen the original, then I don’t know who you are and you’re probably not interested in this post anyways. Sucks to be you! But I will say that I’m sad to see that the remake, er, “re-imagining” didn’t bring over the original film’s anti-war (also, anti-nuclear) message, instead going for a much more “Hollywood PC-friendly” environmental preservation message.
The updates to Gort and the ship, which is now biological, are interesting (apropos of nothing, is it me or are Jennifer Connelly and Naomi Watts basically the same person now, just with different colored hair?) and as far as Klaatu is concerned, well, Keanu was probably born to play this part, big stick or not.
Every Friday, or thereabout, on the Counterforce tumblr, I share a few classic and sometimes not so classic sci fi stories that I’ve enjoyed over the years or am curious about or interested in. Stuff you should know about (if you don’t already)! And I figured that today that would do the same thing, but for realsies here at Counterforce, starting with:
Contact, released in 1997, directed by Robert, and based on the novel by Carl Sagan. I’ve always wanted to read the book, but sadly, never have. The movie, which I watched last week for the first time in years, still holds up (even with the cgi’d in Bill Clinton scenes) as both fun and smart, and nicely scratches by sci fi itch, and manages to deal with (in a not totally condescending way) matters of belief and faith in a higher power, whether that be the Christian Sky Bully or high advanced extraterrestial alien beings sending us messages from across the stars. Jodie Foster is excellent as always in her special Jodie Foster way (by now it’s no secret that I have a crush on Jodie Foster, right?)(Yes, I know, she probably doesn’t like me back) and even McConaughey’s decent in this film, but this is years before he perfected his bohemian hobo swerve. Also, I learned from Wikipedia that Sagan was paid a $2 million advance for the novel, the highest at the time for a then unwritten work.
It’s finally here, people. 2010. Pronounced “Twenty Ten.”
I remember first watching the movie version of 2010, the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, when I was a kid and thinking about how far off that was, how ridiculously deep into the future that was. Oh, science fiction. How you captured and enraptured my stupid little brain even back then. How you can give me such enticing glimpses of a far off tomorrow (not that 2010, the movie, was all that enticing), and through it all, I don’t stop to actually notice how similar tomorrow is to today.
It really hits me now, especially, since tomorrow is now today.
This is our science fictional future? I want more. And who knows, maybe more is right around the corner. This is “the year we make contact,” after all. Right? And if it’s not, then why can’t it be? Why can’t it be the year that we make contact?
And I think we will somewhere in the vicinity of the next 365 days. We’ve been hovering around a vein, I think, us humans, us earthlings, and I think we’ll tap into it in some way. Maybe not with aliens, but with something. With science. With space. Maybe, and this is more importantly, maybe with something within ourselves, something beautiful and precious. Or maybe something deep and dark.
from here.
from here.
Two things, and stay with me just another few paragraphs even though I know you’re hungover, but two more things and then I’ll finish my say and let you have yours. One is slightly raunchy: I have this aunt, old as shit and half crazy, I’m pretty sure, but she’s always had this ridiculous saying. She’d always say, “At some point you have to stop jacking off and start coming.” A dirty little bit of wisdom, that.
And secondly, and lastly, like the song says, this will be our year. And it took a long time to come. Make it worth it. Earn it. Go make contact.
How 
The 
The Invisibles, fiction suits, singularities, the supercontext, 
Marco Sparks loves 
Tonight is 
