The Day The Earth Stood Still - remake version in cinemas now
Just saw it - at the very first session at 9.30 AM. This film is a whole lot better than the reviews make out and a whole lot better than I expected. Keanu Reeves is Keanu as usual and only acts with his left eyebrow, but this works for once, given the part (I had suspected this would be the case) Gort (the fearsome robot) is great but I reckon they didn't make enough of him. The ending is a bit trite and perfunctory but its a film that has such a powerful message that it needs to be plonked straight in the audience's lap quickly. The music has no chance to add anything to the noisy soundtrack, so Bernard Hermann's reputation is safe. I cannot remember anything about the music and I listened hard Some great script moments: Keanu Klaatu: "Nothing ever dies. The universe wastes nothing. Things are only ever......transformed." "I tried to reason with you. You treat the Earth the way you treat each other." John Cleese to Klaatu (cameo role as a physicist): "Help us to change! We are at the precipice. At the precipice we can change." Perhaps faced with the ironclad guarantee of our extinction as a species we COULD do it? But we have to be forced to confront it by an intelligence far greater than our own. That's the movie's message. It's a little unfortunate in my view that the process of our extinction - in typical Hollywood fashion - is halted before it has completely run its course, so we get let off the hook and the sun rises again tomorrow on the human race, so it remains a mere conjecture that we can change. In the original, the Earth's energy economy is halted for 24 hours as a demonstration of superior force which convinces us we have no other option. Weak. In this version, the extinction process is commenced (using matter- eating quantum nano-bugs that self-replicate at an impossibly fast rate, becoming a tornado that whips around the world) and this process looks set to wipe out humans and their structures in a couple of hours at most. Keanu Klaatu - for some unbelievably treacly, sentimental Hollywood non-reason becomes convinced at the last moment that humans may be capable of change after all and calls a halt to the process and goes home in his beaut glowing orb. THEN all the power goes off. So we are left with a three-quarters- destroyed civilisation and no energy economy. We are hunter-gatherers once again. Even though it comes across as a bit unconvincing in the movie, the concept is stronger than in the original because rather than leave Gort behind to keep an eye on things after the lights come back on, the lights NEVER come back on, so we don't HAVE the option to misbehave any longer. Strong. Take a break from your computer keyboards and get into the fresh air - of a dark cinema! cheers, K A thought once thought cannot be unthought - Edward de Bono It is impossible to delete information from this universe - Wei Dai Email: kmjco...@mac.com kimjo...@ozemail.com.au Web: http://web.mac.com/kmjcommp/Plenitude_Music Phone: (612) 9389 4239 or 0431 723 001 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
