Moon (Duncan Jones 2009)

As always, I'm way behind everyone else with my viewing... Anyway, I've finally had a chance to see Duncan Jones' debut, BAFTA award-winning feature, Moon. And what a debut! A really impressive film with an incredible performance - or should that be performances, plural - from Sam Rockwell. As Sam Bell, Rockwell is the film. Reviewers of the film have made comparisons with Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), though few have mentioned Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), which has similar concerns; however all these films share a desire to explore the effects of prolonged isolation and loneliness on the psyche, with a subtlety that is all too rare in contemporary science fiction. In some ways the universality of the questions that Moon considers enable it to transcend the boundaries that can sometimes limit genre films. Not only does Moon explore what it means to be human, to live and to die but it does so with incredible affective power while simultaneously demonstrating admirable restraint. There is one notable moment in the film where this understatedness is substituted for a brief instance of exuberance that made sense in the context but which jarred somewhat nonetheless. Sam Bell has returned the dying Sam to the lunar rover, struggling to carry him and place him inside the cockpit but as he returns to his own vehicle we see him jump a number of times - almost playfully - in the zero gravity atmosphere of the moon. Of course, he is hurrying because he needs to return to the base before the 'rescue' team arrive but it is a strange moment that seems to express his excitement at the prospect of a possible return to Earth. This is one of those arresting filmic moments, what Christian Keathley called 'cinephiliac moments' or what Roland Barthes, in relation to photography, called the punctum. Standing out from the background of its context, this briefest of sequences resonates backwards and forwards across the entire film, encapsulating all of its concerns in this singular instant... For this and for the entirety of the rest of the film, I would highly recommend Moon...

Marcos: Celebrating 50 Years

I have been working on a documentary, celebrating 50 years of Marcos, since last summer's celebrations at Sudely Castle and Prescott. The film is a no-budget production, shot using equipment borrowed from Roehampton University (the day job). I am now nearing completion and in anticipation of the finished product, I am posting a short trailer that gives a flavour of last August's event, when probably the largest gathering of Marcos cars ever, in a single venue, took place. The film itself contains an extended interview with Jem Marsh, as well as archive footage from the early 1960s... Click here for a higher resolution version.