Day: October 17, 2013

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Gravity: A Triumph for Women, Science, and 3D Cinema

From "Gravity."

[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Gravity is the number one movie in America for the second week in a row and has just passed the $200 million mark at the worldwide box office. It’s a triumph for star Sandra Bullock and for the cause of women in film – and it’s also a triumph for real science-based movies and 3D cinema technology.

Let’s start with the first point: it’s truly refreshing that Sandra Bullock’s character, Dr. Ryan Carter, is depicted in Gravity as an intelligent professional. I recently wrote that we needed more movies conveying ambitious visions for women – movies in which women have the opportunity to carry out significant deeds of intelligence, creativity, and heroism. Gravity is exactly this kind of film.

Gravity establishes from the beginning that Bullock’s character is in space because she has invented a groundbreaking medical imaging technology that NASA has decided to install in the Hubble Space Telescope for astronomical use. A medical doctor and not a trained astronaut, Dr. Carter’s skills are considered so integral to the mission that she has been given six months of astronaut training and has spent a full week in space in order to install the delicate technology in the multi-billion dollar Hubble.

As she carries out this mission and deals with its harrowing aftermath, Bullock’s character repeatedly displays a strength that is of the inner type. She has no superpowers or super-weapons: she is a real human being and when she is faced with extraordinary danger, she finds a stoic, inner self-sufficiency to survive. This is why the film has proven so inspiring to audiences.

Sci-fi has been dominated for some time by monsters, robots, clones, and caped superheroes – but these sorts of movies have underperformed lately and it seems that what audiences may be looking for now is not just surface spectacle (though there is impressive spectacle in Gravity), but inner character. The fact that Gravity has made over $200 million at the box office in under two weeks by devoting itself to the close examination of a female character’s emotional journey is a victory for strong women’s roles in science fiction.

The Hubble Space Telescope.

Second, Gravity is a triumph for sci-fi movies based on real NASA science. NASA and JPL’s programs have proven highly popular with the public, yet Hollywood has made few real astronomy-based movies in recent years. Director Alfonso Cuarón has found a smart way to use NASA’s real space efforts (including the genuine collaboration between medical imaging and space science) as the catalyst for a poignant human story. He and his team have done this through realism: realism in depicting cutting-edge space technologies, realism in crafting detailed, pristine special effects, and most importantly, realism in the film’s characters.

I recently spoke about Gravity with NASA/ JPL Public Services Representative Marc Razze on the occasion of the Theodore von Kármán lecture at JPL. Razze told me that Gravity had proven popular with the scientists at JPL for capturing the emotions that they experience in their own research and missions to outer space. Razze noted: “From the folks I’ve talked to, including myself, we all enjoyed it …[in particular] the psychological component everybody seemed to really enjoy – it puts you in that place, where, if that happened, what would you do?”

And while Razze acknowledged the debate over the location of the Hubble and the space stations in the film – “all of those spacecraft don’t necessarily orbit in the same orbits” – he added that the movie did hew to realism by depicting the lack of sound in space. “I love the way they really made it silent, the way they emphasize that.”

Finally, the enormous success of Gravity shows that 3D cinema is here to stay. Over 80% of Gravity‘s box office on its first two weekends came from 3D screenings – an even higher percentage than Avatar. 3D is clearly the wave of the future and is being integrated into the next generation of consumer technologies and much more. News even came out recently that Disney researchers are developing a tactile 3D technology that will allow people to “feel” textures and shapes on flat screens. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Gravity: A Triumph for Women, Science, and 3D Cinema

LFM Reviews Dancing on the Edge; Premieres Sat. (10/19) on Starz

By Joe Bendel. Louis Lester’s band swings so hard, many of their fans assume he is an American, but he is really a born and bred British subject. Several high society types will take an interest in them, but that will not always be a good thing during the course of Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge, a six night mini-series beginning this Saturday on Starz.

Stanley Mitchell is a progressive jazz fan, but he is also a bit of an operator. He sings the praises of the Lester band, hoping his magazine Music Express will rise with their tide. While not to the manor born himself, Mitchell knows many of the right people, like Arthur Donaldson, a man of leisure who happens to appreciate real deal jazz. Through Donaldson’s connections and Mitchell’s glad-handing, the Lester band books some high profile gigs, eventually becoming the house band at the formerly staid Imperial Hotel.

For a while, it seems like everyone will enjoy the good life together, especially when the mysterious American tycoon, Walter Masterson, starts inviting the band to his lavish parties, along with the wealthy but somewhat emotionally codependent Luscombe siblings. The interracial romance brewing between Lester and Sarah, a photographer close to the Luscombes, obviously portends future trouble, but the erratic Julian Luscombe’s reckless pursuit of the band’s lead singer will lead to more immediate problems.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is about to become an Oprah superstar through 12 Years a Slave, but his turn as Lester is arguably his best work since Dirty Pretty Things. In many ways, it is a treatise on “cool” as a defense strategy and a personal aesthetic. Rigidly controlled, Ejiofor still shows us all the gears turning in his head. Arguably, the major historical influences on his Lester are the suave sophistication of Ellington (whose 1930’s small big band could be a model for the Lester outfit) and the not-so-passive aggressive aloofness of Miles Davis to come in later years.

In contrast, Matthew Goode gives Mitchell a slightly manic edge, nicely playing off the tightly wound Ejiofor in their smartly written scenes together. (If you’re asking whether he rings to someone who has written about and championed jazz, the answer is yes.) Probably nobody is more over-exposed for Anglophiles than Tom Hughes right now, but while he was conspicuously miscast in About Time, The Hollow Crown, and The Lady Vanishes, he is sort of perfect for the boyishly creepy Julian Luscombe. Like Hughes, John Goodman brings out the messy human dimensions of grandly indulgent Masterson, a role that could have easily descended into gross caricature.

From "Dancing on the Edge."

In fact, one of writer-director Poliakoff’s great strengths is the manner in which he preserves some degree of audience sympathy for all his characters despite their often horrid actions. Shrewdly, he also maintains considerable ambiguity regarding certain relationships, instead of beating viewers about the head, as a less artful production might. Dancing does right by the music as well, featuring a soundtrack of original era appropriate swingers and ballads, recorded by real life working jazz and studio musicians, who also appear in character as the Lester band. If jazz advocates will have any gripe with Dancing it will be the lack of development for the musicians, besides Lester and his two vocalists.

Like the best of television, Dancing quickly hooks in viewers and keeps them emotionally invested throughout. Poliakoff captures the exhilaration of the after-hours jam, but also incorporates pointed references to the ominous rise of National Socialism, Britain’s lack of military preparedness, and the rather dubious character of the future temporary Edward VIII.

Nicely crafted in all respects, Dancing on the Edge is recommended for fans of swing music and British television when it premieres this Saturday (10/19) on Starz. As a note, the fifth installment is technically the finale, but an epilogue follows the next week (11/23), which purports to collect Mitchell’s aborted interviews with Lester. Initially, it seems to be a DVD-extra kind of thing, but it might conceivably set up a sequel series in its final moments.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on October 17th, 2013 at 9:49am.