Govindini Murty – Page 3 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Finding Movie Inspiration in NASA’s Real Science: The Case Study of Europa Report

[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Hollywood is in the midst of a science-fiction boom, yet few of its sci-fi movies are based on real science. That’s a shame, because the scientific discoveries emerging from NASA these days are as exciting as any Hollywood blockbuster. Whether it’s the stunning images from the Mars Curiosity rover, or the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes’ observations of a dazzling array of exoplanets, or the announcement that Voyager 1 has become the first human-made object to leave the solar system, NASA is daily generating storylines that provoke the imagination and expand our horizons.

What makes these developments intriguing for adaptation into sci-fi movies is that they are real. At a time when audiences are increasingly jaded by computer special effects, there’s something fresh and engaging about a sci-fi movie that might actually have some basis in reality. Isn’t it time that we see more sci-fi films that explore the real mysteries of the universe all around us?

As a case study for a sci-fi movie inspired by NASA science, I recommend that people take a look at Sebastian Cordero’s Europa Report. With a cast that includes Sharlto Copley, Anamaria Marinca, and Michael Nyqvist, Europa Report is currently playing in select theaters and on VOD, and will be available on iTunes starting October 8th. The movie is one of the few sci-fi films in recent years to offer a realistic depiction of a manned mission to outer space – in this case, to search for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

I chatted with NASA- JPL astrobiologist Steve Vance, one of the science advisors on Europa Report, at the film’s LA Film Festival premiere. Vance expressed to me his enthusiasm about the movie:

“I’m just thrilled that I got to be part of something that is bringing Europa more into the public eye. I’m really excited about how this movie captures the passion of exploration and also the science.”

Europa has been the focus of much attention in recent years because it may harbor life in the liquid water ocean that is theorized to exist under its icy crust. Vance, who studies the interiors of icy moons like Europa and who is acting staff scientist on NASA’s Europa Project, told me that he and his colleagues are “pre-formulating a mission that we hope will fly to Europa to address the same kind of questions that were addressed in the movie.” The most pressing of these questions is whether life independently developed on another body within our solar system.

Although Vance noted that a manned mission to Europa isn’t currently feasible, due to the difficulties of even sending a human as far as Mars, he explained that NASA is assessing plans to send a robotic spacecraft to Europa (see NASA artist’s concept above): “The mission we’re looking at right now is [that] we’ll do multiple flybys to orbit Jupiter, and do thirty or more flybys of Europa and completely map the surface.” (See this paper in the August issue of Astrobiology on future missions to Europa, co-authored by Vance).

And this brings me to a larger point: whether it’s robotic spacecraft taking photos of the surfaces of distant moons like Europa – or movies that draw on that imagery to dramatize outer-space exploration – visual representation plays a crucial role in bringing science to life.

For example, the photos taken by the Galileo space probe as it orbited Jupiter and its moons from 1995 to 2003 gave the public the most detailed images yet of mysterious Europa and its icy, cracked outer shell. These photos (see below) then inspired the filmmakers of Europa Report. In turn, NASA scientists like Vance hope that movies like Europa Report will inspire public support for future missions back to Europa. In short, art and science play a surprisingly reciprocal role today.

Given how important photos and imagery have been to NASA, I was amazed to read in a recent NASA blog post that in the 1960s, NASA debated whether to even put cameras on board spacecraft. Fortunately, with the Mariner 4 mission that brought back the first close-up photos of Mars in 1965, the agency realized how crucial images were to advancing scientific knowledge and inspiring the public. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Finding Movie Inspiration in NASA’s Real Science: The Case Study of Europa Report

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking About Women’s Roles with Director Kat Coiro of And While We Were Here

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared yesterday at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. It’s a welcome development to see more women directors emerging in the indie film scene and it’s my hope that this will soon translate into more women directing studio features, as well. We all know the statistics: the most recent studies reveal that women only direct 5% of the top 100 studio features – and yet in the indie film world, they direct 18% of the narrative features and 39% of the documentaries.

One indie woman director whose work I’ve enjoyed in recent years is Kat Coiro. Coiro’s latest film, the stylish, Italy-set romantic drama And While We Were Here, opens this weekend in select theaters and is also available on VOD. The film stars Kate Bosworth, Iddo Goldberg, and Jamie Blackley and features a voice-over by the great Claire Bloom.

Shot on location in beautiful southern Italy, And While We Were Here tells the tale of a neglected wife, Jane (Bosworth), who falls for a bohemian American youth, Caleb (Blackley), when her emotionally-remote viola player husband Leonord (Goldberg) is invited to perform in a concert in Naples.

The film is the latest in a tradition of stories about travelers whose lives are transformed by Italy. Bosworth and Goldberg give strong, sensitive performances as the troubled couple Jane and Leonard, while Blackley is disarmingly amusing as the Dionysian youth who disrupts everyone’s carefully ordered lives. Bloom (Jane’s Grandma Eves) provides a poignant voice-over commentary through tape-recorded interviews that recount her loves and losses during WWII.

I caught And While We Were Here at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012 and had the chance to chat with Kat Coiro a few months later at the LA Film Festival where she was screening her charming short film Departure Date. A romantic comedy starring Nicky Whelan and Ben Feldman, Departure Date (see photo below) is the first film shot and edited entirely at 35,000 feet – an innovative effort made possible by Virgin Produced and highly worth viewing the next time you’re on Virgin Airlines.

Director Kat Coiro filming "Departure Date."

Coiro and I talked at the LA Film Festival about the importance of emotional honesty in storytelling, the joys of poetry, and the importance of creating films that honor brilliant women both past and present. The interview has been edited for length.

GM: I noticed in Departure Date and also in And While We Were Here that there’s a real romanticism to these films, that they breathe with a heartfelt, poetic spirit. What draws you to these sorts of stories?

KC: I appreciate simplicity and I find that creativity often flourishes within the constraints of doing these very small projects in a very short time – and making them something people can relate to. So I wrote both of these stories knowing I had to keep them very simple and I didn’t have time to get very flashy. You strip it down to what people enjoy: which is human connection, relationships, character-driven pieces. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking About Women’s Roles with Director Kat Coiro of And While We Were Here

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Why I Love 3D Movies – And Why They’re the Future of the Cinema

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared yesterday at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. This may be a controversial thing to say, but I’m an unapologetic fan of 3D movies. I see 3D not as a fad, but as the wave of the future. Whether it’s in movies, the next generation of smart-phone apps, or 3D modeling and printing, the trend in all our technology is toward recreating reality with greater detail in three dimensions.

I’ll have more to say about this in a moment, but first, I wanted to let fans of 3D cinema know about a wonderful opportunity this week to see classic 3D films at the World 3-D Film Expo in Hollywood. Leonard Maltin gives high praise to this festival for offering what may be “the last opportunity” to see many classic 3D films in their original 35mm dual-projection formats, noting that “digital restorations are good but they don’t pop off the screen the way the originals do.” The World 3-D Film Expo is unspooling this week through Sunday, September 15th at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

The screening not to be missed at the World 3-D Film Expo is this Friday afternoon’s 3:30pm showing of legendary Western director Budd Boetticher’s The Wings of the Hawk (1953), with star Julie Adams in attendance. (Ms. Adams is most famous for being the star of Universal’s iconic 3D classic, Creature From the Black Lagoon. You can read an Atlantic interview Jason Apuzzo and I did with Ms. Adams about the making of Creature here.)

Julie 2 — Julie Adams in "Wings of the Hawk."

Shot in eye-popping color 3D, The Wings of the Hawk stars Julie Adams as fiery Mexican revolutionary Raquel Noriega (complete with breeches and bandoliers) in a proto-feminist role opposite an edgy miner played by Van Heflin. How many classic movie posters (see above, and the photo below) feature the heroine in a more commanding pose than the hero? If you want to meet this lovely and charming film legend in person, Ms. Adams will be present at the screening signing copies of her autobiography The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections From the Black Lagoon.

Other films to catch over the next few days of the festival include a very rare 3D screening of It Came From Outer Space (based on a story by the great Ray Bradbury), Revenge of the Creature (with a cameo by a young Clint Eastwood), and the Mexico-set gangster drama Second Chance (starring Robert Mitchum, Linda Darnell, and Jack Palance), which features stunning on-location photography. Also intriguing is Cease Fire, a Korean War drama featuring the only color 3D footage ever shot to this day during combat.

The World 3-D Film Expo is showing many of these films in the last known copies of their archival, double-system 35 mm celluloid prints, projected with dual projectors and viewed using polarized glasses. This is the way 3D films were originally meant to be seen – not with inferior anaglyphic prints made decades later using color separation, of the kind people often mistakenly identify with ’50s 3D.

Original poster for "It Came from Outer Space."

And this brings me to my larger point: with all the enjoyment to be gained by watching 3D movies both classic and contemporary, I don’t see why the technology remains so controversial. Critics repeatedly assert that 3D is a gimmick, citing as their evidence the supposedly egregious use of spear-throwing or other projectiles in the past as a reason why all 3D in the present must be condemned. (What’s wrong with throwing a spear at the screen, anyway? Or having a monster’s claw come rearing out at the audience – as in that great moment from Creature From the Black Lagoon?) Such critics would no doubt have been offended by the famous 1st century B.C. Roman mosaic of Alexander the Great, in which the charging horses and bristling spears appear to come straight at the viewer.

And while movies shot natively in 3D certainly look a lot better than those that have been converted after the fact, I still enjoy both because I like experiencing the immersive quality of a 3D image – of being made to feel like one is literally swimming in a movie, much like Ms. Adams in her famous dip in the Black Lagoon. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Why I Love 3D Movies – And Why They’re the Future of the Cinema

LFM’s Govindini Murty Talks Ben Affleck as Batman @ HuffPost Live

LFM’s Govindini Murty participated in a HuffPost Live segment yesterday on the subject of Warner Brothers’ announcement that Ben Affleck will be playing Batman in the forthcoming Man of Steel sequel.

Our thanks to the HuffPost Live team for inviting Govindini to participate.

Posted on August 27th, 2013 at 9:22am.

LFM’s Govindini Murty Talks with Elysium‘s Diego Luna @ HuffPost Live

LFM’s Govindini Murty participated in a HuffPost Live segment yesterday with Mexican actor Diego Luna, who co-stars with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in this weekend’s new sci-fi spectacle Elysium, directed by Neill Blomkamp. Luna was first introduced to American audiences in the critically acclaimed Y Tu Mama Tabien.

Govindini comes on to the segment about 23 minutes in, and asked Luna several questions about what it was like for him to work in the sci-fi genre, and how he prepared for Elysium. Our thanks to the HuffPost Live team for inviting Govindini to participate.

Posted on August 7th, 2013 at 1:06pm.

LFM’s Govindini Murty @ HuffPost Live Talks About Women Directors at The Oscars

LFM’s Govindini Murty appeared on HuffPost Live today to talk about the issue of women filmmakers being left out of the Oscars, and also about women in the film industry, in general. The entire 25 minute segment is available above. Thanks to HuffPost Live for inviting her on.

Yesterday Govindini had a piece in The Atlantic on women filmmakers breaking into the mainstream film world through Sundance and independent film.

Posted on February 22nd, 2013 at 2:54pm.