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it's quiet tonight
and yet i'm tempted to turn the TV back on. I watched 2001 for the first time tonight after having seen snippits of it over the years. It is definitely a movie from another era - the pacing so molasses slow. That's why I'd never watched it before now - I'd tried, but I couldn't sit still for long enough. Tonight though I made about a million cookies while I watched it, so that kept me occupied enough I didn't just fidget the entire time.
And I'd like to write more about my own take on it, but honestly? It's been written about so much that I feel disingenuous coming to it this late and forming an opinion. It's anachronistic. And to comment on it somehow involves the me pulling it into this contemporary moment, and that just doesn't make sense. I almost felt as if when I was watching it I was being pulled back into the 70s mindset under which it was made.
Doesn't help that I'm writing Vivian Sobacheck's Screening Space (a book theorizing SF film written right at the beginning of the 80s). It's huuuuge help with my dissertation on the theoretical side. But the part that I'm struck by, continually, is just that the body of film she looks at, because of when she was writing, is just SO different than the body of film I think of when I think "Sci Fi Film". I think her book includes the first of the Star Wars movies, but not the second or third. Imagine that mindset for a second, and think about how you'd conceive of science fiction if your only experience of science fiction film went up to the end of the 1970s. It's different than if someone was writing a paper on 1950s film now, because even if they've lived in a vacuum, they still had some kind of interaction with contemporary notions of what science fiction should be. And while it wasn't so different back then, especially in film, it wasn't *the same*.
I kind of want to go see Jupiter Ascending for that very reason. I've read a ton of reviews basically saying it's terrible, but that we should go see it anyway, because it's big budget SF, both in the best and worst ways ever. Besides, the costumes look cool.
maybe i'll turn the TV on and get the external hard drive open and make some graphics. it's that kind of night. i'm missing being a producer in fandom. funny how that happens now that i've finished my second chapter, and am on the preliminary research for the third.
And I'd like to write more about my own take on it, but honestly? It's been written about so much that I feel disingenuous coming to it this late and forming an opinion. It's anachronistic. And to comment on it somehow involves the me pulling it into this contemporary moment, and that just doesn't make sense. I almost felt as if when I was watching it I was being pulled back into the 70s mindset under which it was made.
Doesn't help that I'm writing Vivian Sobacheck's Screening Space (a book theorizing SF film written right at the beginning of the 80s). It's huuuuge help with my dissertation on the theoretical side. But the part that I'm struck by, continually, is just that the body of film she looks at, because of when she was writing, is just SO different than the body of film I think of when I think "Sci Fi Film". I think her book includes the first of the Star Wars movies, but not the second or third. Imagine that mindset for a second, and think about how you'd conceive of science fiction if your only experience of science fiction film went up to the end of the 1970s. It's different than if someone was writing a paper on 1950s film now, because even if they've lived in a vacuum, they still had some kind of interaction with contemporary notions of what science fiction should be. And while it wasn't so different back then, especially in film, it wasn't *the same*.
I kind of want to go see Jupiter Ascending for that very reason. I've read a ton of reviews basically saying it's terrible, but that we should go see it anyway, because it's big budget SF, both in the best and worst ways ever. Besides, the costumes look cool.
maybe i'll turn the TV on and get the external hard drive open and make some graphics. it's that kind of night. i'm missing being a producer in fandom. funny how that happens now that i've finished my second chapter, and am on the preliminary research for the third.
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I was pleasantly surprised that it was a proper film, but so pretentious. (This was 1977, before Star Wars and the populist SF that came later)
I want to give Jupiter Ascending a try. I wonder if the scathing reviews are partly because it has more female-centric tropes which automatically must be decried? Will look forward to your opinion on this film.
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if i make it to the theatre I'll definitely write it up! And possibly you're right about the female-centric tropes, though most of the reviews seem to be saying not that they don't like those kinds of tropes, just that they're done badly or with not enough time and development in the film. but we shall see!
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