• Lunatic Writer
  • Novels & Novellas
    • Big Ledge Front
    • Big Ledge Back >
      • Big Ledge Review
      • Big Ledge More Reviews
      • Chicken Thief
      • Heaven
    • Loose Ends >
      • Loose Ends Back >
        • Loose Ends Interview
        • Reviews
    • Lunatics >
      • Copernicus Images
    • The Draper Catalogue >
      • Reviews
    • Eta Carinae >
      • Reviews
    • All Saints Day
    • Eta Carinae
    • Echoes
    • Book Reviews
  • Short Fiction
    • Sweet Melancholy
    • More Short Fiction
  • Drama
    • Willful Pursuits
    • More Willful Pursuits
    • Sproule's Folly
    • Gravity
    • Audio Drama
    • All the World's a Stage
    • Theatre Reviews
  • Astro
  • Author's Blog
  • Comments & Contacts
  • Res Naturae
    • Valhalla Provincial Park >
      • Gwillim Lakes
    • Record Ridge
    • Skattebo
    • Rock Slide Lake
    • Kootenay National Park >
      • Juniper
      • Marble Canyon
      • Paint Pots
      • Cobb Lake
      • Redstreak
      • Stanley Glacier
    • Waterton Lakes National Park >
      • Bear's Hump
      • Red Rock Canyon
      • Bertha Lake
      • Wall Lake
      • Prince of Wales
    • Old Growth Forest
    • Ripple Ridge
  • Abroad
    • Jamaica >
      • Aerial Creatures
      • Land Creatures
      • Ocean & Beach
      • Miscellaneous
    • France >
      • Paris I
      • Le Sud
      • Paris II
    • Oregon >
      • Washington
      • Cannonbeach
      • North Coast
      • Portland & Corvallis
      • Central Coast
      • Ashland
      • Crater Lake
      • Mt. Rainier
    • Belize >
      • Birds of Belize
      • Daily Life
      • Water Scenes
    • Greece >
      • Athens
      • Hydra
      • Argolid
      • Crete
      • Santorini
      • Mykonos & Delos
      • Delphi
    • Canyon Country >
      • Red Rock Canyon
      • Valley of Fire
      • Zion NP
      • Bryce Canyon NP
      • Grand Canyon
      • Sedona
    • Cuba >
      • Varadero
      • Jeep Tour
      • Havana
    • Cozumel >
      • All-Inclusive
      • Island Tour
      • Tulum
      • About Town
    • UK & Ireland >
      • London >
        • Ealing
        • Tower of London
        • Westminster
        • British Museum & the Eye
        • Thames & Greenwich
        • Victoria & Albert Museum
      • Northwest >
        • Grasmere
        • Chester
        • Liverpool
      • Southeast >
        • North Marston
        • Oxford
        • Hughenden Manor
        • Brighton
      • IRELAND >
        • Dublin
        • Killarney & Dingle
        • Muckross
      • York
      • West Midlands >
        • Hereford
        • Shrewsbury
      • Wales
      • Southwest >
        • Bath
        • Cornwall
    • Arizona >
      • Phoenix
      • Biosphere
      • Tucson
      • Nogales
      • Tombstone
      • Chiricahua
      • Kitt Peak
      • Casa Grande
  • I See You
  Lunatic Writer

Movie Review: GRAVITY

12/21/2013

1 Comment

 
Picture



I guess it’s time for me to release my Christmas Grinch. I am quite floored by the attention the movie Gravity is receiving as a possible Academy Award winner for 2013.

The problem with this film is that it has no story.  Okay, here’s the story:  Astronaut struggles for survival in malfunctioning spaceship. That’s it. There’s no character development. Virtually no character interaction.  George Clooney appears early in the movie but, other than playing himself--George Clooney--which is all directors seem to require of him nowadays, he adds very little to the film.




Picture
Basically Gravity brings the viewer ninety minutes of special effects, and possible queasiness.  If your intention in going to see this film is to get a sense of what it would be like to orbit around the Earth in a spaceship, you will be satisfied. The special effects are good and realistic.  But you could get the same satisfaction from watching a real time video broadcast from Chris Hadfield on the ISS. 


Picture


Or better yet, check out the vastly under-rated movie, 2010, made way back in 1984 which features an unforgettable sequence of a nauseated John Lithgow floating from one spinning spacecraft to another.  Very impressive cinematography even today, and an infinitely better story.









Picture






Or, as another alternative, check out Ender’s Game whose portrayal of a weightless environment is just as captivating and much more imaginative plus the movie has real character interaction and an actual story.


 





Sandra Bullock does a creditable job in Gravity.  George Clooney does his usual—just give me my pay cheque cameo—and there is lots of exploding space debris.  This is hardly the stuff of Academy Awards.  So why has this movie done so well at the box office? I really don’t know.  I can only speculate—optimistically—that there is a renewed interest among the public in space exploration—in rising above earthbound scandal, gridlock and greed. And maybe there persists in our collective unconscious the memory that yes, indeed, we did actually send people to the moon one time, and maybe we should think about doing it again. In a way, this is what my still unpublished novel, Lunatics, is all about.

Picture
Finally, I guess the other reason I’m not such a great fan of this movie, is that they stole the title from my stage play about Isaac Newton without ever asking my permission.  I could sue them, I suppose, but then again, it is Christmas.
1 Comment
Jonathan
12/21/2013 10:07:17 am

why is it doing well at the box office? maybe cause it's ridiculously highly rated on critic aggregator sites like rotten tomatoes and metacritic - at one point it had something like 95% on metacritic or something, which looks like quite the endorsement, and might lead a person to believe it's a must-see - i almost did see it, except i was one day late to catch it in theatres, but at one point i was considering seeing it without knowing much except that it was a space movie and had a high rating... which maybe shows that those meta-critic sites aren't necessarily good sources to go by, and doing well at the box office isn't much to go by either, and academy awards? didn't gladiator win best picture one time? and titanic? it's meaningless - and i'm guessing your review is accurate, so thanks for saving me the trouble of watching that movie, good review

btw, it seems to me, you can't use a one word title for something and expect it hasn't been done and will be done a thousand times again, with all the culture that's piled up and keeps being churned out on an industrial scale - which is annoying, it's sort of demoralizing, when you've come up with a two or even three word title that seems pretty neat and unique, do an internet search, and it's been thought of a hundred times already, but that's why i don't do internet searches, i just use whatever i thought worked, even if it's a one word title, accept that at least in a categorical sense i'm being redundant, but true to my own inspiration, and try not to worry about it

Reply



Leave a Reply.






    ​Author

    Brian d'Eon, fiction writer: whose work modulates between speculative, historical and magical realism.

    Categories

    All
    1917
    2010
    Ainsworth
    Albert Einstein
    Apollo XI
    Astronomer
    Baillie Grohman
    Baillie-Grohman
    Begbie
    Big Ledge
    Blade Runner 1982
    Blade Runner 2049
    Bluebell Mine
    Book Review
    British Colonist
    Bruce Dern
    Capitalism Vs Climate
    Chapbook
    Civilization
    Climate Change
    Cosmology
    C.S. Lewis
    Dandelions
    Davie
    Dead Crow
    Deon
    D'Eon
    Diana Morita Cole
    Draper Catalogue
    Dreams
    E-books
    Economics
    Editing
    Eileen Delehanty Pearkes
    Eta Carinae
    Fassbender
    Flashbacks
    Gravity
    Gray
    Green Manifesto
    Grohman
    Guess Who's Back?
    Hammill
    Harold Fry
    Hayao Miyazaki
    Hendryx
    Hitler
    Internees
    Isaac Newton
    Jamaica
    Jfk
    Jobs Vs Environment
    John Keats
    Kenneth Clark
    Kootenays
    Korolev
    Lily Langtry
    Lunatics
    Mark Twain
    Matt Haig
    Mikado
    Millet
    Nebraska Movie
    Nelson
    Nixon
    Novel
    Novel Drafts
    Novella
    Novel Structure
    Opium
    Oscar Nominees
    Photography
    Pitch
    Plague
    Point Of View
    Primack & Abrams
    Publishers
    Queenie Hennessy
    Rachel Joyce
    Rejection
    Review
    Richard Bausch
    Sam Mendes
    Saoirse Ronan
    Science And Religion
    Science Literacy
    Sean Arthur Joyce
    Serkis
    Shakespeare
    Sideways
    Sinixt
    Sproule
    Sputnik
    Steamer
    Stranger Things
    Submissions
    Sweet Melancholy
    Telescope
    The Humans
    The Price Of Transcendence
    The Wind Rises
    Travel
    Treasure Beach
    Van Gogh
    Victoria
    View From The Center Of The Universe
    Von Braun
    Winter Photos
    Yeats

    Archives

    February 2022
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    June 2019
    October 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012