sunshine - preview @ hoyts melbourne central

Last night I attended a preview screening of Danny Boyle's Sunshine at the Melbourne Central Hoyts with a q & a featuring director and actor Rose Byrne following. What a fucking travesty!! Never in all my years have I seen a cinema fuck up a screening so badly. We were maybe a third of the way through as we cut to what I thought was an overly obtuse dream sequence: Capa the ship's physicist played by Cillian Murphy (that man has crazy blues eyes) dreaming his death in reverse, ambient music playing all through as you watched the final moments of the mission. It dragged on. And on. And on. Boyle what are you doing I asked myself? Sure Kubrick set a high standard in sci-fi incomprehensibility but this makes no sense. It's as if the film is playing backwards. Fuck it is playing backwards!

I looked to my left and right searching for my friends' expressions: Mike to my left leaning in towards his boyfriend and Darren passively watching the screen. Am I not arty enough, it that it? Is this doubt a sign that I am missing the point, not getting it? No seriously the film is playing backwards, they're fucking ruining the film as I watch characters dying as the end game plays out or in or something. Whispers grew to open protests as the lights come up and there are apologies as apparently the reel was wound backwards but everything would be up and running in say five or ten, so take a toilet break or grab a snack at the candy bar or some shit.

A fucking hour we waited before they offered us the choice to watch the rest of the film or leave with a full refund. A few opted out but the vast majority stuck around to watch the rest of Doyle's much anticipated space adventure to the sun. It was three years in the making and it has been hailed by April's Empire magazine as breathing new life into a tired and banal genre of sci-fi cinema that had suffered so much after years of brainless blockbusters offered up to us by hollywood a la Armageddon. Well yes... and Hoyts fucked it up or someone did, maybe the distributor I don't know and I don't care. Call me a purist but I think a film should be watched first time straight through in its entirety and the right way round and maybe I'm a traditionalist jump-cut Jean Luc Goddard shaking your head at me but fuck you I don't care.

The film came back on without the sound and not from where we left off, missing who knows how much. I had finally settled in and began to absorb myself in the story again when they stopped the film. Apparently the reels were mislabelled and out of order and it was impossible to continue.... fuck.

The q & a continued anyway with Boyle and Byrne perfectly apologetic and friendly but it's really difficult to discuss a film that the audience hasn't seen and while they'll be mailing us out replacement tickets to see it at some later date they've destroyed the magic. And I know it sounds trite but I think there is something sacred about the movie going experience. There's something deeply freudianly mirror-stage (thanks Roland Barthes) about sitting there in the dark losing yourself in other worlds and when you consider the premium price of tickets and the five-fifty I paid for M&Ms what I lost isn't made up for by a replacement voucher.

confessions of a hypochondriac

Perhaps the hypochondriac in me that is a little concerned, a little worried about all this, I thought to myself as I lay there passively through an ultrasound on my testicles today.

"Can you hold your penis up on your stomach please," instructed my not too unattractive ultrasound technician as he pushed back my gown smearing gel on the probe and he began to move it around on my balls, first my right and then my left. I tried to think of anything that wouldn't end in me getting an erection and further complicate what was already a pretty awkward situation. This considering the week I'd gone without wanking-required for another test tomorrow- and this I suppose the most action I'd seen in nearly four months.

His name was John, my technician that is, as I made special mental note to remember it, thinking it's important to know the name of any man with his hand on my nutsack. I stare at the ceiling. Nothing like the dentist's office where there are all those calming posters of rainforests and deserts and far away places where they hope you'll be as they drill cavities and root canals. There is no noise, nor traffic or din of other doctors and patients in the room to distract me, just the hum of the machine. The room is on basement level of St Vincent's hospital and I'm the last patient of the day, just John and I and I think the receptionist somewhere about turning lights off. So I turn my attention to the machine and wonder at the different size probes next to me and what they might be used for ... he sure is spending an inordinate amount of time around my left testicle as I notice the soundless vibrations and the warmth the machine is generating.

"Do you normally feel any pain in your left testicle?" he asks me. Why? What's wrong? "No, not normally," I reply. He hums recognition without giving away anything and hands me a towel to remove the excess gel. So I thank him, get dressed and leave.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You couldn’t help it that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed—so you were a good man just the same.”

Said a dying Mary Kathleen. Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird. p226

If our souls are the stars projected onto earth then which star is mine?

the point - think about your troubles

On February 1971, early evening, the American TV station ABC broadcast the 74 minute long "Movie of the Week" called The Point!; a story about Oblio the only round headed boy in the Land of Point, who feeling 'different' goes on an epic journey of the mind, body and soul, accompanied by his dog arrow, to get the bottom of it all. * It's a tale all about diversity and tolerance and a lot of other hippy crap but don't let that scare you, from what I've seen it looks kinda cool. Here's a clip from the film and I must admit it's made me feel all intuned to that deep hum the earth makes as it flies around the sun and well yes the music is by Harry Nilsson who, I'll be honest I only know because of that song from Midnight Cowboy "Everybody's Talkin'" but yeah, I'm sure I was going somewhere with this.

Anyway I think I want to track down the rest of this film. Yes yes, well enjoy.