today i saw moon, a 2009 science fiction movie. i’ve heard about the movie before, maybe seen a trailer, or maybe read a review, but i’ve never managed to see it until i found it on dvd on friday. it is about a guy working alone on a moon base, mining helium-3. close to his three year contract, he’s looking forward to return home, to his wive and daughter. he starts seeing things, until a fatal accident and someone’s too big curiosity brings everything out of control. leads to an unpleasant discovery. (if you want to know more, read the synopsis on wikipedia.) the movie is well made, and one particularly great part is the soundtrack, composed by clint mansell. parts of it became an earworm for me:

yesterday, the german television showed the 6th part of their wildes skandinavien documentary series, this time about finnland. thankfully, someone recorded it and uploaded it to youtube:

(unfortunately, the video was removed from youtube…)

(the documentary is in german. and it seems that it was already running on arte.) the series also has movies about wilderness in denmark, norway, sweden, iceland, and greenland (all available on youtube), and there is also a “making of”. thanks to my parents for telling me about this!

moreover, the swiss television runs a documentary series about the arctic circle. you can watch and/or download all currently available episodes here (currently there are four). thanks to anmut for telling me about this!

one of the video/animation compo entries at revision was raum/zeit by subdream. it displays a lot of three-dimensional fractals and scored the second place. this was one of my favorite entries for that compo, and so here it is:

another fractal based compo entry was electronenmultiplizierer by akronyme analogiker, which is a 4k intro, i.e. an executable of size four kilobytes (that is a very small amount!) which plays something in realtime. you can watch a low-quality recording here:

today i saw a movie, called flatland, based on a 126 years old novel. a must-see for any mathematician (or must-read). it’s about politics. about thinking. about imagination.
in flatland, a two dimensional world, the third dimension is known as a myth, and it is forbidden to talk about it. there are hints, which are well-hidden from the public by the rulers. until one day, little hex went out to see these hints, and her grandfather, after having more than dream, in more than two dimensions, tries to protect her.
apparently, the movie is much easier to digest than the novel.
another reason to read that book.

i usually don’t really care about actors, directors etc. of films. but from time to time, a name recurrs often and impressively enough that i remember it. one such name is johnny depp. after some movies with him, i noticed that all movies i can remember him from were good. which is a good sign. so far, i saw

• edward scissorhands,
• the ninth gate,
• sleepy hollow,
• dead man,
• ed wood,
• pirates of the caribbean i,
• pirates of the caribbean ii,
• pirates of the caribbean iii,
• corpse bride,
• alice in wonderland.
• chocolat,

(the order is hopefully the order in which i saw them.) and as far as i remember, all of them are very good. movies i wouldn’t mind to watch again. (and again.) in fact, some of them i watched several times, in particular dead man, one of my most favorite movies. (i’m somewhat surprised i never wrote something about it. i guess i have to do that as soon as i see it again, which will be hopefully around christmas.) i first saw dead man somewhen late on tv, i’m not sure anymore why. maybe because i read that it had an interesting improvised soundtrack by neil young. anyway, this movie just blew me away.
two of the above movies, namely corpse bride and alice in wonderland, i saw on planes (air canada probably), somewhere between calgary and frankfurt.
the first pirates of the caribbean also has a special place in my memories. when watching it the first time, we had someone in the audience who, at a very few occasions, shouted something into the movie theater. i usually hate that, but this time, it made everything even more hilarious. it was just great.

while eating dinner, i watched a movie called babel. i somehow got the feeling that i already saw parts of it, or at least somehow know the story. don’t ask me why… nonetheless, the movie is really good, and centered about the theme of death. (nonetheless, nobody actually dies. at least not during the movie.)
the movie consists of a stream of intertwining stories, playing in morocco, japan, the us and mexico. on the first glance, there’s no relation, but eventually the jigsaw puzzle is completed enough to get an idea of the global picture. the movie is very emotional. love. envy. disputes. panic. fear. pain. desperation. happiness. suicidal.
there’s blood. hopeless situations. overreaction. triggered by two boys, herding goats in morocco, playing around with a rifle, a rifle they were supposed to use to protect the goats against wild animals. not understanding consequences until it is too late. an american tourist gets shot. local police searches for terrorists. one of the brothers almost dies. meanwhile, a girl, frustrated, bitter, seeks love. seeks sexual encounters. unsuccessful. haunted by her mother’s suicide, eventually appearing suicidal. her father, a hobby hunter, left his rifle in morocco. another scene, far away, two american kids taken to a mexican wedding by their nanny, as their parents did not come back in time. the parents are in morocco. returning from the wedding, the kids and their nanny end up in the desert. eventually rescued, the nanny is deported to mexico, despite living for sixteen years in the us. meanwhile, in morocco, a husband is trying to get help, for his wounded wife. stranded in a small village, far away from everywhere, the only doctor at hand being a veterinarian. almost bleeding to death. endless pain, finally ended by a helicopter ride, after a long wait.
somewhat, a happy end? maybe.
life is cruel.

star trek – the next generation. memories: old memories, and good memories. i used to watch that when i was a kid. probably the most influental science fiction series for me. i also read a huge amount of tng books, before later starting to read also a lot of star wars books. unfortunately, except the movie appearances of the tng crew, i haven’t seen any of the series for a long, long time. until a few days ago, when i noticed all seasons sitting in the dvd shelf. well, guess what i’m doing now. :) i guess that will keep me busy for some time…
one thing which is funny is that before, i always saw star trek movies and series in german, and never in english. which makes a huge difference, the voices are completely different, most notably the one of captain picard, played by patrick stewart. in most of the series and the movies, he was dubbed by rolf schult. the combination patrick stewart/rolf schult also appeared in the x-men movies, and everytime i hear and see it i have to think of captain picard… and now, i’m watching the series in english, i see patrick stewart playing captain picard… and it sounds so alien to hear his real voice. well. after a few seasons, i guess i will have adjusted.

today, i heard about, downloaded and watched valkaama, a movie released under one of the creative commons licenses. (this means that you can actually download the sources of the movie and make your own version. and, probably more important to most people, you can just copy and watch it without restrictions.) technically speaking, the movie is of good quality, except the audio, maybe. i’ve listened to the movie with headphones, which was a bit annoying since voices were often only audible on the left or the right channel, but almost never somewhere inbetween. on speakers, this is fine, but with headphones it sucks. but besides that, everything’s great. so go and watch it, but maybe not with headphones :-) the movie also features inarijärvi, one of the largest european lakes, located in northern lapland.

today, i saw dracula (imdb). the one from 1931. well, you might now think, “so what?” well, i did not just saw the movie on a big screen, but the more important reason – the one which made me pay CAD 52 for this show – was the score. the original movie did only had music played during the intro and the outro. until 1998, when minimalist philipp glass was given the task to write a score. he composed a string / piano piece, performed by him and the kronos quartet, under the direction of michael reisman. well, a philipp glass score together with the movie is still no reason to spend that much money – but a live performance of the score by philipp glass and the kronos quartett themselves, together with the movie, definitely is. the whole thing happend in the context of the high performance rodeo 2009 in calgary; an advertisement can be found here.
this was actually the first time i saw the movie. and probably the first time i saw béla lugosi in a movie not made by ed wood. well, it was quite funny, even though some of the dialogs were hard to follow because of the score.
anyway. this event was definitely worth its money.

she didn’t say it. never ever.
a cloud of dust, debris, arises. so majestic, somehow beautiful, but deadly. ripping apart the two bodies, parting them forever, leaving emtpyness. blackness wins, once again.
dil se.. (imdb), another bollywood movie, does not features a happy end in the classical sense, with blowing the lovers to dust. still, the beauty which can be found in particular in the last moments of the movie, is amazing. even though she didn’t say it, she accepts it and, somehow, expresses the yes, in her deep look into his eyes. if this isn’t, then what’s love after all?
then, in another glimpse of time, all is gone, shattered.
sounds familiar.