Gravity

[lettered]

Everyone is right about this movie. You should go see it.

I.) Visually stunning.

A. Best 3d ever. Why doesn't other 3d look like this? I could be persuaded to want 3d if it always looked like this.

B. This was like someone saw Hubble 3d and made a fictional story of it. Hubble 3d is my favorite museum movie of all time. It's just about the Hubble telescope, but it makes me cry every single goddamn time. It is just so beautiful, even more beautiful than Gravity.

C. Space is beautiful. Our Earth is beautiful. NASA is beautiful; ISS is beautiful; international cooperation is beautiful; astronauts are beautiful, Sandra Bullock's thighs are beautiful.

D. The force of gravity is beautiful.

II.) Feminism and casting.

A. Sandra Bullock was great, but I'm not sure why everyone is falling all over her?

1. The part is great. She did a good job with it and she didn't fail. Not everyone could have done what she did; besides the acting there must have been a lot of physically strenuous training and work--and the lady is almost fifty! All I mean is that she didn't do anything beyond what the role asked for. Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, who I usually slot in the same tier acting-wise (though I find Roberts more appealing and Ryan way more annoying) could have delivered the same thing.

2. She really does have fantastic thighs.

B. I really, really, really appreciated that this character was female. She didn't have to be. Kudos.

1. The shots of her in her underwear did not feel exploitative, and I'm not sure why. Realistically, she should have been in a flight suit. my_daroga said it had to do with "themes of rebirth," but idk; I'm just happy I felt like I was being asked to look at her because this is who she is, not because she's hot.

2. I sort of wish Clooney's part had been played by a female, mostly because of the scenes where Stone (Bullock's character) panics and Kowalski (Clooney's character) is the mentor figure, calm and reassuring, whom she looks up to. It's not that women never panic and men never comfort and mentor them in real life. It's that these are pretty stereotyped Hollywood gender roles, and in a movie that gives us such a strong central female character I would really have liked to have seen those roles subverted even more. Besides which it would have given us a blockbuster with a (visually) all-female cast.

C. That said, Clooney was as charming as ever.

III.) Amazing concept, okay script.

A. This is high concept at its best.

1. Speaking of high concept, it sort of reminded me of Alien-- high concept film whose sole focus is the human will to survive featuring a strong female protagonist.

2. This concept is so simple and fundamental that I'm mostly just shocked this film has never been made before.

B. The theme was well-matched to the concept. Very simple idea of rebirth/learning to live again matched to this desperate struggle for survival, and yet it totally worked. In this sense it was stronger than films like Alien--I feel like Ripley doesn't have a life outside of that film. The whole point of Gravity is that Stone does.

C. That said, the script was heavy-handed in places. This is a film short on dialogue (I should say monologue) and yet I still felt there was way more talking than there needed to be, especially in the scenes in which Bullock was alone. We know what she's feeling; we understand; she doesn't need to tell us with words. I wish she hadn't.

D. That said, how do you even write a film like this? There is so little talking and so much is in visuals. So much of what happens depends on the way gravity works; how do you even conceive of a scene in which the only thing at work is sheer physics--how would you know that it would be that gripping?

IV.) Science!

A. I know deGrasse Tyson tweeted about all the things wrong with this film, but the only wrong thing I noticed was that her hair didn't seem to be as floaty as it should have been.

B. I hope this movie makes people love science.

1. My high school physics teacher would love this movie. He had a list of books with physics in them and made us choose one, read it, and write a report on it. That was why I first read Ender's Game. It has limited physics, but the parts about the Battle Room and how "the gate is down" was enough for my teacher, and I've been interested to see what they will do with that in the film. Having seen Gravity, I honestly don't care anymore (about that aspect). Anyway, I just think it's so cool that this one physics concept is the central component of a well-done blockbuster movie. (And I love how it's still a factor when she returns to Earth--weighted down in the water by her suit, and then once she reaches land her difficulty in walking due to loss in muscle mass.)

2. Besides gravity, the other science component that really stood out was the beauty of Earth and the universe. If that doesn't inspire people with an interest in science, I'm not sure what will.

C. I hope this film will get more people interested in space, NASA, international cooperation for space exploration and commercial travel to space. I've been researching SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Space Adventures (which uses Soyuz spacecraft to send private citizens to space, which means I knew the exact model of the Soyuz she was driving) lately for a plantarium show I'm helping to create, and I'm really excited about Orion, which is the next crewed spacecraft planned by NASA (I would link, but due to the government shut-down, NASA website is unavailable. This has caused consternation at work!) I just feel like there's not enough public interest in space exploration, and there should be. It's worth spending money on.

V. Soundtrack was pretty cool in places.

VI. What did you think?

Comments

[amalthia]

I had a blast watching this movie and I didn't even notice her hair not floating like it should have been because I was on the edge of my seat. I'm willing to hand wave inaccuracies if the story is compelling enough.

I'm also amazed at how well the 3D worked, just wish more movies used it properly.

I thought Sandra Bullock did a great job here. Not sure what else she could have brought to the table?

[lettered]

I'm not sure what else she could have brought to the table either, but that's part of what I mean. She did exactly what the script called for, and she did it well. But Bullock has always done that; you don't get to be where she is without doing that. She did that in every Miss Congeniality movie; it's just that the part in Miss Congeniality isn't as cool. Sandra Bullock doesn't usually get parts that are serious and cool--just like Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, or if you want to go with later generations of rom-com actors: Jennifer Garner, Rachel McAdams, Kristin Heigl, etc. I think that any of those ladies could handle this part (even if Ryan and McAdams personally drive me batty); it's doing something beyond what the script calls for that makes me sit back and say, "Wow, this actor is more than strictly competent; they're extraordinary."

I'm willing to hand wave inaccuracies, but in a movie in which the concept of gravity is central and for the most part handled in an extremely competent way, the lack of floaty hair was disappointing.

[amalthia]

I see your point.

P.S. So who was the last actress that made you sit up and take notice???

[cest_what]

the lack of floaty hair was disappointing.

I keep thinking about this, and I do think that with such short hair, the natural kink and the fact that she was probably sweating like hell would both make it less floaty than otherwise. (That said, I can't remember if she was visibly sweat-stained at all.)

For the most part, I thought the physics was amazingly good ♥

[lettered]

I kept trying to figure out how hair works, and whether 'natural kink' would keep it down when it's that short. I do think most of it would stay down, actually, but there were bits that were long enough to fluff up. And if it was sweaty it should've looked sweaty enough to stick.

I thought the physics were awesome and the science was awesome; the hair doesn't bother me all that much in the scheme of things.

[lettered]

I rewatched The Devil Wears Prada last night. Meryl Streep did something with that role that was so far beyond what the script called for that it just makes me go gah. Of course, Streep being amazing is nothing new.

Speaking of The Devil Wears Prada alumni, I was pretty impressed with Hathaway in Les Miserables. To me she went beyond what the script called for because she found a way to compensate for her lack of singing ability by making the song gut-wrenching--choking up in the middle and so on and so forth. Some of that could have been direction--I'm pretty sure she was told to make it ugly instead of beautiful--but she pulled it off.

There are actors who do what the script demands and do it well. And then there are actors who do something singular, but they always do that thing because it's sort of just who they are (John Malkovich is a great example). And then there are actors who take a script and do something extraordinary with it that is unique to that part, and they do that each and every role they play. That is the work that really blows my mind, and sometimes it makes me sad that Oscar buzz seems to be all about who got to play a really cool role.

[amalthia]

Meryl Streep is an awesome actress and she owned that role in Devil Wears Prada. I was in tears by the end of Anne Hathaway's performance in Les Miserables. After that the rest of the movie was a bit of a letdown for me.

I'm going to have to give this more thought next time I go to the movies. I tend to not think about the quality of the acting and only notice if it's lacking.