April 11th, 2011

Into the Bay

Will You Stay In Our Continually Repeating Lovers' Story?

I went at least two thirds of a year believing I was 32. Discovering that this is actually my thirty second birthday is actually kind of a good feeling. I feel like I get to do-over a year.

For my birthday yesterday, I went with my family to see Source Code, a perfectly decent Science Fiction film. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but I don't feel movies always need to be. It's the second feature by Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, and the first with a big studio budget behind it. Which is probably why Jones didn't decide to do anything too crazy--one senses the pitch to studio producers; "It's Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day." Fortunately the film resembles the latter more than the former. Also, unlike Groundhog Day, it invokes quantum physics, as Captain Stevens, the protagonist, actually repeats the same moments in parallel universes, rather than experiencing exactly the same moments, which provokes some interesting questions about how Stevens perceives the people he meets. He may save someone in one reality, but does he at all bear the weight of all the other versions of that person he didn't save?

Howard Stern had said the movie felt like a Hitchcock film, and he's right. I think there are several deliberate references to North By Northwest, particularly in Chris P. Bacon's Bernard Herrmann-ish score and the visuals constructed with the silver passenger train. Not quite as blatant as all the Hitchcock references in 12 Monkeys, but it's there.

Who wants pollen?

The recent days of heavy rain followed by hot, sunny weather seem to have produced, among other things, a sort of daisy apocalypse in a nearby field;

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