Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Nightly Nerdlinger News Epi 18

Hey all, Verm here with a quick bit of buzz about a little retro-cool sci-fi flick that all true nerdlings need to support that came out Friday, June 12. The movie is called Moon and it's one and only character, Sam Bell, is played by Sam Rockwell, who you may know from such films as The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where he played Zaphod Beeblebrox and Galaxy Quest where he played Guy Fleegman, the nervous "redshirt" crewman.

Moon is about a Helium-3 miner under a three year contract on the moon. Helium-3 has become the leading source of energy on Earth and there are mining outposts dotted around the moon extracting it from the rock. It seems to be a largely automated affair with an AI and one crewman running the entire operation at each widely spaced outpost. The suspense kicks in when, with only 2 weeks left on his contract Sam's health has been deteriorating and he's in an accident. He awakes back at base to find a younger him has rescued him. The question is, well, who, why, what and all that jazz. So suspense and deep internal probing are the theme of this movie, along with a lot of interesting takes on moon mining and solitary survival.

The work on this movie is very old school with tons of model work and sets and minimal CG. So it looks like Silent Running, 2001 and original Star Wars. Which is a good thing. Unfortunately it's an independent film and is only going to be in limited release, so if it's showing in your area, go see it! Maybe it will get a wider release if it gets a good response.


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