Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

The years move faster than the days

Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:32 pm Comments (1)

Well, September was a bit of a tizzy. Harking up and down across the country to attend a course during the week and then being too exhausted during the weekend to do anything. That routine hasn’t exactly changed, it’s just I had the pleasure of getting a cold and spending the whole week in one place, which helped me gather my bearings, I guess.

I watched Dark Star. This is the first film I’ve watched since the start of September, and man, I didn’t realise how much I missed that little routine! (I think the last film I saw was Dragon Ball Evolution. It was a decent little romp. My dad described it as something to the effect of “Buckaroo Banzai on crack.”)
You know it’s a Ragey review when it wonders if it’s even worth summarising the movie’s plot. Four guys are in space destroying “unstable planets” for a living, and getting mighty sick of it. The crew miss Earth, their homes, their hobbies and their ex-captain, who died and is kept in cryogenic stasis. Everybody’s getting on each other’s tits and nobody gives a damn about anyone else’s problems, be it mysterious malfunctions or beach ball alien on the loose. The only thing that grabs everyone’s attention is a sentient bomb threatening their mortal integrity.

I’ve read a lot about the movie before, but it’s hard to carry across its unique atmosphere into text. Yeah, you’ve got the popular elements such as the sentient bomb and beach ball alien, but a lot of the movie is just of the crew trying to futilely keep themselves occupied and entertained between planet-busting. There’s a ponderous, low-key feel to the movie that really captures the lonely isolation of these guys in the deepest space… and at the same time, there’s a comic, almost Looney Tunes style of oddball humour that gives it a kinda surreal feel, such as explosive charges being set off to loosen an elevator floor, leaving Pinback smoking and blackened as he clambers out. In the thick of a crisis, Doolittle speaks to their frozen ex-captain, who comes across as slow and slightly senile, asks him why they don’t talk more often, and is more interested in hearing about football than answering his questions.

Like I said, it’s hard to carry across in text, but it’s a vibe that simultaneously sombre and amusingly surreal, and I really, really enjoyed it because of that. Of all things, what cemented the movie as a winner for me was the catchy country and western song used for the title and ending sequences, especially in the latter instance. It’s a complete shaggy dog story and nothing is accomplished by the movie’s end, but the ending was somehow bleak, uplifting and darkly comical all at once, and that piece of music just completely nailed it.

Can we expect website updates soon? I wouldn’t bet on it, I’m just too shattered to do anything beyond lying around like a vast slug. I am slowly working on the Bomberman shrine revamp with fleshed out content and fancy new designs, though given the scale of the damn thing, the chances of even porting over everything from the current site anytime soon seems comical. Here’s one of the mostly-finished pages to satisfy anyone’s curiosity, though. Everything but the reference section is done, and only because I’m still trying to work out what on earth I’m going to do with those pages.