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Empire of Light

This week I flied over to SF for a one-week get-together. I almost forgot how flying is, really, but it was way more relaxing than I thought. The security in Munich was a bit funny. As I waited in line, a uniformed, blonde girl in her twenties winked me up, introduced herself as security officer and started to ask very detailed questions about what I do for the living. That dialog started off a bit like a first-level job interview with a realitvely fresh HR colleague doing some sanity checks on ones resume, but then it veered off unexpectedly.

“But what exactly do you do? What kind of software are you working on, precisely?” she asked.
Well, this question often elicits a surprisingly inadequate response from me. What is this exactly that I do? Is this what I should be doing? Why am I doing this at all? Why not am I doing something else? Why am I here in the first place? This internal monologue invariably kicks off and takes valuable seconds away from the short window of opportunity to give a coherent, timely answer without veering into morose retard territory.

“Ok, off you go”, she said with some tiredness in her eyes and winked me through,

Anyways, the 12h flight passed through without any major incident.

I watched two good films and one really great one.

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent bugs relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.


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(Per Aspera) “Ad Astra”…

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

I think Netflix guessed my foible for Interstellar-like flicks. What can be more dramatic than people affections divided by infinite grandeur of space. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, if at all, to ever have even a chance to meet again; like a pair of Vermont ants one of which accidentally got hitched on a plane to South Asia. I think thats the thrill of it, to expect something to happen against all possible (and realistic) odds.

Really like this movie despite its very flexible approach to science, and an equally stretched story.

The picture and the sound, but also Mr Pitt, compensate for the lack of above well enough for me.

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“Another Earth” – they said its science fiction🤣

I wonder sometimes what kind of people write plot summaries and classify movies into genres. Are they, as a principle, on some misguided quest to mislead the reader in the most aggravating way possible? Is this what they are after? Why are they doing it?!

As I was writing about IO, another equally badly-billed movie crossed my mind. I watched that one a long time ago. Its name was “Another Earth”, and it was billed as a science fiction (🤣🤣🤣 this fact never fails to make me smile) and its summary on imdb is: “On the night of the discovery of a duplicate Earth in the Solar system, an ambitious young student and an accomplished composer cross paths in a tragic accident.”.

The person who wrote the summary probably saw the “duplicate earth” photoshopped on the sky and thought oh it just must be kinda science fiction stuff, what else right..

Anyways.. The another earth in “Another Earth” serves exactly the same purpose as the Io in the “IO”, and is almost equally present (that is, almost not at all).

Another similarity for me, btw, is the equally strong performance of the lead actress.

..

And since I am writing about it, I need to mention this little story.

Guess what movie is this?

“A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.”

So.. so what? Its hard to write a less motivating line than that, its my honest opinion. I watched this film anyways and I’m still in awe.

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I watched an IMBD score 4.8 movie (“IO”)

Thats funny. Now and then I use to click on the random flick on Netflix, and mostly I just stop after a few minutes in a state of an all-encompassing boredom. “Man ive seen this.. like hundreds of times .. “.. But I do this nevertheless, and sometimes I stumble upon something with a soul.

I read the IMDB reviews this time. Hmm..

Thanks to the 7/10 review I still went ahead 🙂

Its an unbalanced movie: stellar acting that really kept me hooked throughout, but less than perfect attention to detail of the world. I enjoyed the movie nevertheless. It would have been a 10 if it would try to be a bit more realistic.

Margaret Qualley was amazing. I really liked her – and her partner’s (Anthony Mackie) performance.