Matter Anti-Matter
Welcome to Matter Anti-Matter, a site about nerd stuff. By day, I work at Kickstarter.
***
You can also find me here .
-
Here is Michael Okuda’s site dedicated to saving Project Constellation and human space exploration.
If you’ve been following the debate since President Obama announced plans to scrap funding for human space exploration in favor of advancing technologies for unmanned space missions, Okuda’s site makes an extensive argument for why that’s a mistake.
For a point of comparison, here’s the New York Times‘ take on the Obama Administration’s new direction.
Is grounding NASA’s astronauts a good idea? Can we trust that private space flight entrepreneurs will step up to the plate if we need to ferry people into space? Will this new direction speed up technological advancement for space exploration, or waste years of work already spent on the Ares?
What do you think?
(Image via Michael Okuda)
-
NASA, you are the best at crazy space kersplosions and punning.
-
It’s Tuesday. It’s cold. Listen to this Clint Mansell track “Memories (Someone We’ll Never Know”) from the movie Moon. Then sleep.
-
I finally saw Duncan Jones’ Moon at the local Sundance Theater this week (yes, after whining about how no theaters near me were showing Moon, it came). If you have yet to see it, do not delay! This one deserves to be seen on the big screen. I mentioned the beautiful soundtrack in an earlier post, and let me tell you, seeing this movie made that music even more haunting in its spartan dashes of piano against methodical drumbeats. As for the movie itself, I guarantee you will leave the theater with a nifty pile of philosophical questions that probe those eternal questions of what it means to be human. Sam Rockwell’s performance is particularly noteworthy. His motivations and internal conflicts never seem like forgone conclusions, and this is where the movie excels the most.
Moon is that rare movie that I’d classify as “high” science fiction. Even though such distinctions are a bit old fashioned and snooty sounding, it’s a useful way of distinguishing between movies like Alien and movies like Alien vs. Predator. The former fully ensconces you in the terrifying possibilities of predacious life forms beyond the realm of your worst nightmares juxtaposed against the horror of human greed, while the latter makes you you realize that hollywood is composed of predacious life forms beyond the realm of your worst nightmares driven by the horror of human greed.
Moon is special. Go see it.
-
It has recently come to my attention that Clint Mansell, the man behind this excellent track “Death is The Road to Awe” from the film The Fountain, is also responsible for the soundtrack to Moon. If you’ve never seen The Fountain or listened to the soundtrack, you should do so immediately. The film is a bit of a mind-bender but utterly beautiful, and due in no small part to Mansell’s fantastic score. His music is part Godspeed You Black Emperor, part vacuum of space. The track “Welcome to Lunar Industries” from the forthcoming Moon soundtrack (set to release on July 21, 2009) is on Mansell’s myspace page queue, which you can listen to here. Until then, all we can do is go see Moon and wait. -
I have been reading many reviews of Duncan Jones’s film “Moon” which opens all over the country today. This excites me, since after Star Trek XI, the only movies I’ve been remotely interested in seeing are Drag Me To Hell and Up (both of which I still haven’t seen). ”Moon” has drawn comparisons to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and is apparently one of those heady, “cerebral” science fiction movies that instead of helping you escape the gravity of your earthbound troubles throws you hurtling back to the ground under the weight of your own flawed humanity. This, I imagine, should make for an interesting counterpoint to the hope-drenched adventurey goodness of Star Trek by bringing a harsh dose of reality to all the potential psyche-crushing effects of space travel.
Here’s a list of theaters where “Moon” will be opening today.
And for the record, while Moon will be playing in ANCHORAGE, it will not be playing at a theater near me.
