I've been tracking the approach of Duncan Jones' forthcoming "space miner" feature Moon, and thought I'd blog a few of those sources today, on the occasion of its debut at Sundance.Kevin Spacey plays the voice of an AI presence, Sam Rockwell plays the space protagonist, and the film is directed by David Bowie's son — so, I'm in already. Over at i09, Meredith Woerner writes:
The dark but beautiful space-isolation movie Moon, starring Sam Rockwell, is finally starting to explain why our astro-miner starts losing his mind. Moon will screen at Sundance this year and I couldn't be more excited to learn more about what David Bowie's son Duncan Jones (aka Zowie Bowie) thinks about space madness.
Then, a few days later, i09 scored some video clips. Cinematical pointed to various links for stills and more background on the film, which opens on May 25 in US theaters, and today Cinematical posted a review from Sundance. Here's a snip:
Moon evokes many things — the nature of the human experience, the nature of employee-management relations, how the odds are fairly good that the future will be exactly like today, but more so. With all of its far-flung inventions, impeccable visual design and Clint Mansell's eerie score, Moon boils down to a single man having a long conversation in isolation, telling himself a few lies and opening his own eyes to a few truths; Rockwell, playing the only person for tens of thousands of miles, has no one else to act against, and much of his plight has to be conveyed through special effects that gave him little or nothing to work with on-set.
Many reviews of Moon will go to great pains to preserve its twist — as will I — but let it also be said that Moon is more than just a film defined by its twist. Moon has a cat in the bag, yes, but it knows when to open the bag and bring out the cat, fairly early on, so we can take a good look at both and think about what they really mean. Jones (who, not coincidentally, is David Bowie's son; Sam Bell and Major Tom could be distant relations) has made a science fiction film that's not about aliens but instead about alienation, not about future technologies but instead about the people who'll have to live and work and cope with them.
Here's the IMDB listing. Trailer please? (Big thanks, Susannah Breslin!)
