Sunshine

Shawn, Amy, and I ventured to the Arclight to see the Danny Boyle / Alex Garland film Sunshine.

I am always pleased when those on the clean and pretty side of the Orange Curtain risk life and limb to cross through the border control at La Mirada Gate and head to points north to meet me. I learned long ago that if I was to keep my O.C. friends, I was going to be the one that did the driving.

Since any sort of company is so infrequent, my house is usually in frightening shape. Even though Shawn and Amy were only going to be in the house twenty seconds or so to pick me up, I knew that one would want to use the bathroom. Cleaning that toxic waste dump took a couple of hours. Was the bathroom floor always supposed to be white?

The Arclight is a place that reminds you that Los Angeles is, in truth, not OC. A mere glance confirms that we have left the real world and are in a place that is categorically, even ontologically, different. Fashionistas, gutter punks, gays, trust fund kids, and muscleboys were all on display in the lobby of the Arclight.

Buying tickets from the supposedly automated kiosk outside was technological comedy. Our kiosk, possesed of the devil, clicked through the menus without assistance from us, and tried to refuse us entry into our movie of choice. While we subjugated it to our iron will, the people behind us likely though us idiots. Little did they know....

Sunshine was quite the movie. A crew of a ship carrying an immense bomb was destined for the dying sun. The crew hoped that the bomb would re-brighten the sun, to save the Earth from death. Unlike some sci-fi (say, The Chronicles of Riddick), this movie had enough logic to not piss me off, scientifically. Granted, the premise of using fissionable material to increase the rate of fusion was probably bogus. I recommend it on the whole. Don't expect the happiest of endings. I'm not giving much away when I tell you that some members of the crew aren't going to make it back alive.