05-18-2020, 11:08 PM
I watched this because it has Yoko Tani in it, who was my English teacher in 4th Grade.
Okay, that's a bald-faced lie. There were no Asians in my grade school or high school. No blacks either. Nor Mexicans for that matter. We were fine-tuned for racism.
There were lots of Amish, though, at least until they got yanked out of school to help on the farms. That was back when they had farms. Now they're mostly employed as carpenters. Though some raise Shetland ponies, because they're popular and can be sold as pets.
But back to The Silent Star. The first East German science fiction film, it is based on The Astronauts, a novel by Stanislaw Lem. I recently became aware of the movie and have been trying to track it down. It turned up on Kanopy, which along with Hoopla has deals with many libraries (among them Santa Cruz, I'm pretty certain), so you might check to see if you can sign up for Hoopla and Kanopy.
The movie is in color and much better than I expected. True, it's got stilted characters, and women are emotional and subordinate. But hey, they're intelligent, educated, and in professional fields. There's various nationalities and ethnicities in the mix as Earth prepares to send a crewed rocket to Venus. Lots of refreshing world cooperation. That is, until fucking America gets involved. Bastards. But still, once the crew is assembled, the conflicts are more of humanity against the unknown.
A great rocket ship, and parts of Venus reminded me of a Tanguy painting with bejeweled biomorphs. But there's lots more strange visuals to the place. And the whole mystery of what is going on is satisfactorily complicated.
Golden Age SF, so a bit dated, but hey, based on a work by Stanislaw Lem. I went to high school with him.
Okay, that's a bald-faced lie. There were no Asians in my grade school or high school. No blacks either. Nor Mexicans for that matter. We were fine-tuned for racism.
There were lots of Amish, though, at least until they got yanked out of school to help on the farms. That was back when they had farms. Now they're mostly employed as carpenters. Though some raise Shetland ponies, because they're popular and can be sold as pets.
But back to The Silent Star. The first East German science fiction film, it is based on The Astronauts, a novel by Stanislaw Lem. I recently became aware of the movie and have been trying to track it down. It turned up on Kanopy, which along with Hoopla has deals with many libraries (among them Santa Cruz, I'm pretty certain), so you might check to see if you can sign up for Hoopla and Kanopy.
The movie is in color and much better than I expected. True, it's got stilted characters, and women are emotional and subordinate. But hey, they're intelligent, educated, and in professional fields. There's various nationalities and ethnicities in the mix as Earth prepares to send a crewed rocket to Venus. Lots of refreshing world cooperation. That is, until fucking America gets involved. Bastards. But still, once the crew is assembled, the conflicts are more of humanity against the unknown.
A great rocket ship, and parts of Venus reminded me of a Tanguy painting with bejeweled biomorphs. But there's lots more strange visuals to the place. And the whole mystery of what is going on is satisfactorily complicated.
Golden Age SF, so a bit dated, but hey, based on a work by Stanislaw Lem. I went to high school with him.
I'm nobody's pony.