February Dark Skies

 Usable dark night nights in February in this part of Canada are extremely rare.  If it is clear, it's usually far too cold to be standing outside with a telescope.  From where I observe there is no warm room.  The car can't be used, as the turbulence from the heat of the engine would cause poor seeing conditions in the local air  Images would "swim" in the eyepiece.  This is why telescopes cannot be mounted on rooftops of heated buildings.  I have a threshold working temperature and I can't go much below that.  It was clear Saturday night and part of Sunday night, and the temperatures were within my range of tolerance!  February skies are spectacular due to their extreme darkness when there is no snow on the ground.  Orion is high up and an unforgettable sight.  Among other reasons, this is a great time of year to observe.  Those lucky people in southern climates.

Sunday night at 8:15 pm I happened to look up from the eyepiece and noticed a cloud bank coming in from the east.  I figured I had perhaps ten or fifteen minutes of clear sky remaining before I had to shut down.  It was 26 degrees F, which just happened to be the dew point temperature.  By 8:20 I was completely immersed in dense fog.  It had been fog, not clouds, approaching, and it came almost lightning fast.  By 8:30 I had packed up and was commencing my long drive home, at a much slower speed than usual.  I have never encountered an instant fog like that before.  At least I managed about 90 minutes of observing before it arrived.

In film news, there are three to report, two of them my picks and one of Deb's.  Most recently we watched Arab Blues, a 2019 French/Turkish film that is supposed to take place in Tunisia.  Here are two blurbs from the Mubi website about the film: 

Selma has returned to Tunis and wants to open up a psychotherapy practice. As she settles in, she’s faced with increasing complications. There isn’t just the matter of finding patients, but she also needs to navigate a confusing bureaucratic circus to get the right papers to run her practice.

A charming fish-out-of-water comedy, this debut feature places local cultural anxieties on the therapist’s couch. Starring an effortlessly charismatic Golshifteh Farahani, Arab Blues affectionately maps the social landscapes of post-revolution Tunisia with wit, warmth, and a keen eye for the absurd.

 

We last saw Ms Farahani as the housewife of the bus driver in Jim Jarmusch's Paterson.  She is perfect in the role of the therapist who begins to help so many people in her area.  She seems to weather all of the setbacks and hostilities, but even she has her breaking point.  There is a lot of not too subtle criticism of the country's bureaucracy (it was not filmed in Tunisia, needless to say), but even so, she wants to live there.  She recognizes the needs of the people (they are just people, after all) and is trained to help them.  Her young cousin and a friendly by the book cop offer some contrast to the main theme of the film.  Well worth seeking out, as I am sure a lot of Arabic women already have.

 

Leaving Mubi Feb. 7th. 

 

That was my leaving soon choice.  My regular choice was Jacques Tati's 1967 epic comedy Playtime.  This is a hit and miss film, but when it hits, it is quite hilarious.  Tati, however, had the same thing to say about modern times, and he says it over and over.  Architecture, travel posters, American tourist groups, Paris traffic, and all night restaurants get sent up in this perhaps overlong film.  The night at the restaurant is way too long, and sometimes seems to happen in real time.  When the dawn finally comes, viewers are no doubt relieved.  One of the scenes (among many) I really enjoyed was when the high energy jazz group in the restaurant calls it quits due to parts of the ceiling falling on them and their equipment.  Suddenly there is dead silence, and the entire film comes to a standstill.  Then an American woman volunteers to play piano, and she begins by playing slow and soft music.  The film changes gears completely, all within the space of a minute or two, and it comes off brilliantly.  Filmed in widescreen format, one must watch all parts of the screen at times, since the main action in centre may not be the intended focus of attention.  Viewers can miss many jokes by not glancing off to a side.  Definitely worth catching, but it is not my favourite Tati film.  Criterion has a 6 minute intro given by Terry Jones!

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

 Going back a week now, Deb's final film festival choice was The Day The Earth Caught Fire, a Val Guest British film from 1961.  Atomic bomb tests cause the Earth's axis to tilt at a steeper angle, and that seems to throw things out of whack.  We get to watch cynical reporters try to come to grips with events, which in include strange fog, hurricanes, catastrophic fires, earthquakes, and ultimate doom for the planet.  Sound familiar?  Climate change at its most dramatic.  The film suffers from really bad science (an eclipse that comes days too soon) and one of the cheapest endings one could imagine.  Does the Earth survive or doesn't it?  They won't tell us.  Boo.  Still worth watching for SF classic film fans, this was a restored print.

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

Astronomy Season

So far this session I have enjoyed one clear night.  A very chilly clear night.  My lonely sight near giant windmills had snow and ice on the ground.  On arrival just after sundown it was 25 F.  Upon leaving around 11:30 pm it was 21 F.  I usually use a small computer to locate fainter objects that are difficult to find by just "pointing," but it was too cold for the little 9v battery that powers it.  So I went back to my primitive observing days and "pointed."  I didn't do too badly, either.  I am currently observing the tail end of winter constellations.  The spring ones are well up by the time I pull out.  I am on the fringe of the Milky Way in Canis Major and Puppis, both low lying constellations from northern latitudes.  But talk about stars!  When observing galaxies, the observer is usually looking away from the Milky Way, into deep space.  But when looking towards the Milky Way (summer and winter, mostly), the observer peers into the star fields and clusters that make up our galaxy.  So Tuesday night was all about observing star clusters.  I managed to log 13 new ones for me, including a deep southern globular cluster in Puppis that I never thought I would see so clearly.  It was a spectacularly clear night.

It is now cloud, rain, and snow season once again, but Sunday night looks promising (but cold). 

Deb has been sorting through our vast comic book collection from the 70s and 80s.  She is preparing to sell them off tomorrow.  We'll see how that goes.  Had the mice not chewed a good many of them, and water not damaged many others, we might have made a sweet bundle from the sale.

Deb's newest film is now out there, as it begins to enter festivals.  And there has already been an acceptance, from Atomacon in North Charleston, South Carolina.  It's a major SF event that also has a SF film festival.  The short (12') animated film takes a short story I wrote many years ago, updates and improves it, and has the look of a graphic novel.  We are both hoping it will be widely accepted by certain kinds of film festivals, and we seem to be off to a good start (if you wish to see the film, go to Deb's website (see link at upper left).  Near the top of her "films" page is a link to Will Ye No Come Back Again).

In film news, possibly the stupidest film to ever win a major Oscar managed to win an Oscar.  As I said in an earlier blog, the movie seems perfect for its time.  Everyone everywhere wants everything, and they want it now.  The breakneck pace of the film is also indicative as to what social media and instant gratification has done to the human brain (so far).  It can (and will) get worse, especially when the slew of copy cat films begin to emerge.  I might have been the only person on the planet in the 1970s who thought that Star Wars was the worst SF movie I'd ever seen (my opinion hasn't changed much).  So I might also be the only person on the planet (though Deb agrees with me) who thinks that the 2023 Oscar winner is a load of virtually worthless celluloid.

At the opposite end of the film spectrum from the 2023 Oscar winner is a film we recently saw by Jim Jarmusch, and both loved.  Take this review as the kind of movie that I think people really ought to be watching.  Paterson, from 2016, is a quiet film where not much happens.  It's about a man named Paterson who is a bus driver in Paterson, NJ.  We follow him and his wonderfully quirky wife through one week of their day to day existence.  It will be a rewarding week in many ways, mostly for viewers.  Paterson (the bus driver) is also a poet, and his mind is constantly turning over words and phrases as he goes through his day.  They live in a small house and own a small dog.  Every evening Paterson takes the dog for a walk, leaving the dog outside a neighbourhood bar as he sips his nightly glass of beer.

Besides the man, the wife, and the dog, we get to know the bartender, a few of the customers, and two people interested in poetry that briefly encounter Paterson.  There is only one dramatic moment in the whole movie, and it is brief and thankfully resolves calmly.  Even when the bus breaks down with passengers, it is a quiet event, though the director gets some mileage from it.  With just the right amount of humour, love, passion, and memorable moments, this film should have won even more awards than it did.  The dog did win the Palme Dog at Cannes, anyway.  A true sleeper film, it should not be missed by any cinema lover.

Now showing on Mubi, and worth several viewings. 

My leaving choice for the week was Maelstrom, a film by Denis Villeneuve from 2000.  Entertaining if somewhat forgettable, it follows a troubled young woman through several catastrophic events that occur almost simultaneously:  she has an abortion and it truly bothers her, she loses her job, and she kills a man in a hit and run accident while drunk driving.  With three strikes like that against you, it's tough to go on.  She meets the son of the man she killed, and things get even more complex.  His earlier film, August 32nd on Earth was also a challenge to watch, though it did have its rewards, like this film.  Not for everyone, but a credible film nonetheless.  However, coming right after the Jarmusch feature, well, it just doesn't stand up.

Leaving Criterion March 31st. 

Deb's main film choice last weekend was Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, a fascinating look into the famous author and neurologist, with plenty of film devoted to him speaking in his last year of life.  He brought the subject into the 21st C, and though he was ridiculed and ignored for much of his life, he now has a worldwide following and a legacy that has led many into the field for themselves.  His  observations and insight into the human mind, especially as it relates to Alzheimer's, Tourette, and other almost untouchable problems of the mind have advanced the cause several degrees.  His life was very troubled.  As a gay doctor he was unable to fulfill any kind of relationship on peril of being jailed until his later years, and his treatments and written studies were rejected by the medical community.  The documentary is a pretty straight forward one, but fairly representative of a helpful life lived to its fullest.  Highly recommended.  We have only read his music book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.  I will be adding to that list very soon.

From 2019, now showing on Mubi.

Finishing up Deb's weekend choices was Guy Madin's film of the Winnipeg Ballet's version of Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary.  From 2002 it has a running time of less than 75 minutes, but seems way longer.  It is not that riveting to watch on the screen, despite many cinematic techniques at work.  I'm not sure I would have even enjoyed the actual ballet.  Let's just say that it's a story that has been done before, and though to my knowledge it has never been danced till now, that might just be a good thing.  Not the way to start getting into Guy's films.  In b & w, with colour accents (such as blood).

Leaving Criterion March 31st. 

Mapman Mike