With a cold, foreboding atmosphere and perfect pacing, director Duncan Jones’ impressive feature debut, “Moon,” immediately sweeps you up in its existential look at the human condition of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a mining engineer on the dark side of the moon with only two weeks to go on a three-year stint spent in almost total isolation.

In what’s pretty much a one-man show, Rockwell’s superb as an ordinary man counting down the days until his flight home to a wife he misses more with each passing minute and a daughter born just before his shift began. Due to technical problems, he can’t communicate in real-time with anyone, including his loved ones and the people who run the company he works for. The long delay between each space transmission only serves to increase Sam’s feeling of disconnect and loneliness — and the strain’s starting to show. Every day he looks as though his very lifeforce is draining from him and the hallucinations have begun. (more…)

An Iowahawk Techno-pinion
by David Burge

It hardly seems possible that 40 years have now passed since Neil Armstrong put that puffy moon boot in the dusty surface of the Sea of Tranquility and uttered those immortal words — “joke’s over Aldrin, unlock the friggin’ door.” I was only 8 at the time but I remember it as if it were yesterday. My parents let my brother and me stay up late into the night to witness that historic Moon walk on our new Quasar console TV, and we watched in bleary eyed wonder at the sight of those brave astronauts and our parents passed out on the floor after one too many “Apollo 11 cocktails.” It was also the summer we discovered where Dad hid the liquor cabinet key and his Playboys.

For weeks after, we reenacted that “one small step for man” from our backyard tree house, descending the steps in Super-Slo-Mo onto the lunar crabgrass. Then we bounded out in search of our dog Buster’s steaming “moon rocks” for “moon rock fights.” Eventually Dad would yell at us to get out the moon-mower, but it did little to dent our enthusiasm for space exploration. Maybe it was just the model airplane glue talking, but for that brief moment we actually believed we were Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. But did I ever get to be Armstrong? No-o-o-o, Dave, you stupid baby, you have to be Collins. Shut up and orbit in the tree house while we drive around in the moon buggy. Sometimes if my brother had his stupid 5th grade friends over they would make me be Walter Cronkite or Jules Bergman and do the news report with Mom’s hairbrush. (more…)