Salocin

Stander is another gem I was lucky enough to pick up on at the Sundance Film Festival. Set in the apartheid era in South Africa, this story follows the life of Andre Stander (played by Thomas Jane), a Johannesburg police captain who has some problems with the way in which the police (and therefore he himself) maintains the apartheid regime. On riot duty, he shoots an unarmed black man, and has a crisis of conscience, requesting later that he be excused from future riot duty.

Not long after, he finds himself all alone in the police station, and realises that all the other officers are on riot duty somewhere, and caustically remarks that any white man could commit a crime in Johannesburg now and would never be caught. In a moment of decision, he enters the Kruger Bank, pulls a gun on the teller, and robs the place, disappearing into the crowd. He later returns, as a police captain, and brazenly looks into the eyes of the bank teller he only recently robbed.

Caught by his partner, escaping from prison, and robbing banks up and down the country, he quickly becomes a sensation, but always his fundamental reasons - the guilt of his prior role, and the inequity of police attention - remain. Caught up in the excitement of his current life of crime, we nevertheless feel the consequences of his decision through the unhappiness caused by his separation from his wife (played by Deborah Unger) and his father (Marius Weyers).

Harshly critical, but historically aware of the nature of the apartheid regime, and with "Catch me if you can" style, this film entertains while making a deliberately ambiguous statement about being born on one side of a fence. It shows the difficult, exciting, and ultimately damaging consequences of having to conform to a society at odds with one's own sense of right and wrong.

Directed with a sure hand by Bronwen Hughes, this film was shown to a packed house at the very chilly Sundance Film Festival this January.

Written, directed, edited and acted in by Shane Carruth, this intricate and convoluted movie was shown at the recent Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to the enjoyment of - in my estimation - almost the entire theatre.

It is true that at Sundance, one reduces one's expectations because the films can be so random (if I ever get over the horrible trauma of the experience, I might one day tell you about the techno fish), but many are actually gems which beg to be discovered. Devoid of the big studio peer pressure and constrained by budgets smaller than the wallets they're held in, filmmakers with true ambition and some talent find themselves wringing filmworthy performances from undemanding actors, cheap rental equipment and by burning the midnight oil refining every inch of the script.

What results in this case is a movie that relies almost entirely on dialogue to communicate a story so convoluted that it probably requires several showings to fully understand (I had enough trouble getting into just one). The careful writing manages to avoid painful exposition, and while based on an unrealistic scientific premise, the script also avoids trying to explain it so clearly that it has to make up pseudo-science. As viewers, we end up content that it works, and that the protagonists understand it, even if we can only get it by virtue of a metaphor and a couple of circular arrows on a piece of paper.

Four men, physicists and programmers by training, work together in a garage trying to devise devices and circuitboards that will attract the attention of customers in the short term, and hopefully a venture capitalist in the longer term. While exploring the boundaries of their knowledge and experimenting with new designs, two of them consctruct a machine that seemingly does the impossible. The existence of this machine fundamentally changes their lives, and theoretically should allow them to obtain almost anything, but they are nevertheless hopelessly out of their depth when it comes to the ramifications of what they have built. Knowing this, they at first refrain from using it in ways that might put anyone at risk, but in the face of temptation, can they trust themselves, or each other, not to take advantage of their new horizons?

Cunning and engrossing, this movie demonstrates that the constraints placed upon modern filmmakers unleashes creativity. The obvious special effects and big-name actor expenditures employed by directors over-endowed with cash all too often replace, rather than enhance, the quality of the script and story, as it becomes easy to wow the audience. When the best special effect in the movie is a box that vaguely hums, but the audience still leaves the theatre thrilled, you know you've been witness to talent. I wholeheartedly recommend this to you, but realize that you would be very lucky to ever get the chance to see it.

It's very exciting to see the Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, get ready to roll onto the Martian surface. I think it's quite easy to forget how far we've come.

Thinking back to the last time we successfully sent something mobile to Mars (and I take huge liberties saying 'we', as I am not American, but hope that I can feel that this is being done, at least to some extent, by the human race), this tiny little rover was wandering around the surface, and while I'm sure a few scientists received terabytes of data, I felt that it achieved little in the way of actual physical science. Any step forward is a big step when it is made so far away and in the face of such immense technical difficulties, but the net result of the mission was spiritual rather than tangible. Nevertheless, the mission was seen as a huge achievement - the bleeding edge of exploratory science.

A few downed ships, failed missions and a tragedy in the space program, and another rover is sent to Mars. Orders of magnitude larger than the last one, with greater range, better resolution, more instruments. This is a massive step forwards. The thought that there is quite a large vehicle manoeuvering around on a terrain quite that far away is something we as a species are being much too calm about - it is an achievement that has no equal in its domain. A demonstration of how we have taken the science we already know, and applied it with such careful design and execution that we can further our knowledge and inspire generations of people to come. I stand in awe.

Now Mr. Bush has announced a (somewhat grandiose) view of the future of the space program. It looks terribly ambitious, and we've heard it all before. But this came from Mr. Bush. As anyone who reads between the lines of what I write will know, I'm not his greatest fan. But because of who he is and what I've seen, I have more confidence in this pronouncement because it came from him than I would if any other human being had made it. If only the world at large could step back from their jaded view of the universe and realize the sheer wonder of what is being proposed : a trip to Mars.

Because we have seen this in the movies, we feel on some level as though it has already happened, or as if it should have already happened. After all, if we've seen the faces of our favourite actors against a Martian background, sometimes in fantastical habitats, then surely it cannot be that impossible. We've also read in some of the more imaginative press, theoretical concepts of space elevators and orbital passenger vehicles. But films and future-watching scientific theorists happily gloss over the amazing feat that it is to actually go to another planet. Perhaps a good example of a movie that is more realistic about such things is Apollo 13. It's dangerous, it's bold, it's the work of thousands of dedicated experts, it takes years to prepare, and perfection to execute; and that's just to go to the moon.

So look up at the sky, and let the breath catch in your throat, because we may just be getting ready to do it all on a scale never before seriously envisaged. We might actually be going to Mars.