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Friday, April 06, 2007 , 1:28 PM

Sunshine is waaaaaaaay HOTTTTTT! GO CATCH THE MOVIE!

Capa's message before going into the 'dead zone'

Sunshine Trailer

Sunshine Trailer 2

Caught the movie "Sunshine" yesterday, it was a very impactful movie for me, the effects and the images of the Sun (of which some are real from NASA and ESA) are simply breathtaking, and throughout the entire movie, it's just one helluva roller coaster ride into space man. In the beginning you think this is gonna be another Armageddon-like movie, then the next WHAM BAM BAM, brings you to helluva turning point here and there, and at the end of it all, yur heart is pumping and yes, you're rendered spechless. Haha trust me, when the crew members slowly die one by one, you simply don't have time to weep or tear, there's just so much going on. Heck, I'm so gonna but the DVD when it's out. Go to a good movie theater for this, it'll be worth every penny, you know how in cinemas there's this dead silence (filter out the popcorn-munching sounds and the oohs and ahhs), and the awesome sound effects and visuals, you'd feel like just walked right into space.

One word, breathtaking. I'm a huge sci-fi (war and action movies come in a close second and third) fan, but this just nailed it for me. It brings back memories of my Astronomy classes last semester of the Sun, where our lecturer showed us docu-movies/dramas about the Sun, where we learnt a lil' about a dying star, red giants, supernova and all that blah. It was nothing like Sunshine, not even close, cus' for the docus we saw in lecture, it felt more like an observation of the Sun from a safe distance. With Sunshine, you feel like you're the 9th crew member on board the Icarus II, the awesome effects and the oh-so-realistic set makes you feel like you're in it, seeing what they're seeing, feeling what they're feeling. Haha for whoever that's gonna watch the movie soon, DO NOT VENTURE FURTHER CUS' THIS POST CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS. =)

Icarus II is a space mission to reignite our dying Sun, after a previous mission the Icarus I failed its mission 7 years ago due to reasons unknown (later revealed how in a shocking revelation). Icarus II is the last hopefor Earth cus' we've already exhausted all the Uranium on Earth. These 8 people contains crew members from all over the world, haha the papers are all raving about the multi-cultural cast on set, which gives a little more depth and realism to the movie plot and character development.

After they passed the Dead Zone (the region where no signals can be sent or received from Earth due to the massive and powerful solar winds emanating from the Sun), they received a weak distress call from the Icarus I and they decided to change their trajectory and send themselves on a slingshot to Icarus I. And that stupid Trey, did so many complex calculations and measurements of angles to see if they could still complete mission after going to Icarus 1, amidst all that, he actually forgot the simplest and most basic task of changing the alignment of the shield. Without this sield, they'll literally fry in all that UV radiation. Trey just broke down psychologically and he went "I FUCKED UP! I FUCKED UP!"

And so they had to change the alignment of the shield manually, that's when 4 of the panels corked up so the captain (Hiroyuki Sanada, his acting is awesome, the calm and composed, very captain-like) and Capa (played by Cillian Murphy, get lost in his oh-so-hauntingly-blue eyes) the physicist and the only guy who knows how to operate the payload (i.e. the bomb), had to go out and rectify the problem. But a technical problem came up and the shields started altering its alignment and within minutes they were going to be exposed to the Sun and the solar winds, Captain Kaneda is so frigging noble!!! He told Capa to go back cus' he's the only on who knows how to activate the payload, and he stayed behind to rectify the last panel. This shocking scene is the first of many others to come in the movie, when you see how the Sun's UV radiation and Solar winds reachig him (at the background the suit goes 97% exposure to Sun, 0.000XX% of survival), it's breathtaking but at the same time, shocking and unnerving. To be honest, I felt more fear than sadness. Speechless.

Another scene which was memorable was the part where they reached Icarus 1 and when they entered right, there was a hell lot of dust, and one of them went "80% of the dust that you see here is human skin". Then another technical cork up and they had to return back to Icarus II manually since it drifted away, so they had to manually return to Icarus II, but they've only got one suit left and Capa had to wear it (payload operator), then the second captain Harvey don't wanna die so he command him to get out of that suit, haha but lucky Mace thought of an idea and ripped the solar-protective material and wrapped themselves in it. The plan is for them to cling on to Capa and the pressure will pull them back into Icarus II. But one of them had to stay behind to align the entrance of Icarus I with II and open the door, and Searle damn steady lar, Harvey was saying how he didn't wanna be the one, and Searle just said "I'll go", and he said it like he was just gonna fix a broken pipe or something. Then Searle walked into the observation room (where they could observe the sun behind special filters at various intensity accoding to how you want it), and he sat there and turn the filter off to literally expose himself to the Sun and disintegrate. Salute to him man.

Harvey damn suay lar, cus' he lost grip of Capa and drifted away, Capa only managed to pull Mace back, then you can actually see Harvey open his eyes and get out of his solar thingy and he froze to death, and you can see the water vapour escape into space and freeze man, then when his arm crashed onto part of the ship he broke into pieces man and the people sitting behind were going "Woah SHIT!".

Another one was they lost oxygen, so they didn't have enough oxygen, so 3 members had to be sacrificed lar, so 2 died now they had to kill off one more and that person is Trey. Then they were like voting to kill him off or not, Mace volunteered to kill him, but when he went to look for Trey right he'd already self-mutilated and killed himself. Think Trey's quite pitiful also, cus' he took responsibility and knew full well that oxygen wasn't enough. But the ship was still sounding the alarm how there wasn't enough oxygen, Capa told Icarus (the ship's system) Trey died there's only 4 left on board, then Icarus replied "Negative. There's a 5th crew on board". OMFG! At that part right I knew what a chill down your spine felt like lar! Then Capa asked where the 5th crew is and he was directed to the observatin room. That part when you saw that 5th person who was the sole survivor of the Icarus I mission, his skin is like seriously sunburnt like those 3rd degree burns, somehow he survived lar that Chao Tar Man.

This Chao Tar Man is crazy lar, he was going how they can't oppose God and if he wanted them to die they shouldn't go against the Will and whatnot and that was how he sabotaged the Icarus I mission like that son of a bitch. So scary, then this slasher flick thing began, freakin' chao tar man on the loose. So Capa got chased and he locked him in a portal. And that Chao Tar Man killed Michelled Yeoh. Then the Chao Tar Man went to shut down the systems, and the machines are losing coolent, so Mace had to dive under the coolent (ULTRA COLD LIQUID) to fix it, he got the ship running again then when he tried to crawl out of it his legs got obstructed by something and he froze to death.

Now there's only Capa, Cassie and that Chao Tar Man on board. Capa was locked in so he had to unscrew the bolts and open the door to let the pressure from space burst open the other door so he could get in. Haha so he wore that gold and ultra bulky suit, then when everything was sucked out into space, you can see Michelle Yeoh flying out man. So as they're approaching the Sun, Capa had to activate the payload. So Capa went to dislodge the ship from the payload. He entered the payload and there was no turning back, he found Cassie and Chao Tar Man was there. That Chao Tar Man still tried to stop them lor that freak, then before Cassie collapsed she said "You must complete the mission", so Capa struggled to the operating room to activate the payload. At that final moment right, when the bombs got activated and you can see the whole thing lighting up, everything was golden and so freakin' beautiful, yeah he's dying but weirdly, there was this calm and serenity, you could see the inside of the Sun, how the particles are reacting with matter from the bomb. At that scene, the entire cinema lapsed into dead silence lar, it was so powerful man that part.

Sunshine is one helluva movie, left me spellbound after the movie, heart rate's prolly 200 man. This movie is simply stunning, you guys should really go catch it.

Found this excerpt from this Sunshine website which Gia Millinovich has set up and maintained for months which somehow explained the impact of the film. This webby has many resources to the movie, and background info on some Science facts and stuff, they've got videos and image galleries in there as well, go check it out! http://www.sunshinedna.com/

Here goes:

Boyle was drawn to both the Icarus II’s literal voyage to the Sun as well as its crew’s psychological journey as they head out across the cosmos. “Traveling to the Sun is great visually, but also very interesting psychologically,” he explains. “We wanted to make the film as psychological a journey as possible. There is the question about what happens to your mind when you meet the creator of all things in the universe, which for some people is a spiritual, religious idea, but for other people it is a purely scientific idea. We are all made up of particles of exploded star, so what would it be like to get close to the Sun, the star from which all the life in our solar system comes from? I thought it would be a huge mental challenge to try and capture that.”

The part where we're all made of particles of the exploded star is true, lecturer once said that for our Astro lecture. Carl Sagan summed it all up, "We are all made of star stuff". This is pretty shocking revelation, since whatever atoms we're made of, our food, water, mountains, television, whatever there is are made of atoms which came from the supernova. This is freakin' cool stuff man.

OMG! I can't wait for the DVD!

MY FAVORITE: CILLIAN MURPHY!

The Crew: