In London on Friday 10th February? Fancy seeing Sam Rockwell do his thing in MOON & David Bowie do his thing in The Man Who Fell To Earth, on the big screen in a fantastic Duncan Jones & Nic Roeg double bill? Well you’re in luck, cus you can 
Get in touch with the Genesis Cinema through their web site, or Facebook page.
Thanks to Paul Byrne for the heads up
Duncan Jones presented a MOON & Source Code double bill at the New Beverley Cinema, Los Angeles on the 18th & 19th of November, featuring an introduction of each film, and a Q&A with Duncan and his producer Stuart Fenegan, hosted by Julia Marchese. What the audience on the 18th were not aware of, was the surprise appearance of Sam Bell himself, Sam Rockwell.
For those of us unable to attend, I found a few snippets of the Q&A, and was putting together a post for you to get a flavour of the event. Then I found this…
And to top it all off, and maintain the British connection, there’s a nice portion of Edgar Wright at the end presenting Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Fantastic work there by Random Dreamer Studios
As you may have caught Duncan mention there in the Q&A, Julia at the New Beverly is supporting a campaign to fight for the survival of 35mm film projection in cinemas, please take a moment to read Julia’s post, and sign the petition here.
If you are in Leeds, UK or Nantes, France over the next few days, then you have the chance to see Duncan Jones‘ multi award winning, debut feature MOON starring Sam Rockwell on the big screen.
The Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds gets the ball rolling with a fantastic Sam Rockwell double bill of Galaxy Quest & MOON on Saturday 15th October beginning at 23:00 through to the early hours of Sunday morning at 02:30. Head over to their site now to pick up your tickets, and see the facebook event page for further details. Wonder if anyone will dress up?…
Sumit Purohit is an Independent film maker from India, who recently tweeted a lovely sketch of a still from MOON to Director Duncan Jones.
As usual we like to get the artist to tell us a bit about how they became inspired to create artwork based on Duncan’s films. So we got in touch, and Sumit has very kindly sent us a copy of the first sketch, and another one as well! Click the images for full size versions.
Growing up with a father who is an astrophysicist, the outer space at times, feels closer than mundane reality. You are always eager to hear stories, myths, legends, facts, equations set in ‘that world’. And so, everything felt right about Moon from the moment I saw its trailer online, back in 2009: Sam Rockwell, a new young director in Duncan Jones, an indie low budget sci-fi set on backdrop of Moon. For any aspiring film maker like me, it felt good to see that such a film could be made within with very limited resources.
I saw Moon in midair- literally. On a flight to Dubai. I would have loved to watch it on the cinema screen but could not resist the temptation. Am glad I did that, as Moon sadly, never got a theatrical release in India.
I have been sketching frames, inspired from frames of films that I find riveting. I try to capture the essence of the film through those and somehow choose scenes that are of pivotal nature to the plot. Terrence Malick’s films are what inspired me to start sketching like this. Malick’s films are visual poetry in the way they weave the metaphysical realm into each frame. I could pause any and sketch it.
Moon was a very obvious choice in this series: a story of a man employed to work on a lunar station, alone, for three years. I sketched one frame of the interiors of the space station and the other is on the surface of the moon, both trying to capture contrasting moods of the film. What attracted me to sketch Moon was the fact that even with a visually sparse environment, Jones manages to conjure up a visually rich experience. In parts it reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Make sure you pop over to Sumit’s site for more examples of his fantastic film still sketches
** MASSIVE THANKS TO CHRISTOPHER WILSON FOR HIS WINNING BID **
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Any of you lucky enough to be near Denver between July 6th and August 10th will have the chance to see some great Sci-Fi courtesy of the Sci-Fi Film Series Presented By Denver Museum Of Nature & Science And The Denver Film Society.
The key date from our point of view is obviously a screening on August 3rd at Denver FilmCenter/Colfax of Duncan Jones’ MOON starring Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, isolated employee of Lunar Industries, alone on the Moon with only the company of his robotic assistant GERTY (Kevin Spacey) to see him through his three year contract mining valuable Helium 3 to provide energy to the people of Earth. As Sam approaches the end of his contract, with thoughts of home providing hope, things take a turn for the worse, and Sam discovers not all is as it seems.
Always great to see some of you getting the opportunity to see Duncan’s award winning debut on the big screen, as for many, their first experience of MOON may have been home viewing due to the limited original theatrical release.
An added bonus with this Sci-Fi Film Series screening is a post-film discussion with Ka Chun Yu, PhD, curator of space sciences at Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
As well as MOON, the Sci-Fi series will also be screening classics of the genre such as Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyessy, Ridely Scott’s Alien & Alfonso Cuaron’s Children Of Men, most screenings also include a post film discussion with Denver Museum Of Nature & Science staff.
Dates and times available on the Sci-Fi Series programme guide.
Thanks to Ryan Boulding for the heads up
MOON was originally released in 2009, and is now available on DVD / Blu-Ray and digital download. This makes repeat viewing of Sam Rockwell’s incredible performance as Sam Bell a simple matter of switching on the telly, and getting comfy. It’s always nice though, to watch a film as wonderful as MOON on the big screen.
Image Gazer Film Festival Director Dylan Howard, has been in touch to let us know that should you be anywhere near Bucksport, Maine, USA in June, then you may be lucky enough to get to see Duncan Jones’ MOON as part of the Festivals 2nd year line-up.
MOON will be screened at 17:00 on the 18th June at the Alamo Theatre, in Bucksport, along with another 25 films, over 4 days at the festival, which runs from June 16th – June 19th 2011.
So, if you’re in the area, pop over to Dylan’s site for further details.
Thanks, Dylan
With two features under his belt, and two fantastic, high profile leading men already highly impressed with Duncan Jones’ Directorial abilities, it seems Jones has set his sights now on one of todays ultimate leading men, Actor and Director George Clooney.
Speaking to Kimberley Gadette for Indiemoviesonline.com during the current promotional tour for his latest film ‘Source Code‘, Jones responds to Kimberley’s question on who he would like to see ‘Source Code’, having previously been keen to have Terry Gilliam, Ridley Scott and Neil Gaiman see his first feature ‘MOON‘
“This time around it’s tricky; there’s certain actors I’d very much like to work with in the future. George Clooney is the ultimate for me in that he’s the kind of leading man who is incredibly charismatic, who the audience can immediately find a way to bond with. So George Clooney, who I have a huge amount of respect for … I’d love him to see it. If he can watch Moon and then Source Code afterward and then hopefully conclude, “Maybe this is a director I want to work with …!”
It’s a really great interview, of which this is but a wee snippet. Touching on working methods, the value of humour in script to present a fuller character for the audience to empathise with, career path, wanting to work with Sam Rockwell again in the future, and a potential hint towards the lead character in film number three! So go have a read
Take one Classic Sci-Fi movie, add a stunning soundtrack from Clint Mansell and leave to simmer in the imaginations of all who have seen, and at some point, someone is going to be inspired to create a Hip Hop EP right?
Sampling dialogue from that movie, Duncan Jones debut feature ‘MOON‘ starring Sam Rockwell, and the stunning Clint Mansell score, producer Max Tannone has done just that, telling io9:
I saw this movie, loved it, and thought the original soundtrack written by Clint Mansell was great as well. Each track samples a song from the film’s score. To complete Selene, I teamed up with Brooklyn rap artist Richard Rich to provide the lyrics. His raps include themes like isolation, separation, self-realization, and cloning.
Head over to SELENE (Greek Titan goddess of the Moon btw) to listen to the 5 track EP now, where you can also download the EP, for free.
Clint Mansell’s score for MOON is available from all the usual music outlets, physical copy, and download stores, so do yourself a favour and grab a copy if you haven’t already.
Well it’s taken a while, but our friends in Germany can celebrate and have all sorts of ‘MOON’ fun next week, when Duncan Jones’ multi award winning first feature ‘MOON’ is released on DVD & Blu-Ray on Friday 28th January.
Distributed by Koch Media, MOON is released in both single & double disc special edition, on both formats. The difference between the two being the addition on the special edition of the original UK release bonus material (Duncan’s short ‘Whistle’, ‘The Making of Moon’, Special Effects Feature, & interviews) and now for our german viewers.
Astronaut Sam Bell ist alleine auf dem Mond “Selene”, wo er als Mechaniker den Abbau von Helium-3 überwacht. Das kostbare Gas könnte die Energiekrise auf der Erde beenden. Zwei Wochen vor seiner Abreise beginnt Sam seltsame Dinge zu sehen und zu hören. Nachdem eine Routinekontrolle katastrophal schief geht, entdeckt er, dass Lunar ganz eigene Vorstellungen von seinem Verbleib hat. Als dann noch ein Doppelgänger auftaucht und die Firma einen bewaffneten Aufklärungstrupp schickt, wird Sam klar, dass seine Rückkehr zur Erde in Frage steht.
“Mit einem großartigen Science-Fiction-Drama gibt David Bowies Sohn Duncan Jones ein aufsehenerregendes Regiedebüt. Befeuert von einem spektakulären Auftritt von Sam Rockwell in einer Doppelrolle, ist ihm eine exzellente designte Produktion gelungen.” (Blickpunkt Film)
So for all you lovely people in Deutschland (or MOON collectors) you can order through Koch now: