MOVIE REVIEW: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

 This was the second of the Jordan movies, and a friend came over to watch it with me, even though it was the longest one. Although it did include a short intermission and a black screen to start, the movie was listed as 3 hours and 47 minutes! 

Lawrence of Arabia was the best picture Oscar of 1962. Based on a true story, I had only known T.E. Lawrence from the translation work of The Odyssey. Indeed, it was the story of his military life that was spent rallying a group of disparate Arabs, from the Bedouin desert to conquer Aquaba and move towards Damascus. 

Set as a heroic story for an antihero, it was good at very prolonged suspense. It avoided all exposition, but I didn’t know what was going on sometimes. It needed editing, and a little more explanation. However, the story of the Arab uprising against the Turks as part of Britain’s WWI campaign was interesting. 

While Lawrence was changing from his uniform to a desert costume, the main Arabic characters were played by western actors like Alec Guinness and Omar Sharif. 

One highlight was when they rode by a rock I had stood on, with a photo to prove it!

Classic, interesting, strange dislikable character finding a way to belong.

MOVIE REVIEW: THE MARTIAN

 This was the shortest of a trilogy of movies that I wanted to watch on returning from a trip to Jordan.

The Martian is one of the three films

Comparisons

Contrasts 

That desert, full of satellites, rovers, and solar panels, was last full of litter and bedouins in headscarves and camels in my memory

As much as the stars fill the sky on film, there were not so many in the light haze of camp see you 

Criticisms: 

Why did they go out again in the storm? Without cinching themselves together in case electronics fail?

Where did he get all that plastic and tape?

How did we solve the problem of oxygen? Especially since H2O molecules take two each

Potatoes are far from enough nutrition

Why is he adding up meals, not calories? protein ability? Weight of the potatoes?

Plutonium : radiation poisoning?

NASA rooms: too many men

So many British actors for an American movie

A ribbon, not a knot? Really?! They were doing so well being realisticky!

The thing about space travel stories that I have read(The bio of Yuri Garagan, the autobiographies of Chris Hadfield and Dave Williams) is that they all return to earth firmly convinced that we much defend what we have more than pursue more desolate places to colonized. In this movie (I didn’t yet read the book, and I may not), there is a nod to a plant growing in pebbles, but then they are on to space travel again. I think we need to apply our energies to world cooperation in climate control, and less on dreaming of spitballing for aerospace disasters.