Sci Fi Log: Sand Kings

Beau Bridges.. madman or genius?

Madman.

Sand kings the movie, which is different from the book, takes place in a future where life was found on Mars and the government has been doing research on the specimens. They start out small, building fortresses out of sand to protect themselves from the other waring clans of sand kings. When the main character, played by Mr. Bridges, is fired from the project he decides to take some of the eggs home in order to do more research on his own. As the law of 'don't mess with mother nature' goes, we can be assured that bad things ensue. The sand kings get bigger and bigger and when they stop getting fed, all hell breaks loose. The sand kings war amongst themselves for food and territory. The sand kings break free of their glass terrarium and run rampant throughout Beau's house. The story ends with a cliffhanger as the camera pans over a nest of sand kings in the forest outside of the house.

I would like to take a moment to comment on Beau Bridge's performance in this movie. Not only do we get the pleasure of seeing him lose his mind completely, but his hair has a story of its own throughout the movie anyway. There is a scene where he is cutting his hair in front of the mirror and he just loses it. Talking to himself as he cuts, Beau thinks about what his dad thinks and that his wife was wrong for leaving him.. I disagree. I think the moment he put a strand of hair over his mouth like a mustache and spoke into the mirror was the moment Beau Bridges lost all evidence of sanity.

Sci Fi Log: Contact

Contact is a story of a scientist who receives a transmission from space and then tries to decipher its contents. The information received turns out to be schematics of a machine that will transport one person through space to the star Vega. It takes a coalition of quite a few countries to fund and birth the project.
The film ends with the main character, Ellie, traveling to see the aliens in the machine. The machine travels through wormholes. The part I found interesting was that the Vegans said they didn’t create the portals and that they didn’t know who did which means that there is even more sentient life out there.

When we watched Contact in class, I found myself way more into the movie than I ever have been. I’ve seen the movie on tv countless times but never before have I focused in on every detail of the film. I liked how they incorporated the theory of special relativity into the movie, it makes it feel more possible. Maybe that's it, the reason I was so into this movie was because we learned about the science used in it beforehand. On another note, the radical evangelical that blows up the first machine creeps me out.. big time. I think it's important, however, that there was a religious theme throughout the film because if this were to actually happen, I could see there being a lot of religious protest as seen in the movie.