Who? What? Where? When? Why?

What are the chances that Moon is a good movie? If I told you that it was a debut feature directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, its chances would have to sink sharply. First time director? Son of Major Tom? Working out whatever weird inter-planetary issues he has from the strange alienated, sci-fi infused childhood he surely had? If I tell you that the movie was financed by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, the movie's chances surely drop off the chart. With the exception of Time Bandits, no movie funded by a rock star has ever turned out to be good, let alone the rock star's wife, who probably knew the kid when he was growing up and was happy to give him any money was lying around her husband's tudor mansion slash yoga studio while he was in the middle of one of his five-hour Tantric orgasms. It was with some perplexity, then, that I announce that Moon is not just a good movie, but a very good movie, beautiful and haunting and original — the best sci-fi movie I have seen since Blade Runner.

Let me just check that against my hyperbole meter... hang on a minute.... Yep..... It checks out. We're good. The best sci-fi movie I have seen since Blade Runner, although I should distinguish between two type of sci-fi movie, here. There's the type we get every year — exciting and fast with laser guns and exploding planets, with a lineage that stretches back to Star Wars. And there there is the other, much rarer kind — thoughtful and strange and sad, with a lineage that stretches back to Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is the kind of movie Moon is. Nor is it shamed by that company.

I'm not going to tell you a thing about it. I had the good fortune to see it blind, attracted solely by the cool poster and the beautiful stills I had seen in the paper, which exactly resemble those dusty haunting shots of the lunar surface taken by the Apollo crew with those fancy cameras that everyone wants but whose name escapes me right now. I will tell you that it stars Sam Rockwell, and only Sam Rockwell, which is fine by me because he has just become my favorite actor. I thought he was mesmerising in Snow Angels, which blew my mind on a transatlantic flight last year. There he played a charming wastrel so heartbroken by his ex-wife that it takes a while to realise that he is, in fact, psychotic. It takes the whole movie for you to realise that, in fact: it's one of the more subtle unraveling of one man's mind ever put to film. (Someone should get this man a copy of David Gates Jernigan — he's already got the narrator's rueful sarcasm down to a tee). Moon starts out in similar territory, with a character you suspect may be losing his sanity, and then..... but I'm not going to say anything. Just see it. It's one of those movies you wander out of going "where did that come from? Who made it? How? Where? When? Why?"

See the trailer here.

The Uighurs go fishing

Uighurs Salahidin Abdulahat, 32, left, and Khelil Mamut, 31, go fishing in Bermuda, where they're now living after almost eight years in Guantanamo Bay.

A.I. reconsidered

I saw A.I. again on Showtime last night and finally realised the problem with it: you don't believe the mother loves the robot boy. We believe in Joley Haley Osmont's love for her, but never hers for him. It's hard to know what the actress, Frances O Conner, could have done exactly — the part pulls her all over the place. She has to first reject her surrogate son, then grow to love him, and then abandon him when her real son returns. The rest of the film — in which Osmont embarks on a long quest to be reunited with her — seems heartbreakingly misguided. Maybe that's why it feels so desolate. I doubt this was intentional: the final ten minutes, in which the boy finally gets to spend just one day with her, is one of the more heartbreaking ideas Spielberg has ever come up with. It's almost a complete movie in itself. I wish he had decided to make it.

Quote of the day

We've now seen several different occasions when [Obama]'s been on the international trips, where he's not willing to say, flat out, 'I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, America is the best nation that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today.' — Liz Cheney, CNN

Hmm. Most odd. I wonder why he didn't say that. I've generally found that reminders of one's innate superiority are the best way to start any conversation. Say I meet a stranger at a dinner party. They ask for my name. I tell them. They ask me what I do for living. I tell them, but before they can carry this inane conversation to its stultifying conclusion, I cut in, quick as a flash "I believe unequivocally, unapologetically that I'm the best person that ever existed, and clearly that exists today." It never ceases to get conversations off to a flying start. Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if Obama is really as smart as everyone says he is.

Knocked up

Letterman offered no apology, but more of his usual postmodern, I'm goofy; feel sorry for me; "got the wrong daughter;" I'm Dave after all junk. The fact remains that in three separate references he slurred the female governor of Alaska and her 14-year-old daughter on a recent visit to his New York. And when he tried to contextualize it, all he did was make it worse by suggesting that he meant instead Governor Palin's 18-year-old daughter, who recently delivered an out-of-wedlock child.

Oh come on. The joke only works if it's about Bristol. There is no joke unless it's about Bristol. She's the only one of Palin's daughters who was knocked up. And it was her mother who then pushed her into a ludicrous public position as an advocate for abstinence. The humbug is self-evident. The joke makes itself.

Its fun to see Palin back in the spotlight, though. I've missed her immensely.

Jive talking

'Travolta's Ryder is not your average villain. He’s that modern type: the brainy sicko, an all controlling puppeteer who uses his vast knowledge and power to manipulate others into jumping through a series of ever more difficult hoops. Frequently, he calls out of the blue, using the public payphone system to pose a series of bizarre riddles to the hero. It normally ends with a mad race across town in the middle of rush hour. Cultural critics are in disagreement over the precise roots of this phenomenon — the plunging Dow, the rising tide of alienation and anomie in today’s cities — but agree that it allows audiences a good working knowledge of what it is to go to lunch with Ari Emanuel.' — From my piece for the Daily Beast about OCD villains

Tom Shone, novelist!

A finished copy of my novel arrived in the post yesterday. I opened the package, took it out, placed it on the chest in the living room, and haven't moved it since. Occasionally I will go and have a look, like a caveman creeping up to a refrigerator, give it a poke, cry "oogga-boogga" and flee to a safe distance to peer at it again. I'm not sure why it should fill me such primordial dread but it does. It's like someone has sent me a chicken foot in the post, or a set of nuclear codes. Clearly I am going to have to pull myself together before promoting it in London later in the month. It's not so bad, really. The cover looks great; the pagination is neat; the dimensions, to my mind, just right — not too onerously long, not too skimpily short. My worries about it looking too dialogue-heavy have been eased; inside it I find pages, sometimes whole consecutive pages, of uninterrupted text, just like a normal book. And yet it makes me feel like a perfumed imposter — like Inspector Closeau in that Pink Panther movie, grinning and gurning his way through a Bluebeard impression while his fake nose slides down his face.