The Stone Tape

the ideas at the core of this movie - about probing and provoking something unknown/unknowable, and about the insatiable hunger of capital to reproduce itself no matter the cost, and how that hunger is itself reflected back at the technicians by the cosmic horror they uncover - have stuck with me for years. i love it for that.

Very special. I love Jane Asher. All the performances were good. A very unusual take on the supernatural.

as a member of the alphabet Maui

Destruculous is utter trash.

this has some of the deep, brooding cosmic horror of the original quatermass serials. if you haven't seen those, they're very worth tracking down, especially 'the pit'. the incremental build in this one + the methodical way has the same magic. the way it methodically steps from one insight to the next is probably going to be somewhat divisive. some people are going to be less into technical particulars and will want something more demonstrative + genre standard. but personally, as a fan of quatermass + print sci fi from that era (i'm reminded of some of Frank Herbert's work) i think this is offering something very specific and quite special. like a lot of other reviewers, i am curious about the way racism and gender are handled in this. in my assessment, the project lead + the other male researchers are largely not meant to be terribly sympathetic characters. i wonder if in that context, their offhand sexism + schoolboy racism are meant to be marks against them: an effort to establish the boys' club vibe of the whole enterprise? i'd be curious to hear how someone closer to the cultural particulars would interpret that aspect of it! though you'd convey that very differently now, you do see a similar technique employed in modern media like Devs, Fresh, or Ex Machina. you get a sort of froth of cultural signifiers which place people within a certain privileged hotshot engineer bubble. not to be an apologist at all, but out of curiosity, i wonder if that's part of what we're seeing. in that and other matters, it's certainly a mixed bag in terms of how they deal with gender, but i do think the main character has depth and is interesting. as someone who's often one of the only women in tech circles, i found her very engaging. also, does anyone know if that's a radiophonic score? it seems like it might be.