What's Your Favorite Thing About Earth?

I don't know my favorite thing, I thought maybe the people, friends, family, but I think I have a new answer forming.

Gardner Elliot spends The Space Between Us searching for the answer to this question. And it's equal parts beautiful and heart breaking.

Sixteen years before the main story, a team of astronauts is sent to live on Mars, with the expectation of living there. Two months into the trip, the lead astronaut turns up pregnant. The pregnancy is classified and she gives birth shortly after they land on Mars, and promptly dies in childbirth. We jump ahead and meet the boy, Gardner. He is brilliant (and was raised by scientists), but he's lonely. He's only ever met the people on Mars, so an occasionally revolving crew of astronauts. Few people on Earth know he exists. He has technology though and has met a girl from Colorado and IMs with her regularly. She is in the foster system and hates her current family.

Eventually, they figure out a surgery to make his bones strong enough (remember he gestated in zero gravity and has spent his entire life in Mars's gravity. So he's gonna have weird health problems if he tried to deal with Earth gravity) to try to go back to Earth.

Being a 16 year old who wants to meet his dad (a dad who doesn't know he exists, I might add), he sneaks out of his quarantine and goes to find the one person he knows on Earth: his friend Tulsa. He and Tulsa then go on a road trip to find his father and find a bit of romance with each other along the way.

Gardner asks everyone he meets on Earth the same question, "what's your favorite thing about Earth?" He gets a variety of answers, but I think I liked the founder of Genesis's (Genesis is the company funding the settlement on Mars) answer best: he tells Gardner he likes the rain, that it washes everything clean. Not much later, Gardner has snuck out of the NASA compound and found his way to a bus stop to go find Tulsa and it begins to rain. Heavy rain, the kind that you either hide from or just walk out, look up, and laugh as it streams down your face and soaks you to your skin. It's a truly beautiful moment because everyone on the street bolts to hide under an awning while Gardner darts out from under the awning and stands out in the rain, looking like he has never experienced anything quite as magical.

And remember, he hasn't. The first time he sets foot on earth is the first time he's ever been outside without a suit on, the first time he has ever breathed air that wasn't carefully piped and filtered. He's been either inside a compound or in a space suit his entire life. He has never experienced elements. It's his first rain.

That was the moment that made me wonder, what would it be like to experience everything for the first time? Sunshine, rain, the ocean. The beautiful things.

And that's when I realized how beautifully this movie is shot. It's not particularly thrilling cinematographically, but there's a brilliance to it. The colors when they get to Earth are incredibly vibrant and it's all framed like you're looking at a new world for the first time. In many ways, it's like waking up in Oz.

And in writing this, I've realized something: I think my favorite thing about Earth isn't the people. It's what the people create: it's art. Art is what makes Earth, well, Earth.

***obligatory special shout out in two parts: first to Poof because I adore her, second to Celine Dion because this movie has put My Heart Will Go On in my head for the last week***

A Fascinating Tale of Cherries

I'd like to tell the incredibly fascinating saga I experienced sitting in the theater watching Gold.

A young woman orders a drink from her server. It's a drink she knows the bartenders will be familiar with. She doesn't specify what kind of gin because she suspects they don't need to be told. She doesn't ask for cherries because she knows they don't need to be told.

The drink comes back. It certainly tastes like it's her preferred brand but is completely cherry free. She hems and haws for a bit and then decides she should give the bartenders a hard time for not giving the cherries. There's a competition on the cherry front and a new record was just set, not to mention no one else orders this drink. Literally no one, she made it up and the bartenders have all told her if they ever got this order they'd know it was for her.

She calls the server and tells him she actually wanted cherries (he doesn't know her. She'll give him the benefit of the doubt). She also asks if he knows who made her drink and specifies the two bartenders who really ought to have known better the most and says to tell them they owe her. He looks a tiny bit confused but heads off.

He returns and says one of those two bartenders says he's really really sorry but they're out of cherries. It is at the point that the girl starts cracking up. She says to tell him that it's the other guy's fault, because he just set the new record (the server seems entertained).

I'm sure it will shock you to discover that this intriguing tale is actually not the story of the movie but actually autobiographical.

THIS MOVIE WAS SUPER BORING AND GIVING THE BARTENDERS CRAP FOR RUNNING OUT OF CHERRIES WAS MORE INTERESTING.

Gold is the story of a a gold prospector (played by Matthew McConaughey). It's basically him running around asking people for money and then being really excited he found a huge mine. And then his world explodes around him. It just does it in a really boring way.

It didn't pass the Bechtel test, although it's also completely and totally from the main character's perspective and I don't think there was a scene he wasn't in, so that's not a surprise. I think there was only one scene with multiple named women, though, so it's not like it was super diverse.

So short story long, I kind of don't recommend this movie because oh my god it was so boring.

***obligatory special shout out to the guy who did my backing and forthing while I was sniggering about them freaking running out of cherries***