I think it was meant (guy number three more than Clooney) to appeal to everyone's "god it'd be fun to be in space, floating around" instinct, before all hell breaks loose.

But yeah, as a matter of protocol, not so much.

Wanna build a tunnel going back and forth between Melbourne and Los Angeles and forget those UK people even exist?

We could have code names.

I lolled.

Lydia is super Scottish.

Most likely it was mostly for moments where their face is visible, but far enough away that it's too much of a pain in the ass to get a live plate just for that shot.

Aw, you reminded me to relisten to this episode. So good. I love that gag.

Just got back from seeing this a second time with Eddie, who was seeing it for his first time.

3D.

IMAX.

Way too close to the screen.

Holy shit, you guys.

I was a bit bummed when I saw how close we were to the screen. I kept cracking up, it was actually funny, looking up at the screen before the movie started... like, "oh my god these seats are retarded." To give you a sense of it, tilt you head back, way back - it was that tall, and the screen was curved almost around us, and so wide it literally went out farther than the frames of the glasses.

And I was bummed! Like, "man, these seats suck."

Yeah, funny thing about that; just for this movie, it actually worked out better than anything else would have. Because we were so separated from the usual filmwatching experience, the usual angle, and having to look up to see what's up there, and to the side to see what's going on over there, it was so-close-as-makes-no-difference like actually being there with them. Totally immersive.

Super, super cool. It's better the second time, for the usual "well now I won't be surprised by nitpicky things that take me out of the movie" reasons.

Also.

I watched closely during the "Clooney has to detatch" scene to confirm or deny the angular momentum excuse; "the station is spinning, so he's inheriting weight from the spin that justifies the pull on Bullock's tether." I like that excuse a lot, because it's a completely plausible justification for what otherwise seemed to be a massive departure from the ballistic "accuracy" of most of the movie. I was keeping an eye on specific details and general film grammar, really trying to see if that was what was going on and if it's just kind of unclear.

Aaaand, the answer is no way. That isn't happening. There's a couple camera moves that seem to indicate a bit of rotation happening, but all those camera moves are offset by opposing ones that conclusively indicate the "rotation" you could imagine was just the camera moving around. Bastard ain't spinnin,' and we're back to square one on the "aw, damn it, that part doesn't make sense" thing.

Here's the "slim cut," three minutes shorter. Mostly removing air here and there, although I lopped off a couple exchanges that I thought weren't working so great, either for pacing or tone or whatevs. Saniss and Maggot got the brunt of it.

This was made with no score, but then I was fiddling with YouTube's "add music" thingy and didn't realize it would take a while to process that, too, so now I can't turn off the music until it finishes, and I wanna go to bed. So by the time you see this, it might have inappropriately loud music over it. It'll be gone tomorrow.

Fireproof - the idea behind doing a slimmer cut is to try to maintain the pacing established at the beginning there. It's doable, I just overwrote the shit out of this thing to try to cram everyone in. Some entire cast members might be lost in the attempt, come to think of it.