Congratulations to the makers of and the actors in Gravity for the seven Oscars they won tonight, including Best Director for Alfonso Cuarón. Quite remarkable for a space drama with a near-term, (fairly) hard science, realistic approach to captivate audiences in huge numbers and to achieve so much critical acclaim.
I wish the scenario was less catastrophic but, as NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino indicates, the movie still manages to depict the amazing beauty and wonder of spaceflight in earth orbit:
Jindřich Polák’s pioneering and much-imitated feature Ikarie XB 1 is one of the cornerstones of contemporary sci-fi cinema. It predates Star Trek and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and was clearly an influence on both, as well as on almost every other science-fiction work that followed.
Adapted from Stanisław Lem’s 1955 novel The Magellanic Cloud, the film is set in 2163 and follows a mission deep into space in search of alien life. During their perilous journey the crew confront the effects of a malignant dark star, the destructive legacy of the 20th century and, ultimately, the limits of their own sanity. With outstanding design and cinematography, Ikarie XB 1 is imbued with a seriousness, intelligence and attention to detail rarely seen in science-fiction cinema of the period.
A reader responds to the earlier posting about robot assistants in space with a link to this documentary about Robby the Robot, a metallic character first seen in the marvelous 1956 movie Forbidden Planet: