Science Fiction, Fantasy & Human (& other) Beings in Peril

[Silent_Water]

"Lucy" starts with a tired looking Scarlett Johansson, US-student in Taiwan, and her "random acquaintance" Richard from a party last night (?) who tries to convince her to deliver an attaché case into a hotel.

She is not happy about this idea and he tries to make her a compliment going wrong by saying her name, which remains unclear at this time, reminds him of a visit in a museum because the first woman in human history which is displayed there as a wax model was also given the name "Lucy" by anthropologists.

After a look at this "Lucy 1", we all should be happy that he did not mention any visual similarity between Lucy 1 and Scarlett Johansson because this could have been already the end of this movie if she would have known how Lucy 1 looked.

Scarlett Johansson does not want to do this job, so Richard turns into a bad boy and suddenly ties the case by a chain to Scarletts hand, which makes her really angry but he says she now has to deliver the case into the hotel because the key will be given to her by the recipient.

Inside the hotel and after some more problems, which make Scarlett look very unhappy, Scarlett herself introduces her to the front desk agent as "Lucy", sent by Richard who is still outside "looking for a parking place for his car"...



... the front desk agent calls the suite of the recipient who sends down his "servants" who do not really look like men you would like to have as your new business partners.


Fading in now some very surprising pictures from African wildlife into this movie, which could make you think that Scarlett might have similar thoughts.


Thoughts which are intensified by a sudden problem of Richard with his blood pressure outside the hotel's entrance:


Scarlett's reaction seems to show that Richard's problems might have led to an early ending of his role in this story and the tension is rising how hearty the welcome of Scarlett will be on the upper floor:


To be continued ...

 

[Silent_Water]

After the men gave the front desk manager and some other personnel bundles of money, they and Richard simply disappear forever. Concerning the pure discretion of the personnel, this is a hotel every mafioso could only recommend in the highest circles of his honourable society.
After some flashbacks into African wildlife ...

... "Lucy" is brought to the upper floor with a bit of emphasis.


There, another business seemed to have gone wrong.

The boss there is laying some stress on Lucy to open the case after he gave her the key number. She is a bit surprised about the precaution taken by the "servants" of the boss because there seems not to be so much love and trust in business partners as she knew from the world she was living in up to now.


In the case are bags with some blue crystals of which we later get to know it is a substance called "CPH4", a highly valuable synthetic drug with some unknown effects yet.

Lucy would really like to go home now ...

... but an ugly and unhappy man is brought in to test the substance which makes him laugh. His laughter makes the servants smile but the boss is not in the right mood for entertainment and kills the laughing man by shooting into his head. (Red dots, spots and swaps everywhere again!)
Lucy is now offered a job by the boss but she does not like to work in this obviously unhealthy environment and she refuses. Unfortunately, the boss does not like to hear the word "no" and one of his servants knocks her out.
When she wakes up again, she remarks to have been operated and is brought into a room where some other man have the same bloody bandages around their abdomens and an European explains to them that they are now bearing a bag inside their stomachs which they shall deliver to certain capitals in Europe. For this delivery they will be highly paid and if they would not like to do so ... their senders would know the addresses of all their families.


In the meantime, Morgan Freeman as guest professor of neurology at the Sorbonne university in Paris is explaining his theory of human evolution. All the sense of life would be to storing the information of cells by immortality or by giving them to another generation by improving them in a kind of reproduction. Fading in now some scenes of reproduction with its highest developments in some kinds of life forms (with some additional remarks by "Silent Water").
A very beautiful life form with feathers reproducing its cellular informations:

A not so beautiful life form without feathers reproducing its cellular informations:

A very ugly life form with few unregular feathers in one of its movable caves reproducing its cellular informations:


To be continued ...

 

[Silent_Water]

The professor explains what capacities a human being probably could have if one day the reproduction of cells could lead to 20 % usage of the whole brain, 30 % and so on ...

Even our 10 % capacity should not be underestimated because look what we have achieved with it!
We can make fire! (Down right!)

We can solve some problems.

And all of this shows a little bit of God-like abilities sent by nature (or really God)?



Changing of the scenes again because in the meantime, Lucy was brought hooded into a closed room, where some criminals looked at her and one of them seemed to like the idea of a "reproduction trial" with Lucy but she did not. So he beat and kicked her until another criminal stops him and they both leave her alone. The bag inside her bursts and the drug is set free. (Logical problem of this plot: When she has already this valuable bag in her body, why is she still in this prison room under the control of criminals whom no responsible mafia boss would trust?)
Some incredible scenes are following, in which the drug makes her tumble and fly around in the room, combined with some new abilities no normal human being has until now.
Some time later, one of the criminals comes alone into her prison cell and starts another trial of reproduction. The look in her face made me think this could become unpleasant for the criminal because she seemed not really to be in the right mood.


She was indeed not in the mood for reproduction:


OK, it was the opposite, indeed rather the mood of reversing reproduction and stopping evolution for some individuals:


After she solved the problem with her bag in a rather violent manner at a hospital she surprised the mafia boss at his recreation center by a visit during which she made some philosophical remarks about pain whilst stabbing two knifes through his hands in order to get his undivided attention. Unfortunately, he feels so much pain that she needs to use a kind of Mr Spock's mind meld to get the information where the other bag bearers of CPH4 are now going to.


She visits her fellow occupant in order to use her computer to find out who could her help with knowledge about controlling her new abilites and what to do with them. She finds the name of the professor in Paris. Her fellow occupant is stunned by being told that Lucy learned Chinese in one hour and to take her advice serious about her illness she does not know anything about yet.

 

[Silent_Water]

Some visual expressions are really great in this movie when they show the surprise of being witness to more and more God-like abilities of Lucy:


The professor in Paris is surprised by a multi-dimensional call of Lucy via telephone, TV and lamplights, too.

He gives her the advice to share her exponentially growing knowledge with mankind because this giving to society is an equivalent to what all cells in life forms are doing from the beginning of time, so this seems to be the highest and most honourable aim in the universe.
She tells him, she will meet him in 12 hours in Paris.

To be continued ...

 

[phlebas]

If you want to see a great, intelligent sci-fi film, see the original or the TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. If you want to see Scarlet Johanson in a good action movie, see "Lucy". If you want to admire her body, see "Red Sparrow". But, don't waste your time on this atrocity.

Scarlett Johansson is one of those people who are a bit of a mystery to me. I remember seeing her and Thora Birch in Ghost World way back, and I've always thought Thora Birch to be the better and more interesting actress, but she doesn't seem to do much these days. Ah well.

Red Sparrow, though was Jennifer Lawrence
Scenes you were never going to see in The Hunger Games, pity



I'll have to have a look for Lucy.

 

[Silent_Water]

Scarlett Johansson is one of those people who are a bit of a mystery to me. I remember seeing her and Thora Birch in Ghost World way back, and I've always thought Thora Birch to be the better and more interesting actress, but she doesn't seem to do much these days. Ah well.
...
I'll have to have a look for Lucy.

The career of an actress / actor depends on so many different and publicly unknown facts that you can never be sure if someone will be famous in the end. Some actors here in Germany are really great in their job which they really love but they also like to see the immediate reaction of the audience, e.g. in comedies or tragedies. So, they are only really famous and known from theatres not in movies. Others like Veronica Ferres (no relative of the BDSM-artist Ferres) are having lives which could be part of one of their movies. She had some hard times in her life and her last marriage probably made her life easier in finance but harder in society because she is now married to one of the richest and most hated billionnaires in Germany. But this is a different story.
I try to continue my picture story of "Lucy".

 

[Silent_Water]

After calling the professor, Lucy is entering the airport of Taipeh where the news are warning of a young blonde woman who killed someone at a hospital and who is armed and dangerous.
(Are these Asian news reporters not sometimes a bit to young looking for their jobs?)

But Lucy has now the capacities of changing her body and hair by walking along (an asocial ability which would make all hairdressers jobless!) and influencing other beings by telepathy and telekinese.

One look from her eyes and the drug dog from the police walks back step by step.


On the flight she works simultaneously with two computers in a way and speed I also always wanted to do myself in order to punish my computers for their crashes - until they are glowing red from inside.

She calls the chief of the French drug police in Paris, tells him to take the pencil left of him because she has not so much time to say everything twice (she can obviously now look through his eyes if she wants) and how he can arrest the other drug couriers in Europe. Then she goes on working with her computers until the landing is announced.
(By the way, be careful if your girlfriend ever changes the eye colour and the form of the pupils like this after drinking champagne! It does not mean anything good!)

She made a mistake before the landing, I think, when she ordered a glass of champagne in order to drink a toast to knowledge and wisdom. Champagne and CPH4 is simply too much. She is suddenly losing some teeth, running to the rest room and seems to be dispersing but she eats and inhales the last parts of her CPH4-bag.



She obviously loses consciousness and wakes up again in the hospital at the airport in Paris where the French drug police chief talks to a doctor because he wants to interview her. The doctor says this is impossible because he gave her a sedativum and she will sleep until the night. But a nurse runs in and tells them she already woke up and makes herself ready to go.
They are running out to the corridor which Lucy is just entering. The French police officer tells her to hold her hands up. She does so and everybody except the policeman falls asleep. The policeman cannot believe what is happening around him.


To be continued ...

 

[Silent_Water]

Lucy knows that she becomes less human the more capacities she develops and that she cannot stay alive as a normal human being because she will always need more and more CPH4 to keep her body cells in order. So she consequently decided to go all the way to the end: She needs as much CPH4 as possible to achieve simply all capacities which are possible for her in this universe!
She asks the policeman to bring her to the arrested men with the other CPH4 bags in order to secure them in the interest of mankind.
Unfortunately, the Korean Mafia also knows where the police bought them and Lucy remarks that because she can visually filter the Korean voices out of the mix of thousands of telephone calls:

The race begins: Lucy sets the policeman aside in his policecar by snapping her fingers and starts a regardless sightseeing tour through Paris without considering any losses, only saying: "We are late in time!" The policeman: "I would rather like to be late than dead!" Lucy: "Death is only a conditional state in relativity!"


The Korean Mafia is first at the hospital where the other drug couriers shall be operated to get the CPH4 Bags out. The Mafia kills all policemen and also the couriers but Lucy arrives when they try to leave the hospital. In the meantime, Lucy invented a new way of disarmament by cancelling gravity and by throwing tiresome men through walls by snapping her fingers (how many women might be dreaming of this capacity? ;-)) :


She gets the case with all the CPH4 bags from the mafia and drives with the policeman to her meeting with the professor.

To be continued (the best pictures are still to come ;-) ) ...

 

[Silent_Water]

Lucy arrives together with the policeman at the university where the professor has asked some of his most famous colleagues to meet Lucy and her incredible capacities. He is still describing her the way to the university via phone when she already stands in front of him.

Lucy holds a short lecture about her capacity to change the shape of element and even atoms, saying that mankind is limited by nature and so are also limited the ways of thinking because on an atomar base, everything can be changed - and she plays different forms with her hand and changes a hovering metallic pencil into s.th. like a miniatur turbine. "1 + 1 is not really 2 because every 1 is made of atoms which can be changed by using the right force or power."
The professor asks if this all is the case what would then be an ultimate measurement?

Lucy turns around and show a small movie in the air. "Imagine a speeding car. Make it faster and faster until you don't see it any more. How can you prove its existence? You can't unless you have the right moment and speed in time. We only exist in time. Time and our relation to it is the ultimate measurement because we don't exist without our small space in time."


Outside of the room there are the first shots to be heard. The surviving mafia boss and the last of his gangsters were still tracking Lucy and the policeman in order to get the CPH4 back (and what I found a very little bit exaggerating after a big battle with the French police, they are firing a bazooka into the room where the professors are finally giving all the CPH4 via high speed infusion to Lucy and Lucy turns into a living computer).

But in this very moment, Lucy achieved the capacity of controlling time and becoming a true Godess of time. The explosion throws her out of the room right in front of the Eiffel tower:


She can now reach any place on Earth at any time and she experiments a bit with this capability.

(By the way: You will see in the next segment that this way of time travelling is a bit dangerous because of its acceleration. Different from Lucy, you should better use a time travel chair with a neckrest - especially when you are older - and a lot of hairspray if you are a time travelling women.)

 

[Silent_Water]

One of the next places Lucy visits is the New Yorker Times Square:

Here she wipes the years away like we sweep (?) over our smartphones:

But you always have to be prepared for unexpected encounters in different times which will leave some astonished faces behind:



(Maybe, it is hard to be a God ...

Hard to Be a God (2013 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

... but without doubt, it could also be very funny! ;-) )

To be continued ...

 

[Silent_Water]

Lucy wipes a bit too fast and has an encounter with this unfriendly animal ...



... but she wipes back to a moment in time where she meets the very first Lucy in order to close the circle.



Godess Lucy gives knowledge and humanity to Lucy 1.

After this, Lucy is catapulted through different spheres, incredible visions and colors ...


... but the story is still not over yet (damn! f***! sh**!) because the evil is always hard to kill and the mafia boss is still alive aaaand Lucy's mortal body is still at the Sorbonne in Paris. The mafia boss is coming from behind in order to kill ...

... but when he shoots, Lucy has achieved immortality like Obi Wan Kenobi and only her dress is falling to the ground.

The policeman has survived, too. (Incredible, how many bullets must have missed him and the mafia boss!?!) He also comes from behind and shoots the mafia boss.

The scientists are shocked by all this violence in their beautiful university but Lucy has a final present for them!

 

[Silent_Water]

The ultimate USB-Stick with all the knowledge Lucy can offer now for mankind:

When the policeman asks: "Where is she?" His phone is ringing and shows the answer:

Lucy's voice is then heard stating from the off: "Life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with it."



HAPPY ENDING !!! FINALLY !!!

 

[Naraku]

Scarlett Johansson is one of those people who are a bit of a mystery to me. I remember seeing her and Thora Birch in Ghost World way back, and I've always thought Thora Birch to be the better and more interesting actress, but she doesn't seem to do much these days. Ah well.

Red Sparrow, though was Jennifer Lawrence
Scenes you were never going to see in The Hunger Games, pity

View attachment 816343View attachment 816344View attachment 816345

I'll have to have a look for Lucy.

I always get those two confused, for some reason. They are about the same age and do look a bit alike, especially as J-Law spends most of "Red Sparrow" with her hair died blond. Still, that's a big boo-boo on my part.

Speaking of "white washing", which sort of got us on this tangent: I am still amazed that no one made a stink over the casting of the very white Lawrence in The Hunger Games. In the books, Katniss is described as having "straight black hair, olive skin and grey eyes". I suppose it's because the character's racial background isn't defined, although it sounds like a mix of Native American and European, but I can't imagine that the millions who read the book envisioned her as a pale, blue-eyed, red head.

 

[Silent_Water]

Speaking of "white washing", which sort of got us on this tangent: I am still amazed that no one made a stink over the casting of the very white Lawrence in The Hunger Games. In the books, Katniss is described as having "straight black hair, olive skin and grey eyes". I suppose it's because the character's racial background isn't defined, although it sounds like a mix of Native American and European, but I can't imagine that the millions who read the book envisioned her as a pale, blue-eyed, red head.

OK, but on the other hand and in the long run, all these things are only a bit disturbing and do not really matter. Here in Germany, a private TV station of which I don't even remember the name (RTL Deutschland? SAT.1? Kabel 1?) had a small remake of the Siegfried-Saga inside the Saga of Nibelungs which also was a pattern / idea for some operas of Richard Wagner. For Germans and by tradition, "Siegfried" is blonde nordic hero. This TV station took an actor and bodybuilder with black hair looking rather like Germans would imagine a Greek hero as Siegfried because they could not find a blonde bodybuilder as fast as they needed one. No one really complained although everyone thought: "Hey, was Siegfried not that nordic ideal type of a blonde hero every Nazi would have adored 80 years ago? But OK, we live in different times and in principle he could also have colored his hair for his undercover sex action with Brunhilde." ;-)

And in the very long run, evolution and history have some surprises for everyone who thinks that skin and hair color must always have been like it is today.
For example, Danish scientists have reconstructed the DNA of a woman who was chewing a kind of birch resin 6.000 years ago at a coast of today's Denmark. She must have looked like the picture in this article shows because the skin color changes during thousands of years depending on the strenght of sunshine:

Dank Uralt-Kaugummi: Forscher entschlüsseln Erbgut von Steinzeit-Frau - WELT

In steinzeitlichem Birkenpech haben Forscher DNA-Spuren gefunden. Jetzt wissen sie, welche Augen- und Hautfarbe die Frau hatte, die darauf herumgekaut hat. Enthalten waren aber auch Reste von Haselnuss und Stockente.

www.welt.de

On the other hand again, there must have been trade routes in pre-ancient times which should not have existed when we believe all our historians. For example, in a Danish grave of the times of 3.000 years ago, there was found jewelry which could have been made in the same workshop like the jewelry of pharao Tut-Ankh-Amun:

Werkstatt identisch: Totenmasken des Pharaos, Perlen für Dänin

Im Grab des ägyptischen Pharao Tutanchamun und einer bronzezeitlichen Frau fanden sich Bernstein und blaues Glas. Archäologen staunten über die Herkunft: Sowohl das versteinerte Baumharz als auch die Mineralien für das Glas stammen von jeweils denselben Orten.

www.spiegel.de

Difficult for archaelogists to explain all these anachronisms ...

(And please do not try to explain to me that this blue-eyed stone age woman with dark skin and black hair from Denmark was the Egyptian princess who brought the jewelry from pharao Tut Ankh-Amun to Denmark! )

 

[Crux-Emperor Baracus X]

A classic scene.....

 

[twonines]

I always get those two confused, for some reason. They are about the same age and do look a bit alike, especially as J-Law spends most of "Red Sparrow" with her hair died blond. Still, that's a big boo-boo on my part.

Speaking of "white washing", which sort of got us on this tangent: I am still amazed that no one made a stink over the casting of the very white Lawrence in The Hunger Games. In the books, Katniss is described as having "straight black hair, olive skin and grey eyes". I suppose it's because the character's racial background isn't defined, although it sounds like a mix of Native American and European, but I can't imagine that the millions who read the book envisioned her as a pale, blue-eyed, red head.

That is why it is always better to see the film first, once you have read a book and imagined the characters, the film casting is always disappointing.

 

[Silent_Water]

Sorry for my problems with understanding but what exactly is the joke with the "classic scene" two postings before? Is this something special here in this forum or in English language and I do not understand it because I am German?

By the way: Problems with "understanding" and the fame with actors: There is a now famous actor in Germany - Til Schweiger - who also played some supporting roles in international movies like this one:

King Arthur (2004 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In this movie, he played "Cynric":

If you remember him in his roles, how did his voice sound for you in English? In German he had some problems at the start of his career because his voice sounded - at least for Germans - very indistinct and the critics said in the beginning he would never be really successful because his voice was described as "muttering", "screeching" or simply as an "quak-quak".
But maybe, exactly this made him unique and unfogettable, because he changed his voice somehow and now, when he plays a criminal or an inspector from the police, his voice sounds somehow "pressed" and "cynical".
There is even a funny video on YouTube, in which the comedian and imitator Max Giermann tells the story how he got his first role as extra (supporting) player in a movie with Til Schweiger, who probably does not remember this story which happened about 15 years ago but he became a star in this movie and at the same time almost ended Giermann's career because Giermann did not understand one single word from Schweiger - not only because they are from different country parts of Germany. Schweiger is at the same time sitting in the audience together with his little daughter and laughing about this story as much as the whole audience is.

I am interested, if you find this YouTube video funny, too, although you might not understand a word.

The story starts like this:
Til Schweiger as leading actor was coming to Giermann who was standing at a street corner and smoking a cigarette (excited and nervous because this was his very first role as actor-student in a movie), asking Giermann if he can tell him, where the "Schilder-Gasse" (=small "Schilder-Street") is. Giermann does not understand a single word because of Schweiger's indistinct speaking and after Schweiger asks a second time, Giermann asks: "Wie bitte?" (= "Sorry, did not understand!?")
Director: "CUT!" The scriptgirl is running to Giermann and says: "You are stopping the movie take. Better concentrate on your role and if you don't know what you say, simply better nod your head! We will take out your sentence if you sound to nervous!"
OK, next take, but this time, Schweiger is improvising and asks for the time. Giermann does not understand any word again but remarks that Schweiger asked something different, so he does not know what to do but nodding his head.
"CUT!"
Scriptgirl: "Max! What is wrong with you? You are costing our time! Til just asked if you can tell him the correct time! Why do you only nod your head? Tell him the time! You have an indistinct behaviour!" Giermann: "Stop! I would like to talk to the director!" The director with a same indistinct speaking like Schweiger: "Sorry, but we don't have so much time and your role is not so important! You are fired!"

Well, today both are famous and stars in Germany!

 

[Briccone]

Poor Little Spacepirate.....

 

[Silent_Water]

If you want to admire her body, see "Red Sparrow".

During the last week, I saw "Red Sparrow" for the first time. No matter, to whom this body does belong, this movie was also a bit disappointing for me because I rather like "secret service movies" which are playing in a dimension with "High Society" and "Luxury".
Certainly, I also like the "Jason Bourne" movies because of their incredible action scenes but in the long run, good-looking "agents" in beautiful surroundings are staying longer in my memory than agents in a dark and poor environment. If someone of you is old enough or still remembers the true story of

Christine Keeler - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and the

Profumo affair - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

this is also a "spy story" I would have always liked more because of its "ambiente" than "Red Sparrow" which simply is too brutal in my opinion although it might have been more realistic in some times during the last 100 years.
In any case, I would never have liked to visit a "Red Sparrow" - school with teaching lessons like these with cameras for the teaching personnel everywhere around.

I simply had the unusual feeling that this teaching lesson was "interesting" because of the pictures on the one hand but also humiliating for everyone on the other hand: Humiliating for the characters of the story plot but also for the actors and even for the viewers but maybe, I also was not in the right mood for this movie because I had seen shortly before the French secret service movie "The Möbius Affair" and it impressed me much, much more, which I will try to explain in my following posting.

 

[Silent_Water]

Although the plot is similar complicated as in almost all "secret service" movies - you cannot trust anyone and even the played characters cannot be sure for whom they are really spying - this movie is almost typical French in style, art, luxury, elegance, eroticism and beauty of its actors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Möbius_(film)
For me, "eroticism" and sexual attractiveness was always strange and difficult to understand, For example, in "Red Sparrow", I had the feeling, this movie is so brutal that I do not really understand the nude scenes because with this brutality, the plot could also have shown even more nakedness.

On the other hand, the leading actors in "Möbius" are the beautiful "Cecile de France" and "Jean Dujardin", who are both playing together in an almost perfect typical French (only my humble opinion) sex scene which shows almost nothing in close up scenes but this intense scene left me with the feeling to have seen absolutely everything of both although there was almost nothing in reality.
This movie "Möbius" really made me flush in red (on the other hand: "Red Sparrow" left me with a feeling close to humiliation of myself).
Some scene-photos of Möbius: