So Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are collaborating on their third project together, a sci-fi film currently going by the title of Sunshine. As you may remember, we here at Stalker Towers quite enjoyed their last outing with the not-a-zombie flick, 28 Days Later. Hell - I own the DVD, a copy the screenplay signed by both director and writer ( albeit only in book form rather than an original, been on the actual set incarnation) and the soundtrack (which, by the way, has one of the sexiest tunes on it ever - In the House/In a Heartbeat ). So finding out about this new film has piqued my curiosity.

But here come my reservations. The films premise is this:

The Sun is dying, and mankind is dying with it. Our last hope: a spaceship and a crew of eight men and women. They carry a device which will breathe new life into the star. But deep into their voyage, out of radio contact with Earth, their mission is starting to unravel. Soon the crew are fighting not only for their lives, but their sanity.

Admittedly, this is very little to go on but what it does bring to mind several other films. Unfortunately, most of them fall into the “not very good” category. I’m thinking in particular of

• Supernova: excreable and tedious film staring James Spader and Angela Basset about - actually, I don’t think I ever quite got what it was about it was so awful
• The Core: recent film about a crew of astronauts and scientists journeying to the centre of the earth to “restart” the Earth’s core. Deeply terrible.
• Red Planet: Astronauts search for solutions for a dying earth by going to the sun Mars. Truly awful and extremely silly film.
• Mission to Mars: Astronauts go to Mars after some dull disaster or other. See Red Planet for review. A real low point in director Brian De Palma’s career.
• Solar Crisis: Shockingly bad Alan Smithee film about a group of astronauts hoping to save earth by travelling to the sun to…er… waydagoddamminit!
• Event Horizon: Astronauts go to the end of the galaxy to find out what happened to a missing ship. A lot of people cant’ stand this film but I have to confess that I actually quite like it. Think of it as the Exorcist in space. Or perhaps the Exorcist III in space.

Having said all that, and bearing in mind that top notch sci-fi films are few and far between at the moment, if Sunshine avoids the above and follows the examples set in classics such as Alien, Silent Running or Solaris then it will be a good day for British Sci-Fi movies when it opens. And with the building blocks of ‘28 Days Later’ to build on, there’s no reason why it can’t avoid the pitfall of becoming a dire, life draining movies.

But there is one thing that has me feeling optimistic about the film and that is the film’s blog (thanks Daisy for pointing this out). It’s written by experienced blogger and broadcaster Gia, who’s husband is a the scientific advisor on the film and makes for some very interesting reading, especially to a film geek like me. (I was fascinated by the post about the amount of lights - numbering in the thousands - that they’re using on each set. The last short film I made used a total of about 10!) It combines nice little teaser facts about the Sun and the universe with some fascinating insight to life on sets. And I don’t mean in the manner of those sychophantic, information lacking behind the scenes documentaries filmed for E-Online etc. We’re finding out about Danny Boyle’s different coloured shoes, the caterers, the overall dull nature of filming, Cillian Murphy’s playlist… everything that a good blog is made of. It’s so much better than other movie blogs (like the amazingly poor Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy blog which seemed to only have about 2 entries) and is updated on a regular basis. And Gia’s personal site is worth a read too.

Cheers to Daisy for the heads up.