Wednesday 16 February 2011

operation paperclip or grand moff tarkin

A Finnish film producer has teamed with partners in Germany and Australia to pose the audience with the alternative, speculative time-line, in which surviving members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party escape to the dark side of the Moon after the fall of the Third Reich. After decades of nursing defeat on their lunar colony, the space villains plot a spectacular re-conquest of the Earth in contemporary 2018. This dark comedy and  science-fiction amalgam, which bears some similarity with the adventures and exploits of Baron von Mรผnchausen, seems bold in essaying a heretofore unexplored extreme conclusion of pioneering rocketry and mad ambition. The sillier side of the project, however, is the makers' hope that the movie will be financed almost exclusively by donation, crowd-funding by fans. That makes the whole premise seems too familiar--like that of Mel Brooks' The Producers. No one has tried to make an utter flop in quite awhile, though I imagine that wrestling shining success from surpassing tastelessness is a bigger surprise than to be let down by mediocrity or tepid reception.