I do love these reviews. A Few Things About Oblivion Oblivion started life as an idea of Joseph Kosinski's. Joseph Kosinski started his Hollywood life as one of David Fincher's acolytes, doing 2nd unit and the like and working with The Director's Bureau on commercials. He got his first bump with TR2N (is that what we're calling it) which, from Disney's point of view, wasn't terrible. Joseph Kosinski is well aware that spec screenplays don't sell worth a shit but also aware that he can't write. So he sort of scribbled down some ideas and gave them to people he paid to write them as a book with pictures in it which he never had any intention of selling. This impressed people enough that it sparked a bidding war and Oblivion sold as a movie without ever being a screenplay. So now it needed a screenplay. But movies don't work like that any more, at least, not at that scale. So while they were out hammering on the screenplay set designers and storyboardists and character designers and this whole army of people started working on Oblivion even though they didn't quite know what it was about yet. One of them was a buddy of mine, who told me "man, what we've seen so far ain't so good." Lo and behold, shortly before Christmas two years ago Disney told everyone to go home because the script was terrible and they were putting the whole project on hold. Fast forward 9 months and the project is back on. My buddy opted for Oblivion (because he knew the people, and because he knew they were serious because when they killed Nemo it stayed dead) over Ender's Game. He still wasn't sold on it, but it happened. I haven't seen it. I wasn't blown away by TR2N (which a number of my friends worked on, who advised me not to watch it) and I find any "story by committee" movie is invariably terrible. This is one reason why I work on tiny, shitty movies rather than reaching for the brass ring that is Hollywood - at least you get to do something. Incidentally: - Soundtrack: any songs used in a film that can be sold elsewhere (James Bond title songs like Adele's Skyfall) - Score: musical orchestrations hat exist solely for the film (like the James Bond theme) - Sound Effect: Any single clip connected diegetically to on-screen action - Sound Design: the craft of creating sound effects - Foley: footsteps, clothing rustle, etc. Example: "JTHipster praised the sound design of Oblivion but said nothing about the score by M83. For Friday, you have a multiple choice: A) Barbarella because you haven't gotten to it B) Zardoz because it's John Boorman's take on the Barbarella era and is fucking awesome C) Altered States because fuckin' Ken Russel directing Paddy Chayevsky's last script D) The Hunger because it's Tony Scott's first and it's in the same zone and it's got David Bowie and Bauhaus in it E) CQ because it's Roman Coppola's take on this vintage of cinema therefore it's doubly meta F) Logan's Run because c'mon. So long as we're on the 70's psychotronic tip, why not.