Sunshine [A New Film By Danny Boyle]

[MacGuffin]

Sunshine Bumped to December!!
Source: Cinematical

Fox Searchlight pulled Sunshine from March ... and today comes word that the flick won't see the light of day until ... December!!

No word on why Fox has bumped the title, but considering we're talking about Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions), I'm guessing it's not because the movie is a big fat stink-bomb. (Oh dear lord I hope not.) Perhaps they're still tightening the special effects or just wanted the flick released at a less congested time. But December is pretty stocked every year, so that doesn't make much sense ... unless Fox is holding it for an Oscar campaign, which doesn't seem all that likely.

[MacGuffin]

News from the Sunshine Q&A in Sydney
Source: Moviehole

'Matthew' attended the 'Popcorn Taxi' Q&A with Danny Boyle ("Sunshine") last night – following a screening of the film – and summarised the revelations revealed in the Question and Answer session.

Hey Clint
Even though I thought it sounded like THE CORE II, I really enjoyed it. The Q and A was interesting. There were a lot of kiss ass comments coming from the audience but there were some good questions also. Here's some of the stuff I remember (I tried to take my mp3 recorder in but security was tight). Not sure if any of it would be of interest or not.

* budget was $40 million
* spent 1 year in post production
* over 35 rewrites of the script
* the studio where the film was shot was only 10 minutes from where Boyle lived
* wanted Rose Byrne after seeing her in Troy
* thought Cillian Murphy was too "attractive" to play a biologist, but then met a biologist who was helping out on the film and he was more "attractive" than Murphy, so it justified his casting.
* the final scene was originally shot on DV to convince the studio to give them more money to shoot it properly.
* he would rather be in music than film but has no musical skill.
* put 3 Asians in the ship when he found out over 80% of Americans wouldn't have agreed to the first moon landing if they knew how much it was going to cost. (wanted universal casting).
* after the film was shot, the studio paid for him and 35 journalist to experience a zero gravity flight.
* had the cast live in student amenities for awhile where they had to cook for themselves, to create a feel of solitude and being confined together.
* test screenings went "shit" cause the visual effects were not completed and he doesn't think the audience could look past the incomplete effects.
*his next film is about a guy who knows the answers to things and he goes on "who want's to be a millionaire" because the girl he likes watches the show.
* turned down Alien:Resurrection because at the time he was too scared to handle the amount of effects involved in making the film.

[Pubrick]

* ... 35 rewrites
* ... 35 journalists

[MacGuffin]

Interview: Danny Boyle
The acclaimed director talks 'Sunshine', special effects and his 'Trainspotting' sequel.
by Patrick Kolan , IGN AU

After reaping some massive gains from his internationally-acclaimed zombie film '28 Days Later', director Danny Boyle is set to tackle another genre - science fiction - with his latest flick, 'Sunshine'. Yet another notch in his genre belt, Sunshine adds an emotional and philosophical spin to this interplanetary tale. We recently spoke to Boyle in Sydney, where he discussed the premise of the film, its design inspirations and his rationale on the credibility of the near-future technology. He also dropped a few hints about his follow-up to 'Trainspotting', based on the novel, 'Porno'.

IGN: After filming '28 Days Later', what compelled you to do another 'genre' release? And why now in your career?

Danny Boyle:Well, Alex Gardner, who I worked with on '28 Days Later', wrote the script. He gave it to me in a pub in London - we met for an illicit cigarette, you know, which we do occasionally - and I just thought, "What an amazing premise for a film." This idea of eight astronauts strapped to the back of a massive bomb, the size of Manhattan Island, flying towards the heart of the Sun where they're going to try to explode it. I just thought "That's pretty cool."

I've always wanted to do a space movie. I know and I love them; and there's not been a movie made about the Sun, really. And yet, it's the most important thing. And you know, we think money's important - we make lots of films about that; we think love's important - we make lots of films about that. This is seriously important. And there's never been any movies made about it! So we thought, "Let's do that", because everybody's focussing on global warming and stuff like that. The fear is that everything is heating up - let's go the other way, flip it, and make a film about global freezing - like at the end of the film. And if Sydney's frozen, you know the planet's in a bit of trouble.

IGN: 'Sunshine' takes place 50 years from now. Why was this time period selected instead of the more distant future or present day?

Danny Boyle: Good question, that. There's no indication in the script, so the key question is 'When is it?' We have this rule called the 'Red Bus Rule', which is that in London 50 years ago there were red buses, and there still are today. They're slightly different, but basically they're something you can recognise.

We thought, right, 50 years in the future it'll have advanced to allow us to travel to the Sun, but the technology will still be recognisable. There will still be screens and buttons and there'll be a feel of familiarity. It's more NASA than Star Wars. It's not outrageous creatures or things like that - it's still within our world, within our possibility to touch.

IGN: What influenced your design choices in the film, such as the golden suits, gold-leaf reflective shield and glow of the Sun?

Danny Boyle: The gold-leaf was NASA - the satellites they send out need that to deflect the heat and radiation. So immediately you take that as being the shield that they hide behind, that the bomb is hidden behind, that the crew shelter behind. And if they have to go out there then you think, well, make the suit of gold - which is a very bold thing to do because basically the producers want you to use the NASA suit because it's the one everybody's familiar with and can't go wrong. But it's good to take a risk and push it a little bit.

The other big question is the helmet. What's the helmet gonna be like, because that's the nightmare of "Are you going to be able to see into it? And how are you going to cover it? Is there going to be light inside it?" All that.

IGN: You actually mounted the camera on the side of the helmet, didn't you?

Danny Boyle: Yeah, inside the helmet. With the helmet, the Sun is so, ah ...dangerous that you have to hide from it. So you make this helmet based on a kind of medieval style to protect them. And it's sort of based on 'Kenny' from 'South Park', as well - the kind of funnel-shape sort of influences it. And you put the camera on the side so you can see into it. It's great. Although it's very uncomfortable for the actors to wear, it gave a kind of claustrophobia that they use, then, in their performances. They learn very quickly what's gonna work, and not. They learn how to use a tool like that, and then that benefits the film.

IGN: The final shot in the film features the Sydney Opera House quite prominently. Why was Sydney, above other cities, chosen for the closing moments of the film?

Danny Boyle: Because, basically you've got six monuments in the world that are universally recognisable and only Sydney has the heat-thing I think. I guess the Taj Mahal,I suppose I could've done as well. In fact, I've just been there [The Sydney Opera House] and it's really interesting - the Opera House. I was looking at it yesterday and it's got this kind grace that's very beautiful and it was nice to be able to do it like that. And hey, Rose [Byrne] is from here, and it's nice to have the connection with that, even though she's playing an American in the film.

We shot it in Stockholm, in fact - the scene and the snow was all shot in Stockholm, and the Opera House was from here.

IGN: And they made a composite of the two?

Danny Boyle: Yes! It's like they can do anything these days! (laughs)

IGN: 'Sunshine' is the latest film you've made that deals with ideas of God, humanity and morality. What is it that attracts you to scripts with these kinds of subtexts?

Danny Boyle: I was brought up a very strict Catholic and I don't practice anymore or anything. I kind of call myself an atheist, I suppose - although quite a spiritual atheist, I hope. You can't get rid of it; it's there. It kind of lurks and hovers all the time, behind you. I think for everybody, no matter what their upbringing - to go and meet the source of life in the solar system - is bound to create a spiritual dimension. You try to cope with something of this scale, of this power and this magnitude, against our smallness and insignificance.

And that was something really interesting - there is a spiritual side to it. But then there's an arrogance about science - a wonderful, necessary arrogance. It feels that it can create a bomb that can affect this enormous, unbelievable, unimaginable power. But science believes that they should be able to do this. That's wonderful; that's creation-science. I guess, if you believe in God, the star is His really.

IGN: Your cast had to endure some interesting training for their roles, such as living in close quarters and studying their movie professions with real-life counterparts. Can you discuss some of this?

Danny Boyle:I always think that actors, especially international actors like this who fly in to London from all these different places, they arrive in a kind of bubble. A little "actor bubble" - that's what I always think. And I was very keen to pop that bubble as much as possible - it pushes them together.

We made them all live together and we did space training and all sorts of weird things - scuba diving, watching films together. You're just trying to bond them as much as possible, because the film opens and they've been together 16 months. You want them to have that familiarity, that sense of togetherness. And indeed you hope that another bubble forms around all eight of them, so that they are a 'conspiracy' together, in a way. Which I think would happen, if they were in space that long together.

IGN: As director, what kind of special research and training do you take part in?

Danny Boyle: We did lots of stuff, really. We went to a nuclear submarine, which was really fascinating - which, apart from oil rigs, is the closest you get to this kind of claustrophobic living conditions. This sense of having to depend on each other at all times.

We went up in an acrobatic plane to do zero-G, which was really exhilarating as well. Scuba's quite a good way of doing it, because it gives you that sense of being in a different world. You just try and do as many of those different things as possible, really. And you get all these different people talking to you - scientific advisors, futurists and people who are developing products for the future. They say what the world will look like in 30 years time. And you kind of soak up as much as you can and then you dump it all, and tell the story.

IGN: Finally, it's been ten years since 'Trainspotting' so can we expect to see the sequel, Porno, in the near future?

Danny Boyle: That's the thing. We've been given the rights to do the sequel to it, and there is a script - a very early script from John Hodge, the writer of the first one. And we got the idea of doing it, but it depends on [the actors] being quite a bit older than they are at the moment. They need to have a bit of age. Our take on it is, their headiness - these guys who lived at the absolute brink, felt they were invincible and felt they could abuse themselves to the absolute limit - suddenly hit middle age. They're in their forties and they look it - but they don't really look it, those actors, yet. They're a bit moisturised up and looked after. So when they get a bit older, we'll have a go at sassing it up a bit, yeah.

IGN: Fantastic. It's been a pleasure!

Danny Boyle: Great! Thanks very much.

[Pubrick]

well that was spoilerrific.

Danny Boyle: Great! Thanks very much.

[MacGuffin]

New International Trailer

[squints]

Interview: Danny Boyle
we met for an illicit cigarette, you know, which we do occasionally

Perhaps if I smoke one of these the trailer will be a lot cooler?

[rustinglass]

I saw it about a month ago.
I really liked the film, it was a great experience, really got me on the edge of the seat. The photography is amazing, some of those wide space shots are really beautiful. Three films were constantly coming to mind: mission to mars, alien, and 2001.
The trailers are really bad and the film already was some nice weird music, i don't know why they didin't use it in the trailers instead of requiem.

[polkablues]

Three films were constantly coming to mind: mission to mars, alien, and 2001.

It's a little distressing that they're listed in that order.

[MacGuffin]

The sun is the star
The sci-fi thriller Sunshine sees director Danny Boyle continue his love affair with genre films. But, he tells Patrick Barkham, he's no 'Star Wars geek'
Source: The Guardian
 
Briilllliiaaaannnttt! Danny Boyle in full flow bears more than a passing resemblance to the Fast Show's boundlessly enthusiastic teenager, Brilliant Kid. Today the director of Trainspotting is mostly raving about the sun, Kenny from South Park, student digs, acrobatic planes, CGI hamsters, cordless kettles, Dr Brian Cox, D:Ream, the God particle and Hugh Grant. Grant apart, these things all play a role in Sunshine, Boyle's new film and his first foray into science fiction.

"I am a sci-fi fan," says Boyle, whose boyish lust for life knocks a decade off his 50 years. "I'm not a Star Wars geek. I like the hardcore stuff, the Nasa stuff. But I hadn't thought, 'Oh I must do a sci-fi film.'" Then he read the script for Sunshine by Alex Garland, his collaborator on 28 Days Later and The Beach. "I thought it was brilliant. What a great starting point: eight astronauts strapped to the back of this massive bomb, behind a shield, flying towards the sun. Fantastic. I'd go and watch that."

Set half a century in the future, Sunshine, which cost £20m to make, is not as much of a boys-only affair as it first appears. The hero of this claustrophobic thriller is the slight Irish actor Cillian Murphy, all hooded eyes and sloping shoulders. The sun is dying, the earth in permanent winter and Murphy is the physicist in an eight-strong Asian-American team of astronauts 16 months into a mission to reignite the sun with a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan.

Boyle reckons Sunshine is the first sci-fi film with the sun as its star, probably because until now we haven't had the computer-generated wizardry to represent its molten fury in flaming close-up. In keeping with his genre-hopping reputation, Sunshine appears a world away from Trainspotting. But it does share one small motif: the CGI sun is "very, very trippy", according to Boyle. "That was one of the briefs to the CGI people - it should feel like hallucinations towards the end."

Three years in the making, the director began by dumping his international cast - including the Australian Rose Byrne, American Chris Evans and more established Asian talents Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada - in a student dorm in Mile End, east London. "They've got some very nice student digs there but it ain't the Dorchester. Actors want to impress at the beginning," Boyle chuckles, "so you take advantage of that by suddenly saying, 'Right, you're here for two weeks.' What you're doing is creating a siege mentality. It's just like football managers. You're making them feel like it's eight of them, alone, against the world. At the start of the film, the characters have been together for 16 months and you've got to make some gesture towards that."

The film's premise may strain credibility, but Boyle devoted his energies to making his actors convince as astronauts in the claustrophobic corridors of a space ship. He took them scubadiving, introduced them to the work of Richard Seymour, a futurologist who invented the cordless kettle, and put them in a 747 flight simulator.

Then Boyle dragged them into an acrobatic plane. "They put a glove on the dashboard and there's a moment of zero-G where the glove just floats off. It's fantastic. It's so they could experience things that they hadn't in their last film. You don't want them bringing that film with them. You want to pop the actor's bubble and let them be part of this film."

Finally, he brought in Dr Brian Cox from Cern, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva, as their scientific adviser. "He somehow makes it accessible and puts it in human terms," says Boyle. "When you begin to learn about the science, it makes your mind swell."

Scientists may scoff at Sunshine's most bonkers bits and may also feel that Murphy is too young (he's 30) and good-looking to save the world. Boyle will have none of it. Take Cox, he says. He is a proper scientist "who is very handsome and used to be in D:Ream. He's one of the backing musicians on Things Can Only Get Better. And he looks like Cillian."

Boyle gave Murphy his big break on 28 Days Later, his 2002 zombie movie. "He's a reluctant hero, that's what's good about him. He's next door actually." Murphy is being interviewed in the adjoining hotel room. Boyle adopts a conspiratorial whisper. "He's quite modest as a person, and he has to be pushed into the centre of the film a bit. He kind of turns away from the camera. I saw him doing that in the Ken Loach film [The Wind that Shakes the Barley] as well. He has to be eased in there and that's really appealing. It stops it being too obviously heroic."

Boyle shrugs off his reputation for uncovering young actors. Shallow Grave saw Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston and Peter Mullan enter the mainstream, while Trainspotting made names of a generation of actors from Robert Carlyle to Kelly Macdonald. Does that make him a great talent spotter? "Huh huh huh. It makes me out to be Simon Cowell. I trained in the theatre. A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit."

As well as deploying natural cunning to create a cast of characters under siege, Boyle ramped up the claustrophobia in Sunshine by refusing to cut back to shots of our planet as "earth jeopardy" films usually do. Most of the action is within the space ship, Icarus II, and he increased the sense of confinement by resisting the urge to frequently show off its magnificent outside ("It's good, isn't it?" he says proudly of the twirling, enormous CGI ship, before explaining that the designers who built it are known in the trade as "hamsters"). Adding to the sensory deprivation are shots of Murphy from inside the helmet of his gold space suit. "We came up with this idea of a Kenny funnel shape for the helmet. South Park was one of the drawings we used as a reference point," he laughs.

Sunshine may mirror the apocalyptic tone of current debates over climate change but Garland, says Boyle, deliberately chose an alternative future: the earth getting colder and science as a saviour. Boyle, however, agrees his film is about the hubris of science. He tried to imbue his actors with the "uncompromising, cold eye" of scientists. He lowers his voice again. "Brian Cox is the nicest guy, but he's so arrogant. I used to tell the actors to watch the way he'll just go 'no'. He works at Cern, where they are looking for this particle they nickname the God particle. There is a tiny, tiny chance that when they collide these protons they'll create a black hole into which we'll all disappear. I said, 'You're still going ahead with it?' He said, 'Don't worry about it, you won't know anything about it [if it happens].' Everything will be gone!

"We had this argument in the bar last night. He said it's absolutely critical we use nuclear power and Cillian said, 'What about the Irish sea? It's so polluted and there's all these leukaemia clusters.' And Cox went, 'If we use nuclear power we can give light and food to a million people in Africa and you're worried about a few hundred people in Ireland?'"

In keeping with his habit of hopping between completely contrasting projects, Boyle's next scheduled film is Slum Dog Millionaire, based on a true story about a boy who wins the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire but faces the widespread suspicion that he cheated. Boyle has just come back from a scouting trip to Mumbai, where it sounds like the pace of life would suit his kinetic film-making.

Before the sun burns out, Boyle, slightly surprisingly, says he'd like to work with Hugh Grant. He also hopes to team up with McGregor again. The pair fell out badly when the director refused to cast his usual leading man in The Beach. They have only spoken a couple of times since and, momentarily, Boyle's enthusiasm dims. "I don't really hang out with actors. You can't really be top friends with actors as a director because you are often judging them about something they want to do and you won't give them."

Although some years back McGregor publicly dismissed talk of a sequel to Trainspotting in the form of Irvine Welsh's novel Porno, Boyle still holds out hope. "I'm sure we will get back together again, I hope we can, because we had a really good run. He's one of those guys who can do it, who has got that magic thing that people love. You don't come across it very often."

The script for Porno "starts with this amazing premise. Begbie is in jail for 17 years for manslaughter." Boyle sounds perky again. "He gets this guy to stab him so he can go into hospital and break out and this guy stabs him in the wrong place, in the kidney." He doubles up, chuckling. "You can feel the characters straightaway. We just need the [Trainspotting] actors to feel a bit older. They look like they're in a spa every weekend rather than a bar. But when age hits them we'll be there, waiting."

[MacGuffin]

2007: a scorching new space odyssey
One of the most exciting British movies this year is Danny Boyle's sci-fi epic, Sunshine, which puts the divine back into a genre that had lost its way. To film-makers, it seems, the infinite has a spiritual attraction
Source: The Observer

At a key moment in Danny Boyle's radiant new sci-fi film Sunshine, a character is asked, 'Are you an angel?' With its retina-scorching visuals, which blaze from the screen into the dark abyss of the cinema auditorium, this extraordinary epic certainly seems to burn as brightly as a host of fiery angels. Set in 2057, Sunshine follows the crew of the spaceship Icarus II as they attempt to deliver a thermonuclear payload into the heart of the sun, lending new light to our galaxy's inexorably darkening star. En route, they pick up a distress signal from their lost predecessor, Icarus I, which disappeared into the void seven years earlier. Like an interstellar Marie Celeste, the first Icarus now hangs in space like a ghost ship, seemingly without a soul in sight. But as the reason for its mission failure is gradually revealed (more psychological than scientific), the crew of Icarus II fall prey to the eternal inner demons which haunt those who fly too close to the sun.

Shot not in Hollywood but in the 3 Mills studios in London's East End, Sunshine boasts extraordinary computer graphic imagery so luminescent you feel you could get sunburn just watching the film. As a sensory experience, it's overwhelming. But perhaps more importantly, Sunshine also harks back to a time when sci-fi turned its attention not toward the hallowed teen market but toward the heavens. Although screenwriter Alex Garland has said the inspiration for the film came from 'an article projecting the future of mankind from a physics-based, atheist perspective', this ambitious British fantasy increasingly blurs the boundaries between science and religion. In this respect, it falls within a grand tradition of adult-orientated science-fiction which is haunted by the question of divinity, whether as a presence or an absence.

These ideas are familiar to director Danny Boyle, who had a traditional religious upbringing, and planned to join a seminary at the age of 14. 'I was at school in Bolton,' he remembers, 'and all set to transfer to this seminary near Wigan. Then one of the priests told me that maybe I should wait, maybe I should stay and finish my school education. Quite soon after that, I saw A Clockwork Orange, which was the first film I went to see by myself. And it just changed everything. I know it all sounds too neat, but that's what happened.'

Boyle went on to make Trainspotting, which has been dubbed 'the Clockwork Orange of the Nineties' - a viscerally hip portrait of anarchic youth culture which became both a controversial modern film classic and a defining pop icon. Yet despite his current free-form agnosticism, Boyle's films have continued to be haunted by the detritus of his religious background, from the worldly angels of the romantic fantasy A Life Less Ordinary (which owes a debt to Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death aka Stairway to Heaven) to the solidly earthy apparitions of saints who appear to the young hero of the underrated Millions. Other Boyle hits include 28 Days Later, a Garland-scripted zombie shocker set in a terrifying post-apocalyptic Britain. Now, with Sunshine, Boyle has set his sights higher than ever before, making a film which addresses 'what happens to your mind when you meet the creator of all things in the universe'.

Sci-fi fans will see a range of familiar texts echoed in the broadstrokes outline of Sunshine, most notably Paul WS Anderson's Event Horizon, a flawed but fascinating Nineties Brit-pic in which a lost spaceship re-emerges from a black hole having been to hell and back - literally. There are also nods to John Carpenter's Seventies cult classic Dark Star, in which co-creator Dan O'Bannon plays Sgt Pinback, whose oddball moniker inspired Sunshine's most mysterious character, Pinbacker. O'Bannon went on to co-write Alien, Ridley Scott's deep space shocker to which so much modern sci-fi owes a debt, and with which Sunshine shares its use of the time-honoured 'intercepted distress signal' motif. And then of course there's my own personal favourite, the underrated sci-fi masterpiece Silent Running - Doug Trumbull's eco-warning dystopian fantasy in which the last of Earth's forests are consigned to giant geodesic domes in space, an idea that appears to have blossomed into the 'oxygen gardens' aboard the Icarus spaceship in Boyle's 21st-century adventure.

Yet the primary heavenly body around which Sunshine charts its orbit is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a weighty and portentous work which opens with 'The Dawn of Man' and climaxes with the birth of a Star Child in what appears to be an extraterrestrial rewriting of the creationist myth. Just as God creates Adam in his own image in Genesis, so the 'aliens' of 2001 transform a dying astronaut into a perfectly formed space baby, the first of a new species which will return to earth (presumably) to herald the next age in man's cosmic evolution.

This conclusion may be obliquely expressed (I remember thinking 'what was all that about?' and having to read the novel to find out) but the mesmerising symphony of sound and vision which constitutes the film's final act clearly suggest a metaphysical encounter way beyond the realms of rational explanation. Dubbed 'the ultimate trip', Kubrick's psychedelic movie used music by the avant garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti, which Underworld's Karl Hyde admits profoundly influenced his own work on the music for Boyle's new film. 'I'd never heard anything like it,' says Hyde of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna, which sounds for all the world like choirs of alien angels ringing throughout the heavens, investing 2001's baffling denouement with undeniable overtones of religious ecstasy and unearthly transcendence.

There's a strikingly similar blend of science and theology in Sunshine, in which whizz-kid physicist Capa (played by the ethereally blue-eyed Cillian Murphy) comes face to face with his maker in the shape of a dying sun. Just as the enigmatic monoliths from 2001 act as creative gods to the earthlings, so the sun serves as both the giver of life and the source of all knowledge in Boyle's soul-searching movie.

'I tried to keep it visual,' says Boyle, 'because some of the ideas in the film are very hard to talk about. But when we were making Sunshine, which involved a lot of post-production special effects, my responsibility to the actors was to describe to them what they would be seeing. I was brought up in a religious environment, and so my natural tendency was to lapse into descriptions which were broadly creationist. I'd be saying things like: "Kneel before the source of all creation, bow down before the source of all life!" And even Alex [Garland], who is quite an aggressive atheist, has that same cultural instinct in the language that he uses.'

So too, it appears, does Sunshine's scientific consultant Dr Brian Cox, who works at Cern (the Centre for European Nuclear Research), the world's largest particle-physics laboratory. According to Boyle, Cox's work includes the pursuit of the 'Higgs boson', the missing piece in the current theory of the fundamental nature of matter which is affectionately known amongst scientists as the 'God particle'. 'Brian Cox admits that you can't really speak about these things without allowing for what some people would call a "spiritual dimension",' says Boyle. 'The question is, of course, whether that spiritual dimension is just a constraint of the language - the fact that we simply have no other vocabulary to describe such things. I think that's what Alex believes. But for me, what Capa sees at the end of the movie is definitely something beyond the rational.'

The other significant star in Sunshine's cinematic galaxy is Tarkovsky's Solaris, a sombre Russian classic which, like 2001, uses a journey into deep space to dramatise a symbolic voyage into the very soul of man. Tarkovsky and Kubrick were aware of each other's work, and their joint efforts represent the twin peaks of a neo-spiritualist brand of science-fiction cinema which reached its apotheosis in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Other contemporaneous works (which flourished in the period before Star Wars turned sci-fi into an amusement park ride) include John Boorman's bonkers Zardoz, a self-important romp with philosophical pretensions. Here, Sean Connery (in leather straps, boots, and fetching posing pouch) can be found climbing inside the mouth of the flying deity Zardoz which rules the wastelands of the earth in a godforsaken near-future. Zardoz is meant to be a marauding, all-powerful divinity but, as Connery's Zed discovers, he is nothing more than a false idol - a smoke-and-mirrors illusion like the Wizard of Oz ('Zard-Oz', geddit?). The movie was pretentious, boring, and very, very silly. But its adults-only X-rating and esoteric script spoke volumes about the grown-up aura that sci-fi had attained in the wake of 2001 and Solaris

Nor were the theosophical tendencies of the genre utterly quelled by the kidtastic assault of George Lucas and his clones. Although Star Wars and its spin-off sequels and prequels played primarily to a congregation of children and arrested adolescents, the endless ooga-booga about 'The Force' and 'The Dark Side' have since flourished into something resembling a modern religion which commands an army of merchandise-hungry disciples. I can't stand the Star Wars movies, which always seemed to me to represent a gross infantalisation of the dark hearted 'serious' sci-fi (Quatermass and the Pit, Silent Running, Soylent Green) on which I was raised. But I've heard pulpit preachers quote Yoda in their attempts to engage young people with religion, the battle between Good and Evil having been played out in the popular imagination as a war between Sith Lords and Jedi Knights.

Even Captain Kirk has dabbled in the search for God, most egregiously in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in which the Enterprise boldly goes 'through the barrier' between this world and the next. One sub-2001 light show later, and Kirk is splitting infinitives in heaven. Of course, it all turns out to be a Zardoz-style con, but not before everyone has had a chance to pontificate at great length about the meaning of paradise and the nature of the divine being. (The film was directed by William Shatner himself, which perhaps explains why God turns out to be no match for Captain Kirk.)

Danny Boyle sensibly prefers Robert Zemeckis's 1997 film Contact, large swathes of which involve heated debate about whether a priest, a psychoanalyst or a particle physicist would be best placed to represent mankind in our first meeting with extraterrestrial life-forms. 'I was there on opening night,' says Boyle, a devoted sci-fi fan with an enthusiasm for the genre in all its forms. He was even slated to direct the third Alien sequel but backed out due to anxieties about the level of special effects and the studio's evident desire for a nuts-and-bolts, action-orientated romp.

Having completed Sunshine, however, this endlessly energetic filmmaker has no plans to revisit sci-fi, which has a habit of producing creative burn-out. 'There's a reason why many directors only make one science-fiction film,' he says.

'It's because you exhaust yourself... spiritually. I do think that I've become more spiritual working on this - you have to be open-minded. The interesting thing is that the more commercial sci-fi films, like Event Horizon or Alien, tend to go for Hell in space. But maybe its more ambitious to aim for Heaven...'

Five-star sci-fi

2001: A Space Odyssey
(Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Arthur C Clarke's short story 'The Sentinel' provided the inspiration for Kubrick's work in which enigmatic alien monoliths play God, leading mankind on a voyage of discovery - 'beyond infinite'!

Solaris
(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972) Art-house fans howled in 2002 when US director Steven Soderbergh launched his remake of this revered Russian classic, which many consider a poetic riposte to the cold 'inhumanity' of 2001.

Dark Star
(John Carpenter, 1974) Astronauts amble through space with a talking bomb with delusions of its own deity in this low budget cult classic. 'In the beginning, there was the darkness ... and there was also me. Let there be light...'

Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980) Apocalyptic religious imagery abounds as William Hurt's drug-addled Harvard Scientist journeys into inner space in search of 'that true self, that original self, that first self ... tangible and incarnate. And I'm gonna find the fucker!'

Event Horizon
(Paul WS Anderson, 1997) Space travel turns into a journey to hell. 'I created the Event Horizon to reach the stars!' burbles Sam Neill's astro-boffin. 'But she's gone much further than that - to a dimension of pure chaos, pure evil!'

[MacGuffin]

The Danny Boyle Webchat Transcript
Source: Empire Online

From the back streets of Edinburgh to the very empty streets of London, via the beaches of Southeast Asia, Danny Boyle's career behind the camera has taken him to some extreme locations with some very extreme characters. But the director has always managed to keep two feet firmly on planet Earth. With the release of his new sci-fi extravaganza Sunshine, that's all changed. Danny Boyle joined us here at Empire on 5 April 2007 for his exclusive live webchat where the readers of Empire had the chance to quiz him on his latest film and a whole host of other topics.
So, read on for the full transcript, in which Danny discusses his next project, his thoughts on Hot Fuzz, and what he really thinks of Michael Bay...


Rikkie: Danny, great to have you here. Let's face it, thinking about space a bit too much can make your head reaaally hurt. How many times whilst making the film did you yourself go through existential moments of "why am i here"?
Pretty much all the time really. Your head kind of pulses when you hear some of the facts about it. It loses five thousand million tonnes of mass every second. And yet it will burn for another four and a half billion years. You can't get your head around that - you just have to submit!

PDM: Was there ever a point when you considered actually setting the film 4.5 billion years in the future, or did that just seem to impossibly ambitious to imagine?
Good question! First time I've had that, very clever. Clever, but expensive!

Ross: Mainstream Hollywood big budget disaster movies have always made out the Americans to be the only supreme race that can resolve any of Earths problems - be it war or natural causes.
Yeah... Well, the Americans are always right, aren't they?

Ross: My question to you Mr. Boyle is during the start of the production of Sunshine did you make the decision to cast an international cast to break free of the predictable and lets face it the unlikely conclusion that only one nation can save Earth?
Yeah. In truth, in 50 years time, it will be entirely Asian. They will be leading the space race. Between India, China, Japan, Korea etc. But you have to have some Americans still in it, for the cinematic market I guess. But it was a chance to work with Michelle Yeoh, that was the real reason! The coolest Bond girl ever... 

elasticfrog: Hi Mr Boyle (Danny if I may) I am a budding cinematographer and I have always been impressed with your experimentation with people like Darius Khondji and Anthony Dod Mantle and I was wondering how you approached Sunshine visually.
Great cinematographer, Alwin Kuchler, on this one. A real prince of darkness. My kind of eyes, really, on the movie. He had this amazing idea of keeping the interior of the spacecraft all grey, blue and green. No reference to orange, red, yellow. And then when you go outside the ship, you re-introduce yellow, having been starved of it for 20 minutes. We wanted the light to literally penetrate people's bodies.

gritman: directing a big budget sci-fi, where you scared that your film would be compared to the classic greats, or was your aim to be nestled nicely underneath them? Or where you aiming to produce a classic of your own?
I can't say that, but you can. There's a plateau that you have to approach, and on it perch 2001, Tarkovsky's Solaris, and Ridley Scott's Alien. Up to you to judge whether we get on it or not.

statostatostato: Hi Danny, Loved Sunshine (and really ALL your movies)-What was the inspiration for telling this story? Was it a case of yourself and Alex Garland developing it together?
Alex wrote the script and then we worked on it for a year together. Eventually 35 drafts were produced, but some of them were just correcting spelling mistakes. Some steps forward, some sideways, but you try to do all your experimenting in the script... Because it's the cheapest area you ever work in. Once you lock the script and start shooting you keep very faithful to it.

naomi: Hi Danny. Why do you keep working with Cillian (and I mean that in a good way)?
(Laughs) He's made some really good films since I've worked with him, and I was hoping some of it might rub off on me.

FameAsser: 28 Days Later brought about a new Era of Zom-flicks...I wanna know how 28 Weeks Later is shaping up. Are we going to be sat saying "its the same as Days but with American characters" or is there a whole new area of Zombification to explore in the new film?
It's got an amazing landcsape of a deserted London. Different from the first film because it'sshot by a Spanish director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and an Ecuadorean cameraman, Enrique Chadiak. And they bring an outsider's eye to the capital. The rest of it is so violent I don't know whether you'll ever be able to see it!

punchdrunk: Also you have a lot of badly made sci-fi made to compete against, how have you combated people's negative expectations of sci-fi genre when marketing the film?
You just try to invoke the great ones, really. And hope you get close to them. Audiences are very intolerant of small mistakes in sci-fi. And rightly so.

s02bf16c: Hello Danny, Its been reported that Sunshine was at times a pretty damn difficult shoot, will it be a while before you return to the Sci-Fi genre?
I will die before I return to sci-fi.

Rikkie: I'm really really looking forward to hearing the Underworld soundtrack, is there any news of an OST release for Sunshine? (By the way, give Rick and Karl a nudge to do some gigs in the UK.)
Rikkie, they're getting a new album ready right now and then they'll tour I guess. It was one of the big buzzes for me, getting them to do the soundtrack. 

gritman: you seem to be tackling each genre of film with great force, I'm interested to know if this is your intention to show your diversity as a director, and what area can we expect to see next?
Gritman, you don't see it like that until afterwards, when you start to publicise the films. But it's lovely to do different genres, because it involves long afternoons of research in front of the telly.

kevincolmcondon: If there was some sort of horrible parallel dimension where Danny Boyle wasn't a film maker, what would you think he'd be doing instead of making flicks?
Train-driver. I've always wanted to be a train-driver.

FameAsser: Danny, before Trainspotting, you directed a lot of TV projects. Is it something you would ever consider returning to, or does the bank balance suggest that movies are the only way to go?
No, I love TV. Apart from American Idol, what do I watch religiously...? (Thinks) I watch Hollyoaks over my daughter's shoulder... (Publicist requests that Danny withdraw this answer)

rhubarb: Danny, is there a chance you'll return to the Trainspotting world, by filming the sequel, Porno?
Oh yes. When the actors age sufficiently so they look a bit more shagged-out, we'll be waiting for them with the sequel.

dcox: Just come in late so apologies if anyone's already asked this, but are we ever going to see Alien Love Triangle? Or at least your section of it?
I'd love it to come out as a DVD extra, because it's only 25 minutes long. But the Weinsteins own it and it means doing a movie for them first, I think.

Michael J Dowswell: Hi Danny, hope you are well and have managed to get some sleep after directing Sunshine. Struggling (very struggling) filmmaker here in rural South West Scotland. Question: what is the single best piece of advice you would give to a struggling filmmaker?
Persistence. You'll need a lot of it. Pictures - collect them and distribute them to your crew. Trust the actors to get you out of a corner, where you will certainly find yourself.

Jack Bauer: I heard a funny rumour that people approached you for Transformers, is this true or just a big fat lie?
(Laughs) All I can say about Transformers is that I hope Michael Bay doesn't find himself near me when he's on fire.

chanting_ray: Our script has been universally loved. Problem is that the actors willing to attach, we're told aren't big enough, the actors big enough to bring finance, won't attach until we're fully financed! How can we break out of this chicken and egg scenario?
Lower your costs, chanting_ray. Lower your costs.

rhubarb: if you were on the ship to save the sun and could only take three films with you, which would they be?
Good question!! Wow... Apocalypse Now, as always. Don't Look Now. And Au Revoir, Les Enfants.

kevincolmcondon: What are you considering as your next project?
Slum Dog Millionaire. Written by Simon Beaufoy of Full Monty. Set in Mumbai, it's the true story of an illiterate slum kid who goes on the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and wins it. Like chanting_ray I'll have to keep the costs down.

gritman: On the Empire webchat with Neil Marshal, I asked what he thought of your film 28 Days Later. he said he loved the beginning, but not so much the rest. so what do you think of his big film The Descent? (ps he said you where a lovely man!)
I don't believe that. He must like the whole film - he virtually copied it for The Descent!

Benjamin Dover: Ok, If you were locked in a room, detoxing from herion, seeing babies in the ceiling, what 3 cds would you bring?
(Winces) This is sooo tough. Seriously, there's a great New Order song called Subculture, which is a forgotten, really great New Order track. (Thinks) I'll come back to the rest...

v for vienetta: Apologies for my lateness, been for a pub lunch. Danny, Shallow Grave's on tonight, will you be watching?
(Laughs) Where's it on? Oh, I know, there's some pillock introducing it, I think. Me!

elasticfrog: In your films I have loved the dark comedy, does comedy come natural to you and would you consider going further into the comedic direction? I think you could take Will Ferrell to the dark side - a womanising, elephant poacher maybe?
You're not allowed to mention Will Ferrell, as he opens this weekend in a movie as well. If you go to see his film, please buy a ticket for Sunshine and then just switch cinemas when the lights go down.   

SSO-M: what do you want people to learn while watching Sunshine?
I want people to literally journey to the sun. I think that's what only a movie can do. Nothing else can give you that. A mental and physical journey.

tonywatkins: I'm most intrigued about whether the sun is a metaphor for something else, and therefore what you want the audience to come away with?
It's not really prescriptive in that way. It's about what's biggest in your own mind.

scudder: Hey Danny. Sunshine seem like the spiritual successor to Alien, but is there any film that you would actually be tempted to remake? Especially as this year's Oscar winner is a remake.
I've recently been offered Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth. Two Nic Roeg films which I love - how could you ever consider remaking them?

thenextbenhersom: You're famous for being such a diverse filmmaker, what do you look for when you're choosing your next project?
Passion, exhilaration, a kind of buzz. The kind of buzz I got from watching Apocalypto. Barking mad but brilliant.

lane11011: You mentioned your next project 'Slum Dog Millionaire'. It struck me as a similar premise to your film 'Millions'. Is the thought of a kid winning lots of money one you dreamt about yourself as a kid or do you just like the idea?
I love making films about money, that goes without saying! Godard said all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun. I think the British equivalent is a girl and a bag of money, because we don't have guns!

EchteG: Danny, there's a Golden Globe nominated Hungarian movie called Sunshine directed by Istvan Szabo. Did you see it?
We had a lot of problems securing the title because Hollywood Studios have an agreement not to duplicate titles, so ther'es no confusion in the DVD shop. The real reason is they wanted a different title, like Solar Earth Mission. Or Endeavour Enterprise. But we loved Sunshine.

Jay: Danny, as a keen and geeky reader / game-player, I was wondering if there's anything else you're interesting in adapting to film? And yes, Sub-Culture is fantastic.
Alex Garland is the game-player. I'm more music really. I'd like to make a film about The Undertones.

jigs: If you could sit on another director's set for learning purposes, who's would it be?
Ken Loach. In fact, Krzysztof Kieslowski said that he would kneel on a Ken Loach set.

Cloudinsane: So, Danny - why do you freeze frames during intense and heightened scenes in your films?
In Sunshine it's because time and space are distorting. In the other films it's because it's cool.

Robyn: Have you ever (like some other stars have admitted to) 'Googled' yourself? or looked yourself up on Imdb....especially since they've introduced the STARmeter bit?
When my daughter's not watching Hollyoaks, she's Googling me, so I watch over her shoulder then as well.

Mr Phil: Talking of space, have you ever been on a donkey ride on Blackpool beach?
Many, many times.

kevincolmcondon: It seems the earth and its mother is trying to cash in on the superhero genre, have you ever considered joining that exclusive club that includes Bryan Singer, Richard Donner and Tim Burton?
I think there was something in the Empire review about directing a superhero film! I'm not really a comic-book person. I'm more music.

jigs: Have you any interest in directing the third installment of Kieslowski's Heaven, Hell, Purgatory trilogy?
No but I'd love to put The Double Life Of Veronique on my CV. 

Benjamin Dover: Danny, what kind of budget does one need to make a Zombie film like 28 Days Later? And how many litres of fake blood does one need?
It's not a zombie film - how many times do we have to say?!

tonywatkins: What is it you particularly admire about Loach? Would you film in a strictly chronological way like him?
Perfomances. Chronological shooting. No bullshit. And only he, along with David Bowie, has turned down one of those ridiculous awards from the Queen.

Donnie24: Would you like to work with Cillian or Ewan again or do you not belive in repeating actor director partnerships e.g Depp and Burton, De Niro and Scorcese?
Both great actors. Would love to do something with them when we find something right.

Aaron: The soundtracks, particularly in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, really made the films for me and are an unforgettable part of the experience. Do you personally choose the tracks for your films, and for orchestral stuff, who is your favourite composer?
Yeah, I choose all the music. And I upset composers by replacing their stuff with pop songs. John Murphy is my favourite, as he used to play backing musician in Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

EchteG: What's your favourite scene from Sunshine?
There's a great scene where they vote on killing a member of the crew to save oxygen. Very simple, the best scene Alex Garland has ever written, and when they're that good they shoot themselves.

PDM says: What exactly is your role in Dead On: The Life and Cinema of George A. Romero, are you interviewed only or have you any larger part in the making of the film?
Quick interview, that's all.

s02bf16c: Have you asked Empire what happened to your other star yet??!
The office went very quiet. They're ashamed of themselves and so they should be.

Jay: What would you call the 'monsters' in 28 Days Later? Recently, in a large lecture theatre, I scorned a girl for calling them zombies. I listed all the reasons why they aren't zombies, but the best I could come up with was 'infected people'.
We call them "the infected". They were actually cast from an agency in East London that specialises in retired athletes. People who are very fit still but can no longer compete. That's why they're so terrifying when they're running at you...rather than ambling towards you.

anton: Speaking of musician, Danny, have you ever approached a favourite of yours to make his next video?
I've only ever done one video, for Iggy Pop, to promote Trainspotting. I hired 50 people of different ages from 5 to 70, all wearing only his black leather trousers and dancing behind him while he performed the song. It was an act of love, but I think he thought I was taking the piss.

lane11011: I noticed in the trailer for 28 Weeks later that Robert Carlyle stars in it. Was this a choice personally made by you or just a coincidence as you have worked with him numerous times in the past?
I recommended him to Juan Carlos, and he showed great taste in casting him. He gives a blinding performance - literally.

Benjamin Dover: Danny, What are your thoughts on a Norwegian Zombie movie, with blizzards and snow. The plot is Russian genetically modified Zombies coming to eat us, and of course, blood splattered in snow follows! Do you thing it's a possible hit?
If you're planning to make this or convincing someone else to do it for you, watch the John Carpenter version of The Thing before you begin. That wilderness is a great place for a horror film.

gritman: what are your opinions on trailers showing too much of the movie? Do you have any input into the editing of them? Have we seen all the good bits from Sunshine or are there plenty more to come?
There are so many good bits in Sunshine, even the Americans couldn't cram them all into a trailer.

danbo12: Danny when you said that its easy to get lost when you've made a hit in the movie business - what did you mean by this?
Nobody tells you the truth anymore. Everybody thinks everything you say is genius. Or that's the impression they give.

James Dyer: Genius answer.

SimonK: Follow-up to the Loach question above. Who do you rate amongst your peers, ie young British filmmakers?
I loved London To Brighton, by Paul Andrew Williams. And Andrea Arnold. They are two of the newest, brightest suspects.

tonywatkins: Which of your films gives you the greatest sense of satisfaction?
Today it has to be Sunshine.

jigs: Do epic, multi-film stories, or franchises, interest you or do you prefer more contained films?
Not franchises so much. But multi-stranded stories are good, I think.

lane11011: Would you ever consider directing a Harry Potter film, maybe the last one? I hear M. Night Shyamalan would like to do it.
Not really my cup of tea.

EchteG: How did you find Hiroyuki Sanada? I really like him since his '80s ninja movies.
I saw him in Twilight Samurai, in which he's fantastic. He was recommended by Wong Kar-Wai when we were looking for an Asian captain for the ship.

Aaron: With the recent surge in popularity of the 'zombie' sub-genre, do you think there's scope for a TV series based on the world of 28 Days/Weeks?
I think the deserted London idea could be expanded... There are endless possibilities with it as a backdrop.

gritman: was going into zero gravity worth the money then? how did it make your stomach feel?
They give you an anti-nausea pill, but it didn't seem to work with the producer, Andrew Macdonald. He felt like he was in a Michael Bay movie.

rhubarb: Who would win in a fight between a Grizzly Bear and a Lion?
Rhubarb, please watch Grizzly Man.

Benjamin Dover: Danny: Any tips on dating? should I take her to see Sunshine?
Yes. Take a number of girls on different nights.

HelenOHara: How is Ponte Tower coming along?
Nothing yet, Helen. A bit of an overexcited press release - it got ahead of itself.

WillSun: What did you think of Shaun of the Dead?
WillSin, I love it. And I loved Hot Fuzz. I met them coming out of a radio studio in Sydney, Australia. I was going in to promote Sunshine and they were on their world tour for Hot Fuzz. Seriously underrated acting from Nick and Simon, really well acted.

ChrisHewitt: Danny: what's your best joke?
Okay. It's a Gordon Strachan one, famous because of Trainspotting obviously. As he comes out of the dressing room, the press gang press forward, shouting, "Gordon, give us a quick word!" He stops, says, "Velocity" and walks away...

[squints]

That article is spoiler-ific

[MacGuffin]

'Sunshine' Bumped Up For July Release

Cinematical was just informed (via a press release) that Danny Boyle's Sunshine has had its release date pushed up to July 20.

[MacGuffin]