The Sun Stays in the Picture

Over at FrinkTank -- which resembles nothing so much as an academic blog that's been hijacked by Andrew Dice Clay, and I mean that as a compliment -- they're very excited about Sunshine, a blockbuster movie due in 2007. Here's the plot:

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.

Of course they are.

The fact is, this sounds a lot like several nerve-rattlingly terrible movies from the past decade or so, but it's being put together by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, who teamed up to make 28 Days Later, an incredibly cool zombie movie set in post-apocalyptic London. So there's hope. And the Frinkies, like me, warmly embrace the absurdity of the premise:

The best part, that only makes me love the concept more, is that such a scenario is utterly ludicrous. El Sol ain’t like a big f***in’ briquette that you just squirt more lighter fluid on once it starts to die down. Not to mention, if it WERE dying down, the first thing it’d do is swell up to red-giant size and nuke-ify all the planets inside the asteroid belt. Thirdly, that won’t happen for another 4 billion years.

Here's the high-quality official site for the movie, which includes facts like this one:

The Sun contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System.

In other words, the Sun is one bad dude. Which reminds me in a roundabout way of the first verse of "It Don't Matter to the Sun," a song that's been covered by everyone from Garth Brooks to Rosie Thomas. (Um, I recommend her version over his.)

It don't matter to the sun
If you go or if you stay
I know the sun is gonna rise
Shine down on another day
There will still be a tomorrow
Even if you choose to leave
'Cause it don't matter to the sun
It matters to me