Gorgeous cinematography

I’m not watching a movie this Sunday evening, though I started watching Tony Awards concert. The reason for no movie tonight is I saw one on Friday and another on Saturday. The Friday movie was Raya and the Last Dragon by Disney. For a few years (though not last year) my church has been offering an outdoor movie night where a kid-friendly movie is projected on the side of the building and those who want to can bring their own chair and watch. I enjoyed this one and appreciated its message of resolving conflicts by trusting the other. Yeah, that can be hard. And doesn’t always work, as shown in an earlier scene in the movie. The Saturday movie was a part of the Freep Film Fest and also a part of the Dlectricity event in Midtown Detroit. This film fest shows documentaries with some connection to Michigan or Detroit either in subject matter or the director or producers. This has happened for several years (though not last year) and I’ve seen a few interesting films. Dlectricity is an after dark event held around the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Main Library and surrounding area. These are various things that mostly are projected onto the sides of the buildings. Some include sound (and some of that live). Some are interactive. There is also a bike parade with bicycles decorated with lights. I’ve seen the event in a previous year and probably wouldn’t have bothered if the movie wasn’t in the area. The movie was Awaken, by Tom Lowe. It was shown in the planetarium of the Michigan Science Center, which is across the street from the DIA. The description said it was shot in high definition over a period of five years in 35 countries with an uplifting score. Sounded pretty good! So I went. The movie is made up of spectacular images. Many are in slow motion, many of the others are sped up. We see a dancer in the woods with graceful leaps that, in slow motion, make her look like she is floating. On the slow side there are kids running, a group walking through the woods holding torches, views of waterfalls, riding reindeer across a stream, and scenes from several festivals in different parts of Asia. On the fast side were flights over clouds with mountains or buildings sticking through, flights down the length of a freeway, and of stars wheeling overhead as the sun begins to illuminate the trees or landscapes (though I wondered how they kept the stars visible once the sun was up). All of it with gorgeous cinematography. And about halfway through the 80 minutes I started yawning. One reason for my boredom was they kept revisiting the same scenes (though different parts of it). Another was this was beautiful imagery, but there was no story. A third reason was many of the scenes went on too long and that much slow motion dragged the whole thing out. A final reason was the theater. This is a dome planetarium, so the seats are always in a reclining position. The movie was projected on the front part of the dome, not on all of it, so leaning my head back into the headrest wasn’t the right position (besides, when was the last time that headrest was sanitized?). So my neck did not enjoy the movie. At the door to the Science Center I was asked to show my vaccination card, a first for me. I was also told to keep my mask on. I looked over the audience and saw most of them, perhaps all, wore masks.