Astropia!

Yesterday I went to see a recent release in movie theatres here. On the left is Tara Þöll, Atli, Júlia, me, and Breki (some of my cousins here). I met everyone last time I was here, so it's a lot of fun to be meeting them again (they all grew up so much in just three years!) and speaking much more Icelandic with them this time! Tara is a big Jonny Depp fan, and she also really likes Abe Sapien from the Hellboy movies and comic books. She also likes horses a lot. Breki is a big Star Wars fan and one of his favourite actors is Harrison Ford (also a big Indiana Jones fan, and we both agree that the one with Sean Connery is the best!). Júlia likes rock - Pearl Jam, ACDC, Iron Maiden - and she doesn't know how to window-shop: she always has to buy something . . . Atli likes techno, but he does not dance.

The movie we saw is an Icelandic movie called Astrópía. I don't think there's need for a translation - it's just Astropia, like Astronomical and something diminutive too . . . It was a lot of fun, and I didn't understand everything, but my cousin Breki (far right) answered a few questions quickly while we enjoyed the movie. It was not a difficult movie to follow, but it was quite clever and funny too!

The basic plot is that a Paris Hilton-type girl named Hildur falls into a tough spot when her boyfriend is put in jail for some sort of financial electronic scam or fraud. She manages to fall into a job at a comic-book geek-fan-type store with everything from Star Trek to D&D to other role playing games . . . etc... Basically exactly the place you would NOT expect to find a Paris Hilton working. But even though she initially knows nothing about any of it, the sales at the store go way way up cause she's there. She tries RPGs and kinda likes them (after first making horrible fun of it all, of course), and she sort of falls in love with one of the 'geeks,' who is a really cool elvish type guy in the RPG world, much like Legolas from LOTR. The movie has two or three 'worlds' or 'modes' - one is real live action in an every-day suburb of Reykjavík. Another world is a comic-book version of that same every-day world. The third world is the RPG world, which takes you into the spectacular wilderness of Iceland with characters resembling LOTR etc... and D&D. All three worlds eventually combine when the evil jail-break boyfriend kidnaps the Paris Hilton girl (who by the end of the movie is quite un-like a posh and princess-like Paris Hilton and much more . . . er . . . human and real?), and she is rescued by a band of RPG players in the fantasy world, and then the movie ends with a look at the real-life scene of car-wrecks and such that the RPG players supposedly accomplished in dealing with the bad guys . . . Of course Hildur kicks ass in the rescue too! It was a lot of fun and we had a great afternoon.