Just saw Wild Blue Yonder, Werner Herzog's new film. Fascinating. It's largely assembled from footage shot in the space shuttle and by a friend during an Antarctic scuba vacation. There's a wacky narrative by Brad Dourif as an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy, the theme of which is that "aliens suck" (an exact quote).

Herzog tells a science fiction tale that suggests the sort of fantasy a child might misinterpret from such evocative footage. Mathematicians discuss their calculations and theories of space travel, shot like mystery men and ironic monsters. The film suggests that the wonders of our world are the wonders of the universe, that Earth is the last alien planet, that we exist here because there is nowhere else in the universe that is remotely hospitable to our species.

After the screening Herzog and Dourif took questions. Nobody asked Herzog about holding a gun on Klaus Kinski or asked Brad Dourif what it was like to work with Christopher Lee. Herzog was disappointingly atheistic on the subject of far space travel. Impossible, he said. Ridiculous. He gloated over the memory of shaking an astronaut with this insight. I thought it was sad, this man I admire, smugly accepting his own dogma. Some dumb woman in the audience played off this, asking a question dripping in contempt for these foolish scientists and their silly fantasies of space travel. Honestly, when it comes to the possibilities of the universe, the wonder of the physical world, I'm going to take my cue from the scientist, not an indie filmmaker. The mathematicians are probably the better judge on their theories, not Werner fucking Herzog.