Chris Hadfield casually singing aboard the International Space Station (YouTube)

There’s a new YouTube sensation that’s making the social media rounds, and it’s out of this world—literally.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield marked the end of his stay aboard the International Space Station with a captivating music video that’s now gone viral. While listening to Mr. Hadfield’s cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” viewers may watch as the mustachioed astronaut and his guitar float around the space station, while the view of a far-off Earth forms an entrancing backdrop.

The video was posted to YouTube yesterday; The Soyuz spacecraft that contains Mr. Hadfield and two other astronauts is expected to land at 10:30 tonight in Kazakhstan. Since its posting, the video has already racked up 1.5 million views.

This isn’t the first time that Mr. Hadfield has connected with earthlings over social media. The astronaut is a prolific tweeter, with over 834,000 Twitter followers.

Supporters of the space program hope that connections between astronauts and their earthly followers will help redirect people’s focus back to space exploration. “It all boils down to generating interest,” Mr. Hadfield’s son and social media manager Evan told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “You want people to be interested in the space program.” That’s especially important for Canada, whose space program has been hit with budget cuts in recent years.

Plus, videos like Mr. Hadfield’s could help generate kids’ interest in space-related careers; we can’t help but think that since the 1960s and 70s, kids’ career aspirations have pushed “astronaut” aside in favor of “professional app designer” or “star of reality TV dating show”.

This Canadian may be a little biased, but we’re certain that whatever the outcome, the “Space Oddity” video has officially made Chris Hadfield the most stellar astronaut ever.

From Bob Dylan to David Bowie, Tilda can do them all! (YouTube)

This is probably meant to end the debate over whether David Bowie found out a way to genetically clone himself when he was 14 years old, and the result with the asexual Ms. Swinton. But with all the tricks they can do in post these days, we're waiting for visual confirmation of these two standing in the same room at the same time. Until then:

“I know there’s this real sort of appeal and love of Sam,” Mr. Jones, 37, said with a grin explaining his decision to work with screenwriter Nathan Parker and create his first feature film specifically for Mr. Rockwell.

The two men had met in January 2007 to discuss a different project that never came to fruition, but they had bonded over a love of science-fiction films from the ’70s and early ’80s: Silent Running, Outland and (of course) 1968’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“He’s a handsome, strong man. The girls love him,” Mr. Jones said. 

“He’s a handsome, strong man,” countered Mr. Rockwell. Both of these statements are (in The Observer’s opinion) true, but so, too, was the two men’s easy camaraderie, which no doubt came partly from shooting an intense and ambitious film budgeted at $5 million and just 33 days. Still, it wasn’t just science fiction that had them feeling as though they shared a common bond.

“I think we probably both have felt like aliens sometimes,” said Mr. Rockwell, gesturing to Mr. Jones. “I know I do.”

“Definitely,” said Mr. Jones.

“Both of us were only children growing up,” Mr. Rockwell said. “Both of our parents were in the arts, and we got to see things from a weird perspective.”

Indeed. Mr. Rockwell, 40, who has become a beloved, chameleonic character actor thanks to his roles in movies like Safe Men, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Frost/Nixon (not to mention his weirdly seductive turn in Charlie’s Angels), grew up the son of two actors in what The New York Times  once described as a footloose childhood. “I think we were both exposed to things early on … adult stuff,” he said.

Which brings us to Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, a.k.a. “Zowie Bowie,” a.k.a. son of rock supernova David Bowie. Think about it: Mr. Jones was born in 1971, which means that for a few of his formative years, his father was in full-on Ziggy Stardust mode, singing about ground control to Major Tom and spiders from mars. (Is it any wonder Mr. Jones grew up to be so interested in outer space?)

“A lot of the movie, for me, is about the theme of loneliness,” continued Mr. Rockwell. “I think a lot of movies that I grew up digging—aside from those great comedies like Stripes or Animal House or Caddyshack—they were movies like Alien or Taxi Driver or The Deer Hunter or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest—these were movies that had themes about manhood and what it was like to be a man, and courage, but also intense loneliness. I can only speak for myself, but as an only child I spent a lot of time alone.”

“Me, too,” said Mr. Jones.

“I think I understood loneliness,” Mr. Rockwell said.

IN MOON, Mr. Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut who is close to completing a three-year contract with a company that mines Helium-3—one of the main sources of energy for our little planet, spinning 240,000 miles below. He desperately misses his wife and daughter—his only company is a robot (voiced by Kevin Spacey)—and his health is mysteriously deteriorating when he meets a younger version of himself on the space station, there for just the same reason he is. Mr. Jones, who calls himself, “a bit of a geek,” said he had been influenced by the book Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization by astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin. “It’s all about how do you colonize our solar system in a way that makes it financially viable,” he said. “One of the chapters was about Helium-3, which is theoretically a fuel for cold fusion. It was quite a short chapter, but I found it really fascinating because if we are going to colonize space, it’s certainly not going to be for the props—we’re going to do it for the money.”

The idea of having Mr. Rockwell play multiple roles was partly to entice the actor. “It became part of this ingredients list of how do I make a film that Sam wants to be in? I know, I’ll make him play all the roles … and write the theme music, too,” Mr. Duncan joked. It was indeed a challenge for Mr. Rockwell, who had to shoot each scene multiple times, either with a body double or using a Motion Control camera that can replicate body movements identically. Mr. Rockwell would act out the scene, go to hair and makeup to differentiate between the two characters, and then come back to set and do it all over again. It became what the two men described as a kind of dance, having to stick to precise moments to make the scene work—action scenes when the two Sams fight or play Ping-Pong were particularly difficult.

“Didn’t I move the ball?” Mr. Rockwell asked his director.

“You jumped on the table,” Mr. Jones said.

“I jumped on the table in the rehearsal, not in the take, right?”

“No …” Mr. Jones said with a smile. “It was the take.”

“Well,” Mr. Rockwell, “anyway, it was complicated.”

“Poor Sam,” Mr. Jones said. “Here he is trying to act and it’s like, ‘Don’t touch anything! Don’t move anything! Look that way—but don’t move there.’”.

“It was actually cool for me because I like to keep it loosey-goosey and sometimes directors don’t like it,” Mr. Rockwell said. “So this forced me … I could keep it loosey-goosey as long as I stayed within the context of the structure of what we were doing.”

“If you can imagine the instructions on set,” Mr. Jones laughed. “‘Please send original Sam into makeup so we can shoot Sam One so we can shoot the other side to Sam Two.”

Mr. Rockwell, who said he watched the 1988 David Cronenberg film Dead Ringers multiple times to prepare for his role in Moon, said, “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I ran into Jeremy Irons before shooting? I told him I was doing this visual-effect twinning thing. I was like, ‘Hey, I saw Dead Ringers,’ and everything, but he didn’t know who the hell I was.”

“Did he blow you off?” asked Mr. Jones.

“No, he was really nice. He was with his family, and you know no one wants to be bugged with his family. It was just like I was waiting for some tidbit, some great gem of advice. Like just one sentence, you know? And he was lovely, but I wanted something that is just not possible. It was very much like, ‘You’re on your own, kid!’” Mr. Rockwell laughed. “You can’t get one sentence or a paragraph on how to do this. It was on-the-job training for both of us.”

svilkomerson@observer.com

Well, that day has arrived, or at least it will on Nov. 24 when Christie's holds it's first major punk auction in New York City. Up for sale are "more than 120 records, photos and promotional pieces for such punk, garage rock and new wave legends as the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, the Ramones, David Bowie, Blondie, the Cure and the Smiths." The Associated Press reports: "We understand that tastes change, tastes mature," said Christie's pop-culture chief Simeon Lipman. "Ten years ago, punk memorabilia probably wouldn't be something we'd be auctioning here. But now, people of a certain age have a certain ability to splurge on this material."

The timing couldn't be better given that it was just the 30th anniversary of the night when Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious probably/maybe murdered his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, in a drug-induced haze in the Chelsea Hotel, as Karen Schoemer wrote about in her fantastic New York magazine piece last week. While there's no memorabilia up for sale from that gruesome affair, there is a bunch of Sex Pistols stuff, including a copy of the band's first press release, as well as "a rare poster for a 1976 Ramones concert in London widely credited with helping inspire such British punk titans as the Clash and the Sex Pistols and a flier for a show later that year featuring the latter two bands and the Buzzcocks...and a 1966 promotional packet in which an up-and-comer called David Jones promulgated his new last name: Bowie." Also: Late '70s Los Angeles punk flyers, Seattle punk flyers, stuff from the Germs, Black Flag, The Dead Boys, The Damned, The Misfits, DEVO, Nirvana and lots more.

The various punk items are expected to fetch between $300 and $6,000 apiece.

The items generally weren't designed to last for decades, making the few that have survived all the more tantalizing, Lipman said.

Even when the global financial meltdown is sapping a once-raging art market, "with pop-culture items, there's sort of a nostalgia that drives it. It's not necessarily a need to invest — it's 'that's cool,'" he said.

We couldn't agree more. Too bad we're broke! But if we weren't, we'd be all over one of those Smiths promo posters. The full list of items up for grabs can be found here.

Worse still, there’s a deadly, amateurish infection going around called August, with yet another novocained performance by zombified Josh Hartnett as a dot-com Internet star named Tom Sterling, who invents a company called Landshark with his brother Joshua (Adam Scott). Nobody knows what Landshark does, but when Tom explains it, he says: “That’s so third quarter ’99. You want bleeding-edge, mission-critical, cross-platform robust scale. What you want is E. Pure E. Not E commerce. Not E business. Not click and mortar. Anything but that. E. Not old, not hired, not stepped on. Not one gram of E and 10 grams of baby laxative. Pure E. Josh knows E. I know E. That’s what Landshark does. And somehow when E changes, we’re there first on the shore. Beckoning. Is there anyone who can aggregate the way we can? I don’t think so, because if there was, I’d be there.” O.K., so now you know what you already don’t know in the first place and never will. With gibberish like that passing for dialogue (the movie is filled with it), no wonder Landshark is running out of capital and going down the drain—because obviously nobody has a clue what the company does.

The year is 2001. Nobody wants to bankroll cyberspace. Tom lives in his dot-com sandbox and dates multiple women, like Hugh Hefner in the ’60s; drives a Camaro convertible; and fixates on a black chick with a bizarre accent who has just returned from designing housing projects in Barcelona. Josh, the square brother, has a wife, a baby and a mortgage. The business is his life, and he blames Tom because it’s in lockup. Meanwhile, at the office, located in a warehouse on the Bowery, the Landshark staff members sit at their cute little Ikea desks, play solitaire on computers and eat Oreo cookies while their stock options evaporate. All of which gives Mr. Hartnett a chance to mouth brilliant lines like “Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I’m stupid.” Wanna bet?

Oh, yes, there are parents (Rip Torn and Caroline Lagerfelt), aging Brooklyn hippies who see through Tom’s sham and make the mistake of asking what Landshark really does. Tom goes ballistic. “I grew up with cinder blocks, two-by-fours and five copies of Soul on Ice. You wanted to change the world? Stop the war? Tiananmen Square was a fax machine. Think what we’ll do now that we have the Web. And then it’s like, ‘Go tell the maid to dust the Godard poster.’” I mean, more pretentious, brain-busting argot has never been assembled in one film—or mumbled so fast by an actor who can scarcely say “Which way to the men’s room” with any coherence. It probably wouldn’t matter if you could understand what Mr. Hartnett, a graduate of the mashed-potato-mouth school of dramatic art, was saying anyway. But you do need an interpreter here. At the risk of driving you to the bottle, I can best express what I hate most about this plague by quoting more of Mr. Hartnett’s dialogue: “We’re at the forefront of a revolution in technology. You already know that. If I say what you already know I’m gonna say, then it’s like the hamster scurries and the wheel spins and at the end of the day you know we’re all still in the cage, right? So instead of that prepared shit, I’m just going to tell you what’s in my heart. You know what the problem is with—uh, I don’t even know what to call it—with our thing? The problem is, what are we doing? Are we making the world a less sucky place, or more sucky? Are we every day impacting the suckage?” I swear I copied this incomprehensible sludge word for word from a DVD. You think I could make up this stuff?

Or how about this? “What the Net is supposed to do—what the new broadband is supposed to do—what digital whatever is supposed to do—is increase choice. But what are we offering in the way of choice? AOL or Earthlink? Gates or Edison? Miller Lite or Coors? Bush or Gore? We help big greedy advertising agencies sell the useless products of massive, morally corrupt multinational corporations. We advise them on how to aggregate eyeballs. Have you ever seen the beginning of Un Chien Andalou? You know, with the eyeball and the straight razor? That’s what we do. Click here is over. I—whatever is over. Cross platform is over. Disintermediation is way over. The startup is over. Branding is so over. Dot-com and whatever it stands for is over. So what’s left is what we do.”

The chief problem with this mess, among many, is that it never bothers to tell you exactly what that is. The script threatens eternal pretentious palaver. (Impossible to believe it was written by the same Howard Rodman who did such an eloquent job on Savage Grace. How do you go from one of the best films of the year to what is now quite possibly the worst film of the same year?) The direction by somebody called Austin Chick gives the appearance of being phoned in from an Internet bar in another town. If he has any talent behind the camera, this movie is not going to move it up a notch. The acting is uniformly abysmal. After Pearl Harbor, Mozart and the Whale, The Black Dahlia and Hollywood Homicide, Josh Hartnett continues his history of making the worst movies of any actor still working in films today. He’s like a pretty vacant lot, with all the energy and charisma of a dead spark plug. August may not be his worst movie, an award still held by Lucky Number Slevin, but it’s right down there on the bottom of the sludge heap. The atrocity ends when Landshark is bought by David Bowie, of all people; Mr. Hartnett is fired; and the camera backs away from him, hunched over a pinball machine. Life continues, and so does garbage.

rreed@observer.com

Mr. Hartnett plays Tom Sterling, a luxury car-driving, babe-bedding start-up mogul behind an Internet start-up called LandShark. It's not clear what kind of Web site it is ("What do you actually do?" says Rip Torn, "Why the hell would somebody give you a million dollars?"), but the names are pretty absurdly similar.

PropertyShark founder Matthew Haines responded thusly: "I watched the trailer and found no similarities with PropertyShark," so apparently there won't be any thrilling lawsuits.

Bonus: Anyone who can name the creepy glam-era film that co-starred Messrs. Torn and Bowie will get a free bag of popcorn from The New York Observer's real estate writers

Mr. Cave is not the only former singer of an iconic ’80s band to enter the spotlight this spring. Morrissey has a new greatest-hits collection due out in the U.S. on March 25, and while it may seem like the British crooner’s best-of compilations have gotten a bit redundant, this one comes with a special, shall we say, bonus feature: a photograph of the Mozzer’s naked behind (no joke!) bearing the phrase “Your Arse An’ All.” Racy! Fellow Englishman Billy Bragg (who’s been known to cover a Smiths song or two) will see the U.S. release of his latest album, Mr. Love and Justice, the same day as Mr. Cave’s.

But enough about the British. America’s had its fair share of classic indie bands, too, and one of them, R.E.M., was on the Lower East Side recently shooting a video for the first single from Accelerate (April 1). Comeback much? Speaking of the LES, Moby will release Last Night, his sixth studio album, also on April Fools Day. And as if the air of mid-’90s throwbacks couldn’t get any thicker, here come the Breeders with Mountain Battles (April 8—we’re sensing a theme here), their first album since 2002. Yes, that is the Alternative Nation theme song you hear in the background.

This just in from the kids’ table: Noisy Nashville punkers Be Your Own Pet, who have garnered a lot of cred considering they’re still under the legal drinking age (not every adolescent garage band gets to tour with Sonic Youth!), will release their second full-length, Get Awkward, on March 18. On the emo side, Fall Out Boy protégés Panic! at the Disco will release Pretty. Odd. on March 25, one week after their less famous label mates the Hush Sound release Goodbye Blues. Considerably older, but no less sappy, the good guys of Death Cab for Cutie release Narrow Stairs on May 13 … just in time for the prom!

In hip-hop news, Fat Joe’s new album, The Elephant in the Room, hits stores on March 11. Maths + English, by U.K. grime rapper Dizzee Rascal, drops stateside on April 29, the same day as the Roots’ 10th album, Rising Down. And a new album from the foul-mouthed Missy Elliot is slated for late spring. Even more massive will be Gnarls Barkley’s second soul-drenched full-length, The Odd Couple, out on April 8. Two words: summer jam!

That brings us to the contemporary indie rock portion of our tour. On March 18, New Pornographers member Dan Bejar releases Trouble in Dreams, his ninth album under the moniker Destroyer. Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy finally gets a proper solo album, Colin Meloy Sings Live! (April 8), which documents the bookish singer’s 2006 tour. Dancey London duo the Kills (whose singer, Allison Mosshart, you probably don’t remember from her past life as the crusty frontwoman of the late-90’s Florida pop-punk band Discount) will release Midnight Boom on March 18. And just in case any car companies are looking for a catchy song to put in one of their commercials this spring, Spoon’s new EP, Don’t You Evah, comes out on April 8.

Madonna just directed a movie starring Eugene Hutz, the singer from Gogol Bordello. (Is that weirder than Johnny Marr being in Modest Mouse?) But when she’s not busy trying to be an indie filmstress, Madge can be found working with producers Timbaland, Nate “Danja” Hills and Pharrell Williams on her 11th studio album (April 29), which is yet to be named, but does feature the requisite Justin Timberlake collaboration.

And now, it’s time for the spring release we’ve all been waiting for, the one that we’d be damned if we didn’t see at the top of Pitchfork’s 2008 year-end list. Yes … the debut Scarlett Johansson album! Capping off the season with a May 20 street date, ScarJo’s Anywhere I Lay My Head has it all: Tom Waits covers, Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) guitar work, guest vocals from David Bowie. Might we be pleasantly surprised with this one? It kills us to say it, but anything’s possible when Bowie’s involved.

Being safe in Iman’s view doesn’t involve a security detail, or even an iron-clad insurance policy. Instead, she said, feeling secure is a state-of-mind, one that exists apart from her own environment. “It’s just the idea of being safe for all children, whether they’re in Darfur or Lower Manhattan,” said the cosmetics queen, whose eponymous line of maquillage had set up a booth at the event. (Several creative-types—from performance artists to interior decorators—were asked to contribute works that convey their notion of safety.) “For me, in terms of being safe, just the idea of knowing, having the freedom that you can live a life without violence, abuse and all of that.”

Iman said she is looking forward to recharging her domestic batteries in the near future. “I’m just looking forward to the holidays and spending time with my family,” she said of her planned ski vacation. Asked where she and Ziggy Stardust were headed, she snapped with a laugh: “I’m not telling!”

Star Jones [Reynolds], former co-host of The View, on the other hand, was all too happy to let The Daily Transom peek, however briefly, at her inner sanctum. After all, that’s where her security blanket lives.

“I think what makes me feel safe is the security of knowing that I have family and friends around me,” said Ms. Jones, 45, who was wearing a short black Robert Rodriguez dress and a popping pair of obligatory Christian Louboutin pumps. “There’s a whole lot that goes on in this world, and knowing that you have support—just somebody that you know will always tell you the truth. I’m very lucky in that regard,” she admitted, nodding her head in the way that seems reflexive for most T.V. personalities. “I have a lot of people in my life who will just tell me the truth, and that wasn’t always the case. But it does require you to be vulnerable and let yourself hear the truth, because it’s not always what a lot of us want to do.”

Ms. Blake, who left school at 14 to follow the Who and subsequently spent her life surrounded by artists like Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and the Talking Heads, knows a thing or two about hosting a rock and roll event.

The Ball was held at New York’s famous Hammerstein Ballroom and honored musician Bono (of course!). During the ceremony, a South African dance group performed a synthesis of traditional African dance and classical ballet to the beat of African drums, while guests liked Gwen Stefani (in a piercing blue halter dress), Russel Simmons, Clive Davis, David Bowie and wife Iman (wearing Monique Lhullier) enjoyed a dinner designed by Top Chef host and Keep A Child Alive world ambassador Padma Lakshmi (in off-white Dolce and Gabbana).

Ms. Blake was also joined by Alicia Keys, who co-founded Keep A Child Alive and performed at the ceremony.

The young singer, decked out in head-to-toe Armani and a lot of black patent leather, said she was taking a very special date to the Bungalow 8-themed, Amy Sacco-designed after-party.

“You know, I’m dating myself,” she said in her deep, velvety voice. “This beautiful woman named Alicia, I’m dating her. Seriously! I’m getting to know her better. I’m taking her out, I’m taking her where she wants to go! She’s learning new things and seeing new things. I think I like her.”

“It’s incredible to be performing,” she told The Daily Transom. “Keep a Child Alive is a passion of mine, and it’s something I constantly want to yell out about, so that people can understand that we provide the medicine for children and families that have AIDS who wouldn’t be able to afford it and that it’s necessary to do that.”

Supermodel and activist Petra Nemcova, famous for surviving the 2004 tsunami and a breakup with crooner James Blunt, is also an admirer of the beautiful Alicia.

“Alicia Keys and Leigh Blake, who I know, they’re very involved there. They’re very strong, inspiring…I’m inspired by their work,” she said, adding that she also admires “people like Bono and Audrey Hepburn.”

Christy Turlington, clad in black, skin-tight L’Wren Scott, echoed the night’s the feel-good sentiment.“As a mom, [service] helps me to come home and be able to not only appreciate [her children] in a different way, but I see their faces in every child that I see in the world, I see my face in all the mothers that I see in the world. It kind of just makes the world feel smaller, and it just feels good.”