RKS 2026 EURO Documentary Film Review: “We Are Stardust”

Let’s be frank. A documentary about a jazz musician/record producer hobby scientist searching for micrometeorites doesn’t galvanize interest other than for those guys with plastic pocket inserts with pens jammed in them……the Elmer Fudd crowd?

Micrometeorites, in non scientific terms referred to as “stardust”, are tiny extraterrestrial dust particles that survive atmospheric entry that land on earth.

The scientific community was adamant stardust could not be found in urban environments stating in glacial regions or at the ocean bottom were the sole locales they were collectible.

Jon Larsen proved them wrong using a sifter, baggies, a tiny shovel, a microscope and a magnet to collect dust samples in gutters and roofs to prove the scientific community wrong and winning their admiration to the point a small planet Asteroid 63788 JonLarsen bears his name! And the struggle of Larsen against the scientific machine will hook most viewers in more than the dry scientific discourses presented in the documentary about stardust by the “experts” who might not be such experts as they thought!

Larsen reminds one of an early goldminer in gold rush days but despite scientific recognition it has not led to any gold nugget financial success Larsen having to sell his guitars and production equipment for living expenses. The disastrous side of success?

But the fascination and sense of poetic justice with this film for many will be slammed up against the wall with impending tragedy after witnessing the success of Larsen with his struggles and findings enabling director, Elisabeth Rasmussen, to understand the Sami legend of Gabba, the white reindeer descended from the sun and possibly save her life. A tender, insightful and riveting personal moment giving this documentary a hybrid theme that seamlessly and symbiotically is a resounding success.

The film will be showing at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival 15/17/21 April2026.

RKS 2026 EURO Documentary Film Rating 86/100.

RKS Literature: The American Hobo is on the Way Out (Jack Kerouac)

“The American Hobo is on the way out as long as sheriffs operate with as Louis-Ferdinand Céline said, ‘One line of crime and nine of boredom’ because having nothing to do in the middle of the night with everybody gone to sleep they pick on the first human being they see walking. They pick on lovers on the beach even. They don’t know what to do with themselves in those five-thousand-dollar police cars with the Dick Tracy two way radios except pick on anything that moves in the night….”

Jack Kerouac, “The Vanishing American Hobo”, 1960.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: I AM A THREE PEE TYPE OF GUY

I AM A THREE PEE TYPE OF GUY

Bob was ecstatic yesterday. On my morning walk I peed three times. Usually it is once and on a rare occasion twice but three times!

I am delighted Bob is so happy about this but isn’t this “Much Ado About Nothing”? I will admit as the snow has almost entirely melted there are great patches of grass appearing and what aromas! Somehow my brain is saying, “Rory as a dog you are obligated to “comment” in a “certain way” on these aromas. I can’t help myself from commenting in a “particular way”. Similar to my need to climb snowbanks and hills.

Bob’s view is that the more peeing the less leakage “on the premises”.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: “RORY IS THE KING OF THE HILL”

RORY IS THE KING OF THE HILL

Bob reviews films prior to their theatrical release. Let me correct that. He used to review films until I arrived at the doorstep of his life in early November 2025. Since then, he has reviewed one film in a three-month period. I have enriched his life by liberating him from reviewing films. He says his attention span is approximately 68 seconds when I am around. So, he ends up watching movies while simultaneously playing with me or ensuring my biting is causing minimal destruction. When there are dogs barking on television such as in the movie we saw last night “The Great Santini” I simply must join in and establish my superior bark!

I am not couch potato but have seen bits and pieces of film and listen to jazz as well.

I am a natural born climber (not a Tarantino “Natural Born Killer’) and rest assured unlike that Japanese skier in the documentary “The Man Who Slid Down Everest” I am sturdy.

With so much snow in Toronto in January for reasons unknown to me I must climb up on hills. Is it genetic?

Unlike these poor American soldiers in “Hamburger Hill” there are no obstacles in my way and I am not deficient in bravery. Well, sometimes I must jump into Bob’s arms as descents on snow and ice can be treacherous but aside from that I suppose I am inspired by that Roger Miller song “King of the Road”. I am King of the Hill!

With all the rain of late my snow mountain is reduced to a dirty patch of snow. But I will find a new one to climb and as they sing in “Sound of Music” climb every mountain!

RKS Literature: Classes of Bums in Paris (Jack Kerouac)

“There are various classes of bums in Paris, the high class bum has a dog and a baby carriage in which he keeps all his belongings, and that usually consists of old France Soirs , tin cans, empty bottles, broken dolls- This bum sometimes has a mistress who follows him and his dog and carriage around. The lower bums don’t own a thing, they just sit on the banks of the Seine picking their nose at the Eiffel Tower.”

Jack Kerouac, “The Vanishing American Hobo”, 1960.

RKS Literature: The Lights of Christmas Will Not Save America (Jack Kerouac)

“….all you see is marshes and great black distances of night and far off, on hills, the little communities with Christmas lights in their windows blearing red, blearing green, blearing blue, suddenly sending pangs through me and I think, ‘Ah America, so big, so sad, so black, you’re like the leafs of a dry summer that go crinkly ere August found its end, you’re hopeless, everyone you look on you, there’s nothing but dry drear hopelessness, the knowledge of impending death, the suffering of present life, the lights of Christmas wont save you or anybody….:

Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.

RKS Literature: On the Bum Again (Jack Kerouac)

“And since I’m well and on the bum again & ain’t got nothing else to do, but roam, long faced, the real America, with my unreal heart, here I am eager and ready to be a big busted nose scullion or dishwasher on the old scoff scow s’long as I can buy my next fancy shirt in a Hong Kong haberdashery or wave a polo mallet in some old Singapore bar or play the horses in Austrailian, it’s all the same to me as long as it can be exciting and goes around the world.”

Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.

RKS Literature: A Hot Time at the El Carrido Per Motel (Jack Kerouac)

“Deni had big plans for what was going to happen at the hotel, which was the El Carrido Per to Motpaotta California potator hotel as I say with potted palmettos and seamen inside and also hot-rod champion sons of aircraft computators of Long Beach, the whole general and dismal California culture a palpable hangout for it where you saw Hawaiian shirted and be-wrist watched tanned strong young men tilting thin long beers  to their mouth and leaning and mincing with broads in fancy necklaces and little white ivory things at their tanned ears and a whole blanked blue in their eyes that you saw, also a bestial cruelty hidden and the smell of beer and smoke and smart smell of the cool inside plush cocktail lounge all that Americaness that in my youth had me get wild to be in it and leave my home and go off be big hero in the American romance-me-jazz-night.”

Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”Ensure your last testament is prepared (COVID Memories)”

Ensure your last testament is prepared (COVID Memories)

Yes, rely on the government

And the state medical bureaucracy

Politics and medicine can be a fatal mix

The needle but tricks

Urging a jab, then two or three

Has the scientific mind saved us or grossly miscalculated

Well what does it matter?

According to the rebel right wing blockading truckers we all will be soon dead

Be free from coercion instead

Attributable to rush tested vaccines

From a Trump Warp Speed

We’ll be underground and the daisies will be sprouting seed

And the criticized unvaccinated so haughtily criticized

Will be alive and grateful they never complied

Us the goody two shoes instead to The Great Beyond flied

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Death and What Lies Ahead (Françoise Sagan)

“He was dying. He knew now that he was dying. Something was tearing at his body. Meanwhile she was leaning over him, supporting him by the shoulders, and he felt the shoulder blade, ignominiously reduced to skin and bone, flinch beneath his wife’s gentle hand. Ignominy, that was what he was dying of, ignominy. Was there an illness which allowed you to die gracefully? There probably wasn’t, and mankind’s only grace, perhaps lay in that aspiration towards what lay ahead.”

Françoise Sagan, “In Extremis”, 1975.