Movies
drorzel | April 27, 2008Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson posts a comment suggesting how to combat anti-science movies like Expelled:
You want to know how to start -- why doesn't somebody run a film festival for pro-evolution films? THAT is how you reach out to tap into new voices, new blood, new perspectives. THAT is what is desperately needed. Efforts to fan the fires of creativity and innovation. THAT was how I got started as a filmmaker -- winning awards at the New England Film and Video Festival while I was still a professor. That festival, and others, drew me into the world of filmmaking. But right now,…
drorzel | April 22, 2008The release of Expelled has generated all sorts of chatter, almost certainly more than it deserves on its merits as a film. It's also produced repeated mentions of the fact that it's the eight highest-grossing political documentary of all time-- most recently, Tara Smith writing at Correlations.
That claim reminds me of a long-ago student whose application for a summer program described him as a student at "the fifth best university in Florida." None of the people reading it could come up with four, let alone the fifth. And God knows, I would have a hard time naming seven high-grossing…
drorzel | March 21, 2008The Hugo Award nominees for this year have been released. The category I care most about is Best Novel, where we have:
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007)The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)Halting State by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
Does Robert J. Sawyer have secret mind control powers, or something? The Chabon is a fantastic book, Scalzi's book is the best thing he's written, the Stross is very good and he's a buzz-worthy author, and I've…
drorzel | March 19, 2008As approximately six billion other blogs have noted, Arthur C. Clarke is dead. His obit in the Times runs to three pages, which is a good indicator of just how long and distinguished his life was.
My initial reaction is similar to Matt McIrvin's: it feels like the passing of an age. Bradbury and Pohl are of the same generation, but they don't feel like the same sort of writers as Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein, the ruling triumvirate of old-school SF.
I was never a huge fan of his fiction-- I went through Asimov and Heinlein phases, back in the day, but didn't get as deeply into Clarke. I'm…
drorzel | February 24, 2008There was some back-channel talk about the Academy Awards this past week, in which another ScienceBlogger opined that the Oscars were stupid and that we, as Serious Intellectuals, ought to have better things to talk about than a pop-culture award show. I think that's well over on the "pompous ass" side of things, so here's an Oscar post, just for spite.
Of course, I'm somewhat hampered here by, um, not actually having seen many movies this year. In fact, I've only seen one of the Best Picture nominees, No Country for Old Men. Which you might think argued for the irrelevance of the award, but…
drorzel | February 22, 2008A reader writes in with a literary query:
I was asked to teach a 400-level course on Nanotechnology at my U. In addition to the usual technical content, I would like to include a critical view of how nanotechnology is portrayed in popular culture. So I am looking for suitable works that can be examined. Naturally, Stephenson's Diamond Age and Crichton's Prey come to mind. You know of other examples that would make for meaty discussion by a bunch of engineers? [...] I want to stress that most of the course will focus on technical content, so whatever work we pick has to have *some* basis…
drorzel | February 8, 2008I'm currently serving as one of the faculty members involved with a new-ish residential life initiative aimed at raising the intellectual tone around campus. A big part of this is trying to get faculty members to do things in the campus housing spaces. This has all the logistical hassles you would expect, as so we're always in the market for low-key options.
After a conversation with a colleague, I've been kicking around the idea of a low-key sort of film festival-- asking individual faculty members to come to the house one night, and show one of their favorite movies. The idea here would not…
drorzel | February 3, 2008Halfway through the movie, the dog got up, and curled back up with her back to the tv, presumably in disgust.
When it ended, I said to Kate, "Well, that was anvilicious..."
"Seriously," said the dog. "All that peace and love stuff was a bunch of crap."
"It was a mite heavy-handed," I said.
"Harmony with nature, my ass," said the dog. "Let me outside. I'm going to stalk and kill something small and fuzzy."
And you know, I kind of agree with her.
(Copied from a comment at Kate's LiveJournal. What a howling Mary Sue that was. The animation is pretty, but Jesus, the story is ham-handed...)
drorzel | January 10, 2008Kate and I got our Hugo nomination ballots in the mail yesterday (as members of the 2007 Worldcon, we get the right to nominate works for the 2008 Hugo Awards). The nomination deadline isn't until March 1st, but this still seems like a good time to ask:
What should I be nominating for the 2008 Hugo Awards?
I usually use the Locus Recommended Reading issue as a template to remind myself what's eligible, but that won't be out for a while, and I've got this blog just sitting here, begging to be used. So, leave your suggestions in the comments.
Given last year's kerfuffle over the lack of female…
drorzel | December 16, 2007I got a new stereo installed in my car on Friday, so I can plug the iPod in directly rather than using one of those stupid FM transmitter gadgets, and the installation guy said it would take a few hours. So I did a little shopping, and then went to see the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.
The one-sentence review is basically "Just like Fargo, only set in Texas and not funny." As with any Coen Brothers movie, it's beautifully done on a technical level-- the camera work is great, the shots are set up very well. There's great acting as well, particularly…
drorzel | December 9, 2007Kate and I went to see The Golden Compass last night because, dude, armored bears! Also, we both really enjoyed the book, back when it first came out (though I haven't re-read it since The Amber Spyglass, to see if it was retroactively ruined by the third volume).
From the opening titles in the left-over Lord ot ht Rings font, it's clear that this is New Line's bid to reassert their dominance over the "movie adaptations of popular fantasy books" genre, and as a spectacle, it's very good. There's a nifty steampunk aesthetic to Lyra's world and, dude, armored bears!
I didn't walk out of the…
drorzel | October 27, 2007Bora has tagged me, and nagged me in comments for this "Happy Hallowmeme" thing where people post links to clips from their favorite scary movies. The problem with this is that I really don't have that much interest in horror in general, or scary movies specifically.
I do, however, retain some affection for 80's cheese, which includes some of the campier scary movies of that era, along with this gem:
Can't you just smell the hair spray?
I saw this as half of a double feature at a drive-in (!!) during the summer after my senior year of high school. The other movie was one of the Nightmare on…
drorzel | October 22, 2007I've been Netflix-ing and sloooowly watching the anime Last Exile over the last few months, and finished it over the weekend. It's all very pretty, but I really don't understand what the hell happened at the very end. Some fun stuff along the way, though.
This means that I have once again run out of Japanese cartoons to watch, and the mystery anime I was recommended in Japan are not available from Netflix at present. Which means I need new stuff to watch on Friday nights after happy hour, when network tv sucks.
So, oh all-knowing Internet types, what should be on my Netflix queue? Serial…
drorzel | September 12, 2007Before it slips too far into the mists of memory, I should probably post some summary thoughts about Nippon 2007, the World SF Convention in Japan that Kate and I attended last week. To some degree, this will be inside-baseball stuff, but if you're not interested in fannish stuff, rest assured, there is some good, weighty physics stuff coming later. Also, some utter fluff. We aim to please, here at Chateau Steelypips.
So, the Worldcon in summary. Basically, I think it was an enjoyable experiment, and while I wouldn't call it an unqualified success, I'd be in favor of doing it again, several…
bergman | August 17, 2007Over at Andrew Sullivan's place, he's been presenting candidates for best movie line ever. Since I seem to have control of a blog of my very own, I'd like to present my nomination:
Holly Gennero McClane: After all your posturing, all your speeches, you're nothing but a common thief.
Hans Gruber: I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane. And since I'm moving up to kidnapping, you should be more polite.
(transcription from IMDB)
Apparently my affection for this line is not widely shared, however, as finding the clip online has proven to be beyond my google skills. On the other hand, I did…
drorzel | August 12, 2007Why is it that, in the universe of The Bourne Identity and sequels, Jason Bourne's girlfriends need to cut and dye their hair in order to go on the lam, but he makes no effort to disguise his appearance? He just wanders around looking like Matt Damon, and nobody notices him at all.
Is it double-blind reverse psychology? "The last thing they would expect is for me to go around without any disguise at all, so that's just what I'll do!"
Or is he using the Matt Damon thing to his advantage? Is the CIA of that world too busy waterboarding Ben Affleck to notice that there are two guys who look like…
drorzel | July 17, 2007Having finished all of the fiction nominees, I'm now basically ready to submit my votes for the Hugos. Though it occurs to me that I've actually seen two of the five movies up for "Best Dramatic Presentation," so I might Netflix the others, and check off yet another category.
At any rate, I'm sure you're all dying to know how I plan to vote, so here you go:
Best Novel
Rainbows End Vernonr Vinge
His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik
Eifelheim, Michael Flynn
Blindsight, Peter Watts
No Award
Glasshouse, Charles Stross
This ended up being an odd category for me. The Vinge wound up being the clear…
drorzel | July 12, 2007Via Backreaction, I find that there's a paper on the Arxiv titled "Hollywood Blockbusters: Unlimited Fun but Limited Science Literacy," whose authors feel that the best way to counter bad pop-culture science is with equations:
(That's from a section discussing the bad physics in the ending of the first Spiderman movie. There are places where the math is thicker, but this gives a sense of the subject as well.)
It's a fairly long paper (28 pages, single column), and analyzes seven silly movie scenes in some detail. I normally hate this sort of thing, as I think it needlessly contributes to the…
drorzel | July 9, 2007Pete Vonder Haar at Blog 9 from Outer Space is not enthusiastic about a Sex and the City movie. Neither am I, really, and this wouldn't rate a post except for a passing mention:
At any rate, I'm sure a movie about a quartet of promiscuous 40- and 50-somethings will be much better than that Magnum P.I. adaptation Hollywood seems unable to make.
That made me stop for a second. I'm aware that Hollywood is utterly unable to come up with any good original ideas these days, but so far, they've mostly remade tv shows that I either had never seen, or didn't much like when they were on (I hated The…
drorzel | July 1, 2007Kate's going to Readercon next weekend, and I'm not. I have three summer students at the moment, and some other projects that I need to work on, and I just can't spare the time.
This means I'm going to have a whole weekend to do things that Kate doesn't enjoy, like go out for sushi and greasy Chinese food. It also means I'll have time to watch movies she wouldn't like (I should note that she doesn't forbid me to watch stuff she doesn't like, but on the whole, I'd rather watch movies with her than by myself).
Now, I have at least one and possibly two Netflix rentals that I'll be able to use…