Category: Films and movies

Whether big-studio or independent, celluloid or digital, anything about movies

Inception

This past weekend, I saw the film Inception. To a large extent, it felt like an updated version of The Matrix with dreams in the place of computers and less automatic weapon fire. It was also a pretty well constructed jewel heist type movie. It included some neat things conceptually and visually, and didn’t contain much that was frustrating or perplexing.

The image of a beach as where you end up when trapped at the lowest level of dreaming may have been inspired by what artificial intelligences can do to unwary hackers in William Gibson’s Neuromancer universe. It was also interesting to see who head related devices seem to be out, when it comes to mind-machine interfaces. Now, people connect tubing to their inner arms, probably to evoke the addictiveness and danger of intravenous drug use.

All told, I thought the film was well worth seeing.

Burn After Reading

The Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading is an entertaining character comedy – a bit like The Royal Tenenbaums, insofar as the oddity of the characters is the main source of humour. That said, it is significantly darker and has a bit more of a political message: namely, that we might be wrong to assume that the CIA and comparable organizations are actually competent.

In any case, I found it entertaining and amusing.

David Mitchell on climate change

A couple of years ago, the issue of the consequences of climate change being very depressing came up here, given how dealing with the problem means giving up some excellent things, like being able to visit China or Hawaii on a whim and being able to concentrate our scientific efforts on neat things like space travel.

More recently, David Mitchell (of Mitchell and Webb) produced a funny video with a similar message:

David discusses why tackling climate change is always presented to us by people who either tell us off or patronisingly try to convince us that tackling it is “cool” or “fun”, when actually it’s just something we have to do, because of facts.

I don’t entirely agree with him – since I do see moving to renewable forms of energy as an opportunity. That said, I do like the delivery of his message.

Agora

I saw Agora yesterday, and found very little in it that was redeeming. The film depicts the mathematical work of Hypatia, set against a background of religious violence between pagans, Christians, and Jews. The great majority of the film consisted of angry young male religious fanatics, killing another for reasons that were never very well established. All the dialog was excessively melodramatic and unconvincing, and the motivations of all the characters remained obscure.

Given the span of time and the number of characters included in the film, it feels a bit as though they took a trilogy worth of material and crammed it into one film by removing everything that wasn’t a critical plot point. Imagine The Lord of The Rings compressed into two hours by removing everything except key plot points; this film has that kind of pacing. As a result, the film feels like a series of climaxes with no lead-up to give them context or follow-through to show their consequences.

The mathematical sub-plot contrasted aesthetically with all the background violence, but also felt unconvincing and unnatural. Rather than being given any appreciation for why people care so much about the mathematical questions, or what solving them might mean, we are treated to an epistemology reminiscent of Dead Poets Society or an episode of House: all sound bites and sudden insights, with little sense of what makes the knowledge significant.

Not recommended.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a collection of over 1,400 miniature lectures, delivered by one man via YouTube. They cover topics that range widely, in disciplines including mathematics, chemistry, biology, statistics, history, finance, and physics.

From the twenty or so I have tried, they seem to be quite accessible, at least for those with a basic grounding in mathematics. I had never covered matrices in high school or university math, but the videos in the linear algebra collection have left me with what feels like an adequate theoretical awareness of what they are, why they are useful, and how they fit into mathematics more broadly.

The whole collection is worth a look.

The problem with 3D everything

The 3D craze in all forms of entertainment has spread to the extent that the swag bags for journalists at Toronto’s G8/G20 summit include an iPhone cover designed to let you view 3D media. 3D is all the rage for movies and games, as consumers flock to something novel and seemingly high-tech and entertainment companies sense an excuse to boost ticket prices and (for now) offer something that pirated media does not.

I have one big problem with all of this: while it is easy enough to exploit binocular vision to produce the illusion of three dimensions on a flat screen, doing so doesn’t really take into account how people see. The effect works because of how our brain interprets parallax – the situation in which the perspective on a scene differs slightly when the viewpoint used changes. This is a problem for many point-and-shoot cameras, with viewfinders offset from the lens; you can compose a photo nicely as viewed through the former, only to discover that it doesn’t look so great when viewed through the latter. It also applies to the different perspectives offered by your two eyes. Your brain uses the differences between the two views as one source of information about how far away things are, feeding into our overall awareness about the three-dimensionality of the world.

Parallax is one important way in which our brains make sense of a three-dimensional world. Others include geometric cues, like how parallel lines seem to converge as they approach the horizon. Exploiting these sorts of cues allows artists to make works that seem to have depth. It is also one way in which optical illusions can be created. It is one reason why the very cool hollow face illusion works. Indeed, that particular illusion only works when seen without the benefit of binocular vision, which allows our brains to figure out that we are in danger of being tricked by geometry.

The trouble with 3D is what happens when our eyes go beyond perceiving a scene and into responding to it: specifically, by refocusing. When we see a rhino charging at us, the muscles around our eyes change the shape of our lenses so as to keep the beast in focus. Our eyes also turn inward, toward our noses. Unfortunately, when we are just looking at a false 3D image of a rhino, the re-focusing is not necessary. After all, we are still really looking at the same flat screen. This may explain why watching 3D movies is nauseating for some people; more worrisomely, it could cause people to learn to see in unnatural ways, in a manner that extends beyond the movie theatre experience.

This is not a problem that can be overcome, so long as our chosen mode of producing faux-three-dimensional images relies upon information displayed on flat panels. How important it ultimately will be, I can’t really comment on. Still, it is worth knowing that the exciting 3D experience consumers are being promised is premised on a limited understanding of how people really see moving images.

Anne Boleyn on The Tudors

I think the casting people for the television show The Tudors managed to exploit human psychology in a couple of clever ways, in casting Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn. Specifically, I think they took advantage of the way in which increasing familiarity with someone makes them more attractive, as well as how seeing other people be attracted to someone makes them more attractive to you.

When I first saw her, she struck me as very distinctive but not especially beautiful. After a few episodes, and the operation of those psychological factors, she both seemed extremely attractive and quite distinct from the large cast of very attractive but less individually distinguishable female characters on the show.

Now, if only Zip.ca would send me fewer scratched, unplayable discs!

HDstarcraft and HuskyStarcraft – viral marketing?

Blizzard’s Starcraft must surely be one of the most enduring computer games of all time. It came out when I was in high school, but is still actively played by a large number of people, especially in South Korea. There are even professional matches and tournaments.

Now, Blizzard is in the middle of a long beta release of Starcraft II. I think the key purpose is to balance the three races, so that good players will be approximately equally likely to use all three. The balancing is subtle and detailed: involving everything from the cost and time required for weapons upgrades to the potentially useful hexagonal grid projected by Protoss pylons, which could aid accurate placement of buildings.

Throughout the beta, there have been two internet personalities releasing high-resolution narrated replays of high level matches: HDstarcraft and HuskyStarcraft. They had one sponsored tournament, but generally don’t seem to advertise for anybody. That, combined with the relative professionalism of their operation and the sheer amount of time they are putting into it makes me wonder if they might be part of a viral marketing campaign run by Blizzard, designed to build anticipation for the forthcoming game.

This is pure speculation on my part but if it is true, it is a clever move on Blizzard’s part. The number of people watching each screencast has been rising steadily, and is now consistently over 100,000. The people watching may end up as some of the most active members of the eventual Starcraft II community, after commercial release. Even if Blizzard has nothing to do with these replays, I think undertaking such an extensive beta release (with more than 13 patches already) shows a good amount of respect for their customers, for whom the issue of balance will eventually be very important.

[Update: 14 December 2010] I no longer think it is at all likely that HD and Husky are part of a viral marketing campaign. Still, it would have been a pretty good idea on the part of Blizzard. I have definitely enjoyed their videos, and they contributed to my desire to buy and play Starcraft II.

State of the climate video

Last night, I gave a short talk outlining my current thinking on climate change.

I am interested to know which things people think I am wrong about. Also, about which things seemed to be effectively expressed, and which poorly expressed.

An improved version may be worthy of being recorded in a more aesthetically appealing manner.