climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction
Whether big-studio or independent, celluloid or digital, anything about movies
I am trying out zip.ca, a DVDs-by-mail system similar to Netflix. As such, I would appreciate if people suggested some films for me. I like the idea of having a big cue of random, interesting stuff and watching it in no particular order.
I have already requested Helvetica, Frost/Nixon, the third season of The Sopranos, and the second season of The Wire.
I saw Watchmen last night and didn’t feel particularly inclined to review it. That said, it was getting late and I couldn’t think of anything else. As with all my reviews, it it is likely to contain ‘spoilers.’
When it comes to comic book films, the mark of success or failure is often whether it is compelling enough to make you stop asking questions about the unreality of what is presented. Judging by the conversations I had with friends after the film, this one didn’t quite clear the hurdle. While it was very strong visually, it lacked the originality of something like The Matrix or Sin City – both of which it clearly drew from. While some of the characters were interesting, most were either flat or very clearly derivative (James Bond villains, vengeful detectives, etc). The plot was fine, but not especially inspired, particularly in terms of ‘surprises’ that failed to surprise.
The central enigma of the film is the character of Dr. Manhattan, and I think that is where it fails most comprehensively. He isn’t compelling. He’s a dull kind of guy who likes the arid emptiness of Mars and has no special problem with killing Vietnamese soldiers for the American government, Apocalypse Now-style helicopters beside him. He is boring, rather than deep. In the end, he comes across as a kind of powerful dimwit, and nobody is emotionally affected when he wanders off. All kinds of things are deeply implausible about Dr. Manhattan, in terms of the plot, also. For instance, why the military research facility where he was actually created never tried to make any more supermen. Also, why the government seems to think he is able to stop 99% of Russian nuclear weapons, without any special system to inform him they that are coming or where they are. If he could do so without any outside assistance, he should presumably have noticed that the arch-villain had destroyed Moscow, during the climactic period of the film. The other enigma, which isn’t addressed in any way, is why some people who decide to become vigilantes have superhuman powers; it’s like X-Men, but with no premise of explanation. Presumably, the graphic novel version is more fleshed out.
One amusing thing I realized about the film is that, for at least some teenagers, it will be their first introduction to the music of Simon & Garfunkel, as well as Jimi Hendrix. The opening credits, which consist of an interesting montage of film and semi-ironic music, were actually the best part of the film. Second to those were the comic touches included from time to time. Third best was looking at Malin Akerman, though she looks a bit like a digital amalgamation of Kirsten Dunst and a few other recent female love-interest figures.
Watchmen is certainly an enjoyable enough film to watch. There are some cringe-inducing moments of violence, though they don’t have the same awful character as the ones in Sin City. It is not, however, a comic film good enough to make you forget its flaws. It will please those who are primed to appreciate it, but I doubt it will have a lasting influence on anyone.
This video clip of Canadian comedian Louis C.K. on the Conan O’Brien show is quite amusing. He is talking about how people take air travel, and technology generally, for granted. He has an amusing way of turning around the common gripes people have about air travel:
‘And then, we get on the plane and they made us sit there on the runway, for 40 minutes. We had to sit there.’ Oh? Really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?
It’s true that people fail to appreciate the immense effort and skill reflected in things like computers, pharmaceuticals, global communications, as so forth. At one level, that is simply a lack of curiosity. On another, I think it’s a kind of defence mechanism: people are completely dependent on these technologies, and yet few understand them at all. Most people probably couldn’t even explain how an airplane wing produces lift. That general point is especially well made by James Burke. He chooses an even more banal technology example than air travel, elevators. In the first episode of his series, he demonstrates how our attitude towards them demonstrates our dependence, ignorance, and vulnerability.
The Coen Brothers – directors of favourite films of mine like The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou? – have made a short advertisement debunking the notion of ‘clean coal.’ It doesn’t have enormously much substantive content, but it does a pretty good job of saying: “Those promising that coal can be clean are lying to you.”
The ad was commissioned by the Reality Coalition.
As described in this Slate article, a new site called Academic Earth has brought together a large numbers of lecture videos and made them available online for free. Right now, it includes lecturers from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.
There is a six lecture series on Understanding the Financial Crisis.
Apparently, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is considering Canadian content requirements for the internet. While I do support the existence of public broadcasters, I have never felt the same way about Canadian content rules for television or the radio. To me, they seem parochial and unnecessary; why does it matter whether people want to watch shows or listen to music that originated elsewhere?
Of course, the internet idea is even more dubious. Unlike radio and television, where you get to choose between channels but have no input into what each one is putting out, the internet lets you choose each film or song individually. As such, enforcing Canadian content requirements is both more intrusive and less practically feasible.
I remember when there were high hopes that the internet would be free from this sort of petty governmental manipulation. Unfortunately, with all the censorship, dubious monitoring, and other governmental shenanigans happening now, it isn’t surprising that yet another government agency wants to assert its regulatory influence over what happens online.
Hearings begin on Tuesday, with the aim of reviewing the current policy of not regulating content on cell phones and the internet.
I was unaware that a second X-Files film had been made until yesterday night. On the basis of my first impressions, it was better than the first. It involved fewer outlandish elements, more suspense, more drama between characters, and essentially more of the things that made the television series notable.
I think I managed to miss a big gap in the X-Files canon, though it is possible they simply threw a lot of unexplained material between the first and second films. Unusually for an X-Files production, I didn’t clearly recognize any Vancouver scenery during the film.
The film certainly provided plenty of opportunities for quibbling. For one, one can question whether complex surgery can be performed in a filthy, far-from-sterile environment with any hope of success. Head transplants also don’t have an obvious connection to stem cell therapies. That being said, the aesthetics of those scenes did reinforce one’s natural revulsion towards gross violations of medical ethics.
As an aside, it was strange to see how David Duchovny looks basically the same as he did during the television series, while Gillian Anderson looks dramatically different. It is hard to attribute the latter to natural aging, though perhaps that is the cause.
Seed Magazine has a neat video up, in celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. It condenses the 4.6 billion year history of the Earth into one minute of footage. As such, it gives one a sense of perspective, in terms of how little of the history of life humanity has witnessed.
One quibble: the video refers to photosynthesis by ‘blue-green algae,’ which is a misnomer. So-called ‘blue-green algae’ aren’t algae at all; they aren’t even plants. They are cyanobacteria.
This is one of the best bits of satire The Onion has produced in a while: Kim Jong Il Announces Plan To Bring Moon To North Korea. It is especially amusing if you are familiar with some of the actual governmental propaganda about Kim Jong Il. I once saw a North Korean press document claiming that their leader is ‘the most energetic man in history.’ He has a fondness for doctoring photos of Napoleon to include his own face, and North Korean songs claim that he can “dispel raging storms.”
My favourite quotes from the video:
The artwork is also an amusing impersonation of a classic propaganda style.
Buying television programs on DVD or renting them disc-by-disc often costs about the same amount, and the latter leaves you with discs to lend to others. If someone I know in Ottawa wants to borrow one of these, they should let me know:
I would be especially keen to make a temporary exchange with someone who has the second season of Rome, or any subsequent season of The Wire or The Sopranos.