Category: Films and movies

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

How risky is climate change?

Milan’s watch and iBook

On his blog, Lee Jones posted a link to this book review. Basically, the argument is that people are (a) exaggerating the dangers of climate change and (b) using climate change as an excuse to pursue other ends. I would not deny either claim. The Intuitor review of The Day After Tomorrow is evidence of the first, and more can be found in many places. Of course, their review of An Inconvenient Truth suggests that not everyone is guilty of misrepresentation. As for smuggling your own agenda into discussions about climate change, I suspect that is equally inevitable. The question of how to behave justly in response to climate change is fundamentally connected to the history of economic development.

In an unprecedented move, I feel compelled to quote my own thesis:

While the IPCC has generated some highly educated guesses, the ultimate scale of the climate change problem remains unknown. On account of the singular nature of the earth, it is also somewhat unknowable. Even with improvements to science, the full character of alternative historical progressions remains outside the possible boundaries of knowledge. As such, in a century or so humanity will find itself in one of the following situations:

  1. Knowing that climate change was a severe problem, about which we have done too little
  2. Believing that climate change was a potentially severe problem, about which we seem to have done enough
  3. Believing that climate change was a fairly modest problem, to which we probably responded overly aggressively
  4. Observing that, having done very little about climate change, we have nonetheless suffered no serious consequences.

Without assigning probabilities to these outcomes, we can nonetheless rank them by desirability. A plausible sequence would be 4 (gamble and win), 2 (caution rewarded), and then 1 and 3 (each a variety of gamble and lose). Naturally, given the probable variation in experiences with climate change in different states, differing conclusions may well be reached by different groups.

As such, what it means to make informed choices about climate change has as much to do with our patterns of risk assessment as it does with the quality of our science. Exactly how it will all be hashed out is one of the great contemporary problems of global politics.

Multilayer booms

Of late, I have been watching Yes, Prime Minister between bouts of revision. In one sense, it is quite disorienting. As someone who has lived beside a clock tower for more than a year, having a series of booms now and then is not at all unexpected. The series, however, uses similar sounding booms as a frequent sonic backdrop. As such, one gets the awkward sense that time is racing forward: hardly an effective way to control stress in the lead-up to exams.

Little Miss Sunshine

As dysfunctional family films go, this is a clever and artistic one. Tolstoy was right to say that the genre is infinite. This film has strong hints of The Royal Tenenbaums: over-the-top characters, bearded men trying to commit suicide, and a similar tendency towards set-piece funny lines. At times, it is very funny indeed.

The first time I watched the film, it was unfortunately interrupted about ten minutes before the end. Only tonight did I finally get to see the conclusion, based on my flatmate Kai’s enviable collection of DVDs.

Little Miss Sunshine is recommended to those who like humour based on bizarre characterization and a have a reasonable tolerance for social criticism and absurdity. While the film is sometimes a bit on the disturbing side, it never comes close to the unwholesomeness of child beauty contests themselves.

PS. This is what my father and I intended to go see, only to find ourselves watching The Devil Wears Prada.

The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others (Leben der Anderen, Das) is a potent and pertinent film: a reminder of recent history that speaks to ongoing questions about surveillance, as well as the human and inhuman aspects of state security organizations. The film is especially impressive because of the subtlety with which the topic is approached, and the space for contemplation it affords to the viewer.

The cinematography of the film is elegant to the extent that one is in danger of missing subtitles on account of preferring to keep one’s eyes where the film-makers wanted them. The only minor lapse in good judgment is in a few scenes where the use of very wide-angle lenses produces an unwelcome and disconcerting effect. The set designs, costumes, and performs are all extremely well chosen, really managing to convey a certain vision of life under the GDR.

The film struck me as a kind of inversion of Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, notte) which I saw back in November of last year. One explores the moral dilemma of a member of Stasi, the infamous East German secret police, while the other is about a member of the Red Brigades, an Italian terrorist movement in the 1970s. In a way, both films are comments on how people can and do deal with the structures in which they find themselves. In particular, how exposure to the humanity and vulnerability of others affects one’s pre-existing convictions.

People in Oxford may find it useful to know that it is playing at the Phoenix Cinema on Walton Street until Wednesday May 9th.

Microbiology on display

This is too cool not to link: The Inner Life of the Cell

This short video shows animations of some of the chemical processes that occur inside living cells. I only recognized a handful, but they are all beautiful and surreal. The focus is on the behaviour of lymphocytes in the presence of inflammation.

[Update: 13 December 2007] The links above had become outdated. As of today, they are repaired.

“No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

During post-submission decompression, I have been reminded of what a brilliant film The Big Lebowski is. I have certainly seen it a dozen times, and will quite probably see it a dozen more times. Some of the lines in the film are priceless. Altogether, it is simply great storytelling, and a film I recommend to anyone with a sense of humour.

Looking at the Oxford experience of stress over time, it looks a great deal like an f(x)=tan(x) graph, if you disregard the portions in which the Y-axis is negative.

Notes on a Scandal

Flower in the Oxford Botanical Gardens

To call Notes on a Scandal a ‘thriller,’ as many have done, is to strike close to the reasons for which I found it largely unsatisfying as a piece of cinematic work. While decently acted, the story just couldn’t justify the drama that the producers tried to spin around the story. It turned out more like an example of amplified tabloidism, rendered a bit surreal through the inappropriate Philip Glass soundtrack (though my sense that the music made the plot seem trivial may derive from how I associate Glass inescapably with the bombing scenes in The Fog of War).

While the film was not without interesting elements – how a narrator can both be exceptionally aware of the workings of the world around her and profoundly ignorant of how others perceive her – they are ultimately not enough to redeem it as a piece of storytelling. If you’re going to make a film about people violating societal taboos, they ought not be so wishy-washy about it. Nobody wants an uncommitted, neurotic villain, nor one with no particular artfulness through which to be redeemed.

Aeon Flux

I saw the film version of Aeon Flux today. The physics and biology were bad; the architecture and lighting were good. Overall, it makes me want to go to Berlin. It also makes me want to watch Gattaca again: a film with similar logical flaws, but a comparable commitment to aesthetics.

As virus-haunted-future films go, 12 Monkeys is much better. As lethal heroine films go, Ghost in the Shell remains the standard. The philosophical issues raised are less superficial, and the combat is infinitely more credible. There is a lesser extent to which Force = [ Mass * Acceleration / Physical attractiveness of person in question ]. Also, no matter how many Hollywood dollars they seem capable of bringing in, elaborate flips and cartwheels are simply not tactically effective.