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
Available for PC and Mac, the Democracy video player is free and open source software that can play and save a wide variety of video formats. You can, for instance, save Google Video and YouTube files. That includes all of my brother Mica’s videos. The interface is also a lot nicer than mucking around with web pages: especially since you can download batches of files at once and watch them when they finish.
More information is on Wikipedia.
Does anyone in Oxford have the DVDs of the third season of 24?
Tonight, I watched Kai’s copy of the film Three Kings. I remember the advertisements portraying it as some sort of comedy; at best, it is a pretty dark satire. The point it makes indirectly and well is that the on-the-ground realities of warfare can be starkly different from the press conference versions generally presented to us.
The odd thing about the film is the way in which it plays with your sympathies: there is certainly some for the reservists (part time baggage handlers, those who never finished high school, etc). There is plenty for the general populace of Iraq. Saddam and the first President Bush are only ever in the background, each presenting as truth things that have nothing to do with the immediate reality of the film: Saddam has his smiling portraits everywhere, Bush provided the printed sheets or orders the American soldiers wave at Iraqi troops and civilians from time to time.
While the film is, in many ways, unrealistic it manages to convey a truthful message about human greed and brutality. It becomes harder to hold liberal values when the reality of how imperfectly that are applied in many circumstances is revealed.
All told, Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth was quite impressive. The combination of factual information and moral or political argumentation was generally well done, though some of the personal asides about Gore’s life were somewhat tangential to the point being made. This is a film I would recommend to almost anyone: regardless of your level of knowledge or existing stance on climate change. It certainly helped to change my thinking on some of the issues.
Gore’s basic argument is really the only sane position on climate change right now: We know for sure that it is taking place. We know that human beings are causing it. Finally, we are not at all certain what the consequences will be, or even their magnitude, but there is reason to be concerned, on the basis both of evidence in the world as it is now and on the basis of reasonable projections. His massive chart showing world temperatures and CO2 concentrations over the past 650,000 years is an especially convincing element of the film. While natural cycles are certainly evident, we are already outside all previous ranges for CO2 and will go far, far beyond in the next fifty years if nothing is changed.
I am increasingly convinced that the potential consequences of global warming justify efforts to stabilize greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, ideally at a point lower than their present concentration. While doing so will certainly have costs, it is also likely to have considerable benefits. Products of greater energy efficiency and alternative energy sources could include reduced dependence on places like Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Likewise, improved urban design has the prospect of making our cities rather better places to live, undoing some of the enormous harm done to human population centres by the ready availability of automobiles.
By the end of the film, I had the unusual feeling that it just might be possible to do something effective about climate change in the decades immediately ahead. The barriers are arguably mostly in the form of entrenched interests, as is so often the case when big changes in policy are needed. Hopefully, at the very least, the Canadian government can be pressured into living up to the modest promises we made in Kyoto.
[Update: 3 October 2006] While I am unlikely to trek all the way to London for a lecture, those already there might find parts of this series interesting. My thanks to Ben for passing the information along.
If you have ever felt the urge to take your geek tendencies and just run with them – much like how Macbeth did with his thirst for power – I recommend becoming embroiled in the controversy about the hypothetical atmospheric and biological consequences of a fictional explosion in a film starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher – who I prefer to remember as the bazooka-wielding assasin from The Blues Brothers.
Would the destruction of the second Death Star in The Return of the Jedi have inevitably annihalated the ewok race that aids the rebel commando team? Some people say yes. Others say no.
They all have way, way too much time on their hands. The same is true of these people, but at least they have provided me with considerable amusement over the years. Their reviews (1, 2) of recent Star Wars films definitely lay to rest the idea that they could possible be considered consistent or accurate.
This whole discussion was promted by a post on MetaFilter, which I can thank Nick Ellan for addicting me to years ago.
Antonia invited me to see the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s book this evening and, despite having watched the first twenty minutes as a free online trailer, I found it well worth paying for. Based on our discussion afterwards, I have tentatively concluded that it is a film unusually subject to people taking away more or less what they expected to find. While it will appall traditionalists to hear, I didn’t feel as though I got much out of the book, when I read it a few years ago. As such, I had modest expectations for the film which were not disappointed.
The film is odd insofar as it combines a society of total electronic surveillance with the complexities of informants and undercover agents. The combination of knowledge and secrecy that results is sometimes more perplexing than Orwellian, though it does effectively highlight the corrupting nature infiltration strategies of crime fighting can have on police forces. You are, however, frequently left wondering why any state or police force with such power would devote such attention to a group that seems pretty obviously hopeless, when it comes to posing any real danger.
The most immediately obvious thing about the film is the modification of the video stock and the addition of animated elements. The posterized faces with their bold, exaggerated edges, in particular, contribute to an ongoing visual effect with some thematic merit. All told, the visuals and the story were complementary and well integrated. Neither was simply a crutch for the other, as is so often the case in visually unusual pieces of film. As Antonia pointed out, it probably detracted from the film to have recognizable actors in the roles. There is just too much written into Keanu Reaves, for instance, for him to really be able to take on a new role.
My thanks to Antonia for a worthwhile suggestion.
I called the repair centre today and they said that a technician hasn’t even looked at my dust-laden digicam yet. They say they have a backlog of several weeks. As such, we are going to have to see how long I can keep finding suitable photos of the day in my archives. Within the collection that lives on my hard drive, most of the good photos have already been put online somewhere or other. Apologies to those diligent few who may have already tracked these down.
This photo was taken during the summer after my first year at UBC. It was taken in Vanier Park, near the Vancouver Planetarium.
Aside from zipping around on a number of administrative projects, today largely comprised sedate reading. I am two thirds of the way through John MacNeil’s Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century. I picked up a surplus hardback copy from the county library in excellent condition for £1. Mostly, it is familiar reading, though it may be useful to have a source to which so many stories I might tell in the thesis can be attributed.
Later in the evening, I watched Sin City with Kelly. The atmosphere of the film was definitely well-assembled, with good cinematography, costumes, and general verisimilitude. The plot is a triptych of very classic revenge tales: all bound up with underlying assumptions about roles people play and the duties that attach to them. Actually, the extent to which these stories are so automatically comprehensible makes you question the bases according to which you assign social expectations.
The most startling moment was near the end, when I finally realized why one character was so familiar looking; she is the same woman who played Rory in the many episodes of Gilmore Girls that I watched with Nick’s sisters over the years. Not quite the same as seeing the farmer from Babe become the hardbitten chief in L.A. Confidential, but a somewhat similar instance of contrast. To say more risks ruining plot elements. In essence, the film is well worth seeing. Because of the heavy visual focus, it would probably have been especially worthwhile to see in theaters.
The way the Oxford County Library deals with audio-visual materials strikes me as rather illegitimate. They charge for renting CDs and DVDs at rates comparable to commercial venues. As such, they are using a tax subsidized situation (free rent, plus funding from local taxes) to complete directly with private enterprise in an area where there is no market failure. I don’t need a governmental service to charge me three quid to rent The Life Aquatic, and the existence of one that does quite likely crowds out commercial venues that would do a better job (have more than one copy, offer deals for frequent renters, etc).
I am all for libraries having a collection of educational CDs and DVDs, but they really should be lent out in a way that is in keeping with the idea of libraries as publicly funded providers of public goods.
That said, I have been enjoying the use of my new headphones with the opera CDs that I paid £6 to borrow. Reproduction of classical instruments and male vocalists seem to be the two areas where there is the most difference between these and the default Apple earbuds. It can also be amusing to not how often you faintly hear people shuffling around the studio, coughing in muffled fashion, or turning pages in CDs that you have heard a hundred times. You can even hear someone’s watch ticking faintly in a Nine Inch Nails B-side I have.
Apparently, the physics in The Da Vinci Code are no better than the history or theology. (Though this review is more about general plausibility than physics, per se.) Let it be known that Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics is among the greatest of all websites.
The review of The Core is funny enough to be worth reading, even if you haven’t seen that awful, awful film. People making films should probably take a careful look through their generic list of bad physics. Of course, scientific accuracy may not be terribly likely to put people in cinema seats, or sell DVDs.
In a number of ways, Heading South is a film that reverses expectations and thereby leads you to question the ways in which an issue is understood. The film is essentially about sex tourism, though the clients are aging women rather than the middle-aged men who would probably be demonized in the standard documentary treatment of the subject. While such condemnation may well be deserved, it doesn’t attach itself so easily in this case. The tensions between the women, and the insecurities within them, provide the dramatic energy that drives this frequently provocative film. The most interesting scenes are a series of confessional sketches, in which different characters direct monologues at the camera. The decision to employ such a technique highlights the quasi-documentary quality of the film.
Primarily in French, with subtitles, the film may appeal to those who know some French and are concerned about having it slip away from them (this is the case for almost everyone I know who was in French immersion.) The portrayal of Haiti under the Duvalier regime of the 1970s is powerful but indirect, consisting largely of a few vignettes showing the lives of people subjected to arbitrary power.
Morally complex and artfully produced, Heading South is a film to see when you want something to think about.
