This month’s film will be the 1973 adaptation of Harry Harrison’s novel, Make Room! Make Room! Charleton Heston plays a 21st-century police detective working the massively overpopulated New York City. A murder sparks an investigation that cuts to the heart of the world’s population problem: How to feed it?
The Soylent Corporation just released its new product, a plankton-based biscuit made from a harvest from the world’s oceans, Soylent Green. Nutritious! Delicious! Friday, February 10th is Soylent Green Day.
Film Starts at 6:30pm
Regnier Auditorium
12610 Quivira Rd., Overland Park, KS 66213
Discussion to follow – What is the role of the government in providing food safety and biosecurity to a growing population? And what ethics govern a runaway population? Come hear Professors from KU and K-State discuss these questions and answer your questions.
Today’s post about the film, GATTACA, is just as much a movie review as it is a discussion of eugenics, so I thought I’d post that on my other blog instead. Go on over and check that out. That and my thoughts on an ungodly number of bad movies that I watch all the time.
You know, I’m pretty happy with the present state of science on the small screen. This week, we had the opportunity to choose between three excellent shows with real scientists explaining fundamental principles to a wide audience. These shows are:
Cosmos with Neil Tyson
Your Inner Fish with Neil Shubin
Wonders of Life with Brian Cox
Of the three, I think Brian Cox is probably the best spokesperson for science – meaning he has a very casual and unassuming presence and speaks in a slow, measured pace that draws the listener in, eager to hear what’s coming. The camerawork in the Wonders of Life series is also good. It’s more artsy than you would expect from a science show, often putting the Sun behind Dr. Cox’ head to create moments of strong flares that’s muted post-production (I suspect). This technique works wonders when properly utilized. It creates drama and a bit of mystique because it flies in the face of one cardinal rule of photography. In many ways it reminds me of the cooking show Nigella Bites. Besides its production value, the science is solid, well presented and clearly explained. Here Dr. Cox explains the apparent retrograde motion of the planets (wanderers).
Cosmos works well because it is a reprise of a previously well-received series by the much-beloved Carl Sagan. How could it miss? So much is done well. I especially like the simple animations that bring history alive for us. People are hardwired for storytelling, so I firmly believe that science is learned best when it is part of a well-crafted story – and the stories told in Cosmos are right on. And one last word: wow. This is on Fox! Frankly, I’m amazed. Maybe Neil can teach O’Reilly why the tide goes in and out.
Your Inner Fish was initially a book that I use every semester I teach General Biology. As a book it functions well, the story is clear and filled with examples – although we do get lost in the details from time to time. Overall, I like it and think it’s a great introduction to scientific thinking. As a series, the same story is told, but with a greater clarity and excellent use of digital effects to complement the story without getting in the way.
All three are excellent – and more than anything, I just enjoy knowing that popular television, reaching a wide audience, is seeing a surplus of high quality, entertaining, educational material that is not soft on science.
100 films is a brand-spankin’ new blog I’m following. Tonight is night one, so join me and get in on the ground floor as this poor sap tortures himself through 100 consecutive nights of movies.
Watching this film, I can’t help but be reminded of such classics such as ‘Dead Alive’ (a fun zombie story by a little known Kiwi director, Peter Jackson) or ‘The Re-animator’ (a great mid-eighties mad scientist film starring Jeffrey Combs). The story is: Genetically altered zombie sheep are released by animal rights activists. This is terribly unlucky for Henry, the younger of two brothers inheriting a massive New Zealand farm, who suffers from acute ovinaphobia (an irrational fear of sheep – but can there really be a rational fear of sheep?) from a traumatic childhood encounter. Black sheep has it all – familial struggles, money and greed, a love story, the claustrophobic terror of spelunking in an offal pit, oh, yeah, and Zombie Sheep.
I’ve heard of this movie, but it took me quite a long time to actually see it. Luckily I caught it on IFC a couple weeks ago and taped it, so now I can strike it from my Netflix list.
Like so many other films of this kind, there is a great deal of tongue-in-cheek demonizing science and specifically genetics, because everyone knows that biotechnology inevitably leads to a zombie apocalypse.
If you don’t like gratuitous blood and guts with gobs and gobs of gore, this might not be the movie for you. And if you still can’t watch the scenes with the abominable snowman from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you might want to cover your eyes from time to time because this is about that scary.
A prequel trilogy seems to be a director’s opportunity to push CGI beyond its usefulness and try with all
their vast wealth to demonstrate that more is better- in every case, all the time. Regardless, the films make money providing the only feedback that matters to Hollywood. So we, the audience, ensure our future dissatisfaction.
I wanted to like The Hobbit- I really, really wanted to like The Hobbit. Despite the problems one might expect after hearing that this book was to be divided into three films, I still wanted to like it. And there were parts that I did enjoy tremendously. But, assuming I had the ability to make the film myself, I wouldn’t be expecting a good performance review or raise based on this effort.
Now (spoiler alert), I want to talk about what did and didn’t work specifically.
Beginning with the good…
I though that the film was paced very well from the start giving ample time for character development and slow immersion into the world of middle earth. Of course,the characters that were best introduced were Bilbo and Gandalf, both of whom we already knew from The Lord of the Rings.
Getting to know the dwarves was mixed, but overall quite good. The story paralleled the book well taking ample time to convince Bilbo to come along on the adventure of a lifetime, but it’s difficult to get to know thirteen dwarves no matter how long we take. I’m giving Jackson a pass here and will say that he did a very good job or balancing the dwarves’ gravity and lightheartedness and included the song of the dwarves to set the mood.
Although my wife and I have different opinions about it, I was happy with the backstory of the orcs to provide an antagonist to root against, fear and revile. (However, I would have gone with goblins to keep consistent with the book and get to see a new race of people)
Lastly, the scene with Gollum was easily as good as any he starred in previously and saved the movie in no small manner. Gollum represents CGI at its finest, a triumph of technology.
Now the bad…
My wife argued that there was too much effort made to stretch things out to make a trilogy out of what should be one long movie. I didn’t find this to be a major fault, but I certainly saw her point.
My problems started with the rock/ mountain giants. I know they were in the book, but I think they were an easy thing to skip and a hard thing to do well. Jackson took the hard road and got a rather pointless CGI heavy scene that didn’t add anything to the film.
This was followed by our introduction to the goblins… I’m sorry, orcs. In my mind, the caverns of the goblins were cold and dark and populated by a rather simpleminded, but malevolent race. Never did I imagine wide open spaces laced with miles of timber (where did this all come from?) it was consistent with the LOTRs orcs’ cave, but does it give us anything? Perhaps just lots of room for a big, silly chance scene that reminded me of another big budget loser, The Temple of Doom. What filmmaker wouldn’t want their work to be compared to that?
Again, I’m just giving my two bits, but the last fight scene in the trees is a great opportunity to cut a few minutes as well. Less is more, right? Then, as if an echo of the Fellowship of the Ring, I would fade to credits with the eagles in the air.
I get it though, we need the tree fight to develop the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin… And then we have a resolution on the high rock promontory, but forget it – that’s not character development I needed. Bilbo is only just supposed to be showing his worth here, not becoming bestees with the dwarf.
Overall, I think it was about a 6 out of 10. I just wonder if Peter Jackson has gotten so big and respectable that no one says, “hell no, that sucks!” to him anymore. CGI, chase scenes and cultivated emotion aren’t what’s needed to make this a good film. I agree, if there’s no giant eagles in the world, you would have to use Special effects to show someone getting off of one. Or you could cut away and trust the viewers imagination.
I appreciate that you’ve grown up since Dead Alive, Peter (which was awesome, by the way). You don’t have to try very hard to make Tolkien a good story just don’t get in the way and you’ll have a winner.
DownHouseSoftware 