I spent an awful lot of time as a child and teenager tinkering with various projects. I’d have lots of projects on at any one time, brewing in my head for a while, and making their way to 
notebooks and scraps of paper, then to elaborate drawings showing the technical details, and ultimately to some sort of realization in the real work, some percentage of the time. In the Summer time, I would probably have one Big Project and that would occupy my thoughts for a great deal of time, and would involve a lot of hiding away doing things. Lots of these projects would involve electronics (increasingly as time went by and I Learned more and my various part time jobs could support more) and there’d be lots of tinkering with all sorts of items, and a constant feature would be the soldering iron, one not so different from the one that you see above right.
Well, one of the many things I liked about the Iron Man movie (yes, I was right there to Continue reading ‘Ferrous Thoughts’
I should really start a new series of posts with the title “What Could Possibly Go Wrong…?” This story from yesterday would be a fitting entry…
Did you see Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” last year? It was excellent, and of course totally overlooked in the recent discussions about good films of last year. It was released and seen by most people way too early in the year. Hollywood’s memory is not very good at recalling anything that came out earlier than the Fall if it did not come with a huge bang of publicity and so forth (like the excellent Bourne Ultimatum). Well, just for a moment there, I was in an American version of the film. (Setting-wise I mean. The film is set in a gritty, realistic not-Four-Weddings-or-Bridget-Jones London.) I was in New Jersey yesterday just for the day. (I’ll tell you more about it later.) Here’s what happened.
Continue reading ‘I’m Just Driver’
No, not spoiler in that sense. Doug Liman’s new action movie “Jumper” is all about teleportation, you see, and one of the questions that’s going to be on people’s minds is something like “Is teleportation really possible, or is it just some silly science fiction thing?”. I like it when such questions come up, and I like trying to answer them too.
This time I get to do it officially, since Doug Liman’s people are doing a private screening of the film this evening and there’ll be a panel of some of the film’s creators and a scientist for questions and answers afterward. I’ll be the scientist.
The downside is that I’ll be the bad guy of the evening by having to pour a bit of cold water on some of the flights of fancy. The spoiler, you see, as in spoilsport. The upside (besides, you know, free movie) is that I’ll maybe get to explain some really Continue reading ‘Movie Spoiler?’
Readers in New York… Uh… Are you ok? Leave a comment to let me know that you and the city are still there, ok?
Just got back from seeing Cloverfield. Quite well done, on balance. They do a great job of mocking up what it would be like to be just an ordinary citizen during your standard city-under-attack scenario. Routine falls apart, people are scared, fighter jets scream by low and fast overhead, there’s only fragments of information about what’s happening, and you find yourself wondering why on earth we build these tall buildings anyway… Yes, the filmmakers did a very Continue reading ‘Just Checking on New York’
So while you have a look at the following enthusiastic and amusing discussion about how far the Balrog and Gandalf must have fallen (in the film version of the Two Towers), involving discussions of terminal velocities and Balrog profile approximations for air resistance estimates (and so forth)…
(links here, here and here*)
…ask yourself why on earth nobody in the discussion (as far as I can tell from a quick Continue reading ‘Gandalf, Balrog, Physics…’
So yesterday at Pinewood Studios they announced the name of the upcoming second James Bond film in the new series that (excellently, in my opinion) re-envisions the Bond movie universe. Last year’s first one was “Casino Royale”, you may recall. Did you hear what the next one will be called?
Continue reading ‘Planck Meets Fleming’
The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday January 27th (upcoming). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole 
- of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right and left: Reza Aslan speaking on the origin of various ideas in Religion at the event entitled “Beginnings” on 16th December, 2007. Click right one for larger view.)
The theme this month is Science Goes Hollywood. Here’s the description from K C Cole:
Despite our prejudices to the contrary, Hollywood and Science have a lot to say to each other. Take special effects: Nothing Disney dreams up can Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Science Goes Hollywood’
So I took my mum and my brother (passing through on his way to the CES) to the new Arclight (Sherman Oaks) to see “I Am Legend” last night. I’ll admit that it has some things going for it. Overall it is not the disaster one might expect, given the direction in which big-budget “science-fiction” projects like this headed by action stars usually go. Furthermore, it might be said to be a bit of progress to have the main character be a scientist, and one of African descent as well, although I’d have been more impressed to see the scientist character actually using the scientific method - inference, deduction, hypothesis testing. The placeholder for being a scientist here was still the usual - surround the character with fancy equipment, give them glasses and a lab coat, and get them saying a few sciencey-sounding things. Hollywood - please listen up: That’s not what science is!!
So it was basically an action movie with more than the usual puddle’s worth of emotional depth, for a change. Very good performances and so forth and more or less well put together. It did not have the feeling of being written by committee, and so forth. So worth a look.
On the other hand, one main thing has been bugging me all day. If the rabid infected Continue reading ‘I Am Cranky’
On Friday after a very busy week (the last teaching week of the semester), I decided to go to a 21+ screening at the Arclight. This splendid event is held in a special part of the Arclight complex which means that you can buy a cocktail (gin and tonic in my case, made with Tanqueray No. Ten) and wander into the movie theatre with it and relax in a comfy chair and watch a movie for two hours.
Hmm… Sounds good. Was good. Why don’t I do this every Friday?
What I saw was about multiple universes and particle physics. Oh, and fighting polar bears.
Continue reading ‘Odd Direction For Compass’
Astounding. I can’t get over how amazing it was. I’m stunned, just stunned.
What am I talking about? No, it is not some new experiment I’ve done in my lair downstairs to somehow test out whether there are extra dimensions. It is something else. Something that manages to switch on and exploit an extra dimension with such daring and abandon that one sees things much closer to the way Nature intended. The results are rather spectacular!
Continue reading ‘I’ve Seen an Extra Dimension’
Since I’ve maybe done a bad thing and spoken ill of a TV show in which I took part (I may never make an unpaid appearance as a talking head in this town again), I’ll try to set the balance right with this important finding reported recently in the Onion:
Continue reading ‘Everybody Loves Everybody Here’
[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:
I just got back from a real treat* on the USC campus this afternoon:
Know who that is on the podium? (Click for larger view.)
Continue reading ‘Campus Chords’
in Los Angeles,
academia,
black people in science,
environment,
film,
gardening,
minorities in science,
miscellany,
movies,
nature,
personal,
science,
science and society,
science education,
science in drama,
science in the media,
television and
women in science .
I’ll let you know.
Huh? Today, I’ve to think about two things I have to talk about over the next couple of days. I’ve to give a physics seminar on Thursday at UCSB, but more urgently, I have to think about What Matters To Me and Why. Why? This is because in the Spring I agreed to be one of the presenters of the four-times-a-semester USC event of the same title, hosted by the Center for Religious Life. This excellent series is run by Rabbi Susan Laemmle, the Dean of Religious Life, with a committee of students. Here’s how it is supposed to work (extract from their site):
At each WMMW session, the featured guest spends about twenty minutes addressing the topic “What Matters to Me and Why,” and then the floor is opened to informal dialogue for the remainder of the hour. Just as there is no one way to address the topic, so there will be no one direction in which dialogue will proceed. The student contact from the WMMW committee introduces the speaker and makes sure that the session goes forward in a professional yet friendly manner. An indirect purpose of WMMW is to maintain an arena in which people can talk about important, personally charged questions in an open, mutually respectful way.
A typical session is described here. This is going to be a tough one. Not because nothing matters to me but because everything seems to matter, and I cannot effectively rank these things to say what matters most in any way. I only learned yesterday that I only have about 20 minutes to say what it is that matters. This either makes things harder or easier, I can’t decide yet. Probably harder. Now I really have to think.
I jokingly thought a few months ago that I ought to just look at my last few blog posts the day before and just talk about what’s in those. What can I see… Well, there’s public transport, community and the environment, composting and gardening, science and television (and scientific honesty). Not bad. (Good thing I did not do that post on dating. Probably not a good topic for WMMW…) I can probably weave something out of those. Do I blog about those things by accident, or because there are some themes there that are being brought out? What are the big themes in those then? Random scattered thoughts follow….
Continue reading ‘What Matters?’
Here’s my promised report/diary on yesterday’s adventures in film-making.
6:45am Got up a bit earlier than perhaps I should have, given that I got to sleep at 1:00am. Spent a while reading a ton of email, and sending some more. Will be away from my regular professoring duties for the whole day, and so wanted to make sure the fort was held. Prepared some appropriate TV clothing (pretty much what I wear normally anyway - simple solid colours), and so forth. Attempted to beautify myself just a tad (with the usual…inconclusive results). Shower and so forth. Coffee and oatmeal, sprinkled with NPR… Read a bit of stuff on dates of historical background on material I’ll be talking about. I often forget that sort of thing, and its never ever needed whenever I do remind myself of it, so after a few minutes I decided not to bother. The core physics ideas are more important, ultimately. Spent time looking for rain gear (the micro-brolly, basically), since supposedly there’s going to be a rainstorm later (hurrah! finally!). Ready to go.
8:45am Fifteen minutes later than I intended to (how did that happen?), I set off to walk to the Sunset/Vermont Red Line subway station. Waved to a neighbour, and we exchanged pleasantries about how nice a day it was.
8:47am Walked past surprised neighbour back toward home…. briskly.
8:52am Riding the Brompton (the folding bike, for those of you not keeping up), I cycled off to the Sunset/Vermont station.
9:01am Arrive at said station on schedule (one minute late does not count in LA), and Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry, XII - A Shooting Diary’
(Click for a larger view.)
This amused me a lot. Spotted while on Fandango earlier this evening, thinking Continue reading ‘Fandango Physics’
Drat.
Well, maybe on the next flyby. Flyby page here. AP (via Yahoo) story by Alicia Chang here. Interesting extracts:
The international Cassini spacecraft went into safe mode this week after successfully passing over a Saturn moon that was the mysterious destination of a deep-space faring astronaut in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
..and intriguingly:
Continue reading ‘Monolith Not Spotted, Yet’
The next Categorically Not! is Sunday September 9th. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole - of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area.
Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right: Julia Sweeney performing an extract from her play “Letting Go of God”, in the event with the theme “Uncertainty”.)
The theme this month is Mistakes! Here’s the description from K C Cole:
Blunders, boo boos, bloopers, errors, slip-ups, goofs, misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Everyone makes mistakes. In science, the notion of “mistake†is often itself misunderstood. Frequently, a “mistake†often turns out to be nothing more than a limited or skewed perspective. Or as Einstein put it, discovering a new theory is not so much like tearing down a house to build a new one as climbing a mountain from which one can see farther; the old “house†is still there, but is seen in a vastly different context. Mistakes in personal life and Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Mistakes!’
Let’s talk about aliens. I don’t mean people coming across the borders of whatever your country happens to be (although I did giggle a decade ago when I was given an official “alien number” by the powers that be back then - though I always regretted bypassing the “alien with extraordinary ability” status that the O1 visa gives you), I mean living creatures from beyond planet earth (it’s also interesting to consider the possibility that the seeds for life on earth may also have come from elsewhere).
It’s one of my favourite topics to consider, which is why I like to follow a lot of the remarkable things we are learning about our neighbouring planets (and other bodies like moons, asteroids, comets, and, yes minor planets like our old friend Pluto), and of course the ever-increasing variety of extra-solar planets (the ones we are discovering orbiting other stars). Overall, it gives one the sense that it is overwhelmingly likely that we are not alone (to use the tired old phrase), which to me is tremendously exciting.
I think we’ll find lots of compelling evidence that there’s lots of simple life on other bodies relatively soon, and I think that when people on the street hear of this, they’ll find it interesting enough. But I suspect that this will completely different to an Continue reading ‘They’re Out There (Probably)’
So you’ve already read my opinion about the Bourne Ultimatum after I returned from seeing it on the opening night - (In short, it’s just brilliant!) Well here’s something related that is rather funny, especially if you are a football (soccer) fan, although that is not necessary (I have little or no interest in it myself).
If you don’t already listen to Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo every week (most conveniently via their podcast), let me say right away that you should, since it is just an excellent and often highly entertaining discussion of film and movie releases. As a film reviewer, Kermode is not as good with words as, say, the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane (although it is not a fair comparison - the media are different), but his rants can be just great to listen to when he truly hates (and occasionally loves) something -whether you agree with him or not. Simon Mayo is sometimes thought of as his sidekick in this duo, but he’s really the anchor of the whole thing (and often the pragmatic link back to the everyday that keeps the whole show rooted), and from time to time the focus shifts to him. He’s also into his sports, while Kermode is not, which also makes for an amusing backdrop since the broadcast (on Radio 5 Live) is usually done live from some sporting context or other, which takes a sort of backseat role while they talk about movies. Anyway, it is an excellent podcast to listen to every week. I highly recommend it. You can find it on iTunes. (They also have started doing occasional video podcasts too, but the thing to go for is the radio show - another convenience of it is the fact that you can keep the podcast until after you’ve seen the films if you like (this is what I usually do - I mostly prefer to not hear anything about a film before I see it), and then listen to it and shout at Mark if you so desire.)
As I mentioned, Mayo is a big sports fan, and his team, Tottenham, apparently got slaughtered by Crystal Palace and are now at the bottom of the premier league (can you tell I’m faking this and I’ve no idea what I’m talking about?) The next day, he’s interviewing (not with Kermode though) the director Paul Greengrass and the actor Matt Damon (both of the Bourne Continue reading ‘Live Radio Footie Film Fun’
This was the best I could do for a Simpsons avatar for me. (Click for larger.)
(I usually wear plain things with nothing written on them, but I suppose this particular design will do, for fun! Also, I could not really find the right hair.)
So what’s yours like? (Email me them and I’ll post them in the comments if you like. Or give a link to one on your page.)
-cvj
P.S. The movie? Oh, it’s a pretty good extended Simpsons episode. I don’t know if it qualifies as a movie to see in the cinema, but then there’s an awful lot of really bad stuff out there that supposedly qualifies and can’t hold a candle to even a half hour Simpsons episode. Fun with a group out for a lark, I’d say.
(Shooting stars, that is. In other words, meteors. I’ll get to them eventually [or jump].)
The evening started with a 10:15pm movie at the Arclight. I saw the excellent biopic “Talk to Me”, (all about Petey Green and his manager Dewey Hughes) which 
happened to star two actors whose work I like a great deal, Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who both seem to grow and get better and stronger with every performance. I could be very wrong, but they’re also both among that (much) shorter list of actors who seem to me like people it would be interesting to get to know and talk to as well (missed a chance earlier this year with the latter, who was rumoured to be one of the people they were trying to get to take part in that New York shoot for King Magazine I told you about here and here).
Then, at 12:30am I wandered over to my “local” (well, they treat me like one, which is good), and favourite English pub outside of England - the Cat and Fiddle. Said hi to and chatted briefly with the guy at the door (about Stephen 
Donaldson books, of all things) and then ordered my customary thirst-quenching Hoegaarden and sat in the lovely courtyard for a while, reading some detailed notes of a series of what turned out to be startlingly excellent computations by my student Jeff Pennington. (Well, I don’t know if I should not call him my student any more. He’s graduated now and is off to do graduate work up North.) The Cat was relatively quiet (as it can be late on a Sunday night - it’s a very conservative town when it comes to staying up late; my theory is that it is partly because of all those early starts for shoots - and everybody seems to be connected to the Industry in some way), although I did get treated to the conversations of a group of people at the table near my bench. It seemed that all of a sudden, I was immersed in an episode of Entourage. The five women, dressed in severe (for a Sunday night) regulation “high powered 30-something person out on the town in Hollywood” outfits - more of the scary heel height and mercifully less flesh than the 10 years younger equivalent - seemed to be unabashedly discussing their various liaisons with members of the opposite sex, and two of the men from the group stepped aside (in my direction) to have a conversation about “the deal”, where one guy seemed to be seeking reassurance that he could pull off asking someone for 60 million. Ah, yes. It’s good to be back. Been several weeks since I intersected with this stuff.
The next stop - meteors. There’s nothing like a romantic evening under the stars - even if it’s a solo outing. I went to Runyon Canyon Park of course, getting there at about 1:45am. As I’ve mentioned before, it is another of those LA gems that most Continue reading ‘Stargazing’
… for this year, anyway. The evening out ended with a trip to my primary hideout* of this year’s visit, the nature of which you can deduce from the photo. The barkeep at The Little Nell, Michelle, really knows how to make a decent gin gimlet. I asked for it Continue reading ‘Last Night in Aspen’
I’m conflicted. I read the first Harry Potter book and decided that while it is a good thing that many people are reading more as a result of them, I could not really recommend it highly as great work because it’s just so derivative. Having grown up reading all those boarding school books J. K. Rowling borrowed from (for example) without adding anything to them much, I was frustrated.
Well, of course, in the scheme of things, it does not matter. Not all things we like have to be Great Works. And I eventually convinced myself that there’s nothing wrong with people (who did not read those works that she’s imitating) discovering the genre for themselves in the pages of her books. Then others told me that the books got better. 
They got darker, and more grown up (do they approach the excellence and relative originality of the once largely ignored Philip Pullman books I wonder?), and better written, I’ve been told, by people whose opinion I trust. Well, good.
The films came out and they were all very ho-hum and then happily Chris Columbus stopped directing them after the first two and - Wow! They were suddenly really rather good. (The third one was by the wonderful Alfonso Cuarón, so - of course!) (Clickable above right for clarity: Extract from my own attempt to tap into the mania some years back by using characters from the books/films to illustrate the derivation of time dilation in a class on Special Relativity.)
Anyway, I saw the fifth one last night*, and I was very impressed with it as a film. Not having read the book, I find myself hoping that there was more to it than the film, since it still seems all rather derivative. There’s a bit of 1984 and a lot of Lord of the Rings mixed in with the Boarding School motif. I suspect that’s all as a result of stripping it down to look for something to hang a film on? I’m going to assume that, since there’s an awful lot of transparent (but entertaining) dark motifs about the Continue reading ‘Henri Poincaré and the Order of the Polynomial’
As they did with the Incredibles, Brad Bird and the team at Pixar made a movie just for me! No, really! How could they know so accurately about my likes, loves and interests in conjuring up such a perfect combination of the various themes, story elements, images, scenes, characters (and rat facial expressions and gestures)? This time it is all about food - good food - cooking, and kitchens, and you know how I feel about those topics.
Ratatouille is wonderful, and I imagine that (even though they made it just for me) you Continue reading ‘Just for Me’
Well, first major disappointment of the Big Movie season. After doing great work on Spiderman, and brilliant work on Spiderman II, they managed to spectacularly screw up Spiderman III so badly, I can’t even begin to express my disappointment properly, so I won’t try. It started so well, which makes it all the more utterly frustrating that after 45 minutes or so the script irretrievably degenerated into a mess. A total train wreck.
‘Nuff Said.
-cvj
Saturday night was movie night too. This time it was the Arclight (that modern movie palace I love so much) for the venue, and the movie was “Hot Fuzz”. My normal practice of remaining in stealth mode when I hear other British people nearby was abandoned at some point - I could not resist surprising someone in the line for ice cream and coffee (well, that’s what I was getting, ok?) by speaking to them with my English accent to point out conversationally, as an opening gambit, that half the line (maybe a good percentage of the movie’s audience, by extrapolation) had British accents. This unveiling almost always throws people (wherever they are from since I do not fit most people’s idea of what a British person is “supposed to” look like, especially in an American context). Anyway, to the movie…
Continue reading ‘Fuzz Ball’
Last week, Friday night was movie night. (Actually, so was Saturday night, but that’s another story.) The venue: The wonderful Vista theatre, one of the great old movie palaces. The movie: Grindhouse. Why? See title (let’s be honest here), and I love well made terrible films (if you see what I mean) but also because I really do enjoy (overall) Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue1.
To get to the Tarantino segment (a movie called “Death Proof”), you have to wade through Robert Rodriguez’ “Planet Terror”, the first part of the double bill. This is a very well done (but maybe half an hour too long?) celebration of the Grindhouse spirit, complete with missing reels, scratchy film stock with burnt out patches, the works. (Clever idea to put in the technical difficulties - including using a missing reel excuse at a pivotal moment - the second film uses that latter joke too). The level of humour was very high indeed, through all the remarkable and cartoonish slime and gore… It was just the perfect venue that I (with two other friends) had chosen to see this in: Friday night at the Vista with an appreciative Silver Lake/Los Feliz crowd (from the neighbourhood).
Combine Planet Terror iwht the long and marvelously terrible spoof trailer for the movie “Machete”, and that would have been a fun night out on its own. But Planet Terror ended, everyone took a deep breath, and the opening credits Tarantinos’ “Death Proof” began to roll.
Continue reading ‘Because Everyone Wants to see the Woman with the Gun for a Leg’
Saturday night, after a quick trip to catch the end of a pleasant reception down at the Santa Monica Art Studios (they’re featuring a new set of artists), I went to the Arclight (hurrah! - it’s been a while) and saw a quite wonderful film: Mira Nair’s “The Namesake”.
I laughed and cried in turn at the joy and the sadness of it. It’s a very simple film about so many key things, explored marvelously: Family, home, leaving home, leaving your country, loss of family, love, loneliness, joy, togetherness, parents, children, youth, age, aging…
I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mira Nair has done it again, and the performances are wonderful, too. The film grabs you and tugs you in within the first few seconds of the start, engages you with great characters, and holds you close right through the end.
-cvj
I just learned of this festival, starting tonight at the New Beverly Cinema. I thought I should tell you about it in case you’re able to go. Also, it’s just fun to remember some of the movies in this genre, or some of the modern movies that celebrate, quote from, or were otherwise influenced by them. The festival should be a lot of fun!
It’s a Quentin Tarantino project, and there’s more at the cinema’s website, and an truly excellent post about it at the blog “Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule”, which early on has this excellent paragraph:
The director has responded to the New Beverly’s generosity by lining up a gut-bucket cornucopia of authentic grindhouse trash cinema to celebrate not only his 
upcoming movie, but the whole experience of seeing sleazy cinema classics in the only movie house left in L.A. (outside of the Vine on Hollywood Boulevard) that feels physically, spatially and, yes, spiritually related to the downtown second-run trash palaces that fed Tarantino’s (and everyone else’s) desire for this kind of rotgut, low-rent fun to begin with.
…and then goes on to do a wonderful thing by finding as many of the original movie posters (or related artwork) for each movie. It’s great to look at, and there’s a rather Continue reading ‘Grindhouse Marathon’
Well, the video of the Point of View event of a couple of weeks ago is now available. Click here for streaming media. There’s a problem, however. While my opening off-the-cuff remarks are utterly unimportant, and so it is not a big deal that the audio of that is poor, the big problem is in the third segment. Apparently (according to the A/V person) the Bluetooth microphone that they were using to capture the sound for the video camera must have used up its battery, as all the audio for USC’s Cinematic Continue reading ‘You Can View Point of View’
Here are some shots from my point of view of last night’s speakers putting their points of view about the theme “Point of View”.
The event was a reasonable success, in that people seemed quite engaged, and lots Continue reading ‘POV about POV from my POV’
Tomorrow sees the next in the series of events here on the USC campus that science writer KC Cole and I have arranged. They’re in the style of the Categorically Not! events I tell you about from time to time (held each month over at the Santa Monica Art Studios) but are over on the USC campus instead, 
as part of the Provost’s Visions and Voices events. You can read more in the links at the end of this post.
The theme is “Point of View”, and we’ll have an anthropologist, a journalist, and a film maker each give their take on the topic. Here’s an extract from KC’s poster about tomorrow’s event (held at 7:00pm at the Gin Wong Conference Center here on the USC campus):
Continue reading ‘Point of View, I’
From time to time I manage to make it to a movie theatre and sit down to watch a film that I have heard nothing about (which is really hard to do these days), and then am treated to the pleasure - if the film is at least half-decent - of having a film open before me like a box of delights, letting me discover all the things it contains completely as the film-makers intended: right in the moment. When a film is half-decent, novel, or merely pretty good, it can be made into a very enjoyable film-going experience by doing thisa. When a film is very good, or extremely good, this business of having seen it cold can really make it a truly wonderful experience, reminding me of when I went to see movies for the first few times as a youngster. Remember those times?
It’s not easy to pull this off these days with so much (too much!!) information out there about the content and story and back story of a film everywhere in the media, well before you see it. For particular films I want to see, I try to ignore as much as I can by not reading reviews, not listening to stuff that comes on the radio, or tv. But sometimes, it all sneaks through because often you don’t know in advance whether you want to see that film. You might not have even heard of it, and then it is spoiled a bit by too much detail. It has to be said that even a film tht
Anyway, I’ve had that lovely see-the-film-cold experience happen with a small number of films in recent times, and it happened last night. I was set to see another film, but my brother (who showed up in town to stay overnight unexpectedly) arrived Continue reading ‘Just Go’
Every other time I go to the movies, there is a trailer for yet another sports movie which has exactly the same plot as all the others. Every time I sit there stunned and open-mouthed after the trailer and have a little internal rant (sparing my companion(s)), wonder to myself about what it is about the national psyche that needs this same simplistic story quite so often, and wonder why nobody else seems to notice the phenomenon. It is also noticable that it is one of the rites of passage of a famous male Hollywood star (even really good ones) to play the grizzled coach of the no-hope team….. blah blah blah…. why is that?
Well, to my delight, this morning the programme Morning Edition on NPR played Continue reading ‘The Sports Movie Script’
USC has launched a Bachelor’s degree in video games. I know what you’re thinking. Stop it! No, civilisation is not doomed. (Image on right grabbed from Chip Chick). In fact, this could be rather wonderful, as it will create the opportunity to develop the potential of this medium in so many wonderful ways. It will not be about kids sitting there blowing up stuff and shooting up people. Why do I say this?
I remind you that in 1929 USC founded the first film school (at least in the USA)…. I imagine that people turned up their noses at this. Film is now recognized as a major art form, and a powerful tool for education and expression, with USC continuing to lead the pack in educating artists, visionaries and technicians in that area, feeding the local Industry and well beyond.
Doing a degree in film or movie-making (or “The Cinematic Arts”, as we are supposed Continue reading ‘We’re Not Doomed’
I just happened upon the middle of Spike Lee’s documentary “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” , which is on HBO (it is an HBO film, I think). I was transfixed, and horrified, all over again. I’ve set the system to record the next showing of all four acts in their entirety, and it is at the top of my viewing priorities. If you have not seen it, I recommend it, from the 20 minutes I’ve seen so far alone. Spike Lee looks to have done an excellent job. It is a documentary, to be sure, with the faces and voices of the people affected and involved on camera a great deal of the time, and it is also definitely a Spike Lee film in terms of look and feel and, of course, Terrence Blanchard’s music. See the synopsis (along with interviews with Lee) on HBO’s site here. Extract:
“New Orleans is fighting for its life,” says Lee. “These are not people who will disappear quietly - they’re accustomed to hardship and slights, and they’ll fight for New Orleans. This film will showcase the struggle for New Orleans by focusing on the profound loss, as well as the indomitable spirit of New Orleaneans.”
The first thing that springs to mind (other than the thoughts inspired by the content itself, most of which I am sure you’ve had yourself) is: Why is this not being shown in every movie theatre in the country? Documentaries have come back, right? We’ve all gone to see Michael Moore’s cleverly edited and scripted documentaries on various political issues. We’ve gone to see the even more cleverly edited and (oh yes) carefully scripted documentary “The March of the Penguins” and came away weeping at the thought that in 50 years, all that may be gone…. etc, etc. Should we not all be turning out in numbers to see this, showing events where actual human beings were lost and abandoned, in huge numbers? Families destroyed, lives torn assunder? Where the heart of so much of our culture was destroyed? If not, why not? I don’t care that it is 4 hours long. That’s not a good enough argument.
-cvj
Well, it has been a really long day, and I have yet to finish all I need to do before tomorrow. I’ve just had dinner, and am finishing off my splash of wine while waiting for my tea to brew (making it slow in a pan with spices -chai-style-, to combat the aforementioned altitude-induced flavour problem.) The plan is to get back to work for a few hours…
I’m not a huge TV watcher, but occasionally I want to look away from a long day of books, papers, notepad, and computer and distract myself over dinner. Especially when in a hotel or other short stay place. More fascinating then somehow. I don’t know why. So I switched on the TV.
… and Jurassic Park is just beginning on AMC.
I can never resist this film. Never.
I don’t know why I love this film so much. It is Spielberg at his best (and he packs in every single one of his signature tricks, camera angles, and other story-telling devices), and John Williams’ theme -another set of almost inversions of his other well known themes- is just perfect.
It is not a perfect film, but somehow the imperfections are over-ridden for me by:
Continue reading ‘Why
