Monica

It's funny the things that do and don't trigger suspension-of-disbelief problems for me. I enjoy speculative fiction -- science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, etc. This means accepting some basic premises -- faster-than-light travel, teleportation, magic, time travel, or whatever. I'm totally cool with all that.

I had two recent experiences with other factors in such stories.

First, last night I finally saw Looper (Netflix: last year's movies this year, which is fine with me). I enjoyed it in general (the ending moved it from "ok" to "I liked that"), but some of the implementation details gave me pause. (Everything I'm about to say is revealed in the first ten minutes of the movie.) The basic idea is that "the mob" in the future sends people they want to kill back in time 30 years to have hired assassins do the deed and dispose of the bodies in the past -- easier to get away with. That's fine. But the assassins know that they aren't going to be allowed to live past that point in the future -- you get 30 years of high pay and then at some point the guy sent back is going to be you and you "close the loop" by killing him. Ok, I can work with that.

So...why does the future mob need assassins in the past? Why not just send bodies back? Or if the time-travel device only works with live people, then -- given that we've seen them land very precisely in geo-space and time -- why not send them into a live volcano? And if they need assassins, why not go back 100 years and then not have to worry about them catching up?

As I said, I enjoyed the movie -- but I couldn't help wondering about such obvious questions, which could have been addressed with a few sentences of dialogue but weren't, while at the same time accepting the time-travel premise just fine. Maybe I'm weird.

In a similar vein, I recently finished reading The Domesday Book by Connie Willis, which coincidentally also involves time-travel. In this case they're sending a historian back to the middle ages for direct observation. She's got an implanted recording device, something like a universal translator (also implanted)... and neither a homing beacon (should they need to rescue her) nor a beacon she can drop at the rendezvous point (matched up to an implanted detector). The history department has budget for a time-travel net but not homing beacons? Bummer. (I realize that this would totally mess up the plot of the book.) Also, apparently in the future they only have land-lines. I enjoyed the book (which I read because of the song (YouTube, lyrics)), but I couldn't help noticing.

I guess it's the little things that catch my eye.

I've been learning a lot and it's going to take a while to write it all up -- certainly not before I get home. So in the meantime, some shorter bits:

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The Butterfly Effect got lukewarm reviews when it was in theatres and I don't go out to see that many movies anyway, so I missed it at the time. Last night I remedied that with the DVD, and boy am I glad I did. (No spoilers in this post, but I can't vouch for comments.)

The story follows a college student, Evan, who had several blackouts as a child, almost always in stressful situations. The doctors encouraged him to keep a detailed journal in hopes of finding clues to the problem. Eventually Evan discovered that he could use the journal entries around the blackouts to go back in time and change those situations. Change, however, is not always good, as any veteran consumer of time-travel stories will assure you.

There are some scenes in this movie that were very difficult to watch. (One in particular: cruelty to animals is a major squick for me; that it was not shown on-screen was not sufficient mitigation.) But I found the story compelling and the characters generally believable as they morphed through changing situations.

The DVD offers the directors' cut and the theatrical release; without any advance knowledge I chose the former, figuring it would pick up a few deleted scenes but be basically the same. (While for books I usually prefer works that have stood the scrutiny of editors, for movies I tend to watch the story the director wanted to tell unless I know of a reason not to.) Later, when I was looking (unsuccessfully) for a detailed plot synopsis online to confirm a couple details of sequencing, I learned that the endings are very different between the two. Having seen the directors' ending and read about the one that showed in theatres, I am glad I watched the one I did. While much darker, it seems a much more powerful conclusion to the story.

Recommended, with the caveats about some troubling themes. Not for kids.

We finally saw Avatar today. Because we dallied, our only options were 3D (digital or IMAX). To see the plain old 2D version we would have had to head off to the wilds of Bridgeville or Tarentum or the like.

Consensus on the Google-indexed parts of the Internet suggested the the odds were better than 50-50 of the glasses for digital 3D fitting over my glasses, so we opted for that. (Almost everyone agrees that you can wear the 3D glasses over glasses; they'd be crazy not to consider that need. But my glasses are thick and I didn't know if there'd be enough room.) This concern was easy to mitigate; we asked to try out the glasses at the ticket counter before buying. The other unknown for me was whether the 3D effect would work for me: do my eyes work together well enough, or would I just see a blurry movie? Only one way to find out. (The cheapo red/blue 3D glasses of yore never worked on me, at least for 3D comic books. I've never seen a 3D movie before.)

I could in fact see the 3D effects, yay. The glasses would have been annoying if they'd had any weight to them; on the ears they were perched on top of my regular ones, and there wasn't a lot of room on my nose to support them. Since they were made of light-weight plastic that was ok; I just sort of wedged them in place, and I'm not sure to what extent they were even in contact with my nose. If they'd been heavier that wouldn't have worked.

As for the movie itself... ( Read more... )

Last week Erik spent the day at the vet's for an ultrasound (everything looks good, they said; awaiting formal report). When I picked him up, the person at the desk asked me to sign a photo release. It turns out that this was their day to take photos of staff members for their web site, and since my vet had made a special trip just to be there for this ultrasound, she asked that Erik join her in the picture. :-) (No, it's not on the web site yet.)

Thanks to those who gave me DTV advice. I had the wrong mental model for the converter box: I was thinking of it as a passive device, like an antenna, when it is more like a cable box. I don't think I'd realized before today that I will have to always set the channel on the box and not the VCR. That makes recording shows more of a hassle, but I watch little-enough TV that it probably won't be a big hassle. Still, one of the reasons I've never been interested in higher levels of cable service (except for B5's TNT year) is that the box displaces the tuner in my VCR, making recording more error-prone. Of course, VCRs themselves are on the way out at this point, so perhaps I should be looking for a DVR that does not involve a subscription service. (Again, don't watch enough TV to justify paying for a service.) I want to be able to program something and mostly forget about it until I'm ready to watch accumulated shows.

We saw Star Trek this weekend. If you don't think about the plot or the science too hard it's a good movie -- which is pretty much the calibration I expect from Trek. I wonder if the reset will lead to more TV shows or if it's just a movie franchise at this point.

Speaking of movies, thanks to osewalrus for passing on I'm a Marvel / I'm a DC (YouTube).

A seasonal note: a different kind of Omer calendar. Y'see, Jews are supposed to count the 50 days from Pesach to Shavuot, each night. Sometimes it's hard to remember, so people have come up with various reminder schemes. This one builds on the near-universal motivational properties of chocolate. :-) (Some commenters compare it to a chocolate Advent calendar. Advent calendars are completely outside my experience; sounds like I missed out on something tasty as a kid.)

Seen in passing, a useful-looking URL to have on hand: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/.

Finally (below the cut due to image size) a cartoon that made me laugh out loud. I didn't particularly expect to find it on Language Log, but I'm glad they posted it so I could see it.
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We finally saw the fifth Harry Potter movie today. As usual, I have not read the book. (From what I hear, if I do decide to read the books I should still skip this one.) Overall... eh.

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Trailers:

• Bee Movie: Looks cutesy, so it comes down to the quality of the writing. I'm unlikely to bother absent good reviews from people whose assessments are good predictors of mine.
• Golden Compass: We'll see this. (This reminded me to try their web site again. It still fails for me, differently in Firefox and IE. Oh well; I guess I wasn't meant to have a daemon.)
• The Enchanted: This looks funny; I laughed out loud multiple times during the trailer. Definitely worth learning more about and hoping the trailer didn't contain all the funny parts.
• I don't remember the name of the Loch Ness movie. At the beginning of the trailer it evoked memories of E.T., but the trailer suggests that a good chunk of the movie is about the search for and secrets of Nessie, more than it is about a boy and his pet alien, and that doesn't grab me.
• Fred Claus: No thanks. Actually, a pretty good heuristic seems to be to write off anything billed as a holiday story. The snowflake logo at the beginning of the trailer told me everything I needed to know.
• Get Smart: I was never a fan of the TV show, and the trailer hasn't led me to reconsider.

Two for six (one of which we would have seen anyway) is a better-than-average hit rate for me and trailers.

Sunday night we went to see the Narnia movie (finally). The previews were mostly aimed at kids, with one notable exception (The White Countess); that was an odd combination. One of the previews was for Hoot, which appears to be another in the theme of "these kids, and only these kids, can save the world (or their small part of it)". I find that while I'm willing to suspend that sort of disbelief in a fantasy or SF millieu -- Narnia, my recent D&D game, and a number of novels boil down to this plot -- I am usually unable to do so for stories set in the real world. So Hoot came across to me as dumb and lame, even though I was sitting there waiting for Narnia.

A doctor friend was recently opining that "some guy" is responsible for about 80% of ER visits from violent crimes, and if we can just find him we'll all be better off. "For instance", he said, "you get reports like 'there I was, sitting on my front porch at 3AM reading my bible and minding my own business, when Some Guy shot me!'". Err, this might be more challenging than he thinks.

I caused a telemarketer to violate the script this weekend. I was lured in by him pronouncing my name correctly, so I didn't immediately detect his true nature. Then he said "I'm calling from the PA Pro-Life Commission" (or some such) and I interrupted and said "you really have a wrong number". He stopped mid-shpiel and apologized. Negative points for calling in the first place but positive points for not persisting. And maybe this one will actually put me on their do-not-call list.

A random thought: in this age of global communication, when giving an email correspondent your phone number it is polite to mention your time zone. On the internet nobody knows you're a dog, and also, nobody knows you're in Bangladesh. Or wherever. Fortunately, Google can answer these sorts of questions pretty easily given the phone number, unless it's a cell phone.

Saturday is a local SCA event, Dance and Romance. It's a free event (pot-luck food) at Pitt, and as the name implies, there will be a lot of dancing. Ensemble Rigodon (that's On the Mark's SCA identity) will be doing a short concert, and lots of us will undoubtedly be playing dance music all day. Should be fun!

We saw the new War of the Worlds last night. This had the potential to go one of two ways, I thought. They might have decided to make a thriller action flick (which would not have been very interesting to me), or they might have made more of a character story. Wells provided a foundation that could go either direction -- not that movies necessarily take much from the books they're based on, of course.

( here there be spoilers -- but c'mon; the movie's been out for two months )

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. I haven't seen any other movie/video versions of this story to compare it to. (I only know the book, the Orson Welles radio version, and Jeff Wayne's musical setting.) My favorite telling of it is probably still Jeff Wayne's; it and this movie are so different, though, that comparing them wouldn't really be feasible. That said, though, it's been years since I've listened to that recording and I should do something about that. And maybe dump it to CD if I can, since I currently have it only on vinyl.

"Existentially speaking, is there such a thing as half a piece of cake?" -- kayre

This evening at dinner the fundamental dynamics of lightsabres came up. Specifically, how does the color encoding work? Is Luke's blue because Luke prefers blue, or because any lightsabre Luke uses will channel Luke-specific force, which is blue? If so, do the admission criteria at Jedi University include "sabre does not glow red" (and if not, why not)? Are there important qualitative difference between blue and green sabres, both of which appear to channel the light side of the force? Surely these are important research topics for someone out there who has, you know, seen all the movies.

While we were in Sears waiting for Dani's new tires, he noticed a "bilingual tire gauge". Yes, it talks to you (in English or Spanish). It also has a decent-sized digital display. So I went looking for one that has the display but doesn't talk, because I have a lot of trouble reading a conventional gauge and thus do not check my pressure as often as I ought. Alas, there is a hefty surcharge for silence. So I got the noisy one and will hope for minimal annoyance.

Erik (the underweight cat) has developed a voracious appetite (for him) in the last several days. I'm happy to oblige, but I wonder what the difference is. I did buy a new type of food to try out on him on spec, but he's also chowing down on the food he had previously shown little interest in. Maybe he just needed some new flavors to jump-start his appetite. It's probably pretty boring (culinarily, at least) to be a domestic dog or cat, getting the same stuff day in and day out. Think back to childhood and those "tuna casserole again?" moments, and that probably wasn't daily. :-)

Dani and I finally saw The Incredibles this afternoon. Fun movie. They probably should have included a family pet, who would exhibit absolutely no powers but keep you wondering. But maybe I'm being influenced by The Crossovers. :-)

We saw a matinee and all the previews were aimed at kids. Is that because that's what's attached to this movie, or because you get different previews at matinees than at evening shows? There was also a short feature -- haven't seen one of those since I was a kid -- and it, too, was pretty clearly for the kids. Well-done technically; insipid artistically. (I didn't catch a title.)

(Ok, let's see if this will post today.)

We went to see the Harry Potter movie Monday night. Before that, though... this had to have been the most unappealing set of previews I've seen in a while:

• Spongebob Squarepants: Um, I think they might not quite have this movie's demographic nailed.
• Spiderman 2: Eh. Didn't see #1 and won't see this, but they're closer to the demographic.
• Sleep Over: Eww. Just... eww. Inane gigly teenage girls sneak around their parents and have cat-fights. Um, yeah. Maybe Spongebob wasn't so bad after all.
• Catwoman: If, like me, you have not read the comics (I assume there are comics), you get no information about this movie beyond "babe in black doing acrobatics". Maybe that's enough for their target demographic. (Oh, and I gather the cat-woman died and was recycled or something?)
• Cinderella Story: Cinderella set in modern-day LA. Looks cute, but if the glass slipper has really been replaced by a cell phone, I would think that identification would be anti-climactic. ("Each of you, quick: what's your phone number? Ok, let's ask the phone.")
• Princess Diaries 2: This looks like it could be fun. Or rather, it slightly motivates me to find #1 (this is a sequel). Dani has good things to day about the book.
• Polar Express: Eww eww eww. Even if I did Christmas, and even if I had kids, I still wouldn't take them to see this bit of insipid Santa-is-love fluff.

Now, on to the HP spoilers. ( Read more... )

Assessment: Much better than #2, not a rich as #1. I'll go to the next one.

We made extremely good time getting to the theatre, but were still surprised to be the first ones at this particular show. That's not really a win, though; it just meant we got to watch more commercials. Remember when you could spend pre-movie time just talking, with quiet music in the background?

Saturday night we went to ralphmelton and lorimelton's for dinner and a viewing of the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring. Some of the cut scenes were appropriately cut; others were a real loss to the movie. I particularly liked the scene where the hobbits get a lesson about how filling lembas are (a sort of flatbread that only requires one bite a day for a full-sized elf).

The DVD has some extras, most of which we didn't watch. We did see a (long) trailer for the Two Towers. We also saw a rather, um, tasteless send-up of the Council of Elrond called "Lord of the Piercings". We had to google for the navigation instructions, as the person who suggested it couldn't remember the details.

I'll bet easter eggs were a lot more challenging a decade ago than they are now. :-)

Sunday night we went to an SCA potluck dinner. The theme this time was "birds, including things birds eat". We rejected chicken as too obvious, and decided not to do things with eggs (quiche, devilled eggs, etc) for a similar reason. We worried about duplication. I finally opted for baked salmon (some birds eat fish), which went over well. And, as it turned out, while the hostess made roasted chicken, there were no devilled eggs.

The creativity award has to go to the person who constructed a bird out of soft cheeses (with some structural elements), with wing and tail feathers carved out of peppers, sitting in a nest of (probably) shredded cabbage.

After recording Saturday's torah portion for posterity (or whatever suffices for same in non-digital media), I set to work on the portion I'm chanting Thursday. It came back more easily than I thought it would -- once I consented to flushing parts of the previous one from active memory. It's weird how that works. I can remember zillions of songs, even ones that are similar, but two similar torah portions are currently beyond me. I guess that will get better in time. I've got to find more opportunities to grow in this area. (For next year I will learn the final chunk of the weekday reading for this portion, but I'd like to do something before then, especially since I'm now starting to be able to parse the trope directly, without looking every symbol up in the book. I still have to look up the less-common ones, but that too will get better in time.)

At the Saturday service a random member of my congregation congratulated me on becoming chair of the worship committee. Ok, I assume that means they've told the outgoing chair by now...