Entertainment
pharyngula | June 24, 2014World War Z was on the Netflix last night, so I made the mistake of watching it. It was terrible. Spoilers abound, so stop here if you care.
The dreadful biology was offensive. Even if the plot were compelling -- it wasn't -- and the actors engaging -- they weren't -- it would have driven me bughouse mad. As it was, this looked like a movie in which someone had a CGI routine to render frenzied mobs, and they just had to use it over and over again.
The central macguffin of the plot was to find Patient Zero of the zombie plague. Why, they don't explain; it would be scientifically interesting…
pharyngula | May 8, 2013He has a new movie coming out this summer, After Earth. It looks awful, but then, that's what I've come to expect from Will Smith's Sci-Fi outings.
Jebus. Anyone remember that abomination, I, Robot? How about I Am Legend? I steer clear of these movies with a high concept and a big name star, because usually what you find is that the story is a concoction by committee with an agenda solely to recoup the costs and make lots of money…so we get buzzwords and nods to high-minded causes and the usual action-adventure pap. Just looking at the trailer, I'm getting pissed off: it's supposed to be a…
pharyngula | September 17, 2012I know it's early, but I expect it to be the best thing for a few days yet. David Byrne writes about his love affair with sound, and I came away from it feeling like I'd both learned something new and that it fit well with other ideas I already had — it was a revelation to see how well music and evolution fit together.
Because music evolves. Byrne's thesis is that it evolves to fit its environment (sound familiar?), and that you can see the history of a genre of a music in its sound. It's all about the spaces it was played in, which shapes the kind of sound can be used effectively…and he…
pharyngula | June 10, 2012I completely missed the disgraceful hokum the Animal Planet channel aired last week, Mermaids: The Body Found, a completely fictional pseudodocumentary dressed up as reality that claims mermaids exist. You can watch it now, though, until Animal Planet takes it down.
It's genuinely awful. Total nonsense, gussied up with more nonsense: would you believe it justifies the story with the Aquatic Ape gobbledygook? Brian Switek has torn into it, and of course Deep Sea News is disgusted. How could the channel have so disgraced themselves with such cheap fiction?
Here's the answer:
ANIMAL PLANET…
pharyngula | January 23, 2012Mondays are my long, long days — this is the day I get to spend 3 hours talking to students in small groups about cancer (they're young and invincible, so so far it hasn't been as depressing as I feared.) And they teach me stuff! Among the things I learned today is that there was a Peanuts special from the 1990s about cancer, titled "Why, Charlie Brown, Why". I was incredulous — it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd expect on Peanuts — but I looked it up, and there it was on YouTube. So I'll share. It's not bad.
The class is operating on a much higher level than this special — it…
pharyngula | October 5, 2011I saw the movie Contagion last night — it's good, but chilling. You are at the mercy of viruses that are evolving far faster than we are, and our lives depend on the luck of our genetics, the random permutations of recombination in pathogens, a bit on our efforts in hygiene and social practices, and a great deal on science supplementing our immune systems. We're one strong pandemic away from a breakdown of the social order, and we rely on science and vaccinations to help protect this tasty giant petri dish of human meat we call planet Earth.
So I'm not too sympathetic when the Edmonton Sun…
pharyngula | August 5, 2011Some people are planning to make a sequel, another 13 part series, to Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This may be a greater heresy than giving Star Trek a reboot with a time-travel movie, or turning Star Wars into Jar Jar Binks land, but there is one glimmer of sunshine: it's going to star Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's our only hope.
(Also on FtB)
pharyngula | August 2, 2011I shall have to turn on my television Sunday evening (7 or 8pm, depending on where in the US you are). Stephen Hawking will be on the Discovery Channel to answer the question, "Is There a Creator?" — I'm pretty sure he's going to answer "no."
He also tersely answers a few questions online.
Q: First, we wonder if you could comment on why you are tackling the existence of God question?
A: I think Science can explain the Universe without the need for God.
Q. What problems you are working on now, and what do you see as the big questions in theoretical physics?
A: I'm working on the question…
pharyngula | July 25, 2011Over the course of the last few weeks, I have dragged myself through George R. R. Martin's latest, A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in his Game of Thrones series.
I'm done. No more. I'm not reading any of his books any more.
It's terrible. Martin has taken the concept of the pot-boiler to an extreme — it's a novel where nothing happens other than continual seething, roiling turmoil. He whipsaws the reader through a dozen different, complex story lines where characters struggle to survive in a world wrecked by civil war — one other problem is that I'd hit a chapter about some minor…
pharyngula | June 24, 2011I finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides tonight, and I've got to say…Tim Powers was robbed. It was a mess of a movie that wobbled from point to point, with no sense behind it, and a plot that had nothing to do with what I expected.
Skip the theater and read the book, On Stranger Tides, instead. This movie could have been stunning if it had simply used that wild and thrilling story from Powers, instead of stealing only the title, giving a feeble acknowledgment ("Story suggested by Tim Powers"), and then ignoring everything in the book.
Someday, I would like to see something…
pharyngula | June 24, 2011O Delight! Savage interviews Minchin. It's beautiful.
I'm also very sad. Minchin is coming to Minneapolis…on the same weekend I have to be in Las Vegas for TAM. Or I'd be there.
You other Minnesotans better buy out every ticket to his performance so he'll feel like coming back.
pharyngula | June 12, 2011The new threat to humanity and specifically New York: A glacier. A really, really fast glacier.
I hope everyone involved in creating it is really, really ashamed.
pharyngula | May 26, 2011I don't understand how this could happen. You can buy the new Lady Gaga album for 99 cents? I am in shock.
I also have it on my iPod now.
pharyngula | May 26, 2011It's an annoyance that the History Channel is part of the basic cable package I get — I haven't watched the acceleratingly awful channel in years, but they still get by on their slice of the cable pie. Now they have announced that they will be turning the Bible into a "five-part, 10-hour scripted docu-drama with live-action and state-of-the-art CG". There is no part of that description that doesn't make me cringe.
An honest survey of the Bible wouldn't be a bad thing — as we often say, it's a great tool for making atheists. I don't think that will be the case here, though.
The idea for the…
pharyngula | May 9, 2011I saw the new Thor movie tonight. I'll give you the gist of the movie, with no spoiler details.
First of all, atheists are allowed to watch the movie. The Asgardians are actually super-advanced aliens who live in a high-tech mega-city with trans-galactic transporter technology that uses wormholes. They use it to oppress distant worlds and impose their medieval political system on the universe. We're supposed to feel all right about that because the king is Hannibal Lecter.
Thor is a bad, foolish bully-boy who picks fights with the Blue Man Group, so Hannibal Lecter flings him to Earth to…
pharyngula | April 29, 2011HBO has this show now — you've heard about it? — recreating a most excellent fantasy series by George R.R. Martin. I enjoy a good fantasy story, and I think Martin is a fabulous writer…but man, I read the books, and I felt burned.
Here's the basic premise established at the start of the first novel:
The kingdom descends into the chaos of civil war, while a mysterious supernatural threat arises far to the north, and an exiled princess across the sea plots to invade with the power of dragons. Many tangled plot lines are established with a horde of memorable characters.
Now here's the situation…
pharyngula | February 22, 2011In a too rare fit of quality, our local theater is showing The King's Speech this week, which I keep hearing is wonderfully well made and a serious Oscar contender. I was thinking of going, but now Christopher Hitchens shreds its historicity — it's about yet another royal fascist-sympathizer — and Katherine Preston explains that it's got the neurology of the speech defect all wrong. I don't think I can watch it at all now. I can enjoy a fiction without apology, but I find it impossible to watch a false story that pretends to be true.
The reviews are annoying, too — they all praise the quality…
pharyngula | February 14, 2011I thought I had more than enough Valentine's videos queued up for the day, but then this one was mentioned:
Who would have thought that a video with puppets about a mummy would be the most romantic entry of the day?
(via Neil Gaiman)