film
dmunger | January 12, 2010Today I had to put off my normal morning run in order to make time to be interviewed on a radio show at 7:30 a.m. As I waited on hold for the interview to start, I could hear the hosts joking back-and-forth about what the "latest TV controversy" is. "Is it the Jay Leno / Conan O'Brien news on NBC?" the host asked? No. Then the hosts rattled through several other hot-button issues on television before arriving at this: "New research from the American Heart Association Journal [Circulation] suggests that watching TV might actually reduce how long you live." How's that for a controversy?
The…
sb admin | January 7, 2010It's football season in America: The NFL playoffs are about to start, and tonight, the elected / computer-ranked top college team will be determined. What better time than now to think about ... baseball! Baseball players, unlike most football players, must solve one of the most complicated perceptual puzzles in sports: how to predict the path of a moving target obeying the laws of physics, and move to intercept it.
The question of how a baseball player knows where to run in order to catch a fly ball has baffled psychologists for decades. (You might argue that a football receiver faces a…
sb admin | January 6, 2010Here's this week's list of notable posts from Psychology and Neuroscience at ResearchBlogging.org.
Is autism really surging? Michelle Dawson wonders whether the recent rise in autism rates can be traced to methodological differences in studies tracking autism rates.
We know many men are attracted to younger women, but what does it mean to look younger? Wayne Hooke looks at a recent study and concludes that looking younger may be a matter of looking less masculine.
Ever had a song that you just can't get out of your head -- an "earworm"? You'd think that psychologists would be all over…
grrlscientist | January 2, 2010tags: Scary Mary, Mary Poppins, spoof, film, parody, Chris Rule, Nick Eckert, streaming video
This recut of the original Disney film, Mary Poppins by Chris Rule and Nick Eckert, raises an interesting question about the film goer's perspective and how a scary film is set up differently from one that is not scary.
This contains the musical piece "A Violent Attack" composed by Caine Davidson for the film 'An American Haunting,' "Stay Awake" written by Richard and Robert Sherman for Disney's 'Mary Poppins,' and stock sounds from iMovie. Clips filmed with a Penasonic MiniDV camera and edited on…
sb admin | December 24, 2009Television can have a huge influence on our lives. But the most important influences may be the ones we don't even notice. I discuss several fascinating studies about television in my latest column on Seedmagazine.com. Here's a snippet:
Travis Saunders, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa who studies the impact of sedentary lifestyles, questions whether a little exercise can make up for hours of inactivity. He refers to a study led by G.F. Dunton of the University of Southern California and published in October in the International Journal of Obesity. The researchers conducted a phone…
razib | December 19, 2009I saw Avatar in 3D.
- The special effects were very good. I have seen special effects of similar quality, but never such quality in such quantity. The detail was striking enough that I assume I stopped thinking of it as "special effects" and more as simply a background canvas. I'm talking more about the landscape, the flora and fauna, than the humanoids, who occasionally slipped into uncanny valley territory.
- The plot was melodramatic and not particularly exceptional. The ideological ax didn't bother me because the plot was mostly extraneous to the film's experience anyhow.
- I think that…
gregladen | December 5, 2009My review.
The last movie of this genre I watched had Christopher Lee as the Werewolf Hunter. In this movie, the Werewolves engaged in a periodic orgy in which a newly converted nubile female would would be converted into a wolf-like form to have repeated dog-like copulations with a male vampire-wolf counterpart under the observation of the king and/or queen vampire and a dwarf. Or something like that. I came in during the middle of the movie and never quite got it. But it was obvious, and this is always true in traditional vampire and werewolf movies, that the Catholic Church is very…
bioephemera | December 2, 2009Product placement is old news, but just in case you're wondering how saturated films really are with implicit advertising, brandchannel.com's brandcameo-films index tells you which brands were featured where:
It's hard to make audiences feel okay, and even good, about innocent people being gored, beheaded and axed to death--but Friday the 13th knows the trick is to populate the film with beautiful, shallow characters who feel self-entitled to a life of partying, comfort and money. Enter Jason Voorhees, the maladjusted and disfigured karma-maker. Though none of the characters seem to have…
razib | November 15, 2009'2012' Opening Earns $65 Million:
It is rare for a movie not based on a pre-existing brand, franchise or hit novel to deliver such robust results. Sony said "2012," with a budget of $200 million, had the highest worldwide opening ever for an original movie.
dmunger | October 28, 2009Product placements in movies and TV shows are becoming so commonplace that my kids now cynically take note of them whenever they appear. It wasn't always that way. In 1982 when I first saw E.T. I had no idea that Elliott's use of Reeses' Pieces to lure E.T. into his home was part of a clever marketing ploy that had been pre-arranged with the multinational conglomerate selling the candy. Now that nearly every household has a DVR allowing viewers to fast-forward through commercials, advertisers are relying more and more heavily on product placement to show off their wares. But how effective are…
grrlscientist | October 27, 2009tags: Food, Inc., food industry, factory farming, health, documentary, film, movie trailer, Eric Schlosser, streaming video
This is the official trailer for a 2008 documentary based on Eric Schlosser's research (Fast Food Nation DVD or book). It identifies, describes and details the problems of the food industry, its effects upon our health and provides us -- the consumer -- with strategies for changing the way the food industry operates so farmers can earn a living wage and all of us can enjoy improved health outcomes.
Learn more about this film or purchase the DVD.
grrlscientist | October 23, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part eight (the last part) of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
Learn more about the film and purchase the DVD.
grrlscientist | October 22, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part seven of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 22, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part six of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 21, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part five of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 21, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part four of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 20, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part three of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 19, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part two of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 18, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part one of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.