First Maudlin Man. That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for Mankind. — Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11, June 1969. FIRST MAN is a strange piece of dramatic fiction. Not a biopic; not a historical document. Following Neil Armstrong on his pioneering Apollo 11 Moon landing, instead of a science-driven, or politics-driven docudrama, movie attempts to find an emotional … Read More
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
A Very, Very Brief History of Hawking. My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all. — Stephen Hawking. The brilliant English cosmologist Stephen Hawking appears as a B-character in the movie about his life, while his first wife Jane hijacks the narrative in THE … Read More
A DANGEROUS METHOD
A Lecherous Method. Ah yes, the hunt for puss. Isn’t that why we’re all here? To hunt or be hunted? Director David Cronenberg turns what could be a grand journey into the minds of two extraordinary psychoanalysts (Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud) into angling at puss. Ironically, that’s what the grand journey of these two minds arrived at – that … Read More
COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY
Starstuff Redux. COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY is the 2014 “reboot” to Carl Sagan’s 1980 monument, COSMOS. Producers include Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan, and FAMILY GUY Seth McFarlane; narrated by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. 1. Standing Up In The Cosmos 2. Some Of The Things That Molecules Do 3. When Knowledge Conquered Fear 4. A Sky Full Of Ghosts 5. Hiding … Read More
COSMOS 2014: EPISODE 2
COSMOS continues treading H2O. COSMOS: A SPACE-TIME ODYSSEY is an ambitious venture, treading in the footsteps of gods, attempting to explain Life, the Universe and Everything, while retaining a connectivity between the farthest galaxy, the smallest microbe, and you and I. The opening montage says it all, with its morphing images of a chasm into an eye, a spiral galaxy … Read More
COSMOS 2014: EPISODE 1
COSMOS Lite for the generation of attention-deficit gamesters. They call COSMOS: A SPACE-TIME ODYSSEY a reboot (which is a fad term for movie properties rehashed due to lack of original scripts, brand recognition and merchandising venality). So this update of ever-changing scientific information is most decidedly not a reboot, but a new introduction to the same old information about Life, … Read More
FEYNMAN: THE CHALLENGER
A Smart Guy for Dumb People. A scientist at the opening of FEYNMAN: THE CHALLENGER describes Richard P. Feynman: “He was physics with a human face”; able to transform the esoteric worlds of theoretical physics into lay speak. In other words, A Smart Guy for Dumb People. He was a roarer, a rogerer, a gorger and a puker. And a … Read More
THE CHALLENGER DISASTER
Hubris Greed Politics vs. Genius. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. — Richard Feynman, “Report to Congress on Challenger Investigation 1986.” Indepth chronicle of Dr. Richard Feynman’s investigation into the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1986 explosion. When I first heard about the TV movie, THE CHALLENGER DISASTER, I shrugged it off, … Read More
THE CLIMATE REALITY PROJECT
The Krypton Syndrome. As he did in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006), Al Gore talks up a storm. About storms. And droughts. And melting ice caps, and raging fires; THE CLIMATE REALITY PROJECT outlines the global climate shift exacerbated by what 1960’s science fiction films might have called “Mankind tampering in God’s domain.” But something has changed in the, uh, “climate” … Read More
COSMOS
The real Encyclopaedia Galactica. KNOWLEDGE! Not just physics, not just astronomy, not just biology, or philosophy or mathematics; knowledge from every strand of human endeavor. Astronomer Carl Sagan ties it all together in an immense library of congress called COSMOS. First broadcast on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1980, to date COSMOS is still the most widely watched PBS television … Read More
CREATION
And Darwin said, “Let there be light!” And there was light. When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn’t anger me. – Mark Twain, Feb 1907. The battle between Good (intelligence) and Evil … Read More
GASLAND
Despicable Them. [Hydraulic fracturing] is an onshore version of offshore unregulated drilling… — Keith Olbermann, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” Like Big Pharm, like Big Oil, like Big Corp, in the indie exposé GASLAND, it is revealed that the American companies that drill for natural gas are as unequivocally criminal and truly as insidiously evil. Filmmaker Josh Fox starts his documentary … Read More
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Sunshine Superman. We’re gonna die. That seems to be the main thrust of Al Gore‘s symposium on sunshine and line graphs. Woiking that Power Point mean machine like a Marketing Manager Gone Wild, the man who used to be “the next President of the United States” assails us with facts, figures and forecasts in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, outlining possibly the … Read More
ASTROLOGY | Keep The Nuts Out!
Keep The Nuts Out! Hi, Planetary Society, To cut straight to the chase, my enjoyment of articles such as your planetary grouping segment (April 9, 2002) is somewhat diluted when I see credibility afforded The Nuts that abound among us – I’m speaking of astrologers and all things astrological. (As Stephen Jay Gould has pointed out, it seems a tragedy … Read More