Movie Review: San Andreas (2015)

Tremors.

I can sum up this blockbuster action disaster flick in just one phrase: The Rock vs. the Fault.  Dwayne Johnson and the San Andreas, that is!  Johnson's established himself as an action movie star of the first order long before this flick, and he'll be one long after it.  That's good, because San Andreas is pretty much a huge, noisy, bombastic CGI cartoon of geological mayhem and mass urban destruction.  (Weather forecast: Cloudy with a chance of storage ship containers.)  I'd be lying, though, if I said that I wasn't stupidly entertained for 2 hours, because I was, and that's due almost entirely to the Rock's own irrepressible personal charisma.  Is the movie preposterous in a dozen different ways?  Yes, it is.  Did I have fun anyway?  Yes, I did.

Quote of the Day: Self-Debunking Middle East Policy?

My colleague Alessandra called this long ago: Obama's Middle East foreign policy debacles would induce the Saudis and Israelis to work more and more closely, even flat out openly, against Iran.  A common fear of a regional nuclear hegemon makes strange bedfellows?  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

There's also this observation (my emphasis in boldface):

Obama came into office convinced that U.S. influence in the Middle East, as well as regional stability, revolved around one problem: the plight of the Palestinians. Resolving their conflict with Israel was the president’s top foreign policy from his first day in office. His belief that the U.S. was too close to Israel and that by establishing more daylight between the two allies, he could help broker an end to the long war between Jews and Arabs. To accomplish that goal, he picked fights with Israel, undermined its diplomatic position, and did his best to pressure the Israelis into making concessions that would please the Palestinians. The failure of this policy was foreordained since the Palestinians are still unable to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.

But the events of the past six years have also shown that his focus on the Palestinians as the source of the problem was a disastrous mistake. The Arab spring, civil war in Syria, the rise of ISIS, and the Iranian nuclear threat proved that the Palestinians had little or nothing to do with the most serious problems in the region. Indeed, by forcing Israel and the Saudis to cooperate against Iran with little attention being paid to the dead end peace process with the Palestinians, Obama has effectively debunked the core idea at the heart of his foreign policy.

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: Hello NYPD

BUSTED.

The Cinema-Mad Sibling Recommends: "Kung Fury"

This awesomely lunatic, over-the-top homage to 80s cinema hit the Internet last week, and you really have to see it to believe it. 



BONUS: Music video tie-in starring a real 80s pop culture icon. Enjoy, my lovelies! 

All Movie Reviews

Wow, now that I've put all my movie reviews together in one place, I'm thinking: Have I really written THAT many reviews?  That's not counting the movies I've seen that I didn't write reviews for because I was short on time!

For your entertainment, here are all my reviews organized alphabetically.  All grades are listed after the movie titles.  I've also linked this list to the right, so you can have easy access to the movie review archive.  By the way, I haven't gone back to check the embedded links in 9 years' worth of reviews, so there may be some instances of link death in older entries.

Current number of reviews:  126.
Updated most recently on June 27, 2017 with Wonder Woman.

Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Hell on Wheels.

Is this a movie or a really vivid hallucination?  Whatever else you want to say about Aussie filmmaker George Miller's return to the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max, you can't say that he isn't committed. Miller is completely dedicated to turning his fever dream roaring into maniacal life with all the gonzo gusto and automotive mayhem you can imagine ... and then some.  The premise of the thing is pure B-movie fodder, but somehow - impossibly, even - Miller turns what is essentially (let's be real here) a two-hour-long desert car chase into a surprisingly entertaining, even occasionally substantive, story.  Bolstered by actual practical special effects, moments of Oscar-level cinematography (yes, you read that right), and a much-ballyhooed performance by Charlize Theron as a bald, war-painted, one-armed road warrior named Imperator Furiosa (I can't make this stuff up if I tried), Mad Max: Fury Road both is and isn't exactly what you expect from a movie with that name ... and you will love it for being so.

I'm not sure how much I can say about the movie without spoiling your experience of seeing it for the first time and getting Miller's unhinged imagination thrown right into your face.  No matter how familiar you are with the Mel Gibson Mad Max, you won't be fully prepared for this latest go-around in the savage burning wasteland.  Of course there's Max, played by the versatile Tom Hardy (how is he not already a superstar of epic proportions?), but in one of the most subversive moves of the entire film, Max isn't the protagonist.  He shares the spotlight with Theron's Furiosa when he ends up traveling with her on her desperate mission, and it is a testament to Miller's storytelling that this diminishes neither character but instead creates a bond of mutual respect that elevates them both.  These two damaged badasses don't have time for cliched kissyface nonsense, but you don't need it or even want it here: you want to see them howling ferociously through sand dunes and gas fumes in a deadly game of chase with the grotesque masked villain, the hilariously named Immortan Joe, and his army of painted minions (including - of all people - Nicholas Hoult, his usual beauty utterly obscured). 

I'll leave you with the best line I've yet read about this movie: "Mad Max: Fury Road is like the film adaptation of your favorite heavy metal album cover."

Mad Minerva gives Mad Max: Fury Road a grade of A-.  It's a masterpiece of genre filmmaking, a cult classic from the word go, and one hell of a thrill ride, but I can't see myself watching it very often.

Mad Max: Fury Road runs for 120 minutes and is rated R for intense violence, action sequences, disturbing images, and completely unhinged vehicular pandemonium.  

Rotten Tomatoes gives Mad Max: Fury Road the unbelievably Fresh rating of 98%.

Nerd News: Highlights From Commencement Speeches

Congratulations, grads!

Friday Fun Video: Doctor Who Does the Time Warp Again

Quote of the Day: Dan Drezner on FIFA

FIFA, that hive of scum and villainy (remember this?), deserves everything that it's getting and probably more.  All my soccer fan friends and I are watching with unadulterated, Schadenfreudelicious glee.  Here's a hilarious comment from foreign policy prof Dan Drezner:

We live in an age when foreign affairs pundits like to bemoan the crumbling of existing order and ponder whether the United States’ best days are in the past, when rising powers seem more comfortable throwing their weight around than the U.S. government. These are days when American scandals and dysfunction and economic stagnation seem to wrongfoot U.S. foreign policy aspirations at every opportunity. 

But then there are days when the United States is the greatest country in the world, because it makes stuff like this happen ...

Memorial Day in the Netherlands

A good read for the day.

Movie Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

The IT Crowd.

I'll say this for the movie poster: It really was a WYSIWYG ad for the flick itself.  Think the poster is confusing and crowded?  So's the movie.  Avengers: Age of Ultron suffers from the Spider-Man 3 syndrome of shoehorning far too many characters old and new into the story, but unlike the disgraceful Spider-Man 3, the sequel to 2012's luminous and practically perfect Avengers is still worth watching.  I don't envy director Joss "God of the Nerds" Whedon his massive task in creating and then offering this follow-up to the same audiences that had adored Avengers.  The pressure to produce a worthy sequel must have been absolutely unimaginable, and I'm not going to complain (too much) that the movie cracks a little under that pressure, especially when I know that the studio's demands must have pushed Whedon's own creative liberty into a corner.  This brings up a host of other issues of various grades of nitpickery, but the short version of my review is this: flawed but still fun, Avengers: Age of Ultron kicks off the 2015 summer movie season in fine style ... and it's almost a certainty that I'll go see it again.  The Cinema-Mad Sibling thought Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) was a better follow-up film to the first Captain America (2011) than Age of Ultron is to Avengers.  Well, he's not wrong.

OK, I'm going to try to talk about the movie without spoiling it for everyone who hasn't it yet. (Once you have seen it, you can take a look at this and join the debate. All I'm going to say now is that Marvel should be careful.  Really, really careful.)  Three complaints, and then a few observations and one unqualified hoorah.

One: The crowding issue.  Yes, I get that Marvel wants to bring all the Avengers back together and give them a new adversary to fight.  I get that.  I also get that Marvel wants to introduce a few new characters.  The problem is that we end up with not enough time with any of the characters old OR new for character development.  This is compounded by the cameo appearances of a zillion other characters who have no real role in this movie but who show up anyway because they point you to other Marvel projects.  UGH.

Two: Joss apparently did not have the narrative room to BE JOSS.  The movie is so stuffed with characters and occurrences that it doesn't have nearly enough time for it, and by that I mean time for him to give us the witty banter and bickering that he's so good at ... and that is so good at character development.  Joss is really good at people standing around and talking ... arguing ... flirting ... hassling ... The witty retort, the sly verbal jab, the underplayed humor.  For a lot of Avengers: Age of Ultron, I couldn't even tell that it was a Joss Whedon movie.  That's not to say that the movie itself as spectacle wasn't entertaining.  I was entertained ... but it felt a little hollow because it didn't feel like Joss's project.

Three: Ultron was a missed opportunity for a couple of reasons.  One is that we really could have done more with Tony Stark and, to a lesser degree, Bruce Banner.  They were the ones who gave rise to Ultron, and I didn't think the movie did nearly enough with the emotional fallout of it.  There should have been.  There should have been TONS OF IT.  That would have been character development and a real meditation on how even the best-laid plans of well-meaning superhero science bros gang aft agley ... because that has some serious real world resonances in terms of tech and artificial intelligence getting out of hand and of protective measures that become themselves perils.  Road to hell, good intentions, anyone?  While we're at it, Ultron is voiced by none other than James Spader himself, an actor who has elevated smug superiority to a veritable art form, and we could have done so much more with that.

A few observations:

•  Give us a Black Widow movie, and the fans will stampede to see it!  Shoot, even give us a backstory movie called Budapest based on one throwaway line from Avengers, and we will rush to get in line!
• There's a lot going on in the movie, but if I'm going to be honest, I'll tell you that the party scene at Tony's is probably my favorite scene because it wasn't jammed full of CGI and special effects and whatever else: it's mostly about people being people.
• Let me save you some time: There's a bonus scene in the middle of the credits but not one at the very end.  
• If we hadn't already in previous movies grown to like and care about the individual Avengers as people, we wouldn't give a hoot about any of them in this movie.  That's not a compliment.  Losing sight of characters' humanity is a mortal sin that no amount of mammoth special effects wizardry can undo.  If we the audience don't care about the people, then we'll have no emotional stake in what happens to them. 

The unqualified hoorah: Paul Bettany is back on screen!   Here's the story behind that.  To be honest, I've had a soft spot for Bettany ever since he played Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight's Tale (and he's terrific opposite Russell Crowe in Master and Commander).  As much as I love him being the elegantly starchy voice of JARVIS, I'm frankly delighted to see him on screen again.  Yes, I know he's been in some stinkers (*cough* Da Vinci Code! *cough*), but, hey, who hasn't?

Mad Minerva gives Avengers: Age of Ultron a grade of B+. 

Avengers: Age of Ultron runs 141 minutes and is rated PG-13 for various action sequences, a bit of language, and some suggestive comments.

Rotten Tomatoes gives Avengers: Age of Ultron the Fresh rating of 74%.

Next up: I'm seeing the much-ballyhooed Mad Max: Fury Road. (Updated: Now online!)

Quote of the Day: "Our Stock Arguments Are Lazy Stacks of Cliches"

A thoughtful liberal takes his fellows to task (as well he should, because he's totally correct).  Read the whole thing, but here's a piece of it:

Criticism of today’s progressives tends to use words like toxic, aggressive, sanctimonious, and hypocritical. I would not choose any of those. I would choose lazy. We are lazy as political thinkers and we are lazy as culture writers and we are lazy as movement builders. We ward off criticism of our own bad work by acting like that criticism is inherently anti-feminist or anti-progressive. We seem spoiled, which seems insane because everything is messed up and so many things are getting worse. I guess having a Democratic president just makes people feel complacent. Well, look: as a political movement we are in pathetic shape right now. We not only have no capacity to move people who don’t already share our worldview, we seem to have no interest in doing so. Our stock arguments are lazy stacks of cliches. We seem to want to confirm everything conservatives say about our inability to argue without calling other people racist. We can’t articulate why our vision of the future is better than the other side’s, and in fact many of us will tell you that it’s offensive to think that we have an obligation to educate others on that vision at all. We celebrate grassroots activist movements like Black Lives Matter, but we insult them by treating them as the same thing as hashtag campaigns, and we don’t build a broader left-wing political movement that could increase their likelihood of success. We spend all day, every day, luxuriating in how much better we are than other people, having convinced ourselves that the work of politics is always external, never internal. We have made politics synonymous with social competition. We’re a mess.

... One-liners don’t build a movement. Being clever doesn’t fix the world. Scoring points on Twitter doesn’t create justice. Jokes make nothing happen. We’re speeding for a brutal backlash and inevitable political destruction, if not in 2016 then 2018 or 2020. If you want to help avoid that, I suggest you invest less effort in trying to be the most clever person on the internet and more on being the hardest working person in real life. And stop mistaking yourself for the movement.

Via Mark Hemingway of the Weekly Standard, who also notes: "The Democratic party's complete ideological breakdown in favor of party leaders fragging each other would be an amusing spectacle if so many of America's imminent problems didn't depend on working together."

Friday Fun Video: Peter Dinklage Sings About Tyrion's Survivability

I'll say this much: Tyrion Lannister's outlasted many another character on Game of Thrones so far.  Furthermore, Peter Dinklage is absolutely fabulous.

Summer Reading? 100 Novels to Consider

How many have you read?  Like all lists of this kind, it's plenty arbitrary and subjective.

I must confess that I thought Joyce's Ulysses was a bloated behemoth and a hot mess that isn't worth your time.  I can be an insufferable masochist, and even I could not force myself to get past the first half of this miserable monstrosity.  If you want Joyce, do yourself a favor and read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Wuthering Heights is a bit of Gothic nonsense with two of the worst characters I've met in literature.  Heathcliff and Catherine are both terrible people, and they pretty much deserve each other.  There, I said it.  If you must read a Bronte, read Jane Eyre.

Read more Jane Austen, please.

Movie Review: Ex Machina (2015)

Weird Science.

A slick, spare, rather familiar yet visually striking combination of several of sci fi's most fundamental tropes, Alex "28 Days Later" Garland's directorial debut Ex Machina is the best small-scale sci fi movie that I've seen in a while.  Nothing explodes in eardrum-popping Michael Bay-esque fireballs, but the film's slowly creeping sense of unease will unsettle you in far more visceral ways as the age-old Pygmalion fantasy myth of creating the perfect woman meets modern fears about artificial intelligence run amok.

The story begins with a young, socially awkward computer programmer named Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) who works for a massive tech company named Google Facebook BlueBook.  As the winner of an intra-company lottery, he is whisked off by helicopter into the seeming middle of wilderness nowhere to meet the company's genius recluse of a CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac, his star fast rising in Hollywood).  Caleb soon finds himself in Nathan's isolated compound, a place of glass, steel, and concrete that is as immaculate and soulless as a laboratory ... and after signing a non-disclosure agreement, Caleb learns that the house in its windowless bottom layers is indeed a lab and he himself brought in to be take part in a groundbreaking experiment.  

Nathan has created an A.I. named Ava, and Caleb is there to be part of a Turing Test: to see whether a human being can interact with a computer and think that the computer is also a human.  The twist on the classic test is this, though: Caleb is shown immediately that Ava is a machine in a synthetic female form, but in interacting with her, can he both intellectually know that she is artificial and also begin to consider her a being with consciousness?  Thus the test begins as the movie divides itself into segments labeled with "Ava: Session #."

Ava, by the way, is played by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander with an unsettling, glassy-eyed grace.  Vikander reportedly trained as a ballerina, a fact that would explain how she invests every movement with a studied grace that she plays as a little too uncanny.  I have to say that CGI in her character is wonderfully deployed, and it is noteworthy too for how it adds to the narrative instead of being frivolous eye candy.  Ava as she first appears on screen is clearly a machine: she has the smooth face of a beautiful human girl (airbrushed like a cover model), but the back of her head is a slick curve of metallic mesh, her arms are clear plastic housing for mechanical components, and - perhaps most striking of all - her torso is completely transparent, revealing the glowing, whirring complexity of hardware within.

The film soon reveals itself as a subtle psychological thriller with three elements in a stand-off: Nathan, Caleb, and Ava.  Nathan has ostensibly brought Caleb into his (increasingly claustrophobic while increasingly labyrinthine) compound to test Ava, but with cameras everywhere, evidence of Nathan's genius being devoid of moral depth, and Ava's startling, adaptive intelligence, Caleb - and we - soon begin to wonder just who is testing whom. Better: who is manipulating whom?

I'll stop here before I spoil the details, but I'll just say that Ex Machina is well worth a look.  While its basic ideas are commonplaces in sci fi storytelling, its execution of those ideas is quite good.  The film has its problems, but I can't quite talk about them without giving too much away.  Let's just say this: the line between human and machine becomes as queasy as it is fascinating as it blurs.

Mad Minerva gives Ex Machina a grade of A-.

Ex Machina runs 108 minutes and is rated R for language, nudity, and some violence.

Rotten Tomatoes gives Ex Machina the Fresh rating of 91%.

Friday Fun Video: Ultron Funk

I owe La Parisienne a big movie review for Avengers: Age of Ultron, but while I'm working on that, enjoy this as a placeholder:

Nerd Journal: As the Spring Semester Ends, One Last Lesson

Class is in session one last time.  Repeat after me: You do not give up your civil liberties and individual rights when you set foot on campus.

Got that?  No?  Write it out 100 times by hand then.

As a fellow teacher and I were just saying, thank goodness for FIRE.  Keep fighting the good fight, my friends.  Support and defend academic freedom, uphold the civil liberties of students (and faculty!), and abolish all campus speech codes!  (Why?  Because they are evil, muzzling, and blatantly unconstitutional, that's why, and because - to put it baldly - you do not have a right to never be offended.) 

After the UK Election: 3 Quotations

Well, politics-watching is fun again ... when it isn't my own!  I am already sick of the run-up to 2016, but it's been fun to watch the UK election for the sheer unvarnished Schadenfreude of seeing Ed Miliband's Labour get completely smashed.  Frankly, any party that engraves its campaign promises on a huge slab of stone and thinks cozying up to Russell Brand is a winning tactic deserves to lose.   At least Miliband can now use the other side of that stupid stone to write the epitaph of his political career.  Anyway, here are 3 quotations now that we've had a few days to think about the results:

Quote the First: Amid the usual howls of the defeated Left, one Labour voice actually talks some sense (and is quoted in the Guardian no less):

There’s absolutely no point in blaming the electorate. Any suggestion that they didn’t ‘get it’ is wrong. They didn’t want what was being offered.

YOU DON'T SAY.

Quote the Second: From Daniel Hannan, MEP, on how Labour overestimated its support:

If you want an explanation of the 2015 election in a single sentence, it’s hard to improve on the words of that great Whig, and founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke: "Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field."

Quote the Third:  David Cameron in victory might need a swift kick in the pants.

We must end the idea that as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.

WHAT? 

Addendum and Bonus Quotation:  Now that the election's over, I'm even more tickled by Boris Johnson's verbal assault on Miliband's epigraphical excess with its 6 promises:

It is no joke, my friends. This thing exists, and Ed fully intends that this tasteless, verbless, truthless stele should loom over No 10 like some kitsch version of the laws of Hammurabi, or some new Decalogue – except that he couldn’t think of 10 things to say.
...
Let us therefore consign Milibandias and his tombstone to the bafflement of future archaeologists. Let it go down as the last act of a desperate candidate, and the heaviest suicide note in history.

And You Thought the *American* Press Was Nakedly Partisan

As the Washington Post reports:

"With just one day to go until Britain votes in its general election, it looks like the British press has lost what little restraint it once had and launched into open political warfare."

I suppose this at least eliminates the hypocrisy of claiming to be objective and impartial.

Nerd Journal: Music for an Allnighter

Spring exam season is upon us!  We all know - with a sick sense of familiarity - that we'll be up at all hours for the next two weeks, so let's at least have some fun tunes:

Run, Bernie, Run!

This is probably the first actually interesting thing that's happened in the "I wanna be a candidate!" blitz.  

I'm not saying that I would leap on the Sanders bandwagon in earnest, but I would be darn pleased to see him challenge Hillary, because the whole "Hillary is inevitable" PR attempt reeks of ludicrous entitlement and should be challenged vigorously (not to mention soundly mocked).

While we're at it: Can we PLEASE on principle say no more Bushes and Clintons and nose-wrinkling whiffs of political dynasties and oligarchy?

Movie Magic: Trailer Mania

Let us obsess about the 3 trailers that just hit the Internet in the last few days.  Here they are, with the best for last (of course):

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: Hong Kong's Dim Sum Restaurant

My love of dim sum is duking it out with my hatred of Hello Kitty here:

Greece Demands €297 Billion in WWII Reparations From Germany

Good luck with that.

March Madness 2015 Crowns Duke the Champion

Fine, fine, the hated Blue Devils and diabolical Coach K beat Wisconsin and took the championship.  Congratulations.  Now here's that song, because it's not March Madness without it!  (Sorry it's just a link, but the NCAA wouldn't let me embed it. Booooooo.)

Say Hello to My Little Friend: the Taiwan Navy's Latest

"Carrier killer"?

(Snarky) Quote of the Day: the Purposes of the EU

Heh:

The European Union serves three main functions. It gives the French the illusion of power, the Germans a possibility of being something other than German and the political class of all European countries the hope of eternal life, or at least of power beyond the normal natural life of a democratic politician. It is a giant pension fund for European politicians.

Monday Therapy: For All of You/Us No Hopers, Jokers, and Rogues

From a little fishing village on the coast of Cornwall, England, comes this group of Cornishmen who made their mark singing sea shanties:

God Help Us All: the Iran Mess

You know, over the course of watching this entire absurdity happen, I've said more than once - granted, more as a curse than a prayer - God help us all.

So when I looked up the Pope's annual Urbi et Orbi Easter message, I couldn't help smiling just a little bitterly when I read this part of it:

"At the same time, in hope we entrust to the merciful Lord the framework recently agreed to in Lausanne, that it may be a definitive step toward a more secure and fraternal world."

Good luck with that!  Really, good luck with that.

Well, if we're going to be reduced to prayer, there's probably nobody better credentialed to offer one to the Almighty than the Pope, aka the Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God.  

Still, I can't resist quoting that old line: "Trust in God ... and keep your powder dry."

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll try to offset my pessimism and bitterness with sweet, sweet chocolate bunnies and cream-filled eggs.  When I'm in a sugar coma, I'm sure Iran will be the least of my worries.

Awesome: Rube Goldberg's Passover Seder

Happy Easter 2015! Christos Anesti!

Happy Easter, everybody!  This year's Easter art is a painting (c. 1511) that was only recently identified as a work by Titian, one of the artistic giants of the Italian Renaissance.

Couch Potato Chronicles: Laddie, Come Home - "Outlander" Returns

The STARZ adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's historical fiction novels returns, and not a moment too soon.  I need to forget the lunacy in the news and the home stretch-to-final exams rush at school.  Fun fact: Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica is one of the showrunners for this.  (At first the two shows seem wildly different, but they both deal intensely with politics and characterization.)

Short version of Outlander: Claire Randall, an English World War II nurse, is on a second honeymoon to Scotland with historian husband Frank when she suddenly finds herself transported to the 1740s in the same location.  Those are the days of Highlander clans, English redcoats, and the Jacobite risings for Bonnie Prince Charlie that would culminate in the catastrophic Battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle in the British Isles.  Claire finds herself a stranger in a strange land ... and a dangerous one, in which she is a Sassenach, a foreigner, a stranger, and - yep - outlander.
She soon gets caught up in local political turmoil, for the redcoats suspect her of being a spy (for the French, perhaps?) and the Scots suspect her of being an English one.  What would you make of a stranger who suddenly appears in your lands, who has odd mannerisms and no connections? As Claire quickly finds out, she's caught between two radically different worlds.

OK, I must admit, it doesn't hurt in the slightest that the scenery is beautiful, the re-creation of that historical period is quite evocative, Caitriona Balfe as Claire offers us a heroine with brains and spunk (thank goodness for that as an anti-Anastasia Steele!), and Sam Heughan as Jamie Fraser provides both a complex personality and ample testimony to just how much of a chick magnet an outlaw Scotsman in a kilt can be. 

There's a good deal of violence and some nudity, but both are pretty much nothing compared to HBO's (also wildly popular) fantasy-political epic Game of Thrones.  Still, Outlander is a cable show and not for little ones.

Holiday Humor: Jon Stewart vs. Easter and Passover

From the archives and still hilarious: 

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

Well-Known Right-Wing Rag Calls Iran Deal a Disaster

Call the deal what it is with a headline of "Obama’s Iran deal falls far short of his own goals."  So, yeah, even by his own stated standards.  Compare and contrast.

By the way, I was being sarcastic in the post title.  Nowadays I can never tell if people understand what sarcasm is.  

Oh, and the Onion nailed it 2 whole years ago.

Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree

Actually, it's an entire family of kookaburras, and they are adorable.

It's nice to remember that there are, after all, a few creatures in Australia that aren't bound and determined to kill you or frighten you to death. 

Celebrity Dude Mobbed By Rabid Fangirls

Wait for it ...

Disgustingly Cute: Meet the Ili Pika of Northwest China

Funny name, weapons-grade adorable furry face.

Up in Flames? Oh the Humanities!

Why are humanities not only valuable but freaking awesome?  You'd better figure it out on your own, because university presidents can't mount a substantive defense of the humanities.  Of course, I think most university presidents aren't worth the pixels it would take me to express my displeasure with most university presidents.  No wonder higher ed is in trouble: its putative leaders have no idea about education.

Music Hath Charms: Vivaldi's "La Primavera" (Spring)

The calendar tells me that spring arrived on the 20th, even though the weather is still chilly.  Ah, well.  Let's have some Vivaldi, shall we?

Awesome Nerd News: Meet John Urschel, Chess Player, Mathematician, and NFL Athlete

John Urschel, offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, is one smart cookie.  He's just published a paper entitled "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector" in the Journal of Computational Mathematics.  Sound mind in a sound body, indeed, mens sana in corpore sano.

Here's the abstract:

In this paper, we develop a cascadic multigrid algorithm for fast computation of the Fiedler vector of a graph Laplacian, namely, the eigenvector corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue. This vector has been found to have applications in fields such as graph partitioning and graph drawing. The algorithm is a purely algebraic approach based on a heavy edge coarsening scheme and pointwise smoothing for refinement. To gain theoretical insight, we also consider the related cascadic multigrid method in the geometric setting for elliptic eigenvalue problems and show its uniform convergence under certain assumptions. Numerical tests are presented for computing the Fiedler vector of several practical graphs, and numerical results show the efficiency and optimality of our proposed cascadic multigrid algorithm.

I have no idea what that means, but I do know how hard it is to get published in a scholarly journal.   Congratulations, John!

March Madness 2015: Wisconsin vs. Stenographer

Word games in addition to basketball games!

Thoughts on Bibi's Return and Its Ramifications

I ended up wanting to excerpt too much, so let me suggest that you read the whole thing as a jumping off point for analysis.  More off-the-cuff nonsense after the fold.

LOL: Now THAT Is How You Call Into a Cable News Show

Supermoon, Solar Eclipse, Vernal Equinox, March Madness, Starbucks Race Hustling, and Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome All In One Day!

Well, I guess the only thing I can do as commentary is post this Onion story. 

It's been a lunatic day, in which learning that Starbucks is actually encouraging its baristas to engage customers in discussions about race relations wasn't even the craziest thing that happened.  The inevitable backlash has, admittedly, provided its own form of Schadenfreudelicious entertainment. (Of course the incomparable Iowahawk has a quip.)

Elsewhere, my head is spinning from all the post-Israeli election howling from various people and quarters and media outlets.  I really can't take any more of it, because all the yelling and yammering has coalesced into one wordless collective shriek.  Maybe later I'll try to consider the fallout and talk about foreign policy again, but for now let's just call the furious reactions together "Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome" and let it go at that, mmmkay?

Finally, let me add: THANK GOD March Madness has finally started.  It's the only madness right now that makes any damn sense at all.  

(PS: Go, Anybody-But-Duke!)

Proposed Euro Coin Design Spawns Fight Over Napoleon's Legacy

The design is intended to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.  The French are objecting.  At least there's no doubt where this op-ed writer's sympathies lie.

Oh, since we're on the topic ...

Bibi Got (Come)Back

Well, whaddyaknow?  Several folks I know are calling it "a St. Patrick's Day miracle."

Nobody puts Bibi in a corner.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Today we're all Irish, my dears!  Have fun, be safe, and take a listen to an old favorite:

Quote of the Day: Kurds vs. ISIS

From an anthropologist and a retired general writing together in the New York Times opinion pages today (well, that's not a combination you see every day):

Together with Lydia Wilson and Hoshang Waziri, our colleagues at Artis, a nonprofit group that uses social science research to resolve intergroup violence, we found that the Kurds demonstrate a will to fight that matches the Islamic State’s. The United States needs to help them win.

"Them" means the Kurds.

A Law Professor Considers the University of Oklahoma Speech Kerfuffle

The umpteenth reminder: free speech also protects speech that you don't like.

Here's a bit of it:

Though some ignorant people argue that "hate speech" is unprotected under the First Amendment, that is not the law and never has been. Nor should it be. The test of our commitment to free expression, after all, isn't our willingness to tolerate speech that everyone likes. If you only support free speech for ideas you agree with, you're a hack. If you only support free speech for ideas that everyone agrees with, you're a coward. 

MM in the Kitchen: Cupcakes for Saint Paddy's

Look at that green frosting!

The Best Ad of the Israeli Election?

Apparently Netanyahu is not doing very well in the polls, but I have to say that I really liked this ad.  I thought it was clever, funny, and made its point without being nasty.

Here Are the Best 3 Minutes of Your Day. Guaranteed.

Is this Swedish sign language interpreter the new Numa Numa?

Movie Review: "The Imitation Game" (2014)

Demand the genuine article. 

  

This movie review is long delayed, but I promised La Parisienne that I would write one ... and a lady keeps her promises (even if she's not always punctual!).  The Imitation Game is Oscar-bait biopic filmmaking at its most quintessential, and even if the film ultimately failed to win that golden statuette for fangirl favorite Benedict Cumberbatch in his role as Alan Turing, it is still a largely solid project even if it (inevitably) takes liberties with factuality and (even more inevitably) verges on hagiography.  

In short, The Imitation Game is a movie you watch once and enjoy in the watching (hey, look, it's Tanner from the Bond movies, Tom Branson from Downton Abbey, and Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones!), but it is also a movie that (aside from Cumberbatch's elegantly messy turn as Turing) I swiftly forgot when I left the theatre.  Maybe I should simply refer to the famous Turing Test for seeing if an intelligent machine can be mistaken for a human being.  This movie plays as a machine.  It's not human.  Oh, it tries.  Cumberbatch tries, and he tries on an Oscar caliber level.  But this movie both tries too hard and not hard enough.

I think part of the problem is that the movie keeps leaping among three different time periods: Turing's schoolboy days as an awkward adolescent, the thick of World War II and Bletchley Park's attempt to break the devilishly complex Nazi code enabled by the Enigma machine, and then 1952, when Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality (still criminalized under British law at the time).  The three separate threads do not come together into a unified whole, and so the final product seems disjointed and not a little incoherent.  Besides, Turing as a historical figure is far more (and far more interesting) than "tortured, persecuted genius," and I'm sorry to say that in the end, that is what the film makes of him, first and foremost.

Mad Minerva gives The Imitation Game the grade of B+.  Part of that grade is in grateful acknowledgment of how the flick resists the temptation to be a bloated, 3-hour-long, self-indulgent behemoth.  Another part is for Keira Knightley, who manages not only to be not annoying but actually interesting as a character.  Most of the B+, though, is for Benedict Cumberbatch, who is hands down the single best thing about this entire film.

The Imitation Game runs 114 minutes and is rated PG-13 for sexual references and some adult themes and situations.

Rotten Tomatoes gives The Imitation Game the Fresh rating of 89%.

Quote of the Day: Charlie Hebdo

Time to repeat this fundamental point:

... it is vitally important to resist the impulse–so common among “responsible” institutions, whether foreign ministries or large newspapers–at a time like this to somehow imply that the victims brought their fate upon themselves and that the best line of defense against such attacks is to practice greater self-restraint in the future. ... That is giving the terrorists precisely what they want, indeed the very reason they carry out such attacks is to deter others from similar mockery in the future.

The right to offend is the very essence of free speech–and as long as a publication doesn’t incite violence (which neither Charlie Hebdo nor The Interview did) its right to say whatever it likes must be defended to the last inch.  That is, after all, the very bedrock of freedom upon which Western democracies rest–and the very opposite of the kind of totalitarian state that Islamists have created in Iran and a large chunk of Syria/Iraq.

Nerd News: Home Schooling in the News

Article in the New York Times.  Honestly, with education being the mess that it is with No Child Left Behind and Common Core and the obsession with standardized testing, I would probably want to home school too if I had a Mini-Me.  As it is, I've already been asked to consult a bit on my areas of specialization by some friends home schooling their little ones.

LOL: New Book Satirizes Overbearing NYC Parents

Mommie dearest.

LOL: A Deliciously Demented Detail

I just saw this hilarity on Imgur: "After ten years and many viewings, I just noticed the streets of Paris are paved with croissants in Team America, World Police."  OMG, HOW HAVE I NEVER NOTICED?!  Go and look for yourself!

Thoughts on Broken Windows

William Bratton, NYC police commissioner, and George Kelling, criminal professor emeritus from Rutgers, take time to write:

Critics have posed a variety of arguments against Broken Windows.  Some assert that it is synonymous with the controversial patrol tactic known as "stop, question, and frisk."  Others allege that Broken Windows is discriminatory, used as a tool to target minorities.  Some academics claim that Broken Windows has no effect on serious crime and that demographic and economic causes better explain the reductions in crime in New York and across the United States.  Still other critics suggest that order-maintenance policing leads to over-incarceration or tries to impose a white middle-class morality on urban populations.  It is rare to have the opportunity and space to correct all the misconceptions and misrepresentations embedded in such charges.  We will counter them here, one by one.

Thoughts?

DVD Review: "Pacific Rim" (2013)

Jaegermeister

The holidays are for watching all the things you never had time to watch before!  This time it's 2013's unabashedly silly summer popcorn flick Pacific Rim, which is really more entertaining than it has a right to be.  Disclaimer: I was a kid who loved Voltron and mech suits and Gundam and Godzilla and all that, so I was pretty much going to consider Pacific Rim a guilty pleasure and love it (and then feel no guilt about any of it), especially since it has a cast that includes Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, and Ron Perlman.  Anyway, the premise is simple enough: gigantic monsters called kaiju are invading the planet via a fissure in the ocean floor, and it's up to hotshot warriors in enormous mechanical suits called Jaegers to fight them.

Sure, there's plenty of nonsense and silliness in the flick, but - hey, let's be honest - I didn't care!  I was willing to let it all slide because the movie itself is so much bombastic FUN.  It's style over substance, but come on, it's hilariously entertaining.  This is a movie that features Idris Elba (!) as a commander named Stacker Pentecost, for goodness sakes!  Charlie "Jax Teller" Hunnam plays a pilot named Raleigh Becket (seriously), and he has a Jaeger called (I'm not making this up) Gipsy Danger (ex-girlfriend of Anthony Weiner perhaps?).  A trio of hoops-shooting Chinese pilots run a machine named Crimson Typhoon.  Another pilot is named (with a straight face) Hercules Hansen.  The nomenclature of everything seems to have an uproarious Engrishy twist to it.  Alessandra, watching with me, shouted, "It's pure anime!" and meant it as a compliment.

Ignore the silliness ("drift compatible" and whatever), logical pitfalls, Rinko Kikuchi's almost unintelligible Mako Mori character, and a climax that is a little too reminiscent of Independence Day and The Avengers.  Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the sight of giant robots battling giant monsters while wrecking Hong Kong with cheerful abandon.  For an hour and a half you can be a kid watching a cartoon and having a grand old time.  You can be a sensible adult before and after, but for the run time of Pacific Rim you can be a schoolboy/girl enjoying eye candy mayhem, monsters, and mechs.  Oh, and be sure to sit through the first bit of credits.

Mad Minerva gives Pacific Rim the grade of B+ for sheer enjoyable popcorn amusement.  Yes, it's ridiculous, but it's ridiculous fun ... and rather more fun than the latest Godzilla.

Pacific Rim runs 132 minutes and is rated PG-13 for monster/mech action, some disturbing images (kaiju guts are gross!), and Charlie Hunnam's abs (they could give Thor's a run for their money).

Rotten Tomatoes gives Pacific Rim the Fresh rating of 72%.

I could give you the actual trailer, but I think it'd be far more amusing to give you the Honest Trailer:

Friday Fun: The Scaredy Swan

Nerd News: Winter Commencement at the University of Hawaii

A nod to one's heritage.  Congratulations to all the new grads!

The 2015 Rose Parade

This year's Tournament of Roses, one of my favorite New Year's traditions, has the theme "Inspiring Stories" to honor remarkable men and women.  I was surprised and delighted to see this beautiful float!

Recognize the motto "Go For Broke"?  It's from the 442nd, of which several veterans were on the float this morning.  If you aren't familiar with its history, please do look it up when you have a moment.

Happy 2015!

Delightful Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has a great message about optimism and the conscious resolution to do some good this year to make the world a better place:

LOL: JibJab's 2014 Retrospective

I'll Fly Away: Jetliner Cross-Section

Since we're all traveling a lot for the holidays, here's something cool and relevant.  Ain't technology grand!  

*tries to hang onto sense of wonder about human flight even as babies howl in crowded cabins and people drop bags on one's head from overhead compartments*

Mamma Mia! 30 Best Fictional Parents

Atticus Finch et al!

The Movies of 2014

How many have you seen?  I reviewed a selection, and you can find all my raves and rants under the movie reviews tag!

MM in the Kitchen: History via Recipes!

Specifically, recipes from 1600-1800.  Edible research!

Nerd News: Diversity Initiatives vs. Asian Americans

Yet again.  One could do an entire case study on Stuyvesant in NYC:

These challenges have a bearing on K-12 schools, too, suggesting that the the bamboo ceiling may be even lower than once thought. Stuyvesant, one of New York City’s nine specialized public high schools, doesn't consider race in its admissions process; students only need take a standardized test to apply. Still, the policy has come under fire because of the student demographics that result: 73 percent of 'Stuy's' current students are Asian, while 22 percent are white. Just 2 percent of the school's population are Hispanic, and 1 percent is black.

Houshi Ryokan: Japan's 1300-Year-Old Family-Run Hotel

 

You can stay there too. It's listed on Booking.Com.  Lots of (gorgeous) photos.  The ryokan was founded in 718.  The mind boggles!

LOL Christmas Tree!

Christmas Eve! NORAD Tracks Santa Once More

Time for one of our favorite holiday traditions!

Movie Review: "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"

"Will you follow me one last time?"

Thorin Oakenshield asks the other dwarves this question, and it might as well be director Peter Jackson asking his now-exhausted audience to finish his seemingly interminable Hobbit trilogy. By the time my friends and I went to the theatre on opening weekend, I was mentally prepared to slog through the final installment not because I was actually excited to see it, but because I wanted to finish it and get it over with already. I felt pretty much like I did when I went to go see the last Star Wars prequel. Thank goodness the Hobbit finale is better than that, though prequel fatigue set in with a vengeance, and it was not helped by the news that Jackson had included a battle sequence that lasts 45 minutes. There is one point in the movie when something ludicrous happens, prompting a character to burst out with mingled disbelief and annoyance, "Come ON!" and the audience can't help but agree wholeheartedly.

Quote of the Day: Sony Hack Debacle and Its Discontents

Shot: A wee bit of appropriate profanity from George Clooney regarding The Interview:

"Stick it online. Do whatever you can to get this movie out. Not because everybody has to see the movie, but because I'm not going to be told we can't see the movie.  

That's the most important part. We cannot be told we can't see something by Kim Jong-un, of all f*cking people."

Of all f*cking people!

Chaser: Things took a turn for the ludicrous with Paramount canceling several sassy theaters' attempt to screen 2004's Team America: World Police instead:

"Terrorist threats are no laughing matter, of course, but the Department of Homeland Security has found no credible threat and evidence that the Guardians of Peace have any sort of manpower that could do anything within the boundaries of the United States (much less at thousands of locations simultaneously) is practically non-existent. This sort of panicked cowardice would be laughably absurd if it wasn’t so damn sad."

What I find even more disturbing still are all the self-righteous people who are blaming the victim and saying that it's the moviemakers' fault for making a flick that offended the wrong people.  I'm sorry, but THAT IS EXACTLY WRONG.  Tyrants are precisely the sort of people who should be mocked by free peoples.  Comedy as a genre should be a free space, while we're at it: everything is game.

By the way, I wasn't even interested in The Interview at first because I really don't care much for the oeuvre of Rogen and Franco, but now I bloody well want to see that flick.  Meanwhile, amuse yourselves with this:

Movie Review: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

Schlock like an Egyptian.

It should tell you something that after I saw Exodus: Gods and Kings on opening weekend, I went home and watched 1998's DreamWorks animated The Prince of Egypt on Netflix ... and had a much better time.  I would have watched Cecil B. DeMille's monumental 1956 production of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Ramses, but - alas - it wasn't streaming.  Then when I sat down to write a movie review, I seriously contemplated framing it all as a "I'm sorry, please take me back, I love you!" letter to Chuck Heston.

Come on, babe.  You know it's always been about you.

OK, OK, let's get to Exodus: Gods and Kings (and why in the world do we need that colon and its little subtitle?  Isn't Exodus enough?)   All cards on the table: I wanted to like this movie.  I wanted to like it a LOT.  There's no disappointment quite like dashed hope.  I almost entitled this review Exodus: All Washed Up.  In fact, it would probably take the entire Red Sea to wash all the guyliner off Bale and Edgerton ... though I suppose I must give some kind of grudging acknowledgment of an entire movie in which the men wear more makeup than the women.

Your Hanukkah Earworm Is Here

Season's Greetings Star Trek Style

Awesomeness: Epic Christmas Caroling

Holiday Travel Rage Is Nuts

No, literally nuts.

Stephen Colbert Interviews Smaug

THIS IS FREAKING AMAZING.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

Friday Fun Video: Honest Trailer for "Guardians of the Galaxy"

Guardians of the Galaxy, the best movie of Summer 2014, has just come out on Blu-ray and DVD this week, so here's a brand-new Honest Trailer to mark the occasion:

Nerds Behaving Badly: Harvard Business School Prof Threatens Legal Action Over $4

Seriously?

Nerd Journal: FINAL EXAM APOCALYPSE IS HERE

Campus is hell right now.  Thatisall.