War propaganda media is an interest of mine, and this is an excellent romp through the area of films being made during WWII. Terrific performances, especially by the wonderful Bill Nighy.
ALT: Joel Kinnaman as Tak Kovacs in a dark, strange world, wearing a blue coat and shirt; he's looking around in wonder. Oh god, I didn't know whether I could get past the first episode: I love dystopian futures, but this seemed hackneyed... Altered Carbon has the feel of sometimes The Hunger Games , sometimes Harry Potter , often Repo! The Genetic Opera or Gotham City or Narcopolis .There's martial arts, comic booky treatments, digital effects and story content. Some of it is dumb, and the names for things in the future are lazy: The Array is the internet, a sleeve is a host, ONIs are basically smartphones, Poe is like TNG's Data, Meths are the 1%, and paying my chip-implanted fingers is technology that's already here. The "strong, independent woman cop" is the lamest character attempt/trope out there, and the actress is terrible. The producers seem to be trying to appease audiences on every front rather than trying to make a solid, consistent produ...
Photo: http://codices.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/machr.jpg I just finished ripping through the 369-page The Martian by debut novelist Andy Weir, self-confessed science nerd. This year, I have read more fantasy/sci-fi than ever, and several books have been about scientific disasters and/or space, but I tend to go for the more blockbuster and less techie stories, having practically failed science every year after intro biology. We won't even discuss maths. I'm a luddite, and I don't want to be scratching my head during my precious escapism hours. So books that go into thrust and scientific measurements and velocity and the nightmare-inducing periodic table of elements are a little intimidating for me. The story, if you haven't heard yet about the book or the upcoming Matt Damon movie, is about an astronaut named Mark Watney who gets stranded on Mars after a mission mishap. That's all I'll say in the interest of avoiding spoilers à la "Who Shot...
I spent (unfortunately only) yesterday at RIC for their three-day symposium, a fourth annual event. With international speakers like Dr. Vanessa Schwarz, Dr. Marianne le Galliard and UCLA PhD candidate Nadya Bair, the talks and following Q&A sessions with audience members were informed and sometimes even a tad heated. Definitely setting aside the whole three days next year. Perhaps I've now blown this little gem out of secrecy? It was beginning to be standing room only already. Pod casts can be accessed by the links on this page . I heard some gem quotes such as " There are four simple words on the matter, which must be whispered: Colour photography is vulgar " (Walker Evans, 1969) versus colour being spectacle and a commodity (Schwartz). I learned about Ansel Adams' zone system that helped him mathematically calculate his photos' composition. I also want to read the important text, Words and Pictures (Hicks, 1951). I think Nadya Bair's dissert...
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