I won’t write a whole lot about James Cameron’s latest, Avatar, because the following diagram sums up almost exactly how I feel about the movie (courtesy of Aurich Lawson, from Ars Technica):
Avatar: the Venn diagram
It just seems as if storywriters cobbled together elements from many popular movies (look in the comments, especially) and added a huge dose of incredible 3D imagery – akin to hanging Monica Bellucci’s beautifully voluptuous body on Kate Moss’s scrawny skeleton. The movie is still entertaining – as the huge box office opening numbers attest – and the world of Pandora is certainly compelling, but time will tell whether this particular chapter of its history will have the same legs as Cameron’s previous work in the genre such as Terminator and Alien.
Watch it and make up your own mind, but if you do, definitely go for a 3D session otherwise you’d be missing out on one of the most compelling things about this movie.
The Order of GeekReads wished to know the purpose for which Gallus Gallus – a member of the kingdom of Animalia, from the Phylum Chordata, and belonging to the family of Phasianidae – traversed a piece of paved land usually reserved for wheeled vehicles.
An inquisition found that “Gallus” desired to relocated its body mass to the area diametrically opposite to that in which it originally stood.
Hilarious, no? Those of you whose eyes hadn’t glazed over after reading the first few words might have recognised the timeless classic. It might come as a surprise that there are people out there, like me, who find the longer version interesting. We are also likely to be the market that Neal Stephenson is targeting with his recent works such as Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle; i.e. books that read like education disguised as novels. It could also be why the cover designer felt the need to put “A novel” beneath the title on the cover of Anathem.
The first edition hardback cover
Not everybody is going to have the patience to endure multi-page diversions to the main plot, but it can be quite rewarding for those who persevere. The story centres around Erasmas, or Raz, a junior monk of sorts (“fraa” in the book’s vernacular) who recounts his involvement in a major epoch on his home world, Arbre. During the various phases of his journey, he tries to unravel the mystery around the circumstances that he finds himself in, through intellectual discourse with whomever he happens to be travelling with at the time: his “avout” friends, recruits from the Saecular world, other avout whom he meets on the way, etc. Not exactly action packed for the most part.
What this format does do is allow Stephenson to wax lyrical about whatever science or philosophy takes his fancy, without too much disruption to the narrative flow. Mostly it’s physics and astronomy, but occasionally he’ll launch into something resembling social commentary, which communicates a certain contempt towards the laity for being too stupid to support the ideals of the intelligentsia. Take this exchange for example:
“I always tend to assume there’s an infinite amount of money out there.”
“There might as well be,” Arsibalt said, “but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.”
Emotions are presented in a ham-fisted, cartoony fashion and treated with disdain. No sooner does Raz find love, than it is wrested from his clutches by the narrative, so that his pursuit of knowledge is not distracted by silly things like feelings. All it really says though, is that Neal Stephenson is a geek – of a higher order than most, but still firmly a member of the geekdom.
Hence one of the recurring themes in the book is the tension between science and religion. While Stephenson remains largely respectful of both sides, he still manages to take a few swipes at religion’s anti-intellectualism near the end of the book:
“The rule of thumb we’ve been using is that Deolators [religious believers] are welcome as long as they’re not certain they’re right,” I said. “As soon as you’re sure you’re right, there’s no point in your being here.”
“Flec’s not sure of anything now,” Quin assured me. Then, after a minute: “Can you even have an Ark [church], if you’re not sure you’re right? Isn’t it just a social club, in that case?”
All that aside, there’s a compelling story within the book’s 900-odd pages. Once the lengthy expository parts are well and truly done with, the story takes over and really starts coming into its own in the third act. The world of Arbre is truly fascinating, as are many of the characters within it. I just wish it didn’t end – ironically, given its stance with regard to science and religion – with what amounts to a deus ex scientia.
I leave you with a widget from the official Anathem Web site, which features Neal Stephenson talking about his creation and reading excerpts, and which also contains a hilariously crap “trailer” (why a book needs a trailer I can’t being to imagine):
District 9 is a stunning debut feature-length movie from director Neill Blomkamp, which will hopefully become a significant milestone to a very successful future career. He was originally hired by Peter Jackson to direct the Halo movie, but apparently when that fell through Jackson’s wife suggested that he turn his short film “Alive in Joburg” into a feature. Happily, it means that instead of yet another bland interpretation of an existing franchise, we’re blessed with this visceral look at the inner workings of racial discrimination.
The premise of the movie is that a large population of aliens find themselves stranded above the city of Johannesburg, and unlike the aliens depicted in most other fiction – running around with laser guns trying to take over the world – these ones arrive in bad shape and need humanitarian aid. The area where they live turns into a slum, and they become a significant drain on the city’s resources, which causes a social rift.
Opponents of “shaky-cam” won’t be too happy, but the movie is shot documentary style, not to help you pretend that you’re right there in the thick of the action, but to evoke the feeling that these are real events being recorded. It works well here for this reason. Then there’s the script, which features honest dialogue, characters that act and react like people in real life (rather than the caricatures usually depicted on film) and an intellectually stimulating and unique perspective on an important human social issue.
This scene from the trailer wasn't actually in the movie
But the real success of District 9 lies in the way that all of the not-insignificant sci-fi elements (aliens, technology, conspiracy theories, CGI, etc.) all take a back-seat to the unfolding drama. After only a very brief exposition, the tension caused by the inter-species* divide is ratcheted up a notch. And then another. And then another. My hand still has the teeth marks from where my wife was biting it from the sheer terror of suspense. In concentrating all of this tension on the main character of Wikus van der Merwe though, it does go a bit too far with the number of times he gets into a scrape, and then out of it again always right at the last minute (including one very literal version of Deus Ex Machina).
Otherwise, the movie ticks all of the right boxes in my book: it’s a riveting human drama; it features authentic people acting in realistic ways; it leaves just the right amount up to the imagination; it focuses on the important elements of the story, not things which look great on camera or entertain for the sake of it; it doesn’t rely on celebrity casting; and it’s just bloody fantastic! Go and see it right now.
* Race is to racial what species is to… special. English is so insufficient at times.
On a separate note: one thing that I’m curious about is whether people who are ignorant of, or are too young to remember Apartheid, would get the same message from this movie as those of us who do. For me, the racist connotations are as clear as a bell, but maybe there’s a possibility that the video-game generation might simply see this as a story about a guy being caught up between two factions (the MNU and the Nigerians)? After all, that’s really the purpose of this movie right, to spark a discussion about racism?
G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra "Storm Shadow" movie poster
After the travesty that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I was highly sceptical of this attempt at bringing yet another Hasbro franchise to the big screen, but I actually found G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra to be less offensive. Don’t get me wrong; it’s just as big, loud and dumb as its cousin, but what’s different is that it takes itself just seriously enough to be respectable.
Directed by Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing), it’s an action movie in the purest sense of the word with one energetic sequence after another leaving you almost no time to catch your breath. In the session where I watched it, there were a bunch of idiots who insisted on talking loudly throughout the whole movie. Normally this would’ve really pissed me off, but there were only two mercifully short scenes that were quiet enough for them to even be a bother at all, that’s how loud and intense this movie was.
The biggest let down was the script. One example is the scene where the antagonist, McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), gives the orders to “launch the missiles”. His minions duly respond that they’re launching the missiles, followed by a shot of the missiles launching. As the Joes arrive at the enemy base, we see another shot of the missiles soaring into the sky, and the script has one of them remark upon this, in case you didn’t get it the last few times.
I don't know how she managed to do everything in those ridiculous heels
The characters are pretty incidental to the plot, featuring standard comic book fare such as black ninja vs. white ninja, good chick vs. bad chick, the renegade vs. the incorruptible, etc. I never watched the cartoon series as a kid, so I can’t really comment on whether they are true to the original.
The CGI was fairly impressive, particularly the chase scene through Paris, and while many would have marvelled at the fantastically improbable sci-fi gear such as the Accelerator Suits, what amazed me the most was that Sienna Miller’s stick-thin legs didn’t snap from doing all sorts running around in those impossibly high heels that she was always wearing. Suffice to say, there was plenty of eye candy as befits the genre.
So don’t let the “movies as art” crowd and the negative reviews sway you. G.I. Joe is a decent flick if you leave your cynicism at the door.
Update: I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a novel version available…
My First Edition hardcover copy of Anathem, flanked by Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle
It’d be fair to say that any self-respecting geek knows of Neal Stephenson; not that he’s a particularly prolific author, or even widely-liked at that. I suggested one of his novels to this book club I’m in (Diamond Age), where it got absolutely panned. Truth be told, I feel that Stephenson has gotten more self-indulgent as his writing career progressed. Snow Crash and Diamond Age were relatively easy reading, but it took me several months to finish Cryptonomicon, and a good 18 months to plough through the three books of the Baroque Cycle. And because it took me so long to read, I’m not even entirely sure whether I enjoyed it or not!
I received my First Edition hardcover copy of Anathem as a gift from Secret Santa last year and have only just started reading it, so this post is more like my initial impressions rather than the full review. I’ll come back and do a wrap up after I finish (or maybe even spread this out over a few posts).
I’m finding the book incredibly difficult to get into. The opening chapter already contains a huge vocabulary of made-up words like Saunt, Fraa, Suur, Mynster and Concents, some of which are explained in dictionary-like entries at the beginning of each section, but Stephenson also bullies regular English words (e.g. math, cloister) into new and unfamiliar meanings. Even the regular words that he uses to describe the architecture of the monastery-like setting confound me. Victor Hugo he’s not.
A friend once said reading Neal Stephenson gave her the impression that he’s talking about stuff that you won’t get unless you’re privy to some kind of special knowledge; that’s the vibe I’m getting from Anathem. As in his previous works though, there are some very compelling ideas, and once you get over the language hurdle of this book there is a unique and possibly interesting concept underneath. This is a world where history was not shaped by myth and religion, but by religious ferver for knowledge. It’s on this that I pin my hopes for the rest of the book.
