wshaffer

Went to see Pacific Rim yesterday. Some thoughts:

The Good:

• This was basically a catalogue of all your favorite scenes from giant-robot anime, rendered lovingly in realistic 3-D live action. Be still my geeky heart. In fact, this movie probably works best if you pretend it's anime.


• Some good acting performances, particularly from Idris Elba.


• The film generally manages to treat the sole major female character, Mako Mori, with respect for both her skills and her ambitions.


• Burn Gorman playing a totally uptight British scientist! I would have been happy with more research team in the movie.

The Bad:

• Large chunks of this were scripted by numbers. There were lots of scenes where I found myself saying, "Okay, this is the scene where they disobey orders and something terrible happens that results in him leaving the force in disgrace," "This is the scene where our disgraced heroes save the day and redeem themselves in the eyes of the rest of the team," and so on.


• Only one major female character. And a dearth of female characters generally. It's nice that one of the Russian Jaeger pilots is female, but it would have been nice to see more female faces among the operations team, the pilot trainees, and so on.

The Weird:

• I know that Hollywood has a long and dishonorable tradition of portraying the effects of electromagnetic pulse weaponry inaccurately. But just for the record, the opposite of "digital" is not "nuclear," it's "analog". And analog circuitry, while it might be less vulnerable to the effects of EMP, is not immune. What you really needed in that situation was a steam-powered giant robot.


• This film features an American played by an Englishman, and two Australians played by an American and an Englishman. They all do a pretty good job, but an alert viewer can entertain themselves pretty well by playing "spot the accent slippage."

In summary, I wouldn't call this a must-see film by any means, but if you go in with the appropriate expectations, you're likely to have a good time.

An amusing juxtaposition of links crossed my twitter feed this morning:
First, I always thought that I cooked meals at home because they were tastier. But, according to this article, it's possible that these meals are tastier because I cook them at home. Apparently food tastes better when you have to work for it. At least if you're a mouse. (Though, the non-mouse people who regularly eat my cooking also seem to think that it is pretty tasty. Does the anticipation of doing the dishes later add savor to one's food? Really, you gotta love how quickly that article goes from "Here is an interesting scientific result," to "ZOMG! This is the reason Americans are fat!". For values of "love" equalling "cringe at".)

Of course, the very next link to cross my twitter stream was yet another article pointing out that strenuous attempts to make Americans eat more fruits and vegetables have had essentially no impact. Which is attributed to the fact that fresh produce is expensive and difficult to prepare.

But wait, according to the first article, that ought to make fresh produce taste especially delicious! Er...

Actually, I think the dietitian who talks about fresh produce spoiling is closer to the mark. Regularly clearing green goo out of your crisper is powerful negative reinforcement. (Really, sometimes my motivation for cooking dinner is thinking about how much happier I'll be eating that spinach than scraping it off the bottom of the fridge next weekend. But for a lot of people, just not buying the spinach in the first place is an equally valid solution.)

Reasons why it is good to watch "The Poison Sky" with a five year old: When they set the Earth's atmosphere on fire, and you brain is thinking, "And they are all still breathing how?", the kid is cheering like he's just seen the coolest thing ever.

I thought "The Doctor's Daughter" was pretty cool, although...
( spoilers for The Doctor's Daughter )

I also saw the mid-season trailer, and all I can say is: I don't believe that you-know-who and you-know-who-else are actually coming back! And it looks like it might actually be pretty cool!

Saw two more episodes of season 3 of Doctor Who last night, courtesy of the Legion of Rassilon.

Overall, they were good fun. Though, I have to start by saying something to the Doctor Who writers: Dear Doctor Who writers, please stop treating DNA like it's a magical Science macguffin that can explain anything. It Doesn't Work Like That. Also, I can (possibly) forgive you for being ignorant of or choosing to ignore the fact that most of the gamma radiation from space is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. However, I'm having a really hard time forgiving you for thinking that a pulse of gamma radiation looks and acts like a lightning bolt. If you insist on doing that kind of crap, do what Russel T. Davies did in "The Runaway Bride" and make up some completely different kind of energy.

I'm relieved that we've got a Paul Cornell two-parter coming up. He's far from a hard science fiction writer, but he seems to understand that if you use rubber science, you need to avoid thwacking it so hard that the viewer can hear it go "boing!"

"Evolution of the Daleks". A mixed bag. It was kind of a mess, and it had a lot of little things about it that niggled: in addition to the scientific idiocies which I've already referred to, there's a particular scene which depicts the Daleks using completely idiotic military tactics - not something Daleks are known for. But the script has its moments, too.

( Spoilers for Evolution of the Daleks )

Apparently Helen Raynor has another script in the works for Series 4. I'm looking forward to it. Even though it looks like "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks" may turn out to be the relative "stinker" of Series 3, I think she "gets" Doctor Who. (I mean, she'd better - she's one of the script editors.) I think she might do much better with a story that involves less technobabble and more character development. We shall see.

"The Lazarus Experiment". Everyone gets dressed up in black tie. Mark Gatiss is creepy. Martha is awesome, brave, and clever, and saves people. Martha's sister Tish is cute, brave, and nearly-as-clever-as-Martha, and I nominate her for a trip in the TARDIS someday. Martha's mother smacks the Doctor. (When the Doctor meets the next companion's mum, if he has any sense, he'll duck.) Mr. Saxon is mentioned, ominously. The Doctor blows up a chemistry lab, there is Magical DNA again, and the plot is resolved with a very loud boing! from the rubber science. And Martha is acknowleged as a real companion, no more of this "just one trip" business. Yay!

It has a bit of a feel of a romp before the storm. It ties up some plot threads, and lays a bit of groundwork for others, but it didn't feel very consequential. It was very entertaining, though. I'll certainly watch it again.

It feels very strange to be writing this when the British Doctor Who fans and their BitTorrent-savvy brethren are about to go into meltdown all over the Internet about the penultimate episode of Season 3: "The Sound of Drums". Which, if I keep to the Legion of Rassilon's schedule, and don't succumb to the lure of BitTorrent myself, I will be seeing at the end of August. Which I think will still be before American fans who are watching it on the SciFi Channel will see it. That's Doctor Who for you - even the fandom takes place in a time warp.