Archive for January, 2008

27 Dresses

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

This romantic comedy gives Katherine Heigl her first shot at carrying a movie, and she does a fine job. The dresses of the title refer to Jane’s (Heigl) collection of bridesmaid dresses. She is cute and charming, while her fashion model sister Tess (Malin Akerman) grates on the nerves. This makes it hard to see why the object of Jane’s affection, played by Edward Burns, remains oblivious to her and instead falls for Tess. James Marsden plays the man that everyone (at least those of us in the audience) except Jane knows is who Jane must eventually fall for. One doesn’t necessarily hope for surprises from a movie like this and 27 Dresses doesn’t offer many. What one does hope for is a good set of laughs and a bounce in the step on the way out of the theater. While Heigl has the charisma to pull that off, the laughs in this one are light and too far between.

Epimetheus and a Blog Upgrade

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

Okay, first go-round with upgrading the blog didn’t go very smoothly, but the good folks at eboundhost.com got the blog upgraded to WordPress 2.3.2. This means I should be able to have the picture of Saturn’s moon Epimetheus appear in a “lightbox” using the lightbox plugin. Let’s see. Clicking on the picture should blow it up.
Cassini spies Epimetheus
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

Hooray! It worked! Mostly, anyway. Still some issues on my end with the upload, but still pretty cool.

First Look at the Other Side of Mercury

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

The MESSENGER spacecraft has been zipping around the Sun on its very circuitous route to Mercury since its launch in August 2004. It made its first flyby of Mercury two days ago, snapping high resolution images of a hemisphere of the planet that has never been observed by a spacecraft. The only previous spacecraft flybys of Mercury were made by Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975. Not surprisingly, this hemisphere looks pretty much like the other, at least at first blush. It is also quite similar in appearance to the heavily cratered lunar highlands. This is all consistent with Mercury being a geologically dead world. A lot of the interest in Mercury centers around its magnetic field and the material knocked off the surface in the harsh environment so close to the Sun. MESSENGER is equipped with instruments to study all of this. It has two more flybys of Mercury this year and next and doesn’t actually go into orbit until March 2011. These flybys are all to lose enough energy so that it can go into orbit around the relatively tiny planet with the fuel available.

Juno

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

A fun aspect of being a member of the Screen Actors Guild is that I get to vote for the SAG awards. This year I’m way behind on seeing nominated performances. Seeing Ellen Page’s nominated turn in Juno was a great start on catching up. Page plays a 16-year-old who is pregnant from her first sexual encounter with her best friend Paulie (played very well by Michael Cera). Juno is not a nerd or a jock, but an independent at her Minnesota high school where Paulie runs track and she spouts social commentary that sounds like it comes from the pen of the screenwriter rather than from a high school junior. My only criticism of the movie is that Juno, Juno’s father and stepmother, and the would-be adoptive father of her child, all speak with essentially the same voice, presumably that of first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody. But that didn’t bother me much because it’s a fun fresh voice to listen to, and the actors all do a great job with it.

Juno decides to arrange a private adoption and finds a picture-perfect couple in Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner). Garner gives perhaps her best performance in a supporting role as a woman born to be a mother, but unable to have a child of her own. Juno finds a kindred spirit in Mark. They amazingly have not only the same taste in music, but also the same encyclopedic knowledge of bands from the 70s through the 90s. When she first meets Mark and Vanessa, Juno assures them that if she could just “pop it out” and hand it over, she would, but as “it probably looks like a fish” she’ll keep it for a while so it will get cuter. Page does a convincing job as a girl who, as she puts it, must “deal with issues way beyond her maturity level”. For the most part Juno manages with wit and a tough independent exterior. But there is nothing easy about her situation, and at times it takes its toll. I don’t know if she’ll get my vote yet because I haven’t seen the other nominated actresses, but she’s great fun to watch in Juno.

I Am Legend

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of this movie which features another fine performance by Will Smith and an impressive rendering of a post-apocalyptic Manhattan. And I can let slide my standard zombie complaint that applies to this movie as well as every other zombie movie I’ve seen: if they’re so bestial and so damn hungry, why don’t they eat each other? Zombie meat not good enough for them? Anyway, I was ultimately disappointed by the ending which had an overtly anti-science theme and an implied anti-evolution message while having a savior appear because God sent her. Smith’s ultimate act also seemed totally unnecessary. Nothing was gained by him not getting in the safe with Anna and Ethan.