This is my review of Vicky Christina Barcelona, the new Woody Allen movie that I didn’t see because the showtimes on line were wrong. Instead we saw House Bunny. This is an entirely formulaic movie that is, like a good sitcom, still fun to watch. (A key difference is that a good sitcom is free.) Anna Faris does a great job playing the ditzy bimbo (who is, of course, much deeper than she seems at first, but never loses her innocent charm), Shelley. Shelley lands a gig as the house mother of a misfit sorority with seven members who are on the brink of losing their sorority house. It’s not clear why this particular group of young women want to be in a sorority, but to keep it they need to enlist 30 new members. Shelley does the standard makeover on them, exchanging their gray and black loose-fitting duds with sexy attire designed to draw the attention of college males (who are generally the recipients of good-natured scorn in the movie). Bring the guys, and the girls will follow. There is the sniping evil sorority across the street to wreak havoc with Shelley’s plans. But the predictable story is just a clothesline on which to hang a number of gags and set pieces: Shelley’s comical deep voice she uses to remember names; her attempt at being seductive by being slutty; her attempt at being seductive by being intellectual; and her attempts to dumb down and priss up her den of sorority sisters.
Archive for August, 2008
House Bunny
Sunday, August 24th, 2008Enceladus Up Close
Friday, August 15th, 2008On Monday Cassini had its closest encounter to date with the intriguing moon Enceladus, which spews water vapor from a number of points along the infamous “tiger stripe” fissures over its south pole. The closest approach to the Moon was up near the equator, and the trajectory of the spacecraft took skimming along the perimeter of the boundaries of Enceladus’s geysers. Turning back to look at the south pole as it flew away, Cassini had to maneuver quickly to capture clean pictures. The imaging team has now been able to piece together and “navigate” the images, meaning they have figured out where on Enceladus each image is. Tying this together with earlier work by Joe Spitale, Carolyn Porco, and others on the imaging team that identified various jets from the tiger stripes, they have now given us the first close-up views of two source regions.
Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI
Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI
The Dark Knight
Sunday, August 10th, 2008Heath Ledger totally disappears into the role of the Joker, helped by creepy makeup and greasy hair, but mainly through a transformative performance. This makes it easier to watch The Dark Knight, without thinking of Ledger’s untimely death. Which is not to say that it is an easy movie to watch. Dark from start to finish, punctuated by psychopathic killings at the hands of the Joker and the mechanical rasping of Batman’s voice. The movie is intense and gripping, and as a bonus creates the villain Two-Face from picture-perfect D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).
Christian Bale, as Batman, benefits from twice the sage advice as most superheroes: he has both Michael Caine (as butler Alfred) and Morgan Freeman (as Lucius, Batman’s version of 007’s gadget-maker Q) to offer guidance on ethics, bad guys, women and life. Watching the movie I couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be to have a couple of senior wise friends ready to whip up a nice breakfast or a space-age gizmo at a moment’s notice, especially if they were played by Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman and were being paid handsome salaries from my billion dollar empire. But I digress.
This is definitely the creepiest Joker the Batman franchise has produced. His stated goal is not money but mayhem. He derides schemers and planners, but this rings a bit hollow when his various plans for mayhem obviously required a tremendous amount of advance planning and scheming. Somehow, for example, he single-handedly wired a hospital for a textbook example of how to completely demolish a building with no one noticing him or the bombs. Ultimately, Batman must make a noble sacrifice for the greater good which is in turn affirmed in an admittedly surprising (or I guess I’m more cynical than even Batman) ethical collective act. The screenplay by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan (who directed) has to ignore a critical point in order for this to work, but it’s a minor flaw in an otherwise compelling action flick.
Update from Saturn After Cassini-Huygens
Friday, August 1st, 2008I’ve been off-line for a bit due to a combination of European travel, interrupted internet access, and illness. We’re just finishing up the Symposium “Saturn After Cassini-Huygens” at Imperial College in London. The symposium is linked to a book of the same name that will be published in mid-2009. I’m the lead author on the chapter on the structure of Saturn’s rings. Others have the more difficult task of explaining that structure. Of course, Cassini is now into its “Equinox Mission” which runs through mid-2010, so the “After” in the title of the book is a bit misleading.
The big news from Cassini this week is the confirmation that there is liquid on the surface of Titan. The lake was identified by the spectral signature of liquid ethane which is in solution with methane and other compounds in the lake in Titan’s south polar region. Suspected to be a lake based on its appearance, this confirms it is in fact liquid, making Titan only the second object after Earth to have stable liquid on the surface. Many other suspected lakes exist in the north polar region where it is currently late winter. Those were identified by radar measurements, while the new identification comes from the Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). Future observations as Cassini continues its mission should identify more lakes.
The more distant future may see more dramatic observations as both NASA and ESA are considering major missions dedicated to Titan exploration.