Avatar (2009)

Sam Worthington is my new favorite actor. He looks great in 3-D, too.

Okay now a few words about the movie. The story is quite good, keeps you riveted despite the length (2:42), in a way similar to Titanic but with significantly less love story and more Al Gore story, but in a good way. Versus Titanic, Avatar has even more incredible eye candy.

As everyone says, the 3-D starts a bit gimmicky but soon becomes more subtle and very pleasing. The world is beautiful. I couldn't suppress any of my gasps and murmured 'wow's in several scenes. Avatar is one of the few movies that I would go to see again in the theater. I don't know how or whether the 3D can be done well on DVD, but I kept the glasses just in case.

I did notice that at points the 3-D imaging with some particular camera lenses resulted in strange sizing effects with things looking out of proportion. Some people in the center of the frame looking much bigger than those at the edges. Hopefully this can be fixed in future 3-D films.

Outing Riley (2004)

After the film, I thought Pete Jones, the actor playing the protagonist (as well as writer and director) must be gay, but it turns out he has a wife and kids. I suppose he must have some great gay friends because the film turned out well. I'd read some criticism on imdb of the film that it wasn't gay enough. But actually I thought it was pretty well spot on and rang pretty well true.

Star Trek (2009)

Finally saw it beginning to end on dvd. I'd previously only seen the second half on a plane. How excellent!

The dvd has some enlightening extras including a part in the "making of" about lens flares when in fact during the movie, I noticed that these were nice realistic lighting effects that I had never seen before. It also talks about the camera shaking, mirrors and miniatures. J.J. Abrams is brilliant.

But what was the deal with the 20th century crashbar on the door and the concrete block design of the Delta-Vega outpost manned by Scottie (Simon Pegg)? One might think they would have changed from two century old Earth-based design elements by then?

I also just noticed that Vulcans are the elves of space. They have the same pointy ears as the LOTR elves, are 'wise' in a certain way, live up to 250 years, and are always in danger of extinction. They even have special powers like mind meld and nerve pinch. Perhaps this is why Vulcans weren't given night vision and the males don't have long hair. It would be too much of an obvious thematic copy.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

A few minutes in, I thought about leaving the theater. I only went because the person I went with seemed interested in it, but of course I'd forgotten that this person is quite uninformed about movies. And damn that Google movies website with it's 4/5 star rating. I'll never trust Google movies again. (I just checked imdb now, and it gave a more accurate 4.5/10 rating.) I had thought that this was going to be an action flick, but action flick, it definitely is not. This is really a teen chick flick.

Almost the only redeeming value is the eye candy later in the film in the form of Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black. Wow, what a body, and he has a pretty face, too. (For some reason, from looking at his nose, I was guessing that he might be part Asian.)

The movie assumes you've seen the TV series and know who everyone is. So dropping into this Twilight story cold is quite jarring and makes you think you're missing out on all the inside jokes, and you've made a serious mistake in coming, which you basically have.

Another serious negative for liberal/atheist movie-goers will be the references to human souls, and the brief but 'what-have-I-done,-have-I-come-to-a-red-neck-movie-but-I'm-in-California-dammit' Glenn Beck ad/preview which made my blood boil. But actually these agonizing moments are pretty fleeting, and surprisingly the story did take shape and have drama, if only in disconnected moments. I think it would be a reasonable film to watch on DVD, where you can gaze at some shirtless torsos for a bit longer.

There are at least a couple very strange and counter intuitive casting choices: the hairy chested guy plays the vampire, and the smooth chested guy plays the werewolf.

Fateful Choices by Ian Kershaw

I heard about this book while in Paris on CNN Int'l. It's a 2007 book which basically goes back to WWII and reviews ten choices made which altered the course of the war dramatically. They are all fascinating. A couple which I had no idea about were the choices of Japan at that time to continue its aggression against China and the rest of Asia -- it was at the time highly dependent on American oil -- and Germany to go back on its agreement with Russia and actually attack Russia, the two front war decision. But besides these there is also the decision by Great Britain to continue to fight Germany despite expectations of a near destruction of its army (expeditionary force, it was called) in France near Dunkirk and the imminent surrender of close allies Belgium and France. A really thick tome, but exceptionally well written as it considers the thinking at the time and the egos of the personalities involved in making the decisions.

The Rating Game by Reba Toney

Leave it to a woman to figure out a workable dating method. But it seems surprisingly sensible. Boiled down: what usually works is if both people bring -- not necessarily the same thing -- but something equivalent to the table. First off, if a person is a real loser in every way, that person would never rate a winner in any way. Since people value different things, perhaps the author's innovation is not to focus on just the obvious aspects: face and body. There's also personality and money (latter is euphemistically termed "life situation"). As she says, this seems key to the success of hetero: supermodel/rock star couplings. I.e. the man's ugliness is canceled out by his attractive personality, status, friends and money through a simple averaging function. One key of course is to be honest on one's own rating so one doesn't date outside of one's rating class. The author even tosses in some semi-helpful hints on improving one's various categories. Perhaps this is a more detailed look at what it means when people say: "he's way out of your league".

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard Dawkins

My favorite (warning: spoiler) passage:

Shooting the messenger is one of humanity's sillier foibles, and it underlies a good slice of the opposition to evolution that I mentioned... 'Teach children that they are animals, and they'll behave like animals.' Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality, that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false. It is quite astonishing how many people cannot grasp this simple point of logic. The fallacy is so common it even has a name, the argumentum ad consequentiam - X is true (or false) because of how much I like (or dislike) its consequences.

I would add in the case of the hypothesis of God (a name for religion), the life after death or 'Heaven' is the consequence that people so want to be true that they ignore all other contrary information including evidence for evolution.

I've learned a few things from this book despite having some knowledge about evolution already:

1. Evolution has been observed to happen in experiments conducted on bacteria and animals. That bacteria has been observed to evolve should be expected. Bacteria grow very quickly and have new generations over a short period of time. But animals generally reproduce more slowly. In experiments, lizards were brought from one island to another, and guppies from one stream to another. Both animals were observed to evolve to better adapt to the environment even over the relatively few generations compared to those observed in bacteria.
   
2. In embryology, how do cells which are dividing specialize into different parts of the body? The answer is simple, they don't divide evenly. One daughter cell gets certain parts of the mother cell and the other daughter cells gets other parts. How does this relate to evolution? It shows how the DNA recipe is used to determine ultimate shape and function of an animal's body. I.e. relating to genetics and passing of characteristics from one generation to another.
3. How continental drift works is by creation of rock generally in the middle of oceans and consumption of rocks usually at the other side of the continent. (Actually, I knew this, but forgot some details.) This relates to evolution by explaining why South America and Africa have similar fossils because they were once attached.
   
4. Using radioactive decay of several different isotopes, scientists determined the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. (I knew that scientists had determined this, but didn't remember how.) This relates to refuting creationist belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
5. There is substantial fossil evidence linking humans to apes, but fossils are not required to prove that evolution happens (see item #1).
   

But while this book is written to preach to the choir, I would like to think that a relatively open minded non-dogmatic moderate religious person could open this book and be somewhat persuaded. I could be wrong about that, but to my religious friends I propose my usual experiment, read the book and see if you found the needle moved in any way towards belief of evolution.

Henry's 12th Street Tavern, Portland

Portland is the US beer capital. This place has got a gazillion different ones. If you're confused when confronted by the menu, it's worth trying the chocolate beers.