Eat more cookies

Once school finished a few weeks ago, we set the kids up to watch the first three Indiana Jones movies. Our kids love adventure movies and Han Solo, so we figured they’d get into them. They did, especially Temple of Doom - at 9 and 6 they’re the right demographic for Short Round. I taught them how to say “Truck? What truck?” They now really hate the Nazis, who are much more violent in these movies than the ones they already knew from The Sound of Music. The also like to count how many times in each movie someone says “Indyyyyyyyy!” and they’ve been imitating Marcus’ great line in the tank from #3: “Henry - the pen! Well don’t you see? The pen is mightier than the sword!”

So we took them to #4 on Saturday. They had a blast, of course, and now they know about the Cold War and spying and a lot of stuff like that. Fantasy though they are, these movies have given us a nice segue to talk about real history with them.

The movie was fun, as expected. The special effects were great, with one notable exception I’ll get to in a second. The location shots were pretty awesome. Shia Lebouf’s “Mutt” was a gritty and likable character.

But whoa - the script and the dialogue left quite a bit to be desired. I actually found myself doing something I’ve never done while watching an Indiana Jones movie - I yawned.

The biggest disappointment, however, had to be the stupid crystal skull itself. It looked like a football shaped wad of aluminum foil, wrapped in Saran Wrap, and covered with cheap plastic. For the amount of money they spent on this film, why the heck didn’t they just pay to have an actual crystal skull made?

Sometimes I’m downright proud of my church.

In a recent story, a Vatican astronomer indicated that extraterrestrial life is in no way contradictory to Catholic doctrine.

You’ve come a long way, baby.

That’s right, nothing in the Catechism precludes the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. Our faith is built around the human experience here on this planet - there’s no telling what sort of other projects God may have in the works. Makes sense to me.

We Catholics are such a confusing lot. On the one hand, we cling to medieval traditions and regard every sperm as sacred. [*Warning - mature content in that last link!*] On the other, we can be quite progressive, as in the official Vatican acceptance of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. I like to tell people that I first learned about Darwin from my Catholic high school biology class, where Sister Antonella Giba spoke freely and positively about evolutionary theory. Quite unlike its mistreatment of Galileo, the Church is fully on board with Darwin.

So the Catholic enlightenment continues. Now if we could just figure out why so many of us seem to be supporting Hillary . . .

“Bueller?”

“Bueller?”

Ben Stein’s iconic portrayal of a disaffected egghead economics teacher in 1986’s “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” established his career as the quintessential brainy character on screen, and his real-world persona as a general know-it-all. Even more than 20 years later when people are looking for something that is clearly not there, you’ll hear them ask “Bueller?” Movie-magic at its best!

But Ben Stein is apparently the one playing intellectual hookie with his latest project, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”
While it would be disingenuous to pan a movie I hadn’t seen, I’ve heard and read things about this movie that seem disturbing. Apparently, the movie is rife with factual errors on the nature of evolutionary biology, and the producers don’t seem to have acted at all honorably to the biologists who agreed to be interviewed. For a laundry list of what’s wrong with this movie, please visit here: “Expelled Exposed“.

Look, science advances by observation, prediction, and hypothesis testing. We scientists are not “scared” of ideas that challenge our positions - we encounter such ideas all the time. The insinuation that notions like “intelligent design” are squashed by mainstream science because scientists are trying to maintain their grip on some kind of an NSF gravy train of research funding is just silly. If intelligent design was science (i.e., it led to falsifiable predictions verified by hypothesis testing), then this startling new revelation could become the next big funding initiative for the NSF. Imagine hundreds of millions of dollars allocated to intelligent design research! Rank and file scientists would have far more to gain from intelligent design being scientific than from the sad alternative.

The reality is that intelligent design is, of course, not scientific. It does not lead to falsifiable hypothesis testing; it has no predictive value. That, and that alone, is the reason that it should not be taught in science classes. We wouldn’t teach Spanish vocabulary in an algebra class, so we shouldn’t teach a religious philosophy in a science class. It’s that simple.

This explains a lot. We can’t seem to find one here.  Bigfoot is Martian!  

What better reward for a couple of kids who got their flu shots without incident than to take them to the movies?

A great way to gauge a movie is to determine if the commercials and previews show the best parts. If they do, then the movie will be lame. If they don’t, you’re in for a treat. The latter was definitely the case for us with Disney’s Enchanted. It was funny, sweet, and exciting.

The humor was both self-deprecating to storybook fantasy (and its Disney adaptations) and the classic “fish out of water aspect” of placing those fantasy characters in the Big Apple. The chipmunk Pip was a spunky hero, more likeable than I expected.

Giselle’s innocence and optimism were exquisitely portrayed by Amy Adams. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to truly act like a Disney princess on screen, rather than “merely” voice one. In the audience, I was putty in her hands from the moment she appeared on screen.

The ladies will likely appreciate the opporunity to see Prince Edward (Stillwater native and Oklahoma State University alum [?] James Marsden) on screen, both dashing and comical at the same time. And that dude can sing!

Speaking of singing, one great surprise for us was the “You’ve got to Show Her” number. It just kept building and building from its spare and simple start. Great stuff! Disney fans will also recognize snippets of music from previous films, as well as cameos by former princesses Ariel, Belle, and Pocahontas.

And Susan Sarandon? Yeah, she’s still got it.

So if you need a pick-me-up - if you could use a good laugh, if you like to walk out the theatre singing and tapping your feet - go let yourself be enchanted by Enchanted.

With so much Britney- and Lindsay-bashing in the media of late, I really haven’t been interested. But here’s a surprise: that nice Shia Labeouf kid is also, apparently, a flaming idiot.

“When I hear my favorite song,
I know that we belong.
You are the music in me.

It’s livin inside of us,
kind of like a virus.
You are the music in me. . . “

Infectious.

It was a little more than a year ago that my 5-year old told me I had to “get my head in the game.” Weeks later, I got to hear the soundtrack from this “high school musical” the kids were on about, and I teased them by feigning confusion with the characters they seemed to know so well. (I still refer to Zac Efron [Troy Bolton] as “Zac-Troy”.) But something did happen during my very first listen. I remembered.

Those wizards at Disney have figured out something in the neural wiring that pumps these songs directly into the brain. You find yourself singing them hours later and after a single listen. Pop magic. I can’t imagine how ingrained these songs become in the far less cluttered minds of little kids, especially after the 100th listen . . .

Now it’s High School Musical 2, and the talented ensemble cast is back with their perfect skin, straight teeth, shiny hair and a soundtrack maybe even more catchy than the first one. Our kids are pretty savvy now. They know how silly it is that everyone knows how to dance, or that drums and guitars can be heard even though all they see is cute little Kelsy at the piano. But it’s still good, clean fun.

For us, we’re now somewhat vested in these characters because they mean so much to the kids. We’re impressed with the talents of the cast, most of whom are much closer to actual high school age than the “kids” we enjoyed in Grease. It’s also fascinating to see the Disney marketing machine in action, for example, the three different showings of the movies this weekend, each with a different “theme” like last night’s sing-along version. But mostly, there is fun to be had in good pop music - it’s light, it’s shallow, and it makes you feel like a kid again.

And now, some advice for all the kids who want to be like Troy and Gabriella:

Boys: At 5′9″, Troy doesn’t have much hope of landing a basketball scholarship. If your dad is pushing you into sports like Troy’s dad, then don’t listen to him. Coach Bolton is a self-centered jerk.

Girls: If you want to be like Gabriella (intelligent and adorable), then study hard and choose your wardrobe carefully. Cute sundresses and ballet flats will flatter you so much more than trashy revealing outfits and those God-forsaken flip-flops.

ps: this is related, and funny!

Because this 2006 movie did not feature Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, or Ewan MacGregor, my wife had no desire to accompany me to the movies to see it on the big screen. I finally rented it yesterday and watched the DVD on our 13″ screen at home.

It was, of course, an awesome spectacle. If I was teaching a course on pre-colonial MesoAmerican culture, I would definitely show this film in class. It’s easy to focus on anachronisms and incongruities (as I’m about to do), but important to recognize that, overall, Gibson was successful in bringing to life a culture and a time that no living person has seen. In that regard, it was a fantastic experience, and I wish I had seen on the big screen.

Now I’ll start nit-picking.

(more…)

While I’m on the subject of movies, we got to see the exciting trailer for “10,000 BC” last night. Now this movie, due out next March, should be right up my alley - warring tribes, CGI prehistoric creatures, hot babes in ill-fitting hides. But I fear it may be a bust. Here’s why.

I noticed in the trailer - traveling before my eyes at light speed - things like metal weapons and soldiers riding animals. These Iron Age advancements strike me as anachronisms. So too the blending of Pleistocene fauna, e.g., mammoths, with something looking an awful lot like Diatryma, the ferocious and flightless avian predator of the Eocene. But I can look past things like this, it’s what they did to the mammoths that destroyed their credibility with me.

The mammoths in the trailer are clearly seen galloping like giant horses. Everyone knows that elephants don’t gallop, they pace, moving the legs on each side of the body forward or backward in unison. You can take a pacer and make it gallop (like a racing camel), but they don’t like it. I’ve never seen an elephant move this way -when they want to go fast they just pace faster, and they look like they’re speedwalking. By galloping their mammoths, the filmmakers for 10,000 BC took their expensive CGI skills and their otherwise beautiful mammoths and ruined them by making them do something that makes them look ridiculously fake.

Why didn’t these guys take 5 minutes to look at how real elephants move? If they had, I’d be a lot more excited about this movie . . .

Pottermania has gripped the nation! People are lining up to gush over the final book and the latest movie. Elsewhere, people are lambasting the Potter fans for latching on to “children’s books” while ignoring real literature.

Well I’m a fan, I have to admit it. I resisted for a while - I hate bandwagons - but eventually I sat down and read #1 (”Sorcerer’s Stone”, I believe) and guess what: It was fun. Harry is the reluctant, misfit underdog who must find his inner hero to defeat an evil and far more powerful opponent. Is that the most original storyline ever? No, but it works, and people have embraced this theme since at least the days of David and Goliath. So I kept reading, and I’ve enjoyed every one.

The Potter books work because they’re just great storytelling - does literature really need to be more? I’m in a new place, I’m discovering new things, I’m caring for people comprised of mere ink on paper. That is literature. These stories don’t have to be allegories for political and social commentary (although it could be argued that they are). They don’t have to change the world (although it could be argued that they have). They just have to be entertaining, and in doing so, transport the reader to another world, a world that is scary and weird, but I bet one that every Potter fan would like to visit.

The movies work too, but don’t bother to see them unless you’ve first read the books - you’ll be confused. And if you have read the books, don’t expect a verbatim adaptation - movie editors are much more ruthless than novel editors. But go, let yourself see some movie magic bring story magic to life. It’s fun!

We saw “Order of the Phoenix” last night, and I think it was the best of the movies thusfar. The action and the effects were first rate, and the mood was darker - appropriately so - and more mature than the earlier efforts. If you read and enjoy the books, you’ll love this movie.

As for “Deathly Hallows”, I’m about 1/3 through, and it’s great . . .