A Life Aquatic

2001: A Space Odyssey gets a new soundtrack

 

I love Michelle for lots of reasons. One is that she wanted to watch Jurassic Park for our five year anniversary. She likes Independence Day and Groundhog's Day and the other night she let us watch an installment of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We watched it on our computer on Netflix. The movie opens with a group of monkeys surviving in an area that looks a lot like rural Utah. For the first fifteen to twenty minutes there is no dialogue, just classical/choral music. Watching it this time, however, I noticed something different about the music. It was orchestral and choral, but I recognized it from somewhere else too. Enchanted. Michelle and I commented on it at the same time. We wondered if Patrick Demsey and his crew had ripped off their soundtrack. As we kept watching, I wondered how I had never noticed the 2001 soundtrack being so vivacious. As the monkey clan approached the monolith an acoustic guitar suddenly kicked in. I knew that that hadn't been there before. I checked the computer and realized that iTunes had been playing the Enchanted overture (12 minutes long) during the movie. We had a good laugh.

I think I actually preferred the opening with the Enchanted soundtrack. I guess that probably borders on blasphemy, but a lot of people said that 2001: A Space Odyssey was blasphemous too.

TRON!

It has been a while. Michelle and I went and saw TRON: Legacy in IMAX 3D the night after my final exam in December. It was an awesome way to end the semester. I loved everything about the film with just a few exceptions. The music and visual effects were out of this world. The final aerial battle just about made me pee my pants. Visually, the whole thing takes place on a 'black canvas' which seemed to me like pretty original cinematography. Caravaggio would have been proud; it was chiaroscuro through a whole new medium. Could Daft Punk have done any better with the soundtrack? No. No, they could not. Resolutely no. You should definitely check out Recognizer, Outlands, and Derezzed.

Only complaint: Tron is PG and therefore made for kids. So, some of the lines and even some of the characters are made to make little kiddies giggle. That can be hard for an adult anticipating an action movie to accept.

I have read several critic reviews and, as much as I agree that Tron was no Lord of the Rings, I think they didn't really get it. One, they keep calling all the characters within the grid Robots. I realize that this is like arguing about Data being an Android, Robot, or Cyborg (he's an Android), but they are not Robots. They are Programs. They have limitations. That is why Quorra is unique. She can learn and evolve whereas the others cannot. Two, Tron came before the Matrix and Tron is PG, not R. The only real comparison between the two is that the 'cyberworld' of the Matrix was derived from Tron, not the other way around. And, as mentioned before, Tron was made by Disney for kids.

It really was an awesome experience in IMAX and all this talking has made me want to go see it again. See it on the big screen while you still can.

Merry Christmas!

Picking a winner

About a month ago I wrote a post about the upcoming movie Cowboys & Aliens. Well, the other night while waiting outside the theater to see TRON (future post), I saw this poster.

And then I looked again...

 

Wow. Wranglers are meant to be tight (see Where have all the cowboys gone?), but they were never meant to do that. 

Soda Solution

Problem: FINALS WEEK

Solution: DR. PEPPER

Enzymatic Promiscuity

The number of unsavory human characteristics that enzymes portray has always impressed me. The first to catch my attention was the idea of enzymatic bullying. Enzymes prowl around intracellularly picking on wimpy substrates that are foolish enough to get in their way. They grab the sorry sobs and twist and contort them and put them in very uncomfortable positions. Sometimes the poor substrates even suffer an embarrassing public dephosphatation or have a stranger’s phosphate thrown at them.  The enzymatic bullies are complete in that they also have little toadies. With enzymes they take the form of co-enzymes; little guys that are not big enough or capable of pushing substrates around on their own. So, until we can stop those raging enzymes, our substrates will continue to live in a sad, cruel world.

The most recent unsightly human characteristic that has been brought to my attention is that of promiscuity. Some enzymes go around and have relations with only a specific type of substrate and engage in enzymatic 'yada yada yada' with just that one type for their entire microscopic existence. Others, however, will engage in inappropriate interactions with multiple partners, occasionally one right after another. It does not matter what the substrates look like or where they have been. I say that someone needs to stand up for our sorry substrates. It is simply wrong for those barbaric enzymes to treat them so poorly and discompassionately.    

Something has to be done. I need to stop them. I don’t know how yet …maybe dynamite.