Rating: 3 out of 5 (meh)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a Michael Bay film.  That pretty much sums up exactly what the movie is, and you don’t really need to know any more about it.  It’s not a bad film, exactly, and it’s not a good film (definitely).  It’s a film, a Michael Bay film.

Spoilers follow.

Lots of stuff blows up.  (OK, it is a Michael Bay film, so that’s not really a spoiler.)  Interestingly, very little blows up in the first half of the film.  This means that Mr. Bay — to reach his contract-specified density of cordite use — has to really pack the last half, which is a numbing non-stop explosionfest that involves Chicago (for reasons the film never adequately explores, or indeed, mentions).  There is much loud boomage and lots of robots turning into and out of their vehicular disguises, again for little explained reason.  There is a brave assault by the humans, who nonetheless come off looking like ants attacking two children wrestling on a beach.  For most humans, it ends up about as well as it would for the ants.

Shia LaBeouf is, well, Shia LaBeouf.  He seems more or less stuck in the same place.  His Sam Witwicky is far less engaging than in the first movie.  (I did not see Revenge of the Fallen.)  Somewhere along the line, Megan Fox’s Mikaela dumped him, and it’s hard not to sympathize with her.  Sam is self-absorbed and a bit whiny.

Rosie Huntingly-Whitley plays his romantic “interest”, Carly.  Apparently Ms. Huntington-Whitley is a Victoria Secret model.  She is not an actress.  In fact, she is the most robotic character in a movie about robots.  As made clear by the rear-end lingering establishing shot (itself taken from a Victoria Secret commercial, I expect), her primary purpose is eye candy.  She is also of course the romantic MacGuffin (that is, hostage) whose capture “motivates” Sam for some fraction of the movie.  (Because, apparently, he wouldn’t go save the world and all unless he had a direct personal stake in it.)  Finally, she is also there to play a pivotal but silly role in reminding Megatron that he is, in fact, a bad guy and nominal leader of the Decepticons — a realization that leads to him backstabbing the Autobot who back-stabbed Optimus Prime.  This makes Megatron this movie’s Starscream, and he does an even worse job of that than the actual Starscream (who eventually meets exactly the end foreordained for that type of character).

Optimus Prime takes a level in badass for this movie.  I know the character starts out pretty bad-ass, but in this one he becomes pretty dark — very nearly an anti-hero.  For one, he outright lies to his best human buddy Sam, when the latter asks him what his plan is once the Autobots are exiled from Earth (again).  Optimus tells Sam there is no plan, which makes the subsequent destruction of the Autobot’s spaceship all the more emotional.  At least it would, if it wasn’t telegraphed better than Western Union ever could that this is not in fact the end of the Autobots.  They hid in the first stage, you see, and played dead while everyone wept over their destruction.  So, on the one hand, +10 bonus points for the Autobots being genre savvy and realizing the Decepticons would, well, be deceptive and betray them.  On the other hand, -1,000,000 for bald-face lying to the only human who’s ever been totally on their side.  But on the gripping hand, +2,000,000 because said human — that is, Sam Witwicky — was in fact betraying them at that very moment, spying for the bad guy. (That’s the whole MacGuffin/hostage thing mentioned above.)

Anyway, back to Optimus.  He not only straight-up lies to Sam (of whom, remember, Optimus should have no suspicion whatsoever).   Optimus also allows the Decepticons to ravage Chicago, more or less to teach us humans a lesson.  When he eventually decides to intervene, he tells the Autobots “Kill them all”.  He’s talking about the Decepticons but still, that’s cold.  He eventually beats up his mentor Sentinel Prime (who, to be fair, had just betrayed Optimus and all they had ever fought for) and kills him by shooting him in the head with a blaster.  Earlier, after Carly’s improbably reverse-psychology trick, Megatron swoops in and disables Sentinel Prime.  He tells Optimius that the two need each other.  “What would you be without me?” asks Megatron.  “Let’s find out,” replies Optimus — and he rips out Megatron’s spine. Wah??  This is the good guy?

In fact, by the time the movie ends, Optimus is giving off a deeply disturbing psycho vibe — which, in honesty, would be a way cool path to take the next movie: The Autobots have lost their world, been betrayed by their greatest leader, and been thrown off Earth no fewer than three times by the soft bags of meat they’ve decided to ally with.  Who could blame the ‘bots for getting tired of the entire scene?  Maybe it’s time for some Autobot-mandated order here.

By far, the best human is former agent Simmons (played by John Torturo).  Simmons was a surprising breakout character — not only because he’s been transformed (get it?) from an obstructionist bureaucratic man-in-black to an O’Reilly Factor-appealing obscenely wealthy conspiracy-theory author whose wisecracking and over-the-top outrageousness is genuinely funny.  He’s the surprise breakout character in that he is a character, an actual human being who stands out from the mass of fleshy targets that define the rest of the breathing cast.  Also, his assistant Dutch is played equally well by the always-stellar Alan Turdyk, who steals every scene he’s in despite the tremendous dearth of lines.  I was mildly disappointed that Dutch never said, “I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar” but I understand.

I’d describe the climax of the movie but it would really be lost in print.  Plus, it doesn’t really matter.  It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t really follow from what came before, but plot isn’t why you see a Michael Bay movie anyway.  In this case, you have to sit back and let it wash over you.

A final note:  While the special effects were good, the 3D was a complete waste.  Not a single scene benefited from it.  I’ve heard that Mr. Bay wasn’t keen on adding them but his backers insisted.  He should have stuck with his intuition.  One nice side effect, though, is that the technical requirements of 3D forced Mr. Bay to use wider shots than is his wont.  Unlike earlier Transformer movies, in this one you can actually see the Transformers.  It makes a difference and makes them a least little more relatable.

Is this a good movie?  Yes, for certain values of the word “good”.  It’s a decent summer blockbuster; in fact, it might be the quintessential one.  If what you’re looking for is soggy-cardboard thin plot just about barely holding together a string of explosions and fights, you will not be disappointed.  If you want something reaching the higher reasoning centers of your cerebrum, this won’t be it.

Being a geek of a certain age, I of course went out to see Tron: Legacy as soon as it opened in the theaters. And being a geek of a certain type, and having listened to Wendy Carlos‘ ethereal soundtrack to the original Tron, I also purchased the soundtrack to this one as soon as it was available. This was my first introduction to Daft Punk, whom (I must admit) I first even heard of when their role was announced to much rejoicing. On receipt of the CD (yes, I still buy physical goods from time to time), I learned that they had worked on the orchestration with Hans Zimmer, a composer whose other cinematic work I do know and enjoy.

I say all this to make clear that I cannot evaluate the album as to its “Daft Punkness”. On my first listen through, I was underwhelmed. Wendy Carlos notwithstanding, I am not much of a fan of techno, and this album is certainly that. But having spent the cash I gave it a few good listens, and then I noticed that I was replaying the music in my head throughout the day. That’s just about the best recommendation you can give an album: it’s something you want to keep listening to. It evokes the movie (which I very much enjoyed) without being dogmatically tied to it. I’ve played these tracks for more than anything I’ve purchased in the past year or so.

That’s not to say the album is perfect. Again, bear in mind that all I know of techno is an outsider’s impression; it’s not my cup of tea. But the soundtrack encapsulates why it’s not my cup of tea. Daft Punk is very good at mood-setting and crafting almost subliminal music cues and then building them up. But this album is too much crescendo and too little climax: Too many tracks simply don’t pay off, dribbling away into subtle but ultimately disappointing whimpers. To be fair, this is a criticism applicable to most movie orchestration; after all, the music is fundamentally infrastructure on which a scene is hung. It’s not supposed to attract your attention and it isn’t telling the story itself. Especially in a visual medium such as movie-making, there tends to be an emphasis on crescendo: The scene wants to build tension which is generally then released abruptly with transition to the next scene. (Certainly the action genre, of which Tron: Legacy is an example, follows this pattern.) So the music builds for the big reveal, and then dashes to the next cue.

All of that said, it is this no-there-there quality of most tracks that I find most dissatisfying about the album. Daft Punk does a nice job with the rising action and are masters of the building overlay, where the same riff is repeated many times, but each repetition adds a new instrument or variation. By the tenth or so cycle, the output is quite complex and rich. But once the end of the scene comes, the payoff is usually just one abrupt transition to a fadeout; and that is unsatisfying, especially when encountered over and over.

Nonetheless the soundtrack worked its way into my brain and I found myself often putting it on when I needed instrumental music in the background. It turns out that this album is far more effective when heard out of the corner of your ear, rather than faced directly head-on. Once I got past the newness of the genre and made peace with the crescendo/climax issue, I was able to appreciate the subtleties. One surprise, for me, was that the bombastic big-picture stuff is not the album’s strengths. There are some quite gentle and quite beautiful pieces to be found, such as “Adagio for Tron” and “Father and Son“. They serve as nice counterpoints to the more driven mood music of the rest of the movie. They also allow the audience to come up for air and find the emotional core of the movie, which is always at risk of being lost among the neon action.

It is fair to say that the album succeeds in capturing (and creating) the mood of its progenitor film. After listening to the album for nearly a month, I went back to re-watch Tron: Legacy in the theater. My familiarity with the music definitely enhanced my experience of the film. Daft Punk does seem to have a cinematic intuition; the music evokes the action, as it should. Despite not knowing the soundtrack, it still did not drown out the film. It lies safely underneath what is happening on screen, the audio substrate but not a distraction, just as it should be. Perhaps the only place where that really fails is during the End of Line Club scenes, wherein Daft Punk appear as digital versions of themselves and their music on this album is closest to the club-thumping techno for which they’ve earned their fame. Maybe I’m just a oldster but this is the least engaging part of the movie and of the soundtrack.

Being versed in the released album also let me notice the musical cues that aren’t to be found on the CD. Clearly there are always artistic choices to be made and decisions to face. I did discover the haunting “Father and Son” interlude, cut from the album but happily available online via the Apple iTunes store. I wonder if the decision was artistic or commercial — perhaps they wanted to tap multiple revenue stream? In any case the omission lessens the official soundtrack. Likewise, there are apparently tracks available on an import CD but not in the States. I’m a big Tron fan but I’m not spending another $40 to get five tracks.

Daft Punk have said that Wendy Carlos was a major influence on their own style, and that comes through. No one would mistake this soundtrack for hers, but then, no one would mistake Tron: Legacy for Tron, so that’s OK. Much like the visuals of the movie, the soundtrack has been updated and evolved. I do wish that, perhaps, they had included just one or two more direct homages (all we get is a brief rendition of the iconic Tron motif by Kevin Flynn) but that is really more nitpicking than anything else.

Final verdict? This album was definitely worth the time to listen and the money to buy. It’s already worked its way into my rotation of instrumental/soundtrack playlists and I expect I’ll be replaying it for a long time.Православни икони

Inception
a Christopher Nolan Film
Arbitrary 5-Point rating: 5 out of 5

Inception is a weird, ambitious, action-packed sci fi thriller-cum-heist flick.  It is, in its own way, as ambitious as The Matrix and suffers from the comparison only in that it didn’t come first.  Leonardo DiCaprio plays Tom Dom Cobb, a thief of a singular kind: He can enter the dreams of others and “extract” information they’re trying to keep secret.  On the run for (at first) unspecified horrible crimes, he parlays his skill into a lucrative, if high-risk, lifestyle.  But in the end all he really wants to do is get to go home again and pick up the shards of his former life, including two small children.

More detail, and spoilers, to follow, but in short, this is a fantastic film that’s better than it has any right to be.  The pacing is superb, the acting is above-average, and the setting and technology are remarkably well fleshed out.  Although everyone draws comparisons to The Matrix, the real spiritual ancestor of this film is The Thirteenth Floor (which, ironically, came out at the same time as — and got lost in the glare of the hoopla of — The Matrix).

Spoilers ho!
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Any movie that involves dream technology is going to mess with the audience’s perceptions, and this is no exception.  By the end of the film, we’ve delved three levels “deep” : a dream within a dream, itself within a dream. And the film ends by (of course) going one further and asking, Is this the real world?  Or is Tom Cobb just locked within another nested level?  Has he returned to reality?  Was he ever there to begin with?  By transparent design, the question is left open.  Within the movie, we are told that every dream adventurer must fashion his or her own “totem”, an object he/she can use to assess whether the current setting is real or someone’s dream.  Arthur uses a loaded die, whose balance only he knows.  Adriadne makes a chess piece (a bishop). Cobb uses a peculiar top.  (It belonged to his deceased wife Mallorie, and would keep spinning forever in a dream world but flop over in a real one.)  You can’t share your totem because then someone else could simulate it in one of their dreams and you’d be lost.

The totems raise a couple of questions.  For example, while it might tell you you’re in someone else’s dream, could it tell you if you were lost in your own?  Cobb warns Adriadne that one must never use whole memories in building a dream world, because you might lose grasp of the distinction and never find your way out.  But you can, of course, perfectly dream your own totem — so it must be useless in distinguishing your dreams from reality.

Adriadne’s totem never comes into play, oddly enough, considering the screen time spent on explaining its purpose and on her fashioning it.  But the top is crucial.  At several places, after Cobb begins to get drawn more and more obsessively into the dreams they are making, he uses it to reassure himself that he’s still got a handle on reality.  There’s something almost heartbreaking about this process, because by the very rules of the game, he must check his sanity alone.  You can never share the thing that keeps you anchored.

But the most important — if most glaringly telegraphed — use of the top comes at the end of the film, after Cobb has rescued the sponsor of the last job and so gotten his life back. He sets the top to spinning, but is distracted by the arrivial of his children.  For the first time he (and we) can see their faces, and he moves off to their embrace.  Behind him the top keeps spinning.  Just before the camera cuts, it starts to wobble, but we never see it fall.  So… is Cobb in the real world?  Or has he fled into yet another dream, one he fashioned himself, so that he can have the life he’s been missing?  (This is even set up by a projection of Mallorie, that asks him whether his actual life — chased by shadowy agents of an unseen conspiracy — is true or just another psychological immune reaction.)

To me, the far more interesting point is:  The top was Mallorie‘s totem.  That fact is mentioned repeatedly, in important scenes.  But you can’t share totems … so why does Cobb think it’s valid for him at all?  Every one of his reality checks is suspect, not just the final one.  We might be far more than one level “down” at the end.  There are hints, I think, that the nesting is infinite.

It’s been a while since a movie had me thinking this hard after the credits rolled.  I heartily recommend it.

For about ten years, I’ve been running a project in my Honors Physics course called Days of Miracle and Wonder (yes, title taken from a Paul Simon song).  In it, the students are asked to create a business case for a product or service not available today but likely to be so by 2030.  Although they are expected to construct a likely technological path from today’s state-of-the-art to that future product, they aren’t expected to actually build their device because, after all, it’s supposed to be 20 years away.

In one of the early years, a team chose as its device a free-standing holographic display a la the chess scene on the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.  They presumed it would involve some sort of fast-spinning mirror.

Today, I came across this – a SIGGRAPH paper and video demonstrating a free-standing three-dimensional display utilizing a fast-spinning mirror.  It’s about 20 years early.

I guess I have to revise my project rubric. 

… but this looks awesome.

… using footage from — amazingly! — the Toy Story franchise!

via Ezra Klein

This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3jkUhG68wY&feature=player_embedded) is a hilarious take-down of the music publishing industry’s allegation that personal filesharing is “killing” music.  Part of the fun is figuring out the early 1980s references.  Also, I would totally buy a flag that had that cassette-and-crossbones logo…

Also, remember that according to former MPAA chief Jack Valenti,

[T]he VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

Not that the content cartels would ever condone the use of overblown and hyperbolic language to frighten lawmakers into writing into law special rights to protect their outmoded business models…

… but this looks awesome.

Apparently, the release date is 2010 December 17.

Just for completeness, the original Comicon 2009 trailer is embedded below the fold.

Everyone has their own unique signs that summer is upon us, the signature sound that signals the academic year is winding down. For me, it’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears.

More below the fold.

Real Genius tells the story of Mitch Taylor, a 15-year-old supergenius admitted to Pacific Tech to work on a new laser power source.  His mentor, of sorts, is Chris Knight (Kilmer), who used to be the hottest genius on campus but who, in his senior year, has suddenly gone a bit wild.  Both work for Dr. Jerome “Jerry” Hathaway, played by the inimitable William Atherton. Back in the 1980s, Mr. Atherton made a virtual career of playing stuck-up, neurotic antagonists (the EPA guy in Ghostbusters, the arrogant reporter in Die Hard) and here is no exception — and he’s still the guy you love to hate.  The movie weaves together Mitch’s coming-of-age tale with the simple but brutal politics of campus life and a larger-picture concern over the weaponization of outer space.  (Really.)

Real Genius is actually quite a funny movie and deserves to be remembered more and better than it is.  That’s only one reason why I show it, though.  The larger reason I show it has to do with the population I teach and the culture we live in.  Specifically, Real Genius has a message I think it’s good my kids hear, especially on the night before their big exam:  It’s OK to be smart.  In fact, it’s preferred.

Too often, in Hollywood, brains are to be despised or distrusted.  When tolerated, it’s only because they’re useful.  (Think: The Professor from Gilligan’s Island.)  There’s always something suspicious, unnerving, even faintly un-American, about the intelligent characters.  Movies are about “regular Joes” who demonstrate that book smarts might be useful in the short run, but it’s the aw-shucks simple spirit of the common man that will save the day.

Real Genius takes that motiff and says, Bollocks.  The kids in this movie are smart.  And it’s not just one lone smart kid, who has to learn to embrace his inner mediocrity and be accepted into the group.  The group is smart.  Beyond Mitch and Chris, there’s quirky love interest Jordan, budding mad scientist Ick, and silent guy in the steam tunnels Lazlo.  They are individually intelligent and collectively, well, geniuses.  Every one of them brings something to the endeavor and every one of them is appreciated by all the others for being smart, not in spite of being smart.

The other Hollywood stereotype undermined by this movie is the evil scientist.  Generally, the assumption (especially in the 1970s and 1980s) was that anyone who did basic research and used his/her brain was, to be blunt, dubious.  Many were in it to develop weapons and not think of the consequences.  Real Genius embraces but then subverts that stereotype.  The kids at PacTech certainly delve into their fields and don’t think about the applications.  But they uniformly reject Hathaway’s attempt to weaponize their work — even foil and nebbish on-campus antagonist Kent, when confronted with the fact that he’s actually been working on a phase conjugate targeting system for a laser death ray, is stunned and dismayed.  Heck, in backstory, we learn that Lazlo, faced with a similar discovery, actually broke and went from #1 rising star to hermit living in the steam tunnels.  Mitch and Chris are outraged at Hathaway’s perversion of their work and take positive steps to correct the mistake.  Even Hathaway is shown to be motivated not by crazed visions of scientific power but from a mundane desire to succeed materially.

In the end, the students best the professor and the military-industrial complex.  They do it not by being purer (though they are) or by working together (though they do).  They do it by being smarter than their opponents.  The movie celebrates their intelligence.  And yes, they are pure and they are noble.  But this is shown not to be the aberration but the usual order of things.  They are amplified by their intelligence, not lessened by it.

It’s a lesson I want my AP kids to see.  They’re also bright and even a little noble, and they’re about to dive into university life, where there will be pressure to compromise their intelligence and their principles.  Almost the entire culture is screaming at them to cover their light under a bushel and be less than they are in order to fit in.  I wanted them to hear at least one voice against that cacophonous chorus, that lone whisper that says,

It’s OK to be smart.  In fact, it’s preferred.