I finally saw the March of the Penguins. It’s unquestionably informative and beautifully photographed. Almost everything in it was new to me, and I couldn’t help being astonished and moved by what these birds do in Antarctica. (They’re very different from the penguins I see in the Aquarium.) Despite the occasional sentimentalized and anthropomorphized portions of the documentary, I can heartily recommend it if you haven’t yet seen it.
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Today we participated in an intense professional development (PD) program and worked on our preparation for NEASC accreditation. NEASC work is often frustrating but often useful as well (more on that later). Today’s PD was quite interesting. The main part of the day’s program opened with “Where Good Ideas Come From,” a great video by Steven Johnson. Drop whatever you’re doing right now, click on that link, and watch the entire four-minute video… …So now you know why “chance favors the connected mind.” Keep that in mind, no matter what organization(s) you’re a part of. I think I’ll show it to my students. After that video, as well as other more-or-less related introductory material, we split up into small groups to participate in parallel sessions in which various “professional learning communities” presented progress reports. (You have to keep up with the current jargon, you know.) I chose to attend sessions on Metco, mathematical discussions, and iPads. All were well worth it:
In the afternoon we watched the film Race to Nowhere and discussed it in small groups. This “documentary,” in the style of Michael Moore, is definitely worth seeing despite its obvious biases. It makes a strong case that our students are being stressed out and pressured to focus entirely on a race to attend the most prestigious colleges. That is certainly true for many students in Weston. But I have several problems with the film: math teachers are always the bad guys (too much math homework drives a girl to suicide???); scenes of black students in Oakland were obviously edited in, probably in response to the otherwise white-suburban bias; scenes from The Blue School in New York City made unfounded generalizations about all other schools; the film claims that 95% of American high-school students cheat, which seems unbelievably high; they also claim that American schools aren’t preparing independent thinkers, which strikes me as a gross over-generalization. Almost everything in the movie is worth thinking and talking about, but I wish it had been more balanced.
Be sure to watch High School Quiz Show tonight: Channel 2 at 7:00! The match is between Weston and Woburn, starring Mir Bokhari, Grace Huckins, Jon Birjiniuk, and Matthew Chernick, as seen left-to-right in this brief promotional video.
At school yesterday we had a special assembly sponsored by our local Amnesty International chapter. Here is the official description we were given ahead of time:
This calm description turned out to be something of an understatement. Both the moving documentary and the talk by the two speakers highlighted not only the role of child soldiers but also the massive death and destruction caused by Joseph Kony’s terrorists in Uganda and Congo. The audience of Weston High School students was engaged and respectful. And yet…and yet…I have a couple of reservations. Why is Kony doing these horrible things? One of my students asked the speakers that, and did not get a satisfactory reply. Of course the Wikipedia article is not to be trusted (unlike math and linguistics, this is the kind of topic for which one needs to be suspicious of Wikipedia); saying that Kony wants to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments is bizarre at best. Second, both the festive aspects of parts of this well-made movie and the attempt to get everyone to “stay silent for 25 hours on April 25th” seem orthogonal to the problem and its possible solution. Maybe I’ve just been out of college for too long. Finally, how does one do anything for 25 hours on a single day? Inquiring minds want to know.
Saw an absolutely fascinating movie yesterday at the ICA: Utopia in Four Movements. This engaging film, which premiered last year at Sundance, is unusual in at least two ways. First, although it has music and voice-over like most documentaries, both are live rather than recorded in the film. Music was provided in real time by The Quavers, and voice-over was done by filmmaker Sam Green. The film itself was compelling enough, but Green’s narration was striking for its clarity and perfect timing. I was astonished to learn in the Q&A that followed the screening that Green is not a professional actor; you would never know it from the quality of his delivery. The second unusual feature of the film is that one quarter of it dealt with Esperanto. How often do you come across something like that? The entire documentary was about different utopian movements, ranging from Esperanto to shopping malls — yes, shopping malls —but the inspiring but ultimately unsuccessful vision of Esperanto was of course what most captured my attention. Go see it if you get the chance.
I suppose you would have to label it historical fiction, as the novel Alice I Have Been is actually a fictionalized autobiography or memoir. Like all historical fiction, it is faithful to the letter and the spirit of the known facts while weaving dialog and situations around them to imagine a complete story. In this book Melanie Benjamin has created a compelling account of the life of Alice Liddell, the “real” Alice in Wonderland, upon whom Lewis Carroll based his two famous books. I found this story irresistible, partly because Carroll was a math teacher in his day job and since his primary mathematical interests were logic and language. But those points are actually minor ones in Benjamin’s narrative, which primarily tells the reader a story about the Liddell family and its place in the Oxford community in particular and Victorian England in general. The reader also learns a great deal about early photography and the cumbersomeness of Victorian dress. (Incidentally, we learn that Alice wasn’t blonde, despite John Tenniel’s famous illustrations.) As a side note, it is actually the audiobook version that I am reviewing, not the print version. The reading by Samantha Eggar is convincing and compelling, with three-dimensional portrayals of all the major characters. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, and it kept me occupied through many hours of commuting. After reading Alice I Have Been, I figured that I had to see the 1985 Dennis Potter movie Dreamchild, which covers pretty much the same material. The atmosphere of the writing is far darker than that of Alice I Have Been — not surprising for anything written by Potter. In particular, the Muppets that portray the gryphon, the Mad Hatter, the dormouse, etc., are all quite creepy. The journalists that surround Alice in her famous visit to New York when she was in her eighties are presented very negatively, in contrast to their light-handed treatment in the book. So it’s worth seeing the movie and reading the book, as you will get two quite different perspectives. I have only one problem with Dreamchild, and it was almost enough to spoil the entire movie for me: all the actors consistently mispronounce Charles Dodgson, the real name of Lewis Carroll, by sounding the silent “g” in his last name. I suppose this shouldn’t bother me so much, but it did. In particular, it damaged the verisimilitude that’s necessary for a thorough immersion into the 19th-century world of the narrative. Fussy, fussy, you’ll say. And perhaps you’re right, but when I’ve gone through fifty years correctly pronouncing his name Dodson, it becomes jarring to hear it said wrong every time. When I see a movie, I want to be immersed in that world, not continually knocked out of it.
What more can I add to all the chatter about James Cameron’s Avatar? Not much, except to share my opinions. You probably already know all that you need to know about this movie, and I certainly don’t want to include any spoilers. First of all, it’s absolutely essential to see it in 3-D, preferably in IMAX. The three-dimensional effects were absolutely convincing, especially in the outdoor scenes, giving the viewer the sense of being in the action rather than watching the action. The result was a thoroughly entertaining, amazing film. I was totally absorbed by it, having no trouble sitting for nearly three hours. (The Tempur-Pedic seats definitely helped! I guess that’s one of the benefits of seeing a movie in a theater that’s located in a furniture store.) The linguistically sophisticated artificial language of the Na’vi was of course of interest to me, though it was really a minor part of the movie. Although the three-dimensionality allowed subtitles to hover well in front of the action — thereby making them less intrusive than they would be otherwise — it was still appropriate for Cameron to use the device of having the main Na’vi characters be more-or-less capable speakers of English as a second language. Doing so allowed him to get away with minimal use of subtitles. Perhaps I’ll write a follow-up post concerning their own language . I was surprised to see some little kids at this showing (early Sunday afternoon). Either their parents had no idea that there would be so much violence, or they didn’t care. Avatar is basically a war movie, after all, so they should have cared. As a war movie, it included every cliché in the book, and therein lies its major flaw. The flaw isn’t the lack of originality; I discount critics who observe that this movie has been made before. Yes, the theme and story line are taken from other efforts, but so what? It’s commonplace for plays and films to do this; even Shakespeare took story lines from elsewhere. No, the flaw is the piling on of cliché after cliché. Fortunately the action and the visual effects are so stunning that it’s almost possible to ignore this problem, but “almost” isn’t good enough. As an unsubtle metaphor for the Europeans’ destruction of American Indians and their lands, it was bound to be somewhat predictable — but it didn’t have to go to such extremes. The result was a collection of one- and two-dimensional characters who fell into situations that anyone in the audience would have expected. Despite that flaw, and despite its transparent political correctness, Avatar is still a successful film. Aside from the special effects, the spectacular scenery and the attention to detail redeem the story. Go see it — warts and all! A small linguistic question that has nothing to do with the movie: why is it that I have no trouble with the ostensibly misplaced modifier in the fourth sentence of my second paragraph above? By proximity, the participle “having” should modify “it,” yet the intended reading where it modifies “I” is definitely the dominant one to my eyes and ears. Something to ponder…
After spending a totally absorbing 90 minutes at Harry Potter: The Exhibition, I still don’t know why it’s at the Museum of Science of all places — what’s the connection with science? — but I highly recommend it nonetheless. The exhibition consists mainly of actual props, sets, and costumes from the filming of the Harry Potter movies, supported by small amounts of textual commentary and other related material. By far the most striking aspect of the show is the exquisite attention to detail; every tiny bit of the handmade costumes and other props has been carefully crafted and expertly weathered so has not to look new. The verisimilitude has been enhanced by the context in which the materials are set — sometimes actual scenes but more often just sets that are suggestive of the scenes used in the movies. Even the usual store that you are forced to walk through when leaving the exhibit is entrancing, as it is made up to look like various shops from the movies. The exhibition will be there until February 21; don’t miss it! Incidentally, it struck me as I was walking through the exhibits that there is a deep connection with model railroading here. I was asking myself why I would be interested in costume design, a subject that actually doesn’t interest me at all. And yet the costumes were among the most fascinating artifacts on display. Halfway through it hit me: even though everything was 1:1 scale, it’s a lot like a model railroad! The attention to detail created a miniature world that selectively reflects the real world but veers off into fantasy in various ways. I once again thought of imaginary gardens with real toads in them. See a post I wrote four and half years ago, which was actually about math but could equally as well have been about model railroading; it’s just that everything is intertwingled.
Julie and Julia has gotten so much publicity that I’m not sure I have much to add. It was a good movie to watch on New Year’s Eve — but watch it anyway if you haven’t seen it yet, New Year’s Eve or not. In this fictionalization of a true story, Meryl Streep is surprisingly successful at portraying the great Julia Child, Amy Adams does a great job as the irritating Julie Powell, the food looks delicious, the scenes in Paris are inviting, and Queens looks like…well…Queens. Paul Child and Eric Powell are played as unendingly supportive husbands, as they apparently were in real life. (Maybe that’s why some reviewers consider this a chick flick.) There are no surprises here — just a well-made, charming, and entertaining movie. Don’t listen to those who tell you it’s too long (at 123 minutes); it isn’t.
The Man from Earth is a quirky movie that you should see if you like talky films that make you think. Skip it if you insist on visual effects, exciting plot, and a clean resolution at the end. Clearly a low-budget effort, the entire film is a conversation among a group of college professors holding a going-away party for one of their colleagues, who has been teaching with them for ten years without apparently aging. It soon develops that his colleague claims to be 14,000 years old, and he has to keep moving every ten years or so before people get suspicious of the fact that he doesn’t seem to get older. Because almost all of the characters consider themselves scientists, they are of course skeptical and demand lots of evidence, which they then manage to explain away. (I say “consider themselves scientists” because they are mostly not hard scientists — biologists, chemists, physicists — but some are in related fields. One is an anthropologist, one an archeologist, one a historian, one a Christian theologian.) The acting can be a bit wooden at times, but I for one did not find that to be a problem; these are supposed to be professors after all, but we’ve all known some professors who are a bit wooden but nonetheless real. Anyway, if you’ve ever enjoyed sitting around with friends and discussing philosophy and science, you’ll enjoy The Man from Earth. It reminds me of My Dinner with André; if you liked that movie, you’ll like this one.
Somehow this post got delayed from earlier in the year. Oh, well…hakuna matata. Anyway, earlier in this calendar year — but it was last academic year — two of my Weston sophomores were aghast to hear that I had never seen The Lion King. After a great deal of persuasion, both from them and from my niece, I agreed to see it. One of my Weston colleagues had warned me that it was offensive and patriarchal, so I was wary. Also, I’m not into Disney films. My verdict: I definitely enjoyed it — though not with anything like my students’ level of enthusiasm — and I didn’t find it the least patriarchal or offensive. Mostly I found it folkloric, and of course there are patriarchal elements involved in folklore. I liked the animation and the wit. The songs weren’t bad. Although I’m still puzzled why my niece named her cat Zazu, I found the various animals cute and/or captivating, and the actors were effective in reading their voices. All in all, it will never be one of my favorite movies, but I’m definitely glad that I saw it. I wouldn’t want to draw any conclusions about Weston students or teachers from my tiny sample on this matter.
Two and a half years ago I read Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, and I am surprised that I didn’t write a review of it at the time. I no longer remember why. Perhaps I was waiting for the movie — though how could I have ever known that there even was going to be a movie? Anyway, Barbara and I just watched the movie on DVD, so now I can review both at once. Of course I violated my usual principle that it’s better to see the movie before reading the book, but then again that’s usually impossible, given the relative schedules of publishing novels and making movies. Anyway, the book is worth reading, and the movie is worth seeing — though I’m sure that both would have been significantly enhanced if I were more familiar with Austen’s work. Unfortunately my English Lit background is insufficient, as I’ve read no Austen other than Pride and Prejudice and a bit of Emma. This deficiency doesn’t matter so much in the actual book club scenes, but it’s glaring in the overall structure of the book and movie, where the big concept is that these characters’ lives are replaying the interactions among various Austen characters. I think Fowler must have created a one-to-one match between Austen’s novels and the modern characters, though it’s hard to tell for sure. Each member of the book club hosts a discussion of a different novel, and I suspect that her (or in one case his) life is reflecting that novel. Six novels, six characters. The movie is surprisingly faithful to the book, although the 30-month gap makes it hard for me to remember details. One glaring difference is that the character Allegra is explicitly 30 in the book but is in her early 20s in the movie — a distinction that wouldn’t always make a difference but definitely does in the case of Jane Austen. The actress who played her, Maggie Grace, was 23 when the film was made, enhancing the impression of youth. Prudie, a French teacher, is the youngest in the book (28) but seems older in the movie — although a male student’s crush on her suggests that maybe she isn’t, and the actress portraying her, Emily Blunt, was only 24 at the time. She is a rather annoying character in many years, although she’s the subject of an excellent line: in response to a suggestion that Prudie should stop speaking French, Jocelyn says, “Or at least go to France, where it would be less noticeable.” Actually, that’s the narrator’s line in the book, but Jocelyn’s line in the movie, where there is no narrator. Also, the phrase “at least” was inserted in the movie; I have no idea why. The student with the crush on Prudie causes her to say one of the best lines in the movie — one that I don’t think was in the book at all: “He looks at me like he’s the spoon, and I’m this dish of ice cream.” What’s unsurprising is that the one male lead, Grigg, is the only book club member who is not already familiar with Austen (though at least he’s enthusiastic about Ursula LeGuin). Male members of book clubs are already rare enough; they would be rare to the point of extinction when a book club is devoted to Jane Austen. The Grigg of the novel is carefully reproduced in the movie, providing a useful foil to the otherwise all-female take on human relations. He’s pretty much a “sensitive, new-age guy.” Both the book and the movie are well-written, clever, intelligent, at times amusing, and always engaging. Read one. See the other.
On the other hand, the season opener of Numb3rs — Season Six, which is hard to believe! — was pretty good, even it was skimpy on the math and a bit long on tensions between Charlie and Amita. But this is television, after all. Math content included Fibonacci spirals in nature, and the Unexpected Hanging paradox in its original form. In order to make the latter less gruesome and more relevant to students, it is usually changed to an unexpected quiz, as Jim Loy points out in the linked article. It goes something like this:
And I hand out the quiz. Where’s the flaw?
I gave it a fair shot. As a teacher in a suburban high school, I felt duty-bound to watch the first three episodes of Glee, and I really tried to like it. But I’ve given up. The actors can’t act (except for the lead, Matthew Morrison), and the writers can’t write. I assume that the actors were picked by their ability to sing, since they do that quite well, but that’s not enough. And the writers just pile on cliché upon cliché, most egregiously in Episode 3. A clear thumbs-down.
What do you do on a snow day? Watch a movie, of course. Get over It had been on my shelf for awhile, since I had ordered it from Netflix shortly after seeing Midsummer Night’s Dream at Weston High School back in November. Time to watch it and then return it to Netflix, right? It’s no surprise that this is not a very good movie, though that probably makes it appropriate for a snow day. I can recommend it only to those who have recently seen Midsummer Night’s Dream and/or some other high school theatrical production. Get over It is a light, frothy teen comedy about a high school that is putting on an adaption of Midsummer Night’s Dream, turned into a musical with the addition of a dozen songs written by the director, who is not only a drama teacher but also the head of the Fine Arts Department. (At Weston the director is in the English Department. I don’t know if that’s significant or not.) The twist is that these high-school students are also living through a plot that’s vaguely reminiscent of Midsummer Night’s Dream — appropriate enough since Shakespeare’s own plot involved a group of actors who performed a play within the play. The movie is fun but weak. Here’s an unedited comment from a British teen:
Well….yes. Some of the acting, at least, is pretty good. In particular, Kirsten Dunst presented a convincing Kelly/Helena. The casting, however, turned out to be confusing from a Weston point of view, though of course that’s nobody’s fault. It was hard for me to remember that it was Dunst who was playing Helena and Melissa Sagemiller who was playing Hermia: Sagemiller looks more like Katherine Donahue, who played Helena at Weston, and Dunst looks more like Anna Been, who played Hermia at Weston, so that’s how I think of the two roles now.
Thanks to the wonders of Tivo, Barbara and I were able to watch the opening episode of Dollhouse, “Ghost”, a few days late. It turned out to be part fun and part obligation — fun because it’s Joss Whedon, and obligation because it’s Joss Whedon. Although I’m not going to jump in and pronounce judgment on the series based on a single episode, my first impressions are that it’s no Buffy but is still good enough to make me want to watch the next few episodes. I wonder, however, how Whedon is going to have any chance of developing the personality of Eliza Dushku’s character, given that the entire premise of the show is that she has a new personality in every episode. Well, we’ll just have to see. Some associations and possibly related thoughts:
Then again, maybe all these associations are irrelevant. Finally, like Mark Bernstein, I wish it weren’t on Fox.
My students sometimes ask me whether the mathematics in the television show Numb3rs is real. This question, among others, is explored in a fascinating book, The Numbers behind Numb3rs: Solving Crime with Mathematics, by mathematicians Keith Devlin and Gary Lorden. Most of the book consists of excursions into specific mathematical topics that arise in various episodes of the show; these excursions are really spinoffs, as they take an idea (that might be mentioned in passing or might be the entire basis of an episode) and discuss it in an accessible manner that goes far beyond anything on the show. If you’re interested in real-world applications of math, these chapters are well worth reading for their own sake, even if you’ve never watched Numb3rs. But I specifically want to comment on my students’ question with regard to what’s in this book. Not surprisingly, the authors get asked the same question that I do. Here are some excerpts from their answer: Is the math in Numb3rs real? So there! Read the book for more details. But the views of Devlin and Lorden may be out of date. A more recent and contrarian view comes from Mark Bridger, a mathematician at Northeastern University who maintains a blog about Numb3rs, from which these excerpts are taken: January 3, 2009:
One of my sophomores is appalled at the list of movies that I haven’t seen. Whenever she mentions one or another of her favorite movies, it almost always happens that I haven’t seen it. So she gave me an assignment to see the following eight:
I’m not convinced that I should see all of them. I’m not even convinced that I should see any of them, except maybe Slumdog Millionaire. What do you think?
Last night’s New Year’s Eve festivities included watching Juno, which neither Barbara nor I had seen before, even though it was released over a year ago. On the basis of reviews and personal recommendations, I had expected to like this movie. It exceeded my expectations. I’m sure everybody knows the plot by this point, but I’ll still stay away from spoilers in these brief comments. My major observation is that all of the actors were entirely convincing in their portrayals of various teens and adults, most notably Ellen Page as Juno, who kept reminding me of various Weston students of mine. No students in particular, I hasten to add — just different generic students at different points. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney were much more genuine than the parents in the typical movie about teenagers, although I kept being distracted because I knew I had seen Simmons before but couldn’t remember where (I’m not good at actors). When I looked him up, I discovered that he plays Dr. Skoda, who appears off and on as the consulting psychiatrist in Law and Order; the temperaments of the two characters are almost identical, thus reinforcing the distraction. Also, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman were effective (if a bit creepy) in their roles as the soon-to-be adoptive parents. Early in 2008 there was some chatter about whether Juno glamorizes and therefore encourages teenager pregnancy. Frankly, I don’t see it. Admittedly, Juno isn’t portrayed as a bad kid, as the right-wingers would prefer; she doesn’t suffer much for her mistake, and her friends and family are all accepting of her. But that doesn’t mean that the movie glamorizes pregnancy, and since Juno immediately decides to have the baby adopted, it shouldn’t encourage the standard worry among adults that a girl will want to get pregnant in order to have a baby who will love her. In fact, since neither Juno nor her family is dysfunctional, what we have here is simply a straightforward tale of how a normal (if rather counterculture) teenager grows up and interacts with adults and with other kids. It’s well worth seeing, just for the quality of the acting if nothing else — but it’s also worth seeing because it’s such a refreshing and captivating story. I’ll have to ask my student who recently moved to Weston from Minnesota about St. Cloud, where the adoptive parents live in the movie. The director portrays it as a lot like Weston. Addendum at 8:10 PM: The message of all this is not that more birth control is the answer. The message is that Time Magazine picked up on the bandwagon of sensationalizing teen pregnancy, and that bandwagon is out there because of Britney Spears’ sister pronouncing how wonderful it is to be a teen and to be pregnant… The Juno movie, the Juno effect. The Juno movie in a lot of ways was a great movie from my perspective because it showed the dignity of a human life before it’s born. It’s a pro-life movie and it sends a wonderful message to kids. But it also is a movie that glorifies teen pregnancy to some extent. To say that there will not be that many side-effects, that you can get through it, that it is not such a colossally terrible thing, and it also glorifies in some respects teen sex, although I think the message of that movie is that teens are not prepared to have sex and should not be having sex. This analysis is just plain wrong. The movie doesn’t glorify teen pregnancy, and it doesn’t send a message. It’s not a political document. It’s a story, a work of art, which presents a group of characters and deals with the internal and external conflicts of the main one, just as stories usually do.
I mentioned two days ago that I was going to watch N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős, a documentary that had been enthusiastically recommended to me by my former student, Kelly Mathislife. She writes that N is a Number is the “best movie ever” — although she does admit to a slight bias since Erdős is her hero. So now I’ve watched it, with help from Netflix, which coincidentally delivered the DVD on Erdős’s birthday! This really was a genuine coincidence, since I had put it in my queue a couple of months ago with no idea when it would rise to #1. Anyway, Kelly knows that I certainly intend no disrespect toward her when I point out that of course she was exaggerating; N is a Number isn’t quite the “best movie ever.” It isn’t even even the best documentary ever. But it’s definitely a well-made, captivating documentary that should be watched by every math teacher, math student, and mathematician. It becomes totally clear that Erdős meets Paul Graham’s criteria that I discussed two days ago: absolute honesty and caring obsessively about his work. Erdős, who died 12 years ago at age 83, was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th Century and certainly the most prolific; he is best known for his peripatetic life style, having had no fixed abode and collaborating extensively with hundreds of other mathematicians wherever he traveled. The movie is successful at vividly letting the viewer know the kind of person Erdős was, portraying him in person and through the eyes of his collaborators. Fortunately the filmmakers were willing to use subtitles extensively, since the accents of various Hungarian mathematicians (and others) could get in the way of ready understanding, even though almost everyone in the documentary was speaking English. As a math teacher, I thought there was a bit too much of an emphasis on anecdotes, but that’s a small cavil; I use anecdotes myself in similar ways, and I recognize that it’s the best way for the film to appeal to a general audience, who wouldn’t want to watch or listen to lots of mathematics. I want to quote a couple of snippets out of N is a Number. One comes from Ron Graham — another Graham! but no relation to the aforementioned Paul Graham, as far as I know — who has a major role in the movie:
That’s what should happen from time to time in our math classes, but it almost never does, even at Weston, except in last year’s Friday-afternoon optional after-school math get-togethers. The other snippet comes from Erdős himself:
How Platonist can you get? This is clearly the right attitude toward the mathematical endeavor!
As I was reading Paul Graham’s essay, “Some Heroes,” it struck me that I’ve never liked being asked who my heroes are. In his second and fourth paragraphs, Graham reflects on the question itself:
I had never thought of that criterion before, but perhaps it would unstick me. Then I thought of the statement from one of my former students that Paul Erdős is her hero. [Brief aside: it’s tough to get the correct diacritic over that o. The natural tendency is to try for an unlaut — Erdös — especially since umlauts are relatively easy in HTML. But in Hungarian the diacritic looks like a double acute accent rather than an umlaut, producing a character with Unicode ID 0151. Thus you want “&#” followed by “x0151;” in HTML. End of aside.] So I wondered whether Erdős would fit the description in Graham’s next paragraph: After I made the list, I looked to see if there was a pattern, and there was, a very clear one. Everyone on the list had two qualities: they cared almost excessively about their work, and they were absolutely honest. By honest I don’t mean trustworthy so much as that they never pander: they never say or do something because that’s what the audience wants. They are all fundamentally subversive for this reason, though they conceal it to varying degrees. More on Erdős after I watch the movie about him. But note that Graham’s characterization is not a definition of “hero”; it’s simply a comment on two of their properties. Graham’s twelve heroes are Jack Lambert, Kenneth Clark, Larry Mihalko, Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Morris, P.G. Wodehouse, Alexander Calder, Jane Austen, John McCarthy, the Spitfire, Steve Jobs, and Isaac Newton. Could I make a similar list (though surely not duplicating any of Graham’s)? I don’t think so. But it did make me think about the issue. Which people have influenced me to such an extent that I would consider them to be my heroes? Would I really “decide what to do by asking what they’d do in the same situation”? Would my list consist of people who “cared almost excessively about their work” and “were absolutely honest”? I suppose Isaac Asimov, Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Bertrand Russell would come to mind first. And maybe Johann Sebastian Bach. And probably Martin Gardner and Noam Chomsky. And it’s a cliché to put one’s mother and father on such a list, but it’s a cliché for a reason, so I will do that as well. And shouldn’t Shakespeare and Ibsen be on the list? And perhaps James Joyce? Well, that’s twelve, but I’m not convinced. This bears more thought…
Two and a half years ago I wrote a brief negative review of Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, by Ben Mezrich. I suggested that the account seemed to be fictional (even though it claims to be non-fiction) and that it “alternates between melodrama and tedium.” Now they’ve gone and made a movie of it, 21. The plot outline on IMDb asserts that the movie is a “fact-based story,” But Drake Bennett’s article about it in the Boston Globe has this comment on the original book:
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the Globe article certainly makes me skeptical. Read the article, not the book.
In yesterday’s post, I recommended watching the movie of Mozart and the Whale before reading the book. And then I got to thinking about whether this was the natural order: after all, in most cases a movie is written after the book on which it is baed, so why shouldn’t it also be watched afterwards? In standard mathematical fashion, let’s see whether we can abstract from the concrete example of one movie/book pairing to the more general case. What happens with other such pairs? Sometimes the order doesn’t matter. And often I read a book as soon as it comes out and then have to wait for the movie, so the order is imposed artificially. What are the consequences of reading the book first? On the plus side, you have the freedom to visualize characters and scenes as you wish, and you can learn the necessary background that might be omitted from the movie. On the minus side, the movie is usually a disappointment, precisely because it can’t possibly capture everything in the book. Furthermore, my own view is that surprises and plot twists in a movie are more effective when one hasn’t read the book first. There are surely exceptions, but on the whole I come down on the side of always reading a book after seeing the movie wherever possible.
On February 20 I reviewed Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger’s Love Story. After seeing and enjoying this fascinating movie, I decided to read the autobiography on which it was based. (Can I still call it an autobiography when it was “written” by two people, both Jerry Newport and Mary Newport? Not to mention Johnny Dodd, a writer for People who served as ghostwriter and who is duly credited?) I highly recommend reading this book — after you see the movie. Not surprisingly, the movie had to leave out lots and lots of material, and occasionally had to take artistic license, but it doesn’t actually contradict anything in the book, either in fact or in tone. The major difference is…well, I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, so let’s just say that the Newports’ relationship and Mary’s psyche turn out to be much more complicated than portrayed in the film. Again, no surprises there. The only real problem with the book is that the first-person point of view changes without warning from section to section. Presumably Dodd interviewed the Newports extensively and fashioned the narrative out of their information with an attempt to capture their separate voices. But apparently he isn’t skilled enough to succeed at this endeavor, since it’s often impossible to tell who’s speaking except from external clues (like mentioning the spouse). Of course this makes me wonder whether he is actually capturing the voice of either Newport; probably what’s coming across is Dodd’s voice.
Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger’s Love Story? I was initially skeptical — definitely intrigued, but still skeptical. The premise sounded too sentimental. It was going to be a chick flick, I figured. It was going to be what my friend Meryl calls “heartwarming,” it was going to be mushy. But it turned out to be none of those things (except, perhaps, heartwarming). The subtitle correctly prepares the viewer to expect two protagonists with Asperger’s Syndrome. But almost all the other characters as well were living with Asperger’s (or other forms of autism). And what I definitely hadn’t realized was that the movie is a semi-documentary, a fictionalized account of the lives of two real people: Jerry Newport and Mary Meinel-Newport. But even before I learned that, I knew that I had to see this movie, since some of my students have Asperger’s and since one of my ten favorite books is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Definitely go see Mozart and the Whale for an unforgettable experience that is truly sympathetic without being at all sentimentalized! What makes this a successful movie is the melding of the demands of fiction with the demands of a documentary. To meet the former, Norwegian director Petter Naess has emphasized a strongly traditional story arc with well-developed characters and plausible conflicts. To meet the latter, the film sets its diverse but self-aware characters firmly in the real world, with jobs and homes and even friends. The diversity is especially important, at least from my point of view. Over my career I’ve taught over a dozen students with Asperger’s, and I’ve worked with more than a few in the software industry; they all defy stereotypes, since no two are alike. The only aspect of the movie that rang a false note to my math-teacher’s mind was the inappropriate male-female ratio. In Mozart and the Whale almost half of those with Asperger’s are female, whereas in reality only 20–25% are. But Barbara reminds me that the movie does not show a random sample, but only those who volunteered to participate in a group; even among people with Asperger’s, society surely pushes females to be more sociable and more willing to participate in groups. (I’m dimly convinced that this is somehow related to the issues I discussed yesterday in my post about girls and math, but I haven’t yet worked out just how.) You’ll have to see the movie to find out where the title comes from.
I wasn’t completely convinced that I wanted to watch Ratatouille, but it seemed like a good choice for light entertainment over winter vacation. And indeed it was. Don’t let the fact that it’s a Disney animation make you think that it’s only for children; there’s plenty in it for adults. Indeed, it’s hard to see how younger children are going to understand much of what’s going on. But of course that’s often the case in works that are aimed simultaneously at kids and adults. By now you know the premise behind Ratatouille, so I won’t repeat it. Suffice it to say that Pixar has outdone itself in the quality of the animation, reveling in the hundreds of individually distinct rats that move with convincing verisimilitude. The actors provide convincing voices, making the rats sympathetic without sappy anthropomorphism. The attitudes toward French cuisine are also convincing. We have the snooty food critic who desperately wants to write a negative review but in the end is too honest to do so. (The French may be corrupt in other regards, but not about food.) We have the recently deceased chef who demeaned his profession by placing his name on popularized frozen foods (sound familiar?) and by writing a book (in English, of course) called Anyone Can Cook. OK, that seems to contradict my claim about French attitudes toward cooking, except that it explains why Gousteau (hmmm…) is dead and why his book is in English. And, of course, we have our hero, the rat Rémy, who knows the importance of every herb and of correct presentation. He can even turn a humble peasant dish (ratatouille, of course) into a gourmet success. So go out and rent the DVD. It’s not just for kids.
How can a Woody Allen movie be so boring? I just couldn’t make myself care about any of the characters in Match Point. There was no wit, no humor — in a Woody Allen movie of all things! Maybe I shouldn’t judge, since I gave up about half way through, but I just couldn’t stay interested enough to watch the rest of it. Ebert makes this comparison:
I guess it’s too bad that I didn’t watch the whole thing, but the first half sure didn’t seem to be to be in the same league as Annie Hall or Manhattan.
Delayed post (originally written 8/24): Sigh. The movie of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix turned out to be a disappointing mess. I had carefully avoided all reviews beforehand, but maybe they would have warned me. Usually I read Ebert before choosing to see a movie, but of course there’s no choice in the case of Harry Potter; I knew I was going to see it anyway. Actually, now that I read Roger Ebert’s review, I am convinced that he missed the main flaw in the film. Ebert focused on the unexpectedly dark tone, but that wasn’t what bothered me. Without discussing it with each other, Meredith and I independently reached the same conclusion: of course a huge amount had to be omitted in order to transform a long novel into a film, but so much was chopped out that the plot became completely incoherent. As a result, no one’s motivation was clear. Maybe the filmmakers assumed that everyone has read the book anyway, but that’s no way to make a movie. It needs to stand on its own, and this one didn’t. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon Magazine calls it “perfectly satisfying.” Feh. I’m looking forward to a better job of #6 and #7.
Some Like it Hot-buttered, by Jeffrey Cohen, is an amusing and well-written mystery about popcorn. Well, no…though the title correctly suggests popcorn and old movie comedies, the popcorn is actually quite peripheral — merely a vehicle for delivering poison to the victim. The novel is about one Elliot Freed, who renovates an old movie theatre in New Jersey to turn it into a venue for old comedies. Don’t expect noir, don’t expect a police procedural, don’t expect a serious mystery at all. But do expect to have fun with a bunch of interesting characters. Freed’s movie theatre is appropriately named Comedy Tonight, and that’s what Cohen’s novel provides as well. I’m ready to read his other books.
How nerdy can you get? A movie about typography? About a font??? (Well, actually, it’s a typeface, but the ubiquity of Windows and Macs has trained people to call typefaces “fonts”; I’m sure I’ll slip up and do so here.) Helvetica is an absolutely wonderful but very geeky movie with a rather limited audience. Graphic designers, computer aficionados, and those of us who care about the appearance of type will all love this documentary. If you’re not in any of those three groups, go see it anyway. You’ll learn something. You might even enjoy it! Although I was intrigued from the get-go, when I started watching the DVD I was initially reserved in my enthusiasm, because the first half hour or so of Helvetica is a paean to that particular typeface, which I don’t much like. (Note the rarity of it in this blog, though I do offer a small concession by putting my headings in Helvetica.) I was worried that the rest of the film would continue in its unvarnished one-sidedness, hitting the viewer over the head with the claim that the ubiquity of Helvetica is due to the fact that it’s the solution to all font problems, the font that can be used everywhere. But fortunately it turned out that there was a healthy balance of opinion, including quite a number of articulate remarks by designers who refuse to see Helvetica as the be-all and end-all, ranging from sensible traditionalists to off-the-wall grunge fans. Of course the issue isn’t really which font you prefer. (Some people even like Comic Sans, after all.) The real issue is whether you want typography to say something or whether you want it to be transparent. That question is explored well in Helvetica, though the bias is still quite clearly in favor of Helvetica in particular and transparency in general. I suppose my position is somewhere in between: I don’t want typography to disappear from consciousness altogether, but I certainly do want it to help the content shine through. |
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