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posted by [personal profile] mmoa_writes at 06:25pm on 28/12/2007
Finally watched Jurassic Park from beginning to end last night. Find it interesting that even the animatronic/CGI T-Rex has difficulty doing anything to his prey with such tiny arms - lends itself quite nicely to the scavenger/predator debate.



Eurgh. Nollywood makes me want to scream - I think it's the naive over usage of music that really makes the films seem unprofessional - it just undermines the drama. Having said that, I perk right up with every mention of 'coco yam porridge'. I think traditional food is for Nollywood what over lavish dance routines are for Bollywood.

It also frustrates me to see the silly, nice girls forever succeeding: it's such wishful, slightly warped thinking on the part of the (usually) male directors/scriptwriters, as the only successful women in the real West Africa are absolutely not pitiful, over-polite and submissive (except to their mothers, if they're sensible at least, but that's common sense) but shrewd, subversive and almost deceptive... in the nicest possible way.

With fabulous headgear.



Would anyone like to see a new version of Rapunzel at the Queen Elizabeth's Hall, (south bank centre) on the 2nd January with me? I'm getting free tickets (two apart from mine) from my agency.
There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] ekzept.livejournal.com at 12:18am on 29/12/2007

there are lots of strange stories, or at least themes, captured in Jurassic Park as the canonical American entertainment product. for a science-based movie, it has some damaging ideas, worse than the James Bond notion that exploding a portion of a computer causes it to respond with an orgy of sparks and explosions.
  • real power lies with the rich, and because they are private if benevolent dictators, they can get far more accomplished than the fumbling public, however talented, or the bumbling government
  • (therefore) there are many hidden solutions to scientific and engineering problems which otherwise appear insurmountable, so, when the rich are threatened, they'll fix it. thus the rest of us needn't worry.
  • (corollary) until the rich worry about something global, like climate change, there's no real reason for the rest of us to worry, at least any more than we should because of our collective pathetic lot.
  • no problem is too big to surmount or project too big to accomplish if you get just the right small group of outrageously well paid people.
  • reptiles and amphibians really are the same, aren't they?
  • a 70 million year old immune system can still protect you against modern flora.
  • John Milton was right, wasn't he, in Paradise Lost: those damn scientists are evil, mostly because they don't take enough philosophy courses, disparage poetry, and take all the good money at university from the humanities.
  • you really oughtn't mess with Mother Nature, as Mary Shelley opined.
  • all mathematicians are aloof, if principled, Charlie Eppes notwithstanding. wait, Eppes is principled. naw, can't be. too emotional.

 
posted by [identity profile] mmoa.livejournal.com at 03:44pm on 29/12/2007
*snorts* Even the name frustrates me: it really ought to be Cretaceous, you fools!

The reptiles and amphibians thing really got to me - they didn't once explain why it would be okay to fill in gaps in the DNA of an extinct dinosaur with bits from a Bull frog's chromosome (I'd have said that bird-like reptiles and amphibians are pretty much identical: apparently dinosaurs were likely to have been warm blooded).

I also dislike the typical view of scientists as somehow unable to comprehend why resurrecting an extinct ecosystem would be dangerous, being so arrogant and into their research that they can't see beyond it (much like your last point).

And the Mother Nature argument likewise gets to me. However, I must confess that unlike the permanently stupid James Bond movies, I was quite taken with the detail put into the effects of Jurassic Park.
 
posted by [identity profile] ekzept.livejournal.com at 03:25am on 31/12/2007

And the Mother Nature argument likewise gets to me. However, I must confess that unlike the permanently stupid James Bond movies, I was quite taken with the detail put into the effects of Jurassic Park.
oh, no doubt. it is gorgeous.

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