Neil deGrasse Tyson got quite exercised while watching the movie Gravity, which seems to be garnering rave reviews. In case you didn’t know, it’s about two good-looking astronauts (George Clooney and Sandra Bullock) who become marooned in a space capsule. I’m sure I’ll see it some day.
Tyson weighed in on Twitter. He wasn’t happy about the science.
Some of his tw**ts:
After all that, perhaps wary that’s he’s been too captious, Tyson adds this:
Scientists walk a fine line when calling out inaccuracies in movies involving science: we’re irked by things that could easily have been fixed, but being too critical makes you look like a geek. I know I was rankled by the movie Evolution (although it featured a reference to “Coyne and Orr” on a classroom blackboard), but I was mostly annoyed that it was a dreadful film.
Did Tyson stay on the right side of the line?
And, if you saw the movie, did you like it?
I found his tweets amusing. I really enjoyed the movie too – very gripping and suspenseful.
No. It’s a dreadful mix of reasonably OK science and really bad misinformation, with no clue as to when the story switches from one to the other. It deserves to be lambasted by intelligent and well informed people.
yeah, he did
I’ll be seeing this very soon at an IMAX theater in 3D.
The science parts could be wrong or partly wrong. How would I know? And I may not care. For what it’s worth.
When I motored my way through Star Wars series (hey, the first three)I already knew the science was deeply questionable. I loved them anyway. You don’t watch these for the science. You watch them for the hope.
I haven’t seen the movie…but, if I understand the basic premise, it’s not unlike a couple people in a sailboat getting capsized a few hundred miles away from Guam deciding their only hope for survival is to swim to Hawaii. And they successfully proceed to do so by swimming due south.
I’m all for willing suspension of disbelief, but there’re limits. At the very least, you need to offer up some sort of self-consistent fantastical device, like a magic wand or the particle of the week.
Cheers,
b&
“I’m all for willing suspension of disbelief, but there’re limits.”
This. And Hollywood almost always exceeds them.
And the frustrating thing is that Hollywood’s the perfect place for doing impossible things in a believable manner. Just set this particular movie 50 years in the future and give them atomic jetpacks and air manufacturers, and build the dramatic tension by the particle of the week damaging the equipment. Now you can get all the orbital mechanics correct — it’s not that hard — and you don’t have to worry about Neil twittering about how clueless you are.
Cheers,
b&
Forget the atomic backpacks. If you’re going to do this sort of plot, just make Poul Anderson’s A Bicycle Built for Brew.
That would be so very freaking cool.
Must admit, I don’t know that one….
b&
Can we stop blaming everything on this “Hollywood” bogeyman? Hollywood makes tons of movies, ranging from excellent to horrible. And this particular film isn’t even really a “Hollywood” film. Cuarón is a true auteur who maintained a very high degree of control. He blocked attempts by executives to inject a love story, or flashbacks, or explosions that make noise in space (although they still slipped one into one of the trailers). And it was shot almost entirely in England (partly in Lake Powell). This is a “Hollywood” movie in the same sense that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a “Hollywood” movie — yes, the funding came from there, but that’s about it.
The movie is light on plot because it tells a very small story, almost in real time. It’s set in an alternate timeline, where we’re still using Space Shuttles and the Chinese have their own space station (apparently built mostly by Russians). And it has the best depiction of what it’s like to be in space since Apollo 13, or maybe 2001.
If you see it in 3D, you’re not even going to be thinking about that stuff. You’re going to be engulfed in a masterfully-crafted cinematic spectacle the likes of which you’ve never seen. You’ll be too busy alternating between feelings of awe and dread to notice a few piddling little “gotchas”.
I saw Gravity in Imax 3D and I was definitely thinking about all the factual errors and plot holes. The pseudo-realism only heightened the cognitive dissonance.
What plot holes? The plot’s not big enough to have holes.
They stretched a few points, like the locations of the objects, sure. Although, again, since it’s already in an alternate timeline, I’m not even sure that counts as an error. (Do we hold it against 2001 that Pan Am is still around?)
It’s just weird to me that this movie’s already getting so much flak. Especially when it’s from the same people who love Star Trek, where people still run around on the floor when the power’s out and there are aliens that look exactly like humans.
I saw the movie and thought it was slow and boring (luckily it was very short). I imagine it would have been 100x better if I paid for the 3D version.
I saw it in 3D.
I hate 3d movies – the visual gimmick always seems to take away from the story and contributes nothing: except for Avatar, and now Gravity. There were a few places where they got gimmicky but, all in all, the 3d was effective in putting the viewer into the environment and making you a part of the story. Yes, they sacrificed the science to tell a story. I enjoyed it a great deal – I’m not sure it would be worth seeing twice but it certainly made my heart pound.
Two other movies that good esthetic use of 3-D were “Hugo” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3-D was excellent save for the bizarre postscript.
I just saw the movie this afternoon having read rave reviews. I’m not a scientist but I thought it was a dreadful fluff piece on so many levels, really stupid and sickening pablum. One of my main questions wasn’t even the perfectly coifed hair, it was where did they go to the bathroom?
Anyway, if you want a really dramatic and important film, much much shorter, watch this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRGVTK-AAvw#t=573
Check out Karen Nyberg, currently on the ISS, for a real-deal micro-gravity ‘do. I think it’s great. This is her Twitter photo. http://goo.gl/EObhK4
Meow!
b&
I want to be an astronaut just so I can have space hair.
Fantastic film and intelligent people can recognize the scientific faults while still enjoying it.
I enjoyed the film, more because it happened in space and seemed pretty accurate. I never took notice of her flacid hair though, but come to think of it…
I know a movie (“Breezy” with William Holden–directed by Clint Eastwood) where a couple on the California shore of the Pacific Ocean, watch a sunrise over the Pacific.
I watched Neil’s tweets coming across and give him a lot of credit for speaking up. Maybe scientists should get themselves Hollywood agents and accept consulting positions on movie productions.
Maybe the movie will be on Netflix streaming someday; I’ll watch it then.
Well Prof Brian Cox (is he as big a star in the US as here in the UK?) was apparently scientific advisor for the dreadful film “Sunshine”. Forget that it is merely a re-hash of every sci-fi movie you’ve ever seen and instead ask how puny humans, living on the speck of dust they call earth, could ever hope to re-start a dying star.
The best advice Cox could have given was to not make the film in the first place. If he wanted the fee so badly why didn’t he at least ask for his name to be removed from the credits?
So, having fun is bad?
Don’t bother on TV. See it in 3D IMAX now, or don’t even bother. Go big or stay home.
Ridiculous movie. Not only was it scientifically absurd (unless technology is a religion for you, ha!) it was emotionally maudlin and intellectually shallow. It was painful to watch how she survived impossible feats such as slamming into physical objects at high speeds that were crushing everything composed of metal all around her.
It’s a film for idiots who like being brainwashed that some miracle is going to save us from certain destruction.
There seems to be some funny parallel between the catastrophe zombie genre and the fabulist survival genre.
The end is going to be far more mundane. Famine, pandemics, and violence of the really ugly sort.
Not with a bang but a whimper!
Didn’t dislike it *that* much, but… I kept waiting for the movie to have a point. *SPOILER* woman loses daughter in accident, becomes depressed. Regains faith in god/heaven due to disaster.
Also Clooney is barely in it for a mere 10 minutes! Would have been a better story if he was actually dead *the whole time.* Woman acts like complete nitwit for first half of the film, then decides to (wo)man up.
Pro: the only movie I’ve seen where 3D effects made actual sense.
I want to see the movie but I usually avoid ones where inaccuracies will bother me too much (like Troy – I will probably never see Troy).
It’s okay to be a geek and look like a geek as long as you aren’t disturbing those around you in the theatre.
I don’t know enough about that period of history to have noticed them, let alone be bothered by them. I enjoyed it.
/@
Yes, it’s a blessing and a curse to know about ancient history and the Iliad. 🙂 It is why I have a hard time dealing with Gladiator as well but I loved the opening scene. As a few others have said in this thread – Hollywood has the means to be accurate but choose not to; I feel the same way with Gladiator and Troy. The real history is far more interesting than the fiction they made up.
In Troy, I thought Brad Pitt was more wooden than the horse.
Diana, just curious, by inaccuracies in Troy do you mean departures from the Illiad, or departures from plausible depictions of Bronze Age warfare?
I ask because they made an interesting choice to tell the mythical story of Achilles but without the supernatural elements that dominate the Illiad.
I think the cultural context of who Achilles and his love of his boyfriend Patroklos for starters. Once I got to that part, I couldn’t watch it at all. Also, since the gods pretty much move the plot of the Iliad, it skews the whole thing and modernizes it so that character and psychological behaviour moves the plot more than it does in heroic epics.
I suspected there were so many things I wouldn’t like given these fundamentals that I would annoy anyone watching it with me.
I meant to say who Achilles was and his love of Patroklos. Even Alexander the Great mimicked Achilles with the Patroklos part. I like my Achilles like I like all my Bronze aged heros, single minded and kinda gay. 🙂
Later Greek renditions of Herakles really show a dislike of that old hero with the once brutish Herakles reduced to a big mook that’s always hungry.
Thanks. Maybe it’s just me, but I always thought Hector was the real (but tragic) hero of the Iliad. This may be a result of modern sensibilities.
I think Troy handles the Hector story reasonably well. It’s the only Eric Bana performance I’ve ever enjoyed.
Also, I never liked that the divine intervention that helps Hector defeat Patroklos in the Iliad, and as I said, that sort of stuff isn’t in the film.
Achilles sexuality in specific, and classical Greek and Roman male sexuality in general aren’t well understood by modern audiences. In particular you have to portray someone who is
1) The apex of manhood, admired and feared on both sides
2) Capable of throwing a pout storm over a woman captive (Briseis) but also
3) Thrown into fury over the loss of his male lover Patroklos
It would be nice to see Hollywood try, but I regretfully understand their hesitation.
By real hero of the Iliad, I mean to me personally, I’m under no illusion that Homer and his contemporaries didn’t see Achilles as the admirable and also tragic protagonist of the Iliad.
They saw Achilles as the hero alright but everyone was really just living out their fate. Achilles was fated to live a short life full of triumph and even his mother couldn’t protect him by dipping him into the river Styx (pro tip: if dipping your kid into the river Styx to make him invincible, make sure to get all the spots. You may therefore need to do it twice). Even heros and demi gods and gods don’t get to escape fate.
Hector gets his turn in the Aeneid (poor Roman substitute but the Romans needed a nice creation story that tied Augustus to Venus and to Rome).
The hero of Odysseus in the Odyssey and all those themes are pretty set too – the loyal woman who waits for her husband for a generation and spurns suitors as best she can, heck even the dog waits for Odysseus! The hero who can’t help being a liar and bragger in his cunning…..all that fun stuff.
Oh Achilles did indeed pout over not getting all the women to rape but they were on par with all the gold and other trinkets he would plunder from a conquered city. In this respect his brooding is accurate and is the reason Patroklos gets killed – it’s the central theme of the Iliad which opens, “sing goddess of the wrath of Achilles”.
The Iliad is far from sentimental but it comes close when Priam takes his hands and begs for his son’s body to be returned to him.
I know I’m a total pedant about these stories but I think it would be nice to teach people about the cultural context and try to convey that. Otherwise, people get things all mixed up. Having said that, I hope it convinces more people to learn about the Classics – I know watching dreadful renditions of Classical stories got me to read about Classical mythology (Edith Hamilton’s tattered book is still on a shelf somewhere), which made me want to take Latin in highschool, which led to me studying Classics in university and brought me to here – where I complain pedantically about movies and their bad treatment of Classical things. 🙂
Pedants are the worst.
The worst what? Please be specific, preferably using numbered headings. And references.
+1 nice!
I’m going to see it, accompanied by some other HS physics teachers. Phil Plait’s review was much more generous.
About the hair, I had a GF who used Aquanet…you couldn’t move her hair with a crowbar.
In highschool, I went to kiss a girl and nearly had my eye poked out. (Treated with certain products, hair can be a lot more dangerous than a BB gun!)
That was just god’s way of keeping you chaste. 😉
Then probably god didn’t succeed that time either.
Where there’s a Will, there’s a way (or a Wilma).
We called that shellacking your hair in the 90s when we went out to clubs. 🙂
LOL. It probably could easily be set on fire though. 🙂
Easy fix: preface the beginning of the movie with the caption, “This motion picture depicts scenes of unrealistic astrophysics, scientific discretion is advised.”
Oh hell, you may as well just watch this:
http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/viral-video-unleashes-carrie-coffee-shop-155157580.html
Odd how — years after shows like Candid Camera and Game for a Laugh — people’s first reaction is that something genuinely weird is going on.
/@
Remember, they did multiple takes, and they’re only showing you a few seconds of the best reactions. And, the way some of those scenes were edited, the reactions could have been to the initial emotional outburst. Plus, they admitted they had lots of accomplices in the room; I’m sure at least some of them gave convincingly emotional reactions, and we could well be seeing those.
b&
It cant be anywhere as dreadful as Prometheus, which is anti-science fiction movie
Oh hell – Prometheus is anti scientist! How could they assemble the dumbest people ever to go on that trip? That movie was just awful. Everyone just Stop. Making. Alien. Movies. You killed the franchise after Aliens.
It is definitely not anywhere near as bad as Prometheus. It’s reasonably close to accurate, which I guess makes some of the imperfections stand out to some people.
It’s called willing suspension of disbelief.
I am willing to suspend disbelief for a movie, even one pretending to be about incidents in ‘real’ space. This one is really a sci fi movie. Attractive astronauts not dieing after a bunch of accidents in orbit = aliens and noisy space explosions. Not much different, really.
What really cheeses me off are the science and nature documentaries with blatant inaccuracies for the sake of extra sensationalism.
Lemmings!
/@
I don’t think Neil deGrasse Tyson needs to worry about looking like a geek to people who follow Neil deGrasse Tyson on twitter.
Saw in IMAX3D. Visually powerful, like you’ve heard. A survival story essentially. Misses greatness, for me anyway, for two reasons. One, the filmmakers don’t seem to understand that human beings working in space through the medium of advanced tools is gripping stuff. Not because if something goes wrong your dead but rather because it’s just friggin amazing if you think about it. Not enough wonder for me. And two, Sandra Bullock is given a lame and morbid backstory that only interupts the critical events unfolding before our eyes. It’s pure Hollywood contrivance. I didn’t need this portal into her psyche. I assume that anybody w. the credentials to work in space is spectacularly intelligent and driven and curious and interesting. Isn’t that enough?
But the backstory is so minimal, it seems silly to me to gripe about it. It’s a few lines of dialogue — no flashbacks (like the studio wanted), no introductory scenes (as in a standard action flick), or anything.
One of the few books I have shlepped in many moves is Lawrence Krauss’s “The Physics of Star Trek” (still in print)
I enjoyed that book too. As well as all things Star Trek (more or less).
Enterprise?!
/@
Enterprise had so many self inflicted wounds, but probably the biggest problem was a prequel series that had such contempt for the original. In particular, two of the most interesting elements of the original that the Enterprise team seemed not to understand and to actively dislike:
1) The Prime Directive
2) Vulcans
When Manny Coto took over in season 4 he tried to fix #2, but he did it in typical Manny Coto style, with a long, tedious three-parter where the heroic human captain saves the Vulcans from themselves and sets them on the path to cultural renewal.
Hey! Neil got himself on NBC Nightly New. See the NBC video inside this story by Alan Boyle, NBC News science editor.
http://goo.gl/qmYNhZ
How often do we see astrophysicists on the nightly news? Who knows, maybe he’ll get a spot on Leno or Letterman.
He was on the Daily Show or Colbert after criticizing the astronomy of a different movie
It was the stars in the movie, Titanic but he also has weighed in on Thor’s hammer, and we all argue about Thor’s hammer sometimes.
“We” being geeks?
/@
Well yes we being “geeks” though with Thor now on the big screen, the hammer discussions have spread to the non geek as well….or perhaps the non geeks have been assimilated into geek culture all through the seductiveness of Thor’s arms (I have a friend who has a man crush on Thor).
It seems to miss the point that the Mjolnir’s apparent mass varies with the virtue of the person trying to pick it up.
I saw it in 3D and thought it was great. But it was not done along the same plot lines as other recent exciting movies. It ends too soon when she lands the escape pod in a lake, swims to the surface and walks away. It would have been more exciting if the lake were full of crocodiles, and then some lions when she defeats the crocodiles and climbs out on shore, and then ………….. etc.
That’s almost the ending I wanted for Battlestar Galactica. They land in Africa, a lion mauls Lee. He yells, “I once was a pretty man” then the lion eats him.
And then she sees a squad of Gorilla soldiers beneath the shattered remains of the Statue of Liberty.
LOL!
Saw it in 3-D and thoroughly enjoyed the visuals. Having read about the errors in physics, I have to wonder why they didn’t get more of the details right; it seems like they could have still made a gripping movie that would have been just as satisfying. My real complaint, though, is with the ponderous and silly pop
psychology/spirituality that encroaches on the film as it progresses. I would love to see the film with about 80% of the third act’s dialogue (monologue, actually) cut, and have the action just play out in the silence of space. It worked very well when it combined beauty and terror visually, and when things were operating on a visceral level (most of the film), but fell flat when it tried to get inside the Bullock characters’ head. That said, I’d see it again just for the visual imagery!
Oh….the soundtrack was really good too. If you stay thru the closing credits you can hear all of the films themes reprised. The score suited the movie just about perfectly.
Agree about the pop psychology stuff – an unnecessary distraction from the actual story.
Haven’t seen Gravity yet so no spoilers! But a good friend says we really ought to see it in 3D at the theater for the full on effects. I hope “someday” means while it’s still running at the cinema for you, Prof. Ceiling Cat.
Also, I love Dr. de Grasse Tyson’s spunk, but I’m a fan of real world physician and ex-US astronaut Story Musgrave. Check this out, from his wiki page:
“He received a BS degree in mathematics and statistics from Syracuse University in 1958, an MBA degree in operations analysis and computer programming from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959, a BA degree in chemistry from Marietta College in 1960, an M.D. degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1964, an MS in physiology and biophysics from the University of Kentucky in 1966 and a MA in literature from the University of Houston–Clear Lake in 1987.”
I know, not everyone can be like him, but it’s not unprecedented.
Oh, I forgot to add that on STS-61, “the HST [Hubble Space Telescope] was restored to its full capabilities through the work of two pairs of astronauts during a record 5 spacewalks. [Medical doctor and astronaut] Musgrave performed 3 of these spacewalks.”
Astounding.
That’s a lot of degrees!
As long as we’re picking nits, those in the know always refer to “microgravity”, never “zero gravity”, in LEO (low Earth orbit).
At 230 miles above the Earth’s surface (the altitude of the International Space Station), gravity is 89% of its strength at sea level. If you stood on a 230 mile high tower built on the North or South Pole, you would weigh 89% of what you do now. From this perspective, gravity at this distance is neither zero nor micro.
For objects in free-fall, which is what an orbit is, the term microgravity is used to account for a myriad of extremely small accelerations. Weight is for all practical purposes zero, but tidal force is strong; the spaceship and every object in it experiences an extremely weak stretching force because the part of the ship facing the Earth is accelerated faster than the part facing away from the Earth. The term “microgravity” accounts for, among other things, this slight differential.
“Weightlessness” is perhaps the more correct term in this discussion, – but I am guilty of picking nits 😀
It’s just a little unfortunate that the correct terminology you just went through really doesn’t help with understanding the distinctions between mass, weight, gravity etc.
It’s tricky but not that tricky, but the language really gets in the way on this one.
Reading it again, I agree it is not good writing. But it was 5:30 AM, and I am suffering from a 7 hour jetlag, I should have waited a week.
No it’s not your writing, the terminology really is weak.
For example g is not really zero, but we often refer to it Zero-G. And Free Fall is accurate, but not intuitive, because if you’re in orbit you’re not falling in the conventional sense (though you are falling in the vector calculus sense).
Part of it is just that our language is pre-Newtonian.
Gully Foyle could have shown them how to do it!
It would’ve been a jauntier film, no doubt.
/@
Vorga, I kill you filthy!
Tyson tweeted —
Wikipedia shows that today in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Iridium and Globalstar satellites orbit at altitudes of approximately 400 and 850 miles respectively. Yes those two LEO constellations are higher than 230 miles, but not 100x higher.
I haven’t seen the movie. I assume the movie is set in the future because I don’t recognize their space suits. My point is Wikipedia shows LEO is a valid choice for a communications constellation today and in the future. Tyson would be wrong to say this is wrong on science.
Yes, iridiums are in polar low earth orbit which makes seeing them quite common as well. I have serendipitously seen a iridium flare a couple of times.
It’s set in an alternate world where we still have Space Shuttles and the Chinese have their own space station (apparently mostly made from Russian parts).
Fact, in 2009, two communications satellites collided in LEO, so I say this aspect of the movie was based on that fact.
Visually impressive, and overall I enjoyed it. However it did seem like they kept trying to throw whatever extra obstacle they could think of at Sandra B’s character. For example, unless there was a puncture, I don’t understand the lack of fuel. I also missed why the ‘object’ at the end lost its orbit and re-entered the atmosphere.
SPOILER: The object burning up at the end is the rest of the escape pod.
Buzz Aldrin likes it. (Shwell Thanksh @ 28: Note his use of “zero gravity”!)
/@
Tyson is right.
It needs to be said.
And there is ONE reason for all the nonsense:
It is another one of those films where a panicky girlie needs to be rescued by a man.
As role model as bad as the films in my youth.
How else can you get man-boys to take a night off from their video games?
o.k., we live in capitalism.
cannot deny that film producers want a share of the money videogaming boys can spend.
Even if I could guess that a few movies at the expense of pink toys and slimming diets could bring in more, in addition to the longterm effects on girls´lives: less health damage AND a field of interest with a better chance for a wellpaying job.
Just my point: chance missed, again.
Leaves me as bitter as I am old.
(And do not forget – if your remark was not only irony, ladyatheist – the problem often crops up in the education system: better chances for girls seem to be shortterm disadvantages for boys. To sell the longterm view has been hard each time)
On the other hand, she was a woman scientist/astronaut/HERO OF A MAJOR MOVIE. You really want to ignore all that because she got some help and advice from a guy? You know, that happens sometimes in real life.
Were the astronauts in Apollo 13 less manly or heroic because they got help from the men at Mission Control?
There’s an arc over the course of the film. In the beginning she’s rescued, but by the end she’s triumphantly independent.
That said, it is interesting to think about it if the sexes had been reversed.
I was already thinking that Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t have been this sloppy before his masterpiece of nearly fifty years standing was mentioned.
Mind you I haven’t seen the film yet, but I think I can take Neil deGrasse Tyson’s word at face value.
You mean where he says he really enjoyed it?
If we want to criticise films, while I quite enjoyed Oblivion (Tom Cruise), there are several daft bits important for the story line but just daft. The plot depends on him being out of radio contact with his base. This is a technology with space flight & remote robotic patrolling flying machines so the idea that they would have to rely on line of sight communications is silly – they could have satellites for goodness sake!
I have a whole rant about Oblivion that starts with – why would a machine intelligence need squishy humans to do repair work? Also, why do they need water? Everyone always wants the Earth’s water. A friend said for Oxygen but I figured you could get it from a nebula with less resistance.
Movies have always been full of errors and inconsistencies whether it be defying the laws of physics, misrepresenting the relative positions of Java and Krakatoa, giving ants only four legs (A Bug’s Life), giving cowboys pistols that apparently never need re-loading or by playing fast and loose with historical facts.
Most of the time it doesn’t matter as we know it is fiction and the only thing that matters is whether or not the story grips us. I guess we all have our own sensitivities about which particular blooper outrages us to the point that we can no longer enjoy the movie.
I’m a bit surprised (Jerry) that you found Creation dreadful.
I enjoyed it; though it had it’s grating moments. I think Bettany (one of my favorite actors) and Cumberbatch (another excellent actor) did a fine job in their roles. (Huxley came off as an aggressively grouchy creep; but maybe that’s not too far off the mark.)
I’d be curious what you found dreadful about it. ??
… or even its moments … (sheesh, I hate that error.)
He did not go too far.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with picking apart a movie, or a book or whatever.
If movie makers don’t want to hear it, they will consult scientists. That would be a small expense and it might draw in more geeks.
Imagine the publicity if Neil had instead sent out a similar bunch of twits about all the stuff they got right. “OMG — can’t believe I’m gushing over Sandra Bullock’s hair, but did you see the way it floated?”
b&
I saw it in 3-D Extra Experience. It was OK, and I enjoyed some of it, especially the special effects and the floaty feeling. The views of earth and the aurora borealis are stunning, but the movie is very disappointing and thin on plot and dialogue.
I’d give it at the most 69%.
The best thing I saw today was a nice program about Darwin on eqhd, “Darwin’s Brave New World”, narrated by one of Canada’s heroes and environmental activists, Dr. David Suzuki. There were cameo appearances by Prof. Coyne, and Dr. Dawkins!
Here’s a little trailer.
http://eqhd.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=495:darwins-brave-new-world-&catid=6:catd
Hey I saw that Darwin show too! It’s a series. I thought it was pretty good but didn’t catch the whole thing.
Thanks, Diana! I didn’t know it was a series, but just in case, I set the PVR to record any and all. 🙂
I’ve just done the same!
Wait a minute! Was he tweeting during the show? I hate when people do that!!!!!
YOU DON’T LIKE “EVOLUTION”? We can’t be friends any more. I know it was thoroughly silly, but I love that movie.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has replies to the press attention to his tweets & says that he said nice things too. 🙂