TV review: Black Mirror

The British TV series available for streaming on Netflix is set in the near future and each episode features a new story with a different cast and deals with the impact of technology on people’s lives, especially miniaturized communication technology that does not yet exist but seems tantalizingly possible, such as tiny chips embedded in our brains that record every aspect of our lives and can be played back at will or software that, by accessing as much information that exists about a person, can re-create a replica that is indistinguishable from a person who died, or immersive virtual reality worlds that are indistinguishable from the physical one.
[Read more…]

Film review: Eye in the Sky (2015)

The 2015 film Eye in the Sky starring Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman is about a joint British-US operation using drones to spy on and kill suspected terrorists in Kenya. The central tension is created by a child who sets up a stand to sell home-made bread in the vicinity of the target and the film deals with the debate in London as to whether the possible death of the child is worth it to stop a pair of suicide bombers from carrying out attacks that will kill many more. It is the equivalent of the trolley problem commonly used in ethics discussions. It is the British who are in charge of the operation, though the drones are operated by the US.
[Read more…]

Film review: Dark Horse (2016)

This documentary is delightful even if you, like me, are not a horse enthusiast or know anything about horse racing. It tells the story of a group of people in a small Welsh coal mining town. The mines, like so many others, had closed and the town struggled economically. A woman who had a job cleaning a department store and also worked as a part-time barmaid had the bizarre idea of starting a small syndicate to buy a race horse and she managed to find 30 people willing to contribute £10 per week. With part of the money that was raised they bought a mare that turned out to be a rotten competitor. They bred that mare with a thoroughbred and named the foal Dream Alliance.
[Read more…]

Film review: Snowden (2016)

I saw this Oliver Stone film a couple of days ago that tells the story of Edward Snowden (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) over the period 2003 to 2013, ending with his trip to Moscow. The films starts on June 3, 2013 with Snowden holed up in a hotel in Hong Kong making contact with journalists Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Ewan MacAskill for the first time and telling them his story, though he had already given them the encrypted documents that would explode into the world that week.
[Read more…]

What’s the point of such things?

The Cleveland Orchestra is considered one of the best in the world. Like all classical music ensembles, it faces the problem that the audience for it is aging. In order to attract a younger and more diverse group, it engages in various programs that have more contemporary and popular music. One of the things that it advertises are things called Movie Nights that say that a film will be shown on a big screen in the concert hall with the score preformed live by the Cleveland Orchestra. They have had films like Back to the Future and the next one will be Raiders of the Lost Ark.
[Read more…]

The making of Star Wars

The documentary below was made in 1977 at the same time as the blockbuster hit was being filmed and takes us behind the scenes, with C-3PO and R2-D2 as our tour guides. It shows how the various special effects were produced at a time when CGI was not available. Interestingly, they do not reveal the actors behind Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2. The last was played by Kenny Baker who died last week at the age of 81.
[Read more…]

Film review: Zootopia (2016)

This is an excellent animated film from the Walt Disney studios that tells the story of the town of Zootopia where all animals, even those who used to be predators and prey in the distant past, have learned to live together in harmony. The story focuses on a rabbit Judy Hopps who realizes her dream of becoming the first rabbit to become a member of the police force that has been dominated by large mammals. She graduates top of her police academy class but faces all manner of discouragement, from her parents who fear the dangers of the job to her precinct boss who thinks that rabbits have no business being police officers and assigns her to parking meter duties in an effort to get her to become frustrated and quit.
[Read more…]