Hitchens Tribute

I was not lucky enough to have met Christopher Hitchens, but have, on a couple of occasions, met and spoken to the great Lawrence Krauss. Krauss was lucky (as he would admit himself) to be considered a friend of Hitchens. Here is a remarkable tribute to Hitchens that Krauss gave at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention:

Gay Marriage

Kudos to Obama for finally not riding the fence on gay marriage:

Obama supports gay marriage, taking a risky stand

As Bill Maher said on twitter (@billmaher):

I predict Obama coming out for #GayMarriage will help his re-election cuz it will make Repubs defend bigotry which will energize Dem's base

People will support a candidate that stands for something.  Do you think LBJ's advisors were telling him to support the Civil Rights Act?  I doubt it.  It was a political risk but a stance that had to be taken ... as is this one.  History will not look kindly upon those on the wrong side.

This is perfect because it forces the Right to defend the indefensible. At best
they appear as religious zealots. At worst ... out-of-touch bigots.  And I don't believe that this is going to cost the votes that some people think it will.  Those strongest in opposition of gay marriage were the type of voters that would not have voted for Obama anyway.  And despite the tendency of Black and Hispanic voters to generally be against gay marriage, this is hardly the issue that would push them into the "reed-in-the-wind" Romney camp.  Romney ... who has never had an opinion on anything.

Taking a principled stand is what the base of the Democratic Party has been looking for Obama to do.  Everything doesn't have to be politically calculated.  Take a stand, goddamn it!  People want to be inspired, not lulled to sleep.

Podcast(s) of the Week

I've always enjoyed Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's work, partly for their own aesthetic but also for the undeniable real life drama that encompassed the artists themselves. Politics and Mexican culture are integral to their art and probably the reasons that I'm drawn to them. The Phoenix Art Museum, where we are members, is lucky enough to have several paintings by both artists.

These 2 recent podcasts do a great job of talking about the tragedies and experiences that influenced Kahlo as an artist and a person.  Interestingly, her marriage to Rivera could be construed as both ... a tragedy and a positive experience.

Frida Kahlo podcast from Stuff You Missed in History Class:

Part 1
Part 2

They've both been portrayed on-screen very well, most notably in Frida with Salma Hayek in the title role and Alfred Molina as Rivera.  I also like Ruben Blades as Rivera in Tim Robbin's Cradle Will Rock, a very good movie on art and politics in 1930's America.

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I will listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson in whatever capacity he speaks.  He is the most vocal American proponent of an active space program and one of our best spokesman for the popularization of science and a reality-based world.  Here he is on a recent NPR Science Friday with Ira Flatow speaking on both of those things:

NPR's Science Friday - March 24, 2012

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Earl Scruggs, who just recently passed away at the age of 88, was one of the pioneers of bluegrass music and a true innovator of banjo playing, creating a completely new way of picking.  Most people think they don't know of him, but if you have ever heard the getaway music in Bonnie and Clyde or the theme to the Beverly Hillbillies, then you have heard his playing.  He was greatly influential and touched musicians in completely different genres.

Terry Gross interviewed him in 2003 and after his passing, NPR re-aired the interview:

Earl Scruggs: The 2003 Fresh Air Interview

This NY Times article of his passing has a short video of some of the people that he influenced:

Earl Scruggs, Bluegrass Pioneer, Dies at 88

Environmental/Political Song of the Day

Subdivisions by Rush

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone
Subdivisions --
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions --
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights...

Oh, the delicious irony. I knowingly live in the suburbs and curse my existence. Sadly, it's mostly out of financial necessity. But even that necessity is becoming less and less so. In the suburbs, you have less access to mass transit and less access to the things we actually like to do. As you've seen from this blog, we're always downtown anyway: protest marches, art museum, ballgames, farmer's market, the Audubon Society, etc.

Rush (the band that is) kicks ass. This song sounds awesome but has great lyrics. I particularly like,

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

The organization of living is just a metaphor for people's opinions. This song is from 1982, but just as relevant today.

Brainwashing

In a surprising, and probably unintended, bit of candor, a local church tells us what they are really doing with today's children.

The dictionary.com definition of "programming":

to cause to absorb or incorporate automatic responses, attitudes ...

“There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents.” ― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.” ― Steven Moffat (Doctor Who writer)

One of the merits of good science fiction is that it's not all about the special effects. It's about the ideas. Of course, there are directors that don't understand this. Michael Bay comes to mind. However, director Shane Carruth does.

Carruth made the sci-fi film, Primer, for $7000 in 2004. Hell, Michael Bay's hair stylist made more than that. We're talking Robert Rodriguez, El Mariachi, Rebel Without a Crew territory. Sleeping in your parents' basement, McDonald's catering style.

When you are making a movie for that amount, you have to wear a lot of hats. Carruth wrote, directed and starred in the movie. His parents catered the movie ... for real.

I've had the DVD for a year or two. I had heard a good review of it on NPR or some podcast. I can't remember exactly. But, I'm glad I finally watched Primer.

There are no special effects. The shooting locations are a garage and a U-Haul storage location. The technical dialogue is intentionally complicated, perhaps to obfuscate, but not in a bad way. More just to confuse enough to make the story plausible.

Primer is about 4 engineers making some kind of device in their garage in their free time. The way they talk about it, it is some type of device that will be market-changing once it is perfected. Two of the engineers think that that is all the device is ... something industrial and useful. The other two engineers, through extensive experimentation and fine-tuning without the other two, discover that it is much more: a time machine.

They refine enough that each can travel ahead in time a day or so. They use this to obtain stock information that will allow them to make short term investments and make money. The complications arise out of the fact that each time they travel, they are creating multiple timelines and iterations of themselves. These iterations encounter each other and confusion ensues. Add on to that the fact that the story is told in a style that is either non-linear (a la Memento) or such that you don't know whose timeline you are following. The ambiguity and causal confusion is what makes Primer, and these types of stories in general, interesting.

I can't get enough of time-travel/multiple timeline/causation stories. No one can honestly say that they haven't thought about what they would do or how they would change things if given the ability to travel in time. Or as the tagline says,

"If you always want what you can't have, what do you want when you can have anything?"

I can't honestly tell you where to find this movie. I think I picked it up used at a Blockbuster Video. As far as I can tell, it is not on Netflix Instant. Anyway, if you want to see it, and can't find it, I'd be more than happy to mail you my copy.

What good is it?

... and yet it moves

"Eppur Si Muove" -- "And yet it moves" -- words often attributed to Galileo when he was forced to recant prior to the Inquisition. He may or may not have actually said them, but the point is salient regardless. He was describing the movement of the Earth around the Sun, a configuration that the Church did not want to concede as it would shatter their world view. Whether the Church wanted the Earth to be the center of the universe or not, it doesn't really change the facts. Maybe Galileo wouldn't have been so quick with a comeback if he had been given the "comfy chair" torture:



As is often the case, history repeats itself, and we have reached a point (at least in America) where a segment of the country feels their belief system crumbling and lashes out at those things that call it into question. Whether it is fighting the teaching of evolution in our classrooms(by putting creationism on equal footing, like in Tennessee) or the denial of climate change, some (and you know who you are) are exerting an all-out assault on science and reason.

Evolution and climate change may not be convenient to your idealogy, but it doesn't lessen their validity. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said,

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

It's not a fair fight. Scientific progress, by its very nature, works on the assumption that all involved parties that are in disagreement are still respectful and are desirous of using reason to resolve that disagreement. Deniers, however, do not. Innuendo, out of context cherry picking of data and ad hominem attacks are all tools that they will use. Scientists will not and cannot use these same tools. It's like carrying a knife to a gun fight, as it were. Climatologist Michael Mann, on a recent NPR Science Friday broadcast (March 2, 2012) explores this issue.

Wunelle shared a great video from this last weekend's Reason Rally. In the video Adam Savage (of MythBusters) gives a short, straightforward account of what reason means in our daily lives. To simply drive a car, fly on a plane, use a computer ... you are relying on hundreds of years of theory, research and experimentation by scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It's not magic. The very people that rail against scientists, that stunt our children by fighting against real science and promoting religion and pseudo-science -- these people have no problem taking advantage of those technologies that are utterly dependent on science.

I propose that all that have a problem with the teaching of science and with the use of reason stop using the fruits of those things. The way I see it, unless you are living in some Quaker or Amana colony driving around in a horse-drawn carriage and spurning the use of technology, you are a fucking hypocrite.

Earlier I said that "some" were against science. That "some" is obviously largely conservatives and most notably the the religious among them. Why this group, that I believe is more vocal than actually large, gets such a prominent place in public discourse - I will never know. But, it is our responsibility as thinking beings to challenge the superstitious and ignorant. As Lawrence Krauss recently said,

" ... Choosing to censor or distort knowledge rather than risk the possibility that such knowledge, or the technologies that result from it, might challenge faith or confront preexisting ideological biases is a something that should better characterize the Taliban or al Qaeda rather than the Republican Party.

As we head into the home stretch of a too-long presidential primary season, it is not too late for the public to turn their back on candidates that turn their back on empirical reality and scientific progress."

When seeing a speech by Rick Santorum, one feels that some elaborate joke is being played on us. This is all just a modern day Monty Python sketch. But it's not and the gravity of the situation takes some of the fun out of it. If we don't fight against this revisited Inquisition, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves for what will become of our society.

Podcast(s) of the Week

This week, I'm highligting two podcasts, one from This Week in Science and the second from Philosophy Bites:

This Week in Science, Feb 02, 2012:

An interview with Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America is the highlight of this podcast. In contrast with a similar recent book by Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, Otto's book gets into how politicians, in general, seems unwilling to debate issues of science openly. When it is less controversial to hold a public debate on religion than one on science, you know something is fucked up with society.

I have not read either of Otto's or Mooney's books, but they're on my want list. It seems to me that Otto's would be the better for a general audience.

During the interview, Otto also mentioned The Debunking Handbook. This is a 7 page PDF file that you can download here. The Handbook is a good read and is a nice tool when you are debating with purveyors of pseudo-science (Creationists, climate change deniers, etc.).

Beyond Otto's interview, the podcasts has some interesting discussions on the psychology of Facebook posts and the nature of contagious yawns. The podcast runs about an hour.

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From Philosophy Bites, Ronald Dworkin, American philosopher and constitutional law scholar, on the "Unity of Value -- Is liberty compatible with equality?"

This is a very good discussion on the practical applicability of philosophical concepts like liberty and equality. Dworkin contends there is a "right answer" to societal problems. Despite what politicians lead you to believe, liberty and social equality are not mutually exclusive.

He says that you can't look in the dictionary for a philosophical definition. You have to be able to apply your concept to the people that are affected by it. We have to "justify what we do in their name" and there can't be a disconnect between theory and action.

The discussion is about 19 minutes.

Prius

A bit overdue, here's my review of how we've done on gas mileage with our Prius that we got last May:

This model is rated 50 mpg city, 48 hwy by Toyota and 48/45 by the government's official ratings.

Even in the worse conditions ... fully loaded, on trips to Flagstaff or California climbing a mountain (the dips you see in the graph) ... we have consistently been well above all the ratings. In the summer, when I have the A/C on, I'll have tanks in the 52 or 53 range, but this time of year, I get between 55 and 58. The car is just perfectly suited for how I drive: 30 to 100 miles per day, mostly city driving.

And because of the constant feedback, I've drastically changed how I drive. I rarely speed. I coast to stops as much as I can. I accelerate slower. It's not that I can't do any of those things - the Prius has plenty of power, accelerates quickly and climbs mountains with ease. It's that I can see how doing those behaviors affects gas mileage. Manufacturers should put the MPG rating devices in all cars, hybrid or not. People would get better gas mileage just because they would change how they drive.

All in all, we both love the car. Rides great and has more room than any of the cars we've had before. It's nice that you can drive 600 miles on an 11 gallon tank of gas. I don't like that I have to drive for my business. But as long as I am, I might as well do the best I can.

Podcast of the week

"It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I'm in the car a lot. Honestly, a ridiculous amount of time. And I've ran the course on sports talk radio. You can only listen to local sports meatballs complaining about stuff they have absolutely no knowledge of for so long. Ideally, I'd listen to NPR all the time but a lot of the shows I like aren't on when I'm driving around. So, for the last year I've been on a huge podcast listening kick. My car stereo has an auxiliary port so that I can plug my Blackberry into it. Plus, I've gotten in the habit of walking 3 or 4 miles each night, so I'll put a bunch of podcasts on the Blackberry and tool around the neighborhood in bliss.

Since I don't have near the amount of time I'd like to read, I've found listening to the podcasts gives me an opportunity to still learn and keep up on films, music, history, science, philosophy, etc. This week, I'm just going to the give you the general sites for the podcasts that I most often download. But, in future weeks (and every week, I hope), I will highlight 3 or 4 specific podcasts that I've listened to that I thought might be of interest to my few readers.

Anyway, here we go:

Filmspotting -- Put on by a couple of Chicago film geeks, these podcasts are frequently over an hour long. They review new movies, but maybe not the blockbusters that most other reviewers waste time on. These are actual good movies that may not get pub from mainstream reviewers. Plus, their shows have themed topics, such as Top 5 Action Thespians, which I just listened to a couple of days ago. Michael Phillips makes frequent appearances as do many indie filmmakers. While they get into a bit of film theory, it's not necessarily all high-brow and a casual film watcher can still get something out of it.

The Naked Scientists -- I like listening to this with my son. It's a British show that explores current science topics in-depth, often interviewing leading scientists. But, it doesn't get too overly technical, so is good for an audience of all ages. Plus, they bring some humor into it.





Nerdist - Hosted by comedian Chris Hardwick. Very irreverent and often off-color, but Hardwick has channelled many years in the entertainment business and his natural inquisitiveness and nerdiness into relationships with a lot of science and sci-fi talent. This is just a sampling of the guests on his podcasts in the past year: Conan O'Brien, David Tennant (Doctor Who), J.J. Abrams, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the cast of Big Bang Theory, Sir Patrick Stewart, etc.

NPR's Fresh Air -- This is probably my favorite NPR show. Terry Gross is arguably the best interviewer in any medium and has been doing it for over 30 years. She'll interview people from just about any area: politicians, actors, scientists, authors, etc.

NPR's All Songs Considered -- I'm relatively new to this podcast but have been very impressed. As their website says, "All Songs Considered is a great place to discover new music that doesn't get a lot of airplay anywhere else.". They will focus on a specific genre each broadcast and give some play to musicians that you may not have heard of but that are fantastic. One week it might be electonic music, another week punk, and yet another week might be themed.

Philosophy Bites -- If you like philosophy, this is really good. They highlight a specific philosophical concept on each podcast and will talk to a philosopher well-versed in that particular topic. The shows are not too long, frequently about 15 minutes. A few topics from the last year: meaning of life, moral relativism, atheism, Hume on design, humanism, free will. Good stuff.

NPR's Science Friday -- If you listen to NPR, most of you will know what this is. Ira Flatow has hosted this couple hour program on current science topics on every Friday (obviously) for as long as I can remember. I was lucky enough to see Ira Flatow in person a few years back at one of the ASU Origins Symposiums that I attended. He's very knowledgeable and understands the relevance and for science and reason in our everyday lives.

Sierra Club Radio - As you would guess, this highlights current environment topics, often speaking with authors and activists. About a half long episodes.











Sound on Sight - Another in-depth movie analysis program of about an hour an episode.

Star Talk Radio -- One of my favorites. This is hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I believe he is one of the best science popularizers out there and a tireless advocate for science education and space exploration.

These are just a few of the podcasts available. There are zillions of other smart people making great podcasts. All of these can be found through Itunes or the pages I linked to above. Itunes is probably the best place for searching for podcasts of a specific topic.

The best stuff, the most informative talk, the most intelligent insights ... are not on your TV's. What you see on most television is what someone is paying for you to see or that is trying to sell something. Obviously reading books is probably the best way of getting information, but sometimes that verbal interaction between smart people is great way of learning. And I still want to be learning even when I can't be sitting down reading a book. Listening to something of substance makes me feel like that dead time in a car wasn't a complete waste of my time.

"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." -- Ernest Hemingway

... of my youth

Doing a semi-annual purge of my garage, I came upon a box of my paperback books from my late teens, early 20's. Taking a look at pictures I took of them, you get a window into the mind of a shy, but ambitious young man.

It's not just about content of the books, which were great and informed my outlook, but also the cover art. The books are bright, abstract, inventive. All the things that my upbringing in podunk Iowa was not. Escaping into these books gave me the hope that I would not always be where I was then and the impetus to escape once I was able.

I was able to escape, but just not to where I thought I'd end up. Naive me, I thought I'd somehow venture beyond Earth's confines (all sci-fi geeks do) ... or at least save the free world from bad guys and bed the hot Russian spy. Oh well. I may not have done those things, but at least part of me went there - my imagination.

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves."
-- William Shakespeare

Top 10 Movies of 2011

I've put it off too long. I was trying to get a lot of the critically acclaimed movies released late in 2011 watched before making up my list. But, it's already February and I need to go with what I have. I have to admit that I did not see as many movies in 2011 as I normally do. 2011 seemed like a bad combination of a not great year for movies and a rather pathetic attempt by myself to see the movies there were. So, to get 10, I might have dug a bit deeper than normal:

(10) The Muppets - This does a really good job of being both nostalgic and modern at the same time without being cynical or sarcastic (thanks to Jason Segel). My son had never seen the Muppet Show and loved the movie. I grew up on the show and loved it as well.

(9) Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - I think this movie works, and most critic agreed, because of the combination of director Brad Bird (The Incredibles) translating cartoon action to live action, and some levity by Simon Pegg. I think this movie doesn't take itself too seriously like too much Tom Cruise stuff usually does. For a different take, I highly recommend Wunelle's review: "Recombinist ..."

(8) Hanna - I think this was an underrated movie and it was quite awhile ago that I saw it. The cinematography, sparse dialogue and nice performance by Saoirse Ronan all work to great effect. Click the title to see a nice review by Wunelle.

(7) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 - Pt. 2 very nicely ties up both Deathly Hallows and the series as a whole. An especially good performance by the always great Alan Rickman as Snape.

(6) Rise of the Planet of the Apes - I was expecting just a decent popcorn movie and was pleasantly surprised to get a bit more. It should be no surprise that the unexpected bonus is the remarkable performance by motion capture actor Andy Serkis (of LOTR fame) in the role of the chimp Caesar. This performance was deserving of an Oscar nomination.

(5) The Ides of March - Great cast - Paul Giamati, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Clooney and Gosling. Timely subject matter - political intrigue and influence.

(4) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I guess I'm one of the people that likes both versions of this film equally well. While I believe that Noomi Rapace's performance in the Swedish version of the movie is the defining one, I think Rooney Mara does a good job of not mimicking her and makes this her own. The pacing of the American movie is better and does not rely on having read the book as much.

(3) Haywire - Very distinctly Soderbergh in a dialogue and visual sense.

(2) Meek's Cutoff - Subtle, quiet, yet still powerful. Nice performance by Michelle Williams.

(1) Moneyball - If you think this movie is about baseball, you are largely missing the point. it is more about how we value things and how important it is to believe in what you are doing, even when nobody else does. This is probably Brad Pitt's defining performance of his career and one that a younger and more naive Brad Pitt could not have pulled off. It's a naturalistic, nuanced performance. Jonah Hill also does a great job in an understated performance.

Honorable Mention: X-Men: First Class, Super 8, Contagion, Rango, Limitless, Pearl Jam Twenty, Bobby Fischer Against the World

I would like to have seen the following (and surely will this year):
The Descendants
Drive
The Artist
A Dangerous Method
Take Shelter
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Hugo
Shame
The Iron Lady
The Tree of Life
A Separation
J. Edgar
Melancholia
Adventures of Tintin

I have a feeling that if I'd seen any of these, they would have made my top 10.

2012 VNSA Used Book Sale

A sampling of my finds from our yearly trek to the VNSA Used Book Sale:

Sci-Fi

Virtual Light by William Gibson (one of my favorite authors. This is the last book of his that I did not have.)

The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman
The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies by John Scalzi

Science Non-Fiction

Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution by Madison Smartt Bell

The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist by Richard Feynman
Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit
They All Laughed ... Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions that have Changed Our Lives by Ira Flatow
eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben

General Non-Fiction & Philosophy

AThe Lord of the Rings and Philosophy Edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson

The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm
The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol
This Game of Ghosts: The Sequel to Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (yet another book about mountain climbing ... I love these!)
The End of Oil: On the Ege of a Perilous New World by Paul Roberts

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf
Render Unto Darwin: Philosophical Aspects fo the Christian Rights' Crusade against Science by James H. Fetzer
Modern Architecture: since 1900 by William J. R. Curtis
Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress ... by Michael Specter (Wunelle had turned me on to this book and I was thrilled to find it)

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance." -- Confucius

ASU Origins: Something from Nothing

You'll have to forgive my little bit of hero worship. I went to the previously mentioned ASU Origins talk with Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss. My seat was great (despite the iffy photo I took with my phone).

Something from Nothing was mostly as an informal talk about each of their current books: Dawkins' children's book The Magic of Reality and Krauss' Something from Nothing. The talk was unmoderated and bounced around quite a bit from evolutionary biology to cosmology to religion and politics. It was erudite and humorous and as has happened with the previous talks I've went to, I had a great time. Taking place in a packed Gammage Auditorium (the last public commission of Frank Lloyd Wright) on the campus of Arizona State University, it was gratifying to see so many smart people (young and old) who were willing to pay money to hear other smart people talk. I was lucky enough to speak to many of them before after the show. Getting to have a real conversation with rational people was an experience I don't often get. There may yet be hope for my generation and beyond.

During the last talk I attended, I was able to meet, talk with and get an autograph from Lawrence Krauss. This time, I made sure to stick around and speak to Mr. Dawkins. I had him sign the Magic of Reality book that I had bought for my son Alex for Christmas.

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Update: You can view this talk online here: Something from Nothing

Girl Power

What does a Western set in 1845 on the Oregon Trail have to do with a modern action thriller, you may ask? More than you think, I say. I had intended on writing two reviews but in a weak moment, I thought I could save some time and appear clever by comparing Meek's Cutoff with Steven Soderburgh's Haywire. How successful I am remains to be seen. The success of the movies is not in question. Both are outstanding.

Meek's Cutoff is based on a true story of a group of settlers led by Stephen Meek (played brilliantly by Bruce Greenwood), their guide. He's prone to bragging and general nuttiness and the band of weary travellers eventually figure out he may not have any idea where they are going. The trip that was supposed to take a couple of weeks stretches over a month. They're almost out of water and in treacherous lands.

Some might consider Meek's to be slow, but I believe it is for effect. The deliberate nature of the narrative builds tension and anxiety in both the characters and the observer. Being in the 1800's, there is a definite hierarchy of decision-making in the group, with the males ostensibly taking the lead. The male members of the group converse among themselves, the females the same. In one of the most effective plot devices, the conversations of the males are often in heard in the background by the females. But it is done faintly so that the movie watcher is made to feel like the women, barely able to hear what they are saying. I found myself often trying to turn up the volume (was on Netflix) just to hear what they were saying. It was a bit maddening and made me feel anxious. And, I believe, that was exactly the director's intent.

After endless meandering, no clear directing by Meek, and with water quickly running out, tensions rise to the point that the lead female, Emily Tetherow, played by the always fantastic Michelle Williams, takes things into her own hands. I won't say how, as that would give away a bit too much, but it is literal, symbolic and forceful all at once. Besides the previously mentioned Greenwood and Williams, the cast is capably filled by Will Patton and Paul Dano, among others. Dano (There Will Be Blood) and Williams (Brokeback Mountain) have a bit of experience in the Western genre, but the revelation is the virtually unrecognizable Greenwood. Usually playing clean-shaven, reserved and authoritative roles (Presidents a couple of times, Capt. Pike in Star Trek), he is positively wild and woolly here. I recommend this movie. Grade: B+

Haywire, with MMA veteran Gina Carano in the lead role of secret agent for hire Mallory Kane, was another pleasant surprise. Carano has had a couple of bit roles, but this is her first starring vehicle. As you would expect from a non-actor, this is not a Shakespearean role exactly, but it doesn't need to be. Soderbergh plays to her strengths ... a cool demeanor, physicality, great fighting ability, and, let's face it, she's not harsh on the eyes.

The details and intricacies of the plot are not nearly as important as the set-pieces for Carano's action. The plot does enough to carry Carano around to different places/countries and to different scene-chewing baddies: Ewan McGregor as her "boss", Michael Fassbender as a fellow agent, and Mathieu Kassovitz (Amelie) and Antonio Banderas as a couple of diplomatic string-pullers. Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, and Bill Paxton all capably fill roles as her allies.

Movie watchers, and Americans in general, are idiots. As a rule, they are unappreciative of nuance and incapable of picking up plot points unless they are spoonfed them. For this reason, Haywire is the odd action movie more appreciated by the critics than the general audience (a point well made at Antimatter's blog). Perhaps misreading the TV ads, movie-goers expected an all-action movie. Thankfully, that is not what Haywire is. It's not that it doesn't have action ... it's that it is not go-go-go and it is not cartoonish. The action grows out of the plot.

One of my favorite scenes is after Mallory and Fassbender's character have left the party and she already knows of the doublecross. And I'm pretty sure he knows she knows. But they play it coolly. They are showing every sign of a normal loving couple returning home but there is a tightly coiled tension awaiting that moment when they get in the room and he will attack.
The strength of the scene (and the movie) is as much about the anticipation of action as the action itself.

Haywire has a lot of the usual Soderbergh elements: a quirky jazz soundtrack, clever dialogue, and cinematography digitally filmed almost exclusively by Soderbergh himself. Like most good directors (and even some bad ones), you could guess who the director was even if you didn't already know. But in the case of Soderbergh, that's not a negative. I recommend this movie. Grade: B+

For some more takes on Haywire, also check out Journal Wunelle and his review: Root Canal, and also the previously mentioned review at Matter - Antimatter: Annihilation

Now, to tie it all in, here is where I believe these two movies share some thematic elements. Both movies are spare with no effects and infrequent dialogue. Both have a strong female lead who initially take direction from males of dubious intent -- Greenwood's Meek and Ewan McGregor's Kenneth. Through adventures that are either ill-conceived or outright devious, those females discover the duplicity of the males. At that point, they take control of their futures and proceed to an ambiguous and unresolved end. But the destination, ultimately, is not as important as the path and the decision they made. Both have strong female protagonists that would be dangerous to underestimate or as the character Kenneth says in Haywire:

"Don’t think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake."