Signal Watch Reads: Feynman

A few months ago Jim Ottaviani visited Austin during the promotional tour of his graphic novel, Feynman, a biographical sketch of famed physicist Richard Feynman.  It turns out that Jim's day job is in the field of digital libraries, and he had a sort of informal chat at the library, where it turned out he knew two of my colleagues from graduate school.

Its a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.*

A few things:  

1)  I struggled mightily in high school physics and stuck with geology as much as possible in college when asked to to take science (rocks!).  My investigations into modern physics (stuff they were not teaching at my high school) have been mostly catch-as-catch can through television specials, reading articles online and this, my third comic book on physics in any way, shape or form.  I know some basic principles, I know some names, I understand that light behaves like a wave and a particle, and aside from that, I sort of stop and start with what everyone who has ever owned more than one Pink Floyd album knows about Schroedinger's Cat.  And, as I understand it, what we consider the point of the experiment is incorrect.

2)  I don't pretend like I had ever heard of Richard Feynman before this book hit the shelves.  The pop-culture aspect of science also eludes me, and so I had not read any of Mr. Feynman's books or sat about urbanely quoting the man over coffee served in a small and delicate cup.  

3)  I have a hard time remembering the basic fundamentals of physics.  Every time I return to the material, that part of my brain re-engages, and neurons re-fire, but its not something I think about very often.  Its sort of how I wrote down what the Higgs-Boson is just so I had a place to go look it up every time I needed to know while reading an article on the LHC.

My hat if off to Jim Ottaviani for his handling and structure of a book that could have been an horrendous mess.  The book is really 85% biography, 15% physics lesson in order to explain why Feynman matters to Sally Q. Reader.  As he states in the afterword, I had no doubt that Ottaviani had done his research enough to both understand and not judge the man particularly one way or another, and to internalize what Feynman was on about enough to share it with an audience as clueless about physics as myself.

Movie Watch 2012: Annie Get Your Gun

As biography, the splashy Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun is, charitably, less than accurate.  But that's not really the point of Annie Get Your Gun, so if that's what you were looking for, you may want to move on.

To be honest, I thought I'd seen this movie as a kid, but I now believe what I was watching was Calamity Jane featuring Doris Day, so that's going to be somewhere in my queue.

The movie is a bright, colorful MGM spectacular from 1950.  Annie is played by Betty Hutton, in her defining role as the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show sharpshooter of legendary skill.  Howard Keel, in an early part, plays Frank Butler (he'd show up a few years later in Calamity Jane as Buffalo Bill, just to add confusion), a fellow sharpshooter and the man of Annie's dreams.  The performances are hokey and broad, but this isn't exactly A Streetcar Named Desire, so much as a sweet story in service of big show tunes.  The "Get Your Gun" of the title is, of course, not literal, and drives the feather-light story.

Take a minute today

This is one of my favorite stories from 2011 (which aired originally in 2007)

I am a regular listener of This American Life and I also pitch them a few bucks every once in a while. They're public radio. Its how it works these days.

Last year I heard this story, and I just realized I'd never linked to it, and I'd never shared it, but its one of best stories I enjoyed last year in any medium. It has everything, and its not all that long.

What blew my mind was that I was just on the This American Life site and noticed they're selling t-shirts (which will not fit me, and tell me the entire audience for TAL is comprised of the spindly little nebbishes and hipsters in tight t-shirts I always supposed comprised the listening audience).

So, listen to the story, and then go buy the shirt. Do not reverse the order of these steps or it will ruin everything.

Movie Watch 2012: Comanche Station

PaulT and I journeyed to The Alamo Drafthouse on 6th street for the occasionally-occurring* Alamo Cinema Club.  Both Paul I really dig this experience.  Its a bit like the better bits of film school, but with no quiz.

Tonight's screening was Comanche Station featuring Randolph Scott and directed by Budd Boetticher.

As was much discussed post-screening, Comanche Station feels very much like the transition between old school westerns and the coming Spaghetti Western or grittier Western ushered in by the likes of Sam Peckinpah.  While somewhat coded, the movie suggests some of the harsher realities of the frontier, and partially due to the era portrayed and material its working with, doesn't fit neatly into modern molds of dealing with how the west was settled.

Mostly, its a story about a frontiersman who barters a trade for an anglo woman captured by Comanches.  At a closed trading post, they meet up with a sly character from Cody's past who can ride along with them to provide protection, but who is also a threat to both Cody and the woman he's transporting back to her home.

In many ways, its a movie about assumptions versus reality with the characters.  And it works.  The narrative is clockwork tight, the cast small and the feeling of distrust among the members of the party is poisonous.

Anyhow, a lot was said about the work of Budd Boetticher, an independent producer operating just outside the studio system, and I'm curious to see his other westerns (all featuring Randolph Scott).





*its like movie geek Brigadoon

DC lurches and flails around a bit with cancellations and new books

I waited a few days before posting because...  eh, who cares?

Anyhoo...  to nobody's surprise, DC's New 52 is going to remain DC's 52 as they cancel 6 titles and bring in 6 new titles.  Its actually not a terrible plan from a business perspective, I'd guess.  It sounds like they had the next 6 titles ready to go, and they're employing the Jack Welch-approved cull the bottom 10% rule to their own titles.

They're losing:

• Static Shock
• Mr. Terrific
• Men of War
• Black Hawks
• Hawk and Dove
• OMAC

I'm not overly surprised by the loss of any of these titles.  Aside from OMAC, the other 4 of these I read were a mess from issue 1, and as much as I wanted to support Sterling Gates after his work on Supergirl, I hadn't grown to like this iteration of Hawk and Dove, and Liefeld's art is not my cup of tea.

Its unfortunate to see Static fail once again, when the potential for the character to be DC's Spider-Man seems so high.  And as much as I have liked Mr. Terrific in theory, Wallace's take in issue 1 felt so generic and disposable, I abandoned the series immediately rather than deal with hoping that it might improve.

Blackhawks was trying to be like the current GI Joe, which is already a successful franchise elsewhere, so I couldn't figure out why they bothered to try to simply echo an established and beloved property you can already buy, and Men of War seemed simply ill-conceived.  Its a war book or its not.

OMAC I've kind of enjoyed, but I don't really care that its vanishing.  Its like when that show you catch occasionally disappears and its only months later that you realize its gone.  I can certainly live without it.

As replacements, we're getting:

End of the Week

Ms. Grahame and I hope you have a swell Friday.

Just, you know, no trouble, if you don't mind.

Movie Watch 2012: Christine (the movie about the magical, haunted car)

You know, the movie was never as good as the book, but the movie holds up pretty well, all things considered.  It features mostly in-camera and practical effects.  The cars are sleek, the music is cool, the atmosphere holds fairly well (though not as well as the novel), and it captures something unique about quietly going off the rails in high school, I think.

I am not sure I'd want to go back and read the book of Christine.  There's no way it would be as good at 36 as it was when I was 13, but the book seemed pretty fun at the time.

The novel seemed much more subtle in its approach to the corruption of Arnie, but the movie still does its job thanks to Keith Gordon's gradual transformation through the film, 3 parts script, 7 parts Gordon.  Credit to director John Carpenter for this one, too, even if its a kick in the gut to watch car after car get destroyed in the name of making this movie.

The movie also stars John Stockwell as Dennis, and Alexandra Paul as Leigh Cabot.  You will remember Alexandra Paul as The Virgin Connie Swail in 1987's Dragnet or as Lt. Stephanie Holden from Baywatch.

I always liked the idea of a car with a personality.  It was like if KITT were a homicidal maniac (that would actually be KARR, I suppose), and the fact that Stephen King made Christine the world's worst girlfriend on top of everything else was just a stroke of genius.

The movie does have one of the best closing lines of any movie, and I have to tip my hat.

"God, I hate rock and roll."

Remember that one, kids.  Also, never mess with a nerd's car.

Signal Watch saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

Hiatus break in favor of keeping up with movies for 2012.

I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Its fun for the whole family.  Take Grandma and your toddlers.*

Its okay.  Nothing groundbreaking.  Nice cinematography, convincing acting, appropriately bleak sets and settings, and they did a much better job of condensing the plot than the Swedish film counterpart (even if they lifted some of the story changes).  Rooney Mara is pretty good.  They eliminated the various sexual exploits of the hero enough that I didn't see the entire story as one long Mary Sue story for a middle-aged journalist imagining the sorts of women with whom it might be interesting to canoodle.

After reading the book and seeing a completely different movie of the same book this year, this may have been a bit much.  I sort of wonder if the fact that we're all already familiar with the book and movie has hurt the box office numbers as (1) why bother to do this again? (2) those familiar with the story might not actually want to see some of that up on the big screen and (3) people already had numerous chances to take a pass on the material and are just continuing to do so.

But, mostly, I wonder if the studios need to rethink releasing grim, adult thrillers upon the public during the holiday period.  I certainly wouldn't pitch this one to my folks for a night out at the movies (its not exactly Tintin).  That said, its after the holidays and the theater I was in this evening was packed.  So maybe it'll have some post-holiday staying power as Granny heads back to Arizona or whatever.

I wish I had access to an orchestra, because I have an idea for a Goulet-style theme song for the movie.  Jamie is already sick of me trying out various lyrics on her.

*do not do this

Hiatus

I really don't feel like doing this for a few days.

Also, in Googling "hiatus", I learned that there's a part of your GI track called the "hiatus".  Here's what it looks like when you pull your hiatus while eating nachos.

why did they draw in that guy's bangs?

I shall return anon.