This year I tried noting down every film I watched with a rating. I got 56 altogether, but I might have missed some towards the beginning of the year! They are presented below in chronological order.
Possible awards:
★ Good!
★★ Very good
★★★ Amazing!
★ Bad...
★★ Very bad
★★★ Awful!
These measure my subjective experience of the film, not my objective critique! If I enjoyed a movie, it got some gold stars, without deep analysis of whether it deserved it. And vice versa.
Also I've bolded some titles, to highlight significant films (one I was highly anticipating, is a well-known classic, was just really good, or has some sort of significance to me personally).
If it wasn't the first time I'd seen the film, that is also indicated.
★★ Predators
2010 sequel to the 1987 classic
★★ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
2011 American adaptation of the book
★★ Agora (II)
2009 historical drama starring Rachel Weisz
★ Requiem for a Dream
2000 trippy film about drugs with a score by Clint Mansell
★ Chronicle
2012 sci-fi film
★ Dogma
1999 satirical film starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck
★★★ The Adjustment Bureau (II)
2011 sci-fi film, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt
★★★ The Shawkshank Redemption (II)
1994 drama film
★★★ Megamind
2010 Dreamworks animation
★★ Scent of a Woman
1992 Al Pacino film
★ The Cabin in the Woods
2012 horror/satire film
★★★ The Fellowship of the Ring (many)
2001 Peter Jackson adaptation of the book
★ Prometheus
2012 prequel to the classic Alien franchise
Dark City
Bizarre 1998 sci-fi 'film noir' homage or something
★ Cowboys and Aliens
2011 western adventure
★ Men in Black 3
2012 addition to the franchise
★ The Amazing Spider-Man
2012 reboot
★ Brave
2012 Pixar film
★ The Lost Boys
1987 teen horror film
★ Iron Man (II?)
2008 superhero film
★ American Psycho (II)
2000 psychological thriller
★★ Batman Begins (III?)
2005 first part of Christopher Nolan's trilogy
★★ The Dark Knight (II?)
2008 second part of Christopher Nolan's trilogy
★ The Dark Knight Rises
2012 final part of Christopher Nolan's trilogy
★ 360
2011 drama starring Hopkins, Weisz and Law
★★ Blade Runner
1982 sci-fi classic
★★ The Avengers
2012 superhero film
★ The Secret of Kells
2009 animation
★★ My Neighbour Totoro
1988 Hayao Miyazaki film
★ Stand By Me
1986 coming-of-age film, starring Wil Wheaton
★ The Grey
2012 Liam Neeson survival drama
★ Bridge to Terabithia (II)
2007 children's fantasy-ish drama
★★ Sherlock Holmes (II)
2009 film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law
★★ The Thing
1982 horror film
★ The Thing
2011 prequel to the 1982 film
★★ Road to Perdition
2002 gangster film starring Tom Hanks
★ Brokeback Mountain
2005 romantic drama
★★ Casino Royale (IV?)
2006 Bond film, the first of the Daniel Craig reboot
★★ Quantum of Solace (II)
2008 Bond film, the second of the Daniel Craig reboot
★★ The Fly (II)
1986 sci-fi horror film, starring Jeff Goldblum
Skyfall
2012 Bond film
★★ Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
1984 Hayao Miyazaki film
★★ Laputa: Castle in the Sky
1986 Hayao Miyazaki film
★ Porco Rosso
1992 Hayao Miyazaki film
★ Kiki's Delivery Service
1989 Hayao Miyazaki film
★★ Princess Mononoke (II)
1997 Hayao Miyazaki film
Spirited Away (II)
2001 Hayao Miyazaki film
★★★ Road to Perdition (II)
2002 gangster film starring Tom Hanks
★★ Howl's Moving Castle (II)
2004 Hayao Miyazaki film
★ Ponyo
2008 Hayao Miyazaki film
★★ The Two Towers (II or III)
2002 Peter Jackson adaptation of the book
★ Hook (many)
1991 children's film
★ The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
2012, first part of Peter Jackson's adaptation of the book
★★ The Return of the King (II)
2003 Peter Jackson adaptation of the book
★ Life of Pi
2012 adaptation of the 2001 adventure book
★ 27 Dresses
2008 romcom
Bring on 2013!
Science is a process
Science is a process, not the accumulated knowledge we have thus far.
It's like building a map - the map might change over time and mistakes might even be made that later get retracted and altered, and there might be disagreements about some regions of the map, but that doesn't alter the fact that the territory exists and that, in fact, we have managed to map out much of it and that there is a process by which it makes sense to continue to do so (the scientific method). We are building a map of reality, our universe, Nature, what is true and what is not. There's no a priori reason to believe this territory actually exists, but it definitely seems to, and we've had great success with our map-making so far (see literally all technology).
Saying science is about making up theories at random (something I heard honestly asserted by a fellow trainee teacher this year), or pointing out how scientists now believe different things (have a different map) than scientists in the past as if that invalidates the whole thing, is a misunderstanding of this fact. Science is the answer to the question 'how do we build a conceptual map of reality'? Or, in simpler terms, how do we find out about the world.
It's like building a map - the map might change over time and mistakes might even be made that later get retracted and altered, and there might be disagreements about some regions of the map, but that doesn't alter the fact that the territory exists and that, in fact, we have managed to map out much of it and that there is a process by which it makes sense to continue to do so (the scientific method). We are building a map of reality, our universe, Nature, what is true and what is not. There's no a priori reason to believe this territory actually exists, but it definitely seems to, and we've had great success with our map-making so far (see literally all technology).
Saying science is about making up theories at random (something I heard honestly asserted by a fellow trainee teacher this year), or pointing out how scientists now believe different things (have a different map) than scientists in the past as if that invalidates the whole thing, is a misunderstanding of this fact. Science is the answer to the question 'how do we build a conceptual map of reality'? Or, in simpler terms, how do we find out about the world.
Tribute to Neil Armstrong
In 2009 my crazyawesome family threw a party to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (complete with replica lunar landing module/obstacle course). Since Neil Armstrong has died this week, at the age of 82, my brother Darren has edited some of the footage from the party as a tribute to Neil Armstrong.
The Olympics were good, I admit it, but we've been to the goddamn moon, people.
And, because I can, an excerpt from a certain Harry Potter fanfiction which proves beyond all reasonable doubt that Science is more magical than Magic:
Read it, go on, just the first few chapters...
The Olympics were good, I admit it, but we've been to the goddamn moon, people.
And, because I can, an excerpt from a certain Harry Potter fanfiction which proves beyond all reasonable doubt that Science is more magical than Magic:
And Harry raced back up the stairs and shoved the staircase back into the trunk with his heel, and, panting, turned the pages of the book until he found the picture he wanted to show to Draco.
The one with the white, dry, cratered land, and the suited people, and the blue-white globe hanging over it all.
That picture.
The picture, if only one picture in all the world were to survive.
"That," Harry said, his voice trembling because he couldn't quite keep the pride out, "is what the Earth looks like from the Moon."
Draco slowly leaned over. There was a strange expression on his young face. "If that's a real picture, why isn't it moving?"
Moving? Oh. "Muggles can do moving pictures but they need a bigger box to show it, they can't fit them onto single book pages yet."
Draco's finger moved to one of the suits. "What are those?" His voice starting to waver.
"Those are human beings. They are wearing suits that cover their whole bodies to give them air, because there is no air on the Moon."
"That's impossible," Draco whispered. There was terror in his eyes, and utter confusion. "No Muggle could ever do that. How..."
Harry took back the book, flipped the pages until he found what he saw. "This is a rocket going up. The fire pushes it higher and higher, until it gets to the Moon." Flipped pages again. "This is a rocket on the ground. That tiny speck next to it is a person." Draco gasped. "Going to the Moon cost the equivalent of... probably around a thousand million Galleons." Draco choked. "And it took the efforts of... probably more people than live in all of magical Britain."
Read it, go on, just the first few chapters...
YouTuber and Maths-enthusiast Vihart on reaching your audience
In this video Vihart discusses a surprisingly relevant, to the internet today, piece of writing from the 70s in a video that should be interesting to all, but it has a special significance for me.
Though the theme of the video is how a YouTuber should go about reaching an audience, to me the interesting and pertinent message (as a teacher-in-training) is her opinion towards education. From 02:07 to 02:38 she compares the popularity of her maths videos to the approach, which I am well familiar with, frequently advocated in the modern teaching profession. Watch:
So, food for thought. Next time I hear somebody say that to teach maths (or any other subject) to children we should make it 'relevant', make it about sports or wrestling or whatever, I'll think of Vihart's videos, and see if I can't express some of the feeling one gets from watching them, missing from their approach.
Though the theme of the video is how a YouTuber should go about reaching an audience, to me the interesting and pertinent message (as a teacher-in-training) is her opinion towards education. From 02:07 to 02:38 she compares the popularity of her maths videos to the approach, which I am well familiar with, frequently advocated in the modern teaching profession. Watch:
So, food for thought. Next time I hear somebody say that to teach maths (or any other subject) to children we should make it 'relevant', make it about sports or wrestling or whatever, I'll think of Vihart's videos, and see if I can't express some of the feeling one gets from watching them, missing from their approach.
Russell Brand at a committee about drugs
Another post about Russell Brand. This guy seems to be fascinating me at the moment! I find the argument very compelling that we should treat addiction as an illness (and the implication that drug use, without addiction, may not need to be illegal).
Why do we teach lies at school?
I learned something interesting recently about gravity. Well, it's something I'd heard before plenty of times but, a bit like how it took reading The Selfish Gene to really understand evolution, it wasn't until I read Why does E=mc2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw that I got a glimpse (it's more difficult to understand than natural selection) of what it means when people talk about gravity and 'curved spacetime'.
This post isn't about the subject matter of the book, as such, rather what it got me thinking about some of the things that are taught to children in school (I'm currently training to be a primary school teacher, so this is a significant question for me). But I should explain the basic principle so you know where I'm coming from.
One of the last chapters in the book describes gravity as something we observe which hints that spacetime is curved. To do my best to explain briefly, let's first think about forces. There is a law that we're all probably familiar with that objects will remain at a constant velocity (either sitting still or coasting along) unless a force acts on them. To persuade yourself of this, just think how obvious it is that an object won't spontaneously start moving without a force. Then you only need to realise there's no difference to Nature between sitting still and moving without accelerating. So it turns out that the deeper rule is that an object moving at constant velocity won't spontaneously accelerate (imagine a world without friction, there'd be no way to stop unless you hit something!).
So, to gravity. Gravity is taught as a force because objects tend to fall and it looks as if they're being pulled away from what would have been their natural course, just as if a force were acting on them. Certainly a constant downward force would have the same effect on an object in space. But in the book it is revealed that our best understanding of physics describes the natural course of objects to be along straight lines through spacetime, spacetime which is curved by the presence of mass. So an object you're holding in your hand would coast along a straight line through space time that would bring it closer to the Earth, if you let it go. You're constantly bumping against its spacetime-momentum, like you would bump against someone if you tried to walk in a straight line parallel to each other due to the curvature of the Earth's surface. It's not that you're attracted to each other, it's that your paths intersect.
In other words, gravity isn't a force. This is crucial, because it is explicitly described as a force in primary science. Watch this (brilliant) video I found of Dr Richard de Grijs teaching primary school children about gravity. I'm sure he's heard of Einstein, so why is he teaching children that gravity is a force? Perhaps, I've been thinking, he shouldn't be...
I am still finding a lot of the concepts (pretty much anything to do with movement through spacetime from multiple perspectives) in Why does E=mc2? to be very hard to focus on and I strongly suspect this is because it contradicts what is drilled into our heads in school. What sort of obstacles are we putting up with miseducation like this?
We don't have to teach children advanced physics, obviously, but should we teach them lies? Why do we still teach children that gravity is a force, if we know it's not? Is it really necessary? Surely it would, if nothing else, be better to just avoid discussing it, as we avoid discussing the relationship between magnetism and electricity, if there's really no way of describing it to them. Then when they're older they won't find it such a hurdle to wrap their head around the actual theories we use to understand Nature.
And perhaps it is possible to teach children the rudiments of these things. Isn't the point of the curriculum to work out the best way to break down complicated subjects into steps that children can handle? Is it really more complicated than other scientific concepts, or is it a very new way of understanding Nature?
This post isn't about the subject matter of the book, as such, rather what it got me thinking about some of the things that are taught to children in school (I'm currently training to be a primary school teacher, so this is a significant question for me). But I should explain the basic principle so you know where I'm coming from.
One of the last chapters in the book describes gravity as something we observe which hints that spacetime is curved. To do my best to explain briefly, let's first think about forces. There is a law that we're all probably familiar with that objects will remain at a constant velocity (either sitting still or coasting along) unless a force acts on them. To persuade yourself of this, just think how obvious it is that an object won't spontaneously start moving without a force. Then you only need to realise there's no difference to Nature between sitting still and moving without accelerating. So it turns out that the deeper rule is that an object moving at constant velocity won't spontaneously accelerate (imagine a world without friction, there'd be no way to stop unless you hit something!).
So, to gravity. Gravity is taught as a force because objects tend to fall and it looks as if they're being pulled away from what would have been their natural course, just as if a force were acting on them. Certainly a constant downward force would have the same effect on an object in space. But in the book it is revealed that our best understanding of physics describes the natural course of objects to be along straight lines through spacetime, spacetime which is curved by the presence of mass. So an object you're holding in your hand would coast along a straight line through space time that would bring it closer to the Earth, if you let it go. You're constantly bumping against its spacetime-momentum, like you would bump against someone if you tried to walk in a straight line parallel to each other due to the curvature of the Earth's surface. It's not that you're attracted to each other, it's that your paths intersect.
In other words, gravity isn't a force. This is crucial, because it is explicitly described as a force in primary science. Watch this (brilliant) video I found of Dr Richard de Grijs teaching primary school children about gravity. I'm sure he's heard of Einstein, so why is he teaching children that gravity is a force? Perhaps, I've been thinking, he shouldn't be...
I am still finding a lot of the concepts (pretty much anything to do with movement through spacetime from multiple perspectives) in Why does E=mc2? to be very hard to focus on and I strongly suspect this is because it contradicts what is drilled into our heads in school. What sort of obstacles are we putting up with miseducation like this?
We don't have to teach children advanced physics, obviously, but should we teach them lies? Why do we still teach children that gravity is a force, if we know it's not? Is it really necessary? Surely it would, if nothing else, be better to just avoid discussing it, as we avoid discussing the relationship between magnetism and electricity, if there's really no way of describing it to them. Then when they're older they won't find it such a hurdle to wrap their head around the actual theories we use to understand Nature.
And perhaps it is possible to teach children the rudiments of these things. Isn't the point of the curriculum to work out the best way to break down complicated subjects into steps that children can handle? Is it really more complicated than other scientific concepts, or is it a very new way of understanding Nature?
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