happy solstice (ish)!

film review: The Imitation Game

Alan Turing did seminal work in several fields – on the fundamental theory of computing, Artificial Intelligence (the Imitation Game of the title), biological morphogenesis – and contributed to several others – neural networks, the Reimann zeta function, the quantum Zeno effect, and more. One area I’m not aware of him having contributed to (although I may well be wrong!) is the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Which is a pity, as this movie is clearly set in an alternate reality.

In this alternate (or merely fictional) universe, Alan Turing [Benedict Cumberbatch] is a semi-autistic anti-social loner, who single-handedly, against the opposition of his co-workers, builds a giant computer that breaks the German Enigma code, so winning WWII, and then goes mad in Manchester, building another computer in his front room to recreate his schoolboy crush, Christopher.

Don’t get me wrong: this alternate universe story is well told, and is the basis of my “worth watching” rating. I very much enjoyed it, with its interleaved flashbacks between his schooldays, the WWII code-breaking, the Manchester incident, the complex relationships between the characters, and the celebration of intellectual prowess and of difference generally. But I enjoyed it only as an alternate world story. Don’t rely on anything here as historically accurate (the movie’s disclaimer basically says as much); there was a person called Alan Turing, he was gay, and he was involved in breaking the Enigma code during WWII, but that’s probably it. (Oh, and Euler is pronounced Oi-ler, not You-ler.) If you want a better shot at the reality, read the book this film is “based” on: Hodges’ The Enigma of Intelligence

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film review: The LEGO Movie

Everything is Awesome

Emmett is a completely contented minifig, working on a massive construction project with his buddies, singing the company song, having a great life. But this all changes when he sees a strange woman searching the construction site. He follows her, falls down a hole, and gets attached to the Piece of Resistance. It seems he is the prophesied Special One, destined to save the world from the evil Lord Business. Mayhem ensues.

This is great fun, much more than just a movie-length toy advert (although it is that, too). It is full of verbal and visual wit, with clever little references all over the place, and even better if you know your Lego. It inevitably gets a bit saccharine at the end, with the “message” of not being inflexible. But since that message is rather confused (it is the Master Builders who can build “off piste” who are supposedly the heroes, yet Emmett and crew win the day by following the instructions to build a particular device the same as all the others), it can be safely ignored.

It has been noted that there are rather few female characters (there’s the co-protagonist Wyldstyle/Lucy, Wonder Woman, a female construction worker, and some background characters), reflecting LEGO’s disappointing number of female minifigs overall, and it fails the Bechdel test. Wyldstyle is actually a reasonably strong figure, and it could be argued that it is she who “gets the guy” rather than the other way round. What I actually found most teeth-grinding was the ending, where the boy is “threatened” with having to play with his little sister, clearly a dreadful fate.

Despite these grumbles, overall this is a fun piece and wonderfully visualised of mind-candy, and I laughed out loud many times at the various visual jokes.

Good luck getting that song out of your head, though.

Everything is Awesome, Everything is cool when you’re part of a team…

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For all my film reviews, see my main website.

Joseph, Warrior of the 37th Century

Scalzi had me at the “demon worshippers vs Future Ninjas subplot”…

What if the angel is secretly a fallen angel, and the shepherds aren’t really shepherds at all, but a secret order of demon worshippers disguised as shepherds, who have been waiting for centuries, at the ready, to kidnap the savior foretold by prophecy at the moment of his birth, and the fallen angel is telling them so they can put their dark plan into action? Now, that makes sense!

That’s a nativity film I’d watch!

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merely resting

This is a dead parrot ... not.

The [Scottish SPCA] was called to the scene on Great Western Road in Aberdeen after what a driver believed to be a parrot was seen in the middle of the road.

However, when they got there they discovered it was a woolly hat.

duck ... rabbit ... parrot ... hat

Better to check, and be mistaken, than not to check at all.

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a picture window to dream of

WANT

Any of the murals, that is, not necessarily the furniture!

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pet food by post

I was trawling through the latest recommendations Amazon have for me, when I came across

The perils of low sample sizes, I thought: someone bought Grimm 3 and dog food in one order, so now Amazon thinks I want dog food.

A little later I saw

Oh, I thought, they bought bird food, too.

But wait!  This wasn't the Grimm-loving dog-owner, this was instead a Feist-loving bird watcher.

I’ve had some strange recommendations before, but this was just weird.