Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Originally I was going to write and post this before DST2007 dropped out of effect for 2015, but I missed the time. Indeed, I am writing this during the "free" hour between 1:59am EDT and 1:00am EST. Since not everyone reads newspapers with their above-the-fold reminder graphics or listen to local radio or TV, I always post a notice on my class webpages which my students are supposed to check every day:


Daylight Saving Time -- note there is no "s" -- is regularly mocked and hated in the United States of the 21st century:


For me, seeing as I am not a farmer, nor do I do many outdoor things in the summer evening (or anytime any more for that matter), the changeovers between DST modes generally results in having to battle the Sun in my eyes during my morning commute twice in the spring and twice in the fall. Alas, my commute starts off heading due east on roads. Fortunately, my current schedule doesn't put me in the same position westbound coming home.

Now there's a possible move to rid Michigan of DST altogether:

MICHIGAN -- As much of the nation prepares to turn the clocks back an hour Sunday, a Michigan legislator wants the state to dump daylight saving time.

The idea of Rep. Peter Lucido, R-Shelby Township, is not new. Others have tried to get Michigan off the twice-annual time change regimen without success.

In March, Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, sponsored a bill but it gained no traction.

Now, Lucido has sponsored a similar measure.

Introduced Oct. 14, his bill seeks to dump daylight saving time but also bring four Upper Peninsula counties into the Eastern Standard Time zone with the rest of the state. Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson, and Menominee counties now are in the Central time zone.

"There is no rational basis for (daylight saving time) whatsoever," Lucido argues.

He claims it leads to workplace accidents, health and driving risks, sleep disruptions and simple hassles for people that need to manually change clocks twice a year.

Lucido also believes that one intent of the program -- to save energy -- was never a proven outcome.

"It doesn't save anything. It causes problems," he said.

Lucido's bill has been referred to the House Government Operations Committee for a possible hearing.

Interestingly, Michigan has not always adopted Daylight Saving Time:

In 1967 the Michigan Legislature adopted a statute, Act 6 of the Public Acts of 1967, exempting the state from the observance of DST. The exemption statute was suspended on June 14, 1967, however, when the referendum was invoked. From June 14, 1967 until the last Sunday in October, 1967, Michigan observed DST, and did so in 1968 as well. The exemption statute was submitted to the voters at the General Election held in November 1968, and, in a close vote, the exemption statute was sustained. As a result, Michigan did not observe DST in 1969, 1970, 1971, or 1972. In November 1972, an initiative measure, repealing the exemption statute, was approved by the voters. Michigan again observed DST in 1973, and has continued to do so since then.

The vast majority of Michigan is in the Eastern Time Zone. Only the Upper Peninsula counties that border Wisconsin (Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson, and Menominee) are in Central Time.

Of course, the ridiculous DST2007 we currently operate under, was actually proposed by... duh-duh-DUH... a MICHIGAN congressman -- and a Republican at that. Thanks, Fred Upton:

Starting March 11, 2007, DST was extended another four to five weeks, from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. The change was introduced by Representatives Fred Upton (R-MI) and Edward Markey (D-MA) and added to the Energy Policy Act of 2005; the House had originally approved a motion that would have extended DST even farther from the first Sunday in March to the last Sunday in November, but Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Pete Domenici (R-NM) agreed to scale back the proposal in conference committee due to complaints from farmers and the airline industry. Proponents claimed that the extension would save "the equivalent of" 10,000 barrels (1,600 m3) of oil per day, but this figure was based on U.S. Department of Energy information from the 1970s, the accuracy and relevance of which the DoE no longer stands by. More recent studies by the Department of Energy and California Energy Commission have predicted much smaller energy benefits.[8] There is very little recent research on what the actual positive effects, if any, might be.

And, of course, I was in high school and had to deal with the Nixon-era nearly all-year DST:

In response to the 1973 energy crisis, DST in the United States began earlier in both 1974 and 1975, commencing on the first Sunday in January (January 6) in the former year and the last Sunday in February (February 23) in the latter. The extension of daylight saving time was not continued due to public opposition to late sunrise times during the winter months. In 1976, the United States reverted to the schedule set in the Uniform Time Act.

Part of the reason people hate DST in that they could never figure out when it was supposed to happen -- they kept changing it. Originally the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October:

On July 8, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1986 into law that contained a daylight saving rider authored by Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA).[3] The starting date of DST was amended to the first Sunday in April effective in 1987. DST continued to end on the last Sunday in October.

The system I started out with as a kid was simple enough -- Indiana and Arizona were oddities which stayed on Standard Time, as they straddled two time zones. Alaska and Hawaii were disconnected from the Lower 48, so weren't on my radar as a kid. Me, personally, I could live with the old rules for DST. Alas, I don't think going back is likely to be a choice. All or nothing now. And trust that software updates will handle many of our devices twice a year.

So, what else did I take advantage of on this extra-long Saturday night? Well, I stumbled onto a movie on TV I hadn't seen, amused as much as the 12-1 schedule, since it was running into the time change.

R.I.P.D. (Rest In Peace Department) [PG-13] (2013)

FXHD 12:00am EDT to 1:00am EST

A Boston cop is killed and discovers he's "not quite dead yet", as the R.I.P.D. still has a use for him. He's teamed up with a Wild West lawman, who's been around the block a few times. Sort of like the TV series Dead Again -- and like that show, you no longer appear in the same body to the living, so don't try to go back to your old life.

Of course Ryan Reynolds doesn't listen. Old codger Jeff Bridges has to show him the ropes. It's a lot like Men In Black, only this time they're dealing with deados, rather than aliens. Kevin Bacon figures in the beginning and the end, and he's smiling, which is never good.

A silly fun romp, R.I.P.D. tanked at the box office -- go figure -- but it was a pleasant enough diversion for two hours. The worst part were the interminable triple-damned commercials. (evil-grin)

Dr. Phil

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The Three Week Cold is still annoying me, but I am getting better. Last Saturday we didn't go out to the movies, saving our energy for Game Night. This Saturday? Despite the heavy rain earlier in the day, we had a chance to go to our favorite Holland 7 and catch a movie I wanted to see with the comfy new recliners that debuted the other week. And then go out to a wonderful dinner in honor of our second 31st anniversary.

Pretty fair deal, I'd say.

Steve Jobs [R]

Holland 7 Theatre 5, 4:30pm, 2×$6.00 ***

The movie opens with a real treat, an old bit of film with Arthur C. Clarke talking about the possibilities of a personal computer on life, while surrounded by the usual white room of Big Iron mainframes. Many of us growing up in the techie fields of the 70s and working with mainframes, PDP-8s and -11s and VAXes, etc., wanted to have a computer to call our own, even if we couldn't yet articulate exactly what we would use a computer for. And between IBM, Microsoft and Apple, it took a while for some of that to shake out. We've come a long way to get to 2015.

I must confess that I would never have been able to work for either Steve Jobs or Bill Gates in the heyday of the early PC/Mac era. I don't need that pressure. And while most of you know that I use Windows and DOS PCs, it's not that I actively hate Apple products. Indeed, I actually do own a Mac -- but it's a Macintosh SE running System/Finder 6.0.8 that I bought used for $125. And while I haven't actively participated in the Cult of Apple, I have always found Steve Jobs a polished charismatic salesman, versus the We Own The World bludgeon of Bill Gates.

Second confession. When I first saw trailers with Jeff Daniels in it, my first thoughts were "Oh, he'll be perfect as the hyper excited Steve Balmer." Oops, Balmer was Microsoft, my bad. But truthfully, I had forgotten all about Pepsico's John Sculley, who'd been brought in to be Apple's CEO.

So what's the crack about this being "half a movie" in the blog post title? Well, the movie centers around three history making product announcements by Steve Jobs -- the original 128K Macintosh, the NeXT computer and the iMac. We see lots of the chaos backstage, and getting everything to work right, or even just work. And in the middle of all this, there's outside shit to deal with. BUT, a lesser filmmaker would have gone on to show Steve Jobs on the stage performing the Steve Jobs Magic Show. Each of these sections of the movie end with him going out onto the stage. That punch is pulled, primarily because it is totally unnecessary. In addition, we end with the iMac. We don't get to see the warm-ups to the iPod, the iPhone, the Mac Air, the iPad, etc. Those punches are pulled, because we already have satisfied the writing gods with the Rule of Three. We don't have to deal with his illness and death. A lesser filmmaker would've tried to cram in too much, or concentrated on the pathos of the endgame. Again, there's half a film left not on the cutting room floor, but simply not needed. 1984, 1988 and 1998 are sufficient.

It is the middle act where I had some interesting reactions. The NeXT machine came out when I was in grad school, and some in the Michigan Tech Math department were all agog at the machine and thought we in Physics should switch to it. Really? An MC68020 processor, I think running at 25MHz? Insufficient memory, disk, a prohibitive cost -- and no FORTRAN compiler? What, am I supposed to be doing mainframe Hartree-Fock calculations using Mathematica? And yet the NeXT OS was brilliant and clean. I used NeXT on a 66 MHz 486 PC at Hope College in 1996, and it ran complicated multi-user applications far more stably than my single-user 166MHz Pentium PC. I can see why it morphed into the MacOS used today. But the original black cube? Bah!

I can see some eyes have glazed over -- TMI on the tech stuff. Does that mean the movie is only for geeks? I don't think so. There's a good smattering of insider techie talk, but it's not oppressive -- and there's plenty of dramatic and social dialog to keep the tech stuff at bay. AMC's series Halt and Catch Fire is much more geeky.

Danny Boyle directs, but for a film which is chock full of talking, it is a joy to have a script written Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, A Few Good Men, etc.). I found the whole cast to be terrific, including the guy playing Steve "Woz" Wozniak, Seth Rogen. And of course, I'm sure people who know me can't believe we've gotten this far down in the review and I haven't mentioned the incomparable Kate Winslet. Of course Kate is brilliant as Johanna Hoffman, Steve's marketing shepherd -- and frankly his shepherd, too. We know La Kate can do convincing accents and mannerisms, as in the 2008 film The Reader (DW). Here she serves as the missing half of Steve's personality. Also kudos to the casting of the three girls used for his daughter Lisa -- nice match there.

But ultimately this is Michael Fassbender's movie. As Steve Jobs, you can't take your eyes off him in any scene. I am sure that if Jobs were still alive today, he'd probably hate the performance, but that's as it should be.

So, is this a love story treatment of Steve Jobs? No. We see the best and worst of Jobs, especially a lot of the latter. Yet, there is that seed of genius -- or at least the demand for perfection -- along with a few cracks in his iron demeanor. And though he calls a few people "friend", we also are privy to his loneliness, even when surrounded by hundred of Apple people who've drunk the Kool-Aid and are his biggest fans.

In the Wikipedia article, there's a section about journalist Walt Mossberg's feeling that Steve Jobs is too much fiction and probably should have been treated like Orson Wells did William Randolph Hearst in Citizen Kane. I can vaguely see his point, but look -- we know that biopics are artificial. That they are going to emphasize some things more than others. Is this a complete tale of Jobs? No. Hardly. But by focusing on only a few things, we not only see the man of history, we also see him grow.

Frankly, I don't think it's possible to a film about Steve Jobs without stepping on toes or bringing up stuff. So what? We're getting a look at the man behind the curtain, right before a couple of the biggest shows of his life.

For me, this is sufficient. For Mrs. Dr. Phil, I don't think she actively disliked the movie, but did comment that she was in no hurry to watch it again on television any time soon. Perhaps that's as much an indictment of living in the Steve Jobs pressure cooker, as the film itself. As I pointed out above, you'd not find me working for Apple or Microsoft in most any alternative universe you care to hypothesize. (grin)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Trailers: One from the First Looks video ads running before the movie trailers -- The Man In The High Castle is coming out on Amazon video on 20 November. The way to movie speculative fiction gold has, for a long time, been to turn a Philip K. Dick short story into a movie. Now we get to see what the 1963 Hugo winning novel from Philip K. Dick will turn into when Ridley Scott makes a two-episode mini-series for Amazon. Frankly, it's gorgeous. There are reasons why we "love" Nazi movies -- the Nazis were all into set dressing and giant set pieces. So when the Allies lose WW II, what we get is... Will definitely have to check this out. The Big Short, brings back some of the people and cast responsible for Moneyball, to look at a True Story of some people who saw the housing market crash coming in 2005 and decided to short the big banks on Wall Street and make a killing. Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, etc. Very intriguing. The Finest Hours is the Disney United States Coast Guard rescue film in the middle of the True Story of terrible conditions. Looks better than the Kevin Costner movie The Guardian, though that one I have to admit is a late night guilty pleasure... Concussion, seen previously, has Will Smith as a foreign born doctor concerned with Repetitive Head Injuries in football. As noted before, it comes out in December AFTER most of the high school, college and even NFL seasons are done. Hail, Caesar is a Coen brothers romp in the golden 30s age of Hollywood, with George Clooney as the studly matinee idol in a movie Hail, Caesar. Except he's kidnapped by "The Future". I don't know where this is going, but it's a great cast and it sure looks like fun.

Dr. Phil

*** Actually, we only paid for one ticket. The group ahead of us had bought their tickets online, but one in their group hadn't made it. Unfortunately, I suspect because they had gone through Fandango or someone outside the theatre, they had no way to refund one ticket. So the lead guy in the group decided to pass the extra ticket onto the next person in line. Which was Mrs. Dr. Phil. Didn't matter that the ticket said "Woodlawn" 4:25 -- it was the same price.

We will have to pay it forward another time we are in the theatre...

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Somewhere I think I once did a blog review of Robert Altman's Countdown. I know I've mentioned it several times, including during my review of The Martian. It's a 1968 movie with Robert Duvall and James Caan about a juryrigged mission to put an American on the Moon, using a mixture of Apollo and Gemini parts -- because the Russians were going and the full Apollo wasn't ready.

I hadn't heard of it until just a few years ago when it was on Turner Classic Movies. Pristine print in letterbox widescreen. It is by no means a great space movie -- to me it is memorable because it was a big studio production with Altman at the helm which had the misfortune to come out the same year as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Oops.

In looking it up when I did The Martian review, I was reminded that it was based on a novel. So... off to Amazon, where I found a used copy for a couple of dollars. And it came the other day and I read it Monday and Tuesday night.

The Pilgrim Project / Hank Searls. 1964.
used via Amazon.com, paperback, $3.00 + $3.99 S+H.

Opening the package took me right back to my early SF reading. Books tended to be shorter -- this paperback was some 200 pages, with a small heavy font with very small margins and gutters. The three cut edges of the paper had been dyed a deep purple or burgundy -- the dye spreading onto the pages just a little bit. The cover art, as you can see, very stylistic and simple.

One of my favorite books in junior high school was Martin Caidin's Marooned, later made into a lackluster film much like Countdown. But Marooned comes in two versions -- the one I read was Apollo/Skylab. I finally tracked down a copy of the 1964 Mercury/Gemini version and am partway through it. (My used copy is slightly mildewed and so I can't read it in very long stretches -- one area that e-books have solved.) Marooned is much the better story, and the 1964 version is contemporary with The Pilgrim Project

This is cheap and dirty spacecraft design, a Just-in-Case Apollo isn't ready when the Russians try for the Moon. A Saturn I launch vehicle, with a Centaur third stage. A one-man Mercury capsule with extra supplies, using a Polaris solid rocket engine to get close to the surface and then a liquid fuel engine for maneuvering and landing. No launch vehicle. You're stranded on the Moon... and have to find the shelter sent up the week before and use that until Apollo is ready and you can hitch a ride on a LEM to go home. Huh. Doesn't this sound a lot like the plot of The Martian, except doing it deliberately?

This book doesn't make sense at first -- this isn't the NASA we grew up with -- until you understand the Cold War subplots between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Space Race wasn't just about firsts -- it was also about controlling the high ground. There really were fears that the Moon could be militarized and by the Russians if we didn't get there first!

“I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon” -- Lyndon B. Johnson

And as NASA secrets go, Pilgrim makes a lot more sense as a positive thing than the conspiracy of Capricorn One when they realized their environmental equipment couldn't make it to Mars and back -- and they had to fake the Mars landing so as not to kill O.J. Simpson.

Like Capricorn One, there is a lot of lying going on. Including an abort of a manned Apollo mission for really poor reasons.

What is more unbelievable is the sort of standard issue 1950s/1960s matter of alcoholics, spies and interagency and interservice rivalries. The flight surgeon is against the whole project and behaves unprofessionally and -- in the Cold War spirit of the story -- treasonously. My take away is that Searls is a competent technical writer and researcher -- the basic parts and engineering are there. I read up on all this stuff in every book I could find in our school and public libraries when I was a kid. Today, you could research all this stuff on Wikipedia and make it sound convincing.

But technical accuracy does not necessarily a great plot make.

In the movie they used a Gemini capsule as a one-seater, so there'd be more room. But in the book, it's a Mercury capsule. Mainly for weight. But one of the things I forgot about Mercury was the periscope. If you're trying to land on the Moon and you're lying on your back facing up, it sure would be nice to see the surface. In the LEM, you're standing and looking through forward and downward canted windows.

They used the "little Saturn" rocket for launching, just as they did to get the Apollo capsules up for Earth orbit work in Apollo 7 and the three Skylab Apollo missions. They used Launch Complex 37, not the more famous Saturn V Launch Complex 39. As they start talking about the firing of the engines, I suddenly had to remember that the Saturn IB first stage did NOT have five engines like its big brother the Saturn V Moon rocket, but eight. Off to Wikipedia where I realized they were talking about the original Saturn I, not the IB: S-I first stage with 8 H-1 engines, burning RP1 kerosene and LOX, S-IV second stage with 6 RL10 engines, burning LH2 and LOX. And the never-flown S-V (Centaur-C) third stage, with 2 RL10 engines. The Saturn I flew some of the early unmanned boilerplate Apollo capsules, such as the one in Grand Rapids MI. (grin) The Saturn IB didn't fly until 1966, with an upgraded S-IB first stage, still with 8 H-1 engines, but the second stage was the S-IVB third stage workhorse of the Saturn V rocket, with its single J-2 engine, also used in the Saturn V's second stage.

Pretty clever to manhandle the mass around to make the Saturn I a manned Moon rocket.

Technical details are easy. People are hard, especially when we all know who the Mercury Seven are. Glenn is mentioned by name, as having left the program to run for the Senate. One of the main characters is the colonel -- he talks a lot about the commander. I'm assuming the latter is Shepherd, but is the colonel Grissom? That's who I assumed in my mind the whole time. It's an almost clever way to deal with NOT inventing extra original Mercury astronauts, which is the usual conceit. It's like 555- phone numbers and the endless number of made up large airlines in stories. It's one of the reasons it's easy to write in the 29th century -- or secret kingdoms. (grin)

And then on the top of page 170 I was suddenly thrown out of the story because one of their markers was Shiaperelli crater. What, wait? Sure enough, I was right and there is a Schiaparelli crater on the Moon AND one on Mars. Now I REALLY am wondering if Andy Weir ever read The Pilgrim Project when he wrote The Martian.

If I was a few years older, I probably would've found The Pilgrim Project on my own in the mid-60s and I would've liked it okay. Today, I am really glad to have found a copy and see where the movie came from. Has some good technical stuff, but the story... seems desperately far fetched today. For my money, Marooned is far superior and the 1981 Shuttle Down by Lee Correy is a decent more modern technical and engineering romp -- but the latter also suffers from some poor writing in some places.

RECOMMENDED for its historical value

As a footnote, I should add that McDonnell-Douglas, the manufacturer of the Gemini space capsule, really was investigating post-Gemini missions and adaptations, including a 12-man Big Gemini orbital resupply ship and:

A range of applications were considered for Advanced Gemini missions, including military flights, space station crew and logistics delivery, and lunar flights. The Lunar proposals ranged from reusing the docking systems developed for the Agena Target Vehicle on more powerful upper stages such as the Centaur, which could propel the spacecraft to the Moon, to complete modifications of the Gemini to enable it to land on the lunar surface. Its applications would have ranged from manned lunar flybys before Apollo was ready, to providing emergency shelters or rescue for stranded Apollo crews, or even replacing the Apollo program.

It's like the paper I discovered last year or so about the concept of using an Apollo capsule for Mars and Venus manned flyby missions!

In other words, there were a lot of hairbrained schemes for dangerous manned flight missions talked about, so that part of the story isn't completely bonkers.

Dr. Phil

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Alright, let's first get a little humor out of the way. Because the meme posted below is rather funny. Tom Hanks and company ran all over France trying to save Matt Damon. Interstellar's Matt Damon turned out to be a rat not worth saving. And Robinson Crusoe on Mars Matt Damon is stranded after being presumed dead. On the other hand, the CIA spent considerable time through three movies -- and after a hiatus in the fourth -- and now a fifth trying to kill Matt Damon. And Matt Damon goes on a murdering spree as a Talented Mr. Ripley. So it's all confusing. (And funny.)



A cold and gray and windy fall day -- raining late in the afternoon. Apparently a lot of people thought to go to Holland to see a movie. The main handicapped parking spaces at the Holland 7 were full, so I had to roll a little further than usual with the walker.

But... we are so glad to have gone to the Holland 7 to see this. They have just renovated Theatre 5 with all recliners. And I don't mean those awful rocking back chairs which put your neck at the wrong angle and are really hard to get out of, especially when you are handicapped. No, these are big solid recliners, with wide arm rests, metal cup holders and power reclining buttons. For once, I had a solid and comfortable chair that was easy to get in and out of in a movie theatre.

The best part? These recliners have a strong resemblance to the recliners used by NASA at the Cape for suiting up the astronauts -- see Apollo 13 -- which really put me in a good mood to see...

The Martian 3D [PG-13]

Holland 7 Theatre 5, 3:30pm, 2×$9.75 ($8.95 net ***)

And now we have Ridley Scott's The Martian.

In 1968, the greatest science fiction space movie of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey, came out. Stanley Kubrick's impeccable filmmaking technique promised to usher in an era of hyperrealistic SF space films for years to come... not. Ron Howard's superb Apollo 13 actually is more realistic, but alas, it's historical and not fiction. (grin) James Cameron's Avatar is an extraordinary 3D CGI movie, but it's not really a space movie. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar was billed as the modern successor to 2001, but came off a little flat as the plot fell apart into non-science nonsense. Sigh. We've been down the road of pretenders to unseat 2001 from the throne -- Peter Hyam's sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact comes close. And lord knows I was embarrassed to follow TIME Magazine's pushing of the Disney movie The Black Hole, which most emphatically was NOT the most realistic space movie ever made. 2008's Moon comes close, amazingly as does the horror space movie Apollo 18, in terms of making you believe that this is a real mission. But they're not 2001.

Andrew Weir's The Martian is a great book -- a tour de force for the space/science/engineering/technical geek reader -- and anticipation amongst my SF friends couldn't have been greater. Even xkcd couldn't believe that the impossible might be about to happen:


The whole cast is great -- Mackenzie Davis, who plays Cameron on Halt and Catch Fire, Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiofor and on and on. But... The burden is completely on Matt Damon to sell this, as he is primarily playing by himself. He narrates some bits with his video logs, has some long range communications and gets verbal warnings from emergency systems. But there's no HAL or GERTY or Lucile or TARS or R2D2 computer or robot sidekicks.

The Martian scenery, whether local or long range, is terribly convincing. And let's face it, according to Wikipedia they really were on Mars: "Wadi Rum had been used as a backdrop for other films set on Mars, including Mission to Mars (2000), Red Planet (2000), and The Last Days on Mars (2013)." They do like their CGI dust devils/tornadic activity + lightning, though. No one mentions the Martian surface gravity, which has an acceleration of g(Mars) of 3.71 m/s² -- just over twice the lunar gravity 1.62 m/s² and about two-fifths of the Earth's 9.81 m/s². In fact, there is no overt mention of the zero-gee and artificial gravity (centripetal acceleration) sections of the Hermes ship. The zero-gee motion, by the way, is fluid but is surely done by wirework -- either on set or green-screened. I was thrown out of the story momentarily by a change of direction to go down one of the axial tubes to an artificial gravity section. Either I missed a push off which would explain the vector change, or they managed to fly in a curved trajectory. (grin)

Special attention has to go to the sets, both on Earth, in space and on Mars. The movie version of Marooned suffered from the same flat paint set dressing that characterized the Original Star Trek series. And Robert Altman's Countdown, contemporary with 2001, is also artificial looking. Here everything looks great. But...

The Hab itself is huge and spacious. Really? NASA would be able to spring for all that space? Note that the Hab sent up in the Canadian mini-series Race to Mars mentioned yesterday is far more cramped. It's not like the Ares III mission was going to be up there long enough to justify all that real estate. As a result of this roominess, it carries over into the airlocks and hatches. I'm expecting a much tighter fit everywhere. Maybe not quite Das Boot U-boats, but certainly not Ohio class SSBN. (double-sized-grin)

But these are nits. Overall, the parts of the book which are portrayed -- and they are never going to get the whole book stuffed into even a 2:20 movie -- are rendered well with little damage. I have worried for sometime about whether a crucial underling at JPL was going to get whitewashed -- he wasn't. The side story with the Chinese space program? It might have been cut, too, but it wasn't.

The tech looks great, from large pieces to sealed Mylar bags to lots of screws to the inevitable and necessary duck tape. There is no doubt this is a movie FOR space geeks and FOR SF/F fans. There are infodumps and technical details which were left in the book -- oh, they're there in the movie, but not mentioned even once. (But we know!) We have left intact the "steely-eyed missile man" reference, which dates back to the Mercury program. And there is a wonderful exchange about the Lord of the Rings, which includes Sean Bean in the room. (!!) This is how my people really talk. (geek-grin)

Is this the most realistic space movie ever? I dunno, 2001 really set the bar with a high escape velocity. But it is by far the most realistic space in a long time, and definitely the most realistic Mars exploration movie made.

Bottom line: There will be plenty of people who will find faults, because they just can't stand civilians claiming that a movie is the most scientifically accurate, when we've been down this road so often and have been as often so disappointed. But at the beginning, I said we had great anticipation regarding The Martian and I just don't think I could've been more pleased -- unless it was a 3:20 movie and not 2:20. Mrs. Dr. Phil figures with Ridley Scott there will be a longer Director's cut. Oh, I'll buy that Blu-Ray, I assure you.

And in case you happen to ask -- Yes, the 3D is very nicely done. Neither in your face or distracting. Just looks good. As you would want it to be.

MOST HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION

Trailers: Okay, big budget highly anticipated 3D film? I called the trailers for Star Wars, Mockingjay Part II and James Bond. Three whiffs with the bat -- completely struck out. Bridge of Spies -- Tom Hanks and U2 Incident negotiations in East Berlin. In the Heart of the Sea -- this is the Ron Howard Moby Dick tale, expected at Christmas. Concussion -- Will Smith as a foreign born doctor who ends up trying to take on the NFL regarding repetitive brain injury. Comes out in December, after nearly all the NFL and NCAA and high school football seasons. Of course. Joy -- Jennifer Lawrence and Robert DeNiro. Young woman coming of age... in the 60s? 70s? I think she was an Eastern Airlines gate agent at one point... Krampus -- Because what would be Christmas without a horror movie about "the other Santa Claus"? Yuck. Also a promo for a Fathom "event" about digging for Noah's Ark -- Finding Noah: An Adventure of Faith -- with the serious guy seriously saying "We will either prove it is here or prove it is not." Well, damn. That surely sounds convincing, doesn't it?

Dr. Phil

*** We usually only buy movie tickets online to get the right seats in the IMAX theatre at Celebration North. However, we were given a Fandango gift card last year, which doesn't work at Celebration, but does work at Goodrich Theatres. We'd used up $20.70 out of $25 to see Avengers: Age of Ultron 3D at the Grand Haven 9(DW) (LJ) back on 4 May -- so we had $4.30 left on the card. Tickets were $19.50, plus the "convenience fee" of $2.70 and minus the $4.30 balance, gave us a net cost of $17.90. We actually saved a buck apiece on the tickets. Thanks, Rebecca!

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After seeing the first Maze Runner (DW) (LJ) movie last October, we both ended up reading the boxed four book trilogy. We both felt it got steadily weaker after the first book. Dr. Phil's Rule of Sequels. But the maze in the first movie looked so good. I was especially interested to see what they could do with Scorch Trials.

Last weekend we were busy being entertained in the Butterworth ER (DW) (LJ), so we didn't go out last Saturday. Down to this Saturday. There was a line out the door of the small Holland 7 lobby when we got there, but most of the people were short -- we figured it was for Transylvania Hotel 2. (grin) There were ten people tops in our theatre. Good popcorn.

Maze Runner 2: The Scorch Trials [PG-13]

Holland 7 Theatre 4, 1:45pm, 2×$7.25

As is the current style with movie series, there was no backstory/intro to The Scorch Trials. Pretty much started where Maze Runner left off. I suppose this will improve binge watching the completed trilogy or for those who did their pre-lab before The Scorch Trials. Not a good standalone movie. Besides, who goes to see the second in a series without seeing the first?

Alas, the disconnect provides some confusion, as one tries to remember who the main characters are. And for books which aren't all that long and have short chapters, The Scorch Trials still suffers from Too Much Book Syndrome, meaning they couldn't fit it all in -- and as discussed below -- so they gutted big chunks of the story and rendered a couple of the new characters irrelevant.

The Cranks, infected with the Flare virus, were always going to be part zombies -- but much more so as visuals. You can turn down the volume in your head when you're reading a book. And does anyone ever use safety glass in building construction anymore? (evil-grin)

Alas, the appellation "Based upon the book by James Dasher" is pretty much appropriate in The Scorch Trials.

The Rat-Man, as I recall, is described as a sad, gray man. Jansen is called the Rat Man because Thomas sees him that way. He's called the Rat Man maybe once in the movie, but there's no context. Dumb. Worse, this guy is a psychopath who enjoys his work way too much.

On the other hand, Jorge and Brenda are nicely done, even if they cut their introduction, which would've served to explain Cranks and the Flare to the moviegoer -- instead of giving us nothing.

----

Mildly Spoilery For Those Who Read The Book

The Maze Runner reasonably followed the books. But for whatever reasons, the makers of The Scorch Trials managed to remove the Trials out of the Scorch. The duplicitous behavior of WCKD -- they even felt they had to shorten WICKED -- is mostly absent. Which is dumb. I can only imagine they didn't know how to shoot the terrors of the long dark tunnel, the desert Grievers and didn't feel like putting in the "competition" between the two maze tribes. Probably so they could do more zombies.

----

Obviously it would've killed them to make a better 2 hour 39 minute movie, than a lesser 2 hour 9 minute one. Sigh.

Bottom line -- there's some good action, but there's no attempt to really do the book or bridge properly to the first movie. By cutting down our party running through the Scorch, they get myopic. It's like how 1st season original Star Trek had busy crowded corridors, but by the 3rd season they'd cut it all down to the main core cast.

It's fun enough and the cast, when they get a chance, does some good work. But they could've done so much more. Interestingly, The Scorch Trials did well on its opening week. Not quite as good as the first movie, but then the IMAX version had to be shelved because pre-release opening of Everest in IMAX took all their screen times.

I'd say to recommend rereading Book 2 to get you back up to speed, except they cut so much story I feel such advise would only make you hate it more.

Maze Runner 3: The Death Cure opens in February 2017. They are not splitting the third book into two as has become common with the YA trilogies.

Recommended For Those Invested In The Series

Trailers: The Jungle Book -- Just heard about this the other day, probably based on the release of this trailer. Disney is going for a more realist version of Kipling's novel versus their old cartoon musical. One commenter online suggested they thought Disney might do better justice to the book this time. We will see. The voice talents are OUTSTANDING. Scarlett Johansson as Ka. Also Ben Kingsley, Christopher Walken, Idris Elba, Bill Murray. The 5th Wave -- Huh... Independence Day 2? No, from another best-seller novel. Series? I am not familiar with this. Trailer has to explain what Waves 1-4 are. My All-American -- The first 2015 release in this bunch. Billed as sort of an underdog Rudy story. Small energetic guy is standout high school football player, passed by every college -- until the University of Texas comes along. Fulfills his promise, but wrecks up knee before the Cotton Bowl. Will he follow the doctors or play and be crippled for life? Who can say? Based On A Real Story. Deadpool -- Next Marvel backlist superhero origin story. The suit looks like Spiderman with swords on the back. Wisecracker like Spidey, too. But We Can Build You Better After Cancer -- what could possibly go wrong? Hideously scarred underneath the mask? We'll see it -- Marvel has been batting near 1.000 with these movies. Allegiant -- Divergent 3 (originally Divergent 3 Part I -- Part II is now called Ascendant). We've read the 3½ books in the trilogy. Mrs. Dr. Phil likes these better than Hunger Games -- I put them on a close par. Of course, Hunger Games was the first of this round of YA series movies -- and the second one I read after the Uglies series, so to me Hunger Games has a particularly novel setting. Now I know there are a lot more Let's Mess Up Teens' Lives stories. Divergent looked really good. Insurgent was weaker. We know they have some high tech, but felt that the Erudite's tech as a little too much. Plus there was the ridiculous badly engineered double-wide train. Divergent is set in Chicago, including the Hancock Center and Navy Pier. Insurgent was set in the Merchandise Mart. And Allegiant was set at O'Hare in the book -- we'll see. For now, the land beyond the fence looks too apocalyptic compared to what we've seen earlier. Teased with Kate Winslet in the trailer, but all flashback scenes as they killed her off in Divergent 2.

NEXT WEEKEND IT'S THE MARTIAN!

Dr. Phil

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Another Saturday in September. Another weekend where there was nothing opening in the local cinemas we wanted to see. So we hooked up the Sony WiFi Blu-Ray player to the power -- still need to rewire the setup -- and fired up Netflix.

The Iron Lady [PG-13] (2012)

Netflix streaming

I remember when this came out, and I can't remember why we didn't see it, other than it was released in the U.S. in January and we don't go out to a lot of January movies. Of course, it's the incomparable Meryl Streep, who won the Academy Award for her role as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. I also remember that it was pretty controversial when it came out -- and we could easily see why.

This isn't your straight biopic flick. It starts with an aged, retired Maggie Thatcher not having a tight grip on reality, but managing to escape her security detail and have long conversations with her dead husband. Her career, both as a young woman (ably handled by Alexandra Roach) and her 11-year reign at 10 Downing Street, is shown in flashbacks and TV news coverage. Those who are huge fans of Thatcher no doubt felt this failed to honour the woman, by focusing on her frailties as older. Those who hate Thatcher probably figure that her downfall and comeuppance wasn't hard enough and that her old age would prevent her from being punished sufficiently.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere between these two camps. Alas, it is not entirely clear what relationship the truth has with the people who made this film. Maggie died in 2013, and as far as I know, neither she nor her children ever saw the film. I suppose one could argue that it pairs well with Helen Mirren's The Queen, as movies somewhat obliquely about their main subjects.

Still, as a somewhat biopic, it is an interesting look at one of the major political leaders of the 20th century. But politics and history take a bit of a back seat. Reading through the Wikipedia entry for the film put in a lot more context about events that is obvious, at least to this American. Read the 2nd-4th paragraphs at the head of the Wikipedia article on Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) and you don't get just more -- you get a whole different image. Research chemist and barrister after Oxford? Never mentioned. And there were easily a dozen more stories they could have looked at as Prime Minister. They chose not to go there.

One can argue that too much of the 104 minutes deals with issues outside of her career. But at the same time, some of the charm of the film -- and I think it has some -- is that this outside time is used to humanize the woman. It would be too easy to make a total focus on Thatcherism, her economic plans, which would feed the fuel of a hatchet job to some extent. Roger Ebert argued that this was a life which required an opinion of its subject, that "Few people were neutral in their feelings about her, except the makers of this picture". Perhaps they erred by going too far the other way. Still, a look at the histories of many U.S. Presidents after their time in office shows a general pattern of retirement. It's as if one or two terms in the White House ruins you for doing anything else afterwards. For P.M.s, they are the head of their parties and often return to the opposition or even repeat stays at 10 Downing Street. Thatcher served her three terms and then... gone.

This film has a lot in common with the Kate Winslet/Judi Dench movie Iris, with dual casts showing the main character at two age ranges. In Iris, we're specifically dealing with Alzheimer's. Here in The Iron Lady it is listed merely as old age dementia. Interestingly enough, Jim Broadbent plays the older husband in both movies.

As with everything else, the 1982 Falklands War was glossed over. Yes, this was a film about Thatcher and not the Falklands, but it was so unprecedented at the time for Britain to pull together a hundred ship armada and steam halfway around the globe. I'd forgotten that the task force left just days after the Argentine took the Falklands -- much of my memories were more about the air war, including the long Vulcan bombing missions from England to the war zone. And despite some tough losses and very high risks, they won.

I should warn people who are having to deal with an aged loved one with dementia, will find many of the conversations between mother and daughter to have a familiar feel to them. That may or may not be a good or bad thing, so I'll provide this trigger warning.

Streep, though, is worth watching -- as is Broadbent -- whatever your feelings about the politics or the approach of the filmmakers. And how often do you get to do a review which mentions three of the great ladies of the silver screen at the tops of their game -- Meryl Streep, Judi Dench and Helen Mirren?

Recommended

Netflix can be annoying. My List items tend to disappear -- and sometimes the whole My List of saved items has disappeared, wasting all that search time. So we've already cued up the next movie we want to see, the 2010 Christopher Plummer/Ewan McGregor film Beginners by starting it, then hitting PAUSE. This should cause Netflix to offer to resume when we next sign in. We'll see next weekend...

Dr. Phil

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Saturday is a great wasteland for television. And as August and the Summer of 2015 winds down, there's not a lot of new movies coming out that we HAVE to see. I think the next big movies on our To Do list is Scorch Trials and... drum roll... The Martian. So... maybe stream something on Netflix?

I don't remember if I mentioned this, but a couple of weeks ago we went to watch something on Netflix and discovered that the Blu-Ray player with WiFi would not come on. It was not the case that the BD player was dead -- rather its small surge protector apparently died a valiant death in one of two violent thunderstorms we've had in the last month. We have a temporary kluge, stringing an extension cord that I use with various devices next to the computer desk. But we shall rebuild the system, making it better, stronger, faster... and costing less that $6 million. (evil-grin)

Netflix has redone its screens and its Android/Kindle apps a number of times. To look more dramatic, no doubt, the ubiquitous red letters spelling out Netflix on a white background is now red letters on black. But one of the changes was the TV lost its listing of My List -- the things I'd checkboxed and hoped to someday get around to seeing them. Of course, Netflix pulls things out of rotation from time to time, either through licensing agreements or just changing up what is available on streaming as opposed to DVD rental. When we got the Sony Blu-Ray player for the new HDTV, we reactivated my old Netflix account, but streaming only. So what's available for DVD isn't too important.

But surely there is something to watch. And one of the offerings was this quirky film:

In A World... [R] (2013)

Netflix streaming

I remember when this little film came out and had gotten some decent reviews. Who doesn't remember all those "In a world where..." movie trailers? Don LaFontaine owned the movie trailer business for many years. As opposed to Hal Douglas, the east coast movie trailer voice, who also did "In a world..." trailers -- and was sometimes mistaken for LaFontaine. (Douglas did the overblown fake trailers designed by Cameron Diaz in The Holiday.) Both men are gone, in 2008 and 2014, respectively.

But honestly, I was thinking that this was a documentary -- about the daughter of The Voice of God.

Turns out... no. Although the movie does open with a tribute to Don LaFontaine, including his most excellent GEICO insurance commercial, it's a fictional look into the whole very small voice over industry, especially the vacuum left after La Fontaine's death.

It's delightfully quirky, with a lot of inside baseball humor about voice over work -- and many classic voice over moments. Unlike The Red Shoes, which I reviewed recently (DW) (LJ), hopefully In A World... will not encourage hordes of young people to rush into Hollywood to become movie trailer artists. (grin)

Watching movies at home is not the same as watching in the theatre -- it's less total concentration. As is typical, I was Kindling while watching. But I had to put the machine down because I was missing some of the complications of the dysfunctional friends and family going on. It's a comedy... but it's much more human. And having grown up in schools surrounded by creative people -- artists, actors, musicians -- I have much more attachment to these people than in most comedies. Even if I want to knock some sense into the heads of a couple of people.

Lake Hill, who also wrote/directed/co-produced, stars as the daughter of one of the great voices, trying to make it in her own voice business. She's really good. (Lake is well known for several series we didn't see, including The Practice and Boston Legal, so some of you are much more likely to know who she is.) Michaela Watkins plays Hill's sister and seemed awfully familiar. We both thought for a bit she was Lisa Edelstein who was on House for so many years, but the voice was wrong -- it turns out she was on Saturday Night Live from 2008-9. Likewise, the sister's husband Moe, played by Rob Corddry, I kept thinking was the husband in the movie Fargo -- but that was John Carroll Lynch. Confused so far? Good.

I liked this movie. It was definitely a case of a "sufficient" budget. Too much money and it would've looked fake. This is a small voice over industry, and it needed to look small. After all, the smaller the pond, the bigger the fights over nothing but scraps.

RECOMMENDED

The Search for General Tso [Documentary] (2014)

Netflix streaming

Now this really is a documentary. I remember hearing about this documentary -- a search for both the historical General Tso and the origins of this damned chicken dish named after him. Several people had recommended it, but I couldn't think of the name -- all I could remember was Jiro Dreams of Sushi (DW), which we saw back in December. But after In A World..., I was flipping through the list of movies on the Netflix home screen when lo and behold here it was. Also about 90 minutes, we figured there was still enough Saturday evening to watch this.

General Tso's Chicken. It appears on nearly every Chinese restaurant menu in America -- and apparently many other countries as well. Though not, in particular, China. (grin) As one might expect, it's an Americanized Chinese dish for the blander American palette. But what was the source? Who invented the dish? And was there a General Tso?

It's not my place to spoil any of the adventure for you. It's a good solid, and funny, documentary. Very much worth the hour and a half to see it. And especially if you have interests in food, American and Chinese culture, and the whole creation of industries. The history down this rabbit hole -- or chicken coop if you like -- is well worth it.

RECOMMENDED

Dr. Phil

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We both grew up with Mission:Impossible on TV. Mrs. Dr. Phil started earlier than I did, so she saw the early Barbara Bain/Martin Landau episodes as a kid, where I don't really remember seeing them until we were watching reruns in Laurium. Barney was always my favorite... (cough-geek) after of course the mandatory opening scene with the self-destructing tape, theme and burning fuse opening credits. And later Leonard Nimoy showed up, post-Spock. Whoa -- mind bending.

I have a love-hate relationship with the movie series. Jon Voight as Jim Phelps? Come on, Peter Graves was still active in 1996. How could they? Jim Phelps as the BAD GUY? HOW COULD THEY? Unforgivable. But as a Tom Cruise action franchise -- they have been fun. We saw the first two in the theatres. I've seen the third one on late night TV. We skipped the fourth one. I think the problem was blowing up the Kremlin. It's a divergent point. You can imagine the IMF teams running amuck around the world in our world... mostly. But not after they destroy an iconic landmark. We'd kind of notice. Threw me right out of the story.

Having missed the fourth movie, did we really want to see the fifth? Well, the trailers were quite exciting. The movies have always had good looks and over-the-top set pieces. But Tom Cruise hanging from the side of an Airbus A400M Atlas -- in the trailer I was thinking it was a C-130 and then in the movie I was thinking it was a Russian turboprop, but Wikipedia sets the record straight -- probably sold the deal. That Tom still does his own stunts, including the famous free climb of a cliff face in an earlier movie, is impressive.

Then the reviews came in, saying it was fun. So last Saturday we decided to go see the new one.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation [PG-13]

Holland 7 Theatre 4, 3:30pm, 2×$7.25

Tom Cruise is getting older. They compensate for that by beating him up, before setting him loose on the world. Sure, these movies are his vehicle, but it isn't just Cruise. Ving Rhames has been the reluctant operative all along, but I love his quiet confidence and tech geekery. And Simon Pegg? It'd be easy to dismiss him as just the comic relief, but his geek fu is strong, too.

I have to say, this is the first M:I movie where I felt they were getting closer to the Bourne movies. No, I won't say Ethan Hunt out does Jason Bourne, as one blurb proclaims. But I think they did a good job. And I have to say that the motorcycle chase scene was one of the best chase scenes I've seen in a while. Though there was the little continuity point where I suddenly wondered where did we get off the divided highway and onto the two-lane mountain road.

After the whole Jim Phelps betrayal in the first movie, I spent the whole movie wondering who the evils really were. Alec Baldwin as the head of the CIA and trying to shut down the IMF was a logical choice. But Jeremy Renner? I guess he was in the fourth movie -- but we just thought he was just a new outsider. And therefore a candidate for duplicity. And of course Rebecca Ferguson as the femme fatale whose loyalty we worry about the whole movie. Think Bond Girl but more professional.

The main villain is terribly confident and competent. His denouement is lovely.

There's a cute moment where a cute IMF operative does a Ethan Hunt fangirl moment, before he gets his secret message. So much for security with the whole long pass phrase exchange. (grin)

You're not supposed to examine the physics and engineering too closely in these superspy technothrillers. But come on. Does anyone think that storing important computer data in unfiltered water -- possibly even seawater -- is a good idea? And don't you think that someone would notice a unit being disengaged by something other than the robot arms? And doesn't Ethan have the biggest streak of luck in the world? Sheesh. Pretty. Impressive. Fun. But not very realistic. Sorry.

The one trouble I have with the film series is the repetition of the plot where someone is destroying the whole IMF team -- or the IMF itself. In the first film, there's a nice setpiece where much of Hunt's team is massacred, setting up the revenge aspect of the rest of the film. The one we didn't see involves the IMF being framed for blowing up the Kremlin.

We were perfectly happy to see this at our favorite Holland 7 and not spend the big bucks for IMAX. But I'm glad we saw it on a big screen and not TV -- it deserves the larger canvas. It's fun, it's fresh. And I guess we're not done with the franchise after five movies and 19 years -- another is planned.

Should you choose to accept the mission...

Good times.

Recommended -- better than some of the previous.

Trailers: Hmm... I had taken notes on the trailers, but I've misplaced the half index card with the information. That's what I get for waiting a week before posting this.

Bonus

As long as we're talking about Tom Cruise -- and Tom Cruise movies we haven't seen -- I was flipping late night channels the other night after the news and stumbled onto this movie, fairly close to the beginning.

Oblivion [PG-13]

We missed this because it opened on 19 April 2013 -- which would have been Grading Week for me and just when my foot was getting infected after our basement flooded. Over the next couple of weekends things deteriorated and by 6 May I was stuck in the hospital for 5½ months. Game over. And it's not on Netflix.

Visually Oblivion is beautiful. I remember an article in Wired talking about the 360° dome they used to project aerial imagery for Cruise's bubble ship.

Where I came in, the movie is pretty sparsely cast. We have dashing pilot Jack Harper, his elegant live-in flight controller Vika and the remote image of Sally from the space station supervising them. Aliens had attacked Earth decades earlier, damaging it and making it uninhabitable. Mankind is moving to Saturn's moon Titan. There are giant fusion power plants powered by seawater which must be protected from any remaining aliens. Jack's job is to the fix the armed spherical drones defending them. When their mission is up, Vika and Jack will migrate to Titan and Earth will be abandoned. Meanwhile, they live a beautiful life atop Tower 49.

There's a hitch. Jack and Vika have had their memories wiped it seems. My guess, having not seeing the very beginning, is this is supposed to aid in their cleanup and abandonment of Earth. Excuse me, giant red flag waving over here.

Of course, like the fireman in Fahrenheit 451, Jack doesn't quite toe the company line. He's found an unspoiled mountain lake retreat and spends time there. He collects things, including an old book. And he keeps having flashbacks of the observation deck on the Empire State Building -- and a girl.

We soon realize that part of Tower 49's territory includes New York City -- or rather the mostly buried and destroyed remnants of NYC. And if you think all is not as it seems, this gets cemented when he discovers a stasis chamber with the girl of his dreams. And then he runs into Morgan Freeman. The Earth is not empty of humans, it seems.

From there it gets complicated. And overall, I have to say it's nicely done. The end is a bit reminiscent of Independence Day or V'ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The very end reminds me of the end of Battlestar Galactica -- and if BSG had ended like Oblivion, I would've been much happier with it. (evil-grin)

Make fun of Tom Cruise if you want, but his name is still a big budget draw and he's been willing to get into some top drawer science fiction movies. Technical accuracy might be traded in for thrilling action, but at the end of the day, Mr. Cruise gets the job done and in style.

We will have to rent this sometime and see it all the way through with Mrs. Dr. Phil. Sorry we missed it in the theatres, because I did want to see it, but that damned heel got in the way.

RECOMMENDED

Dr. Phil

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Back in the days of Studio 28, we went to a number of double feature outings -- especially on Thanksgiving. Less likely since they closed. And so today's movie going is a triple threat of unusual: Double feature. Double feature since my foot has acted up. And quality animation. This was made easier by virtue of the fact that both movies were only about ninety minutes long.

Also in the old days, we might have hit the concessions twice -- popcorn one time and nachos and/or hot dogs the other as a meal. Today was one of the few times we have ever taken advantage of Holland 7's free pop refills and 50¢ corn refill. Holland 7 doesn't do hot dogs or other sandwiches and the starting times fell between lunch and dinner. But they have the best popcorn in West Michigan.

Given the animation angle, I will say this is by far the youngest average age pair of audiences we've been to in a long time. And this had an extraordinary impact on the video ads before the trailers and the trailers themselves. Not huge crowds this time of day for either show -- maybe 30-40 each. Mrs. Dr. Phil also reported that they had a new credit card and pay system at the ticket window. Slow going, either because it was balking at reading some of the cards or unfamiliarity with the system when looking up online purchased tickets. It will smooth out.

First up:
Minions 2D [PG]

Holland 7 Theatre 5, 2:10pm, 2×$7.25

This movie is totally about Minions, right from the hilarious opening theme for Universal Studios. If you aren't familiar with the yellow pill shaped eye goggled critters from the Despicable Me franchise, then this movie is probably not for you.

We love Minions.

Totally improbable and great gobs of fun, despite this being touted as a prequel origin story for the Minions, it still begs the questions: Where do Minions come from? How many are there, beyond Kevin, Stuart and Bob? And are they actually indestructible/immortal? Also do not dwell too much on where Minion stuff comes from -- such as their various forms of goggles...

And then there's Minion-speak, which is mostly unintelligible babble, punctuated by a few understandable words like "okay" or place/people names. I seem to recall that some of the language is based on Portuguese, which not a lot of people tend to know, and then it's reduced to rapid fire muttering. (grin) Whatever, it's rather funny that you can go through whole movie and the Minions never get any subtitles. Yet we understand them perfectly.

The story is just plain fun. Kudos to Sandra Bullock for voicing the chief villain of a movie full of villains. An amusing note is watching her animated character do the same bust shimmy of a strapless gown that Sandra Bullock did so awkwardly as an FBI agent in Miss Congeniality. Love the family which picks up the hitchhiking Minions.

Much of the movie is set in 1968 -- there's a nice joke about DisneyWorld -- and therefore has a GREAT soundtrack. Stay for the credits, since there's a big production musical number at the end.

I was getting really concerned with the saturation bombing of TV with ads for the movie and all sorts of product tie-in ads -- hell, there's a Minions NASCAR racing car right now -- that maybe we'd seen all the funny bits and the actual movie would be a disappointment. But... on Friday's Morning Edition on NPR, Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan -- who hates nearly anything SF/F we want to see -- gave a lovely review of all this nonsense, calling it fun. There may be hope for him yet. (evil-grin)

We very much enjoyed ourselves.

RECOMMENDED for MINIONS

Trailers: Goosebumps, I guess is Yet Another YA series someone is trying to turn into a blockbuster. So far the only ones which have worked have been Harry Potter and various dystopian YA series. Of course if this bombs, then it might be hard to get a movie deal for Jim C. Hines' Libriomancer series. (sad-reality-grin) Shaun the Sheep: The Movie is Aardman Studio's latest creation. We've seen a trailer before, this one was longer. Lots of fun. Aardman (Chicken Run, Wallace & Grommit, etc.) is simply brilliant. No one done claymation like they do. Could be enormously funny. Pan is a prequel origin story for Peter Pan and Hook. The teaser trailer I saw a while ago looked awful. This full trailer is better... but I'm not sold yet. I think it might be on the par with the so-called sequel Hook, which couldn't completely survive even with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman. The Secret Life of Pets is already forgettable, and I only have the title written down in the notes I took before the movie. Also before the trailers, saw a commercial for The Descendants on Disney Channel -- think Kristen Chenowith as Malificent, the headmistress of a boarding school for the children of fairy tale villains? Have no idea of the quality, but the idea is cool. Sort of like the premise to Wicked, but without the good guys. Despite the lack of superpowers, Wednesday Addams would be so at home here... (evil-grin)

The Second Feature:
Inside Out 2D [PG]

Holland 7 Theatre 7, 4:10pm, 2×$6.00

We'd talked about doing a movie on the Sunday we were in Greensboro NC, but we managed to do enough scheduling in a short time, we didn't need to push it. And last weekend we did Ah-nold, review coming Real Soon Now, so we really wanted to see Inside Out in the theatre. Easy decision to do the double -- not brokenhearted that we didn't get to see either in 3D.

As a Pixar film, we get treated to a new Pixar short: Lava. A sort of Hawaiian themed story of a lonely volcano in the middle of the ocean, almost turns tragic in multiple ways, but ends up with a sweet ending. Not knowing whether it is based on some actual Hawaiian or Polynesian tale, very early on I thought of Pixar's short about the critters that were all teeth, and was just sure the two birds shown flying in the opening were going to be toast from the volcano erupting. But it wasn't that kind of Pixar short. Of course there were a few problems with plate tectonics. (grin)

As to the movie, Pixar's Inside Out is sheer genius. Yes, we've had Brain Command Centers before, most notably in Woody Allen's EUAWTKAS*BWATA. But the fivesome of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear are cute and clever -- stay for the credits and see inside some of the other characters' brains -- the bus driver is hilarious. All the voices are outstanding, but I'll give Amy Poehler some credit for playing Joy with such enthusiasm, yet not managing to be cloying where we want to smack Joy. Let's just say that Joy experiences a lot of growth in this movie.

The world building is exceptional -- both in the Real World and inside the mind. I was struck from the first trailer that there was an extraordinary use of strong colors. There is a gentle naivete with how the fivesome approach problem solving, and the obstacles thrown up against them are well thought out. And everything has consequences. Well played.

There's been a lot of talk about useful this movie will be in term of getting kids to talk about feelings. I particularly liked how baby, toddler, 11-year-old and 12-year-old Riley all have different needs. The child's control panel is one-emotion-at-a-time -- the older adult control consoles have places for all five. And memories and personalities become much more multi-faceted. The new control console also has a big red warning light marked PUBERTY, which the fivesome doesn't know what it's for and so figures it's not important. I was SO hoping it would go off at the very end of the credits... but no. The one boy's response to GIRL! is priceless, however.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Trailers: Underdogs where Foosball game players have to take on an evil real soccer megastar in a soccer game to save a small town from a takeover. Right. Could totally happen. Might be amusing. Hotel Transylvania 2 is the sequel to an animated movie that I figure we saw all the good jokes in the trailer. There might actually be more of a plot in this one, trying to get the vampire's grandson to grow in his fangs so he won't be moved to the excitement of the big city. Still, this sort of comedy is not our cup of tea. Dream Big is a Peanuts movie. The artwork looks good and the voices are better than most of the later TV specials. Seems to be the story of the Red Haired Little Girl moving into town. Charlie Brown practicing his pitching against a snowman version of himself -- and still gets disrobed-by-explosion on the pitching mound. I would probably watch this on HDTV, but not the theatre. Oh, and what's with all the late 60s/early 70s music in films lately? Besides Minions today, the trailer for the Peanuts movie features "Teenage Wasteland"? The Good Dinosaur from Pixar. Imagine that the Extinction Level Event meteor missed the Earth. Gives hope to those who thinks Man and dinosaurs coexisted, but for COMPLETELY different reasons. Also, the asteroid belt and the Oort Cloud are NOT that dense with rocks. (science-fail-grin) Minions -- which we just saw. (grin)

All in all, a tremendously fun afternoon. But I'm glad we saw the silliness of Minions first and the more thoughtful Inside Out second. We had a lot of nice discussions on the drive home, especially about the latter.

Both are rated PG, both are suitable for kids -- and eminently acceptable for adults.

Dr. Phil

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Back in early June 1993, we were returning from a trip south up through Indiana and US-131 in Southwest Michigan. It was early enough in the afternoon that we figured we'd stop at Studio 28 in Grand Rapids, grab something to eat and see a movie before going home. It ended up, though, there wasn't really anything to see. BUT... Studio 28 was finishing up their big renovation of the huge Theatre 1 with new seats and a massive multispeaker Dolby sound system, new projection system/screen, etc. And they were doing a big old-fashioned film opening with Jurassic Park the next week. Reserved seats and everything.

So we said fine, we'll buy tickets for that, eat a couple of hot dogs and go home. Really excellent decision, instead of seeing something lame just to see a movie -- we don't do that, thank you very much.

It was swell.

Just the scenes around the T-Rex paddock, with the bellowing, the singing of the snapping electrified wires and... most especially, ramped up in volume, a completely gut turning, cringe inducing scraping sound of the roof of the inverted Ford Explorer sliding on top of the concrete barrier. Eeeeeee!

Dinosaurs. Real ones.

The franchise stumbled through two sequels, easily following Dr. Phil's Rule of Sequels, but fun enough. Fast forward 22 years and they are trying to capture the magic again. We had a social engagement Saturday night and I bought us afternoon tickets for IMAX 3D online. So we decided to do our pre-lab.

Jurassic Park [PG-13]

Amazon Prime Download Rental $3.99

Yes, I own at least two copies of JP, if not three. But one is VHS and we don't have a working VHS player. And I'm sure I got the boxed set of DVDs a while ago, but they're buried somewhere. Likewise, I brought up all of Wendy's DVDs when she died and I'm sure she had JP, as well. Found The Lost World DVD from the set, Jurassic Park II, but we wanted the original. So it's pretty easy to rent it from Amazon and play it on our WiFi Sony BluRay player -- Netflix is not streaming it currently.

The diciest thing about rental streaming is that we were doing this on a Friday night, where we've decided that everyone on our DSL subnet must be downloading the universe, because we sometimes get into buffering troubles. In our case, most of the movie looked and sounded great in HD, but there were some scenes where both video and sound were downgraded to keep playing with limited bandwidth. Not too much, though. Besides, we'd seen it before. (grin)

Anyway, there's a reason why it's a classic. Even if it showcases the WORST USER INTERFACE EVER -- a slow motion flying over a 3D cityscape of files and then dares to call it UNIX. GACK! Don't say it! No-OOO!

But the whole cast is great. Jeff Goldblum playing Big Player Jeff Goldblum is spot on, Laura Dern is terrific, Sam Neill, SAMUEL L. JACKSON as a computer geek -- Motherfucking YES, etc.

Okay. We're ready. Bring on the dinosaurs.

Jurassic World IMAX 3D [PG-13]

Celebration North IMAX Theatre 18, 3:45pm, 2×$16.50 + $2.50 fee. Seats A-13/14

So... 22 years and 2 days later, does Spielberg and Company deliver again? Well, yes and no. It's clear that they're trying to follow the structure and the beats of Jurassic Park -- I mean why tamper with a successful formula? This is a summer blockbuster movie, after all. But I can't say it's just another me-too meh sequel, because it certainly has some charm of its own.

For one thing, it's got Chris Pratt. I swear it's the same costume as in Guardians of the Galaxy. (evil-grin) It's kind of like Indiana Jones. When he puts on the jacket, the hat and straps on the bullwhip, you're locked and loaded and ready for fun. Whereas Mad Max was almost irrelevant to Fury Road, Pratt is the heart and soul of Jurassic World. And you thought you knew velociraptors. Clever girls...

Second, it's a functioning looking full blown theme park going on. Jurassic Park never opened. Jurassic World is full of the kind of summer vacationers you often don't really care if they live or die. Man, karma is a dish best served cold. With dinosaurs.

B.D. Wong is back as the incredible scientist who doesn't ever think of consequences. Yeah, during our prelab I realized he definitely got off the island on the ship during the storm, to live another twenty years and cook up some new dinos. Seriously, someone needs to get him a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, plus a few hundred hours of HR workshops on ethics. On the other hand, I had real trouble relating to Bryce Dallas Howard's winner-takes-all character. She's the wrong person in that job, especially as the new rich investor guy to replace Hammond actually has some amusing qualities, amongst his blind spots. I am reminded of another Michael Crichton character, Ross in his book Congo (they never made a movie of this). (grin) I guess Ingen couldn't hire Pepper Potts away from Stark Enterprises to run Jurassic World properly, assuming her boyfriend didn't interfere. Or if he did, at least the security troops would have the upper hand with equipment...

Speaking of security, Vincent D'Onofrio is channeling Brian Dennehy here. I spent half the movie waiting for him to get chomped. Almost, but not quite as satisfying as Lawyer On The Half Shell chomp in Jurassic Park. (yes-i-went-there-grin)

Also, who ever designed their security systems sucks. You got mega dangerous killer dinos? I want that GPS tracking system to update every 1/100th of a second. Seriously. I think Jurassic World the themepark bought theirs from the same cutrate vendor who services most supervillain lairs in most movies. Let's put cameras everywhere, except for these secret entrances and at these vulnerable choke points and, what the heck, let's skimp on the sensors in the room with all the valuables.

All that said, it's wildly entertaining.

An interesting question came up when talking about the movie at the cookout Saturday night. Does Jurassic World pass the Bechtel test? Barely. The operation is run by the woman-in-suit, or at least she's in charge. And one of the top console hotdoggers is a woman, and they do talk to each other about, oh, dinosaurs eating people and not about boys. So that's good. But Mrs. Dr. Phil pointed out that since genetically all the dinosaurs are female -- and it is established that the velociraptors are talking to each other, usually about eating things -- why then YES. The surprising answer is that Jurassic World DOES pass the Bechtel test, just not in the usual way we think about it.

I will mention two nits that momentarily threw me out of the film. And they're not particularly spoilery. The first is watching two teens manage to get one of Jurassic Park's old gas powered Jeeps running. Now... I may have misheard the dialog, but I was pretty sure the one kid said it was a 1972 Jeep... not a twenty year old 1992 Jeep we'd expect. However, that isn't a flaw. Because a '72 would presumably NOT have a computer or fuel injection. Which means they'd have a hope in hell of getting it started. But geez, man, they're in the jungle off of Costa Rica. That vehicle ain't gonna run. And even if that battery charger DID have power from a phantom circuit that's still online from the new park, that battery is NOT going to charge. And I'd hate to think what is in the gas -- if it hasn't all evaporated after twenty years.

But it's the second nit that really is the howler. Bryce Daughter of Ron Howard and those shoes. Really? She's running for her life in the jungle in designer high heels? Remember, you just have to be faster than the slowest person to survive. (grin) And the heel's never break? And she's STILL in them at the end? Chris Pratt apparently commented on a talk show that she really did running in those shoes, which amazed everyone. At least in the jungle they showed people actually sweating.

Still, at the end of two hours we were mightily entertained. It's a natural progression from Jurassic Park, if you assume that governments around the world wouldn't have bombed and quarantined the hell out of Isla Numblar and Site B two decades ago...

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Trailers: Ant Man almost derailed us. Usually when they start a trailer with the talent sitting in a studio chair telling you how great the film is, that's a sure sign of a desperation attempt to flog a dead dog. But the first trailer is SO good looking, I think it's more the problem that Ant Man was, pardon the pun, small potatoes in the Marvel universe, so they have to try and tell people, "NO, man, we're serious here -- this is gonna be fun!" When I met three people at a cookout on Saturday night who did not know there was a Jurassic Park sequel out, sometimes you have to let people know. Also, given the Disney connection, I was amused that this was the SECOND movie this summer to include It's A Small World singing along. Which as I said in the Tomorrowland review, might be THANK GOD the closest we get to trying to turn THAT Disney park attraction into a movie. (truly-evil-grin) The Next Mission: Impossible IV Or Whatever brings Tom Cruise and the band back together, and it certainly looks like suitable action movie fodder. Everest in IMAX is even more insane than the Everest documentary we saw in IMAX 3D years ago. I mean, crossing those aluminum ladders lashed together, wearing climbing boots with crampons -- who DOES this? I might have to see this one alone. Mrs. Dr. Phil is not that interested in dizzying heights disasters, real or imagined. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II will close out this series in November. I'd just seen the trailer online a few days ago and it still looks good. Is anyone creepier in the world smiling and being polite to you than nice, innocent Donald Sutherland? (creepy-grin)

Of course, the best trailer I've seen lately is for September's The Martian, based on the tremendous book by Andrew Wier, and starring Matt Damon from I-Can't-Stop-Watching-Reruns-Of-The-Bourne-Movies. We are going to science the shit out of this. Seriously, even xkcd thinks so:


And that's it for this movie edition...

Dr. Phil

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