We watched this on YouTube as one of the many media works being made available for free during the global lockdown. My wife and I went to watch the Phantom of the Opera when the global tour arrived in Kuala Lumpur last and we considered going to Cats when it supposed to come this year as well. I argued against that as I thought it was a silly show and indeed it was cancelled way before covid-19, likely because of low advance ticket sales. The debacle that was last year’s star-studded film version only reinforced my poor impression of this musical. But since this is free online, I went along with watching this in full just so that I can finally say that I’ve done it.
Not too many articles this month, especially as I’m avoiding covid-19 topics as there is way too much noise and things are moving so fast on that front.
This paper is a little old but I hadn’t seen it before so here it is. Based on US data, it examines the relationship between the temperature and the ability of students to learn, finding that hot days reduce test scores with extremely hot days being the most disruptive. As you can expect, providing air-conditioning to schools makes a big impact. Plus this is about the US so think about how much more difficult it is in poorer hot countries.
Next here’s an article about a new comprehensive review of the fossil record of the Kem Kem region in eastern Morocco which paleontologists have playfully called the most dangerous place on Earth. This is because they have discovered it to have been populated by an unusually high preponderance of large carnivores in the past, based on the region’s fossil record. Scientists have known about this for a long time so it even has a name, Stromer’s Riddle, in honor of the German scientist who in 1912 first identified the phenomenon of how it seems to have so many fossils of carnivorous dinosaurs compared to herbivorous ones.
The next article is here mainly as an example of bad science writing. The phenomenon is question is real enough. Scientists trying to find particles coming from space in Antarctica were surprised to find high-energy neutrinos instead coming from the ground. This seems impossible as the Earth itself should be blocking them. They have been hunting for a good explanation for a years now and as the more conventional ideas have panned out, are reaching for more exotic ones. The latest idea is that the particles are somehow coming from a parallel universe in which time runs opposite of ours. Naturally this lead to a lot of excited news coverage. But it remains a very implausible explanation, offered only because we have thus far found nothing else and the math checks out. It’s not impossible but we should be properly skeptical of such wild claims.
Very often I have films sitting in my queue for so long that I forget why I ever put them on it. I knew going in this one that it’s a thriller or action movie starring Tom Cruise but little more than that. But after the usually patient pacing of the opening sequence of Cruise in a taxi literally cruising through the city at night, I wondered who the director is and of course it’s Michael Mann. That in of itself is a good reason for wanting to watch this.
This documentary was added to my list because of its prominence among critics last year but I never realized how heavily inspired it was by the Jacques Demy film Model Shop. By pure coincidence, we only got around to watching that earlier this year and we’re very glad we did as Echo in the Canyon refers to it almost constantly as a sort of record of what mid-1960s Los Angeles looked and felt like. The producer himself acknowledges that it was watching the film that inspired him to embark on this project to find out what the music scene at the time was light and to organize a sort of tribute concert for those great bands.
This is an earlier film by the same Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos who brought us The Lobster and The Favourite. When he made this, he hadn’t yet become famous so this was made with unknown actors and a limited budget. In fact, it takes place almost entirely within the confines of a family’s house. Yet it doesn’t disappoint with regards to its weirdness quotient while being somewhat easier to understand in terms of theme.
I keep saying I’m done with playing around with Blender but this will be my last set, at least for a while. I did the above scene for example because I’d always wanted to make a nice bathroom scene but this doesn’t really break any new ground for me and didn’t involve too much work at all. There’s still plenty of things for me to learn and Blender is moving very fast forward but it’s getting to be too much work for me to try to keep up. Plus I have other stuff I want to work on next.
It’s pretty amazing how Elisabeth Moss is the one who achieved the most success and recognition coming out of Mad Men, and here she is in another film that is a hit with the critics. Unfortunately I think only about half of the film is really good as the part that deals with the descent of a rock star is fantastic but the subsequent attempted redemption feels weak and unearned.
