Though billed as a documentary, Leviathan is really a work of pure visual artistry. Made by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel who are both anthropologists at Harvard University, it is best described as an attempt to capture what it feels like to be aboard a commercial fishing trawler as it works the seas around North America. With no narration and no dialogue beyond the rare incidental remark by the crew which are almost always completely unintelligible, it is up to the audience to glean whatever meaning that they can from the myriad images and sounds.
Only a handful of articles this time and the biggest one of them, which I’ll start with, is deceptively underwhelming.
CRISPR isn’t a new discovery but it was only recently that it has been put to its current use and its importance understood. This article from Quanta Magazine gives a broad overview of the topic. It was originally discovered as a unusual gene in common E. coli and researchers only later realized that the microbes which possess this gene are able to use it to defend themselves against viruses. Effectively the microbes are able to cut out parts of viral DNA and store them so as to recognize these invaders in the future. Even later, researchers realized that this could be adapted into a gene editing tool which would enable scientists to precisely snip out a specific section of DNA and replace it with anything else. Finally, the changes will persist in future generations of the organism. As you can imagine, this makes all kinds of customized organisms much easier to engineer.
This next article from the BBC is much lighter fare. It talks about how the signalling function of the peacock’s elaborate tail may be much subtler than previously imagined. Apparently in addition to the large size and brilliant colors of the famous fantail, it also produces an infrasonic sound that is inaudible to humans but that both male and female peacocks can detect. This effectively allows peacocks to use their fantails to send signals to each other even when not in line of sight.
Ever wondered why we have lots of adjectives that are sight-based, for example all of the different words for even minor variations of colors, but few words for describing smells. In fact, it is difficult to think of many words for describing smells that don’t refer to the source of the smell. This article from The Economist talks about how a study of the Mani people who live in Thailand that this may at least be partially due to cultural bias rather than purely because our sense of smell isn’t as well developed as your sight. Researchers administered smell tests to them and found that they could identify smells much more quickly than a control group of Dutch people and furthermore that their language contains many unique descriptors for smells.
Skipping over the next film in the Marriage in the Movies course because I can’t for the life of me find The Marrying Kind, we come to Adam’s Rib. This one stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, another phenomenally successful and famous Hollywood duo. In this case, they actually were a couple in real life and remained so until Tracy’s death though the relationship was kept a secret.
Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the most interesting Hollywood performers to me. Aside from some exceptions like Prince of Persia and The Day After Tomorrow, his career is devoid of the stereotypical big but dumb blockbusters. His own acting acumen of course is not in doubt ever since Brokeback Mountain. Nightcrawler is therefore only the latest feather in his cap, being not only an excellent film but also one that brilliantly showcases his diverse skills.
As with many of the animated films we watch, this one was added to our watch list by my wife. It’s a French-Scottish production directed by Slyvain Chomet who is best known for Les Triplettes de Belleville. It’s also worth noting from the onset it’s based on a script by French comedian and film maker Jacques Tati from the 1950s about his relationship with his daughter, but it was never actually made into a film.
As you might expect, this one was included as the next entry in the list for the upcoming Marriage and the Movies course. The leads are Carole Lombard, who was a huge star in the late 1930s but this is I believe I’ve seen a movie of hers, and interestingly a much younger James Stewart, who was so impressive in Vertigo. In fact, I didn’t realize that it was the same actor but did have niggling feeling that I should know him from somewhere.
I knew going in that despite its title this film had nothing to do with Brazil and that it was a science-fiction movie with a good dose of director Terry Gilliam’s unique brand of fantasy. What I didn’t know was that it is basically a re-imagining of 1984. You can’t fail to notice what’s going on when the perfect on-screen version of jack booted thugs, down to the square jaws and British accents, show up, and that’s when I started to really have fun with this movie.
