This Pixar film didn’t seem to make much of a splash on its release and I even preferred to watch Turning Red from a year later before this. I came back to this after seeing some beautiful still images of the fictional town of Portorosso it is set in and realized that it’s inspired by Italian culture. Pretty as its art is, its themes and its story make it too juvenile to take seriously and its references to Italy too generic to be meaningful. It’s watchable but it feels almost boring next to Turning Red.
I had this pegged as an American film on my list, was surprised to see the opening set in London and that’s it’s full of British characters and then later read that it is American after all. That actually makes sense given how much it exaggerates English mannerisms and makes fun of how one is supposed to behave according to one’s class from a perspective of an outsider to their society. Unfortunately while this film has its amusing moments, its many flaws causes it to fall short of true greatness and it isn’t that memorable.
Every one of Satyajit Ray’s films we’ve seen so far has been at the very least strong contenders and this one impresses us once again as a powerful invective against traditional superstition. I particularly love how this film very small and yet very large at the same time. It’s based on a short story and limits its scenes entirely to one family and their household. Yet its themes encompass the pantheon of Hindu deities and carry all of the weight of tradition, the patriarchy and wealth. It says so much and so powerfully in one compact package.
This month’s pick of developments worth paying attention is more substantial than usual and I think at least a couple of them will have serious long-term implications.
Starting with lighter news first, the announcement that lab-grown retinal cells are capable of reaching out and connecting to other cells is exciting. Lately many researchers have been experimenting with all kinds of organoids, organized clusters of cells that can be regarded as very primitive versions of organs. This is a similar example that involves coaxing stem cells to develop into light-sensitive retinal cells. The latest development is to show that these cells are capable of forming synaptic connections to other cells. We’re still a long way from growing artificial eyes in this way but it may be possible to use this technique to treat certain eye disorders and injuries.
Next is a paper that claims that chimpanzees possess risk-taking behaviors that are similar to humans. This means their risk assements are broadly correlated across domains, they shy away from ambiguous situations, males are more willing to take risks than females and that appetite for risk peaks in young adults, patterns that are broadly similar to humans. From a philosophical perspective, these results are interesting as chimpanzees are of course not influenced by human culture, suggesting that there may be an evolutionary basis to risk-taking preferences.
Then we have this longer article about how the old model of animal learning, famously known from Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, is slowly being debunked. The old model looked forward and stipulated that learning works by trial and error. A prediction is made in response to cues and adjustments are made to future predictions as a result of how correct it was. The new model looks backwards, such that when a reward or punishment is received by the animal, it looks back in its memory tp search for what might have caused the event and learns accordingly. New experiments suggest that the new model seems closer to the truth. Though the difference between the two models may be subtle to most of us, this amounts to a revolution in neuroscience with major implications.
Finally some of the early results from the James Webb Space Telescope are in and they are suggesting that cosmologists’ ideas of how the universe formed may be all wrong. The new telescope effectively lets astronomers see further back in time than previously possible and the surprising finding is that there are too many mature galaxies out there and that they are too bright. The researchers expected to see more chaotic and primitive structures from the distant past, yet it seems that the past looks too similar to the present than what is predicted by current models. No prominent astronomer has quite come out to explicitly say it yet and they’re all still reviewing the results but I believe this shows how little we really know about the formation of the universe and the models we have are really just educated guesses.
I’m not really an enthusiastic fan of the films of Wes Anderson even if I tend to enjoy them and this newest one makes for a pretty good illustration of why. It’s almost pure style with no real underlying theme except for a love of its setting. There’s no character development and it actively tries to avoid emotional engagement. Anderson himself calls it a love letter to journalists, well, maybe a very specific kind of foreign correspondent from a bygone era. But it feels to me like more of a tribute to France, at or at least a kind of idealized France of the 1960s according to the American imagination. It’s supremely gorgeous and fun but ultimately feels hollow and unsatisfying.
Ran was Akira Kurosawa’s last epic and is one of his most famous films despite it being made so late in his career. It’s considered an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear though it seems that the director was originally inspired by a real figure from Japanese history Mōri Motonari. While Kurosawa was never a very subtle director, I found this to be much too heavy-handed and obvious for my tastes, like a lavish, exaggerated stage play. It does look incredibly beautiful and being the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time, features some of the most impressive large-scale period battles put on film. It even manages to convey the effective use of tactics to win battles!
As I promised a while back, I enjoyed Shadow Tactics so much that I decided then and there that I would play the Western-themed but similar genre game by the same developer. It took a while but here we are. This title pretty much offers the exact same type of gameplay and I unfortunately discovered that I don’t really like the Western-theme much after this being the second such game I’ve played this month. The guns do indeed make this more action-oriented if you want but it still feels more satisfying to be stealthy so this felt like more of the same for me. Eventually I warmed up to it enough to be just as engrossed by the more complex levels but I still prefer the earlier game more and I had no desire to replay levels for the sake of grinding stars and achievements.
