Steven Soderdergh is of course best known for the Ocean’s series of films which I’m not really a fan of but he has made more serious crime films as well. Judging from the praise it won from critics, I thought this period crime film would fall on the more serious side, and for a while it does seem that way. But after a rapid spate of mutual betrayals, this starts looking more like a darkly humorous caper film with an ensemble cast instead. It’s a lot of fun but it’s not a film that really cares about character development or even having them behave in ways that make sense.
This game is based on a British television series. It seems like a rather popular one and the final season is set to air soon but I’ve never watched it. I only bought this because I’m always curious about quirky little games and I liked the setting. The name itself refers to a family of gangsters based in Birmingham, England, set just after the end of the First World War. The gameplay is somewhat similar to Shadow Tactics, in that you need to coordinate a team to get through each level.
The China-made fantasy films we watched recently have been pretty great so far and this latest one is just as impressive. This one is particularly striking in how it conflates multiple disparate issues in China into one film: the popularity of online web fiction, the kidnapping of children on the streets and the scary power of the founders of the tech giant companies. This isn’t great art and there is no point in looking for deeper themes in it but it is rollicking great entertainment and a wonderfully imaginative spectacle even if some of its inspirations are very obvious.
This is very much a rich people problems kind of film but you do have to admit that the story is fascinating. It is about the forgery scandal that rocked the art world some years ago when dozens of paintings were found to have been made by a Chinese painter Pei-Shen Qian. This film focuses particularly on the role of the Knoedler & Co gallery in facilitating the sale of the forgeries to rich collectors. It is extraordinary how filmmaker Barry Avrich was able to obtain the cooperation of many different parties, including the ones implicated in the fraud, to speak on camera and hence capture opposing perspectives.
This is another cultural touchstone that I’ve somehow missed out on and not knowing anything about it just gets embarrassing. It is of course always a pleasure to watch a Coen brothers, even the ones that don’t particularly resonate with me, and this one features a crazily large cast of name actors and a really fun attitude. I didn’t like the familiar plot of chasing a briefcase of money as the MacGuffin at all but I then realized it isn’t meant to matter at all and then I loved the film all the more for it
A lighter load of articles this month and just as well as I am very busy! Almost all of this is medical related as well especially as I have started paying more attention to potential health issues.
We may as well start with the news that everyone most likely has heard already, about a man in US being the first recipient of a heart transplant from a genetically-modified pig. The genes needed to be modified to reduce the risk of organ rejection due to the presence of foreign proteins and even after all that work this is understandably still a huge gamble. It is an incredible milestone to reach of course and even if the transplant fails in this particular instance, there will most certainly be many more attempts.
A very common ailment as one ages is arthritis caused by wear and tear of the cartilage protecting our joints. The only treatment possible right now are artificial implants or transplants of healthy cartilage from elsewhere which makes for a very scary surgery as someone I know had to go through this recently. So this announcement about success in inducing cartilage to regrow is promising. This experiment was performed on a rabbit and they stimulated the cartilage to regrow by constructing a tissue scaffold that generates a weak electrical field. This induces cells to colonize the scaffold and grow into cartilage and the scaffold itself is made of a biodegradable polymer that doesn’t have to be removed afterwards.
Next up is the discovery of a possible explanation for what actually causes multiple sclerosis. To the uninitiated, this is a horrifying condition in which your own immune system attacks your neurons but why this happens has always been unclear. By searching through extensive blood samples drawn from every serving member of the US armed forces, researchers showed that diagnosis of multiple sclerosis is preceded by infection by the Epstein-Barr virus, one of the most common viruses in humans. We still don’t know why only a small subset of those infected by this virus goes on to develop the condition but this finding may be enough to prompt more effort to develop a vaccine against the virus, which currently does not exist.
Finally here is a cool article about how astronomers watched a red supergiant star go supernova for the first time. Of course the star in question is located in the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million years away so this happened a long time ago and this still marks the first time that astronomers were able to observe the day before it went supernova and kept observing it when they detected unusual activity 130 days before the violent event.
Wanuri Kahiu is a Kenyan director of some renown and I believe this is the film of hers that has made the most impact internationally so far. It’s a romance about a couple of young lesbians and given the state of LBGT rights in Kenya, it’s no surprise that this was banned in its home country. The ban however was lifted after the director took the matter to court. It feels a little rough around the edges to me in terms of production quality but it is heartfelt and the Kenyan setting makes it doubly interesting.
