from the will-the-sequel-be-called-departure dept.
The new movie Arrival is drawing sufficient praise as a smart and stylish science fiction film [AdBlock unfriendly] that Kate and I actually went to the trouble of getting a sitter so we could see it in the theater Friday night. It is, indeed, a very good movie, and probably the best adaptation one could hope for of the Ted Chiang story "Story of Your Life" (which is one of the best science fiction stories in any medium over the last mumble years). I was, however, disappointed that they left out nearly all of the physics that's in the original.
First, a brief, non-spoiler summary, before diving into the details: In the film, Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist who is recruited by the military to help them communicate with the aliens in one of twelve "shells" that have appeared at random locations on the surface of the Earth. She's paired with theoretical physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly (played by Jeremy Renner), and the two of them spend a lot of time writing messages back and forth to the alien "heptapods," who appear only on the far side of a transparent partition. As Louise figures out the heptapod language, it leads to a transformation in the way she sees the world, one with significant emotional costs to her, but that might be the key to saving the whole communicate-with-aliens enterprise.
What's your take on 'The Arrival,' Soylent?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @10:53PM
Here [sciencemag.org] is what Science had to say about it a month ago from a linguistic standpoint.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by ikanreed on Monday December 05 2016, @11:03PM
What are you talking about? [github.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday December 05 2016, @11:08PM
Well, it's NoScript unfriendly, so I don't actually care about how it deals with AdBlock …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:15AM
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vYY5rr_dOMIJ:http://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/11/21/the-physics-that-got-left-out-of-arrival/%2Bthe+physics+that+got+left+out+of+arrival&hl=en&gbv=1&ct=clnk
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:58PM
You can make the URL shorter by removing the search string from that.
&hl=en&gbv=1&ct=clnk is also noise.
(Everything from the 1st plus sign onward is unnecessary--unless you want to purposely highlight something.)
Note: The first plus sign, as displayed, is %2B.
The http://www. from the target URL can also be removed.
In fact, if you're going for maximum shortness, of the target, only the TLD needs to be in the URL (not the stuff specific to the page).
If I was going to -add- something to the URL, that would be &strip=1 .
That removes any scripts, CSS, audio, SWF objects, and images.[1]
If this page presentation conveys the information well, I'd go with this version of the Google cache.
[1] It also removes some legit basic markup like <strong>, which really bugs me.
.
Going to archive.li and feeding it the target URL can also be a solution.
(They will also run any scripts on -their- machines, removing any bandwidth issues and any possible pwning of your system due to non-sandboxed junk.)
If the .li CCTLD should stop working ( .is is already troublesome sometimes), then .eu (European Union) and .fo (Faroe Islands) are options.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:55PM
I would rather that sites respect my wish not to be inundated with unwanted ads or, worse still, infected by malware than have to take part in a escalating war of software add-ons each trying to defeat the counters to the previous one. My solution is simply not to use that site, but as this was a submitted story I had no option other than try to load it as part of the editing task. It didn't load, so I tagged it appropriately.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday December 05 2016, @11:22PM
Well, frankly, there's only CAM releases as of yet, so your question was posted too early, IMHO :)
(SCNR)
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday December 05 2016, @11:34PM
Most of the story got left out in translating a book to film. And they cut all the stuff that would be all exposition and explanation. Yea, that is what always happens. Which is why the current trend to superhero movies, a typical comic book storyline is pretty close to what can be put into a normal film and the story telling style is much more compatible. Long exposition and dialog kills a comic as dead as it does a movie.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:24AM
Long exposition and dialog kills a comic as dead as it does a movie.
Technically, I agree with this statement. And yet... I'm guessing you didn't enjoy 12 Angry Men or Maus?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:43AM
12 Angry Men was a play converted into a film. They did that for a while as the transition happened from stage to soundstage, from live to edited. Not so much now; Now even Broadway is flash. If it doesn't have lots of stuff going FOOM! it generally doesn't get into wide release in the [current year]. Now we have a few art house films in limited release just in time for the Academy Awards.
It ain't about what I like, it is the reality of a marketplace driven by what teens want to see enough to pay for. Everybody else watches Netflix or BluRay on their home theater system so they don't have to suffer the aforementioned teens with their phones and horrid manners. Any forms of storytelling not geared around kids with the attention span of a ferret on meth is "made for TV" or direct to video now.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:12AM
Boring or shit dialog kills movies. Every time someone opened their mouth in /Jason Bourne/, I cringed. I so wanted to use SQL to corrupt their databases after seeing that.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:58AM
It's hard to talk about it without adding spoilers, but I thought the movie was fairly well done. The science I felt was very spot on and did quite a bit to explain the field of logistics. I was very impressed with that, and the linked article shows that there was quite a bit of consultation for the film and academics were impressed too.
There wasn't a lot of flash though, which I liked. The movie has a far more cerebral and emotional feel to it. It wasn't about the physics as much as it was about the personal journey of one scientist.
That is what it seemed to be to me. A drama film, almost near chick-flicky, that had a very well done sci-fi background to it. The main protagonist is a female scientist, and the film does a very good job at portraying both her skills and humanity under difficult conditions.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:45AM
If science and technology aren't part of world building that directly shapes social structures, it's not sci-fi regardless of how realistic the science is.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:44AM
My take on it is I don't give money to support the MPAA.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:54AM
I saw the movie with one of my daughters (the brainy one) and her boyfriend. I don’t mind slow movies, but this one starts veeery slow and then gets slow; some place it picks up and gets better and the end is very good.
I haven't read the book and as a matter of fact, I didn't know there was a book, so I don't know how close it is to the author's intentions.
I won’t say more because otherwise I would spoil the experience for you. My daughter didn’t quite like it (meeh) but I did like it; the boyfriend said it was OK (but I guess not to contradict either of us!)
IMHO, it is worth watching, maybe even a second time. YMMV.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:08AM
Slow isn't usually a problem, the problem is when movies have scenes that don't advance the plot in any obvious way. You can get away with some of that, but when movies do it the audience tends to get bored.
It's one of the reasons that you can have a movie that's got ton of action, but is still a snoozefest.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:06PM
Which is one reason I hated the new Star Wars... no scene in that movie advanced the series plot, except maybe Solo, Han Solo dying.
Really.
Did any part of that movie MEAN anything but "BIGGER.... SPLOSIONS.... SHINY!!!!"
Snoozefest with a capital SNOOZE.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:52PM
Solo dying didn't have anything to do with advancing the plot. That was so they could reduce the likelihood of needing the writers to work into the script something about Solo falling and breaking a hip.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:10PM
I hadn't specifically noticed that. But, that's probably because I was noticing that the pieces weren't really fitting together the way that they should. I hope that has more to do with the fanservice involved and the fact that this is part one of presumably 3 and as such things will make more sense when the other episodes are released.
I'm also a bit curious why they opted to release episode 3.5 this year.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday December 07 2016, @05:36PM
Part of the problem was i didn't care about Han dying.
Just didn't care.
Luke's aunt and uncle are killed and his 'home' destroyed: they built up the music, gave him a long facial slot where you could see anger building up, showed the smoke, etc... there was a build up and emotion and you could understand why he wanted to join the rebellion.
In the new one, there is a conversation and Han dies. Poo, he's dead.
Then mini-darth cries, someone gets him a kleenex and then there's lots of dance-fighting (like with the Sharks and the Jets: google it, youngsters)...
Remember with Darth and Obi Wan: there is a stand-off, some sword swinging, then Ben stands there and lets himself be martyrd for Luke's sake.
In the new one, there is dancing: lots of dancing and twirling. Lots.
"Let's dance-fight"
"Yes, but i will dance-twirl-fight"
"Oh, no... well i will do interpretive-dance-fight"
"Ah, so i will do interpretive-line-dance-fight! You cannot defeat my interpretive-line-dance-fight!"
"Yes, i can.... with my mime-interpretive-line-dance-fight-sequence! See, i am a mime-tree, standing tall against the empire, and i will gently sway my mime-tree limbs while i do my line-dancing, twirling dance fight choreography!!! Ah-ha!!!"
"Nooooooooo..... but Luke: I am your best friends (who is now dead) son who needs lots and lots of kleenexeseseses sniffle boo-hoo"
"And i keel you now. And... bow to the audience. Now shuffle-dance, and exit... stage left"
They need to bring back George Lucas' wife who edited (or whatever it was she did before he divorced her) his original movies so they were good and drew you in.
The movies after that just sucked... and still suck.
"but... but... dance-twirl fight scene!!" Meh.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---