The weekend started off quite boringly, as usual. Lots of work to do, if I wanted to do, but nothing seemed interesting enough. Books were there, if I wanted to read, but again I had absolutely no interest to put even an iota of effort into reading. So off I went to check out some movies. Telugu movies? Checked, but nothing interesting came up. Same with Hindi, just this Friday watched "Highway", I really liked it, especially Alia's acting was commendable and I was in no mood to spoil it with some mediocre bollywood comedy that popped up on my search list. And then I went onto English. Actually I wanted to watch this "Another Earth" movie coz I watched only the second half on TV and missed the first half (of course some snippets on net made up for it, but I really really wanted to watch the first half). Somehow this 'Another Earth' route took a backseat and I finally zeroed in on "Absolute Zero" movie. And then completed it with "Category 6: Day of Destruction". En route, I quickly touched upon the movie "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" (for whatever little time I gave to it - couple of mins - the movie seemed sooo strange, perhaps the worlds out there, if any, would seem the same for us or is it all our imagination and expectation that is?) and barely barely just as much literally touched upon the movie "In the year 2889" (so to say, I did not care to land on it).
"Absolute Zero" was perfect for an English movie. I mean, it had the typical length of 1 hour something, logic crisply presented and neatly executed. Nothing more to mention beyond that. Ah well, forgot, few things here - there is this dialogue that comes up quite often in the movie "Science is never wrong...Science is never wrong!!". If I were the dialogue writer, I would have had some one ask this counter-question - "But what if you/we are wrong about Science?" (...wrong in the way WE had interpreted/used/implemented "it" - the Science?) Already the movie shows how two groups come up with different test results - one group with all Ph.Ds, which says that the event cannot happen any earlier than 200 years and the other group with interns, which declares that the event is happening NOW and who didn't happen/get to predict it any earlier. Now fine, Science is NOT wrong, but what good is it, if Science is right only at the brink of the disaster? To me, what matters is NOT if Science is/can be ever wrong, but if using (or not using) Science matters when it comes to saving people. If there is a better way than Science, then so be it!
The second movie (though again is mostly based on Science) has a dialogue which says just that - "The strongest forecaster is instinct". But this time, we do have some random character countering it - "I'd prefer reason to instinct!" Of course, we don't have any plans being executed there based on instinct anyway. Both the movies have a major scientific background. I'd love to see a movie in this genre where the game runs by the rules of both reason and instinct.
The Category 6 movie is a little long going by the English movie standards - nearly 3 hours! Couldn't watch it in a single go, had to break it up for y'day and today. The movie is again a typical one in this genre -there is this main thread of the wide-scale calamity going on and then there are these sub-threads of routine life problems - love, infidelity, politics, media, career et cetera et cetera. Yet the movie stays on in the mind for a while. What clearly stands out in the movie is that - Man is an optimist, survival is his priority (I often feel that even when people commit suicide, their intention is most probably not to kill their soul and let it survive more decently). You see life going away in the movie, in fact thousands of lives, but amidst all this chaos you see the angst of a mother wanting to save her daughter, the anxiety of would-be parents to save their child to be and the humans that all of us are, wanting to save our fellow human beings in the moment of disaster.
The second movie (though again is mostly based on Science) has a dialogue which says just that - "The strongest forecaster is instinct". But this time, we do have some random character countering it - "I'd prefer reason to instinct!" Of course, we don't have any plans being executed there based on instinct anyway. Both the movies have a major scientific background. I'd love to see a movie in this genre where the game runs by the rules of both reason and instinct.
The Category 6 movie is a little long going by the English movie standards - nearly 3 hours! Couldn't watch it in a single go, had to break it up for y'day and today. The movie is again a typical one in this genre -there is this main thread of the wide-scale calamity going on and then there are these sub-threads of routine life problems - love, infidelity, politics, media, career et cetera et cetera. Yet the movie stays on in the mind for a while. What clearly stands out in the movie is that - Man is an optimist, survival is his priority (I often feel that even when people commit suicide, their intention is most probably not to kill their soul and let it survive more decently). You see life going away in the movie, in fact thousands of lives, but amidst all this chaos you see the angst of a mother wanting to save her daughter, the anxiety of would-be parents to save their child to be and the humans that all of us are, wanting to save our fellow human beings in the moment of disaster.
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