Event Horizon

The Hunger Games & The Fragility of Civilization

The "Hunger Games" movie has dominated the box office for the last few weekends and it will be interesting to see if the trend holds this weekend. It's a great movie and a great book. What do The Hunger Games mean to me? It makes me think of the fragility of civilization. We tend to think that the world we live in is a given, that things are simply meant to be this way.  We forget that civilization is man-made. We forget that over the course of history most people have not lived in freedom or prosperity. We who are lucky enough to live in societies where individual freedom and liberty are valued, where there is access to education, health care, and an economic system that promises advancement should realize that these societies exist only because someone cared enough to create them and defend them. Even today, there are countries where the entire purpose of the government and all the institutions of society exist not for the benefit of the people, but to keep one person in power. Syria and North Korea spring to mind, but there are other examples. Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy joins Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 in reminding us that civilization is both constructed and fragile and if it is to endure we must be willing to do our part to preserve and advance it and hand it off to the next generation.

Captain Stargate?

I was watching the trailer for the upcoming film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and as I was watching it, I realized that the background music sounded very familiar. How is it that they are using the theme music from the sci-fi series Stargate: SG1?

Final Matrix?

I went to see Matrix Revolutions last Wednesday, along with a few million of my closest friends. I won't give away any secrets other than to say that if you liked the second film, this one offers more of the same. There are some truly amazing special effects, the apocalyptic battlescapes are breathtaking, and the final battle between Neo and Agent Smith is really the highlight of the film. This film delivers explosions, battle scenes and special effects and takes them to a new level, as you might expect for the final installment of the Matrix trilogy. However, once the battles are over and the action moves to the less frenetic and more philisophical issues raised in the first two episodes, I was a bit disappointed. There are some major questions left unanswered. Perhaps it is best to preserve some mystery? Or maybe it was too much to ask for all the oustanding questions and issues to be addressed in one final film, at least one that delivers as much visual punch as this one. As for the ending, this film ends with both a bang and a whimper, which has to be a difficult trick to pull off. I enjoyed the movie, but it left me feeling a bit uneasy, like maybe I missed something, some crucial plot point that would be have put it all in context. Instead, I was left feeling like I'd witnessed one battle in a much larger war.

Accuracy is Futile

Accoring to this AP report, "Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wright measures the time he's served in the Persian Gulf by the blockbuster movies he's missed on the big screen back home: "Lord of the Rings: Two Towers," "Star Trek: Borg Encounter" and "Matrix: Reloaded." So, what does it take to be an AP editor these days? Not much apparently. Borg Encounter?? Unless I'm way out of touch with major sci-fi films (and I don't think I am), there's never been a movie called "Star Trek: Borg Encounter." If they can get something like the name of the most recent film in a famous sci-fi series wrong, it makes me wonder what else is they get wrong that is never noticed.