Sara Reine, Author at Egregious - Page 14 of 45

sara reads the feed

New Old Trek, dietary pop science, and healthcare

2024-03-28 /

I’m ready for it to be warm enough to put my plants outside. The amount of mealybugs I have is obnoxious, and there’s no better treatment than popping them out back to get eaten by predatory bugs. I was just looking at old posts on my Facebook, and I said this exact same thing last year. I don’t think I needed to release more predatory insects indoors; I seem to recall making it through to summer last year. Of course, my memory is crap, so what do I know?

I promised myself I’d stop talking about my New Sober Life because going on and on about withdrawal is an extremely boring subject. But. I have been having rather strong anxiety the last couple weeks in fits and starts. My psychiatrist recommended I focus on improving my diet and exercise, and of course that is something I must do too; I’ve gotten very out-of-shape.

But I think it’s also a side-effect of the withdrawal, based upon what I see in MJ recovery groups. I’m only (“only”) two months into sobriety. It’s fairly early, all things considered. I’m looking at a year-long withdrawal process (for reals!). 2024 is just gonna involve spurts of anxiety, periods of feeling stoned (like the last couple days tbh), and brainfog making me dreadfully forgetful.

On the bright side, I do continue working a bit, and I hope I can keep at it. I am having a very hard time focusing on worky stuff but the desire is there, if not necessarily willpower or energy. I Want To Get Better.

~

I used to hate the Abrams-spawned Trek movies, but the distance of time has given me fondness for them. I really like Chris Pine as Kirk. The fandom specific to those movies is endearing. Also, it’s easier to swallow “wrong” Trek when Trek has continued since. It was hard to accept those shallow, action-oriented Trek films when it felt like a rejection of most everything Trek had been until then, and I feared we would never get more of the Trek I like. We have gotten plenty more good Trek since.

So it’s with that in mind that I continue watching NuTrek 4 development with curiosity. There’s a new writer attached. (Variety)

It’s been awhile since the last movies, and Pine at least is in his Daddy Era, so I’d love if they skewed toward some Star Trek II aging-related plots.

~

One study has linked intermittent fasting to heart disease-related deaths. (Smithsonian Mag) I used to spend a lot of time in diet circles, and what they would say in defense of IF is this: the study is self-reported, and self-reported diet studies don’t mean very much in isolation. This looked at people for eight years, and doesn’t seem to have controlled for lifestyle or many other factors. It doesn’t seem they even looked at whether people were fasting willingly or if it was brought about by other circumstances. You really have to wait for meta studies to draw conclusions.

In diet circles, IF is regarded as a health panacea. They’ll point out that everyone does some degree of IF, since (almost?) nobody eats overnight when they’re sleeping, and that feast/famine is a “natural” eating pattern for humans. I’ve become increasingly skeptical of all the dietary magic bullets. I’m willing to believe it’s more dangerous than anyone says. I already think most restrictive diet patterns like keto and IF are less likely to be suitable for people with estrogen-driven hormone systems.

Generally the best advice that seems to persist through the ages: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

~

I really can’t just link every Psyche.co article, but I always enjoy the read. This one is about ways to think about time.

We’re stuck with the past. But you can dress it up in different ways. Often, what happened in the past is affected in the future because ‘what happened’ depends on how things turn out. Whether some past purchase was a lucrative investment decision depends on what happens to the investment after the decision. Even if you reasoned really well, if your prediction didn’t pan out, you lose the money. If you met someone for a coffee and it turns out that this was the first meeting of the relationship that defines your life, then the coffee was a different kind of event than of a coffee meeting that leads nowhere and has no later significance. This needn’t be a failure of knowledge on your part. Whether or not it counts as a significant event in your life might hinge on how things go subsequently. There may be no clues that you can spot at the time. So there you are, sitting in a café, nervously reading an online magazine, unaware of the significance of the event you are waiting for – because there is no fact yet!

~

Senator Ava Burch of Arizona did a brave thing: she announced both her pregnancy and abortion simultaneously on the Senate floor. (NPR) Hers was medically necessary due to a tragically unviable fetus. She’s had a lengthy history of miscarriage. Her story is one that more people find sympathetic, but she stands in defense of everyone’s abortion.

“I don’t think people should have to justify their abortions,” Burch, a Democrat, told the chamber.

“But I’m choosing to talk about why I made this decision, because I want us to be able to have meaningful conversations about the reality of how the work that we do in this body impacts people in the real world,” she said, in reference to the state’s 15-week abortion ban, passed in 2022. […]
Burch, who is also a nurse practitioner, says the current law requires her provider to give a list of “absolute disinformation” as well as what Burch describes as an “unnecessary” ultrasound, plus counseling designed to change the minds of patients with viable pregnancies.

“I was told that I could choose adoption; I was told that I could choose parenting, which were two things that I couldn’t choose,” Burch said. “And it was cruel to suggest that that was an option for me when it’s not.”

Disinformation surrounding abortions is law in many places, and it’s simply cruel for the government to be involved in medical decisions like these. It’s the definition of personal.

~

Puerto Rico is having an outbreak of dengue. Cows in Texas and Kansas have bird flu. (Ars Technica)

I always think about how often I’ve heard that increased epidemics are going to be one of the hardest-hitting effects of climate change. I don’t know if that’s a factor here, but…I think about it.

~

Scientists want parts of the Moon protected from private interests so that it can be used for scientific purposes instead. (Smithsonian Mag) I extremely do not like humans more aggressively marking off bits of our beloved space-rock for any reason, but I suppose scientific research is preferable.

Comment

Sara Reine

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sara reads the feed

Owls and cats, the early feminism movement, and a decade passed

2024-03-26 /

Me: I’m going to post more SRF for a while!

Also me: doesn’t post at all

~

For whatever reason, my kids are in a “play in the back yard” mood again. The weather isn’t especially good for it. We had warmer days the other week. Yet it’s been this week, with the random spurts of hail, where they want to be outside a lot. I love when they play outside, honestly. I have so many warm associations with working in my office with the windows thrown open so I can hear them giggling and shouting.

We’ve been in this house a decade now. The house we lived in when Little Sunshine was born. Moonlight has gone from three to thirteen here. I’ve enjoyed a lot of springtime play with my kids giggling and shouting outside my open windows.

A decade is the longest I’ve lived anywhere. Even the house where I did most of my growing up, I was there for something like nine years. Sometimes it’s strange because it makes the whole decade feel brief. But it’s also a kind of stability I don’t take for granted. It’s a big house in a nice neighborhood (too “nice” if you ask me), and we could be “stuck” somewhere vastly less pleasant.

For a decade, I’ve wandered the trails, acquainted myself with neighborhood dogs, and ignored how much my house needs repainting. I’ve gone through so many phases here. The whole pandemic.

A lifetime, really.

~

In Canada, a kindly fellow tried to take care of abandoned cats during the pandemic. (The Guardian) He ended up with over 300. Although he had to ask a charity for help, the cats were all apparently very well cared for, in great health, and super friendly. Hopefully they can find homes for everyone. This emphasizes the importance of fixing cats, which can breed like…uh, rabbits? He probably couldn’t afford it, but that’s why we let charities handle it. They can get lower-cost assistance and donors.

Anyway, the guy meant well, and he asked for help — so he won’t be facing any legal action.

~

X-Men 97 got a massive number of views in its first week of release. Disney says this is their biggest new animated show ever. (Variety)

I hadn’t intended to watch X-Men 97. I’m pretty over it with all things Disney. But I heard some tantalizing spoilers about the show — it seems to be following some of Claremont’s 80s soap opera-styled X-Men stories — so I gave it a shot. I loved it. I’m looking forward to more. I guess I’m not done with Disney, but the poorly written crap.

~

In ongoing AI creep news, Google is going to return AI-generated results to people who didn’t opt in. (Engadget) Given the accuracy of AI (spoilers: AI LLMs aren’t designed to be accurate and aren’t capable of evaluating accuracy), this is a continuing disaster on information across the internet. I already switched to Duck Duck Go completely just so I can actually find meaningful things.

SAG-AFTRA ratified a three-year contract limiting the use of AI voices in animated television, though. (Variety)

~

Something like 2.7 million folks in the UK are too sick for work or pursuing education. (The Guardian) Covid is a mass-disabling event, and we usually don’t talk about it that way. We need to.

It comes as Rishi Sunak comes under growing pressure from within Conservative ranks to “get a grip on worklessness” after a dramatic increase in economic inactivity over the past four years to more than 9 million people.

People with long-term sickness do not contribute to the official unemployment rate, which has fallen to 3.9% among those aged 16 years and over – equivalent to 1.4 million people – among the lowest levels since the mid-1970s.

However, economic inactivity has increased from 20.5% of all working-age adults to 21.8% – equivalent to 700,000 people – with little sign of slowing as the impact of the Covid pandemic on the jobs market recedes.

~

The United States didn’t veto a ceasefire resolution at the UN. (AJE) Since we’re allies with Israel, who don’t want a ceasefire, this is noteworthy. Netanyahu abruptly cancelled a visit with Biden when he learned the USA planned to abstain. (WaPo)

But Hamas didn’t go for the ceasefire either; they insist on Israeli troops withdrawing. (Reuters)

~

Here’s another article about a church trying to help the homeless and the government saying “absofuckinglutely not.” (NPR)

~

Did someone say all-woman secret society? (Smithsonian)

Howe’s mindset on feminism was clear: “We intend simply to be ourselves,” she once said, “not just our little female selves, but our whole big human selves.”

Many of the women in Heterodoxy moved in corresponding circles and maintained similar beliefs. They were “veterans of social reform efforts,” writes Scutts in Hotbed, and they belonged to “leagues, associations, societies and organizations of all stripes.” A large number were public figures—influential lawyers, journalists, playwrights or physicians, some of whom were the only women in their fields—and often had their names in the papers for the work they were performing. Many members were also involved in a wide variety of women’s rights issues, from promoting the use of birth control to advocating for immigrant mothers.

Heterodoxy met every other Saturday to discuss such issues and see how members might collaborate and cultivate networks of reform.

~

Lawyers, Guns, & Money talk about the rule of law and how it could be worse in America. It could be better too. Some perspective is interesting, though.

~

Colbert apologized for joking about Kate, Will, and Rose. (Variety) It’s been eye-rolling to see how discourse has switched to saying these were all attacks against Kate herself, and how much people are going along with it. Although there was an intensification of speculation in the period before the announcement from all sorts of directions, the initial point was that Kate’s disappearance was alarming with the royal family’s history of mistreating women. I mean, if we assume that all the stuff they’re saying now is 100% true, the Firm still threw Kate (you know, the mum with cancer) under the bus for a PR disaster that massively damaged credibility. They had so many options to not do any of that. And now focusing on how everyone is being so mean to Kate, they’re using her illness to distract from the bad behavior of the firm. So it’s business as usual, I guess.

~

Poor Flaco. The cost of his freedom from a zoo was getting poisoned by New York City’s rats and pigeons. RIP. (The Guardian)

Comment

Sara Reine

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doc martin

Doc Martin s1e5 “Of All the Harbours in All the Towns” (2004)

2024-03-25 /

This is an ongoing feature recapping episodes of the Greatest Show Ever, ITV’s “Doc Martin.” Please watch the episodes before reading if you don’t want spoilers.

It’s another glorious day in Portwenn. Louisa is joining a surfing club to prove to the kids that she isn’t so old. Martin sees an older fellow in a minor boat crash (he faints out on the water!), and to his surprise, the man identifies Martin as “Little Marty.” This guy has a history with Portwenn! John Slater used to live there, and he took Marty and Joan out on his boat. He’s also not disappointed to hear that Phil, a former partner of Joan, has died.

Martin also gets a patient named Melanie, whose arm was dislocated by her pillock of a brother. When Martin fixes her arm, she goes from hostile to a little too friendly. She hunts him down with a gift of cake. His awkwardness is hilarious, as you would expect. Martin truly does not know what to make of one of the giggling girls who roam the village like feral dogs being flirtatious. He doesn’t even seem to recognize it at first, since she’s so young compared to him. Not that it’s a problem for Melanie.

She leaves him a love card too. And she tells him he’s not Bodmin, but “lovely,” and Martin starts to realize he needs to draw some lines between them. Even he knows that her card (“lots of lurve”) is a bad sign. His “Oh God” made me scream-laugh. He tries to tell her clearly that he’s not interested in her, but she doesn’t want to hear it. And she’s not even sixteen yet!!!

Martin is so concerned about this “besotted” girl that he even seeks out help from PC Mylow, the least helpful person in a town filled with unhelpful people. It’s pretty funny seeing Mylow taking the piss out of Martin, though. Mylow isn’t worried about Melanie, but he thinks Martin should be, because Melanie’s dad is into tae-kwon do.

Anyway, Martin is trying to keep Melanie away in the kindest, most direct way. She takes it very rationally and…shows up naked in his bed!!! She broke in to his bedroom with a ladder!!! She thought it would be like Romeo and Juliet!!!!

The next day, Melanie’s dad shows up!!!! The tae-kwon do guy!

Luckily, Melanie’s (extremely tall) father isn’t coming to beat him up. He totally understanding his daughter is doing a bit of transference and having a phase. It’s not what we expect at all, and it’s nice to see someone who isn’t raking Martin over the coals for the slightest mistake. It’s nice that this is such a fun (horrifying!!!) plot, because everything else going on is sad.

The medical mystery: John Slater is reluctant to be examined by Martin. He also claims he doesn’t have a GP. He lives in Hong Kong! But his flushed face and shortness of breath draw Martin to look into him more closely. John admits that he’s had all sorts of heart problems, like atrial fibrillation and orthostatic hypertension, yet he refused to be sent to the hospital in Truro. He also insists Martin doesn’t tell Joan that he’s sick… Always a bad sign.

Without the patient being compliant, it takes a while to know what’s going on. The lab results he eventually gets are grim. John has rheumatic heart disease. He also has infective endocarditis. It’s terminal, and John knows it. He’s only got six months to a year left. No wonder he’s boating around the world and visiting old loves.

The Auntie: This is a Joan-heavy episode! We love Aunt Joan. She’s extremely flustered to hear that John is back in town and tries to avoid him to no avail. She goes totally heart-eyes at the sight of him. Joan, you dog! He invites her to hang out and visit the old haunts, by which he totally means he wants to bang it out. Who doesn’t want to bang such a gorgeous silver cougar??

Martin is worried about Joan since John showed up. Even though Martin can’t talk about the medical issues, he’s still keen to make sure Joan’s heart is safe. It’s super cute seeing him float around her and trying to get her to talk about it. He’s totally unprepared to hear Joan admit she was cheating on her husband Phil with John back in the day. Joan!!!! You dog!!!!!!

If I’m not mistaken, this is how we learned the method of Phil’s death. She says “motor neurone.” I’m not entirely sure what that is. Maybe he just couldn’t keep up with this foxy babe. Anyway, John is determined to keep up. No matter how she tries to turn him aside, he remains persistent, and even talks her into a picnic date. I’m struck by how cute these sexagenarians are. They’re genuinely gorgeous people. No wonder they fall in love again.

Through Martin’s efforts to support Joan, we learn that Martin’s shitty dad kept Martin and Joan apart at some point because Dad thought Joan was a woman of “gross moral turpitude.” Is this the first indication Martin’s parents suck so bad? Martin is crushed to realize that Joan lost time she could have shared with John on his account — though really it’s his dad’s fault. These moments between Martin and Joan are so sweet. It’s really wonderful to see how intensely Martin loves his auntie.

John totally breaks Joan’s heart. He tells her that he’s still married, and she can’t come sailing around the world with him. But it’s a lie. He’s never loved anyone but Joan, as he confesses to Martin; he just doesn’t want her to take care of him in his last months as he dies. Martin tells her the truth as John is sailing away. Her tears are heartbreaking!

The Assistant: Elaine is even grumpier and more useless than usual. Hey, remember how she and Al were making out? Elaine broke up with the Greg we never see, liberating her white girl dreadlocks to date elsewhere. Al immediately moves in on her. Al definitely has a thing for receptionists, but also, it’s not like there’s an overwhelming number of girls his age there. He’s a little old for the giggling girl brigade.

They connect over music, but really, they should be connecting over her excellent cable knit sweater. Anyway, they end up snogging in an alley, which the Giggling Girls immediately spot. THEY SEE ALL. THEY KNOW ALL. Elaine says Al has a “lush bum” and I never noticed that, personally, but now I’m going to be looking. He reminds me a lot of my spouse in 2004, tbh. He’s wearing a shirt my spouse wore all the time back in the day. Al is such a catch here, too.

He loads up an iPod with music for Elaine…only to hear her on the phone with her ex Greg. Sad trombones. I guess that relationship isn’t developing. Elaine is the worst of the assistants, by far.

Louisa & Martin: Louisa tells Martin it would be great to see him out of his suit :3 Of course she is inviting him to go surfing (hence needing a wet suit), but that’s really her only scene in the episode. Still, we do hear from Melanie that Martin & Louisa’s romance is known throughout the town, which is very validating this early in their will-they-won’t-they.

The Larges: Most of Al’s plot is wrapped up in Elaine here, but we do get an appearance from Bert, failing to understanding technology. He’s convinced Al is going to irradiate himself with the cell phone. And he needs to be assured that Al isn’t calling into some internet “sex-change room.” Remember when the internet was only for porn?

Favorite Quote: “I was probably too busy wetting myself to notice. Forgive me.”

~

Louisa’s Hair Rating: 10/10. We get a really functional Louisa ponytail in this episode! It’s beautiful to see her less-styled. I hope the actress had a nice week off filming.

Infuriating Level: 0/10. Martin is treated very well this episode, and his plot with the community is hysterical.

Episode Greatness Level: 10/10. It’s soooo sad and soooo funny in turns. Legendary.

Comment

Sara Reine

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doc martin

Doc Martin s1e4: “The Portwenn Effect” (2004)

2024-03-24 /

This is an ongoing feature recapping episodes of the Greatest Show Ever, ITV’s “Doc Martin.” Please watch the episodes before reading if you don’t want spoilers.

It’s another glorious day in Portwenn. There’s a community dance coming up, the town is a bit misty (lovely!), and we meet a boy named Peter who has a bad attitude. He’s extremely clever and extremely sour about having to learn about birds. As his teacher, Louisa has to put her foot down on his recalcitrance. She leaves him just outside the house with the birds. Naturally, this doesn’t work, and the boy gets up to trouble promptly. Peter Cronk destroys the “bird tables,” which appear to be a mix of bird houses and bird feeders (if we’re gonna be all American about it).

Peter has to rebuild the bird tables with PC Mark Mylow as a punishment, but Peter says he’d rather just get arrested. What a little punk! No wonder his mum is so anxious. Mrs Cronk has absolutely zero chill. Mylow is very kind about the whole thing, which makes Louisa see him in a new light.

In the meantime, it’s off to the moors for Doc Martin. He doesn’t have much success with visits to the moors. I get a strong sense of class concerns in regards to the moors, and the show is usually pretty sympathetic about it. But it doesn’t change the fact that his appointment goes poorly, and he doesn’t make a community dance in time. He’s trapped with the patient while Mylow and Louisa attend the dance together.

While everyone is distracted by the dance (or an appointment), Peter Cronk decides to make a run for it. He doesn’t really have a plan for being out on his own and spends the night eating snacks out of his backpack. When Mrs Cronk realizes he’s not in his bedroom the next morning, she completely loses her cool.

Mylow and Martin spot Peter Cronk trying to hitch a ride on their way back from the moors and bring him safely home. Martin and Peter connect with each other over being weird autistic rude people, too. (This is important later on the show.)

The medical mystery: Martin only has one appointment this afternoon. He has to go see the park ranger, Stewart James, who has been asking for a visit out on Bodmin Moor for weeks. Martin doesn’t want to go. This is a service Dr. Sim used to provide. The whole town expects Martin to act like Dr. Sim, demanding prescriptions that Sim would have given. Since Elaine books the appointment, Martin ultimately has to go see Stewart James.

Stewart James has a creepy little house in the middle of the vast green beauty of the moors. Tall metal fences keep the world locked out…and Doc Martin locked in. Initially, it seems like Stewart and Martin will get on. Stewart’s grumpiness about the village actually makes Martin smile! But then it turns out Stewart wants nitrazepam, a benzodiazepine he claims that Dr. Sim used to give him, and Martin doesn’t want to give it.

So Stewart confesses that the benzo isn’t for him. It’s for “a friend.” Anthony. An invisible red squirrel. He’s out to get the gray squirrels, who are the “squirrel equivalent of the Nazis.” Hey, turns out Stewart James is schizotypal! And Martin is trapped with him inside a locked fence! We get a really fun performance from the actor for Stewart James, Ben Miller, interacting with his friend the invisible 6-foot-tall red squirrel.

Martin does manage to leave, and promptly tries to get Stewart James sectioned (put into a mental institution, presumably). It doesn’t work out. Stewart James is so offended and unmedicated that he comes into town…and wrecks the bird tables! Those poor bird tables don’t deserve better. But it turns out that Stewart’s relationship with Anthony is well-understood in town, and everyone ends up blaming this on Martin for failing to medicate Stewart properly.

This also means Peter Cronk hasn’t been destroying the bird tables. It’s Stewart. No wonder the kid ran away, facing threat of arrest for something he didn’t do.

Looking through Dr. Sim’s notes, Martin realizes that Stewart James has been getting pills: vitamins. The old doctor only told him that they were benzos. So Martin is able to give Stewart James what he actually needs. This is another case where you just can’t handle Portwenn the way a big city would.

Louisa & Martin: Louisa extends an invitation to the dance to Martin, and he immediately gets weird about it, even though she’s so beautiful. Her hair is so shiny! Her dress is off-the-shoulders! I love the doc, but she’s obviously out of his league by about ten thousand kilometers. Anyway, Louisa invites PC Mark Mylow instead, and Mark takes it like an invitation to a date. He has no idea she’s out of everyone’s league.

Mylow comes to Doc Martin to ask for big-penis-pills in anticipation of the dance. He’s worried he’s not normal-sized. Mylow reveals has been buying penis pills off the internet! Which is an even bigger deal now that he has a date with the “woman of his dreams,” Louisa! Martin is so jealous the instant he realizes what Mylow is on about. He pushes him straight out of the office. And Mylow decides to take the penis pills into his own hands.

Louisa doesn’t realize how romantically inclined Mylow has become until they’re pretty much already dancing. What a disappointment for Martin to see Mylow dancing with the woman of ~~his~~ their dreams. He walks away before realizing Louisa is trying to let Mylow down easily, which is a disappointment for both Louisa and Martin. They’re so smitten. <333

The Larges: Bert is the one putting together the dance, which makes me immediately suspicious. Some people really shouldn’t ever have anything to do with business, no matter how innocuous. But this is one of those times where Bert’s event actually goes well. Is this the only time one of his events goes well? Remember, he was just selling bottled water contaminated by calving sheep the other day. He gets a band and decorations and everything. Nothing burns down. It’s incredible.

Favorite Quote: “You’ll get over it, big boy.”

~

Louisa’s Hair Rating: 10/10. How is it soooo shiny? I love the long tapered bangs on her. It hides her eyes a bit, but also balances out her big lovely lips. <33

Infuriating Level: 3/10. This one isn’t very infuriating. It’s tense! The first time I watched it I was actually quite scared for Martin. I really thought he was going to get shot by Stewart James.

Episode Greatness Level: 9/10. The scariness of the encounters on the moors and the whole squirrel thing means this is one of the more iconic episodes. I think back on it all the time!

Comment

Sara Reine

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movie reviews

Movie Review – Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) ****

2024-03-22 /

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a story about post-apocalyptic Earth, which has been devastated by a seeming invasion of aliens called Phantoms. One touch from Phantoms removes the soul from humans. Aki Ross has been dreaming about the Phantoms and believes she can solve the invasion. It’s a straightforward story, mostly because the story isn’t the main focus of the movie.

The focus for this movie was technological revolution. This was the first CGI feature film intended to look photorealistic. While Dreamworks and Pixar were making more stylized kids’ movies, studio Square hoped to create digital actors whose performances would be comparable to living actors. Aki’s model in particular was intended for multiple movie projects. This never happened, aside from a single demo made with the Aki model to land the Final Flight of the Osiris project.

Square’s ambitions sank the studio: costs went out of control, movie audiences didn’t love the project, and The Spirits Within bombed. They never got to make another full length movie.

The Final Fantasy franchise has always been about creative discontent driving artists to reach for their ambitions. From the Wikipedia article: “Though often attributed to the company allegedly facing bankruptcy, Sakaguchi explained that the game was his personal last-ditch effort in the game industry and that its title, Final Fantasy, stemmed from his feelings at the time; had the game not sold well, he would have quit the business and gone back to college.”

Creator Sakaguchi threw everything he could scrape together at The Spirits Within, and you can tell. Compare it to other CGI from the year 2001. Fiona from Shrek is a great comparison in terms of hair and skin; you’ll notice the lighting and designs are much more stylistic. Pixar’s Monster’s Inc was a contemporary. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is contemporary too. The much-humbler and lower-budget Barbie and the Nutcracker also came from 2001 and is more representative of commercial CGI.

These movies are all wonderful in their ways, but The Spirits Within was on a level unto itself. Note the efforts toward naturalistic lighting and realistic movement. Nowadays it looks like a video game cut scene. It compares unfavorably to, say, Death Stranding’s cut scenes, and maybe Baldur’s Gate 3’s in-game rendering. Both of them look more modern in style and quality, but you’d expect that after twenty years. Twenty years! A studio managed to put out a movie that was almost twenty years ahead of what video games would later accomplish.

The Spirits Within took four years for its team to create, amounting to many many terabytes of footage, and what would now be a $200 million budget to achieve. It’s hard to comprehend the kind of machinery it took to create The Spirits Within. They were using Maya and RenderMan, whereas your laptop can spit out the BG3 footage with hardly a fan-spin to recognize the effort.

Back when this movie came out, I was thirteen-years-old. From ages fourteen through eighteen, I was doing 3D Computer Graphic Design classes at my high school, where I ultimately became a teacher’s assistant. We weren’t taught by anyone who knew anything about 3D. Our teacher did photography. The technology was just too new. But they equipped us with Lightwave, Maya-comparable software, and let us loose. I couldn’t possibly overstate the impact seeing The Spirits Within had on my nascent artistic development. I spent those four years trying to create the Phantoms (as well as the Gungan bubble cities from Star Wars). I absolutely obsessed over what Sakaguchi’s team accomplished.

And I wasn’t the only admirer. The motion capture process used for the models was so good, they brought the mocap guy over to Lord of the Rings to work on Gollum. Andy Serkis’s performance as Gollum is definitive; it spawned an entire profession of mocap artists within cinema.

I’ll note that Gollum was photorealistic enough to perform with human cast mates in photorealistic settings. At the time, we thought this would be the future of movies. What’s actually happened is that we mostly use human actors against CGI environments (although this example video also has CGI Stormtroopers). Technology has also since progressed to turn human performances into CGI-tuned simulacra, prominently used for things like de-aging or resurrecting dead actors.

The Spirits Within was a major stepping stone for all of this, though it has now mostly been forgotten.

That’s because the movie really works best as a tech demo. It never gets lost in its story and becomes unselfaware of itself as an historic CGI creation.

Lingering shots on Aki are clearly meant to give us opportunities to admire her vividly realized model. A lot of shots feel unnecessary, mostly because they’re showing us something that is impressive for the technology of the time. And then there are some odd moments where they seem to have edited in shots because they couldn’t afford to do a more expensive angle on the scene (hair was *so difficult*).

Loving work was put into Aki, but the other characters kinda blur together. Many are kept in full-body suits due to the limitations of rendering the complex multilayered look of human skin. The romantic hero, Gray, would be basically indistinguishable from the villain if not for their different costumes. The vehicles and CGI-rendered environments also have a certain sparse sterility that reminds me of the original Mass Effect. Many environments aren’t CGI at all, but matte paintings. These were all necessary sacrifices. But you can tell where the most effort was focused.

The screenplay suffered for this tech demo focus. The dialogue is stilted to the point where it sounds like the English track is a dub — but it’s actually an English original. Great actors do their best to work with it, but it’s b-movie dialogue at best. The story structure is okay. The concept is Studio Ghibli-esque without the detail, humanity, or wonder. Movies at the time had vastly better screenplays. This is somewhere Shrek absolutely trounced Spirits Within. And if you look at recent years of cinema, like the bangers of 1999, you can see how spoiled we were for amazing story.

The marketing also did a disservice to The Spirits Within. They spent a lot of time talking about the photorealism, when that was the goal, but not really achievable. It got a lot of people hung up on the uncanny valley effect. Honestly, I think this is where I first heard the term “uncanny valley.” Moviegoers were looking at extremely sophisticated CGI and told to receive it as film, and that just wasn’t going to work. And they really couldn’t resist sexualizing Aki Ross, who was the first nonexistent person to appear on Maxim’s Hot 100 list. The movie itself is not sexy. People were disappointed on a few axes.

It’s fair to say that The Spirits Within didn’t age well, but that would imply it was good in its time — most people didn’t think so. Roger Ebert appreciated it. I also defended it with the passion only a thirteen-year-old can muster. And while I was absolutely delighted to rewatch it (I still love! it! so! much!), my own thirteen-year-old offspring was deeply unimpressed. This kid regarded it as a bad old video game cut scene, or maybe a project one guy made on his computer on the weekends. And they laughed out loud at the dialogue.

I’m not sure I’d recommend The Spirits Within to anyone who doesn’t have a particular interest in CGI’s relationship with cinema throughout history, no matter how much I adore the movie. And I do. It’s a great piece of mostly forgotten history that has resonated throughout the decades since. A lot of what we love owes thanks to The Spirits Within for its technological stretch.

(image credit: Sony Pictures Releasing)

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Sara Reine

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sara reads the feed

New reading sources, the Enterprise Revived, and spiritual poetry

2024-03-22 /

I might post more Sara Reads the Feed for a minute. I try to keep the sources of information I read rather broad, international, and from many perspectives. I’ve added a few new sources to my regular feed reads. I’m not sure what’s going to stick around. A couple of these sources are paywalled (like Vanity Fair) which makes it unappetizing to share; others are paywalled and deep in the bottom of a billionaire’s pocket (like WaPo). I’m just trying stuff out for now. While I do more active reading again, I’ll just be posting more as I go along, too. It’ll quiet down again as I winnow the sources I follow and get used to the flow of information.

There’s really no methodology to what I decide to share. I read a lot more than I link. I’m not anyone’s news source, so I don’t really need to provide any of the sorta “breaking news” updates I come across. But I do have a few topics of personal interest that I can’t resist. Systemic inequity, the ecology, spirituality, and reparative practices are particularly good to me. I mostly try to avoid era-specific politics and focus instead on broader trends. Basically, the IRL worldbuilding of my nation and neighbors.

Movie stuff also wanders in a lot, for obvious reasons.

Otherwise, there’s really no method to my madness.

~

I appreciate Rolling Stone’s article about how COVID isn’t over for millions of people, and cannot be.

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A recreation of the Enterprise-D bridge is going on display soon! (Ars Technica)

It’s not actually the original set from TNG, as that was destroyed while filming Star Trek: Generations, when the saucer section crash-lands on Veridian III. But three replicas were made, overseen by Michael Okuda and Herman Zimmerman, the show’s set designers. Two of those welcomed Trekkies at Star Trek: The Experience, an attraction in Las Vegas until it closed in 2008.

The third spent time in Hollywood, then traveled to Europe and Asia for Star Trek: World Tour before it ended up languishing in a warehouse in Long Beach. It’s this third globe-trotting Enterprise-D bridge that—like the grit that gets an oyster to create a pearl—now finds a science-fiction museum accreted around it. Well, mostly—the chairs used by Riker, Troi, Data, and some other bits were salvaged from the Las Vegas exhibit.

I will always miss Star Trek: The Experience.

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Some really cool, rare, historic items from Okinawa, which were looted in WWII, were discovered in a Massachusetts attic. The family did the right thing and reported them to the FBI. The FBI then handed them over to Japan. (Smithsonian Mag)

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Most mammals don’t actually go through menopause. Some whales do. Whaleopause? (NPR)

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Also very cool: This article about poetry as spiritual practice. (The Marginalian)

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According to WaPo, the communications assistant for the royal family earns $32,000 a year. I feel like that explains a lot. The royals are so stingy and greedy.

What seemed like an ordinary job posting gained huge online attention, as the royal family faces a media crisis — and is unable to shake the firestorm of conspiracy theories regarding the health and whereabouts of Catherine, the Princess of Wales.

“They don’t need a communications assistant, they need a crisis communications specialist who can deliver difficult and sensitive messages. And they need to pay that person way more than this!” Alannah Arrington, a communications specialist in Virginia, posted on X, referring to the posted salary of 25,642.50 pounds per year (about $32,500).

Some joked that they would do the job unpaid just to find out what was going on amid a frenzy over Catherine that’s now known as “Kate-gate” in the United Kingdom. According to the LinkedIn post, at least 100 people have already applied for the position.

Since I wrote this part of the post, it has been announced that Kate has cancer, which only makes the behavior of the Firm more unsettling. These are not private citizens. But if we assume they are entitled to privacy, you can still see how King Charles’s diagnosis prevented a lot of the insanity that has unfolded in the last couple months. The incompetency feels either cruelly deliberate or cruelly neglectful.

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Windows Notepad is getting spell check and stuff, and I don’t want it. (Ars Technica) Sometimes you just need a really really barebones place to stick text. I guess Notepad++ and other third-party software can fill in, but I liked using the built-in stuff.

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Balloon Juice shares more about Donald J Trump’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad, and relentlessly ongoing day. Basically the judge who is in charge of his finances gets to be more annoying about it. He must be so unhappy.

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I’ve been watching the information systems element of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Interrupting communications systems in this era is totally different from the past. Russia has used a novel data wiper to take out more than 10,000 of Ukraine’s satellite modems. (Ars Technica)

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Sara Reine

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movie reviews

Movie Review: Aliens (1986) ***

2024-03-21 /

In the sequel to Alien (1979), our story brings us back to Ripley some fifty-seven years after she entered stasis. It turns out colonists have settled the Zeta Reticuli planet where she initially encountered the alien. She returns with a group of Colonial Marines when the colonists disappear. She plans to exterminate the aliens they find, but of course the corporation does not, and hijinks ensue.

I’m still trying to parse my negative reaction to the movie. I can recognize many good points in it: Sigourney Weaver is great, the action scenes with Ripley vs the Queen are very enjoyable, and the aesthetic surrounding the aliens is still delicious. Yet I found myself largely bored and annoyed while I was actually watching it.

I knew to expect an action movie rather than horror this time around. I do vastly prefer horror. But one of my favorite infinite-rewatch movies is Die Hard (1988), so I had good reason to suspect I wouldn’t mind the shift in genre. Aliens lacks the engaging dialogue and methodically escalated stakes of Die Hard. You really can’t understate how much the dynamic between McClain and Gruber pulls the movie along. As cool as the Xenomorph queen looks, she lacks the gravitas of Alan Rickman. Carter Burke, the resident Weyland-Yutani wiener who serves as primary antagonist for much of the movie, is not all that interesting either.

So Die Hard wasn’t a good comparison (and Aliens couldn’t have been in conversation with it, as Die Hard came two years later).

It seems likelier that Aliens was some kind of improvement over older action movies. It earned quite a bit of cultural cachet in its time, including memes that have persisted to this day (“nuke it from orbit”), so something here hit hard. I just don’t know what. I’m just not all that familiar with its subgenre. I’m guessing that having a woman-led action movie by the guy who wrote Rambo II and Terminator was exciting.

And boy, is Ripley a woman in Aliens. She was androgynous in the first movie. Themes of reproduction weren’t especially played up then. By the time Aliens comes around, they’ve left Ripley’s cat somewhere safe (thankfully) and replaced her with a small child, whose nurturing falls exclusively on Ripley’s shoulders. Ripley is also put against an alien mother as her ultimate foe. The woman-as-childbearer aspect has been pulled into focus. I vaguely recall the few later-franchise movies I saw, and it seems the reproductive stuff only gets increasing importance.

Believe it or not, this came out only twelve years after women could have credit cards under their names in America, so I can appreciate how second wave feminism might have enjoyed it.

The Marines were generally obnoxious, though. The action scenes with the Marines in them were muddy and incoherent — possibly as a way to emphasize the emotional chaos of the situation — and their machismo leading into the battles got tiring. I suspect some of what I “missed” may be an expectation the Marines would be more useful, better-regarded, and survive even a little bit. Without that expectation, there was very little pleasure in watching them fall apart.

I really suspect I need to revisit this movie as part of a bigger self-education on 80s action movies. It will probably come across better that way. In the meantime, I am comfortable rating it three stars because Sigourney Weaver did her job excellently, “Chekhov’s Mech Suit” was fun (as my child termed it), and I really do always love the alien aesthetic.

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Sara Reine

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