From: Richard Steven Hack (richardhack@pcmagic.net)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 22:34:05 MST
At 06:30 PM 3/7/02 -0800, you wrote:
>Similarly, I was disappointed with Contact - it wussed out, IMO. But it was
>a successful commercial movie, which not only portrayed an atheist (count
>the movies on one hand with an atheist as the main character)... but an
>atheist who actually didn't end up needing a lobotomy (remember "Frances?").
Actually, Ellie Arroway was an "agnostic" (albeit the distinction in her
case was probably entirely intellectual).
My favorite character in the movie was John Hurt's billionaire. That
there's a cool guy - flies around in a high-tech airplane, never sets down
except to affect some critical situation, invests in good-looking lady
scientists, is way ahead of everybody on what's going on, and may have been
the one who set the whole thing up in the first place. Actually, the
ending was a glaring hole. While I buy that the government would try to
cover up the whole thing by blaming the billionaire, in reality, it would
never hold up. First, how could he or his scientists design a machine that
the rest of the world's scientists couldn't figure out? Secondly, after
his death, somebody in on it would have blown the whistle on it if it was a
hoax. Third, he knew he was dying, what was the point?
Actually, the way Contact wussed out was to reduce the entire issue to a
question of "faith". I really doubt that Carl Sagan intended it that way,
although I have never read the book.
The movie was moderately successful - cost $95 million to make, grossed
$170 worldwide. Not that good for the cost. What really irritated me (as
someone who really likes Jodie Foster) was here she carried a two-hour,
twenty-minute movie on her back, delivered a dynamite performance that
never missed, and she gets totally ignored at the Oscars for a bunch of
British chicks playing - guess what - British chicks... (Dame Dench gets a
nomination for a seven-minute walk-on playing Queen Elizabeth WHICH SHE DID
THE SAME ROLE THE YEAR BEFORE! I believe that when the current queen dies,
Dame Dench will be made queen and get an automatic Oscar every year
thereafter...)
>Julian Simon? Most people have neither heard of Julian Sands nor Paul
>Simon, much less Julian Simon.
Agreed.
>I read this somewhere recently ... something about how we live in a society
>that has never made a movie about Leonardo da Vinci, but has produced three
>movies about Joe Buttafucco.
>
>Weep, weep ...
>O.
>
There you go. Humans.
Richard Steven Hack
richardhack@pcmagic.net
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