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emjohnson | February 2, 2010My favorite novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, once complained about the treatment of science fiction by critics in his book Wampa, Foma and Granfalloons:
I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since [publishing Player Piano], and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
Science fiction films have often received the same treatment. However, two of the surprise nominees for Best Picture this year are none other than James Cameron's Avatar and the South African alien apartheid action film District 9…
ddobbs | February 1, 2010PTSD, pharma, adjuvants, bad movies -- these are a few of my favorite things, and readers' too.
What's Neil doing here? He wasn't on Neuron Culture; I posted his clip on my catch-all, David Dobbs's Somatic Marker, because I love him. So he comes first. From 1986. Looks as if he's having a particularly good time here.
Neuron Culture's Top Five from Jan 2010
NEJM study finds post-event morphine cuts combat PTSD rates in half
"This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials. One caveat I've not had time to check out is whether the morphine was often applied as part of an more…
ddobbs | January 5, 2010I rarely take direct exception to anything my friend Jonah Lehrer writes, and I fully recognize he's just quick-riffing on a Hollywood movie. But if I understand his Avatar post correctly, my good man Jonah is arguing, at least in a minddump-at-the-bar sort of way, that James Cameron's latest movie is a pretty full neuro-aesthetico-art-critico realization of film's medium. His is a fun post, and worthwhile just to see Cameron crammed onto the same page, with appropriate apologies, with Clement Greenburg, Clint Eastwood, and Jorge Luis Borges. But I must differ. In Avatar, which I saw last…
razib | December 19, 2009I saw Avatar in 3D.
- The special effects were very good. I have seen special effects of similar quality, but never such quality in such quantity. The detail was striking enough that I assume I stopped thinking of it as "special effects" and more as simply a background canvas. I'm talking more about the landscape, the flora and fauna, than the humanoids, who occasionally slipped into uncanny valley territory.
- The plot was melodramatic and not particularly exceptional. The ideological ax didn't bother me because the plot was mostly extraneous to the film's experience anyhow.
- I think that…