Dracula

After finally finishing the book, I absolutely wanted to watch the movie adaptation by the great Francis Ford Coppola, even though I had first watched it many years ago.

Although the movie is not bad, time has not been kind to it; at least not in my memory.  I seemed to remember it quite fondly, but the first half of it, this time around, felt boring and unimpressive.  It got better in the second half, but overall it’s just an average motion picture.

Synopsis: after many centuries living in the Transylvanian countryside, Count Dracula decides to move to London, England, where the number of his potential victims would grow exponentially.  His efforts are thwarted by a group of men headed by Professor Van Helsing, who fight valiantly to save the lives of the women they love.  The only problem is that Dracula loves them too.  One in particular might be his reincarnated spouse from before he became a vampire.

While the book isn’t an easy read and has its own issues, the story is told very organically.  The transfer to the motion picture medium, however, required the screenwriter to take a few liberties that mostly worked well (like the initial explanation of how Count Dracula became a vampire and why, which is never really tackled in the book) but sometimes were puzzling (why turn Dr. Seward into a drug addict when it doesn’t serve any apparent purpose?).

What didn’t work too well was the pace of the action.  Given the limited amount of time a movie can last, things have to happen in a fairly quick succession, and sometimes this stretches the limits of what is believable and what is not.  Let’s just say that there was a fair amount of stretching going on here.

Gary Oldman is spectacular as Dracula, and Anthony Hopkins is believable as Van Helsing, but Winona Ryder (Mina) and Keanu Reeves (Harker) disappoint.  Ryder actually made me wonder how, for a time, she was considered a seriously talented actress.  It certainly didn’t transpire in this movie.  Reeves, while excellent in later efforts like The Matrix, here is wooden and unengaged.  He was likely tapped just because he was the “hot young male of the moment.”

The Bottom Line: a decent adaptation of a classic novel, Dracula is an uneven final product.  While the story is intriguing, the screenplay is too crammed and the acting is sometimes weak.  Wojciech Kilar’s soundtrack however, is beautiful and timeless, and the makeup and visual effects hold up pretty well even after a couple of decades.

Grade: 6

The universe through Alma’s eyes

The Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array (Alma) went operational in the Chilean Andes.  It is now the world’s most expensive and sophisticated observatory and once completed (in 2013) will have the capability to find a new galaxy every three minutes!!

A composite of Alma and Hubble observations of the Antennae galaxies. The blue colours represent the best-quality optical image taken of this region of space so far – by Hubble. The red, pink and yellow show previously unseen wavelengths of light emanating from the vast carbon monoxide clouds that float in and between the galaxies, imaged by Alma for the first time. The clouds contain gases with a total mass several billion times that of our sun.

From The Guardian, where you can see more pictures:

"When a star forms, it forms in these cold, dusty gas clouds," said John Richer of the University of Cambridge and a project scientist for Alma. "The moment it's formed it's shrouded in this dusty material, out of which only half of the light from a typical star escapes. Many other stars are formed in very dense clouds and their light is completely absorbed by the dust in these clouds."

These soot-like clouds of dust, which are also the birthplace of planets like the Earth, obscure stars from modern optical and infrared equipment, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. While the dust hides the stars, however, it also gets heated by the starlight to a few degrees above absolute zero (-273C). The dust then emits radiation of its own at sub-millimetre wavelengths, which can be detected on Earth by Alma.

Sub-millimetre light waves are similar to the radiation used by microwave ovens and 1,000 times longer than the light we see with our eyes. Detecting these means that astronomers will be been able to build a more complete picture of the universe. "If you combine the optical images with the [Alma] images you reveal all the star-forming activity, you're not missing half of the picture," says Richer.

Beauty

A marvelous short video accompanied by the profound thoughts of Richard Feynman:

A Quote By

Australia rugby union player David Pocock, who has come out in support of marriage equality:

“I don't see what the big deal is with the whole gay marriage debate in Australia. Being brought up in a Christian home and still identifying as Christian, I get pretty annoyed with the Christian lobbies around the world who say gay marriage destroys the family and all that kind of rubbish. They claim to follow someone who always stood up for the oppressed and marginalised. I guess it is a fear of the unknown - if you talk to someone who doesn't like gay people you can almost guarantee that they don't know too many. These are the prejudices that you have to challenge and break down. Emma and I decided not to get legally married until our gay friends could do the same.”

Would you mind a tax on fat?

Denmark has just introduced a tax on fatty foods, of any kind:

The Danish government has now decided to implement what is considered to be the world’s first “fat tax.” That’s right, a fat tax. This surcharge would apply to all foods containing 2.3 percent or more saturated fats. This isn’t the first time the Danes have declared war on fat.

In 2004, Denmark made it illegal for foods to contain more than 2% trans fat. Austria followed suit and declared a similar law. Denmark also imposed a tax on all sugary junk food in 2010.

Even though I’d be paying more money for some foods that I enjoy, I would wholeheartedly support the introduction of such a tax in the US.  We need it bad.

In Memoriam

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Last week the world lost a gifted visionary whose creations influenced the way we live our everyday lives in countless ways.

He revolutionized virtually every industry he dabbled in.  His Macintosh computer became the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface, rather than a command line, which is what we all use nowadays.  Does it matter that the vast majority of personal computers run Windows operating systems instead of Apple’s (the company Jobs co-founded)?  Not really, because the genius behind the invention remains Jobs’.

He was forced out of Apple but returned later on bringing the innovations that we’re all very familiar with and that have made Apple a powerhouse and one of the most profitable companies in the world.  Jobs created iTunes and the iPod, which revolutionized the way we listen to music and the music industry itself, the iPhone, which revolutionized the phone industry and the way we view and use phones, and the iPad, which once again revolutionized the way we look at portable computers.

His creations have been copied by everyone else and while some products do compare, Apple’s output remains the standard the world over.

During his brief stint away from Apple, Jobs founded Pixar, the animation company that brought us arguably the best animated movies of all time, making Disney’s output look stale and obsolete, and revolutionizing how Hollywood produces animated movies.

Jobs was only 56 years old when he succumbed to the pancreatic cancer that had plagued him for years.  We’ll never know the countless innovations the world has been deprived of with his passing.

He’ll be missed.  R.I.P.

A Quote By

Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist:

"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity. ... I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. ... And one calculates time from the dies nefastus on which this fatality arose -- from the first day of Christianity! Why not rather form its last? From today? Revaluation of all values!"

Someone Like You

Adele released the official video for her second single off her worldwide smash hit 21, Someone Like You:

Occupy Wall Street

Could that be the left leaning movement that mirrors the success the Tea Party has had on the right?

Gods know we need one:

Small groups of demonstrators in major American cities have started their own "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations and organizers are planning further actions in more cities across the United States.

A diverse coalition of people have pledged to occupy Wall Street until something is done about corporate greed and the financial system's undemocratic influence on the U.S. government.

[…]

"The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99 Percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the one percent," said a statement on the Occupy Wall Street website.

At least 80 to 100 people were arrested over the weekend in the first big crackdown since the demonstration began. Police accused the protesters of blocking traffic and resisting arrest.

Video recordings showed female protesters being rounded up in an orange-colored mesh pen by police and subsequently sprayed with mace, seemingly without any provocation, and other protesters being dragged across the street by police. Another protester said she was arrested for trying to film the demonstration and locked in a police van for over two hours.

The protest spread to other cities over the weekend.

[…]

"Corporate interests seem to be controlling both parties,” one protester told LAActivist.com. “The ‘little man,’ the ‘American every man,’ just isn’t getting their voice heard. When you need $35,000 to donate to a campaign to get your voice heard, to have a meeting, that’s not democracy.”

[…]

Journalist Chris Hedges described the protest as “really where the hope of America lies.”

“The real radicals have seized power,” he asserted, “and they are decimating all impediments to the creation of a neo-feudalistic corporate state, one in which there is a rapacious oligarchic class, a thin managerial elite, and two-thirds of this country live in conditions that increasingly push families to subsistence level.”

MIT professor Noam Chomsky also said he supports the protest.

"Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street -- financial institutions generally -- has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world)," he said. "And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power."

Paws Up Forever!

14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer is only the latest gay kid to take his life because of bullying related to his sexual orientation.

Jamey loved Lady Gaga, and she recently dedicated a song to him during a concert.

Now Gaga’s Little Monsters have put together a video montage that speaks directly to Jamey and to any other gay and lesbian kid who might find him/herself in his same situation in the hopes of avoiding the next useless death.

Take out your tissues, it’s beautiful: