Plot Hole Fun and Frustration

October 26th, 2012

Warning: Movie Nerd Post Ahead

I, like most geeks, have an affection for finding goofs in movies: visible boom mics, plot holes, etc. I’ve made kind of a hobby of it, detailing almost all of the goofs that are currently in TV.com’s Doctor Who Classic section. Finding goofs is a bit of stupid nerdy fun, a bit of a wink that reminds us that this is just entertainment, not real life. It’s especially fun with Doctor Who because the wobbly sets and lousy special effects were part of the fun in the early series.

But you do run into annoyances when you play around in this particular geek pen.

First of all, you have those who try to explain a goof; who desperately scrounge around for some explanation — any explanation — for why an obvious goof is not really a goof at all; how the license plate on the car changed because it was a clever disguise.

The worst are Star Trek fans, who are constantly coming up with some quantum tunneling or space warp effect to explain ST’s wild inconsistencies. And sometimes they resort to being flat-out wrong. An example occurs in Star Trek: Generations. When Soren destroys a star, the gravitational field changes instantly. However, according to General Relatively, the change in gravitational field should propagate out at the speed of light: distant objects will still be responding to the initial gravitational field. Yet, ST fans will continue to insist that Trek is right and Einstein is wrong. Over at Movie Mistakes, which is one of the worst-run of the goof sites, you get this nonsense:

I agree that it should take time for the light from the destruction of the star to reach the planet but not the gravitational effects. Things like planets orbit stars not because there is some kind of particle or energy being exchanged between them but because the gravitational field has warped the space they are travelling through. As a result of this when the gravitational field was changed space would have snapped instantly to its new position producing instant gravitational effects. (see Stephen Hawkins:- A Brief History of Time if you don’t believe me).

This is … uh … not true.

But what’s far worse is people who site goofs that don’t exist. The submitters often rely on faulty memory or someone else’s faulty compilation (I’ve purged dozens of these from the Doctor Who pages). Or, frequently, they haven’t paid close attention to the movie and heard someone explain a plot hole they think exists. Gregg Easterbook, oddly, is one of the worst at this. But Cracked has had a series of articles in this vein that are often badly informed, incomplete and just wrong. Here is the most recent, where they list off eight movies made possible only by incompetent characters.

(I would note that characters acting stupidly, as Movie Mistakes notes, isn’t really a goof. A goof is something that reminds you you’re just watching a movie. Stupidity doesn’t meet that requirement. People sometimes act stupidly. That’s how history is made.)

Some of the mistakes in the Cracked article are valid: the idiocy of Die Hard 2 scarcely needs commenting on. But several are simply wrong. For example, they criticize Men in Black for not sending backup to deal with the stellar cockroach. But the conceit of that movie is that Earth is constantly under threat and the MiB’s are always busy dealing with it. Then they criticize Mission Impossible for network security, ignoring the elaborate plan the MI team use to get access to a secure computer. The most egregious is bashing Star Wars because the Empire doesn’t scan the Millenium Falcon after they capture it (they do, and it’s stated several times).

It’s unusual for Cracked to be so lazy.

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The Hormone Vote

October 24th, 2012

CNN has an article up that is … kinda dumb:

While the campaigns eagerly pursue female voters, there’s something that may raise the chances for both presidential candidates that’s totally out of their control: women’s ovulation cycles.

You read that right. New research suggests that hormones may influence female voting choices differently, depending on whether a woman is single or in a committed relationship.

Please continue reading with caution. Although the study will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science, several political scientists who read the study have expressed skepticism about its conclusions.

Basically, this new study claims — actually, rediscovers — that women in relationships favor Romney by 19 points and single women favor Obama by 33. Their new claim is that when those women are ovulating, those percentages jump by as many as 20 points.

This has, for obvious reasons, caused quite a stir in the blogosphere and Twitter. Unfortunately, the primary reaction is for people to clutch their copies of McKinnon and scream at some Texas professor for daring to suggest that women are nothing but hormone-addled idiots, even though the professor in question says nothing of the kind. And that reaction is kind of unfortunate. Because in their zeal to proclaim that women are completely unaffected by their hormones, people are missing the real reason why the article is dumb and should just be snickered at and then ignored.

First, the number of women we are dealing with is small. I don’t have access to the study and their exact numbers but they studied 502 women total. If by “change of 20 points*” they mean that women in relationships went from 59-41 Romney to 69-31 Romney, that’s a total of about 25 women changing their minds. And a similar number among single women. That … really doesn’t strike me as a statistically significant sample, especially given how volatile polls are known to be anyway and how uncertain the date of ovulation can be.

(*A critical point that is missing from the article is whether that jump is 20 points in differential or absolute (i.e, from 59-41 to 69-31 or 79-21). It’s the difference between 25 women changing their minds — a small number — and 50, a more interesting number. I also note the phrase “as much as 20 points”, which suggests that 20 points is at the outer edge of a very large statistical uncertainty and the actual difference is much smaller. This is why I would like to see the actual study.)

Second, it’s difficult to pin down an a priori reason why a woman’s menstrual cycle might affect her voting. In the absence of clear information, we can only speculate. And this is where CNN and the researchers really flounder badly:

Here’s how Durante explains this: When women are ovulating, they “feel sexier,” and therefore lean more toward liberal attitudes on abortion and marriage equality. Married women have the same hormones firing, but tend to take the opposite viewpoint on these issues, she says.

“I think they’re overcompensating for the increase of the hormones motivating them to have sex with other men,” she said. It’s a way of convincing themselves that they’re not the type to give in to such sexual urges, she said.

It’s true enough that women feel “sexier” when ovulating and are known to change their behavior (more likely to have sex, more likely to wear skimpy clothing, etc.). That’s all well-established biology. How this translates into political behavior isn’t clear at all. It seems that the researchers came up with one half of a dubious idea (“women feel sexier so they want abortion to be legal”) and then had to scramble to find the other half (“um, so married women are … repressing?”). That’s nice spit-balling but it’s no more valid than saying that when women are menstruating, they get mad and say, “Screw that guy, I ain’t voting for him any more!” You can basically shove anything you want into that information vacuum and call it “science”.

Something important jumped out at me on a second reading: no one quoted in the article is a biologist or any other kind of scientist. The study author is a Professor of Marketing. They also quote Professors of Political “Science” and Women’s and Gender Studies. I would hazard that maybe the Professor of Marketing knows something about statistics. But this whole things reeks of the Scientific Peter Principle: poorly done studies are the ones most likely to get attention because their flaws produced amazing results.

Here’s $0.02 from someone as equally unqualified to look into this as anyone quoted in the article. I suspect this effect, such as it is, is small, even smaller than the 10% they are claiming. I also suspect that this study was conducted some time ago when a lot of the voters were undecided and might have been a little torn between the two candidates. Undecided voters have a tendency to sway with every breeze that blows. Under those circumstances, it’s possible that the hormone kick at ovulation and the resulting surge in self-confidence might make women a little firmer in their political convictions one way or the other. Or, conversely, that the effects of PMS and/or menstruation make women a little less confident in their choices. One test you could do? See if “ovulation effect” diminishes as we get closer to the election and more people learn about the candidates and make up their minds.

The gripping hand here is that this entire thing is pointless trivia as far as elections go. You see, women’s menstrual cycles tend to be random. So the percentage of women who are ovulating at any one moment is a constant. So the net effect of this on the vote?

Zero.

Update: I just slapped myself in the head for not saying this in the main text: where the hell was the group of menopausal women used as a control?

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Wednesday Linkorama

October 17th, 2012
  • Distracted parenting is a problem, obviously. But, despite the horrible tragedies described, it’s not clear how big a problem it is. Mobile devices free parents up to do more things with kids and to supervise them more. I will let on, however, that they can occupy your attention. I was at a park when a kid broke his arm and didn’t notice immediately because of my phone. Don’t know if it would have been different with my kid.
  • I’m really looking forward to reading Nate Silver’s book.
  • Statues at the bottom of the sea. Amazing. And heart-breaking, when you think of what they represent.
  • I think this author has a good point that the Star Wars universe is likely illiterate. However, I think it’s less a conscious “where is modernism driving us” thing than a reflection of Star Wars being built on medieval narratives and cliches.
  • An interesting take on one of the more panned documentaries of the year. It does seem that people have a problem accepting that being anti-Big Education is not the same as being anti-education. Or even anti-teacher.
  • This story made my day. This is religion at its finest.
  • Whatever the political fallout of Benghazi, the story of the attack is an amazing one.
  • This is NOT the way to fight global warming. And they say all the greed and abuse is on the skeptic side.

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    Emory Apologizes

    October 15th, 2012

    Growing up in Atlanta, I was, of course, exposed to some degree of anti-semitism. A cross was once burned on the lawn of my synagogue. I was frequently approached by people who wanted to save me. A friend of mine went to a school in rural Georgia and was beaten up frequently and harassed endlessly just for being Jewish.

    The astonishing thing, however, was that this was a gentle breeze compared to what Atlanta had been like just decades before. Most of what I encountered was polite ignorance: people who wondered where we made sacrifices; a Boy Scout troop that had never had a Jew before, classmates who wondered why I was out of school so often in the fall. I never faced the kind of threats and mistreatment that, say, my grandparents did. The Dead Shall Rise is an excellent chronicle of the Leo Frank case, which was a watershed event and not a good one. Not only did an anti-semitic crowd lynch a likely innocent Leo Frank, the despair this produced in the Jewish Community could be felt seven decades later. My grandparents, who were in Atlanta when Frank was murdered, refused to talk about it; refused to talk about any of the treatment they’d endured.

    And, as an academic, I’ve never encountered anything close to what my parents’ generation experienced. This week, Emory University apologized for some of the awful things that went on in their School of Dentistry in the 1950′s. Emory was the worst bastion of academic anti-Semitism but they were not alone. Every doctor of my dad’s generation encountered it: quotas on Jews, professors who would tell them Jews were unsuited to medicine, patients would refuse to see Jewish doctors. It was pervasive.

    I’m glad to see — six decades after the fact — Emory acknowledging this. And I am personally pleased because one of the dentists recognized — Perry Brickman — is a friend of my father’s and my uncle’s, pulled my father’s wisdom teeth and mine and is an all-around good doctor and a good man. To see him vindicated after all this time is wonderful and a reminder that things can change for the better.

    Update: Related — maybe it’s a generational thing, but I’ve never held to the Wagner thing. Wagner was anti-semitic; Hitler liked Wagner; both have been dead for a very long time. Neither invented anti-Semitism. And I do not judge art by the behavior of its maker or the vileness of its admirers.

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    2012 League Cups

    October 4th, 2012

    Last year, I suggested a way baseball could bring some relevance back to the regular season: by recognizing the team with the best record as the League Champion. This year’s League Champions, under that formulation, would be New York and Washington. I find that a far more useful metric of overall team quality than “made the post-season”.

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    Tuesday Linkorama

    October 2nd, 2012
  • Paul Ryan and the Republicans appear to be backing down on DADT. About time.
  • Apparently, there is a new blood test that could detect some types of cancer.
  • Yeah, I never thought much of the writing fever approach to teaching writing skills. You learn to play music by learning scales. You learn writing by learning vocabulary, grammar and sentence construction.
  • A fascinating profile of one of the CIA’s operatives. What’s telling is precisely why we provide aide to loathsome regimes.
  • Hmmm. Kids getting their grandparents’ Holocaust tattoos.

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    The Shakespeare Project: King John

    October 1st, 2012

    I think I’m going to like the histories.

    I say this not because King John is a great play. It’s not. It’s narrative is very straight-forward. Many of its character, particularly John himself, are bland. I don’t recall grinning like a baboon at any particularly excellent dialogue.

    However, it has one advantage over the comedies: it’s easy to follow. The comedies rely a great deal on clever dialogue, phrasing and references that often go over the heads of even an educated contemporary reader (Love’s Labours Lost especially). It’s very difficult to get into a play when I’m touching every third word to find out what it means. John, by contrast, and I suspect the histories in general, are less cumbersome to the Brocca’s Area.

    John has some big weaknesses: the seemingly arbitrary shifts in loyalty among the barons (probably reflective of reality, but not very accessible); the shrewish sparring between Lady Constance and Queen Eleanor; and Arthur’s pleading for his life doesn’t really work for me. But things liven up every time the Bastard is on stage. I found myself hoping he would succeed John to the throne.

    Not a bad start, actually, despite its reputation as the weakest of the histories.

    Next Up: Richard II

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    Mathematical Malpractice Watch: Guns

    September 29th, 2012

    A few weeks ago, Mother Jones did a timeline of mass shootings in response to the spate of summer shootings. The defined their criteria, listed 61 incidents and pointed out, correctly, that most of them were committed with legal firearms.

    The highlight is a map of mass shootings over the last thirty years. The map has some resemblance to Radley Balko’s famous map of botched law enforcement raids. But the use of a map and dots is where the resemblance ends. Balko was very clear that his list of incidents was not, in any way, definitive. And he did not try to parse his incomplete data to draw sketchy conclusions.

    Mother Jones felt under no such compulsion.

    This week, they’ve published an “analysis” of their data and drawn the conclusion that our society has more guns than ever and, perhaps related, more mass shootings. Below, I’ll detail why I think their “analysis” — and yes, I will keep using quotation marks for this — is useless, uninformative and flat-out wrong.

    Read the rest of this entry »

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    Toys. In. Spaaaaace.

    September 27th, 2012

    I love this:

    The coolness and wow factors are there, yes. So is the idea that this sort of thing can be done so cheaply and easily. But the real gem is the look on that kid’s face. This is something he will never forget. I have to steal this idea for my kid one day.

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    The Shakespeare Project: Pericles and a Comedy Overview

    September 24th, 2012

    Scholars suggest that the first two acts of this play were written by George Wilkins while the last three were written by Shakespeare. I have to say this sound imminently plausible. The first two acts are boring, running through several locations and a cast of characters with little flavor, drama or humor. You could cut them out of the play entirely with almost no loss.

    The last three acts work much better and have more of the plot twists and court shenanigans that we know and love. It’s still not one of the Bard’s best efforts. But there’s some humor in how Marina fends off her potential clients and the reunion scene between Pericles and Marina is genuinely moving. But I’ve really not much to say about this play because there’s very little to it. It lacks the fire, humor or insight of the other comedies. It’s not really a problem play or one that flirts with tragedy. It’s just … kind of … there.

    So I’m not going to waste much time digging into Pericles. Nor, for now, will I read Two Noble Kinsmen, which is supposedly even worse and is in neither my Kindle nor my bound edition. Instead, I’ll give a quick overview of what I thought of the comedies.

    Reading through all the comedies was an illustration of just how important performance is for comedy. The best comedies do work on the page. But I found that the bulk of the comedies occasionally dragged on the page. Comedy — even just light drama or fantasy — is highly dependent on subtlety and on an actor bringing you in. There are a number of passages where the lines read almost like an instruction manual — setting up the actors to carry the show. The combination of language and lack of stage direction often made the action difficult to follow.

    If I were to rate them, I would say the best were A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, although the latter is poorly described as a comedy. Three of those I was familiar with but Twelfth Night was a genuine surprise and a pure delight. It’s no accident that these are the most familiar comedies as they stand head and shoulders above the others. Not a phrase is wasted, not a humorous opportunity lost. The dialogue, especially, is so crisp, one is easily drawn into the plays. You don’t need a dictionary and stage directions to follow along and grin with every clever line or plot twist.

    The remainder are eminently readable and have some fine moments. And having seen one or two in performance, I can say that are enjoyable on stage, when the actors can add their own flourishes. But they all have some slow passages, some pointless characters or some flaw that denies them the pinnacle of the top four: Merchant‘s absurd idea of justice, Two Gentlemen‘s tedium, Labours slow pace and sudden ending. I am very glad that I have now read them. And if I get an opportunity to see them in performance, I will. But I can’t see myself reading through them again.

    Well, it’s on to the histories. And we’ll dive right in with King John.

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    Changing Opinion

    September 22nd, 2012

    While I find this study, in which people are fooled into arguing against previously-held opinions, interesting, I think many bloggers/tweeters are missing the critical point. On almost all issues, people are of two minds. It is rare that someone encounters an issue where they can not see the other side at all (we call those people “fanatics”). Even people who have a very strong opinion can usually see where the other side is coming from. And, on many issues, we’re kind of on the fence.

    The gripping hand is that, unless someone is really passionate about an issue, they haven’t really thought through their arguments very well. They’ve mostly reacted, usually by agreeing with whomever they perceive to be their “side”. And when they do think about the issue, they tend to argue toward whatever side they have already picked.

    As I say so often: human being are OK at thinking; but we’re dead awesome at rationalizing.

    What the exercise does is not shift their moral compass. What it forces them to do is what we used to do in debate club and what I still try to do while writing blog posts: try to argue the other side. By trying to think of the arguments the opposition might raise, you strengthen your own arguments. And sometimes, you realize that the other side was right to begin with.

    So, no, the results are not terribly surprising. But they are interesting.

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    New Year Linkorama

    September 17th, 2012
  • I fear that Megan McArdle is right and that we are facing an awful bust in higher education. I recently that Emory is cutting whole departments. And we’ve been squeezed. At some point, the massive amounts of money poring into higher ed have to reach their asymptote, no? This is going to be ugly.
  • A fascinating article about why the atheist movement is so male-dominated. I won’t pretend I have an answer to this. I have to think about it quite a bit.
  • Was Obama elected by hordes of welfare recipients? Nope. This is, I think, a big reason many conservatives oppose efforts for mandatory voting. I oppose it myself, but for different reasons.
  • A great article on the state of science writing, the tendency of poor research to grab headlines (because poor research produces surprising bogus results) and the beauty of debunking. A must read.
  • A truly horrible story of isolation and psychological abuse being used to “discipline” kids. Honestly, we were better off with paddelings.

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    Why Science?

    September 14th, 2012

    As an astronomer, I’m always hit with the “what’s the practical use of this” question. My general response is, “Well, what’s the practical use of the Sistine Chapel?” Life can’t all be about practical down to earth things. There has to be beauty and art and discovery and awe. All our practicality has to be oriented toward something beyond ourselves.

    But there’s also this. Sometimes just monkeying around with science produces unexpected insight. So research into jellyfish produces an AIDS treatment; screwing around with microwaves produces lasers and going to the moon produces remote sensors to monitor patients.

    It’s a big universe out there and we’ve uncovered only a tiny fraction of its secrets. We should keep digging because we never know what’s going to turn up.

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    2011 in Film

    September 9th, 2012

    Yeah, it’s mid-September. And I still haven’t watched all the 2011 movies that I want to. But do you know how many films I saw in a theater in 2011? Two? Maybe three? Almost everything I watch is on DVD and one of the more praised movie of 2011 just came out. And I’m glad I delayed this post until I could watch it. But I’ll stick a fork in 2011 for now.

    According to Metacritic, the most well-reviewed films of 2011 were:

    Tree of Life: You can read my long review for my detailed thoughts on what is, without question, the most controversial picture of the year. Many people whose opinions I respect hated it. On IMDB, it is rated at the 58th best movie of 2011, indicating that audiences didn’t like it that much (although the vote is very polarized). But having now seen it a second time, I still think it’s wonderful. I still think, in the fullness of time, it will be appreciated. And I would still rate it as the best film of the year. 9/10

    The Artist: While I enjoyed this film, I did not love it the way many people did. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a fine film and well-qualified as Best Picture. But I wonder how much of its appeal is wrapped up in its gimmick. 8/10

    Melancholia: As I said on Twitter, this is the reason we put with Lars von Trier’s bullshit. Melancholia is a little slow at the beginning, but builds toward a shattering finale. Kirsten Dunst is excellent and it a visually and aurally stunning film. 8/10

    Drive: I have not seen this yet but expect to like it.

    The Descendants: I found this to be a little over-rated. It wasn’t bad mind you. It’s well-written and well-acted. I cared about the people in it. But it didn’t grab me the way some of the other best pictures did. It’s my nominee for the “kafeeklatch” movie of the year: appealing mainly to Hollywood insiders. But it’s a step above, say, The Kids are All Right. 7/10

    Hugo: As I said on Twitter, I’m so glad that Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar. It has freed him up to make the pictures he wants to make, rather than aiming so hard for an Oscar (although this was stil nominated). Shutter Island was good; this was great, carried by its strong actors. I told you to keep an eye on Chloe Moretz. 8/10

    A Separation: I just watched this a couple of nights ago and am still taking it in. As with several other of the top-rated films, it starts slow as it makes the characters compelling and then tightens down. I was, in an odd way, reminded of Winter’s Bone. It may seem odd to compare a picture set in American meth country to one set in Iran. But both pictures deal with good people trying to live in trying circumstances and both feature acting that is so low-key and so real, I didn’t even realize I was watching actors: I only saw the characters. A must see as it provides one of the first glimpses we’ve gotten of real Iranian society. On IMDB, it is the top-rated movie of 2011. It’s rare for a movie with so few explosions to be so well-liked on IMDB. 8/10 (provisional)

    Certified Copy and Take Shelter: I have not seen these. Both are in my queue.

    Moneyball: While I am a fan of baseball, a fan of the book and a fan of the new management in the game, I only liked this one, didn’t love it. 7/10

    So that’s what the critics thought. We can feather that out with the Best Picture nominees, representing the thoughts of an entirely different group of old white men. The nominees this eyar were The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, Tree of Life and War Horse. I have seen all of them. Several I mentioned above, but I’ll go through the other ones.

    Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: I can see what they were trying to do. And there are moments when it is really good and uplifting. I love the optimistic take it has on New Yorkers, which I think is far closer to the truth than the more popular cynical view. But it had lots of credibility problems and the way the kids’ mind was portrayed – with loud noises and flash cuts – irritated me. 6/10

    The Help: The acting in this is great and I enjoyed it a lot the first time I saw it. But as time has gone on, the appeal has waned. 7/10

    Midnight in Paris: This movie is typical Woody Allen — charming, funny, endearing but not quite great. Marion Cotillard was great in this, as she is in everything. 7/10

    War Horse: Like Extremely Loud, there are moments when this film is very good, particularly the touching ending. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The story is told from the point of view of the horse, but Spielberg tries very hard to tell it from the view of the people. It doesn’t really work that way. I kept feeling like I was watching a highlight reel of the year’s best films rather than one of the year’s best films. 7/10

    So let’s go to the people: looking over the movies at IMDB and narrowing to those with 25,000 or more votes, we find the following list from the users: A Separation, The Intouchables, Warrior, The Artist, Deathly Hallows 2, The Help, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, Drive, 50/50 and X-Men First Class. Girl with Dragon Tattoo was good. Not quite as good as the Swedish TV series, but very good. Mind you, I saw an edited version on an airplane, so my opinion might improve later from its current 7/10. Deathly Hallow 2 I rate as a 9, but that’s a fan rating, so a normal rating would be 8/10.

    I do, however, want to comment on Warrior, which was simply excellent. Fantastic acting all the way down to the supporting actors, brilliant directing and a great story. I was surprised by this one. I did not expect a film about mixed martial arts fighting to be one of the best of the year. I love surprises and gave it an 8/10.

    Looking further down the list, there are a few more I have seen or want to see. Sherlock Homes II was even better than the first and I fan-rated it at 8/10. Tin-tin was very enjoyable and I rated it 7/10. The Muppets was a fun tongue-in-check 7/10 that my daughter loved. Super 8 was Spielbergian treat that gives me hope that Adams is improving as a director (8/10). Rango was quite fun at 7/10. And Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was an exquisitely tense spy thriller with a fantastic performance from the great Gary Oldman that I gave 8/10. I would still like to see Mission Impossible IV, Drive, Take Shelter, Source Code and The Adjustment Bureau. And I have been talked into seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes at some point.

    Applying the DVD test, the only films I own are Harry Potter 8a and Sherlock Holmes II, both fan purchases, and Tree of Life. But if money were no object, I would probably buy A Separation, Warrior, Tintin, Tinker Tailor, Melancholia. There are a few more I might throw on the pile once I see them.

    Not a bad year, after all is said and done.

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