Cover Power - Everybody Knows

I rarely get time to watch movies lately, but I saw Justice League on a long flight recently. In spite of the action and the super-heroes I think the best part of that movie is the cover of the song Everybody Knows from the opening scene:

You can see the original version in a live performance here:

Arrival

After a long movie break I managed to see one during this holiday season. Arrival is not the standard SF movie, as it is not packed with action and special effects. It's rather a philosophical story about communication and how a language can shape our mind. What is more weird is that after seeing the movie I realized I read the book on which it is based a few years ago. It is a short story and I wrote about it at that moment here. The screenplay was adapted and the focus of the movie is on the interaction between civilizations and not on the personal story of Louise which is actually the key. I read the book once again after seeing the movie and, strangely, they complement somehow and you understand better both of them in the end.

So my advice is to consume both, no moderation here :)

When The Levee Breaks

I don't have that much time for watching movies anymore, so the only Oscar nominated movie I watched this year was "The Big Short". It tells the story of some guys who realized early on that the American housing market will collapse, bet against it and made a fortune in the end. Apart from the artistic part, the movie tries also to explain to the audience in simple terms the technical market terms and the instruments invented by bankers which lead to this huge unaccounted risks and the melt down that followed.
But apart from other aspects of this movie, what caught my eye from the trailer was the music (When The Levee Breaks) from Led Zeppelin, my all time favorite band. Maybe this was the real reason I watched it in the end :)

The Imitation Game

I first heard about Alan Turing in my second year of college when I studied the Turing machine, a computational model invented by him. We also studied 4 other computational models developed independently by other people (for example λ-calculus), but it turns out all of them are equivalent. Turing machines are widely used for different proofs because this model has the most intuitive definition. It's amazing when you realize that every computer that we use nowadays it's in fact a Turing machine (well, apart from quantum computers which are a different beast, but are still quite far from doing significant work). Besides the theoretical work that he did in computer science, Turing contributed a great deal to the war effort in the Second World War by building a machine which broke the Enigma code used by Germans to encript their communication. This helped the allies to find many of their secrets from movement of troops or the routes attacked by U-boats. "The Imitation Game" tells the story of Turing and his team of cryptographers. I didn't see the movie yet, but I saw it has good reviews and I recognized in the trailer some actors I like: Sherlock and the new prosecutor from The Good Wife. Not to mention Keira :)

Why me?

De ce eu? (Why me?) is a movie based on a real story from 14 years ago. A young prosecutor dares to investigate a judge and a member of the Parliament and he is pushed to suicide by the pressure of his boss and peers. That was the state of the judicial system in Romania at that time. But in the last 10 years it changed a lot: hundreds of members of the "system" (a former prime minister, members of the parliament, judges and other prosecutors, police officers, army officers) were prosecuted and convicted for corruption. The impunity of the ruling class is over and this is just the beginning. I hope that in the next years the level of corruption will continue to decrease in Romania to the benefit of all people. That's what I voted for in 2004, 2009 and 2014: not economic or social policies were my main concern, but the rule of law and the fight against corruption.
The movie will be in cinemas in a few months, but you can see the trailer below:

Ender's Game - The Movie

I recently attended a course called Personal Leadership and Influence which I liked a lot (very good trainers, challenging setting with lots of team projects in four days). It teaches you all kind of stuff about how to interact with various kind of people in various situations, to be aware about how you feel and think and how different other people might feel and think, how to work in a team and overcome blocking points and more. When I went last night to see Ender's Game movie I realized this is what attracted me to Ender's story in the first place when I read the book. It was not the fights with the aliens or whatever technologies, but the story of how Ender becomes a leader, managing and block-busting the difficult situations he encounter at each step. The movie is good, they managed to create a nice orbiting space battle school, including the zero gravity battle room, but it is very condensed comparing to the book. I would have liked to see more school battles with the associated details about various conflicts and team spirit building that is described in the book. So even if you would go and see this movie, you should not skip the book, it is much nicer and complex. Below is one of the trailers of the movie:

Skyfall

"Some men are coming to kill us. We're gonna kill them first." That's the spirit.

I heard that a known plagiator was in London yesterday, so Bond had to save the Queen at the Olympic Games opening ceremony :)

P.S. If you see an advertisement on this page that you know it does not represent my opinion, then click on it so that we take them the money ;)

Another type of advertising

Movie trailers are just another type of advertising. Here's a nice one that I saw today, with an incredible cover of Immigrant Song of Led Zeppelin. I thought first that this was a teaser for the next Bond, since Daniel Craig is starring, but in the end it's another movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo:



P.S. Even with a good advertising, I won't necessarily buy the product, let's see the IMDB ratings first :)

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris is a magic movie about a magic city. Of all the cities I visited, I remember Paris as having the best atmosphere on its streets. Summer is not terribly hot, winter is not very harsh, so the coffee shops are always there, everywhere, inviting you to sit and relax, and watch the time passing by. That probably attracted all those artists in the early 20th century, cause they were flooding to Paris from allover Europe and America alike. So what could possibly happen at midnight in such a city? It's just another walk, drink or party, or what? I'm not gonna spoil it for you, so go see the movie.

An education, but which one?

An education is the social movie of this year. It tells the story of a girl who is seduced out of school and into the easy life of her playboy lover. In the end she returns to the school kind of education. Nevertheless, it is worth questioning the traditional education ans seeking ways of improving it. Probably the worst part about going to school is when it is not fun. Well, the breaks might be fun, but if you sit for an hour and the teacher is boring and you don't understand why do you have to study that subject it can become very annoying.
Here is an alternative view about what the education system should be about:

Movie season

Each year in the period around the Oscar awards ceremony I usually talk around about the nominated movies. It's a kind of movie season. I remember one (Quintana) year when I saw almost all the important nominated movies. I saw a couple of the nominated movies this year too, and even movies that were rumored will be nominated, but in the end were not. The ones I liked most from this season are: Revolutionary Road and Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona. The first one quite moved me and in the second one Penelope Cruz was exceptional, even when she made me laugh with Spanish-English mixture of cultures.

Films

I've seen a couple of movies lately (some of them because they got an Oscar prize): Closer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sideways, Dreamers, and Italiencele (The Italian Girls). My pick goes to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which has another great screenplay writen by Charlie Kaufman.