So I got an iPad

I've had my new iPad for a week. I got the latest, full-sized version and I'm glad I did. I was torn for a while, thinking the iPad Mini was cute -- but I went with size. It was a good decision.

It's way nicer than I expected. It's fast, competent and the screen looks gorgeous. To christen it, I bought "Solaris", my favorite movie. Now when the lights go out I'll have a great movie to watch. It looks so good on screen, I can't believe it. Remember when you first saw a plasma TV at the electronics store and the images looked almost liquid, they were so perfect? That's how movies look on the iPad.

As for Siri, she has her uses. I mentioned the other day that she's great with sports. You ask the start time of a game, and the answer is immediate. Ask for stats on the players or team, and there they are. Siri likes sports. She's also good for setting alarms and calendar events and working with native apps. It's fun to say, "email Carmine" and see an email pop up with the address written in. Then Siri asks "What's the subject?" I respond and there it is. Then she says "What's the message?" and I dictate it. This works flawlessly. Once when I said "thank you", Siri replied "don't mention it" in the cutest voice. There was something about the inflection that made me laugh. She says other things in response to thank you but I liked that one best.

Overall, the dictation function -- in other words, dictating without Siri -- is the best. I can't believe how accurately it transcribes what I say. There are hardly any errors unless I dictate an odd, unfamiliar name. This is a wonderful tool to have. Speaking of which, the Google app updated the other day and told me I could dictate with its (Google's) dictation engine. Uh-huh. I tried and it got it everything wrong. I switched to IOS dictation, said the same words, and it got it perfectly. It's a great dictation engine.

The NY Times app is fab. It's better than the paper version because, for one thing, you can click on photos and see them full-screen and rendered beautifully. Very cool.

I don't have a bad word to say about the new iPad. Get one. On the other hand, I read an article that said Apple is about to come out with a new, widescreen iPad in early 2013. In other words, my iPad is about to be outclassed. I don't care. It's like that old song said: love the one you're with. And I do.

Prometheus really sucked

When the movie came out, I didn't read reviews of "Prometheus", the prequel to "Alien". But I couldn't help but see headlines about viewers' disdain for the movie. As I understood it through headline telegramese, Ridley Scott, the director, implied that jeebus made us and the aliens.

Didn't turn out that way but dang, this movie was a confused mess. There's god-talk everywhere -- and really, who the hell wants this sort of nonsense in the prequel to Alien? The idea for the movie, if there was one, was expressed so incoherently that I'm not even sure what Prometheus was about.

Some huge human-looking creature lives on the world where Ripley found the aliens. But this is way before that time. Somehow, in a way that's never explained, these giant aliens spread their DNA on Earth, and this resulted in mini-versions of themselves. Uh-huh. And now they're going back to Earth to kill us all with the aliens seen in "Alien" (or rather, their precursors). Why would the giant alien do this? No clue. The worst thing is that Scott's premise throws evolution out the window. The aliens "made us". Uh-huh. Why? They never say. The movie literally made no sense.

This is very sad because a ton of money went into the production. With an entirely different script, it might have been good. What I did like (and it's in direct opposition to the no-evolution premise of the movie) is that we saw precursors of the aliens we came to know and love in "Alien". They were obviously less evolved versions of themselves. I liked that. But they blew even this by suggesting that the "evolved" alien seen in the original movie is a hybrid of human/alien origin.

Oy. The giant alien turns out to be a hateful loon and when the humans wake him up (from death, apparently), he attacks them. Duh. What's that about? Seriously, this movie is a mess. I guess Ridley Scott is getting Alzheimer's and he convinced a confused bunch of jeebus fans that his movie was going to push a Christian idea. (And I don't know where the jeebus remarks come from; I didn't see any jeebus in the movie.)

The other fun thing, by the way, was the android. I liked his creepy nature and the things he said. But even here, they blew it. It's as if the movie makers had no imagination at all. They actually used the same gambit as in "Alien": the android's head is ripped off and a human converses with his severed head. I mean, really. They couldn't come up with a fresh idea?

This movie is dead, and watching it is a waste of time. Don't bother.

NOVA on the Japan quake

After giving a heads-up here about the show being on, I did watch it. Twice, in fact. It was called "Japan's Killer Quake" and it was fascinating. I don't know how they gathered so much information in that short a time -- it was the kind of thing you hope to see many months after a disaster. Yet it was only a couple of weeks after the quake when they made this show. Amazing.

There was quite a bit of new footage of the tsunami striking towns and farms. The power of this tsunami was unimaginable. As one observer said, it's not even water by the time it hits you. It's a moving debris field, carrying houses and cars and boats and entire villages. It's not water you're facing; it's more like a bulldozer coming at you. You can't survive.

For me, there were two highlights in the show. One was the tourist's video of the liquifaction that was occurring all around him. The ground was literally liquifying, and this steady amateur videographer recorded it all, including the ground opening up fissures, and then closing, and opening, etc. I think the guy deserves a reward for being a stalwart person. His camera didn't even shake.

Another highlight was Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist from Oregon State University, who lived through the quake at a Japanese airport and reported ever so calmly about what it is like to live through five full minutes of the ground shaking. That's a very long quake. This one just wouldn't stop.

They revealed new scientific data on the show, including the surprising fact that the ground literally dropped as much as three feet onshore because of the quake, making the oncoming tidal wave taller in comparison and enabling its passage over the many, towering sea walls Japan had built for just this eventuality. This lowering of the ground paved the way for the enormous destruction that followed.

It was an amazing show and I hope you saw it. Please free to add your own comments. What did you think?

Sunshine

I watched Sunshine last night. It's a classy movie from 2007 that could have rated a 9, but they mucked it up so bad that I have to give it a 6. It's sad because they had a great idea and a ton of money to pull it off. 

On some levels, the creators of Sunshine did a good job -- but they didn't pay attention to their script. The main concept, that a spaceship is taking astronauts on a mission to restart the fusion reaction in our dying sun, is a good one. Sunshine takes the viewer on a magical, ultra-floodlit two-hour trip to the sun. No one ever promised that before and the movie delivers, in a visual sense. The look is unmatched, so fiery and bright that you may be tempted to close your eyes now and then.

And Cillian Murphy is perfect for the lead. He's such a strange, ethereal-looking guy and a good actor, to boot. You easily believe that he is a genius/physicist capable of saving the world. And the movie's certainly got drama -- if the mission fails, all life on Earth will be destroyed. You don't get much more dramatic than that. With all that going for it, you'd think the movie would be great. It's not.

The problem is that, while Cillian is perfect and the ship's captain, Cliff Curtis, is good, the dialogue and the absurd sub-plots are terrible. I wish the director had spent more time fine-tuning the secondary story to make it believable. Because it isn't. They brought in a ridiculous idea to fill up the middle of the movie, and completely ruined it.

Yet the movie still shines. It's the look: it's brilliant, gorgeous, startling. Since the story takes place on a spaceship, the audience is watching actors and CGI sets for most of the two hours, but the look never gets old. There is great computer animation in Sunshine. Nothing looks fake. The music is also delightful, providing an appropriately magical tone for the story. It reminds me of the soundtrack to Solaris (which is a far better movie). 

They tried with this movie but failed. If you're a sci-fi addict, you'll want to watch it just for the visuals. You can always fast-forward through the idiotic sub-plots. As usual, I reveal no spoilers in my reviews.

Anyone out there have a different opinion of the movie? Remember, this could be your unlurking day, the grandest moment of your entire life!