In Review: National Treasure

There was a lot to like in this movie. There were Masonic secrets, there was action and excitement, there were hidden underground complexes, there was Sean Bean (he brought more to the movie than anyone else (though Harvey Keitel wasn't bad in his 10 minutes)). There was a lot to roll your eyes about, too. The gratuitous love interest and the gratuitous comic relief were very gratuitous (there were even jokes about it within the movie). Even though the action was almost mathematically spaced throughout the movie, the momentum didn't seem to pick up until the last third. In a movie that's 2 and 1/2 hours long, that's somewhat painful.

I think I'm undecided about the movie in general. I know it didn't do anything to improve my overall opinion of Nicolas Cage's acting skills (he was more like Gone in 60 Seconds than ... hmmm ... whatever movie he's been good in). I also think that in the shadow of The DaVinci Code, National Treasure's version of the Knights' Templar/Masonic secret was somewhat uninspired. If King Solomon's Mines was the Steven J. Cannell-type Indiana Jones, National Treasure was CBS 2-part special. Take from that what you will.

More experiments?

Due to the success of the vodka experiment, I'm thinking of trying two other experiments...

• If filtering skank vodka turns it into primo vodka, what would be the effects of filtering primo vodka? Would it be better than the filtered skank vodka, or would they both be reduced to a "lowest common denominator"?
  
• What happens when you filter other nasty, cheap alcohols that are often carbon-filtered (in particular, whiskey and scotch)? Can I do better than Jack Daniels or, dare I say it, Chivas Regal, for less than $6?
  

I think I'll wait until we actually drink the vodkas before moving on to new experiments. For, while we shouldn't stand in the way of science, nor should we forget the fruits of our labor.

In Review: Lilith

by George MacDonald

At one point in time, this was my favorite book in the world. (This was, of course, before I read Stranger in a Strange Land. George MacDonald was C.S. Lewis' absentee mentor, which was pretty much good enough for me, but Lilith in particular of MacDonald's stories is a protypical vampiress tale (though the term "vampire" is never used), published between Carmilla and Dracula (and therefore not derivative of the genre they spawned). Those of you who know me well know that I was a self-styled vampiress afficianado, and I think Lilith is what set me down that path.

As a vampiress story and a Christian allegory, I think I still like Lilith quite a bit, though Lewis' The Last Battle is a better allegory, and there are a number of better vampiress stories on film (at least to my taste). As a book in general, my attention span is much flightier these days, especially when most of my reading is being done on break at work. Lilith was slow, especially in its beginning, and sometimes frustrating for me.

One idea in the book I really liked (though I'm not sure if it was actually in the book, or if I imposed it) was Lilith's ability to assume the form of a leopardess by possessing its body, leaving an inanimate statue of it behind. It was as if she borrowed its form by stealing its spirit from its body, instead of stealing the body from the spirit, though in the after-life world in Lilith, distinguishing body and spirit are difficult.

Science Experiment: Vodka!

Awhile back, Slashdot had a link to this story about an excellent science experiment. Of course, the best science experiments involve some kind of vice, and preferably some way to save money, so a story about turning cheap-ass Vodka into primo Vodka using a Brita filter ranks very highly. Important science like this must be replicated by multiple groups of scienticians to prove its veracity.

Step 1: Acquire the Ingrediants

The cheapest vodka we could find, at $5.65 for .75l


Belvedere - a confirmed primo vodka, at $30.99 for .75l


The Control - a deliciously crisp water filtered from a municipal source

Every science experiment needs a control of some kind, and I figured anyone who couldn't tell the water from the vodka couldn't be trusted anyway.

Step 1b: Qualify the ingredients

The cheap-ass vodka was not tasty

Just so we could prove the filtering had some effect, we made sure the nasty vodka was nasty. It was.

Step 2: Perform the experiment

The equipment

I took the filter from the Brita pitcher and shook it out to get rid of as much water as possible, and rinsed the stray carbon flecks from the pitcher.


The process

Filtering even just .75l takes a long time, and I'm impatient, so I did it while I was eating the delicious dinner my mom had made. She had made a significant investment in the experiment (she bought the Belvedere), so she had a vested interest in its outcome. The Belvedere said it was distilled four times, so I "distilled" the cheap-ass vodka four times in the Brita. Just to make things fair. Plus, on the "Oh My God It Burns!" site, they said their results flattened out at about five filterings, and - like I said - I'm impatient.


More equipment

We used a "sterilized" Coke cup to rotate the vodka from the bottom to the top of the Brita pitcher. I "sterilized" it with some tap water so as not to affect the taste of the science vodka. The Coke cup later doubled as a "vodka remover" so the Brita filter could go on providing crisp drinking water from a quality municipal source.

The measuring cup helped get the science vodka back into its original shatter-proof (to be read: plastic) bottle for chilling without too much spillage.

The wine glass wasn't really part of the experiment, but what else are you going to do while you're waiting for the vodka to chill?

Step 3: Conduct the experiment

I have to say, I was pretty worried about the experiment at this point. I'm not an experienced scientician, so I didn't have a lot of confidence in my results, and the top of the Brita smelled like condensed rubbing alcohol. Not tasty!


The Experiment

Two hours later, the control water, the science vodka, and the primo vodka were all equally chilled. I poured each into one of three identical letters marked only with scientistic letters written on scraps from an envelope in the trash.

I had three unpaid volunteers test the glasses without prior knowledge of which was in each. They all correctly identified the first glass as water, so the scientistic control works! That's some science for you.


That's some tasty, smooth vodka!

Everyone liked the second glass. There was no harsh smell, and no harsh taste. That was some primo vodka!


Gah! It Burns!

The third glass was rank, compared to the second. It stang your eyes and smacked your nose, and made you cough when you drank it. That was some cheap-ass vodka!

Ha-ha! No, that was the Belvedere! The good vodka. Everybody guessed wrong!


Whaaa?

Step 4: Analyze the results.

After I cleaned up the experiment, I asked my mom if I should throw the quad-filtered cheap-ass vodka away. "No way!" she said. "That's some tasty vodka!" (Note: I'm paraphrasing.)

Later, we wondered what had been filtered out of the cheap-ass vodka. I decided it was the skank, but my mom asked what the skank was, exactly. That's a good question.

I wonder if maybe some of the alcohol was filtered out - if now we have 40-proof vodka instead of 80, and that's what makes it so smooth. We decided to conduct another experiment later (i.e. drink the vodka) to see if it had the same effects as the primo vodka, in addition to a delicious taste.

The important thing, though, is that cheap-ass vodka costs $5.65, and a Brita filter costs $14.99, if you buy it at full-price. That's $20.64, already $10.35 cheaper than the primo vodka! But you should be able to "distill" about 50 bottles of cheap vodka with one filter, so the actual cost is probably something like $6.00 and 45 minutes of your time per bottle. That's some tasty, cheap vodka!

Thanks to my Mom for her dramatic re-enactments!

Currently:

: reading -

Lilith
by George MacDonald

From the back cover:

'"Lilith is equal if not superior to the best of Poe,' wrote W.H. Auden in his introduction to the 1954 reprint of George MacDonald's Lilith ... It is the story of Mr. Vane, an orphan and heir to a large house - a house in which he has a vision that leads him through a large old mirror into another world. In chronicling the five trips Mr. Vane makes into this other world, MacDonald hauntingly explores the ultimate mystery of evil."

This will be the third time I've read this book, but it's been somewhere between 8 to 10 years, and at one time, it was my favorite book. (That dubious honor now belongs to Stranger in a Strange Land.) George MacDonald was C.S. Lewis' greatest influence, and that alone makes him worth notice, but as I recall, the books he wrote were among the best fairy tales I've ever read.

In Review: Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland, which has already won The National Board of Review's "Best Film of 2004" (is the year over?) and is already an Oscar favorite, is worth some attention. Johnny Depp plays his role expertly and with much compassion, as he always seems to, and the supporting characters, especially the children, support him well. The story is touching and engaging, and original enough in it's own way.

I'm just not sure that it's the best film of the year. I didn't think Seabiscuit deserved an Oscar nomination, and I feel the same way about Finding Neverland for pretty much the same reason: they're both book adaptations, and they both allowed themselves to be shackled to a storyline that didn't produce a good story arc when shortened to movie length. Not every book adaptation suffers this fate (think the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or The Princess Bride, among many, many others). Nor is a movie that follows a non-standard arc a bad movie - both Finding Neverland and Seabiscuit were good movies; they were also effective (I judge dramas by whether they make Kim cry). But I feel something lacking when there is no build to a climax and a small anteclimax, and that's enough for some other movie to slip into the top 5 for the year.

But I seem to be in the minority here, and it is only a matter of opinion. Speaking of which, my opinion on the film is that it's worth seeing, that Johnny Depp will be nominated, and that you'll enjoy it.

In Review: Saved!

Kim and I watched this DVD right after we arrived home from watching Finding Neverland in the theater. I'll review that in a bit.

Saved! was a great movie. I might be more of the target audience than the average person out there, having gone to a private Christian school and church through the end of high school, but Saved! was both funny and pointful without being mean. With the exception of one scene near the end, the message of inclusion and finger-waggling against fundamentalist readings of the Bible was left between the lines, which worked well. All of the characters played their parts well enough, with the best performances coming from Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin.

An interesting thing about this movie is that it runs almost parallel to But I'm a Cheerleader!. The tone of the two movies are similar (though Saved! wasn't as garish), but while the main character of Cheerleader went off to the reform school, Saved!'s lead stayed back while her boyfriend went.

If you watch either movie, you'd be doing yourself a favor to watch the other as well - both should be worth your time.

In Review: A Sideways Look at Time

by Jay Griffiths

I picked up this book at Barnes and Noble just before Kim and I left for our Drive Across America, both because it was recommended by the Barnes and Noble staff, and because it looked like one of those physics books that waxes poetic or philosophical - which type of book I tend to like, dependent on the author.

The book, however, is more deconstructionist or sociological. The theme of the book, when it's boiled down, is that there is a wild, natural, circular, feminine time - time which ebbs and flows with the seasons, with the phases of the moon, with the menstrual period, with the cycles that appear in nature. This time cannot be easily broken into regular minutes and seconds, because each cycle may not contain the same number of minutes and seconds, but it is regular and reliable and our bodies and minds and souls are built to work off this kind of time. The other kind of time - regular, Christian, linear, and masculine - solar time, counted on cesium clocks, the kind of time that is money, the kind of time that regulates business and leaves no room for play - this Western time has colonized and is continuing to colonize Wild Time, and that is no good. It may make someone some bucks, but it leaves everyone unhappy.

Essentially, the whole book just repeats this theme over and over again; it's repetition and lack of any significant new idea after the first chapter is its biggest fault. It is philosophical and poetical, however, and Ms. Griffiths' turns of a phrase often rewards continued reading. The book is an interesting essay, but it's about 200 pages longer than it needs to be.