Agora is a 2009 Spanish historical drama film directed by Alejandro Amenábar and written by Amenábar and Mateo Gil. The biopic starsRachel Weisz as Hypatia, a female mathematician, philosopher and astronomer in 4th century Roman Egypt who investigates the flaws of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the heliocentric model that challenges it. Surrounded by religious turmoil and social unrest, Hypatia struggles to save the knowledge of classical antiquity from destruction. Max Minghella co-stars as Davus, Hypatia’s slave, and Oscar Isaacas Hypatia’s student Orestes, prefect of Alexandria.

The story uses historical fiction to promote a “conflict thesis” interpretation of the relationship between religion and science amidst thedecline of Greco-Roman polytheism and the Christianization of the Roman empire. The title of the film takes its name from the agora, a gathering place in ancient Greece, similar to the Roman forum.

There is very heavy fictionalization in Davus and his relationship with Hypatia and her investigation of the heliocentric view of the solar system. The later is used as a story device in that finally unlocking the secret of elliptical orbits allows Hypatia to accept her fate at the hands of the parabalani thugs. Davus is a purely fictional character who is there to serve as a viewpoint character.

Agora is remineiscent of the old “sword and sandal” biblical movie like Ben-Hur. This seems to be intentional on the part of the director, as he studied these movies before starting the project. The care in creating the sets is obvious and lush visuals without obvious CG are perfect.

People my age will remember Carl Sagan waxing poetic as he told the story of Hypatia in the Cosmos TV series and indeed that is where the inspiration for this project comes from.

Rachael Wiesz and the others all turn in fine performances.

I love this movie, for its attack on reactionary fundamentalism and the setting. Highly recommended.

The opening scene where the two buddies get into a brawl outside of a bar sets the tone for the movie and lets you know this is not a typical Hollywood action movie with the hero taking on dozens of opponents in short order and running unscathed through a hail of bullets. This film has realistic violence with it ugly and brutal results and the main characters wind up bloody and beaten in the middle of a street.

Plot summary: Two petty if violent criminals kidnap a girl being paid $1m to be a surrogate mother. As the baby is for a gangster the pair’s demand for money sees several henchmen and assorted other ruthless characters head after them to Mexico. Bullets rather than talking are always going to settle this one.

What follows is an extremely complex tale that is most definitely not your standard Hollywood movie with tragedy and betrayal at its heart.

In terms of a Fiasco style of movie, if you watch how every character has some sort of relationship an is connected and the way these all unfold at the end you see exactly the sort of style that a Fiasco game is building as it develops.

Way of the Gun is certainly not without its flaws, extremely slow pacing especially at the beginning and the way it is not the two main characters who are the heroes of the story. If you keep in mind that the amoral pitiless two that open the story are not the protagonists then the movie makes far more sense. I wish there were more movies like this coming from Hollywood instead of the cookie cutter made-by-committee movies that are churned out by the dozens.

For some reason the outside reminded me of IM Pei’s pyramid at the Lourve, maybe not immediately identifiable with music but it also will not age or become dated.

There were several cars hanging, all decorated and artistic. This brought to mind the British influence on Rock and Roll.

They had Johnny Cash’s tour bus parked outside.

The special exhibit at the Hall was “Women Who Rock” a look at women whose music has influenced us through their music.

I have not yet gotten into the Hangout (video chat) yet but in conjunction with the circles it certainly makes for an intriguing way to run a Tabletop style of RPG,

Imagine wanting to run a game of  Dungeons and Dragons, the DM could create a circle for the players. He (or she) could then post updates for the game group that wouldn’t be seen by others. then on the designated game night simply start a video hangout just for that circle and the players could then join for the game. You could use public Google docs for the character sheets and maps, with the exception if dice rolls it would automate the entire game, if playing a Pathfinder or 3.5 edition game the rules are even available online as SRD.

Below is the inevitable Downfall video when Hitler is informed of the G+ rising popularity (some strong language):

There have been disasters in the past but obviously nothing on the scale that has happened after the tsunami and earthquake in North Japan. I am still of the opinion that the meltdown’s full extent has never been told and will be hushed up, much as people do not realize the full extent of the meltdown that occurred at Three Mile Island.

Adelstien also has an interesting op-ed piece exploring whether the incident would have occurred whether or not the tsunami hits, just on the effects of an earthquake, its an interesting speculation given the gross mismanagement.

When you keep running the same nuclear reactor for over forty years, ten years past the date it was supposed to be closed down—that’s insanity. Because any rational person would you tell you that the risk of a nuclear disaster taking place increases every year, with every unfixed problem, with every sloppy inspection, with the normal wear and tear on each part of a reactor that was never designed for an earthquake ridden Japan in the first place.

 

Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood) is thrown off his journalism course at Harvard University after cocaine is discovered in his room. However, the cocaine belongs to Jeremy Van Holden (Terence Jay), his roommate. Buckner is afraid to speak up because the Van Holdens are a powerful family, and Jeremy pays him $10,000 for taking the fall. Matt moves to the United Kingdom to live with his sister Shannon (Claire Forlani), her husband Steve Dunham (Marc Warren) and their young son, Ben (James Allison). There, Matt meets Steve’s brother, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), a loud and thuggish Cockney who runs a local football hooligan firm – a group of football supporters that arranges fights after matches – and teaches at a local school. Steve asks Pete to take Matt to a football match between West Ham United and Birmingham City, though Pete reluctant to take a “Yank” to a football match, because of the xenophobic nature of his friends. He is persuaded only because Steve will give Matt money. After defeating Matt in a fight, Pete decides to take Matt to the football match, thinking the yank might learn a thing or two.

Elijah’s portrayal as having no confidence and the total change in himself by the end is effective. Pete is riveting and really steals the show, Charlie Hunnam is an actor to watch in the future.

the fight scenes are well done highlighting Matt’s ineptness at the beginning to his strength at the end.

Green Street is reputably becoming a cult classic and despite its flaws, its easy to see why.

Operating a pawn shop in a small neighborhood, Cha Tae-sik now leads a quiet life. His only connection to the rest of the world is a little girl, So-mi, who lives nearby. A heroin addict and So-mi’s mother, Hyo-jeong, smuggles drugs from a drug trafficking organization and entrusts Tae-sik with the product without his knowledge. When the traffickers find out about this they kidnap both Hyo-jeong and So-mi. The gang sends a number of thugs to Tae-sik’s pawn shop to retrieve the stolen drugs, but is easily overpowered by Tae-sik, making his identity ambiguous. However, upon learning that the gang now has in their possession both Hyo-jeong and So-mi, Tae-sik gives the beaten gang members what they are looking for.

Cha’s initial reluctance to get involved with the girl and his mysterious past are played very effectively. They come up with a reasonable background without the heavyhanded feel of a lot of “mysterious strangers who happen to be deadly assasins” so common nowadays.  His feelings toward the young girl go from coldness to warm smiles as he regains his humanity through his pursuit of her captors. Just an excellent action movie.

[Friday Map] Give your players the shaft with… “The Circle of Doom”.

Dyson Logos’ really fun little map for dungeons centered around a central shaft with multiple levels,  This would work well in a temple for a Cthulhu Mythos game.

The production values look very good especially for an amateur film crew. From the Kickstarter pitch:

Troll Bridge is an epic short film based on a fable written by Terry Pratchett.  Set in the phenomenally successful Discworld series, Troll Bridge is about the world’s last Barbarian hero (now at the age of 87) embarking on a suicide mission to battle a bridge troll in mortal combat.

I asked if this project would be subtitled and immediately the response came back as “yes, we want to do this in as many languages as possible.”

I backed the project right then

The following teaser trailer shows Cohen the barbarian in his youth and glory: