Archive for November 22nd, 2008

Not bad, not as good as Casino Royale?  All of the quirky humor gone, perhaps because Q (
Desmond Llewelyn) is no longer with us, the witty repartee also AWOL, and a touch too much of Bourne in this one. But overall a surprisingly arty, well shot, fine film featuring the best Bond so far, Daniel Craig. I did feel a lack of adrenaline and exhilaration at the film’s end, which is a tad disappointing for an action flick. Oh yes and how am I supposed to remember what the heck happened two years ago? This film seems to pick up, with no background, right where the last one left off. Remind me again, why is Bond so pissed? After two years even he would probably be a little over it by now.

A somewhat lengthy diatribe on a difficult and controversial subject.  At times I felt like this guy really had an axe to grind, but overall I think his argument makes sense.  In a few years this book will probably seem more like common sense than controversy, but at times the arguments Pinker makes were more like the kind of dehumanized “factual” statements a geek is likely to make that are disconnected from the meaty, love filled, human reality of the everyday world.

Pinker made great pains to overcome this diconnect and in fact a lot of his argument comes from and speaks for this human-ness, but it’s hard to overcome the coldness that a purely scientific argument has to make.

I think I agreed with what was presented overall, but I’m sure it would be no suprise to Pinker that I had the most beef with him about the arguments he makes surrounding art.  Generally I agree with him, art can at times be about a  search for status or sometimes just serve as an example of conspicous consumption but I think he is wrong on one point.  Minimalism is much more than just a formal exercise.  To some people, myself included, there is real beaty in it.  The kind of beauty that Pinker is calling for a return to in art, not just the hypothetical beauty of concept, but actual physical beauty.