Saw a trailer for Gravity while waiting for Elysium to start - it looks really good!
[embed=425,349]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uuMU2q00w3I?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]
I think it looks great! Been following this for a while now.
Saw a commercial for this during the BBT season debut. Looks good!
I haven't seen it yet, but I am anxious to hear from those who have. Initial reporting looks good.
I just saw it last night. It was incredible. Smart, thrilling and emotional. A+ in my book.
Thanks - maybe I can see it tonight...have to convince the wife..
I'm going to see it this week, IMAX 3D.
I actually enjoyed the 3D in this one.
Dr. Degrasse-Tyson 'weighs - in' on Gravity...
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/famed-astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tyson-644291 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/famed-astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tyson-644291)
Quote from: Bromptonboy on October 07, 2013, 10:42:37 AM
Dr. Degrasse-Tyson 'weighs - in' on Gravity...
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/famed-astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tyson-644291 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/famed-astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tyson-644291)
I like him, but he needs to take a chill pill.
There are certainly a few scenes where I questioned the realism such as
[spoiler]
when she blew herself out the Soyuz's airlock toward the Chinese station and made it using only a fire extinguisher to correct her course
[/spoiler]
but honestly it was a great ride and it was "real" enough for me. At the end of the day they need to make an entertaining movie.
Amy and I really liked it. It was pretty darn cool. Now I'm shaking my head and wondering how they made it? SO REALISTIC looking.
Arrgh! Still haven't been able to go see this movie.
Ok, scheduled a half-day on Wednesday.....time to feel the effects and pull of Gravity...
Good for you Pete! ENJOY!
Friday, 12:30, IMAX 3D for me!!
Just came back from seeing Gravity - and loved it. I was sitting on the edge of my seat and squirming more than a few times - trying grab and hold on to something.! :) Very fun film. Saw it in regular 3D - but wished I had opted for the Imax.
Makes you realize how helpless we are when stuck out of our element.
Quote from: billybob476 on October 09, 2013, 11:20:33 AM
Makes you realize how helpless we are when stuck out of our element.
I feel like that when I'm in some places in Detroit! :)
I'm going to probably see this Friday I think - hopefully.
Quote from: Rico on October 09, 2013, 03:15:21 PM
Quote from: billybob476 on October 09, 2013, 11:20:33 AM
Makes you realize how helpless we are when stuck out of our element.
I feel like that when I'm in some places in Detroit! :)
I'm going to probably see this Friday I think - hopefully.
Bring a safety line and a carabiner when you go! :)
I think I would like to see it in 3D Imax now. It was so awesome.
Holy shit, that movie was incredible. I can't recall the last time I have been that tense for that long.
Yes, very intense, and strangely beautiful in places.
Quote from: moyer777 on October 11, 2013, 03:45:47 PM
Yes, very intense, and strangely beautiful in places.
Both, and a fascinating mix. Plenty of incredible real space stuff but also a lot of convenient space stuff. :) But I applaud the effort.
Yes, my wife and kids were gripping the edges of their seats.
[spoiler]I think that lake at the end was in AZ - or so I have read. That bit at the end didn't make sense - where she suddenly started hear radio transmissions - while wearing the Russian suit in a Chinese capsule - at first I thought it was a dream sequence of sort..since she had hallucinated about George Clooney[/Spoiler]
Fantastic movie. Just got back from seeing it in IMAX. Really just superb all around. I'll discuss more tomorrow on the podcast - spoiler free I promise. Everyone should go see this one in the theater.
Quote from: Bromptonboy on October 12, 2013, 10:17:15 AM
Yes, my wife and kids were gripping the edges of their seats.
[spoiler]I think that lake at the end was in AZ - or so I have read. That bit at the end didn't make sense - where she suddenly started hear radio transmissions - while wearing the Russian suit in a Chinese capsule - at first I thought it was a dream sequence of sort..since she had hallucinated about George Clooney[/Spoiler]
It looked like AZ!
Amazing visuals!
I loved this movie, but thought I would still share this generalized nitpick article:[spoiler]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24518305 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24518305)
Alfonso Cuaron's new film Gravity promises to rekindle the debate over how "hard" - or accurate - science fiction should be. Should film-makers adhere to basic scientific principles, or should audiences just feel the magic instead, asks Peter Ray Allison.
The relationship between science and science fiction has always been tempestuous.
Gravity focuses on two astronauts stranded in space after the destruction of their space shuttle. Since Gravity's US release (it comes to the UK in November) many critics have praised the film for its scientific accuracy.
But noted astrophysicist Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, had several issues with the accuracy of Gravity's portrayal of space.
Through a series of posts on Twitter, Tyson - who later emphasised that he "enjoyed the film very much" - highlighted various errors.
He noted the Hubble space telescope (orbiting at 350 miles above sea level), the International Space Station (at 250 miles), and a Chinese space station could never be in line of sight of one another. On top of that, most satellites orbit west to east, yet in the film the satellite debris was seen drifting east to west.
Tyson also noted how Sandra Bullock's hair did not float freely as it would in zero-gravity. This is arguably not so much an error in physics, but a reflection of the limitations of cinematic technology to accurately portray actors in zero-gravity. That is, of course, without sending them into space for the duration of the film.
Sandra Bullock's hair: the subject of scientific debate
There has always been a drive for scientific accuracy within science fiction, especially within the "hard science fiction" literary sub-genre. But sci-fi, especially in film, tends to have a more flamboyant approach, where realism is often dispensed with in favour of visual flair.
The Michael Bay film Armageddon is known for its woeful number of inaccuracies, from the space shuttles separating their rocket boosters and fuel tanks in close proximity to each other (risking a collision) and to objects falling on to the asteroid under a gravitational pull seemingly as strong as the Earth's. More than one interested observer tried to work out how big the bomb would have to be to blow up an asteroid in the way demanded in the movie. Answer: Very big indeed.
Nasa is reported to have even used Armageddon as part of a test within their training programme, asking candidates to identify all the scientific impossibilities within the film.
A scene from Armageddon shows earth-level gravity on an asteroid's surface
Despite the presence of physicist Prof Brian Cox as a scientific adviser on Danny Boyle's Sunshine, artistic licence seeped in. There's a communications "dead-zone" around the Sun - not something easily explicable using real world rules.
Despite claims to the contrary, Red Planet was riddled with scientific implausibilities, from the compatibility between modern equipment and 30-year old Russian technology (imagine attempting to connect a modern PC with a Sinclair Spectrum), to the Martian "nematodes" which had been eating algae that had been sent from earth for the past 30 years. The nematodes should have been worms but looked closer to beetles. And there was no explanation as to how they had evolved to eat non-Martian algae nor what they had eaten before.
The science across the film was so "creative" that Nasa refused to act as scientific adviser on the film.
But perhaps the biggest example of scientific licence occurs in a plethora of space-based dramas.
Continue reading the main story
Science fiction in the Magazine
The battle against sexist sci-fi and fantasy book covers (18 January)
What should spaceships look like? (July 2011)
Welcome to the world of sci fi science (October 2009)
Are UFO sightings linked to sci fi films? (August 2009)
"The most commonly lauded example of 'bad science', intentionally placed into science fiction, is that of sound," says Ed Trollope, spacecraft operations engineer at technology firm Telespazio VEGA Deutschland. "Because space is a vacuum, there is no sound, which means all those explosions and engine noises shouldn't be there."
There's a simple cinematic reason for having the sound of an explosion when a spacecraft blows up - it feels right to the viewer. But other conventions are more difficult for scientists to accept.
"My pet peeve is inertia," says Trollope. "There are many good reasons for keeping your engines on in space, but 'maintaining speed' is not one of them. If you turn your engines off, you don't stop."
Some do it slightly better than others. "I'd prefer not to single out a single film/book/series for this particular error, because it's so common - but I will laud the old television show Babylon 5, for doing a wonderful job of representing the mechanics of spaceflight inertia so nicely," explains Trollope.
2001: A Space Odyssey's silent scenes of space craft, with their rotating Stanford torus design, were closer than many later examples to the reality of travelling in space.
"A classic case of scientific inaccuracy was the first edition of Ringworld by Larry Niven, a novel which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1971," suggests science fiction author Charles Stross. "The author inadvertently set up a series of scenes which implied that the Earth spun on its axis in the wrong direction." Niven fixed it in the second printing.
The Duncan Jones film Moon was lauded for a reasonably accurate portrayal of what lunar mining for Helium-3 could look like in the future. Helium-3 is rare on Earth but less rare on the Moon, and using an automated method with a human overseer might be possible. But the economics behind the mining is not explained.
Jodie Foster in Contact (1997)
The alien signal in Contact is a prime example of what Seti (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is looking for. This is perhaps not surprising as Contact was written by astronomer Carl Sagan. The use of mathematics in the transmission of the message seems reasonable and the time lag in the sending and receiving of the signal is also accurately represented in the film.
Science fiction is not just expected to accurately portray science but also to anticipate future developments.
"Science fiction hits some predictive targets," says science fiction author Neal Asher, "but rather in the way that a clip fired from an assault rifle will hit some of the enemy hidden in the jungle, but mostly hits trees and leaves."
"One of the past criticisms of science fiction has been that it's all 'zap-guns and rocket ships'," suggests Asher. "Now the science fiction writer can smugly point out the LaWs - the US navy laser system - knocking down drones, and then wax lyrical about the X Prize, Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's SpaceX."
Leonard Nimoy as Spock (right) in Star Trek
Richard Blott, principal consultant at Space Enterprise Partnerships, recalls an early episode of Star Trek ("Spock's Brain", 1968) where the latest space ship is described as having an "ion drive".
"Nowadays most new communications satellites have ion engines and they have powered missions to Vesta and Ceres," says Blott.
"In the end," Asher concludes, "science fiction is not there to make accurate predictions about the future, it is there to entertain and stimulate the imagination. There is absolutely no doubt that many of the imaginations it stimulates belong to scientists. To some extent it drives and directs science."[/spoiler]
Careful of spoilers and plot points.
Quote from: Rico on October 14, 2013, 04:55:15 AM
Careful of spoilers and plot points.
Quite right Rico, thanks.
WOW! Very good movie and the use of 3D was amazing! I didn't go see it in IMAX because I didn't want to drive out of town. Like has been said before this needs to be seen in the theater in 3D at least. The wife and I both really enjoyed it.
[spoiler]When she was coming back to Earth and that chute opened I must have got something in my eye because it started watering. I was so happy when she landed. Then it started to sink! I was like "you got to be kidding me!" [/spoiler]
I saw it! Amazing! I loved every second of it. I usually don't like 3d but it was great for this movie. So glad I caught it in the theater. And the music was awesome.
BTW Dr. Degrasse-Tyson is a cool dude and he doesn't take himself too seriously. He's just very passionate about all things science. If you've ever heard his awesome podcast Startalk, you know he has a great sense of humor.
Cool other side of a scene in Gravity:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gravity-spinoff-watch-side-sandra-657919 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gravity-spinoff-watch-side-sandra-657919)
Quote from: Bromptonboy on November 20, 2013, 02:53:39 PM
Cool other side of a scene in Gravity:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gravity-spinoff-watch-side-sandra-657919 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gravity-spinoff-watch-side-sandra-657919)
Watched it. Thanks for sharing! That is so cool.
Finally picked this up today on Blu-Ray (on sale this week at Best Buy). Such an amazing film!
Any good extra features?
Quote from: Bromptonboy on April 15, 2014, 02:37:37 PM
Any good extra features?
You need more than Sandra Bullock?? :)
- Well, if you do there appears to be 3+ hrs. of extra stuff. Plus the DVD version, plus the digital download version, etc.
Can't wait to but this. I missed it at the cinema but my local outdoor museum is showing it on a big screen outside at night in a few weeks. Not sure what that will be like but if it's a clear night with the stars out it could be very atmospheric.
This was one where I felt the 3D was worth the extra $'s - or £'s..
This is on sale again at Best Buy this week. Only $14.99 for Blu and digital. Need to grab it. Also 12 Steelbooks on sale at $11.99 but not all of them are Sci-fi. They do have Incredible Hulk (which I want) and Serenity, King Kong, and Jurassic Park as far as sci-fi goes. I really like te Steelbook versions and they come with lots of extras.
Gravity attracts me.... ;)
Still not got this yet, bad me. Looking for a free night were we can sit down and enjoy it properly.
Certainly worth it. Pity you cannot watch on the big screen. Visually it is very stunning.
I don't know how much longer this is on sale at Best Buy but today Sat. May 17 its still at $14.99. I ordered it and it was the Blu-ray, DVD and digital. Watched the beginning of it and you should watch this when its totally dark in the room because it looked awesome.
Did they include that extra web-scene where you see the other side of that radio exchange she had with Earth?
There is a short in the more than 3 hours of extras called 'Aningaaq' by Jonas Cuaron. I haven't had the chance to watch it but I bet that's it. I thought I had heard that the director's brother did it.
Quote from: WillEagle on May 26, 2014, 11:21:24 AM
There is a short in the more than 3 hours of extras called 'Aningaaq' by Jonas Cuaron. I haven't had the chance to watch it but I bet that's it. I thought I had heard that the director's brother did it.
That's it. Very moving.
yes, I thought it was awesome