Gotta agree with Greg Egan:

Sometime in the next twenty years or so, the technology that enabled Avatar will become cheap enough to risk employing alongside a moderately intelligent script.

It is mighty pretty, though. Among the details, I particularly liked the hemispheric virtual displays in the control room: that sort of thing has been done before, of course, but stereoscopy makes it much more effective.

For objects very near to the viewpoint, the frame rate seemed to me to suffer; though (from what I read of the process) each eye gets 24 frames per second, same as standard movies. So I wonder what caused that effect.

Meanwhile, I continue to use Netflix.

Rebecca (1940, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) recently became available; fortunately needs no introduction from me.

Love Crazy (1941, dir. Jack Conway) — When Susan (Myrna Loy) tries to divorce him over a misunderstanding, Steve (William Powell) fakes lunacy, because if he’s crazy the divorce must be delayed for five years; but he succeeds too well. Good fun. — The same director made Libeled Lady (1936), which I also recommend.

Charley’s Aunt (1941, dir. Archie Mayo) — A familiar farce of impersonations. Jack Benny (who by this time had been 39 for about eight years) is not plausible as a student at Oxford, but who cares? — Speaking of age anomalies, James Ellison was three years older than Laird Cregar who played his father here;

Suspicion (1941, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) is grossly marred by the happy ending grafted on.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942, dir. William Keighley).

Woman of the Year (1942, dir. George Stevens) — Two mismatched reporters for the same paper meet and marry; he covers sports, she covers wars. He’s frustrated that she has no time for married life. The story is poignant at times; the resolution is unsatisfying. — Katharine Hepburn speaks French, Russian, German, Spanish and Greek. Presumably she had plenty of coaching, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she spoke three languages already; oddly, IMDb says nothing on this point. Her Spanish had what sounded to me like an Italian accent; that is, had I not been warned to expect Spanish nor listened closely, the rhythm would suggest Italian to my ear.

To Be Or Not To Be (1942, dir. Ernst Lubitsch) — In occupied Poland, a theater company finds itself stuck with the task of killing a double agent before he can report to the Gestapo. Suspense and comedy (Jack Benny has a leading role) are neatly blended. One may get a bit queasy seeing these Jewish characters triumph and knowing what comes next for them.

Larceny, Inc. (1942, dir. Lloyd Bacon) — Have I mentioned that I like crime comedies? In this one, two felons buy a luggage store, planning to tunnel into the adjacent bank; but the front business does so well that they’re on the brink of abandoning the bank job when ….

Up (2009, dir. Pete Docter) — Pixar does not disappoint, though I would not rate it quite as high as Finding Nemo or WALL·E.

I have my first grey whisker.

Gary Farber, who has occasionally commented / linked / been mentioned here, is in a bad way.

MMK where are you? Not a peep since October.

My strip representation of the hyperbolic plane inspired Vladimir Bulatov to explore weirder conformal mappings thereof. (Conformal means angles are preserved.)

What have I watched lately …

The Lives of Others (2006). Liked it.

The Philadelphia Story (1940). Didn’t like it as much the second time.

Second Chorus (1940) – Astaire without Rogers. Forgettable.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Good.

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (2009). So-so. Had I not seen Blade Runner recently it would have whizzed over my head.

King Kong (1933). Good.

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Bette Davis, as Elizabeth Tudor, has the most peculiar body language; I wonder whether it’s intended to convey old age.

Strange Cargo (1940) is a thrilling escape from Devil’s Island. But wait, contrived circumstances have put a woman among the escapees, so it’s a romance. But wait, one of them is Jesus Christ in plainclothes. The result is a muddle.

The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Good.

The Great Dictator (1940). Good, though the climactic speech is a bit ironic to a libertarian:

You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!

The false god of statism goes by many names, and one of them is Democracy. We have a better chance of making this life free and beautiful if we refrain from uniting or fighting (or sacrificing, don’t forget sacrificing) behind the next charismatic opportunist. —By the way, why does a Jewish barber spontaneously quote from “the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke”?

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), Hitchcock’s only screwball comedy. The script has its due quota of gags, and there’s nothing wrong with the cast, yet I find the result less funny than some of his thrillers. The rhythm is somehow off.

Dan Alderson once made a map of nearby stars by mounting little colored spheres on threads strung between holes in two sheets of heavy clear plastic.

It occurs to me that, taking the stars in pairs, he could use half as many threads; each would be oblique and therefore longer, but none would be twice as long as the straight threads.

Such a design would be error-prone in execution, and thread is cheap. But I think Dan would chuckle at the suggestion.