Contact
9/1/97 Update
8/25/97 Update
8/18/97 Update
8/11/97 Update
8/7/97 Update
7/28/97 Update
7/21/97 Update
Obsessed with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) via a methodical scan of the heavens using radio telescopes, Doctor Ellie Arroway secures private funding for herself and her team from an eccentric billionaire when her government funding runs out. Eventually Arroway and her colleagues do detect a radio signal from the Vega system, twenty-six light years distant. Arroway concludes that it is intelligent because the signal begins counting off prime numbers. But there's more. The signal also contains television footage of Hitler opening the 1936 Olympics (the first high-power television signal sent into space) and the plans for an immense machine that seems to be designed to transport a single human occupant. With a global effort, the machine is eventually built but Arroway is not selected as Earth ambassador. All goes well with the selection process until Palmer Joss--a member of the selection committee and a one-time lover of Arroway--asks if she believes in God. Arroway is forced to admit that she does not and Arroway's former boss in the SETI project quickly modifies his testimony to mollify the committee. When Joss later comes to see an incensed Arroway, he tells her that he could not in good conscious vote for a person to represent Earth who felt that the 95% of humanity who believed in a God were deluded. Arroway remains with the project and unexpectedly has her chance to go after all when a terrorist destroys the transport device and kills Arroway's former boss. Thankfully, the governments of the world built a second machine at a secret location and Arroway is flown there to depart for Vega.
Interestingly enough, when Arroway's launch capsule drops into the gyrating machine, it appears to fall straight though, traveling only into the ocean below. During those seconds, however, Arroway travels to the Vega system, speaks to the Vegans in the form of her deceased father, learns of a worm-hole transport system built by an ancient race that has long since disappeared, and hears of a vast community of alien world whose existence is bearable only because they have each other's company.
But Arroway--a hardened scientific skeptic--has a problem. There is almost no proof that corroborates her testimony. (And the one fact that seems to support it is suppressed.) A world-publicized hearing is convened in Washington, DC, and Arroway herself is forced to admit that there is no proof of what happened to her and all of it might have been a "cosmic" joke foisted on the world by the eccentric and now deceased billionaire.
Afterward, Arroway returns to her methodical survey of the heavens.
Brash Reflections
Good movie! Really enjoyed it! Good characterizations, Good plot. Nice to see that Hollywood can make an intelligent sci-fi flick!
Of course, we did have to have the one bedroom scene that, frankly, seemed out of place and I could spend a lot of time discussing my objections to it. But . . . this is Hollywood and they evidently believe that a man and woman cannot sustain any reasonable level of interest in each other unless they initiate their relationship with sex so . . . we'll move right along to the next topic. (Does the term "romance" ring a bell with anyone? And for those of you who are interested, no, I don't think romance and sex are the same thing any more that sex and love are the same thing! ;-)
It was also very nice to see a secular movie in which faith and belief receive a somewhat honest handling. Nice turn on the end where the skeptic must now face the same accusations which she herself used on "believers."
One last thing before I get to the to nits, I have also been heartened to see that most of the major reviews I have read on the movie have been positive. In stark constant, I had a good giggle over Richard Schickel's review in the latest issue of Time magazine. Obviously Mr. Schickel is "far more better-smarter" than the rest of us. He didn't find the movie intelligently done at all! One might guess that Mr. Schickel would have been much happier if the movie had bashed belief and faith like most movies but barring that option he fell back on the tired diatribe of presuming his own level of genius to the detriment of everyone who doesn't agree with him. He states, "[Robert] Zemeckis and his colleagues had been all over the press congratulating themselves on throwing an intellectually challenging movie in the summer maelstrom. What this tells us about them--and if Contact is a hit, the rest of us--is too depressing to contemplate."
In light of Mr. Schickel's comments, I think it only appropriate to initiate the Official Richard Schickel Prozac Fund. Donations will be accepted at the Nitpickers Guild mailing address. If Contact's strong numbers continue, the poor man is in for a maudlin summer!
I came to this party a bit late but here's a few things that tickled my nitpicker's brain as I watched the movie.
There's a flashback scene where Ellie stands beside a pair of telescopes, shouting for her father to come outside because there's a meteor shower in progress. After one meteor streaks by she takes a peek in a telescope and shouts again to her father that he's missing it. Um . . . isn't it really tough to track a meteor in a telescope?! The pictures of the sky show the meteors zipping by yet Ellie never moves the telescope.
I love primes. I especially love primes and sound effects. When the pulses first start counting off the primes. Everyone at the VLA is shocked to hear first two pulses, then three, then five, then seven, then eleven. At this point the pulses become background noise. At this point I started counting pulse because this is prime nitpicking territory. Creators usually assume at this point that no one would be crazy enough to sit in the movie theater and counting background pulses of noise while "really important" dialogue was going on! (Wink, wink.) Well, guess what? . . . I AM! And, guess what? The next number should be thirteen and if I counted right, it wasn't! ;-) (And yes, it was supposed to be because later we see that the Vegans are up to the hundreds and the statement is made that they haven't missed one prime.
Would the television signal from the 1936 Olympics really travel for 26 light years before exhausting or do the Vegans have some kind of super-duper antennae?
My father-in-law made his first forey into nitpicking after seeing this movie with us in Oklahoma City. He wondered what happened to all the supplies that Ellie was supposed to take in her capsule.
Also, was the machine only a one shot deal? Why not send somebody else?
And one more before I leave it to you fellow nitpickers, did anyone else go "huh?!" at the end of the movie when it showed Ellie talking to the kids at the VLA. Think about all the people who would make her their idol in the United States. Is there any chance that she would have any kind of normal life after this experience?
Reflections from the Guild
[Note from Phil: I have not verified these but they sounded good to me!]
Brian Lombard: Saw "Contact" last night at a special showing. I work for the National Science Foundation, which plays a small part in the movie. So they invited us to a showing. So here are my nits, a week early!
First Jody Foster goes to work at the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico. Then her funding is cut off by the National Science Foundation, a government agency I happen to work for. She then proceeds to go to work at the Very Large Array in New Mexico, to avoid the government bureaucracy, since VLA is supposedly privately-owned. Big mistake! In reality, NSF runs both Arecibo and VLA!
After Foster discovers the message, President Clinton gives a press conference advising America on the important scientific find. The creators very cleverly used footage Clinton made a year ago when the Martian meteorite was discovered to have possible evidence of life on Mars.
Part of the message Earth receives is a rebroadcast of Adolf Hitler opening the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The message took 26 years to reach the planet Vega. That would be 1962. Then supposedly, it took 26 years for the Vegans to send it back to us. That would be 1988. We know for a fact that the movie takes place in 1997, because it makes reference to the Hale-Bopp cult that committed suicide earlier this year. So did the aliens sit on Hitler for 9 years before sending him back to us?
Joseph Pintar of New Hartford, NY: I just saw Contact. This is quite possibly the best movie I've seen in the theaters in a few years. Jodie Foster gives another Oscar worthy performance. The picture and director Robert Zemeckis also deserve nods.
There are a few odes to Forrest Gump here. The big crowd scenes in Washington, President Clinton appearing, and a music score similar to Gump.
Ellie appears to be using a computer in New Mexico that looks like a IBM 286. According to my dad, those have been obsolete for years. This observatory should have something more advanced, shouldn't it?
The observatory in Puerto Rico looks a lot like the observatory in Goldeneye. The radar stations in New Mexico and the waves on the monitors reminded me of The Arrival.
Where did President Clinton get a guy like Sitz? Did he pay to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom enough times?
CNN is featured prominently in this movie. CNN is a subsidiary of Time Warner, which distributes this movie. Coincidence? (By the way, Phil, I disagree with you about real newscasters reading fake news broadcasts in the movies. I think it adds to the realism of the story. Also I think the line betweeen news and entertainment are blurred these days, I don't think it is a conflict of interest.) (Note from Phil: My problem with this is not conflict of interest, it's precisely "the adding of realism" which I take to mean "the erosion of what is known to be factual." If CNN cares so little about their credibility that are willing to participate in fiction, then frankly I don't have much respect for anything they report.)
Drumlin, a bureaucrat, gets picked to go to space? I don't think so.
I find it difficult to believe that the world could afford to build two of those giant vehicles, even with the help of a billionaire.
An eccentric billionaire could figure out the message but prominent scientist couldn't? Another thing about this billinaire, how did he arrange to get on the space station Mir? Does money get you on a space station?
I would think that the building of the vehicle would take at least five years to complete(especially with the government involved), yet it doesn't feel like years pass.
Didn't they test the second vehicle or was that done offscreen?
Donald Carlson of Birmingham, AL: This movie was literate, intelligent, well written and performed, and had some of the most seamless special effects I've seen.
No dinosaurs, not superheros, and no slime oozing digital aliens, no car chases, and no sex. Hardly any bad language.
I think it's doomed!!
Next door to the theatre I saw it in played Batman and Robin. In DTS. You could hear every explosion, every tire screech, every low frequency thump. Our theatre: quiet conversation. Next door: Pow! Zoom! Kaboom!
It is likely this movie will not garner the great hoopla of Batman or MiB, but this is movie making at it's best. There are some amazing camera shots (Ellie running down the hall toward the bathroom, the camera pulls back.... and it's her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror we see! Ellie calling for her father on the HAM radio, the camera pulls back through a window pane to the outside...)
The price of admission was repaid from that fantastic opening shot alone.
Only four nits on what is obviously a well done film...
It is doubtful that the ICM project could have been as far along as it got during the Clinton administration. Sure, I understand why Zemekis used Clinton footage (he didn't know who the next president would be), but still, it is not likely that construction on the Machine would be completed and ready for use in what is left of the Clinton term.
The ICM facility seems to be Kennedy Space Center, including the VAB, launch control, and launch complexes. So, what happened to the shuttle program? Why go to the trouble of building the ICM facility there, why not choose some other site? Indeed, the Machine itself seems to have been built on Pad 39, the exact location of the shuttle launch complex.
Security at KSC is tight, tight. That a terrorist would successfully get to the gantry arm strains believability. After all, much was made of the nut cases protesting the project. Heck, one good look at the Blond Terrorist and you'd know he's up to no good.
The "Howard Hughes" character and Mir... uh, no way. First, a man with advanced cancer would probably not survive the ride in a Russian Soyuz, and second, such an event would be Major News. Imagine if Bill Gates had paid the Russians to give him his own module on Mir to live in (they seem to have a fixer-upper available right now...), every media outlet on Earth would be talking about it. Not a very plausible secret.
Craig Mason: We saw "Contact" last night, which was an incredible film. Equally incredible was the theatrical trailer for "Lost In Space." I didn't see very many faces, but I did recognizegary Oldman's, who was rumored to be playing Doctor Smith before live shooting took place in March.
There is quite a difference in the mechanical look of this film. The ship, the Jupiter, looks totally different. A cross between a Calamari cruiser from "Return Of The Jedi" and the saucer section of the USS Voyager. The robot was totally different as well, taller, bi-pedal, and resembling the ED-2000 from the original "Robocop" film.
It is going to be a long wait til next April.
Tim O'Lena: Not really a nitpick, but of course the movie differs from the book...
Of course, the big question is why did Sagan think that the aliens would go to all this trouble, have US go to all this trouble, demonstrate themselves to ONE person, then cover up their trail.
Why did they wipe out all of Arrowway's recordings, but be sloppy enough to let the 18 hours of static get recorded? What is Sagan suggesting here?
I doubt that Arrowway would be cordial to Palmer after he "exposed" her atheism to the Board. And she should have punched Drumland in the mouth. I couldn't have spoken to either one of these clowns. Unrealistic, I say!
I doubt that the bomber could have pulled off his mission so easily. I think that was a stretch.
Donald Carlson: The scenes with Ellie inside the pod made me think of the holodeck in Star Trek, and how that is how such a device, if it were real, would actually look like.
Not having read the book I may be jumping to a conclusion here, but my understanding was the scenes we saw of Ellie "floating" and being able to "touch" the sky and the limits of her surroundings was that she was actually still in the pod, and that what she was seeing was a holographic projection. The pod apparently had the ability to show holographic images of what was outside it, much like a window, and the occupant was intended to float within the pod freely. (Dialoge between Ellie and the ICM officials said the chair and restraints were not part of the original design, but had been added for "safety" reasons.)
When I saw this, I thought "Now THAT'S how a holodeck should look....definite limits. A ceiling, floor, and walls that look open, but when you reach them, you cause the image to shimmer and thus know you've reached a limit.
BTW, an excellent sequence. A "cook's tour" of the worm hole/subway system. Very clever.
7/21/97 Update
Matthew Chiappardi: You're not going to like this. I haven't seen the film yet, but I've
peeked at parts (I work in a small movie theater in Princeton University
and I'm trying not to ruin the movie for myself before I see the whole
thing) and the creators use tons of 'real' CNN reporting in the film's
narrative. (Note from Phil: Yes, they do! And that about does it for CNN with me! Of course, they finally seemed to have realized that this might have been a mistake. See below.)
Ann Cashin of LaPlata, MD: This happened so fast, so I'd love it if someone would double check this...
At the end of the movie, our heroes are walking out of the Capitol. The Washington Monument
is ahead of them. Fine. You can't see any sign of the Grant Statue/Memorial or the pond
that it's on. The camera goes up and back, and sure enough, there is no Grant Statue or
pond. In fact, it looks like they turned the Capitol building around and put it at the
bottom of Capitol Hill on the Mall.
They can send a woman to Vega, but they can't send someone to the library for a map of our
nation's capital?
Donald Carlson: I've been reading with interest the discussion between you and some
other Guild members regarding use of real, recognizable celebrity
news media people in fictional movies. Here is a relevant article
that appeared in this week's Entertainment Weekly (July 18 issue,
Page 10)
News schmooze! The real story at CNN is that Hollywood is casting the
network's newscasters faster than you can say Wolf Blitzer.
Bernard Shaw delivers news of dino-size invasions in The Lost World.
Prisoners watch CNN in Face/Off. Coming soon, the networks crews appear
in Air Force One and the Crossfire gang goes ballistic in
Contact. With Larry King doing as many movies as Steve Buscomi (he
plays himself in Contact and has roles in the upcoming The Peacemaker,
Primary Colors, and Mad City), the cameo-happy network is starting to
look like an allnews Love Boat episode.
"Scripts are coming our way by the score," says CNN spokesman Steve
Haworth. "Our job is to ensure that the scenes are believable and
they're set in places our viewers would expect CNN to be."
The network insists it isn't courting or paying for the cameos, nor are
its anchors getting rich, as they usually are paid scale ($559 a day).
CNN also insists it's not caving to script demands from within the
Warner family, of which CNN (and EW) is a member. "Warner Bros.,
Turner, New Line, and Castle Rock have all heard 'no'from us," Haworth
reports.
Still, things can get sticky when a journalist strays from covering the
news. "It undermines his position," says Alex Jones, host of National
Public Radio's On the Media. "Instead of being above the fray, he
suddenly becomes a part of it." (Note from Phil: So just being in the movie isn't enough to make him a part of it?!?)
No doubt that's why CNN network chief Tom Johnson became upset when
reporter Jonathan Karl appeared in a Visa print ad. "CNN has never
allowed its people to endorse any product or service," says Haworth.
But are movie cameos different? As one producer says, "These people
have about as much business acting as Ethan Hawke has doing the
weather." (Now, there's an idea!)
But let's go to the phones! Larry King from Hollywood: "You've got to
give moviegoers more credit," he says. "They know they're not seeing me
live on CNN. Do you think anyone who went to see Independence Day
thought aliens had actually landed?" Sure, and Men in
Black is just a movie. -David Hochman and Carrie Bell
(Note from Phil: I'm sure you all are tired of hearing about the blurring of the line between life and fiction but let me offer another titillating story about all of this. We don't believe that what we see on the television screen is real, right? We don't believe that what we see in the movies is real, right? So . . . how hard is it to bludgeon a person to death? Do you just have to crack them on the skull once or is it more gruesome than that. Without wanting to offend any sensibilities . . . does anyone recall the story that came out a few years back about the young man and woman who decided to kill another young woman because she had hopped in the back seat of a car one lonely night with the young man? Seems like the murderers were both accepted to military academies and even attended for a time after the murder. Was this called the Texas Cadet murder? Can't remember. Anyway, what struck me about the account was the testimony of the murders that they were stunned at how hard it was to kill the girl. They konked her on the head. She was still alive. They konked her on the head again. No luck, she starts crawling out of the car. I'll spare you the gruesome details but eventually they accomplished the dead. Now I ask you: Where did they get the idea that konking her on the head once would kill her? I realize this was an extreme example but how many other pieces of "common knowledge" do we carry around in our heads that we have adopted straight from television and the movies. Is there anyone out there who has gone to Hawaii and can honestly say they weren't the least surprised that beaches weren't filled with beautiful people? It's supposed to be Paradise for crying out loud! Snicker, snicker ;-)
Donald Carlson: For those Guild members who are interested, a
web site for the Lost in Space movie is up, and includes the trailer being shown with
Contact in some markets. The url is: http://www.dangerwillrobinson.com/ (Note from Phil: Very cute!)
Richard Stuart of Seaford, NY: How exactly did the pod viewscreen become activated? Is there some sort of tri-d projector along the wormhole routes? Or did Nasa build advanced
microcircitry into this steel ball without knowing it while following
directions. Seems to me if I handed an anchient greek scientist blueprints
for a radio, they might not know what what they were building, but they'd
sure as heck know they were building something. You'd think all this alien
technology we were playing around with would give our hero's some pretty
solid evidence that it wasn't thought up by the resident howard hughes clone.
Not a nit, but a comment: Did these aliens remind anyone else of the Vorlons
from Babylon 5? In the words of John Sheridan, the aliens speach to us was:
"Short, to the point, utterly useless, and consistant with everything I've
come to expect from a Vorlon."
Shane Tourtellotte: I haven't yet read all the comments on "Contact", but one recurrent
theme I noted was a certain surprise cameo. Snatching Presidential
footage for such a purpose does have precedent. The movie "Alien
Nation" featured a snippet of Ronald Reagan, presumably giving the
Newcomer aliens of that film permission to enter the United States.
That snippet had far less context, however, than the footage Mr.
Zemeckis used.
Trevor Ruppe: At the end of the film, James Woods manages to convince Jodie Foster that
the whole thing was a scam by the Haddon guy. Wrong! Even an amateur radio
astronomer will tell you that since the signal was observed as coming from
Vega from both America and Australia (i.e. two antennae on the opposite
sides of the planet Earth), that means the signal *had* to come from Vega
and was *not* a fake (unless Haddon is richer than God and sent a probe a
light-speed to Vega several years previously just so it would broadcast a
signal back to Earth). If it had come from Earth orbit, the Australian
antennae would've triangulated it as coming from a *different* star (one
closer to their horizon).
In fact, I read a book written by Frank Drake (the guy who came up with the
famous "Drake Equation" used to calculate the probability of
extraterrestrial life) that some movie producers once agreed to pay him
something like $500,000 if he could come up with a way a SETI signal could
be faked. He tried and tried and finally concluded that there is NO WAY a
signal could be faked that scientists couldn't immediately figure out that
it wasn't really an alien transmission. Not only did they not pay him the
$500,000, but they decided to abandon the film altogether! (Guess somebody
should've mentioned this to Bob Zemekis, huh?)
BTW, I read the "Contact" book years ago--it's better than the movie. It's
not a great book, but the things the producers did to the book in turning it
into a film (like adding the X-FILES/conspiracy plot and turning Palmer Joss
into a Hollywood Stud role) were inexcuseable. (Note from Phil: Well, Hollywood is Hollywood!)
Brian Dominguez, Oswego, NY: I'n not quite sure how I feel about this movie. I was disappointed in the climax. When she met the alien/father figure, I didn't believe that
it could possibly be the climax, so I kept waiting, but it was only
until Angela Bassett's character revealed that there were 18 hours of
recorded tape that I felt somewhat relieved.
I went in expecting a science fiction film; to see things--new,
futuristic, or just different from Earth--but it wasn't that at all. In
fact, I'd be willing to debate that "Contact" isn't a science fiction
movie at all--it's a drama that has some science fiction elements. This
movie was less about discovering new worlds, new modes of living, or
aliens. It was a document of the struggle of man vs. man, man vs.
society, fairness vs. survival of the fittest, religious understanding,
and conspiracy theories.
I liken it to James Bond movies--without the sci-fi gadget and gismos,
it would basically be a dry movie, but we consider Bond movies as action
adventures not sci-fi. Or even the Nutty Professor--a comedy that used
sci-fi inventions as its comedic vehicle--but it was definetely a comedy
not sci-fi.
I think if I go back to the theatre expecting a drama full of intrigue,
conspiracy, and thoughtful dialog, I may just enjoy it a little more.
If I think on the lines of "Starman" and "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind", great movies that were more about the struggle of man to find his
place and less about aliens, "Contact" may be a different story all
together.
(Note from Phil: There is a wide varience in "science fiction". In the strictest sense, I do think that this was a science fiction film simply because the film was impossible to do with out the "scientific" involvement of deciphering the message from Vega and building the machine. However, it obviously is not what might be called "hard science-fiction" where the futuristic aspect of technology is predominant--sometimes predominant enough to degrade the plot and certainly the character development. Neither was the movie fantasy, which has gained the moniker "science-fiction" though it really isn't because most of the time there's little or no science involved. I have seen the term "speculative fiction" which would encompass all these things and personally, I like that term!)
I think I'm just a Dr. Who/Trekkie/Tomorrow People person who wants to
see the aliens, what they can do for us and everything shines in the
end. I kept waiting for the aliens to come and rescue Ellie from those
torturous hearings--an awe-inspiring event that would let everyone know
that she wasn't dillusional. (Note from Phil: But I think that this was the whole point of the movie. What do you do when you have an experience that you know is a certain "thing" but there's no way to prove it?)
That said...on with the nits.
Did I miss them saying that the vehicle can only be used once? I kept
thinking through the last twenty minutes of the movie, "Send others
through." If they have the same experience as Ellie, hmmm. If not,
tuck her away in a nice padded cell.
Can anyone explain to me why James Woods' character covered this up, and
why Angela Bassett's character helped? Does Clinton know about this
cover up? (I mean the Clinton in the movie, people) (Note from Phil: They are just nasty people! With a nasty agenda that's more important than the facts!)
I'm not sure if Matthew MacConahauy was right for his part. He just
grated me every time he came on the screen. And why was he and Rob
Lowe's conservative character at these meetings? Shouldn't it just be
high officials and cabinet members? I realize Matt's character was
suppose to be the leading authority on religion, but...Think about it,
if this were to actually happen, would Clinton invite Oral Roberts and
Louis Farrakhan to discuss religious ramifications? (Note from Phil: Perhaps. It would have far-reaching consequences and religion is an important aspect in the lives of most of the inhabitants on Earth. Perhaps Clinton wouldn't invite Roberts and Farrakhan but . . . what about Billy Graham, Jesse Jackson and/or a prominent leader of Islam?)
Can someone help clear something up for me too? Who built the second
vehicle? Was it the billionaire or the US? I thought the former, but
then the same mission control people were in Japan. (Note from Phil: I believe both devices were built by the global consortium.)
Finally, while Ellie was on Vega, I totally did not get what her
"father" was saying to her. Basically, I got "Yes, we sent you this
alien vehicle that we've been using for billions of years, but we aren't
sharing anything or coming to Earth until you're ready. Small steps
Ellie, small steps." I then thought of a line from TNG's "The Chase,"
"If he weren't already dead, I would kill him!" (Note from Phil: We as humans have a tendancy to assume that we're smart enough to be told everything about the universe in one small step. By using the same terminology that Ellie's father used with her during her ham radio experience, I think the creators of the movie were saying that humanity may need to grow a step at a time just as Ellie grew a step at a time in her contact with other ham radio operators. Small steps in contact. Small steps in knowledge.)
All in all, I must say that I was very impressed with all the diversity
in the movie. We had disabled people, and lots of minorites in
leadership positions.
Anne Magee of Fredericton, NB: Got this in my Mercury Mail Newspot:
CNN loses 'Contact'
"Contact" may have been the last picture show for CNN journalists. More
than a dozen CNN on-air personnel appear in the Jodie Foster film. CNN
President Tom Johnson told TV journalists that he originally thought the
movie work would be good publicity for CNN. But now he's banning any
more film appearances after the network's credibility was called into
question.
Anchorman Bernard Shaw appears in "Contact" as well as "Jurassic Park:
The Lost World." CNN and Warner Brothers, the film's producer, are owned
by Time Warner.
(Note from Phil: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! [Licking my index finger. Making a mark in the air] Score one for me! ;-)
Brian Fitzgerald of Acworth, GA: First I loved the movie. I have a few nits and a few comments. Donald Carlson, said that the movie had no sex. Not on screen, but
what do you call 2 naked (at least your lead to believe that they are naked, defiantly half
naked) people cuddling in bed and then waking up together. Looks like sex happened
somewhere in there to me. Loved the cinematography, the shots were held in a more
difficult and cool manner than even in "lost world".
Tim O'Lena wanted to know why go it all the trouble, then erase most
evidence, then not do the job completely. Easy, it is a test, they want to see if A) we are
not too skeptical and narrow-minded enough to dismiss anything that flys in the face of
conventional wisdom. B) smart enough to take the next step on our own, without there
instructions on what to do. BTW I think that she should have hit Palmer
and Drumland after what they did to her. (Note from Phil: I've been surpressing my urge to address the aliens' intentions because the answer would be really close to the whole hingepoint of my first novel--i.e. what do you do when "God" doesn't behave like you think he should. Brian's answer is suitable enough for me to postpone adding any more.)
Now on to the nits. First there is proof that she was gone for more
than a second. The seat. It went from being bolted to the floor to smashed on the ceiling. (Note from Phil: [Taking on the role of the skeptic. That could have happened when the pod hit the ocean. Who knows what kind of stress that crazy whirling-dervish of a contraption put on the metal used for the bolts to hold the chair to the ceiling? ;-)
Next, she went from being strapped to a seat that was bolted to the floor to being on the
floor with the seat above her. Since she had a visual link with mission control, both
before and after, this would surely obvious to anyone who views the video from mission control. (Note from Phil: [Taking on the role of the skeptic. That could have happened when the pod hit the ocean. Who knows what kind of stress that crazy whirling-dervish of a contraption put on the metal used to hold Ellie in place? ;-)
BTW I find the comments about news organizations being used in the
film to not be a bad thing at all. I do find the lack of truth in news to be bad. I do not
however have a problem with real
people being used in movies wrong. It is just harmless fun. When we see
real people as
themselves in a movie no one thinks that it is real events. Most of us just
chuckle as a real
reporter says something that is obviously fake.(ex. the T-rex is in the
cargo hold) I enjoy
seeing that kind of stuff. It is just like the millions of times that a
movie character picks up
a real magazine and the cover has one of the characters on the front. This
is done not to
add credibility to the film, but to add familiarity. People love to see
something that they
are familiar with on TV or in a movie. It's like trying to make characters
flawed and more
like real people, which is more enjoyable then the wimpy never made a
mistake 1 dimentional
heroes of the past. The film makers want you to see that the characters are
in a world similar to
ours, not think that the events really happened. Even if it is not a real
news program it will
merely be some obvious rip off of them. "JAG" had ZNN, "Batman forever" and
"Batman
and Robin" had GNN (Note from Phil: Personally, I would rather have ZNN and GNN and actors reading fake news than real live anchors. Again, it has to do with subtle and often unrecognized changes in our perception of reality. But . . . no need to spit at this discussion again!)
Herb Lopez of Yonkers, New York: Yes, the film is intelligent, cerebral and booooooooooooring. I saw it the day after it opened and everyone in the theatre was itching for it to end.
And the place was packed. People were squirming in their seats. When it
ended, everyone bolted faster than usual and you could hear the grumbling. (Note from Phil: Everybody's got a right to their own opinion! ;-)
I have a question, not so much a nit: If the aliens are so advanced, why
don't they just come to Earth? Sure would be a short film. (Note from Phil: See Brian Fitzgerald's coments above.)
Also, I read
somewhere that it has never been substantiated that blind peoples' other
senses are heightened. I think it would be almost impossible for the blind
scientist to hear Ellie saying she was "Good to go!" Or whatever she says. (Note from Phil: Of course, the fact that he's blind may have nothing to do with the fact that he has excellent ears! I don't believe that anyone in the movie says, "Oh yeah, get the blind guy in here because he'll be able to hear better!" ;-)
Michael Apple: I just saw Contact a couple of days ago, so I thought I'd share some
thoughts on it with the guild. It was a decent movie, with good suspense
and storytelling. I was certain that it was going to turn into a big anti-
religion rant by the middle of the movie, but it instead greatly supported
religious belief by the end. It's really wonderful to finally see some
tolerance in Hollywood after so long.
However, I was not impressed by the aliens in the movie's ending.
When Jodie FOster finally travels to Vega and meets the aliens, they use
information from her mind and manifest as a vision of her father on a beach. How many times can you use that tired old idea of aliens appearing as
family members? It would have been a lot better if she had just met the
aliens, as they truly appeared. As a scientist, I'm sure she could have
handled it, and it would have helped the story a lot, but humanizing the
mysterious beings. (I'm frankly tired of everyone thinking that aliens
must have some strange way of thinking far beyond us. If we ever really
met aliens, I like to think that they probably wouldn't be too much
different from us. :) (Note from Phil: [Grinning for reasons that will be apparent if he ever gets his first novel published.])
Exactly how fast do radio waves move? If the signal left Earth and
took 26 years to reach Vega, a star 26 light years away, it must have been
moving the speed of light. Is this some kind of top-secret "super radio
wave", or did the writers simply ignore the speed of the waves to avoid the
centuries of time it would really take for the message to reach Vega? (My
girlfriend kept telling me to shut up in the movie theater because I kept
complaining about this all through the movie.) (Note from Phil: Um . . . I think that radio waves are electromagnetic energy and, coincidentally, light is also electromagnetic energy so--as far as I know radio waves do travel at the speed of light!)
Also, plotwise, what was the point of revealing that the recorder had
indeed recorded 18 hours of static (proving that she HAD INDEED been away
for 18 hours)? They had just spent the entire picture explaining the power
and importance of faith over scientific proof, then they made their entire
argument irrelevant by providing scientific proof. That seemed uncalled
for, in my opinion, and it weakened the movie greatly. (Note from Phil: I think the point of this revelation was to show that the main "skeptic" had an agenda to "prove" that Ellie didn't have the experience. As such he was willing to ignore and suppress anything that he considered superfluous to his theory of what really occurred. Of course, we all know that this would never ever happen in real life! ;-)
Alexander Shearer: Pretty good film. I agree about the cinematography - that hallway
running shot was superb. Some of the special effects were a bit obvious (the
VTOL Learjet thing, and basically the whole approach to Machine #2).
On Joseph Pintar's question about using a 286: Honestly, not every
government facility is even near up to date as far as computers go. Anyone
who really wants to scare themself should check out what air traffic
controllers are still using...
Some nits: When Elly's computer says "you have email..." she checks
it and it's a chat request, not email.
Toward the end, when Elly returns, everyone says "nothing happened"
and seems to think the sucker didn't work. What about that big ball of
light, and the massive tidal forces? While that stuff was happening, no one
seemed to have been expecting it (they all acted pretty surprised, in fact).
A question/nit: Can an airplane really fly continuously, as we are
led to believe Mr. Billionaire's plane does? Seems like the engines would
eventually overheat, or parts would need maintainance on the ground, or
somesuch.
Any thoughts on how far that first test with the dummy was supposed
to go? The aliens might have been a bit disturbed if they received a fake
person... (Note from Phil: I kept wondering this myself. Before we saw what actually happened to the capsule, I kept thinking that the dummy would go to Vega and the Vegans would be amazed that humans had developed plastic skin and non-functioning electronic organs! ;-)
Personal opinion warning: As a scientist, I'd like to argue against
Elly's application of Occam's Razor. Really, "all-powerful God creates and
controls everything" is a darn simple explanation. It certainly ties things
up neatly. That said, I found the faith motif a bit much - too much of a
bludgeon rather than a theme. (Note from Phil: The movie definitely had a "Here's the MESSAGE people" feel to it. But . . . with the kind of bashing that religion has taken from Hollywood, maybe we need a bludgeon to even things out. [Grin] And . . . as for Occam's Razor, I too feel that an "all-powerful God" is a pretty simple explanation!)
Oh yeah: What are the chances that anyone could even read our
television signals? There are different formats for television in our world
now which are incompatible. Perhaps the aliens spent all those lost years
deciphering the signal... (Note from Phil: They're just that smart!)
Joe Griffin of Chicago, IL: Saw "Contact" tonight. Excellent film; much more intelligent than most I've seen--what d'ya expect from Sagan? As usual, I begin by commenting on other
nits I've seen posted:
[Concerning the comment that VLA is privately-owned,] Actually, they never suggest VLA is privately owned. Instead, they suggest
the government is renting the time to Ellie. However, it does seem unlikely
that given the jockeying around she had to do to get this dish time, she'd
screw around with moitoring via her laptop out by her car, risking all sorts
of transmission interference and dropouts etc. Although it made for a great
dramatic sequence.
[Concerning the aliens waiting 9 years to transmit Hitler back to us,] Why not? First off, consider that the movie was written a few years ago and has taken some time to get made (read any of the multitude of articles about it), so it's possible the film would've taken place in 1988 if they'd
followed their original timetable. Second, why not watch us for awhile to
see what happens?
On to the nits:
When Matthew McConaghey's character is on Larry King Live, we see someone
watching the broadcast. There is a reaction shot of this person while
Matthew is talking. However, we see reflected in this person's glasses a
shot of Larry talking.
When the signal is first detected, the scientists watch the evidence of it
on several displays, two of which are an oscilloscope (showing three sets of
excursions or "peaks," the outer two shorter than the center one) and a
frequency analyzer (also showing three peaks, the dimensions of which match
the oscilloscope reading). However, the frequency analyzer is registering
this information only in the high-midrange audible bands (between about 1kHz
and 4kHz if I remember correctly) while we are clearly hearing low-frequency
sounds over the speakers. The correct reading of that sound would have
included lots of information in the lower frequencies (the leftmost meters)
as well as the mid frequencies. (Note from Phil: Very good, very good, very good! I love this stuff. And I really should have caught that one!)
When Ellie walks into the lab about halfway through the movie to listen
to the transmission she turns a knob on a piece of equipment and the
characteristic "whoomp-whoomp" sound happens, as if she has turned up the
volume. However, the gadget she's fussing with is an Eventide Harmonizer,
which is an audio effects device used for reverbs, delays, and other ways of
processing sounds. The big black knob she turns is used for changing effects
parameters. It _can_ be used to control output volume, but I can think of no
reason for this device to even be in the lab, let alone in the monitors
signal chain as a master volume control.
The harmonizer is sitting on top of two Alesis ADAT machines--multitrack tape
recorders. Presumably these are here to record the signal as it comes in. Some problems with this: a) according to the meters, all 16 tracks are
recording the exact same information, which is silly, b) the ADAT only has 40
minutes of record time before you have to change tapes, which in this
application is silly (don't science labs have multi-hour logging setups? Why
have two recorders running simultaneously, recording the same thing for 40
minutes, and then have a dropout of data every 2/3 hour while your
intern/grad assistant changes tapes?), and c) both machines are in Playback
mode, not Record! Which is just plain silly.
Just my $.02--quite a good movie overall.
Roni Choudhury: This movie was incredible! It was absolutely magnificent! From the
acting all the way to the cinematography, this was an excellent movie.
First off, I have to say Jodie Foster did a superb job of portraying Dr.
Ellie Arroway. She doesn't pour her emotions onto the viewer but
instead allows us to infer for ourselves what she is feeling. For
example, she evokes tears of anger during the subcommittee inquiry at
the end, but doesn't raise her voice. She shows us her fear covered in
a shell of determination when entering the pod. She gives herself over
to the image of her father and becomes a lttle girl again at the apex of
her journey. Kudos to everyone who helped to make this movie!
Okay, down to business.
Well, whatever nits I saw before the very ending part of the movie
(whichever ones I can even remember, that is) were completely bearable.
But I have a big problem with the end of the movie. To me, it is too
easy to explain what really happened. Yes, in plain, observational
terms, the transit pod dropped straight through the structure, with no
change in velocity or accelration. There was nothing that occured that
implied the Ellie had gone anywhere. Fine. Later, everyone tries to
convince Ellie that nothing happened, when Ellie has just made the most
fantastic journey in the history of mankind. Okay, so no one believes
her. Why don't they just send someone else, and confirm ahat Ellie has
seen?!?!? The station isn't spent after one run-through, is it? The
aliens know better than to make first contact with a planet only to
never let them return. I realize it might cost money to send someone,
but given that the U.S. has already lost $3.3 billion on this project, I
think the few thousand it would cost to send someone is virtually
nothing. And then, there's the matter of the 18 hours of static.
Hmmmmm. 18....18....Hey! Isn't that how long Ellie said she was
gone?!?!?!?!?!? I think this is the physical evidence Kitz was
reffering to when he accused Ellie of having unwittingly taken part in
Hadden's Last Hoax.
By the way, did you notice the influences of other sources on this
movie?
Prime Numbers...Picard on Star Trek:TNG (Note from Phil: Primes are pretty popular. I think it's a stretch to say "Allegiance" influenced this movie. Using primes is the natural place to start when trying to establish "intelligence" ;-)
Jodie Foster's character...Helen Hunt's character in Twister. (Note from Phil: Hmmm.)
Okay, and now some personal reflections on Other Stuff.
I think the religious/scientific aspect of this movie is wrong. One
thing the movie did not make clear is that religion and science are
mutually exclusive; they have nothing to do with each other, and one
has absolutely no effect on the other. Of course, there are sets common
to both which affect both, like Morality and such, but the two are two
different, separate, entities. What this means is that science cannot
prove or disprove the existence of God, and that, in theory, God has
nothing to say about science. But it does not mean that one cannot
occur with the other. For example, I, myself am a person of science,
but I am also a devout Muslim. Science can be defined as the set of
rules that the universe follows in existing, and it can be explained (by
a religious person) as the set of rules that God used to create the
universe. I didn't like the fact that Joss used the parameter of
religion to choose between Ellie and Drumlin. The thing is, everyone
just accepted this. Both Drumlin and Arroway are representatives of
earth, but more specifically, they are reps of the US. Because of the
situation at hand, and specifically because of the first amendment, the
panel to choose the occupant should not have been so wrapped up in God
and religion. Arroway was actually the better choice because she was
atheist. The best example of teh product of the first amendment, which
establishes the freedom of any indivdual to choose their religion, is
Ellie Arroway, who chooses to believe in no religion. Of course, then
Arroway would have blown up and that would be the end of our beautiful
heroine, wouldn't it?
(Note from Phil: I don't know that I consider science and religion mutually exclusive. In fact, I don't think that it's possible to seperate them. It is true that "science" deals with "how" and "religion" deals with "why" but during the process of investigation, we all bring belief-sets to the table. I have yet to meet anyone who is completely objective. I have met those who claim objectivity but a bit of simple probing uncovers the fact that her or she always has certain elements of their existence that they simply accept--i.e. they believe without "proof". Often these elements are unrecognized. In addition, the human mind has a tendancy go into "defensive mode" and protect these elements at all cost because they are necessary for a person's belief-set--or "matrix of meaning," as I sometimes call it--to function. In short, we all "believe" something and we defend it more emotionally than rationally . . . scientists included. For me, that means that the conclusions of science--not the basic results of repeatable experiementation but the conclusions--will be subject to the belief-sets of the researcher. This is a huge discussion and I am quickly running out of time this morning but it is my contention that we are all biased in some way--that the very process of hypothesizing is a process of suggesting something that "makes sense" to us and then trundling around to see if we can find evidence to support it. Now, before anyone gets mad, yes, I understand that many theories get thrown out because the collected data doesn't support them but there are many, many theories in science that are impossible to prove or disprove with the available data. How do scientists decided which theories they will support and which they will ally themselves against? They choose to believe because certain theories "make sense"--which is just another way of saying that a certain theory fits well with their matrix of meaning. And it is not beyond the capabilities of a matrix of meaning to denegrade data that doesn't fit!)
And, finally, some more praise. My favorite scenes were:
1. The opening pull back. No sound while in outer space! And the
planets are all lit from the right side!
2. The scene where Ellie runs to get her father's medicine. The last
part with the mirrored door to the cabinet closes and we see a picture
of Ellie with her dad was excellent. (Don't ask me why. It
just...was) Oh, I have a question about this scene. It looks to me like
when she is running down the hall, she is taking very, very small
steps. Am I right on this one? (Note from Phil: Not sure! It did seem like that to me as well but it was in slow-motion . . . )
3. The scene where Ellie discovers the signal, and the whole sequence
with her driving to the lab.
4. The scene where the terrorist destroys the first launcher.
5. The entire series of scenes where Ellie is travelling. Especially
when we see what she is thinking, and when the camera eerily changes
angles during transit. Cool stuff:)
George Padovan of Bridgewater, NJ: A GREAT movie! I considered this to become a classic years from now. Sagan *truly* left behind a *legacy* with his book and movie. I *can't*
wait for it to come out on tape! :) (Note from Phil: Well . . . from what I understand, the movie is quite different from the book and since Sagan's name isn't splashed all over the opening credits, I would suspect that he had little involvement with the movie but I could be wrong! ;-)
Matthew Warner: Everyone in my family saw "Contact" this week, and our reactions are as
follows:
Overall, it was a great movie. Great dramatic moments, great underlying
themes, and great acting. Definitely not a waste of money. -- We did,
however, think it was little long for today's audiences.
The biggest overall nit concerned the testing of the second vehicle,
which Mr. Pintar brought up earlier. I think it's obvious that they
didn't test the second vehicle. While Jody Foster, in the pod, said she
was detecting vibration, the mission controllers said Drumlin had
noticed the same thing at the Cape, and therefore they assured her that
it was normal. They furthermore seemed caught off-guard when the
machine burst into a brilliant ball of light. . . . In short, it's
apparent that they didn't test the second machine, and this is a problem
because it is totally unrealistic. If they wanted to compensate for
this -- if Sagan or whoever author still wanted the vehicle to be
untested when Jody took her trip -- then they could've set this up via
conversations such as, "Well, it's not appropriate for the first
emissary from Earth to be a crash-test dummy. The aliens would think
that demonstrates a lack of trust." Then to Jody: "If you're willing to
take the risk, then so are we."
Concerning the design of the vehicle, I was surprised that Jody didn't
wear a space suit or some other life-support system. Sure, it wasn't in
the aliens' specs, but no one on Earth had enough confidence in those
specs to send her off without a console chair and survival rations --
therefore, they wouldn't have believed she would have enough air for the
trip. As far as they knew, she might've been gone for years, and she
would have only had the air contained within the sphere.
I think Jody (-- sorry, calling her by the actress's name) would have
put up a better defense during the congressional investigation. For
example, "Oh yeah? What did my head-mounted camera show? [I.e., How
many hours of static did it show?] How do you explain me being
dehydrated? [A great touch by the makeup artist, by the way.] How do
you explain my chair being pounded to pieces, and don't tell me that the
impact with the ocean dislodged it -- you guys mounted it too well."
It's good to leave some of these questions obviously unanswered since it
makes room for sequel (i.e., investigative reporters uncovering these
facts) but why wouldn't have Jody brought these things up? ... Possibly
the authors could have compensated for this with her being bribed.
E.g., "If you keep quiet during the congressional investigation about
these things, we'll give you a grant -- and a promise to be our emissary
on next year's pod trip. Please, we don't feel the public is ready for
this right now ..." (Note from Phil: See my comments above. From a hardened skeptical viewpoint it is possible to "dis-believe" and explain away everything . . . even "evidence".)
Miscellaneous nits: Jody and the secondary characters (e.g., priest
boyfriend, blind guy) didn't appear to noticeably age in seven(?)
years. The makeup artist deserves praise (see above), but perhaps the
aging effect, if even present, was too subtle.
Concerning the bald billionaire: how did he get the home videos and
pictures of Jody as child? Sure, he's rich, but that doesn't mean they
were accessible to him.
Also, it was hinted that the billionaire contacted the father and
instructed him to encourage Jody's aptitude in science and math as a
child. When she heard this aboard his plane, Jody didn't appear curious
about this element of her past. E.g., "You knew my father? How? --
Are you responsible for how my mother *really* died?" Does the
billionaire's meddling in her life have anything to do with how she
survived after her father's death, and how she could afford an Ivy
League college education? Her character backstory -- i.e., how she got
through the last 20 years -- was a noticeable hole in the story that
could have been avoided through the father's wake/funeral scene in her
house. Following the funeral, it appears that everyone leaves --
leaving Jody alone. (There could have been an aunt calling out the door
to Jody while she talks to the priest -- "Honey, come on in now.") This
gap in the character's history could have also been made up for during
the scene in the plane, when the billionaire reads her biography back to
her.
Speaking of funeral, what did they bury of Drumlin -- an ear?
It seems implausible to my father that Jody and the priest guy would
have established an intimate relationship, in one or two days, strong
enough to bridge a five-plus year gap.
Jody Foster gave a great, Oscar-candidate performance, especially with
her facial expressions during the "I never knew it was so beautiful"
shots in the pod, and later during the congressional committee scene.
Steven Perry: Interesting movie, not as great as some people say it is, but we'll leave that issue alone. Da nits!
The science seemed strong. Can't think of a single nit!
Coincidence of the year: former boyfriend you meet in Puerto Rico happens to become famous -
just like you - and be on the committee to select you for the world's biggest project!
I'm sorry, but though Palmer Joss may be a nice guy, I really don't see how 1)he becomes
world famous for writing a book (I guess Oprah promoted it) at such a young age. After all,
John Gray wrote "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus," but is he a national icon?
2)Even if he was, selecting him would be like selecting M Scott Peck or Robert Fulghum -
nice guys, but are they the leading religious figures in the country? (Note from Phil: It is true that typically in our society authors don't achieve much personaly fame!)
And from what I understand, devout Catholics take the sex-in-marriage idea pretty seriously.
Yeah, Palmer didn't like celibacy, but that's why they have marriage!!! (Note from Phil: Yup! I couldn't get my brain around this aspect of Palmer's characterization. It was like the Hollywood folks just had to go crazy for a moment, jam a bedroom scene into the movie, and then they could get on with the business of finishing the film!)
Security at the VLA seemed pretty poor after the discovery if Elvis got near it.
Really, after all these years Palmer can't get over one girl who he had a fling when and who
proceeded to dump him. The love story wasn't believable at all. (Note from Phil: Well . . . sometimes people are "struck" with each other. It's little more than deep infatuation but it's been known to happen.)
Only ten scientists? Well, with so many in the world, I would like to know how this was
narrowed down.
Also, would they allow all those cars nearby the launch site? Can you say, "low-yield
nuclear weapon?"
Also, I do think Mr Clinton would no longer be President by the time the gyro is finished
(the reason I say this is because the same guy is NSA Come to think of it, NSA's usually
don't last four years). Come to think of it, isn't it a better idea just to make up a
President? Sidney Poitier was suppose to be the prez, but didn't do it for unknown reasons.
Also, those "speeches" by Clinton didn't really fit what was happening. Clearly lifted...
Okay, I don't see why we would select Tom Skerritt. He's a politician. When was the last
time a national science advisor was the leading scientist in the country? Chances are, the
leading scientist is in a lab! And would you send an old man on this trip?
People were mad that the US was so prominently represented. Well, the best argument is...
look at the Nobel Prizes!
It would seem to be very hard to construct a gyro that costs billions in Japan with no one
noticing it, and it not showing up on any of China's satellites!
Will Mir exist in two months? Probably not...
Somehow I don't think that hearings on Ellie's trip would be public. At least not at first.
Furthermore, even the Clarence Thomas hearings were somewhat polite. James Woods would
never get the chance to just... insult.
Okay, the tape had 18 hours of static. Okay, so she existed for eighteen hours in this
place. Then why didn't it record something? The only thing I can think of is
intereference.
Raise your hand if you thought, in response to Ellie's question as to how long was she gone,
Mr Mission control was going to say, "25 minutes." (Inner Light. remember... eh, forget
it.)
Banny Szakola: Is it my imagination or is Clinton's speach similar or the same as the one he
gave about ancient life on mars? (Note from Phil: Turns out, it was exactly the same! ;-)
7/28/97 Update
Alexander Shearer: In the scene where Palmer and Ellie meet (in Washington) at his
behest, talk for a while, then kiss...where was everyone else? This wasn't
a weird time of day, and it's in a rather public area in Washington, so why
was no one else there? Heck - wouldn't you expect at least one press or
paparazzi person to be harassing Palmer or Ellie (and I'm sure they'd agree
with her comments on fooling around with a committee member).
A comment: Sadly Phil, you're absolutely right about how a
hardline "skeptic" can disbelieve any evidence. It's worth noting that this
person is a lousy skeptic, though. A good skeptic considers all evidence as
objectively as they can, and will realize they're doing something wrong if
they have to go to a lot of trouble to explain away what seems like sound
evidence. Healthy skepticism is a facet of common sense (and false
"over-skepticism" shows a distinct lack of same). (Note from Phil: The problem--as I see it--is that the line between "healthy skepticism" and "over-skepticism" is *subjective*! So while a person is pretending that they are being objective by "evaluating" all the evidence, what they are really doing is bringing their subjective belief-sets to the data and deciding what "evidence" they will allow--what evidence "makes sense" to them. We all do this and sometimes we do it right and sometimes we don't! About the only thing that we can all agree on objectively is simple mathematics: two plus two *is* four! ;-)
Joe Griffin: More notes on nits:
[Concerning the implausibility that that Jody and the priest guy would have established an intimate relationship, in one or two days, strong enough to bridge a five-plus year gap,] Maybe, but my own experience tells me that this kind of short, intense
fling can definitely cause tension when the two people are put back
together later by other circumstances...especially when the relationship
is left so unresolved ("you never called..."). Seems to me the tension
was what we were seeing, not the revival of a warm friendship or
something.
[Adding to the fact that government facility don't always have the latest computers,]
Or the stories we heard in the early '90s about the renegade group of
scientists within NASA who spent the better part of the late '80s trying
to get Mission Control to stop using those huge, singletasking IBM
mainframes when a first-generation Mac could do it faster and better.
Eventually they just snuck some Apples into Mission Control and spent an
entire shuttle mission outperforming the mainframes to prove their
point...
You are correct about radio waves travelling at the speed of light.
I've said it before: No more pull-backs from some tick on a dog's back
all the way up to a wide shot of the whole blankin' galaxy! Can we say
"abuse of computer effects?"
Re: Joss taking Ellie down on the religion issue: While it's true that
95% of Earth's people believe in a God, they don't all do it the same
way, and in fact, a war has been going on somewhere in the world every
single day for millenia about this. So it makes no sense to send a
representative who is religious, especially as no one could ever agree
on the manner in which this person must be religious...No Protestant
would want to send a Catholic rep, nor a Hindu a Muslim, or a Jew a
Quaker or a Sufi mystic. Better to send an agnostic scientist with the
message, "yes most of my race believes in God but in myriad ways..." (Note from Phil: While an agnostic might fill the bill--depending on the agnostic--my vote would be to send someone who at least shows some respect to all beliefs. The problem with Ellie was that she was adamant that everyone who believed in God was deluded. Of course . . . that was necessary to the plot development! ;-)
Re: Blind people and hearing: I'm not blind, but as a sound engineer I
listen for a living. All day, every day. I'm constatnly being asked,
"how do you hear those subtle little things we all missed?" It's just
that. My job is to listen. My hearing isn't any better than anyone's
(in fact it's probably worse) but I have been trained to listen, and
likely someone who can't see would similarly train their ears.
Occam's Razor: Usually applies to the simplest answer utilizing
observable data without invention, and is in fact generally used in
order to argue away the existence of the fantastic or unobservable:
i.e. the colony at Roanoake vanished bacause? a) the inhabitants gave
up the colony and left, settling elsewhere or dying en route to
elsewhere--they left no trace because they took everything with them or
b) space aliens took them away. Occam's Razor "cuts off" option b
because it neccessitates the invention of a fantastical unknown--space
aliens. Ditto with: The Black Plague was a) spread by rats in a filthy
environment with substandard medical technoloogy or b) God's punishment
upon sinners. Occam's Razor has been used often to disprove the
involvement or existence of God. (Note from Phil: And continuing on with the subject of introducing subjective elements into our data evaluation . . . if Occam's Razor is going to be used to prefer "observable data without intervention"--and I have no doubt that it has been--then the term "simplest" should be abandoned for the term "naturalistic". In other words, the Razor should read "the 'naturalistic' explanation is usually the best" because that then accurately illustrates what Occam's Razor really means. Now, why would the term "simple" be used instead of the term "naturalistic" in the first place? Because it hides the "subjectivity" in the statement--the inherant belief set that what happens on Earth has terrestrial origins! Note: I am not commenting on the validity of the Razor itself at this point, I am simply observing that if the Razor is going to be used exclusive to prove naturalistic explanations, then the Razor should be rewritten to say what it means! It shouldn't contain a term that by it's nature is subjective.)
Nigel Pond: Just read the brash reflections on Contact.
Joseph Pintar makes a point about CNN's involvement. I just read a
newspaper report that CNN top management is rethinking its policy on CNN
reporters appearing in movies for the very reasons that the Chief suggests.
Apparently Wolf Blitzer was asked to appear in Contact but turned down the
offer as he has many such offers in the past. (Note from Phil: Yup!)
Joseph also asks about money getting you onto Mir. That's exactly how the
US gets its astronauts on Mir. The US pays Russia millions of dollars for
the privilege.
David Hensley of Macomb, MI: Well, I saw Contact a few days ago and I have but one thing to say about
it. About the taking nine years for the aliens to return Hitler to us, they
probably used this time to A.) Figure out how to read the message, and then
B.) Design a machine capable of carrying a human (with the Furher being
their model for humanity). And that's all I have to say about that.
Chris George: I've seen Contact twice now...wow. What a film.
This is a "thinking" type film - there is a lot of sub-contexts and
suggested morals in this movie, but not a whole lot of whiz-bang
excitement. (Though I must admit a similar feeling seeing Arroway in the
capsule as the feeling I get at the top of Shockwave at Six Flags.)
Anyway, onto the nits. So...top of the machine, Arroway is basically
bolted in to her seat by her support suit, wearing gloves. Bottom of the
machine, she is out of her support suit AND the chair, and her gloves are
strapped in her jumpsuit. Hrm...fast change in 3 seconds!
The sex scene bugged me big time. Not because it was in there, and not
because it didn't fit his character (though that helped). What really
bugged me was the "conversation after." Especially as he is professing his
belief to Arroway. As he spread his hands and goes "It was God!" I started
thinking, "Yeah, sure it was . . ." (Note from Phil: There was more to Chris's comment but I think you can supply the punchline yourself!)
The scene on the plane with Hadden got me thinking too. First, when we
first saw Hadden, I started thinking "Gee, wouldn't Patrick Stewart have
been great in that role?" Then, he brought over the Earl Grey tea. Two
thoughts sprang to mind: "Tea, Earl Grey, hot." Next thought: "Earl Grey
Tea: the official drink of space farers everywhere."
As one other nitpicker pointed out, the machine was assembled right on the
shuttle launching area. I find nothing wrong with this, because: a) where
else do they have the transport equipment already there, sufficient to move
multi-ton parts around? and b) I don't think they planned on doing any
shuttle launches any time soon, especially with probably ALL of NASA's
budget going to the machine.
Any thoughts that the reason Hadden got a trip on Mir was because no one
else was using it at that point, having had everyone else pull out?
Hadden seemed to be just a replacement for Bill Gates. I mean, his
"operating system" was on everything from her laptop-like touch screen in
the pod to the Federal Government. He was richer than God. (Well...not
really, but you'll excuse the cliche.) He was also a technical genious with
no social contact at all. There's Bill Gates for you! (Only we can't
expect Gates to depart this earth, much to the disappointment of many Mac
users.) (Note from Phil: Now, now . . . ;-)
Finally, I think we all figured out that Clinton's first speech was
blatantly ripped from his conference on the Mars rock. What about the
second speech, the "we'll factually deal with the facts on what is
factually consistent with the facts" or whatever he said? Where did that
come from? (Note from Phil: See the comments below from Donald Carlson.)
Overall, a great movie!
Donald Carlson of Birmingham, AL: In my original comments about Contact, I should have
said "no explicit sex." There is, of course, *implied*
sex, but it is dealt with in such a matter of fact
way that it wasn't purient. I do agree, however, that
the scene was unnecessary, and that all the dialoge
could have just as well been done with them sitting
on the porch sipping iced tea.
I'd also like to point out a controversy regarding
use of a *sitting* president's news footage. I watched
The McLaughlin Group over the weekend, and not only is
the White House annoyed at the amount of out-of-context
use of President Clinton, but Zemekis apparenlty has
offended survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing by
inserting Clinton news footage of his reaction to the
bombing in Oklahoma as if it were his reaction to the
bombing at the IMC complex.
Personally, I think Zemekis went a little too far here. (Note from Phil: Of course that might be an apt description of Hollywood! ;-)
John Reese of Austin, TX: I don't believe no one has commented on the most glaring error of all.
Joss got a COMPASS out of a box of Cracker Jacks!? I haven't found
anything that cool in Cracker Jacks in at least twenty-five years! Maybe
they have better Cracker Jacks in Puerto Rico.
About blind people having enhanced senses other than sight: Actually,
there is scientific evidence to support this. Brain research has shown
that blind people receive visual input from auditory and tactile nerves--In
other words, the visual centers of the brain are stimulated by sound and
touch. They are thus able to form a "picture" of what they are hearing or
touching.
About Occam's razor to disprove the existence of God: I have never
considered this a suitable argument for Occam's razor, because there ARE no
simple explanations for the existence of the universe.
Carl Sagan's prejudices against religion are evident in this movie. If he
really thought religious people were the way they were depicted in the
movie (With the exception of Joss, or course), then it is no wonder he was
an athiest! Knowing what I do about Sagan, I don't really think that the
ending was an endorsment of religion, unless it was of Sagan's "religion",
Evolutionary Naturalism. From his writings, it is evident that Carl Sagan
thought that the awe and wonder most people direct to God should be
re-directed to a self-creating, self-sustaining Cosmos. To me, Elly's
experience in the pod was the embodiment of Sagan's philosophy. (Note from Phil: I do agree that this movie doesn't not endorse religion or belief in a supreme being. What it does do--and I find this refreshing--is that it has at least *one* character who believes in God and isn't a wacko and it proposes that there maybe some things in life that can be true even though there is not "evidence" to support them! I find that refreshing!)
At one point, Elly is explaining why she is willing to risk her life for
this mission. She says she has always wondered "why we are here". Hold
the phone! Aren't you an athiest, Elly? Doesn't that answer your
question? There's NO reason why we're here, according to her belief
system. We just happened! This kind of calls into question her rationale
for being an athiest. She wants to believe in a Higher Purpose, but not in
the one that killed her Dad (as the priest so helpfully pointed out at his
funeral). (Note from Phil: I would have to agree!)
Obviously, this was a great movie for pondering theological questions!
Scott Vogt: I was reading the comments and nits for the movie "Contact". A recurring
theme seems to be the issue of "real" newspeople being used in a
fictional story. I don't like it either, but I don't get upset when it
happens because it is merely a symptom of a bigger problem. Journalistic
integrity is non-existent. It is merely a race to be the first or the
fastest with a story, accuracy be damned. A real journalist or reporter
would not be caught dead in a fictional movie. But there are very few.
Most newspeople are looking to be celebrities. Qualifications are
non-existent. Look at how many celebrities used to be in local
broadcasting, usually as weathermen. You don't even have to have a
meteorology degree to do the weather, just broadcasting. It all falls
under that general heading.
But back to the accuracy. A couple of years ago there was a big
controversy regarding listeners of the Howard Stern radio program. Many
of them would call radio or TV call-in shows, pretend to be someone, and
later in the conversation yell, "Howard rules!" or something. And was
everyone upset, "Oh, these people! Where do they come from? That's just
awful. Oh, whoa is me. It's a dark day for journalism." Blah blah blah
blah. These goofs aren't the problem. It's the [goofs] who put them on
the air. Nothing is confirmed. "Oh, you're really at the scene? Duhhh,
O.K. You're on the air." The people who yell "Howard rules!" do not
scare me. It's the wackos who DON'T tell you it's a joke and spread
disinformation because Brokaw has to be the first one to talk to someone
LIVE, AT THE SCENE. Look at Richard Jewell. I admit I thought this was
some nut who bombed the Olympics because Tom come on TV and said so.
They were first, first, first. When something happens, it's often the
media I see yelling at the cops for answers. We, the people, expect
everything wrapped up in an hour, like on TV! Look at that poor Ramsey
girl who was murdered. They were in the cops faces not two days later!
Who did it? Who did it? Whoa, whoa. I'm no cop, but I would imagine
investigating a murder takes a little time. But the reporters can't back
off to give them time, because we've got a 24 hour news station going.
Not to mention the 2 or 3 hours of local news and national networks,
etc.. We want answers!
My favorite example of the media inventing news, and quite literally
helping elect Clinton, comes from that election. Think back. Bush is
running for the republicans. And for the democrats we have, oh, about
eight or nine in the fields campaigning for the nomination. I don't even
remember them all. No one really stood out. No one was that special
until....... Gennifer! Yes, Gennifer Flowers (I hate the fact I know her
name) comes forward and says, "I had an affair with Clinton!". Do you
remember the media circus with that revelation? That weekend Clinton and
his wife get a half hour on 60 Minutes! All the "news" stories were
about how this story would affect his chances of getting elected. How
would this story hurt the FRONTRUNNER Clinton. Frontrunner? A week ago
you couldn't identify him in a line-up. Now he's the frontrunner. Why?
Because if Clinton's ahead, this is a STORY. If he's behind, just
another politician with his pants down. So, once we are told Clinton is
the frontrunner, the poles miraculously begin to show this as well. All
the other democrats fade back into obscurity, because who can compete
with all the free publicity Clinton's getting? Now, I'm not saying he's
a good or a bad president, I'm just telling you how he got there. So,
Phil, don't sweat the fact news people are in movies. Just accept the
fact that they're all actors looking to be the next Woodward and
Bernstein. Think of it as when you see a Pepsi sign in a movie: They're
just trying to sell you something. (Note from Phil: Good point!)
Kevin Loughlin: I'd like to say for the record I applauded at the end of this film(which
I certainly don't do for everything), and I truly believe it is up there
with the greats of our age. It transcends like 2001, but is less
ambiguous; it touches like E.T. without the cuteness; and it reaches the
soul like Forrest Gump without being gratuitous.
That aside, a couple interesting points. I find the chances very odd
that two films, released very soon after each other, have
planet-out-to-beyond-the-galaxy pull-back shots. The question is, who
stole it from whom? (Note from Phil: The "long pullback" *is* a pretty old idea!)
A few things tended to grate on me overall. The ending, but I'll get
into that; calling the consortium, literally, a blatantly plain name
like the International Machine Consortium(IMC)(look for their acronym &
logo everywhere); Rob Lowe in the cast (please!); and, yes, the love
scenes. While they provided a certain connection, they ultimately failed
the plot.
The ending left me mixed. Yes, it has more holes than MIR; but it was
written pretty much last-minute when the rest had been reworked for
years. Ultimately, I can go with what they intended, and that perhaps,
accepting the kind of contact made will require more of a collective
acceptance than society can currently provide.
A few more small points:
-Speaking of the(real) suicide cult, I wonder if it's really a
coincidence that that billionare looks so much like Marshall Applewhite.
-Yes, all forms of electromagnetic radiation travel at the speed of
light, from gamma rays to IR to light to UV to radio to microwave. The
only reason we single out light is that it is the only stretch of the
spectrum we can directly observe.
-As for CNN, I don't watch cable and, frankly, I'm not American. I'll
take Lloyd Robertson(CTV) at his word no matter what. Ha.
Simon de Vet: Have to say: Loved the movie! In terms of what makes a good, standard movie (violence,
explosions, etc..) it was a lousy movie. But in terms of what makes a good SF movie, it was
superb. It was nice to see that they didn't try to lure in the general public by putting the
Big Explosion (tm) into the previews. On to the nits, and comments:
1) The pullback: Nice, but a few oddities. Based on the shadows, the terrain on Mars was
drastically exagerated. Sure, it has big mountains, but not _that_ big. Does Jupiter really
have storms moving that quickly? The radio signals seem to be going back in time the further
back we go. Fine. But why are we in the 30s when we reach Saturn? (pick, pick, pick) Nice
mention of a dark nebula, though :) (Note from Phil: Of course, it did happen all in Ellie's mind! ;-)
2) Internet: She, and the other scientists seem to be
using Netscape for communication. I'm not going to touch that, but the little N with comets
seemed off. Maybe my computers are old, but I've never seen it animate with so many frames.
Really smooth. Why would they replace something so common?
3) Where did the chair go after
the sphere was on the beach? (Note from Phil: Holodecks are wonder things! ;-)
Comments: Nice that she was wearing the tight hair style, and that Mr. Billionaire was bald.
You can simulate weightlesness, but it's harder to simulate floating hair...
Who want's a
scale model of that cool launcher? I do! I do! And that was one cool explosion :)
There
really _is_ alien abduction insurance, but you have to get a note signed by the chief alien
(no joke! Not sure if the guy in the movie is the guy who really sells it.... Viva Los
Vega???? AHHHHHH! :)
Was one of the scientists blind? I noticed, much later, him carrying a
cane, and not looking at the TV. Am I very unobservant, or was it just not obvious? (Note from Phil: Yes, he was blind! ;-)
And what was it with the fishing from the kiddie pool. Was I the only one going "HUH?" (Note from Phil: Sorry . . . I'm lost on this one! I'm not sure what we're talking about!)
Can anyone
translate the cryllic russian seen on screen?
Finally, I'll go against the popular opinion,
and say I loved CNN in the movie! After seeing the Mars coverage, it was cool to see the
Science Guy again.
Jeff Carpenter of Springfield, VA: OK, very good movie. Made me think. For 48 hours. Uh. Well, can't say I didn't enjoy that...(and that Trek Metaphysics book was NOT the thing
to read right after this movie.)
Anyway...As for the aliens being sloppy enough to let 18 hours of static
remain...I don't think they cared if the humans believed her or not. I guess
that there is some techno-bable reason that the cameras didn't work, but the
aliens didn't really care one way or the other, so the hours of static didn't
bother them. (Note from Phil: I'm not sure that it was that they didn't care. It could be that they understand that humans will choose to believe on the basis of their belief set and they balanced the "evidence" to neither confirm nor deny their existence.)
And finally, a REAL NIT! (I think.) When Ellie's daddy is talking to
her in bed at the start of the film (where he hangs up the picture), I think,
THINK, that there is a problem. I thought that the only window in the room
was at the head of her bed. I also think that her head was there (at the
head of the bed). Now, when dad sits down, he looks directly at his little
girl, so he's facing the window, with the door at his back, right? Well,
from Ellie's point of view, they show dad with the window behind him! I'm
not positive on this one...can someone check it out if they see it again?
(I'm not sitting still that long again...but I liked it!)
Brian Straight, Shawnee Kansas: An excellent movie! I was surprised to see a "movie" with a point to it ( I can't remeber the last movie I saw like that). It kind of reinded me of
"Close Encounters" (you kinow the Richard Deryfus movie, where he makes a
mountain, etc...)
About the Lost in Space preview....
When I heard about them making a movie out of LS I thought "well here's
another old TV show recycling they're going to screw up!" Notable examples:
Brady Bunch, Beverly Hillbillies, Car 54, Where are you?, Leave it to Beaver
(OK it isn't out yet, but I gaurntee you it'll flop!) But LS looks like they
put thought into it to make it a good sci-fi movie (totaly unlike the actualy
series!). BTW For a moment the Jupiter II looked to me like the Defiant from
DS9, and the robot like the Monochians from The 5th Element.
On to the nits....
Did I miss something? Like where Palmer lived? It's no wonder Ellie never
called him! He only left part of his phone number! He didn't give her the all
to important country code or area code (unless only about 800,000 people live
in the world. In case you're wonder why I didn't put 999,999 it's because
phone numbers can't start with 1 or 0) (Note from Phil: The phone number was probably for his residence in Puerto Rico!)
Half way through, my friend whispered to me "Why do they keep bringing
religon in to this?" I wondered the same thing myself, and frankly it was
gratting on my nerves. Now I'm not big on religon (in fact I'm not sure what
I am), but I do believe in God, which I think is all that is important.
Anyway I fail to understand what traveling to other worlds, and receving a
message from distant planets has to do with the "destruction of God." and
wouldn't not sending Ellie to Vega, just because she's an atheist, violate
her civil rights? If I remeber correctly she can't be judged on her sex,
age, religon, or national origon. (Note from Phil: Well . . . first of all, "civil rights" is an American concept and the selection process was global in nature. I suppose she could have tried to sue someone but i doubt she would have gotten very far! As far as the connection of belief in God and a message from another planet, the end of the movie nicely ties this together. The creators were saying that belief isn't necessarily incorrect just because there is no "evidence"--be it belief in God or Ellie's belief in her own experience
Would that bomb really cause that ENTIRE pylon to fall, causing the pylon to
destroy that ENTIRE gyroscopic/particle accelerator thingie? (Note from Phil: Perhaps!)
Question: You wan't to live on a space station. Do you pick Mir? A station
that is constantly losing orientation, has been struck by freighters, and
people unpluging main power cords! It's also doubtful that he would even be
let up there given all of the problems they're having. (Of course this isn't
fair since Mir was in good shape at the time of writing the book, screenplay,
and probably during the making of the movie).
Obviously the machine wasn't a "one shot deal" since they planed on sending a
dummy and the Ellie's boss.
Is it me or did the sceen where Mr. Billionare is floating in Mir talking to
Ellie, look bad? As far as making it look like he was in a low-g enviroment?
Un Nits?
NOTE TO PHIL: Regarding the nit on Ellie and Palmer having sex after just
meeting. I was under the impression they had been dating for a while. As
the bedroom sceen opens we see her star map, full of push tacks, it could've
taken her months to find all of those. (Note from Phil: Maybe . . . or that was a map that she took from assignment to assignment to show the locations she had already tried.)
Some stated that there was sex in the movie, since we saw to naked pepole in
bed afterwards. I think what the origonal niter was refering to was that
there was no "on screen" sex. (i.e. we didn't see two people on a bed,
kissing, and well...) What we had was "inplied sex."
Lisa Shock of Phoenix,AZ: Great Movie!
One small nit: As Ellie is suited up for the trip, her hair is braided
in one braid, centered on the back of her head. She is then tightly
strapped into the chair. In this set up, the braid would get in the
way and possibly be very dangerous to her spinal alignment. When I
broke my neck, and had to be in braces or on operating tables,
hospital staff braided my hair to curve to one side and fall in front,
away from the restraints. It doesn't look as sleek, or professional,
but keeps hair out of the way.
James E. Puntch: A few notes on the movie, not really nits.
1) The idea for the opening shot that pulls back through the galaxy was
actually lifted from an educational film from the
late-sixties/early-seventies. It was about the powers of 10 and
featured a camera starting out in a city park and pulling out 10^1 then
10^2 then 10^3, etc. meters every ten seconds. To tell you the truth,
the original seemed better to me.
2) Palmer Joss' fame can be explained by the fact that he is a personal
religious advisor to the president. How he got that job is anyone's
guess, since he is catholic and Clinton is a baptist. Who knows?
Bob Sabatini: I have a theroy. A conspiriy is causing 47's to show up in all
Si-Fi, and it's GOING TO DRIVE US ALL MAD!!
when Arrowheed (I think that's her name) first hears the signial, she
starts yelling at her friends "8 Hours, *47* minitues, 1 second!"
I have no idea what this means,(mabey somone can explain it to me?!)
but there's a 47. I'M GOING MAD!
now that I have that off my chest, TO THE NITS!
I live in New Mexico, and I know that there are NOT 27 dishes at V.L.A.
there are 28. the other is kept in a storage shed ready to replace a
malfunctioning dish. (I Know, PICKY, PICKY)
At the very end, when Arrowheed(ITTHN) is sitting at the edge, a faint
noise can be herd tha sounds like the pulse at the begining. She dosen't
look up. (This may not be a nit because the Lensic theaetar in Santa Fe
is HUGE, and a beeper on the other side would barley register.)
Speaking of the cliff, there is no cliff like that near V.L.A.
Joseph Pintar of New Hartford, NY: In his latest feature, film critic Roger Ebert speculates on what really happened to Ellie in her journey in Contact. He says that the
journey didn't really happen, but it was all in Ellie's mind. The web address for this article is
http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/rog20.htm.
(Note from Phil: I've read the article and indeed Ebert evokes Occam's Razor to postulate that it all happened in Ellie's mind. [Which fits quite nicely with the running discussion that we have had on this page so this will be a "real-world" example of skepticism at work!] If I read his explanation correctly, he bases this conclusion that it all happened in Ellie's mind on two things. 1) Physics as we understand it dictates that wormhole travel is impossible and 2) the actual travel to another star would be incredibly complex when a mind trip would accomplice the same thing.
My response? First, Ebert is incorrect in a crucial point. He claims that wormholes for travel are impossible according to our current understanding of physics. This is not necessarily so. According to Cosmic Time Travel: A Scientific Odyssey by Barry Parker, Ph.D., Sagan sent his manuscript to the foremost black hole expert in the world, Kip Thorne of Caltech. Sagan wanted the science of Contact to be as accurate as possible. Thorne and associates were able to postulate a theoretical setup for a transversable worm hole using "exotic matter." You might recall that the Vegans tell Ellie that they didn't built the wormhole system. They claim some ancient, unknown, highly advance race did. This was the reason for that statement. Although the manufacture of such a wormhole is a complete mystery to us, there might be a theoretical basis for it. [And even if our physics said it was impossible, who are we to say that no race will ever accomplish it? Isn't that a bit arrogant? ;-] Second, Ebert questions the implementation that the aliens use to contact us: Why go to all the complexity of taking Ellie to Vega when they could just manipulate her mind. Well . . . alien motivations aren't necessarily the same as ours, are they? The interpretation and judgement of motivation is highly subjective and what seems "complex" to us might be very "simple" to the aliens!
Lastly, we've already discussed the fact that skeptics sometimes ignore important data. Ebert gives us a beautiful example of this. He doesn't even try to explain the 18 hours of static on Ellie's headset! If it all happened in Ellie's mind, where did the static come from? Was she actually skewed in time for eighteen hours in the few seconds it took her pod to drop?! And, if the machine had that capabitility, who can say what other capabilities it possessed?)
8/7/97 Update
Juan Carlos Fernandez of Coral Springs, FL: When I was waiting in line to purchase tix for Air Force One, I looked at
the poster for "Contact". The ad copy on the poster reads something like
: "From the Academy Award-winning director of "Forrest Gump" and Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of "Contact"..." No article before Pulitzer. Now,
I know this is a minor thing, but without a "the" before Pulitzer,
doesn't that statement imply that they're speaking about only one person? (Note from Phil: I believe that this is acceptable usage!)
Also, in "Contact", the religious love interest (I forget the actor's
name) says something to Jodie Foster early in the movie in the Puerto
Rico scenes about the intrusion of technology in Third World
civilizations. Since when is Puerto Rico considered a Third World
nation?
Bob Sabatini: After seeing "CONTACT" agin, and looking at an old family photo album, I discoverd that Arroway was sittinqg on the rim of canyon de Chelley which is at least 250 miles away from VLA I rest my case, your honor.
Chris George: Re: Bob Sabatini's question about the "Right ascension 18 hours, 34
minutes, declination plus 38 degrees 41 minutes." I got curious too, so I
looked it up. Right Ascension is defined by Merriam Webster's online
dictionary as "the arc of the celestial equator between the vernal equinox
and the point where the hour circle through the given body intersects the
equator reckoned eastward commonly in terms of the corresponding interval
of sidereal time in hours, minutes, and seconds." Huh? Please, now...I'm
curious, can someone clear this up? (Note from Phil: Too early in the morning for me to get my neurons around this one! ;-)
As for the static and what the aliens did or did not allow: I don't
particularly think the aliens cared what evidence there was. The static,
IMHO, really wasn't because the aliens somehow censored it out...it was
because there was a great deal of electromagnetic and other interference,
which somehow disrupted the recording of the image to whatever media they
used. My personal guess is that a standard still camera would have taken
some stunning pictures (and would have been great for vacation slides)!
Re Palmer's phone number: If it were for his residence in Puerto Rico, do
they use the same numerical pattern as we do in the states, as in xxx-xxxx?
I know most other nations use several sets of 1 or 2 numbers, such as
43.22.11.4 or whatever. (Note from Phil: True but Puerto Rico is a territory under United States supervision.)
Oh, one more note: Loved the flat-screen HDTV (or whatever the new format
is being called)...where do I get one? :-) Still, is it possible for a
small satellite transmitter like they used to communicate with a the Mir
station in space...and especially, from inside a building?
Still loved the movie, even after the 3rd time... ;-)
Jack Brounstein of Bellingham, WA: This may not be a nit, but a way of thinking. I saw the the movie yesterday. Very good with great special effects. Now my question:
If they had sent some Priest or a guy like Joss in the pod thing and he
claimed he met God, would it have been different? Yes, definatly, because
people would claim she had a phyic (sic?) meeting or something and might not
have supressed the evidence, or he would be giving lectures all the time and
maybe even making some sort of group about God lives in space or something.
That's just my take on the matter.
Joanna Cravit: Most of what I thought has been said, but I have one point to add:
people have been talking about the similarity of Jodie Foster's
character to Helen Hunt's in Twister, and others. I should point out
that there is a technical word for this: archetype. Any character can be
reduced to a basic form that has existed throughout literature, or some
combination of several. Here we have the driven scientist who is so
focused on the goal she is willing to die for it, up against "Those That
Get in the Way" including the "Jealous Coworker" and the mystic who is
constantly pitted againt her secular scientific bent. (cc. Janeway and
Chakotay). Of course, she was "right all along." We also have the ghosts
of childhood, we have the triumph over adversity, misguided authority
figures...I think you get the point. Archetypes really are a fact of
life, there are only so many ideas, after all. The trick is to combine
enough of them subtly enough that the reader (viewer, listener, etc.)
can't tell they've seen it all before. :-) I had an English teacher once
who was shocked when I reduced every John Saul novel to one single basic
plot...
BTW, the movie was good. Exept that a lot of people got restless during
that interminable opening :-)
Richie Laskaris: About halfway through the movie, I thought it was awfully convenient
that the scientist who is the first to discover the alien transmission
Just Happens to be the scientist who spent her entire life listening for
extraterrestrial life, who Just Happened to have wanted to contact alien
civilizations since she was nine, who Just Happens to be the most
appropriate person in the world to discover it. But hey, I appreciate a
good story, and I wouldn't have it any other way :) .
Did anyone else do a double-take when the door of Ellie's pod closed
and the seal *disappeared*? I know it was an alien-designed device, but
it was created with manmade materials!
I found it a little unconvincing that nobody believed that anything
happened when the pod dropped through the Machine. Really--these people
just recently found out that life exists elsewhere in the universe, they
build a machine designed by aliens, see it working and flashing light
all over the place, yet they still insist that "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
HAPPENED" (paraphrasing) when the pod fell through? Would it be so
hard--on top of the huge acceptances they had to make--to believe she
was transported away and then returned to the moment she left within a
sufficiently small span of time as to seem instantaneous? I don't think
so. (Note from Phil: I have noted that humans tend to believe what they want to believe.)
And another thing about this Joss guy. So he's allowed into the
meeting to discuss the Machine and how they're going to choose a person
to go in it, but Ellie isn't? She's only the person who DISCOVERED
these aliens. Oh, I forgot how important Joss is...he's a semi-famous
writer! Even Drumlin is allowed in; he is later considered as a
candidate for the mission, and so is Ellie--so why was he allowed in
when she wasn't? The discussion wasn't secret, or anything, because
Joss tells her what happened inside right after it ends.
I have to admit to laughing at the scientist wearing the periodic table
t-shirt, and how it took them all so long to figure out the signal was
sounding out prime numbers. I suspected it by the time it reached
three, and they took until eleven, if I recall correctly. Incidentally,
I have to praise Sagan or whoever wrote this scene. The writer
correctly left 1 out of the list of prime numbers. (Didn't Picard use 1
in "Alliegiance"?) (Note from Phil: Ahem, actually, no he didn't but in the first Nitpicker's Guide I said that I thought he should have! Just a little boo-boo on the part of the Chief Nitpicker! ;-)
Scott Wasilewski of Ottawa, Il: I can't confirm this, as I only caught the end of the previous
showing and saw it. But I could swear to you that at one point in the
closing credits, "Mechanical" was spelled "Mechnical". Can anyone confirm this? (Or else I could just go see it again - like THAT'd be so bad...) :)
Tony Forbes of Albuquerque, NM: Yee-haw! Just saw Contact, and my Official Prediction meter says "Oscar sweep".
However, I have some nits that only a New Mexican would notice. Amongst
the reporters that swarm to the VLA is Conroy Chino, who is an
investigative reporter for KOB-TV Channel Four, Albuquerque. He is NOT who
Channel Four would send out to do such a report. Christian Peterson,
Stuart Dyson... fellow New Mexican nitpickers back me up! Also when they
first detect the signal, someone wonders if it could just be AWACS out of
Kirtland Air Force Base. There are two other Air Force bases in New Mexico
that they seen to forget about, Holloman and Canon.
The eccentric billionaire quotes facts about Ellie's life. He quotes her
birthdate in Day-Month-Year format, which would follow the fact that he
dosen't sound American. However, he quotes other dates in Month-Day-Year
format.
I can see why the White House might be upset, among the footage used for
the film comes from Ron Brown's funeral.
Now then, I see that you have taken exception to the use of real reporters
for the movie. The argument seems to be that it supposedly blurs the line
between fiction and reality. Now, I walked into the theater knowing that I
was going to see a movie. Also, I saw a preview for a Dustin Hoffman/John
Travolta movie where Travolta takes hostages at a Science Museum. Hoffman
is a reporter and is among the hostages. He is able to twist the situation
where he is not reporting the truth, rather telling the growing audience
what they want to hear. This is a very believeable scenario. The news is
entertainment these days. It's as simple as that.
8/11/97 Update
Jennifer Pope, of Longview, WA: I’ll try to clear up some of Chris
George‘s confusion about right ascension and declination (RA and Dec).
Most simply, RA = longitude and Dec = latitude, making up a grid system in
the sky by which celestial objects are mapped.
The celestial equator is the Earth’s equator extended out onto the sky.
RA is measured perpendicular to this, starting at 0 hours on the vernal
equinox and continuing up to 59 hrs. moving eastward around the sphere of
the sky for a total of 60 hrs. The vernal equinox is simply where the sun
crosses the celestial equator moving north every year, marking the
beginning of spring on Earth. Hours are divided into minutes and seconds
to make finding things easier. Follow me?
Dec is measured northward (positive 1-90 deg.) and southward (negative
1-90 deg.) parallel to the celestial equator (0 deg.) and is also divided
into minutes and seconds. It's all just like latitude and longitude on the
globe of the Earth.
I havn’t seen the movie, but whatever Miss Athiest is talking about is
somewhere around Lyra - at least that’s my best guest, but I’m only an
amateur using a list of Messier objects to match up the numbers.
Bob Sabatini: Somone mentioned that Mechianal was misspelled. I'm not the best speller
in the world, but I thought it looked strange as well. Also, I'm forced
to agree with whoever said that Conroy Chino was not the person KOB-TV
would send.
Will Phillips: In regards to the huge pullback, I don't think that was abuse of
computer effects at all. That adds a Sagan touch to it. (Beelions and
beelions... That's the only thing anyone I talk to can think of the
guy... oh well.) By the way, I'd recommend anyone who liked the movie
to read the book. The book is different enough to make it interesting.
Especially the scene where the Machine is activated. The trip is much
more fun in the book.
Brian Straight: [Regarding Chris
George‘s confusion about right ascension and declination,] Essentially all Ellie ment when she said "Right ascension 18 hours, 34 minutes,
declination plus 38 degrees 41 minutes." was the direction in which the VLA
needs to be pointed to pick up the signals from Vega.
To get complicated about it...
The "celestial equator" is simply away of giving the stars a "place" so they
may rise and set like the sun does. The celestial equator is on the same
line as Earth's equator. Now, sidereal time is the measure of the rotation
of the earth in relation to the stars (not the sun) a sidereal day is 23
hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds long.
(correct me if i'm wrong on this, I had to ask an astronomer friend of mine,
and do some of my own research, so this may be wrong).
The 18 hours and 34 minutes probably tells the astronomers what direction in
the sky to look. And I'm sure the final 38 degrees and 41 minutes tells them
what angle to be at. about 38.5 degrees off the equator (since minutes are
fractions of degrees, putting 60 minutes in a degree).
Did anyone notice, that the sand crystals in the Vegan's hand, and in Ellie's
had towards the end was in the same pattern some of the dropped popcorn
formed when Ellie's father collapsed? I'm also told that it resembled some
star constellation. (Note from Phil: Verrrrrry interesting!)
Jeff Davis of Hollywood, CA: Contact is a great movie and like all good sci-fi films compel one to suspend disbelief. Once in a while nearly every movie will break that trance.
In Hollywood the relative lack of technical knowledge for the average
moviegoer is used from the standpoint of what something "looks" like instead
of what something actually "does" i.e., the monitoring equipment in the
master control rooms in "Contact" looks good but is used for a totally
unrelated purpose... Many of the pieces of equipment are actually recording
studio gear and far from complex measuring equipment. I nearly rolled in the
aisles when Jodie Foster turns a flywheel on an Eventide H4000 which would
only change a parameter such as reverb... but the LED meters sure looked
pretty.
Also, if the aliens were so advanced, and safety was a concern, why did the
cockpit seat break from it's mooring bolts and whooooosh to the ceiling of
the orb, uh, leaving her on the surface to defy centrifugal force if not
gravity. (Note from Phil: Well . . . the seat wasn't part of the design that the aliens sent in the first place. I must admit, however, that I was a bit confused at that particular point in the movie!)
8/18/97 Update
Matthew Chiappardi of Hamilton, NJ: About the chair collapsing...this is just my opinion, but if we could
break the theme of the movie down to one word, that word would be
'faith'. IMO it's just proof that the humans should have just had faith
in the Vegan design...that anything else was unneccesary (and possibly
dangerous).
That's just my take on the scene. BTW, finally saw this (obviously),
and I loved it. A little schamltzy at parts (that's forgivable since it
seems to be Robert Zemeckis's style), but overall a great rewarding
journey.
One thing, did anyone think that the billionare-Howard Hughes type was
a little over the top...I mean it was really absurd.
Also, many nipickers are lauding praises on Carl Sagan for his
wonderful work on this film. Now Mr. Sagan, may God rest his soul,
concepts are used in the film, he was a groundbreaking rouge astronomer,
donating a lot of himself to the science, inspired a lot of people if
not to become astronomers to look at the skies and into themselves,
fowarded the discipline, probably wrote a great novel (I haven't read it
yet), and the 'For Carl' at the end was a great sentiment...but I don't
think Carl Sagan had much to do with the making of this movie.
Murray Leeder: This was a great movie... as good as I've seen all year. If you didn't
like it... too bad. You're wrong. (just joking, of course) I find it
interesting that a story which seems to highlight the value of faith was
written by an ardent atheist. (Note from Phil: From what I've heard Sagan was doing a great deal of dialoguing with people of many different persuations in the later years of his life.)
Some people have refered to Ellie as an atheist. I figure she's more of
an agnostic. Would not a true skeptic consider atheism as short-sighted
as theism? (Note from Phil: Is there such a thing as a completely objective skeptic? ;-)
I wish an inkling was given as to what Kitz's motive was in keeping the
information quiet of the static, and for attackin Ellie in general. He
seemed more of a plot complication to me than a character. (Note from Phil: He was power hungry. There *are* people like that!)
They say that 95% percent of humans believe in a superior being. I
don't think that's right. There are a whole lot of adhererents of
Confuscianism, Taoism and Buddhism, which don't have a supreme being. (Note from Phil: I haven't seen a global survey for belief in a superior being--only one for Amercians--but I would hope they didn't just pull this statistic out of the air. Of course, this *is* Hollywood!)
I also find it strains credibility that the Vegans would insist on
providing no real evidence (obviously they didn't know about the static
:-). Perhaps their crusade is to teach people of various cultures the
value of faith. It's been said that if the existence of God were proven
by concrete means, that would defeat the entire purpose of religion.
I'd imagine that Palmer Joss gained status as a theologian and
spiritualist some time after he stopped fornicating. (He was a very
interesting character, btw. Matthew McConnaughy deserves credit for
being more than a pretty boy)
That terrorist looked REALLY REALLY creepy. Naturally, of course, we
can't have an ordinary looking terrorist... that wouldn't do!
As Ellie was about to disappear into the machine, was I the only one
who expected the line "MY GOD! IT'S FULL OF STARS!"
And when she was inside the "holodeck": "Oh no! They've turned me into
a mime!"
Sorry, I just had to get those off my chest.
Although I respect Roger Ebert very much and read him faithfully, I've
got to contend a bit with his explanation of the end of this film. You
brought up all the good points... but how about this? Since the Vegan's
didn't themselves build the wormhole network, what do they have to lose
by utilizing it?
I'm not saying that it definitely isn't a mind machine, that's an
intriguing possibility, just that he didn't substantiate it enough.
8/25/97 Update
Murray Leeder: Maybe there was no security breach and KSC. Maybe the blond terrorist
worked there! (disquieting thought)
I too got the impression that the pan over Ellie's chart with the tacks
on it was meant to imply the passage of time, before the "bed-scene".
But if that's the case, why is Drumlin still there? And why does Ellie
not know Joss's number?
Joe Griffin: Some comments: Kevin Loughlin was bothered by "calling the consortium, literally, a blatantly plain name like the International Machine Consortium(IMC)."
What about IBM (International Business Machines), AT&T (American
Telephone and Telegraph), GM (General Motors), AMC (American Motor
Company)--the list of uninspired corporation names is endless. Or what
about any company named after its founder? Disney, J. Walter Thompson,
Montgomery Ward's? IMC, I felt, was a pretty realistic naming choice.
HDTV, or High-definition television, is currently available in Japan
but not the US. It is a new (about 8 years old) TV format that has 1050
lines of resolution rather than the current TV standard of 525.
Unfortunately, no one is yet broadcasting a picture that takes advantage
of this, since the FCC has yet to approve a transmission standard for a
signal with that much info. Currently complicating this matter is the
fact that the brand-spanking new revolution in digital video, DVD, is
spec'd out for the old 525-line screens and not the new HDTV screens.
Mind you, DVD is a fantastic new technology, and is still getting
better, but don't hold yer [breath] waiting for HDTV sets.
Murray Leeder: "I'd imagine that Palmer Joss gained status as a
theologian and spiritualist some time after he stopped fornicating. "
Why? One can be a theologian or a "spiritualist" without being
celibate. You just can't be a priest without taking a vow of celibacy.
There are plenty of Protestant ministers who are married. And it's
never really established that he's a practicing preacher, is it? (If I'm
wrong, I will gladly stand corrected.) I don't want to tread on
anyone's spiritual or moral beliefs, but where is it mandated that
someone must be celibate to study religion (see definition of
"Theologian") or simply be an informed spiritual person? Seems to me
we'd be denying lots of people a spiritual existence if we demanded this
level of asceticism of them. He said it himself, I'll paraphrase 'cause
I can't recall the exact quote: "I was gonna be a priest, but I
couldn't deal with the celibacy thing." It's clear that he chose to
have a spiritual life, but it's equally clear that he had found a way to
be spiritual and sexual at the same time, with no inner conflicts. And
not just sexual, possibly, but interpersonal--he allows himself to have
relationships with other humans, not just a relationship with God. He
doesn't subject himself to the Priestly or Shamanistic "otherness" we
seem to expect of our holy people.
...but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
(Note from Phil: Let's clear away some issues here and try to get some clarity on Palmer Joss. First of all, we don't really know what his personal beliefs are. He supposedly was schooled as a Catholic priest but couldn't handle celibacy. Okay, fine. As Joe points out, Protestant ministers are not required to be celibate.
They are, however, required to abstain from sex outside of marriage. In other words, they are required to abstain from fornication.
This is an important point. Within the Judeo-Christian ethic, sex is reserved for marriage. If you are going to embrace the Judeo-Christian ethic, that stipulation is inescapable. And, yes, it is possible to have good interpersonal relationships and be a theologian or minister. My wife and I happen to enjoy a very good interpersonal relationship with our pastor. He is a kind, gentle, generous man. He is very happily married to a wonderful woman and they have built a strong marriage together for many years. In fact, the majority of ministers that I know fall into both of these catagories. They have strong interpersonal skills and they have strong marriages.
The problem that I had with Joss is that the creators tossed him into the Judeo-Christian ethic just before tossing him into the sack with Arroway. They tried to use the "couldn't handle the celibacy issue" to justify his affair with Arroway, but that just doesn't work for me because of the strong prohibitions in the Judeo-Christian ethic against sex outside of marriage. If Joss wants to represent himself as a "spiritualist" and bed whomever he pleased, then fine. But I was cross-eyed after they presented him as an "almost priest" and the very next scene put him in illicit sexual situation. I would have been much more comfortable if the creators had added a line after the celibacy thing . . . something like, "I couldn't handle the celibacy issue and since then I've learned I've learn to respect many truths." That gives me as a viewer the clue that this guy is just making it up as he goes along! He likes the idea of a God but he's not necessary interested in any standards of behavior besides looking mooney-eyed and trying to sound spiritual.
Finally, with respect to the term "theologian." The dictionary aside, I have never heard the term "theologian" applied to anyone outside those who are theists or at least study theistic material. And, as far as I know, every major religion that espouses one God also teaches sexual abstinence outside of marriage. For me, at least, when I here the term theologian, I think of someone who has dedicated themselves to the study of God and has a higher than average standard for their existence! I can't recall if the movie actually applied his label to Joss but if it did, I have a problem with it!)
Ryan Hunter: I read the book, so I am probably too critical of the movie, but it
was still very good. Not great. There was one thing in the end that they
left out in the movie that was what brought the whole book together (I
won't say what it was for the benefit of those who haven't read it).
There are a few things that might deserve mentioning. I'll try not to
write ten pages on differences between the two, but I make no promises.
I'm glancing through the nit file as I write this, so... Your comment
about the Vegans having a super-duper antenna to pick up the signal-
they establish in the book that they would have had to have a REALLY
sensitive antenna. As for Ellie's equipment, I won't go into that, but
suffice it to say that the Vegans allocated a small amount of weight for
the possesions of the five travellers, and the International machine
Consortium was afraid to do ANYTHING to the Machine that wasn't
indicated by the Vegans. Hence the reason for the third (second in the
movie) machine. They didn't send anybody else because they convinced the
world that the whole thing was a four trillion dollar crock.
As for
Brian Lombard's comments about the Hitler signal arriving back here in
1988, it may have been around that time in the book when it did arrive
(the book takes place over a much longer time period).
Donald Carlson
talks about building the Machine at the Kennedy Space Center. The guys
in the book were paranoid about the whole idea of a Doomsday Device, so
the American Machine was built in a little town in Wyoming somewhere
called, appropriately, Machine.
Also, in the book, Hadden goes to one of
the many retirement homes in orbit around the earth. he is only about
fifty and in perfect health. in fact, he is the youngest permanent
resident of outer space.
Tim O' Lena- they show one person, cover up
their trail, leave 16 hours of blank tape "because that's the way it's
been done for millions of years."
Donald Carlson- the Five are
obviously not still in the pod in the book, and they don't do that feely
thing with the air. (I apologize for my doing this. Feel free to delete
this now)
Brian Dominguez- The Japanese traded their right to one of the
five seats in the machine for extensive involvement in the building of
the machine. The Americans and Soviets were afraid to test the
components of their machines because they were afraid they would screw
something up. Meanwhile, the Japanese are constructing each piece,
testing it, and soaking what information they can out of it. When the
American machine is damaged, and the Soviets have been trying to make
theirs out of cardboard, the existance of the japanese machine is
revealed. My gosh, I can't read any more. I apologize for ranting so
much on things that really cannot be considered nits. It just makes me
feel better. If you can find time in your schedule, Phil, you really
should read the book. It was SO much better than the movie. (Note from Phil: The books always are! And as far as Contact goes, it sounds like the book is different enough that I'm not sure we can use it to dispel nits! ;-)
9/1/97 Update
Matthew Chiappardi: I understand your concerns over the character of Palmer Joss. However,
I think they were trying to paint him as more a 'new-age' type
spiritualist than a hard-core traditional Christian. (Note from Phil: I didn't think that he was "hard-core" Christian but it appeared to me at least that the basis for his religious belief was the Judeo-Christian ethic and that ethic disavows sex outside of marriage. Of course, we got plenty of examples of preachers who supposed espouse this ethic that fail miserable in this area!)
Also, while I'm not too sensitive to sex in Hollywood etc., I thought
the sex scene between Ellie and Joss was a bit gratuitous. After I saw
the scene I saif to myself, 'well, that was quick'. In fact, it sort of
trivialized their relationship. It would have been a lot stronger if
the two had built a strng relationship rather than having a fling a few
years ago...it would have strengthened the lines about Joss not wanting
to lose Ellie in Outer Space. (Note from Phil: I whole-heartedly agree!)
Murray Leeder: Of course, Joss wouldn't be the first respected religious leader with a
history of fornication. (Note from Phil: Too true, too true.)
If you would like to add some comments,
drop me a note at chief@nitcentral.com.
Please put "Contact" in the Subject line and include your real
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of the e-mail so I can give you credit if you are the first person to bring
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mine and you grant me the right to use your name in any future publication
by me. I will do my best to give you credit if you are the first person to
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Copyright 1997 by Phil Farrand. All Rights Reserved.