Podcast: Track Em Tag Em Tickle Em
Posted by Editor on January 27th, 2014
Andrew attempts to sell Brian and Justin on an all expenses paid cruise with several thousand cannibal catches. A man in the mist turns into a mystery that bends the reality of the boys and makes them question how they would handle such a revelation. Andrew goes toe to toe with a famous scientific expert to defend the honor of Gravity.
It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.
Get all the latest details on Andrew’s new show Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne coming this January to A&E, like the official Facebook page.
Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.
Subscribe to the Weird Things podcast on iTunes
Podcast RSS feed
Episode archive
Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings012714.mp3
[podcast]http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings012714.mp3[/podcast]
Picks:
Justin:
Brian:
Andrew:
Twitter this
January 27th, 2014 at 6:38 pm
Gravity was one hell of a movie. For my money, if you’re basing something off a true story, you’re allowed to edit for time but not content. You can shrink down some major character’s support staff to just one staffer to economize on the speaking roles while preserving the essential facts of the story. What is unforgivable is changing the facts of the story. I thought that the Social Network was a great piece of filmmaking but a failure at any kind of accuracy. The whole conceit of the man who invents facebook resorting to facebook-stalking an ex is great except for the part where it never happened. Zuckerberg married his long-term girlfriend and they’re quite happy together. It would be just as stupid as adding a subplot in Apollo 13 with one of the astronauts secretly having an affair with his crewmate’s wife.
It’s perfectly acceptable to make a movie inspired by a real person but fictionalized so that the filmmakers can alter the story to suit their purpose. Citizen Kane was about William Randolph Hearst but fictionalized. Gravity went along those lines with a fictionalized space program based on elements from our own world. So yeah, the shuttle’s still flying, the Chinese station is next door to the ISS, etc. While the setup of this scenario breaks from our reality, it plays out semi-realistically. And it had to be changed because, for the most part, a disaster happens in space and you die. You’d have about as much luck trying to survive a beheading.
The only bit that stuck out as a serious science fail was the dangling tether bit. And it’s the biggest shame because it could have been handled a little more elegantly. Clooney needed written out of the script at that point, there were plenty of ways it could have gone wrong for him.
But those are small quibbles, like complaining about a mole on the shoulder of a beautiful woman. The movie was smart, engaging, and grabs you by the throat from start to finish. Calling things a rollercoaster is a bit of a cliche but that’s what this movie is. And you are exactly right to point. There were so many dumb elements the studio wanted to add to Gravity. Flashbacks to scenes on Earth in Bullock’s life, people yammering back and forth in Ground Control, etc. Unnecessary and gets in the way of the story.