The Movie Club

Still of the film John Carter

?2011 Disney.

Here?s what I want: McConaughey?s oiled pecs. At 48 frames per second. In 3-D. For $16 a ticket.

McConaughey has labored to find a persona that works both for him and for an audience. He?s aged into himself, and we?ve aged into him. In 1996, he was presented to us the way Julia Ormond and Gretchen Mol were: as products the movie industry invented, packaged, and sold. But he was too sleazy for stardom in 1996 and '97 and '98. Spielberg and Zemeckis cast him as these figures of piety and virtue, and seeing him with that hair and hearing use that sexed-up drawl on African slaves and Jodie Foster, you just laugh, especially now. It was never acting at the beginning of his career. It was always Halloween. Of course part of the reason we still have him and not Ormond or Mol is that movie sexism is pernicious and sucks. ?

Anyway, back then, we couldn?t have known that McConaughey really was the creep outside the Emporium pool hall trying to score high school girls. He eventually found a way to bend romantic comedies to his druggy, slutty conceitedness. And now he?s come out on the other side. We like The Lincoln Lawyer?and?Killer Joe?and?Magic Mike?because they?re the truth to the lies?Contact and?Amistad?were peddling. Even when Matthew McConaughey?s being good, a kind of lasciviousness comes through and stains all his principles like sweat on silk. Stephanie, I don?t use ?trash? as some kind of demarcation that separates the so-called lowbrow from the high. I use it as a genre of moviemaking with its own special pleasures and properties, and I?d like here and now to crown McConuaghey as that genre?s king. If we want this man?and we do now?we don?t want him fulsome and half-cocked. We want him fully plumed and fulminating.

Channing Tatum turned a different corner last year. McConaughey gained respectability by being disreputable. Tatum is more like Pinocchio, cute wood that turned into an adorable man.?21 Jump Street?did it for me. The movie was a stoopid comedy whose every joke managed to contain a joke or two more, and Tatum was in on all of them. I didn?t laugh at anything as hard as I did when he and Jonah Hill take that party drug and try to play it straight?the cutaways to their freak-outs are just glorious gonzo comedy. I left that movie excited to see what else Tatum would do. Having just typed that, I also feel bad for the Bizarro Tatum: Taylor Kitsch. Kitsch easily could have been in any of the 23 movies Tatum was in. Instead made?Battleship?and the absurdly over-hated but admittedly flavorless?John Carter?(that movie is what happens when Avatar starts taking its medication). Conversely, Tatum could have been in both movies and they would have been hits. He became a bigger deal by flashing a sense of humor. I mean, you have to have one to make something as backward as?The Vow. But in just one year and without much to show for it (not even Oliver Stone?s lavish cartel embarrassment?Savages), Kitsch might have run out of chances. He wasn?t even lucky enough to live up to his surname.

About?The Master?and the argument for the ?twicer,? I?ve been encouraging people to see it again not because they?re too simple or stupid to appreciate it the first time but because I just think the movie was ill-served by the advance speculation about its being an allegory for Scientology. I also saw the film under some of the worst possible moviegoing conditions and was so disappointed by everything that I arranged to see it again, and found it devastating. Freddie Quell is just a great movie character, a man you or I might see as tragic and who?s being goaded into seeing himself the same way because he can?t make it to wherever the Cause is trying to get him to go. He doesn?t have that kind of soul. At the end of the day, he just wants a nice girl whether she?s made of flesh or sand.

The movie?s about the limits of belief. For some people, it?s just about the limits of Paul Thomas Anderson writing and directing. I?m still speaking to those people, but it?s very hard. At their best, he, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and this rejuvenated Kathryn Bigelow are the most exciting American directors right now, artists who can balance the artistic and the commercial, ambiguity and clarity, whose new work you?re desperate to see. In any case, I don?t know that I would have found Freddie?s brokenness so moving without a second viewing. The same is true for?Holy Motors, a movie whose insanity I enjoyed once but whose spirituality overtook me a second time. I don?t know why seeing it again was necessary, but I did it.

I sometimes see movies twice and wish I hadn?t. But a great or very good movie should be able to withstand and reward a second viewing. Argo?did that, even with that rigged ending?so suspenseful, so cheap! We should devote some time to Michael Haneke?s?Amour, which I?ve also seen twice and found even more harrowing the second time than the first. Haneke is a great film artist who?s made a movie that hasn?t divided audiences in half the way his films tend to: Code Unknown,?The Piano Teacher,?Cach?, two versions of Funny Games,?The White Ribbon. I don?t know that that?s an achievement, although the movie itself certainly is.

His detractors find him doomy and punitive, but the dread that his bleakness produces in me is viscerally appealing, the way a roller coaster?s climb to that first drop is.?No one in the movies writes worst-case scenarios the way Haneke does. This new one has caught on because there?s an acknowledgement of transcendent, transfixing holiness in it that?s unprecedented for him.

I think most of us like this movie. Do we all like him? ?????????

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=5a4d9d61c720fc6af35b2497049ce4b8

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AP Source: Surgery reveals damage to RG3's ACL

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A person familiar with the situation says the surgery on Robert Griffin III's knee revealed damage to the ACL.

The Washington Redskins quarterback had surgery Wednesday morning to repair a torn lateral collateral ligament in his right knee. The procedure also examined Griffin's ACL, which he tore while playing for Baylor in 2009. Another torn ACL would complicate Griffin's chances of returning by the start of next season.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the Redskins had not made an announcement about the latest details surrounding the rookie quarterback's injury.

Griffin sprained the LCL last month and reinjured the knee in Sunday's playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

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Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-source-surgery-reveals-damage-rg3s-acl-161052194--nfl.html

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Fighting flares in Palestinian camp in Damascus

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) ? Palestinian factions in Syria called for a cease-fire Tuesday after fighting flared at a refugee camp in the capital, Damascus, highlighting a split among Palestinians as the civil war intensifies.

The Yarmouk camp has been the scene of heavy clashes in the past, but the battles subsided last month after Syrian rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, battled loyalists there to a standstill.

In Tuesday's fighting, five people were killed on Yarmouk Street, four of them when a shell exploded and the fifth in sniper fire, according to The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights that relies on reports from activists on the ground.

The group said intense clashes were taking place on the edges of the camp, where the Syrian troops are positioned, and the nearby Hajar Aswad district.

In a statement, representatives of 14 Damascus-based Palestinian factions called for a cease-fire and a halt to all military operations to enable medical teams and food supply trucks to enter the camp. They urged gunmen to withdraw from the camp "in order not to bear the responsibility of the continuing displacement of (Yarmouk's) residents."

About half of Yarmouk's 150,000 residents have fled since fighting erupted in mid-December, according to estimates by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees that administers Palestinian camps in the Middle East. Some sought refuge in neighboring Lebanon, and others found shelter in UNRWA schools in Damascus and other Syrian cities.

Dozens have been killed in the fighting, although the United Nations did not provide an exact figure of casualties in Yarmouk violence that has included airstrikes and artillery shelling from the Syrian military and clashes between rebels and Assad loyalists.

Khaled Abdul-Majid, a senior representative of the Palestinian factions that issued the statement, told reporters in Damascus, "We are working to end those clashes."

An UNRWA spokesman told The Associated Press Syrian forces continue blocking the camp's entrances, though residents were allowed to retrieve personal belongings. All UNRWA facilities in the camp remain closed, including three heath centers that are inaccessible because of the fighting, said the spokesman, Sami Mshasha.

When the revolt against Assad's rule began in March 2011, the half-million-strong Palestinian community in Syria stayed on the sidelines. As the civil war deepened, most Palestinians backed the rebels, while some groups ? such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command ? have been fighting alongside the troops. The PFLP-GC joined the call for a truce on Tuesday. The group is led by Ahmed Jibril, a long-time Assad ally.

Yarmouk is the largest of nine Palestinian camps in Syria. Since the camp's creation in 1957, it has evolved into a densely populated residential district just five miles (eight kilometers) from the center of Damascus. Several generations of Palestinian refugees live there.

Also Tuesday, rebels claimed they shot down a military helicopter at the Taftanaz air base in the northern province of Idlib. The Observatory said the helicopter was flying toward the base.

Rebel units, including the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group, have battled army troops for weeks for control of the base, from which warplanes have been taking off on missions to bomb rebel-held areas around Syria.

Amateur video posted on YouTube by activists showed black smoke rising from what appears to be an airfield. The video was consistent with AP reporting from the area.

Syria's state-run SANA news agency said army units fought rebels in several areas of Idlib province, including near the Taftanaz base, "killing several terrorists, injuring many others, and destroying their weapons." Troops also battled opposition fighters in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, and in the northern city of Aleppo, the agency said.

In Damascus, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar, who was seriously wounded when a bomb hit his ministry in Damascus last month, attended a Cabinet meeting to discuss Assad's initiative to end the civil war. In a broadcast of Tuesday's meeting on Syrian state TV, al-Shaar was seen with a bandaged right hand and a scar on his forehead.

In a speech Sunday, Assad struck a defiant tone, ignoring international demands to step down and saying he is ready to talk ? but only with those "who have not betrayed Syria." He also vowed to continue the battle "as long as there is one terrorist left," a term the government uses for rebels.

The opposition rejected the offer, which also drew harsh international criticism.

The Observatory and other activists also reported heavy fighting Tuesday in suburbs of Damascus, including the Sayda Zeinab district, and shelling of the towns of Beit Saham and Aqraba, both near Damascus airport.

As fighting rages on, more than one million Syrians are suffering from food shortages but are out of reach of vital aid because of the fighting and government restrictions, according a statement Tuesday by the World Food Program.

The conflict started as peaceful protests against the Assad rule, but it turned into a civil war after a harsh government crackdown. More than 60,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011.

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Surk reported from Beirut.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fighting-flares-palestinian-camp-damascus-123432097.html

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Green Blog: Court Seeks More Public Input on Nuclear Safety

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must either allow more public participation in its decisions about fire safety at the Indian Point 3 nuclear reactor or to show why such input is impractical or inappropriate.

A lawsuit brought by Richard L. Brodsky, a former New York State assemblyman and opponent of Indian Point, involves exemptions granted by the commission from compliance with some fire regulations. Like many reactors around the country, Indian Point installed a fire retardant called Hemyc around critical electric cables in the 1980s to meet a rule that the cables had to be safe from fire for one hour. But the material turned out to be nowhere near as fire-resistant as advertised.

In granting the exemption, the regulatory commission cut the amount of time that the retardant would have to be effective to a level that the plant could meet. Critics said this was unsafe, but the agency said it had re-analyzed the amount of time the substance actually needed to work to ensure safety.

The commission has also been struggling to modernize its fire protection regulations rather than giving so many case-by-case exemptions from its rules. And it has sometimes ruled that the plant?s owner, Entergy, has not done enough to assure fire safety.

The decision by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, dated Monday and disseminated Tuesday, did not pass judgment on whether the commission?s decisions had been correct. In fact, ?we conclude that the plaintiffs? challenges to the N.R.C.?s grant for an exemption to Entergy from certain fire safety regulations in the operation of its Indian Point 3 nuclear power plant are generally without merit,?? it wrote.

Nonetheless, the appeals panel sent the case back to a lower court with instructions to have the commission ?supplement the administrative record to explain why allowing public input into the exemption request was inappropriate or impracticable,? or to ?take such other action as it may deem appropriate to resolve this issue.??

The commission had argued that if members of the public did not like the decision, they could always appeal it. But the appeals court said that the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires environmental impact statements and other steps to assure public participation in policy, seemed to require public input before a decision was made. That is, unless the commission can show why this is not the case.

A spokesman for the commission, Neil Sheehan, said it had not decided whether to appeal.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Brodsky declared victory. ?Now the burden isn?t on the public to show why they need to be part of the exemption process,?? he said. ?The burden is on the N.R.C. to show why they shouldn?t be. ??

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/court-seeks-more-public-input-on-nuclear-safety/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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US doctors feel pinch of early flu season, push for vaccinations

CHICAGO (Reuters) - When Dr. Diane Chaney arrived for her morning shift at the University of Chicago Medicine's emergency department on Monday, there were nine patients from the overnight shift waiting for treatment.

By late morning, 36 patients, most with flu symptoms, were waiting.

Across town, doctors at Rush University Medical Center have seen 203 flu patients since November 5, compared with 119 patients for the entire flu season last year.

"We are coming to the point where we are running out of testing supplies," said Dr. Ed Ward, an expert in emergency and internal medicine at Rush, a teaching hospital.

Similar scenes are being played out in emergency departments across the country as the United States grapples with the earliest flu season in a decade.

"The emergency rooms are quite full and it's clear that the annual flu epidemic is in full swing," said Dr. Brian Currie, medical director for research at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of people visiting their doctor for a flu-like illness has climbed from 2.8 percent to 5.6 percent in the last four weeks. That compares with 2.2 percent during last year's mild flu season and a peak of 7.7 percent during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.

Dr. Daniel Lucey, who tracks global flu activity at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, said people naturally reflect on the past year's flu season as a measure for the severity of flu, making this season appear all the worse by comparison.

Even so, he said, "it's an objective fact that flu viruses are circulating earlier and more widely this year than most years."

Lucey and others say it's not clear why the flu arrived earlier than normal in the United States this year.

Although each season is unique, flu activity generally starts to pick up in December, peaks sometime in January or February and peters out by late March or early April.

One risk of an early flu season is that it arrives before people have had a chance to get vaccinated.

That may be especially true following last year's very late and mild flu season, which may have led some to think they had more time. Experts, however, say it is not too late to get a flu shot.

"We strongly encourage people to get vaccinated, and we'd like them to do that as soon as possible," said Dr. Michael Jhung, a CDC flu expert.

VACCINE IS BEST DEFENSE

The predominant strain of flu this year is an influenza A (H3N2) virus, which has accounted for 76 percent of the reported viruses.

"We know H3N2 has been associated in previous seasons with pretty severe illness, particularly among the elderly. That could be a contributor to why we are seeing such high levels of activity right now," Jhung said.

Currie of Montefiore suspects the H3N2 strain may also pose more of a risk for younger people, who "don't have as much experience with that strain."

Fortunately, flu experts did a good job last spring of predicting which of the flu strains circulating in Asia would be most likely to cause disease in this flu season. As a result, the CDC says the current batch of flu vaccines appear to be a good match for this year's flu.

So far, 91 percent of flu viruses analyzed by the CDC match flu strains contained in this year's vaccine.

"The viruses that we're detecting are like the viruses that are in the vaccine, so there should be good protection," Jhung said.

Earlier this year, manufacturers estimated they would make 137 million doses of vaccine, and by early December, the CDC had vaccinated an estimated 112 million people, suggesting vaccine coverage is fairly high so far, Jhung said.

Even if vaccinated, people may still get the flu. Experts, however, say the vaccine will help reduce the severity of the illness, and may help reduce the number of deaths, which can range from a low of 3,000 to a high of nearly 50,000.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, said even in healthy young people, the flu vaccine was only 70 to 80 percent effective. And in older adults, the vaccine only protects about 60 to 65 percent of those who receive it.

But it is still the best defense against flu.

"Study after study after study shows that the influenza vaccine reduces the risk of getting sick and getting any of the other significant complications of the flu," Schaffner said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Paul Simao)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-doctors-feel-pinch-early-flu-season-push-233405147.html

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DLP unveils new Pico chip architecture, promises brighter projectors with better resolution

Pico projectors are slowly getting better and better as the years go by, and DLP's latest chip architecture announced at CES aims to raise the bar once more. The platform is the same size as the current generation, but it promises that products will be able to offer twice the resolution, 30 percent higher brightness and 50 percent increase in energy efficiency. Given our fondness for products like the Samsung Galaxy Beam, we're pretty excited to see how good movies look on our living room wall. Don't get too anxious, however -- the new platform is currently sampling to manufacturers and products are expected to arrive "as early as the end of the year." We have the press release for your viewing pleasure past the break.

Continue reading DLP unveils new Pico chip architecture, promises brighter projectors with better resolution

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Mobile

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/dlp-pico-architecture/

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Today on New Scientist: 8 January 2013

Mock Mars mission reveals salty surprise

Unexpected findings from the "crew members" of the Mars 500 experiment may overturn a common assumption about how our body stores and excretes dietary salt

'Exocomets' abound in alien solar systems

Planets around billions of stars may be getting pummelled by the icy dirt-balls in the same way that the young Earth once was

Australia faces another week of 'catastrophic' heat

A record-smashing "dome of heat" is causing the worst fire threat on record and forcing Australian meteorologists to add two colours to their heat maps

Black holes star in first images of high-energy cosmos

NASA's recently launched NuSTAR space telescope peers through the dust that blinds other craft to spot a supernova and two black holes

Another day at the office for NASA's robot astronaut

This fine figure of a robot is Robonaut 2 hard at work aboard the International Space Station last week

Into thin air: Storage salvation for green energy

If renewable energy is to succeed, we need to find a better way to store it. Liquid air batteries could be the answer, says Jim Giles

Tony Fadell: From iPhones to sexing up thermostats

After quitting Apple, the tech guru behind the iPod wanted to revolutionise our homes - starting with the humble thermostat

World's oldest pills treated sore eyes

Tablets found in an ancient shipwreck contain zinc carbonates - just like many of today's eye medications

Only the toughest would survive on Tatooine worlds

A new look at twin-star systems hints that life might thrive in more places than we thought, as long as it can adapt to wild climates

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/27513130/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A130C0A10Ctoday0Eon0Enew0Escientist0E80Ejanua0E10Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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