Jack Reacher

Lo and behold, I have watched a modern movie for once.

Today we are taking a look at Jack Reacher (2012).

This movie is based on the novel One Shot, by Christopher McQuarrie. I haven't read it, so I'm not commenting on it, I'm just mentioning it.

First of all, this is a Tom Cruise produced movie, starring Tom Cruise. Now, this isn't a bad thing – Tom always gives it his all. I haven't seen all his films, but the ones I have seen are at least decent and he never gives a lousy performance.

Anyway, Jack Reacher is no exception. It is a very enjoyable movie. But it's a weird one. The story in a nutshell is this;

A man is accused of shooting five people, and during interrogation, he asks for Jack Reacher. Reacher is a former military police Major with pretty much every decoration and medal the U.S. gives out. Being an amazing investigator, he and the accused persons lawyer, Helen, digs around. The plot thickens, lots of action happens, end credits roll.

So far so good, but I get a feeling that this film has a bit of an identity crisis. Conspiracies, deep deceptions, cover ups and paranoia belongs in the thriller category. Car chases, tense shoot-outs and close combat badassery belongs in the action section. Snappy dialog, and goofy events are pretty much comedy material.

Of course, action-comedies are normal, as are action-thrillers. But an action-thriller-comedy is an odd bird to say the least. Alright, so I'm being a bit picky here. There isn't that much comedy, but there is enough to stand out. The surprising thing is, it works. For some mysterious reason this movie hit pretty much all the right notes.

Jack is the typical lone wanderer, bad-ass fighter, super smart hero. You have seen him before with other faces and names. He can beat up multiple goons at ones. Whether it's clues or bullets, he doesn't miss, ever. You know the type, but Reacher feels a little more “realistic”.

Helen is awful. I have nothing against Rosamund Pike, but Helen is a weak character through and through. She spends half her scenes looking bewildered, as if Rosamund had just realized she's in a Cruise movie and she's not sure if that's good for her career. You could replace her with anyone else and it wouldn't matter.

We have a couple of veterans making and appearance. Robert Duvall and Werner Herzog play small but important roles, and there are some other recognizable faces. No complaints about the others.

The action is really solid. Well shot, and not too jumpy or dark. The stand out for me is how people react when getting shot. They don't go flying or spin several times. They mostly fall over as they should. Bonus points there.

My biggest complaint (apart from Helen) is the way the film presents the “mystery”. It's hard to say if it's intentionally feeding you information, or if it's clumsily leaving things in the open, but by the time the characters learn something vital, you already know about it.

Ultimately, Jack Reacher doesn't really do anything new, but it does it's thing well. It is in my book a genuinely entertaining movie. I got the feeling that they had fun when shooting it, and that's awesome. If you want a decent low key action movie, you can do a lot worse than this. And by low key I mean it's not by Michael Bay.

That is that. Until next time, have a great week and stay safe.

How did they do it?

Some people love it, some don't really care about it, but I have never run across someone who actively hates The Blues Brothers (1980).

This is not a review of the classic comedy, that would be a bit pointless, it's an introduction of the making of video. I watched it last night, and it was fascinating.

The Blues Brothers is a movie that essentially does everything right. And it's an odd one. Part action comedy, part rhythm and blues musical. It's also odd in how there is no typical good guy / bad guys set up.

Sure, Jake and Elwood are the good guys, but they lie, steal, cheat, sabotage and destroy property in spades.

Then we have the Illinois Nazis and the violent Good Ole Boys, but one group are Nazis (no, really?) that don't really accomplish anything, and the Good Ole Boys who, while in the wrong, have every right to be mad at the Blues Brothers. Law enforcement does not count since they're doing their jobs.

In the end, everyone get what's coming to them. Even Jake and Elwood (and the entire band) goes to jail, as they should.

But for all the chaos and madness, it's a really heart warming movie. You feel good after seeing it. It's a movie the likes of which we will likely never see again. It was too expensive, too demanding and way too experimental. You know, things studios void at all costs. After all, 103 cars were wrecked during shooting (a record at the time) and in the penultimate scene, there are over 500 extras running around. Oh, and three Sherman tanks, all in central Chicago, which had to be shut down.

Anyway, I tripped over the Making of the Blues Brothers documentary, and it's really interesting, so I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Until next time have a swinging week!

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHMzKNR7iWc

The Voynich Manuscript

Today we're talking about the Voynich manuscript.

Called the most mysterious book in the world by some, a complete hoax by others and a compelling mystery by practically everyone else.

The book has been carbon dated to the early 15^th century, probably between 1404 and 1438, so we know the vellum is real. It then went from owner to owner but there are very few confirmed owners on record, but every famous astronomer, alchemist and soothsayer is named as a “possible owner” even though there's no proof.

What we know however is that it ended up in the hands of Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish revolutionary, antiquarian and bibliophile in 1912. Since no one knows who wrote the book, it's named after him.

So, what's the book like, you ask? It's written in an unknown language, with many illustrations. Some pages are walls of text, others written in circles. Some pages are fold-outs, and all of it is a mystery.

Code crackers ranging from eager amateurs to professional military cryptographers have tried their best and come up empty. This of course fuels the hoax theory. After all, how can it be that no one can crack it, right?

Well there has been a new development. A team from the University of Alberta have put an AI to work on it, and it has suggestions. Not proof, keep that in mind here, but ideas and new avenue of approach.

It seems, according to the AI, that the text is Hebrew, but that every word is an alphagram. An alphagram is when you take all the letters in a word and arrange them alphabetically, so alphabetical becomes aaabcehillpt.

The team needs help from people who are good at Hebrew, but so far no one want to help. If you're good at it, maybe contact the university?

Anyway, according to the AI, the first words in the Voynich manuscript are:

"She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people,"

A bit of a mess, sure, but at least it's something. If you want to know more, here are some helpful links:

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

the Science Alert article about the AI:

https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-may-have-finally-decoded-the-bizarre-mysterious-voynich-manuscript

A PDF of twenty pages from the manuscript:

http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/pdf/en/vms-quire1-en.pdf

That's that. Happy reading, and until next time, have a great week!

New myths to bust

So, MythBusters are back.

Mind you, not the original MythBusters, but rather the show is back. The original run lasted 14 seasons, which is a lot for any show except a soap opera.

Anyway, there was a competition-show called MythBusters: The Search that started with ten contestants, and every episode, one was eliminated until there were two remaining winners: Brian Louden and Jonathan Lung. I haven't seen the competition, but the host was Kyle Hill, and I have seen several of his nerd-science videos on Youtube, and his stuff is pretty awesome. Stuff like proving scientifically that stabbing someone with a lightsaber would instantly turn all the water in the body to steam, and he would most likely detonate. Fun times.

So the “new” MythBusters. I watched the three first episodes of the new season, and I liked what I saw. It feels fresh, like new eyes on an old problem. One of the “issues” that marred the latest seasons with the original crew was, in my opinion, a certain formulaic sluggishness. The original crew (Adam, Jamie, Kari, Grant & Tory) had done everything for so long that patterns started to emerge. It wasn't that they didn't do a good job, far from it, it was just that they were a bit too good. The challenge was gone, if that makes sense. It felt like they didn't have to really experiment or try something new, they just got it done if at all possible.

Now, Brian and Jon are definitely skilled, but they haven't been at it for over a decade so they need to feel their way forward, and that process is fun to watch.

Otherwise, the show is scaled down. The original narrator is still there, which is cool, but pretty much everything else is new. This of course makes sense, as the main reason for shutting down the original run of Mythbusters was money. Viewer numbers were still good, but people weren't tuning in in the same amount they used to.

I'm definitely going to watch more of season 15, given the time. If you used to watch the original series, I'd say give this a chance, you will probably like it.

There we are, keeping it short today. Until next time, have a great week!