Zachary Quinto vs. Leonard Nimoy: “The Challenge”:
Kudos to Audi for making such an awesome commercial!
May 162013
Feb 112013
For all Star Trek fans:
You’re welcome.
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Jun 182012
I didn’t much like any of the Bourne movies, but I’ll see this one, because I’d pay to watch Jeremy Renner peel apples for two hours.
Renner was phenomenal in the gripping war drama The Hurt Locker. Paul and I enjoyed him in the tragically cancelled television show The Unusuals too.
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Jun 202011
Priceless! A new introduction for Firefly as a 80′s show:
And here, Simon has his own 80′s show:
It’s all in the music and the graphics!
Oh, and here’s an awesome video of Summer Glau training for the fight sequences in Serenty:
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Aug 202010
Some FormSpring Questions and Answers on personal preferences in art:
What is your favourite classic novel, outside of Rand?
It’s hard to name one, so here’s a few, in some rough order:
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
- The Sea Wolf by Jack London
- Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I love classic fiction, and I read a great deal of it, but I’m not nearly as widely read as I’d like to be.
Which TV shows do you watch?
Some of these shows are no longer running, but we’re still watching them on DVD.
- The Unit
- Burn Notice
- Psych
- South Park
- The Office
- Inside the NFL
Of all of them, I like The Unit the best… perhaps even more than Firefly.
Do you like Rush? Why or why not?
No. It’s too hard rock for me. My tastes run more to pop. (Go Mika!) I can’t stand to listen to more than a few seconds of it.
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Apr 272010
One of my favorite television miniseries is the HBO production, “From The Earth To the Moon“. This series details the saga of the Apollo space program, with the goal (in President Kennedy’s words) of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth”.
Although I’m not a supporter of government-funded science for the same reasons Ayn Rand laid out in her essay “Apollo 11“, like Rand I still marvel at this tremendous achievement which was a triumph of man’s reason and courage.
Of the various episodes in the series my favorite is probably episode 5, “Spider“.
“Spider” depicted the development of the Lunar Module (LEM) by Grumman Aircraft, led by engineer Tom Kelly. Kelly and his team solved engineering challenge after challenge through a combination of reason, ingenuity, creativity, intellectual integrity, and above all an utmost respect for the facts of reality. The episode is upbeat and nicely captures the joy of engineering.
The whole episode is superb and worth watching. But I was especially glad to find this short excerpt of the final 5 minutes on YouTube:
Kelly’s musings about how each LEM has a “soul”, consisting of the souls of all the men who built her, designed her, and dreamed about her was very reminiscent of Dagny Taggart’s musings in Atlas Shrugged during the first run of the John Galt Line when she thought that the motors running her engines were alive — operated by remote control by the souls and minds of the thinking men who designed them.
This excerpt also contains one of my favorite short pieces of television music, the “Eagle” theme by composer Mason Daring.
Daring’s piece captures a uplifting combination of hope, yearning, solemnity, and pride in wanting to meet great challenges and overcome them.
The musical theme to the series (at the beginning and end of each episode) by Michael Kamen is also very nice:
(The video track just above is from a different television show, but the audio track is from the HBO series.)
I’ve always thought of these as wonderful musical concretizations of the optimistic American sense of life that was so widespread and normal just a few years ago.
So if you find yourself getting depressed over current events, just remember that many Americans still retain that marvelous implicit sense that life is good, happiness is desirable and attainable, and great achievements are possible to men. And as long as we still have that, this country still has a chance.
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May 082009
I haven’t watched The Simpsons in years, but this Sunday’s episode promises to be of interest, according to the description in TV Guide:
Sunday, May 10: The Simpsons (8pm): Oscar winner Jodie Foster lends her voice as Maggie, who portrays the girl-power protagonist from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.
(Via Randex.)
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Feb 232009
Joss Whedon really got my attention with his wonderful but sadly shortlived TV series Firefly and its related movie Serenity. So when I found the premiere episode of his Dollhouse series on Hulu last night, I was eager to check it out.
Quick review: I’m intrigued. Excellent production, solid acting, short skirts. And most important, a sci-fi premise that will make you think about the nature of personal identity. What if you could copy aspects of people from a library of personas to create an amalgam in a host, tailored for some particular application? Need someone who flies helicopters and has a doctorate in neurobiology? Coming right up — but you’d better hope that the amalgam is stable and that none of the donors’ psychological quirks mess things up before the mission is completed and the host is wiped clean again.
Which brings us to the hosts, the agents used in these missions. What would be their motivation for undertaking such a lifestyle? Who would volunteer to become a vessel forever filled and emptied by someone else? Sure, whatever horrible memories they’ve accumulated in life would be erased, which sounds appealing. And they would get to be and do an amazing variety of things — presumably bringing about happiness and justice and so on. That’s pretty cool, too.
But who are you, if not the sum of your choices and actions and experiences? And what is any of it worth to you if you have no knowledge of what “you” did?
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Dec 122008
Oct 312008
If you’ve ever watched Law and Order, you absolutely must watch this two minute spoof. It’s so damn perfect — even in its plot!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
