I loved that the climax of the film was the scientist getting published.

I saw Arrival during Toronto Film Festival and went to watch it again over the weekend. "Story of Your Life" is one of my all-time favourite short stories -- really, that entire Ted Chiang collection, "Stories of Your Life and Others", is wall-to-wall brilliance and I cannot recommend the book highly enough -- and remain impressed at how effectively they tackled something I thought was nigh unfilmable. There were significant departures from the short story, but I thought they managed to stay true to the core conceit nonetheless, which is no mean feat.

I still wish they'd found a way to include the digression into Fermat's Principle from the book, which would have given Renner's character a bit more to do other than look pretty and act supportive (not that there is anything wrong with that!) Plus, it dovetails nicely with the linguistic elements in explaining some of the reasons why Heptapods perceive the world as they do. I also feel like they didn't spend near enough time shedding light on the analysis of Heptapod B (the written language) and how not only deciphering it but the ACT of writing it and immersing oneself in it, is essential in understanding their worldview. Tl;dr I wanted the movie to be nerdier but understand why they short-charged that element from the story, etc.

The external conflicts i.e. the international incidences and the whole thing with the Chinese General, are not present in the short story. I mean, it's realistic that it'd trigger an international incidence like that, but I dunno. It felt more like a distraction and borrowed from a way more conventional SF/action movie.

One thing that got me thinking a bit deeper -- in the story, there is quite a bit of discussion about free will vs. predestination, which really is the meat of the thing. The original story takes a more... fatalistic seems like the wrong word. More philosophical approach to it? You can perceive the future and the present at the same time, and you enact, or "perform" the action that will lead to the future you see with grace and clear eyes, but I never got the sense that there was a *choice* not to do it, to break free and change the course. In the movie, it feels like Louise has a choice, but chooses to embrace the joy and the pain her time with her daughter brings (hence Ian leaving her for "making the wrong choice"). It's just as moving, but the nuance is a little different. I'd love to hear what other folks who'd also read the story thought about that.

Anyway, mad props to Amy Adams, who has rarely been better. I also thought the score was dynamite. I've been playing Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight (featured prominently in the film) in a loop since I watched it.

Also, don't go see the movie with an actual linguistics professor as I did. After the movie, there was a lot of ranting about how this was a super unrealistic stretch of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and grumblings about how she'd now have to prepare to discuss this with her students because of the stupid movie. I told her she has no poetry in her soul and super-unrealistic stretches of known scientific priniciples are what SF is all about. :p

I saw Dr. Strange this weekend in IMAX 3D. Totally worth it. The movie was more moving art than a movie, if you know what I mean. The story is simplisitic, but the visuals. Wow. And the concepts for how sorcerors would see the world and deal with problems was cool. The concept of the whole final fight scene was Volans Crack for non-traditional problem-solving. And The Swinton! Every scene, so good.

The only real negative was Cumberbatch's accent. He has many talents, but an American accent is not among them.

I didn't hear any problems with it, but then I've tended to avoid work in which he's using his own British accent.

super-unrealistic stretches of known scientific priniciples are what SF is all about.

Well...yeah!

Matt, I thought it was really distracting and the guy I saw it with commented afterwards that Stephen Strange had about 6 accents.

ION, we watched Top Secret last night. Carson from Downton Abbey was in it. Maybe that's why he looked familiar to me!

He has many talents, but an American accent is not among them.

It reminded me so much of Hugh Laurie's accent from the first season of House. I think maybe that's just how Brits think we sound.

I always wonder if the American version of an "English" accent sounds as bad to them as many of the British "American" accents sound to me.

Did anyone else watch the London production of Gypsy on PBS over the weekend? The little kids were comical in their attempts to do the American accent a lot of the time. No shade, though -- they were doing a lot of other stuff really well!