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Reviews
The Book of Eli (2010)
What's so important about the these books?
(There might be a spoiler in this comment, but if not please remove the spoiler warning, thank you :) There is nothing good in religion that you can't learn elsewhere. And if there is no religious followers of a religion, there is no people that will hold the book dear. Therefore there would other pieces of knowledge more worth savoring.
Ideals like free speech, freedom from discrimination, human and animal rights. Good insight like the scientific method of ruling out subjectivity through placebo testing, to read all arguments from all sides of the discussion before making up your mind, that homosexuality is not a sin but there are arguments for and against.
These give much more truth and insight than the usual simplified religious black and white teachings. This in addition to all the aggression, threats, discrimination and child abuse written in these books makes them even less worth. No, popularity does not make validity.
Religion spreads with people, not from any holy persons or revelations. If there where no books or literature, no old fathers teaching their traditions to the next generation, there would be the end of every religion.
Other than that the movie excels at every point. Even the martial arts action have calm filming so you can actually see and enjoy the show, and our hero sequences from one enemy to another very good.
The Testaments: Of One Fold and One Shepherd (2000)
Religious indoctrination
The movie is well enough, entertaining and involving with "ok" acting. But the religious indoctrination and dogmas are plentiful in the comments. Dogmas are simplified explanations to difficult/complex questions. The obvious one here is the good feeling you get when you see this movie. Mormons will swear it is the holy ghost you feel, skeptics claim it is a normal feeling you can have many other places, and in any other religion. One way to test it is in a double-blind placebo controlled environment, but religious groups wants you to jump to their conclusion. The hymn played after the movie try to double the effect. It's sad so many people are caught unprepared by missionaries and feel they discover something and want to believe before the had a chance to get counter- arguments.
Religious organizations have specialized themselves on arguments from their side of the discussion and are trying to keep the keys to heaven for themselves. This religious self- deception and indoctrination is not good for your mind, or soul (in case we have one). Let yourself be moved, but keep your mind in place while you watch this movie.
Star Trek (2009)
Good, but not Star Trek
For a nerd like me, this movie is worth it just to see the new going-to-warp computer animation. The movie however, is not very Star Trek-ish. Star Trek is, as many have pointed out before me, about the ideas. Ideas like in the future, we have so advanced technology that no-one needs to be poor. Abundant energy and replicator technology make everything almost free. Thus famine and greed have been eliminated, and people of this future are instead working to improving themselves and working for their ideals.
The original Star Trek ideas was, for instance, problems is possible to solve without violence, racism does not exist and compassion and dialogue is used actively in diplomatic situations. Ideas that say we shouldn't interfere with the developments of aliens on other planets, but wait to make contact until they have developed warp technology. Ideas like if we create robots or an android with artificial intelligence, it automatically have every right a living being would. If they are alive, we have no right to abuse them as laborers. Watching the older Star Trek series and films can teach you a lot.
The Star Trek 2009 movie have very few of these ideas. Star Trek 2009 uses the amazing sci-fi from the Star Trek universe, but leaves out this interesting future culture. It's an action-blast with little of the Star Trek soul. They try compassion, but fail with a smirk undertone and no real effort in saving an enemy. I find this very alien to the older Star Trek. Maybe we can expect two star trek types in the future, one for the kids and one for young adults.
The Star Trek Enterprise series from 2001 seems to be a mix. We get perspective and good insight because of the high intelligent scripts, but also a lot more action and violence.
Doomsday (2008)
Shaky cam and shifty cam action
Shaky cam is when the cameraman use a hand-held camera to make the scene appear more real and intense. It worked OK in The Bourne Identity and firefly series. I however found that I enjoy the action better if it is easier to see exactly what fighting moves the performers use. In Doomsday they also use shifty cam. That is they shift to a new scene very fast, and makes it even more difficult to see the details and enjoy the action. In worse cases people can actually get motion sickness. Maybe I'm old or slow in my head, but I hope they make more films like The Matrix series and Superman Returns for some hard-hitting, slow motion and solid action.
I Am Legend (2007)
God's killing our critical sense
The religious content of this movie hints that even when things are going real bad, there might still be a God, and he/she might help us get out of it. Dogmas like that ruins peoples critical sense, and is very irrespective of the actual children that die of hunger each day. For instance the recent plane crash where everybody survived and people thanked God for the seemingly miraculous landing, but where was God when all the other fatal plane crashes in history occurred?
1) The existence of God is a theory that cannot be falsified. This makes it useless as a scientific theory. Why? Because that's how science works. Propose a falsifiable theory. Make a prediction based on the theory. See if experimental evidence matches the theory, or if the theory is falsified.
This does not make the belief in the existence of God pointless as a motivating or inspirational factor for scientists. It just makes it pointless as an explanatory mechanism.
2) No, engineers study nature to see how to better manufacture things. Scientists study nature to determine the nature of things, and to provide explanatory reasons as to why things are the way they are. The minute you allow the existence of God as an explanatory mechanism, all other science goes out the window.
e.g. Why do things fall? Cause God wants them to.
3) Religious centers like churches and mosques specializes in arguments from their side of the discussion, but I assure you, for every religious argument there is an equal counter-argument. The goal of Science is to become as sure as we can about things, the goal of religion is to confuse people into a mist of claims with no real criticism. Religion can easily turn into fanaticism, but it's just as easy to teach people that not many things are very definite. For instance, I can claim I am the reborn Jesus, and you can't easily counter that. It's something I learned at school, which helped me develop some healthy skepticism.