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Nobel Prize Winners on Sci-Fi Flicks
scientistguy writes "In case you missed it, Harold Varmus, Nobel prize winning retrovirologist and cancer biologist, former NIH director, and current
head of Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has written a review
of 28 Days Later
in this weekend's New
York Times. One would think
that his time is more valuably spent running important medical institutions,
searching for new cancer insights/cures, etc, but the dude's also an English lit major and has a penchant for
sci-fi. 28 Days Later
is the new flick from director Danny Boyle (Shallow
Grave, Trainspotting, etc.) about a virus termed rage
that is advertently released from a Cambridge primate research facility and
goes on to devastate much of merry old England more rapidly than the dragons
did in Reign of Fire. Although Varmus appears to go out of
his way to be even handed, it's clear that he has a problem suspending disbelief on a
topic (virology) that is near and dear to him. Reviews from
professional movie critics on 28 Days
Later have been mixed, but Ebert
and another NY
Times reviewer were into it.
Good, clean summer fun - aside from 'the scenes
of maiming, dismemberment, clubbing, shooting, bayoneting and shoplifting'."
-----SPOILERS-----
Well, from the little that we're told, the chimps are under a drug regimen designed to *repress* the rage. So,
A.) The virus quiets down momentarily when the victim has satisfied the desire to attack (which matches the behavior of the "zombies" in the flick, who slow down and wander off after any confrontation)
or
B.) The chimp seeing the videos was being monitored for threshold levels or some such.
Remember, the researcher said (pretty much) that "we need to see the phenomenon to understand it"
Frankly, what little hope I had of reasonable consistency died when the lights were on in the supermarket.
Science this ain't. After all "all of Manchester" is burning down but London, with more old buildings and the same lack of controls has not a single fire, even WITH their blowing up a gas (sorry, "petrol") station. I was wondering about the lack of fires *way* before they showed the burning skyline.
It's a thrill flick, dude. You're not going to find the logical reason for everything. You'ld be better off trying to find logic in the sequence of stardates in early Star Trek episodes.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
I always thought that The Omega Man was a remake of The Last Man on Earth (which I didn't realize was an Italian production), both of which were based on the work of Matheson: I Am Legend. Great book.