|
Post by Marshall on Feb 17, 2024 9:13:22 GMT -5
Saw Oppenheimer last night. I give it 2 stars. Mediocre, really. Way too long and drawn out. Spent the whole movie focusing on politics of the day and little (none really) about science and the difficulty of splitting the atom and creating the bomb. Even the explosion was wimpy. No real discussion of the consequences. Just blah, blah, blah about the politics of the day and how they threw Oppenheimer under the bus.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Feb 17, 2024 9:17:03 GMT -5
PS - And I can't watch a movie without closed captions any more. This is on Peacock, which we got to watch Illini basketball. A third of the way through the movie I had to stop and figure out how to put on closed cation in Peacock, because we couldn't understand enough of the dialog to know what was going on. Then it was much better. (Still boring, but at least we could understand what was said).
I don't think I can see a film in a theater any more.
|
|
|
Post by howard lee on Feb 17, 2024 9:55:14 GMT -5
Marshall, I have found that the volume of films in the cinema is usually so loud it reverberates the air waves even worse and causes distortion for me. I have found that a pair of lightweight earplugs filter out the vibrations and allow the dialog to come through a bit more purely without all the reverb. I reserve reverb for when I am playing an electric guitar.
PS: I wasn't wowed by "Oppenheimer" either.
|
|
|
Post by TKennedy on Feb 17, 2024 10:40:55 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Cornflake on Feb 17, 2024 11:01:41 GMT -5
I haven't seen the movie. I've read a lot about the subject matter. My understanding is that the science involved in developing the bomb wasn't that complicated. The major challenges were technological. I suspect that if a movie focused on the technological challenges, I'd be dozing in short order. The human side of things was very interesting. Since I haven't seen the movie, I don't know if it handled those well or not.
As an aside, a good friend's father spent WWII working on the Manhattan Project. He didn't know what he was working on at the time. He was stationed in Santa Fe and did a lot of administrative work. It was only when the war was over that he found out what it had all been about.
|
|
|
Post by John B on Feb 17, 2024 11:31:58 GMT -5
|
|
Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,850
|
Post by Dub on Feb 17, 2024 13:15:51 GMT -5
I don’t know whether I’ll watch Oppenheimer or not, but I’m sure the political and social stories behind the atomic bomb are way more interesting than the science. I understand the science, I understood the science at the atomic level before I was in high school. Once you have a critical mass of the right radioactive stuff, it's going to blow. The trick is creating the critical mass at the desired moment and not being anywhere near when it happens. the Manhattan Project was more about secrecy than engineering. A more interesting account can be found in Stewart Udall's book, The Myths of August. Truman had been kept in the dark through the whole project. FDR was dead and they were ready to drop the bomb before Truman was told.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Feb 17, 2024 14:09:17 GMT -5
I understand the science, I understood the science at the atomic level before I was in high school. Once you have a critical mass of the right radioactive stuff, it's going to blow. The trick is creating the critical mass at the desired moment and not being anywhere near when it happens. That's easy for you to say. There is a PBS documentary on Oppenheimer. I saw only part of it. The part I saw talked about the difficulty they were having coming up with a mechanism to take the theory to application. And the fears they had about the whole thing. There was a lot of discussion about Oppenheimer's life and philandering's. But I only saw part of it. And it's now only available on streaming services that I am not willing to pay for. To me that documentary was doing a more complete job of telling the story of how the A-bomb came about and the fears that Germany was going to get it first. Yes, it was all top secret. I don't really care about the political bullshit of the day. I got plenty of that crap every time I glance at any present day media source. Plus the movie was drawwwwwwwwwwwn out. In the end it was more about Robert Downey Jr's character and his deception. (Who cares?)
|
|
|
Post by Rob Hanesworth on Feb 17, 2024 14:29:01 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by coachdoc on Feb 17, 2024 16:19:17 GMT -5
Not gonna read it on the basis of my wife’s philosophy, you get in your life what you give your attention to. I attend to dangling participles.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Feb 18, 2024 6:59:06 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Cornflake on Feb 18, 2024 7:21:01 GMT -5
I have to figure out how to use closed captions. The British shows are often hard to understand. They speak English pretty well for foreigners but still.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Feb 18, 2024 8:17:19 GMT -5
I've started reading the Soundhole with closed captions. It's not perfect, but it seems to help.
|
|
|
Post by John B on Feb 18, 2024 12:17:51 GMT -5
I've started reading the Soundhole with closed captions. It's not perfect, but it seems to help. I've actually found that captions off make it easier to figure out what's going on.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Feb 18, 2024 14:05:13 GMT -5
I have to figure out how to use closed captions. The British shows are often hard to understand. They speak English pretty well for foreigners but still. Depends on what your TV provider is. We're on Youtube for regular TV. They have their system for closed caption and recording and such. We also have Netflix and that has it's own separate way to turn things on and off. We just got Peacock a week ago (for basketball purposes). And decided to watch Oppenheimer, because it's available there. Peacock has a different way to access controls. What I end up doing is googling on my phone: Closed Caption on Peacock. And something will show up that tells you how to turn it on and off on that system. The nice thing is each platform remembers your preferences. For Netflix, that's nice, because everything is CC turned on. For regular channels (on Youtube) I constantly have to turn it on and off depending on what I'm viewing. Live programing is awful, because there's a time delay for the big-computer-in-the-sky to deceiver what was said and convert it to text. That's awful. But for prerecorded shows like movies and documentaries, there's a direct quick link to texts.
|
|
Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,850
|
Post by Dub on Feb 18, 2024 14:10:00 GMT -5
Oppenheimer never used closed captions.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Feb 18, 2024 14:20:04 GMT -5
Oppenheimer never used closed captions. That's right. He and the thousands of people working on the project had to figure out a way to go where no man had gone before without a road map. The engineer in me wants to know how talented people confront the seemingly insurmountable tasks before them and make something great happen. Anybody can dream up Science Fiction. (And any dipshit can play politics) [Present company excluded ]
|
|
|
Post by kbcolorado on Feb 19, 2024 8:34:05 GMT -5
5 stars from me. Story, characters, production all top notch.
Everyone I know highly recommended Oppenheimer and Barbie. I'd have been better off just watching Oppenheimer twice.
|
|