This is a very, very, very strange film--so strange that it clearly is an acquired taste and a film that won't appeal to most viewers. My feeling is that I liked a lot of the strange things that Steven Soderbergh did in this film but after a while it just became too much of a chore to watch. To me, it's a film with some wonderful ideas...too many.When the film begins, Soderbergh addresses the audience in a VERY funny intro. He insists that EVERY SINGLE person on the planet MUST see the movie and if they don't understand it, they must go back to the theaters and pay full price to see it again and again until they do! I was excited by this clever start.As for the rest of the film, it's a mixed bag of weirdness--all cloaked in a strange and enigmatic plot involving 'Eventualism'. This is a weird Scientology-like cult that describes itself as neither a religion nor philosophy but a 'state of mind'! But the film isn't just a take off on Scientology (I would have loved that) but is just filled with weirdness just for the sake of weirdness. Bland conversations between the main character and his wife consist of phrases like 'generic greeting' when the husband enters the house and 'imminent sustenance' when he smells dinner. Some other times, folks burst through the fourth wall and say things to either the filmmakers or audience. None of it is consistent...just weird and disjoint.Overall, a film with some funny and inventive moments which don't add up to an enjoyable whole. Too bad. I really think had Soderbergh used SOME of these weird gimmicks the film would have worked better than using them all. Or, if he'd simply parodied Scientology (such as in "Bowfinger") it would have worked. Instead, it's an odd and frustrating film.By the way, if you do decide to watch, expect to be offended here and there with characters (non-graphically) masturbating, using colorful language and the like.
From the prologue I instantly thought I understood the tone that Steven Soderbergh- writer, director, cinematographer, possible pornographer, and double-actor on Schizopolis- was going for: pure absurdism, not just with how the prologue is worded (as the most important film experience of all time, the "full completed version"), but how he goes between all the different lenses like a young film student checking out the gears on a Bolex. But it's always a tricky thing going into a Soderbergh "experiment", and that it could be a mish-mash like Full Frontal (I've yet to see Bubble). And, in all truth, it is a mish-mash. It tells a coherent story only in that there's maybe two (or three) stories that seem to make any sense, but is scattered around scenes and freewheeling camera moves and editing tricks and music that come closest to that oft-mentioned critic term "off-beat". And a lot of the time it seems to be so personal to Soderbergh (real life ex-wife playing ex-wife, plus what may be his real kid playing Brantley's daughter), and so unconscionably irreverent, that it dares to run off the tracks any minute.But it's this fully realized move to just be silly and strange, to make just random moments of wild satire (Rhode Island sold as a shopping mall, "Well, at least we didn't sell it to the f***ing Japanese", and a man randomly getting caught up in a straight jacket by fellows from a mental hospital), more well-rounded jabs at the drudgery and pointless meandering of everyday white-collar work life (is there a spy, or a mole, who cares if there's masturbation?), and statements just abstracted as if done sort of by a spontaneous idea in the editing room (title cards quoting a page in the script?), that makes it such a daring work of ludicrous intentions. This isn't a filmmaker trying to make an innovative and possibly important film like Traffic, or even a fun mainstream romp like Ocean's Eleven. In fact, it's seeing the opening prologue, and seeing how the style takes off right away (the title for the film on the shirt of a naked guy running away!) it sets off wonderful irony at every turn.Not that Soderbergh isn't being self-indulgent. In fact, I'm sure that's why there's something of an honesty to his going head-long into his own personal crises of dealing with a relationship or marriage, and throwing caution to the wind by making the emotional problems actually quite real while obfuscating them with some truly goofy vignettes. It's almost like directorial therapy: let the actors improvise, let it all be loose, and even have a truly warped storyline involving an exterminator, really an actor looking for motivation and a written scene (ha), yet having in many instances moments of confession. Even if one might not know some of the circumstances surrounding Soderbergh's first marriage (it's detailed in the book Rebels on the Backlot), it feels like it's coming from the heart a good lot of the time, which uplifts the comedy. A running gag late in the film, as certain scenes from earlier with the perfectly dead-pan Soderbergh and Brantley are repeated, has Soderbergh being dubbed over in Japanese, French, and Italian, though in scenes that involve break-ups, awkward sexual tension, and a reconciliation.This is not to say that Soderbergh isn't also more devilish than he's ever since been with his innuendo- make that outright hilariously immature sexual comedy- and it's amazing to see Soderbergh read a 'love letter' he's written to his "Attractive Woman #2", describing his profession of emotions in very graphic ways. And if Soderbergh does some strange things to surprise as the only time he's starred, let alone acted, in one of his films (the scene where he's in the bathroom making faces at the mirror is one of those pure moments in absurd cinema that speaks to the success of paying homage to Richard Lester movies), his going for broke stylistically pays off too. Or doesn't, depending on how one can take the mix and match of film stocks used from grainy 16mm to the usual 35mm, jagged hand-held racing after the exterminator man beating up on a man and woman, extreme fast-motion film-speed, perfectly composed images like a boy in right field missing a baseball, and even documentary style in the scenes with T. Azimuth Schwitters. On top of the dialog being continuously crazy and self-conscious (what's that film crew following along?), it's possibly the best, or at least most fun, that Soderbergh has to offer as an independent filmmaker.So see it at your own risk, definitely check out the trailer beforehand to get an idea of what's at hand (if the poster wasn't sign enough what a tailspin one can expect to get into), and if one is already a fan, if only in the guilty pleasure sort of way as I know I am, do check out the Criteron DVD for Soderbergh "interviewing" Soderbergh commentary, including the story how the deal for David Lean to direct two years after his death fell through (damn Showtime channel)!
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The unprecedented torrent of data returned by the Solar Dynamics Observatory is both a blessing and a barrier: a blessing for making available data with significantly higher spatial and temporal resolution, but a barrier for scientists to access, browse and analyze them. With such staggering data volume, the data is bound to be accessible only from a few repositories and users will have to deal with data sets effectively immobile and practically difficult to download. From a scientist's perspective this poses three challenges: accessing, browsing and finding interesting data while avoiding the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. To address these challenges, we have developed JHelioviewer, an open-source visualization software that lets users browse large data volumes both as still images and movies. We did so by deploying an efficient image encoding, storage, and dissemination solution using the JPEG 2000 standard. This solution enables users to access remote images at different resolution levels as a single data stream. Users can view, manipulate, pan, zoom, and overlay JPEG 2000 compressed data quickly, without severe network bandwidth penalties. Besides viewing data, the browser provides third-party metadata and event catalog integration to quickly locate data of interest, as well as an interface to the Virtual Solar Observatory to download science-quality data. As part of the Helioviewer Project, JHelioviewer offers intuitive ways to browse large amounts of heterogeneous data remotely and provides an extensible and customizable open-source platform for the scientific community. 2ff7e9595c
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