The Mystery of Tom Bombadil and Symbolics

When Craig Reynolds sent me a link to Tom Bombadil's Facebook Page I did not at first realize why he asked about this person.

Tom Bombadil is of course an enigmatic character from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series who is the only one in all middle earth who is not affected by the One Ring and seems to be indifferent to the power of Sauron in some way.

Then I looked more closely at this Tom Bombadil and saw the Symbolics 3600 component boards. The 3600 was one of the original Lisp Machines that came from the MIT AI Lab and was commercialized by two different companies, Symbolics, Inc and LMI, Inc.

Look closely at the top of the picture

Only a member of the inner elite would have access to one of these or understand its significance.

Therefore we can ask, who is Tom Bombadil?

So I sent an email to Tom and asked him about himself and what was up.   He replied immediately from Germany.

Its nice to know that we had a positive impact on someone.   Those were back in those naive and idealistic days when we thought that inventing computing and computer animation was going to help the world, not merely provide more opportunities to steal and support corrupt governments.

Tom Bombadil on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil

ACM SIGGRAPH & The Mixed Blessing of a Single World View

fifth draft

Some must toil in the slave pits of the rich and some must serve on elite committees that stand above the fray, perfect, immutable, and untouched.  But those who serve in those vile yet glamourous positions in industry can not also serve the committees that rule because they do not adhere to the One World View.  It is only this world view that permits the consensus that allows the elite to rise above the unpleasantness that is the world of computer animation.

As my readers know I have been puzzled by the failure on the part of SIGGRAPH to acknowledge certain issues and to make efforts to help their constituency.  It is as if those problems did not exist or that somehow SIGGRAPH was just completely unaware of them.   (1)

And so, since for years I have wondered who runs SIGGRAPH and how it is managed at the national level, it seemed logical that I educate myself as to the processes and people involved.  I have been an attending member of this community since 1980 and of ACM since 1976 and know many of the people in the field, so it seemed to me that it should be straightforward to figure this out.

I think I now understand most of what I set out to know and which I will describe to you below.  It is mostly benign, it is certainly well-intentioned.

The national organization of our community is not secret, but it is elite, and as always with these things they have a sense of who is "of the body of Christ" and who is not by their very nature eligible to be a member.

If one is persistent you will discover that one of the all day meetings of the Executive Committee (EC) of SIGGRAPH is open to the general membership.  This meeting is generally right before or after the national conference. What is odd is that they do not seem to tell anyone about this which is a little inexplicable but probably not intentionally evil.  I have attended SIGGRAPH since 1980 and this is the first I have ever heard of it.   Nevertheless, the minutes of these meetings are published online at a link I provide below.  Also, the annual report by the president is also published online, as well as various policies and bylaws and these altogether  bring a lot of clarity as to what the people who run SIGGRAPH think and worry about.  I am going to presume that like so many other organizations, the picture that is presented is by no means complete, but it is enough for now.

Paul Debevic, formerly of the EC, was also helpful in publishing on Facebook a picture of the EC at work.  I found this picture very entertaining and enlightening.   I don't have a copy of it, but I am emailing Paul for one and I will add it when it arrives.

It seems to me that these people are conscientious and have the well-being of SIGGRAPH at heart.   If I think that they are not aware of a variety of problems and that they have helped contribute to a disaster on the ground, they will not agree with me.  They have a very specific world view, which I will call for want of a better term, an "Educators Point of View", and are probably not aware of the issues that exist in the various production communities even as they glorify and celebrate those industries at their conference.

And that I think is the heart of the problem.  In building a culture and a group of people who can work by consensus, several important communities that are involved in SIGGRAPH are not represented on the EC.  I doubt that this is because of any evil desire to disenfranchise these groups so much as it is a desire to keep the committee centered and effective.  Be that as it may be, the result is that the EC, in my humble opinion, does not acknowledge or address many issues of great importance, at least of importance to some of us.

My first attempt to be nominated for the EC was very politely considered and declined.   Once nominated, one must then stand for election and must receive a certain number of votes from the general membership in order to be on the Executive Committee. Comparing myself to the current members of the committee,  I think I am completely qualified to be nominated and that my position statement would offer the voting membership a candidate with a clearly different point of view and that this would be well-received.

My choices now are to try again to be nominated, or run a write-in campaign to be nominated outside the normal nomination process.   I hesitate to do the latter because its a lot of work, although I think I would get the required signatures if I organized for it.  Perhaps I will do so next SIGGRAPH if I am still interested.

Because I am frankly discouraged.   I have been informed by a long term colleague and esteemed volunteer of SIGGRAPH as well as an alumni of the EC, that the judgment was made long ago that I was ineligible for participation in SIGGRAPH at some level.

I do not know what this means.  I do not understand it at all.  This has left me very troubled and I had hoped to clear this up somewhat at SIGGRAPH but unfortunately I can not attend SIGGRAPH this year because of resource conflicts.  Maybe it can be cleared up remotely.

I will write another post that clearly describes point by point the changes that SIGGRAPH should make, or at least discuss.   This will basically be a summary and restatement after reconsideration of other posts already written in light of what I have learned since then.  For example, I believe SIGGRAPH should stop glorifying the entertainment industry which they do constantly.   They should make a point of showing the dark side if they must also glorify this industry, so that people who are influenced in their career by SIGGRAPH can see other points of view.

Now that I understand, at least to some extent, how the EC works and who is on it, I understand their failure to act on these issues or even to discuss them.   That is what having a homogeneous world view is all about.  They see what they want to see and everything is beautiful.

I know someone is reading my "Issues" post from 2012 because my web site statistics went crazy there for a few days, and then settled down to its normal pace.  About 1,500 people seemed to read it on those three days, or maybe one person 1,500 times.  Although I do not know who those people are or what they think, I submit that this is evidence that some of what I write about must be of interest to people who attend SIGGRAPH, or why else would they be reading it?

I want to help, but I do not want to force myself and my ideas on people.  Its a lot of trouble, it has very little upside for me, and besides, how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to sincerely want to change.

SIGGRAPH EC Meeting Minutes

http://www.siggraph.org/about/ec-meeting-minutes

_____________________________________________

1. Issues include encouraging people to go into computer animation in spite of vast unemployment, having keynote speakers who do not know what a computer is, blind endorsement of many of the worst people of the entertainment industry and so forth.   I will write a more concise description of what exactly I would have SIGGRAPH do to bring more balance to the force but until then you can get a very good idea from reading some of the posts on the right side of this blog listed under SIGGRAPH.   And please do not say that SIGGRAPH can not do this or that.  Be serious, ok?  SIGGRAPH can certainly pick keynote speakers who are from our community.   SIGGRAPH can certainly make it clear to young people what the statistics are about employment and have counter programming.   They could certainly have discussion of the state of employment in computer animation in fiction and non-fiction areas.  They can certainly have representation by non-entertainment users of computer graphics.   There is not the slightest prohibition of any of this in their charter. People need to grow up a little about what they can and can not do.

More About Malfeasance in Medical Care in S. California

[On swift wings revenge approaches.   They should tremble in fear to know that I am biding my time until the moment is right, then I will strike!]

As many of you know, I have a chronic medical condition that requires that I take certain medication every day.   When I can not get access to that medication a variety of things happen that are unpleasant both for me and for people around me.

Is this situation life threatening?   Well, it is certainly very inconvenient.   The way that this medication is controlled and made available to the citizens of this country means that, unless one is rich, one spends something like 1/4 to 1/2 or more of one's time securing the medication and not always succeeding.  In other words, the system is set up such that it is perfectly likely, in my experience, and even probable that one will regularly go without the medication due to the system set up by the state on several occasions during the year.

That's just tough shit.  We all have our cross to bear, nevertheless it is no fun. Not for me, not for anyone who may be working with me. It generates tremendous psychodrama, angst and general unpleasantness. I would go so far as to say that it may disqualify me from working at a real job since most real jobs have such things as deadlines, travel, and extraordinary stress that is incompatible both with how the medication works and the process of getting it.  The good news is that what I always forget is that when one has a real job, and live in a real city instead of out here in hell, one can build systems that mitigates most of this.  

At a later date I will explain all of the reasons why getting this medication is so complicated.  But one word of advice, unless you have had to do it for a couple of years at least, you do not have a clue how bad it is. You only think you know.   Trust me, it just goes on and on and on.   But in this post I will tell you a story about one little wrinkle in this many volume puddle-of-shit that is procuring this medication.   This particular fuck comes from moving from the NY area to Los Angeles as part of accepting a "job".

One deliberate back door that is supposed to allow for special events in getting this medication is that when something unexpected happens, one is supposed to be able to go to any emergency room, show the doctor your prescription bottle, explain what the current crisis is about (a snowstorm, a hurricane, a last minute affair with someone you have had a crush on all your life, whatever) and walk out with a one-time prescription to tide you over until you get back home and see your real doctor, or find and a new doctor, or whatever.  

This back door worked in NYC. Even more amazing is that it was rarely necessary.  When a doctor there goes out of town, apparently, or takes a vacation, they designate a replacement for the period of time. Not so out here in sunny S. California. Although going to an emergency room is not something you want to do very often for a variety of reasons, it is something that is considered routine back east.  So it would seem.

But when I moved to LA, to my surprise, it did not work. The doctor at Cedars Sinai in West Hollywood told me that they were prohibited by law from giving out such prescriptions. Then later, when I was dealing with a life-threatening illness in my family in San Diego, I went to the ER in the hospital where my relative was in intensive care and they also refused to help me, saying that their hands were tied by the law.   Thus I had to deal with one of the most traumatic periods of my life made much worse by their actions.   Of course, in both cases, I also received a bill for their services.

So I asked my various doctors in California about what I was told. Was there any such law? Not that they knew about. How would I find out for sure?  No one knew.  No one gave a fuck.  Not their problem.

Fast forward to this week. I am in the middle of medication hell the week before SIGGRAPH and so I decided to try one more time and go to an ER to see if they could help me out. They could, and they did. I got a stern lecture, told that they would not do it a second time, and got a prescription for a few days, which will not be enough for me to find another doctor, exactly, but it was helpful and I have been able to solve this problem in time for SIGGRAPH.  So the system did what it was supposed to do.  But that is just the beginning of the good news.

The doctor at this ER confirmed for me that those other doctors were lying to my face. What I was told was a common lie told in ERs he says when they don't want to deal with this kind of medication. You the patient are expected to believe them and go away and die or whatever.  You are garbage in their eyes.   They do not care to help. 

So lets be clear.

Twice now in S. California I went to the ER for help, a help they could have easily provided, and they chose to lie to my face and let me suffer because it was more convenient for them, for some unknown reason.  The lies were to deflect my anger from their harmful actions.  This is not just incompetence, this is malfeasance.   What are my legal remedies?

None.

What is the solution?

Become rich and the problems go away.

I do not know if this is unique to S. California or if other communities have the same problem.

I can not wait to get out of S. California.

The two 'bad' hospitals by the way were Cedars Sinai in West Hollywood and the older Palomar Hospital in Escondido, CA.  The ER that actually helped me was the *new* Palomar Hospital in Escondido and the experience was quite pleasant and efficient, as these things go.

[How then will I get my revenge on these evil scumbags who serve Satan?   I can not reveal this as yet.  But their time is coming and then they will know my wrath and they will be punished!  And all those who protect and enable them, they will be punished as well!]

The Mysterious Readers of the SIGGRAPH "Issues" Essay from 2012

I am ashamed to admit it, but I track my blog's page hits pretty closely.  Generally the numbers of hits is dependent on the recency of a post, and whether the post is serious or not.  The number of readers on any given day is closely related to the amount of effort I have put into it in the last 24-72 hours.

But every once in a while the numbers seem to jump, they double or triple out of nowhere and then return to normal after a few days. And what are they reading?

They are reading one thing: my SIGGRAPH “Issues for Discussion” essay that I wrote two years ago when I was late for SIGGRAPH but I was so frustrated with the whole affair that I felt that I had to do something, so I wrote that essay.

Now, a week or so before SIGGRAPH, the statistics on readership on that essay have gone through the roof. I wonder who is reading this? I wonder what they think? They probably think that I am an impractical lunatic because many of the issues are outside the normal agenda of an academic conference of this type. And I guess that is right. But for us, those of us who helped found the field, SIGGRAPH was always something more than merely another academic conference. In this we may have been deluding ourselves.

The essay was written two years ago. I have a dozen other essays on related topics but they do not get read as much.

I wonder who these people are? Do they like it? Do they hate it?

I have no idea, they are silent.

The essay in question can be found here:

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/08/siggraph-2012-issues-for-discussion.html

Politics and Friendship

So I have a great friend in NY or I used to. We have known each other for decades but just in the last 5 years or so starting talking almost daily. A talented outsider artist, IMHO, we would discuss all sorts of important matters such as the stupidity of modern computer graphics and the failure of that movement, the importance of the Hollow Earth, Lovecraft, the Illuminati's role in modern society, Keats, Blake, Bulwer-Lytton and so forth.

My friend is well known for helping other people who are down. No one can figure out how he supports himself but among other things he is very frugal (but that is not enough). He has had some adversity in life but does not seem to notice. Like all my artist friends who are successful in some sense of that word, he works extremely hard, and is very productive. He has stood by friends in need on several different occasions that I am aware of even when it was not convenient (a test of character, in Southern terminology). Since I am impoverished because of my work and commitment to computer animation he helped me find a place to stay in NYC so that I could visit, which otherwise I could not afford. He spent a billion hours with me when I visited NY and really helped to make that trip great. His daily chats and emails would often cheer me up, and since I am currently ostracized and living in abject poverty, I enjoyed hearing from him. It helped to break the near total isolation.

And he is a die hard Republican.

Loved Romney, thought he would make a great president. Hates Obama more than he would hate Hitler. Benghazi this and Hillary that. Obamacare blah blah blah. Jews controlling the media, how much the Jews are hated, etc. I would hear this stuff daily, more or less, in chats on Google mail and by email. It was occasionally annoying but I enjoyed talking to him, he had high entertainment value. I presumed he was being occasionally sincere but often just provocative.

But he kept assuming he knew what I thought and that I was a typical lefty liberal, whatever that may mean. I kept telling him that he did not know what I thought, really. He did not realize that my third generation elitist Virginian reform Jewish atheist roots and the history of Orthodox and Hasidic rabbis in my family in the Eighteenth century or so, as well as my time at the RAND Corporation left me with somewhat eccentric and non-mainstream beliefs.

So one day, after reading about an hour of rants about Democratic villainy from his point of view I told him .0001 percent of what I believe. Just one time, after hearing this stuff from him literally every other day (if not every day) for years.

I told him what I believed on just one issue just one time.

That the Supreme Court pissed on the constitution in public in November 2000 when they installed their goon, Bush Jr, as president in a classic coup d'etat. That the NY Times was just a right-wing rag when it rolled over and did not even slightly object to this gross injustice thus revealing its true colors. That everything Bush did was therefore illegal. That every decision that the Supreme Court made since that black day needed to be reevaluated in light of this crime to see which of their decisions were legal and which needed to be overturned.

And he never talked to me again.

So what is the moral of our little story? I guess the moral is that you should never tell someone what you believe unless you are perfectly ok with them never talking to you again. It doesn't have to be fair, and it doesn't have to be reciprocal, that is the way it is.   We might also conclude something about how Republicans relate to opinions outside their cult, but we already knew that.

'Nuke New York Not' Says FBI in 1951

Although fans of espionage have recently been encouraged by the resurgence of activities across the international scene, from Snowden to MH 17, to Gaza tunnels, some of them still pine for the glory days when America had manufacturing facilities, telephones had land lines, and the threat of nuclear destruction was firmly in the hands of the major powers.

In those halcyon days, Josef Stalin still plotted our destruction, Mao tse Tung had just taken control of the mainland of China, the Berlin airlift was just two years prior and the wall was not yet built, Venona had revealed to the predecessor of the NSA that the USSR had stolen nuclear secrets.  Stalinist USSR then shocked the world by exploding their own bomb years ahead of when we expected them to be able to in 1949.

And in those fear-filled days, when Czech politicians were being thrown out of windows, one of our spies, either in or traveling to Brasil of all places, told us that the USSR had smuggled a small nuclear bomb into NYC and was keeping it at one of the embassies or consulates either of the USSR or of one of their allies (e.g. Hungary, Poland, etc).   The reason of course was to be able to explode it, or threaten to, at a time of their choosing.

The whole matter was kept very secret in otder to avoid panic which might result in lowering real estate values or stock market prices.   The assets of the most wealthy in this country were threatened and so the FBI began an intense survey of all locations that were in the diplomatic control of the USSR or its allies. Over 50 different sites were investigated secretly, usually by using “reliable” assets who already had access to the site and who could report whether anything unusual had arrived, or any other preparation had been made at the site that might indicate the arrival of a nuclear weapon.

The report about the investigation which was declassified can be found at the link below and is well worth glancing at. Although it is many pages there is not that much to read. Perhaps the most interesting fact that I gleaned was that we had a reliable source inside every USSR or related embassy or consulate who could report on whether there was anything that might suggest arrival of a nuclear weapon.

I have included a few pages from the report here as well.

Report on FBI Investigation into NY Atom Bomb 1951 - 1964

http://www.governmentattic.org/4docs/FBI-Atom-BombNY_1951-1964.pdf

The Case for Nuclear Weapons in Space

Warning: Although not named, this essay contains implied spoilers for a recent alien invasion movie.

Although peaceniks were until recently salivating at the mouth at the prospect of disarming the West of its strategic deterrence recent events in alien invasion motion pictures have changed all that. In a stunning reversal of the debate, the US Congress has joined the US Air Force in calling for increased preparedness to deal with a potential alien invasion augmented by the ability to control time to their advantage.

The debate was set off by a recent Hollywood film in which the alien menace combined fabulous tactical ability in the form of their aerial-capable, amphibious-capable, underground-capable foot soldiers controlled by an all-knowing, all-seeing time control master alien with the power to reverse time by a day or two to replay events until things go its way. Although the movie has a human getting a bit of this power by accident and using it to heroically save the world from the implacable alien menace, authoritative military sources suggest that is not very likely in the real world. “No offense to Tom Cruise,” said General Wm. Shelton, commander of the US Air Force Space Command, “But I think it would be a bad move on our part to place the hope of all mankind on the heroics of a glorified press agent and one good special forces person who whacks aliens with a propeller.  What this country needs, what this planet needs, is a serious contingency plan to deal with this threat.”

Gen Shelton talking to reporters about the implacable alien menace

This time-manipulation capability has caused a radical rethink in the strategies that might counteract the alien menace. It would not be sufficient to merely nuke the aliens over a period of a day or even an hour, sources explained. “The way this works is you would have to be certain to get the main bad guy on the very first blast, even though you do not know where it is exactly. All you know is roughly what continent it is on. Its not enough to nuke Berlin, and then Paris, and then inbetween. If you set off one blast even a few minutes before the one that kills the main bad guy then the bad guy will just reset time a few days earlier but now it knows what happens and you don't. So you have to be certain to nuke that continent hard, from top to bottom, being sure to hit it so hard that it wipes out alien life no matter where it is or how far underground. You only get one shot at this.“

“This means that the weapons would have to be synchronized within a few seconds of each other, and with essentially no warning”, Gen Shelton explained. “The only way to do that is to preposition weapons in space by the hundreds if not thousands of the most deadly weapons that we have. Missiles would not be enough to guarantee a short enough warning period and the ability to carpet bomb an entire continent simultaneously. To defeat this alien we have to be able to turn a continent instantly into radioactive slag”.

Industry observers noted that this is not the first time a policy of nuclear weapons in space has been advocated by an important movie about aliens. In the Jim Cameron film Aliens (1986), the civilian Ripley famously advises “Lets nuke them from orbit. Its the only way to be sure”.

US Air Force Space Command

http://www.afspc.af.mil/

How Bad Is The Quality of (Stolen) Downloaded Movies?

In this this post, I described an experiment in whether or not Edge of Tomorrow (2014), was available on the Internet in violation of international copyright.  It was, but the quality was lousy.   How lousy?

I compared what I downloaded to the Youtube trailer at (what they claimed was) 720, 480, 360 and 240.  I have no idea what these numbers mean and doubt they correspond to much in the world of real video standards.   But the upshot is that the downloaded copy was about the quality of the lowest Youtube setting, roughly 240.   That is bad. 

What's the matter with the world today?  Don't criminals have any pride in their work anymore?   This is just another sign of the collapse of Western Civilization.

I am appalled.

The first image below is a screengrab from the trailer on Youtube in 720 mode.  The second is from the downloaded video.  The subject matter is not identical, but is hopefully close enough to get a sense of how bad the quality is.

This is a disgrace.   Cant we educate our criminals to do better than this?

(REDACTED) Advice for Directors of Alien Invasion Films

This post has been redacted.

Summary of redacted post:

I have been reviewing two alien invasion films side by side: Edge of Tomorrow and Pacific Rim.

There is no comparison.   I strongly advise everyone reading this to think twice before doing a movie on the topic of the alien invasion of earth, with or without giant robots, to have a script before wasting everyone's time with a movie.

Memo to file: have a script before production.

Pacific Grim

Warning: This essay contains spoilers for the film Pacific Rim (2013).

Some are born great and some have the mantle of greatness put upon them.

In our world there is mere craftsmanship, then art, then great art, then movies with giant robots.

But not everyone who is called to the altar of greatness is up to the challenge or in some way evil or circumstance interferes with its realization, and we experience the tragedy of a movie that could have been important but that fails and lives down to our worst expectations.

Such is the case with Pacific Rim (2013).  I had seen the effects reel at the Academy Bake Off and I was looking forward to the director's take on the critically important sub-genre of fiction: giant robots beating the shit out of alien and hostile ocean monsters.  But the great concept for the movie was let down by a truly puerile script and shallow characters. The humans were so stereotyped and uninteresting that even the giant alien monsters seemed more richly drawn, realistic and authentic in comparison.

Lucas claims that a movie is binary, that it either works for the audience and they ignore the flaws, or it does not work for them and the flaws are completely annoying.   I think that this principle of all or nothing has merit.   For example, I did not notice many of the flaws in Edge of Tomorrow (2014) when watching the film and when they eventually did occur to me it did not really bother me.

The flaws were made less important because the film was so entertaining.

A mashup between a German scientist and a Cambridge University mathematician, or something.

But not so for Pacific Rim, at least not for me.  There were so many problems and all of them attached to a very obvious and banal plot.   Not even giant robots could save this movie from its plot.   Here is a short list of just some of the problems in no particular order of importance:  1. If you are dying of radiation poisoning, you don't just get a nose bleed, or rather if you do, its because you are bleeding at all your orifices.   But none of that really matters because the radiation has probably killed all your blood stem cells and you will be dead in less than a week, horribly, and wont have the time to lead a group of desperate men and women in a last chance struggle to save humanity.   2. I found the cultural stereotypes of the German/Cambridge scientist to be offensive, although it was supposed to be funny, 3. The mind melt with the alien thing, aside from being improbable, is just confusing. Do the bad aliens read the stupid little scientist mind or not?  4. Umbilical cords are generally for mammals, as I understand it. Are the filmmakers saying that these hideous underwater alien monsters are descended from mammals? That doesn't seem very likely from what we know of them.  5. This may sound silly, but what is the motivation of our alien menace and the big fellows on the other side of the breach?   I mean what is going on?   Are they just attacking because they think its fun? Are they after our women?  What?  6. These big aliens although they are impressive looking seem rather average in terms of construction.   If they can be filleted with (for example) giant spinning sushi knives or a sock to the jaw then it seems logical that they would respond well to a couple of dozen standard, stand-off, air-to-air missiles, not to mention MK48 torpedoes.   7. Its all very well to throw around words like "analog" in regards to EMP, but for that to work that would mean that all the control systems of the adorable Gypsy Danger would have to be analog computers, etc, and I kind of doubt it.

Open wide and stick out your tongue... 

Ok, enough.

It is a principle of visual effects that great visual effects will not save a bad movie.   That is certainly true in this case, but there are some things to note about the film that are positive, in terms of cost reduction, costume design, production design and, of course, visual effects.   

1. They probably saved a lot of money on the writer.

Many people feel that having a script in a visual effects movie is just throwing good money after bad. Certainly, Michael Bay has never been held back by not having a writer on his films.  They probably saved several hundred thousand dollars on this one item, which would leave them more money for visual effects. 

2. The female lead was given an excellent costume.

Movies of this type are often calculated to appeal to adolescent boys of all ages, and one way to get their attention is to put your female lead, suitably cast, into a skintight and/or polyethylene outfit. Actress Rinko Kikuchi plays the role of Mako Mori, the spunky and strong female technocrat and martial arts specialist. I think that the rubber/latex outfit that they have her wear while controlling the giant robot in partnership with our hero is very practical and shows off her intelligence among other attributes very well.   I am still looking for the right single frame to show you what I mean, this image is a standin for now.

The properly sexist still of Mako in her latex jumpsuit has eluded me so far.  

3. In visual effects, objects interacting with water is very difficult to achieve in a realistic manner.

4. One reason that water generally looks fake in earlier visual effects (see WW2 movies or pirate movies with ships generated with model photography on a pond or swimming pool) is how off the sense of scale is, no matter what the visual effects people did.   We get an excellent sensation of scale for most of the important fight scenes of the film which either take place in shallow water or under water.

5. Finally, it is a non-trivial thing to give these 3D models a sense of scale while they are beating the shit out of each other.   And most of the shots, although often ridiculous, were also dramatic and did have good scale to them.   I was very impressed.  

ILM did all these things very well.   Have a look at some of these stills and remember that IMHO the only way to really judge the work is in motion and on a big screen.

6. Very few movies get to show what it is like on the other side: to show the unspeakable and unknowable alien world. This movie did that acceptably I thought, the pacing was good and the reveal of the horror that is the vast and evil alien intelligence is suspensful... Of course the implacable menace is just beginning to understand that they are doomed as disaster overwhelms them.

Pleasantly abstract, the alien menace sees their doom approach.

Its the stories and the characters and the details that let them down. The movie feels like it was written for 10 year olds, and maybe it was. Only a 10 year old could go with the hackneyed characterizations and the stupid plot points. And of course the whole premise is ridiculous. Although it would be moderately expensive (1) and messy to turn these monsters into shredded fish food, it would be straightforward to do so with the weapons at hand in any modern air force or navy.  I mean they are big and ugly and spray acid and look pretty mean, but it seems to me that they blowup pretty much like normal flesh and blood, alien though they may be.

The other scientist stupidly visits the alien fishbait abortion.  Nice eyes.

But I prefer to emphasize the positive about this movie and hope that something better will happen next time. Good art direction and creature animation does not a good monster movie make. del Toro has the capability of doing great work, I hope we will see better and more moving, plausible, end of the world implacable monster movies from him in the future.

________________________________________________

Notes:

1. The cost of a Hellfire missile is roughly $70K but I think that is a little underpowered for this activity.  A Tomahawk missile from Raytheon is about $600K - $1M depending on how you look at the accounting. A Mark 48 torpedo is roughly a million a pop, I think.   Delivering these munitions is not cheap either.  We are talking about flying F-18 Super Hornets off of aircraft carriers or of attack submarines delivering many torpedoes as suitably modified for this application.   So it would be completely plausible for the destruction of one giant alien sea monster to cost at least $50M and probably more like $100M  if not more per critter.   Not cheap, but immensely cheaper than what is portrayed in the movie as the last hope of mankind.  No nuclear weapons would be necessary.

Tomahawk Missile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)

Mark 48 Torpedo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_48_torpedo

Pacific Rim on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/