Will Ron Howard’s new film Moby Dick In the Heart of the Sea be Hollywood’s (and specifically Warner Bros.’s) final attempt to adapt Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby Dick? The film seems to act as proof that it can’t be done; at least not in a way that includes the deep themes, philosophical points, and science of the novel. This… Read more →
Jessica Jones: Science, Realism, & Netflix
This post contains **spoilers** for the Netflix series’ Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Please take a look at my previous post on Daredevil for further discussion of the show. Only seven months after the successful release of Daredevil, Netflix have given us Jessica Jones. It is part of a series of four shows produced by Netflix – Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist – that will eventually crossover into… Read more →
Un-Natural Selection: Evolutionary Concepts in Horror Cinema
This post originally appeared on the Science & Religion: Exploring the Spectrum blog. Evolution doesn’t seem scary. It is the processes of change in heritable traits of biological entities over successive generations, which give rise to biological diversity between and within organisms. This isn’t something likely to make you cower behind your popcorn box at the multiplex. However, the horror… Read more →
Neurology Meets La Nouvelle Vague: The Flutter of Memory and Imagination on Film
This post contains minor spoilers for the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) My previous SciEntLab blog post examined the ways in which disturbances of memory and consciousness caused by neurological damage have been depicted on film. The post explored the cinematic portrayal of a fictional character, Leonard Shelby, with profound anterograde amnesia in Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000).… Read more →
What Entertainment Can do for Science, and Vice Versa
We are experiencing a golden age for the fusion of science and entertainment. Oscar-winning films such as Gravity and The Theory of Everything, television ratings titans like The Big Bang Theory, and high-traffic web-comics like XKCD have shown that science-based entertainment products can be both critically and financially successful. Many scientists are concerned about how this blending of science and… Read more →