Re: Arrival

This is the second or third positive commentary I've seen on the movie.
It's playing in two theaters in Santa Fe, so I should be able to get there
soon.

charley

On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 7:57 AM, Monica McAbee <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I am so glad to hear that the movie lives up to the story's intelligence.
> I'll have to find time to go see it.
>
> I highly recommend Chiang's collection, *Stories of Your Life and Others*,
> in which "Story of Your Life" appears (the story that ARRIVAL is based on).
> I reread the collection recently and it has held up well. What stuck with
> me most were the amazing images Chiang creates, especially in "Tower of
> Babylon" and "Hell Is the Absence of God."
>
> Monica McAbee
> Selection Librarian, Adult Services
> Materials Management
> Prince George's County Memorial Library System
> 9601 Capital Lane
> Largo, MD 20774
> 301-699-3500, ext. 6118
> [email protected]
> www.pgcmls.info
>
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Dennis Fischer <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> ARRIVAL is one of those truly rare science fiction films that centers on
>> ideas rather than action.  The film is full of mysteries which gradually
>> get unveiled, so I don't want to spoil your enjoyment of it by giving too
>> much away.  It is based on a short story of Ted Chiang and centers around
>> the difficulty of humans communicating with a truly alien species. Director
>> Denis Villeneuve (best known as the director of SICARIO) is on a mission of
>> multiple objectives. Focused on the nuts and bolts of interspecies
>> communication, this is an unusually intelligent object from Hollywood.,
>> *ARRIVAL* centers around a highly skilled professional woman  linguist
>> Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams),under the jurisdiction of dismissive,
>> trigger-happy male superiors. She is recruited by Colonel Weber (Forest
>> Whitaker) to decipher the unintelligible blares of these beings from beyond
>> who are hovering above Earth at 12 isolated locations across the globe,
>> Louise has a helicopter meet-cute with her new copilot into the unknown,
>> scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who champions science, not
>> language, as the foundation of any society.  Together, the two travel to
>> Montana to meet their elite team, manning computers in connected tents, a
>> short distance from the ovoid spacecraft they’ll soon enter.
>> This is not a mainstream film--but on its own terms it works very well
>> and it trusts the audience to put together some of the pieces so that once
>> you acquire enough information, it all makes sense. (I have an abhorrence
>> of mystery movies that never solve their mysteries, but fortunately this is
>> not one of those).  There is a subtle pro-life message to the movie, and
>> its major weakness is its score, which apart from a previously composed
>> piece, is not very good. If you enjoy having your sense of wonder evoked
>> and enjoy having ideas played with, then this is one you should enjoy.
>>
>
>


-- 
Charley
Desert Sailor