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Contact on TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar
On Sunday, February 24th, Turner Classic Movies will be airing Contact as part of this month’s “31 Days of Oscar”, in which Academy Award-winning movies are showcased.
Check out the TCM Movie Database entry for the film. Sean Axmaker provides an excellent overview of the film, from the production history to the issues and themes involved; Sagan is described as “one of the most effective spokesmen for the advancement of science and space exploration in the world”, and the entry also includes a quote from Ann Druyan:
“Carl’s and my dream was to write something that would be a fictional representation of what contact would be like,” explains Ann Druyan, Sagan’s wife and collaborator. “But it would also have the tension inherent between religion and science, which was an area of philosophical and intellectual interest that riveted both of us.”
Each night’s worth of movies is organized by a specific decade (all the way from the 1920s to the 1990s and 2000s); it so happens that immediately before Contact on the schedule is a somewhat different 1997 alien contact science fiction film, Men in Black. Saganites have mixed opinions on the merits of MIB; Keay Davidson in his biography of Sagan dismisses it as a dumbed-down “mean-spirited bloodbath”; whereas pop-culture-savvy Nick Sagan slipped in an homage (or more precisely, an homage to an homage) to it in his short story “Tees and Sympathy”:
I thought that was clear. The reason why I’m wearing a black suit and sunglasses is because I’m homaging Men in Black.
And Phil Plait answers the question of how “a skeptical, UFO-bashing, aliens-aren’t-visiting-us-and-excoriating-cow- you-know-whats scientist-type guy” can enjoy the film in his review:
I loved this movie.
Surprised? “What’s a skeptical, UFO-bashing, aliens- aren’t-visiting-us-and-excoriating-cow-you-know-whats scientist-type guy going around saying he loves a movie whose very premise is that not only do aliens exist, but live among us?” you are asking yourself.
Well, the movie is awesome. It rocks. I laughed all the way through it. It’s funny. It’s also satirical, poking gentle but firm fun at the whole UFO and alien subculture.
(Also, for all the differences in tone, note that both films use a shot consisting of an extended zoom out from Earth to outer space to comment on humanity’s place in the universe.)
Popularity: 7% [?]
"Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" released on DVD last week
If you’re wondering why you never heard of a spinoff of Cosmos based on Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s book of the same name, it’s because the film in question — a 1964 Soviet film by Sergei Parajanov — was instead the source for the name of the Sagan/Druyan book! (Also, the film is not a documentary as one might expect, but fiction.) This seems to be the first North American region DVD release. Some links to stuff about the film:
- IMDB entry
- Amazon.com page
- New York Times DVD review
- Village Voice film review
- Time Out New York film review
- The L Magazine film review
Popularity: 4% [?]
Announcing the second annual Carl Sagan memorial blog-a-thon
Later this month, on December 20, 2007, we will reach the eleventh anniversary of Carl Sagan’s passing — and the first anniversary of the wildly successful first-ever Carl Sagan Memorial Blog-a-Thon. Far exceeding my wildest expectations, this became a truly worldwide celebration, with more than 250 posts in 11 languages. And for those who like nice round anniversary numbers, this year also saw quite a number of significant Sagan-related ones: the tenth anniversary of the release of the film Contact and the Planet Walk in Ithaca, NY; and the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the two Voyager spacecraft. I am launching a new blog-a-thon exactly a year after the first one; for full details, see the main announcement post on my personal blog. See you on the 20th!
Popularity: 3% [?]
Arthur C. Clarke 90th birthday blog
Earlier this week, I received an email from a Sri Lankan Sagan fan, Thilina Heenatigala, who had among other things organized a special screening of Cosmos for undergraduates at a local college last year. He is a friend of revered science fiction writer (and science popularizer/futurist, and inventor, and humanist) Arthur C. Clarke — known as the author of 2001 (book and movie), Childhood’s End, Rendezvous with Rama, “The Sentinel”, “The Nine Billion Names of God”, “The Star” and many others — and the General Secretary of the Clarke-cofounded Sri Lanka Astronomical Association. (In “Science Fiction — A Personal View” in Broca’s Brain, Sagan paid tribute to Clarke, recommending “The Nine Billion Names of God” as an introduction to certain ideas from Eastern religious philosophy, noting Clarke’s hard science background and saying that Clarke was “providing cogent and brilliant summaries in nonfictional form of many aspects of science and society.”)
Since Clarke will be turning 90 this month, Heenatigala was inspired by my Sagan blog-a-thon to create a blog to celebrate Clarke’s 90th birthday. December 16th is the special date! He is sending an open invitation to all Clarke fans to post birthday wishes as blog comments.
Popularity: 8% [?]
"Atheist" video by Zachary Kroger
This five-minute video in “defense of atheists” has been a hit on YouTube since its debut in mid-2006 (with more than 800,000 views and 80,000 comments, and praise from the likes of James Randi, Michael Shermer, and Penn & Teller), but has gotten extra attention from a mention in the article “God and Man on YouTube” in last week’s New York Times Magazine.
Much of the video (a “video response” to icecorescientist’s Pale Blue Dot video) features slides of famous people who many might not realize are atheists (similar to lists on websites like this one); and sure enough, Carl Sagan is featured:
The star of Contact also appears:
And at the end, this quote is featured:
Popularity: 10% [?]
Sagan and the Dalai Lama, a Retrospective.
Thanks again go to Larry Klaes for bringing this to our attention.
Religion and science do not have to be at odds. Science, said Ann Druyan, widow of Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan, can communicate with, learn from and even benefit from religion and vice versa.
Druyan, a writer and media producer who collaborated with Sagan for 19 years until his death in 1996, reflected on dialogues in the early 1990s between Sagan and the Dalai Lama at a Sept. 28 lecture in Anabel Taylor Auditorium. For the first time, film excerpts of the meeting between the two were shown in a public venue.
Sagan, Cornell professor and author of “Cosmos,” “Contact” and “Dragons of Eden,” among other books, was perhaps best known for his extraordinary ability to communicate science to the public. “He wanted to share with everyone the wonder and awe that science inspired in him,” Druyan said.
She stressed that there were political motivations behind Sagan’s work as well: “Carl believed that you can’t have a democratic society if you have a tiny scientific elite and a public who is uncomfortable with the methods and language of science,” she said.
Click here to read the whole article from Cornell University’s Chronicle Online.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Café de Sagan
While strolling along The Philosopher’s Path (left) from Ginkaku-ji in northeast Kyoto this summer, my fiancé and I passed this little coffee shop, Café de Sagan. Of course we were drawn to the name, but it’s location on a beautiful stone path that borders a canal known as the Walk of Philosophy made its appearance serendipitous indeed. We stopped in for tea and coffee. Inside ambient music reminiscent of the Cosmos soundtrack drifted toward the front from speakers in back, no kidding. We asked the woman serving us about the name, and with her limited English and my fiancé’s limited Japanese we gathered that the two characters (seen below) are pronounced say-gun, roughly translating as “We hope you come again.” A chance discovery with some karmic undertones. A lovely spot. And good, strong coffee. Been meaning to share.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Equal Time for Freethought
Carl Sagan fan and recent addition to the Celebrating Sagan family, Humanistic Joel provided us with this audio a few months ago, and we are proud to finally post here. To learn more about the following episodes of Equal Time for Freethought, or read to the transcripts visit Joel’s site. Enjoy.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Planetary Imagery: 30 Years From Voyager Spacecraft
Wired has a gallery of Voyager photos up today that includes some Sagan material. There are some truly wonderful shots that I had never seen before.
Here’s two that include mention of Dr. Sagan:
Voyager project manager John Casani displays the “Sounds of Earth” recording shortly before launch in 1977. The 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph record was intended to serve as a time capsule that could communicate the story of Earth to extraterrestrials.A NASA committee, chaired by renowned physicist Carl Sagan, assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds made by surf, wind, thunder, birds, whales and other animals. They also embedded musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings in 55 languages. Encased in protective aluminum jackets, each record had its own cartridge and a needle. Instructions written in symbols explained the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record was to be played
Famed astronomer Carl Sagan served as a spokesman for the Voyager spacecraft. Here, Sagan discusses the Voyager 2 in the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, California on January 18th, 1986.
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The Mix Tape of the Gods.
Joel passed along an excellent Op-ed from today’s New York Times about the 30th Anniversary of the Voyager program, and what the Gold Records mean.
Excerpt, from “The Mix Tape of the Gods,” by Timothy Ferris, dated September 5th, 2007, The New York Times.
Forty thousand years will elapse before Voyager 1, departing the realm of the Sun at a speed of 38,000 miles per hour, passes anywhere near another star. (It will drift within 1.7 light years of a dim bulb called AC+79 3888.) And 358,000 years will elapse before Voyager 2 approaches the bright star Sirius.
Out there, our concepts of velocity become provincial. The stars are moving, too, in gigantic orbits around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Voyager, a toy boat on this dark sea, will not so much approach Sirius as watch it sail by, bobbing in its mighty wake.
Contemplation of Voyager’s billion-year future among the stars may make us feel small and the span of our history seem insignificant. Yet the very existence of the two spacecraft and the gold records they carry suggests that there is something in the human spirit able to confront vast sweeps of space and time that we can only dimly comprehend.
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