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| gromit |
 Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 12:30 pm |
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bartist wrote:
I don't recall exactly, but didn't he make water by burning hydrogen? The explosion might have been due to that.
That was the minor explosion in the kitchen which he had converted into a garden. (and of which he says "I blew myself up")
But the explosion which trashed the HAB was just when he entered and pushed the button to pressurize. You can theorize and make something up, but you'd think Damon and especially NASA would want to know why that happened. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 5:18 am |
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Well disliked the ending to The Martian as much as everything else.
Everyone is a renegade and anti-authoritarian and true to their own ideals. And have to try to be coola nd have snappy olne0liners. A lot of garbage. I sure hope actual astronauts are nothing like these juvenile folks.
I was very amused when Chastain's commander says that she has a direct order from NASA, and if she disobeyed that would be mutiny, then her little speech devolves into "And I don't take mutiny lightly" so lets have a one minute chat and see if everyone else is in.
Also what was all that nonsense about all of Damon's messages and the rescue attempt being shown live around the world. Nearly all the dialogue and most of the scenes were irritating.
Lots of things rang false.
Take the very end where Damon is a senior space survivalist hero, and he tells the trainees that yes he did grow his food in his own shit and it's even worse than it sounds so lets never talk about it gain. Uh, he's supposed to be a high level botanist/scientist. Not Joe Fratboy. Using manure (and urea) to fertilize crops is an age-old tradition still practiced in much of the world. It's very practical and works, and it would be a good idea for others going to Mars to know how to do it in emergencies. So that Damon's intro to the cadets was awful and unscientific A scientist should look at the benefits and uses, not whether it seems icky or whatever.
The film itself never mentioned Damon using urine as fertilizer, and I can understand them not wanting to get too into human waste issues. But certainly Damon, facing a water shortage would want to extend his irrigation water by adding his urine, which is also a terrific fertilizer, when diluted some.
Did I mention I hated this film?
It's basically a dumb blockbuster disguised as a smart sci-fi film. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:20 am |
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So, Matt Damon didn't talk about his pee. Not IMO the most serious indictment of a sci-fi film one could make.
Agree on the weakness and 1-D of other characters.
I would guess that the "let's not talk about my poop" quip at the end was just a joke, something to warm up the crowd.
The solar panels, no, you can't see the dust, but the spectrographic profile and albedo (reflectivity) change when you remove heavy Martian dust from a solar panel, and this is quite detectable from orbit. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:02 pm |
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Every scene being flawed and every bit of dialogue awful, not to mention all the astronauts acting like frat boys -- those were serious flaws.
And since he needed lots of water, recycling his pee as fertilizer would be basic and a fairly obvious step. Actually I would have been interested in hearing something about the chemical composition of the Martian soil and how that might affect farming in it. But our highly trained botanist is more up for making quips than detailing science. I laughed (at the film) when Damon says, "I'll just have to science the shit out of this." Too much juvenile behavior throughout, which made for an awkward pairing with instant problem-solving.
Yeah, I assumed the dust on the solar panels could be determined by reflectivity. Though we really have no idea of the orbital height or camera resolution of the images being taken. But that also bugged me with the film, you had to infer a number of things that weren't specified. Like how they determined the dist was cleared. or why only music from one crew member was left in the HAB. There were more. Such as the cause of the explosion I mentioned above.
There was an overall vagueness to the film.
Were we ever told what year this was? It seemed to be in the near future sometime, and the technology was a little more advanced than today. But seemed to be left indeterminate what year this was, and what technical advances there were. |
Last edited by gromit on Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:13 pm |
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Well, my dvd of Inside Out didn't have a working English audio track. it was just silent. I could watch the film in French, Chinese, Thai and think I had one other option. The English commentary was functional but seemed uninteresting in the 3 minutes I tried it.
I did watch a chunk of the film with English subtitles, but I think a lot of the fun of animation is the voicework. Anyway, it seemed entirely decent, but not that interesting. I'll return the disc and get something else.
I did watch Mistress America, and it was entirely okayish. I'm always surprised in the Greta Gerwig films how wimpy and unappealing the young guys are. In this, two fairly attractive university freshman girls kind of fight over this sloppy looking schlubby freshman guy with minimal social skills. It's certainly watchable, but rather over-written and under-baked at the same time. the kind of film you could watch any 20 minutes of on cable and change the channel without guilt.
Hopefully Anomalisa is good, or this batch is a complete dud. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:49 am |
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Anomalisa was watchable but left me with not very much.
The film about hotel loneliness, mid-life crisis, and hooking up with a fellow guest could have been entitled Lost in Animation.
The only thing really interesting to me was that the titular character Lisa had a face much like a (self-described) crazy girl I used to date. That was a bit disconcerting. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:58 am |
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So, back to Matt Damon's turds ...
I think it was the film's fault that the use of pee seemed an oversight.
There are at least 5 references to Damon's poo.
First we see him taking a dump and flushing; then he gets the idea to use his packaged crap (so we get to see how the waste is disposed of); then he mixes the crap up into mushy form while wearing noseplugs; finally adds it to the Martain soil he's carted inside. Then at the end he makes the sophomoric joke, which would be better suited to a high school audience, about farming with his own shit.
So that's a lot of time and effort spent on poop -- the whole process of making it, processing it and getting results -- yet not one mention of urine. Of course this isn't a major issue, but urea is a standard way to add nitrogen to soil, and growing crops is key to his survival.
Really I thought it was a sloppy film, where things often aren't explained, everyone has a sudden brainstorm to solve an impossible problem, etc. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:43 am |
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The brainstorming is what the film is about. I wondered why he didn't try to take some of the last crop of potatoes and save then to make the next, which would have given him enough food to wait for Ares 4. It's a moot point, given what happens in the movie, but it seemed like an obvious thing to do.
I figured the other crew's music was left on the ship.
As for the urine, it's standard procedure on space missions to recycle it for the water. I don't remember whether the author mentioned in the book whether the urea was retrieved. Of course, he could also water his potatoes more directly. I'm a little surprise he didn't find some subsurface ice. There seems to be a lot on Mars. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 11:20 am |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 11:26 am |
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What did you think of the book?
Someone said that it was sort of a libertarian fantasy and rather anti-authority, and there's a good deal of the latter in the film. That person thought it amusing that taking a billion dollar taxpayer-funded spacecraft and using it for your own ends would be seen as rugged individualism. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:59 pm |
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Syd wrote: The brainstorming is what the film is about. I wondered why he didn't try to take some of the last crop of potatoes and save then to make the next, which would have given him enough food to wait for Ares 4. It's a moot point, given what happens in the movie, but it seemed like an obvious thing to do.
I figured the other crew's music was left on the ship.
As for the urine, it's standard procedure on space missions to recycle it for the water. I don't remember whether the author mentioned in the book whether the urea was retrieved. Of course, he could also water his potatoes more directly. I'm a little surprise he didn't find some subsurface ice. There seems to be a lot on Mars.
Not that I'm keenly excited about prolonging this topic, but I have an organic farmer friend and have researched quite a bit on the subject, and it's my understanding that urine can only be used (as a source of potassium, phosphorus, and urea) if it's diluted 10:1 with water. Undiluted, it just burns plants and sometimes kills them outright. So, if you're recycling the urine for water, then what's left is even more concentrated than straight pee.
I'm looking forward to "Good Will Dumping" BTW, in which Damon plays a janitor at MIT who has a secret gift for agronomy and organic farming. "How do you like THEM apples?" |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:54 pm |
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| He's got other sources of water, too, so he can dilute it. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:31 pm |
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| Hail, Caesar is lower tier Coens, but is huge fun to a film lover. The various movies-within-the-movie are amusing pastiches of the various big genres of the 40s and 50s, some veering off course and needing a little tweak and tough love from Eddie Mannix, the studio exec (verrry loosely based on MGM's real Mannix) who also struggles with his own conscience and Catholic guilt. Some very clever and funny scenes (a meeting with reps of 4 major religions to ensure that the Christ depiction in the titular movie won't offend anyone, e.g.) and, if Joel and Ethan had given a little more dimension, and closure, to supporting characters I could call it another masterpiece. But the film is really a portrait of Eddie that can't let subplots or supportings develop too much. The ensemble, with great vignette pieces from actors like Tilda Swinton, Frances McD and Ralph Fiennes, may help you forget the narrow scope and just have a good time. I know I did. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 2:18 pm |
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I'm looking forward to Hail Caesar though it sounds sort of episodic. But fun.
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As for growing plants/crops with urine, the dilution ratio is variously listed as 5:1, 8:1 or 10:1. I assume this has to do with the variation in water content of urine itself -- from relatively clear liquid, to pale yellow, to fairly dark yellow (right after basketball for me). I assume that 10:1 is primarily intended for more concentrated pee, and is frequently mentioned because that is safest. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 7:37 pm |
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| Yeah, when it comes down to recommended ratios, I just go with the flow. |
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