# phunkon 30 Apr 2008 at 11:40 am
StevoR, That was Frank Poole if I remember right.

Yep. That’s the one – thanks! Frank, Harry .. same diff ..well almost!

# Johnny Vectoron 30 Apr 2008 at 11:41 am
aiabx and StevoR: The movie is “October Sky”, which is an anagram of “Rocket Boys” which in turn is the name of the book on which the movie was based. And yeah, it’s a good movie. Lots of ’splody attempts to make rockets, ultimately leading to becoming a real rocket engineer! Woo-hoo!

Ah, yes! That’s the one I meant! I did’nt know it was based on a book … but I guess I should have. All the best movies usually are!

Checking my Collins Internet-linked Dictionary of Astronomy (Market House Books, 2006) I find the original Sputnik was launched on 4th October 1957 too making the anagram title apt again.

Neil Apology accepted. No worries. I was just a bit confused there for a while .. Actually I’m often confused but ..hey that’s life.

Jim Shaver Many thanks! I’ve been puzzling on how to do all that bold, italics, quotes stuff for ages. So that’s what they mean by HTML eh? Sorry I’m pretty average with computers I must confess. Thanks again & really hoping this works now.
Finally, thinking religious & / or scientific movies :
(Or is philosophical a better word?)

What about ‘Contact’ which had both science & religion?

Or for that matter Space odyssey :2001 … which has the strange pyschedelic semi-religious (?) ending plus heaps of science?

& what was the one with the sleeping sickness patients based on the Oliver Sach’s bok (?) The Awakening or something?

&, of course, ‘A Beautiful Mind’ which I’ll admit I haven’t seen?

Personally I didn’t mind any of Gibson’s movies really – I loved ‘Braveheart’!

As for technofear, blame Mary Shelley. She more or less established the mad scientist meme, and the World Wars proved that the technology the mad scientists make can kill a lot of Joe Blows. So it goes, sadly. Still, there’s a more pivotal reason why no one will make a Technology and Science Save The Day! movie: it’d be dry, unless it got turned into a technoswords-and-sorcery story where the main character has to get the MacGuffin Machine to the Plot Dilemma in order to Save The World, and even then the character is secondary to the MacGuffin Machine.

I’m looking at you, Alastair Reynolds.

I guess the question is “how can we package it so it sells, without looking like The Iron Dream?”

I agree.

The worst end-of-the-world science fiction movie has to be “An Inconvienient Truth”. The main actor did such a wooden acting job.

Thanks–i dig the respeck–booyakasha!

I didn’t think my snarky little post would have still been an ongoing topic here. It was meant as a way of pointing out the reaction to the movie Expelled–yes I was criticizing what I feel is an extremely heated response to a genuinely crappy movie. I think that the opinion of MANY (not all) bloggers here is virulently anti-religion, and it is not something I am pulling out of thin air. So, i will own both my opinion and my lame attempt at being critical of MANY of the opinions here.

And yes, I have seen the Pharyngula site; the bloggers and comments there make this place look like the teddy bear picnic. I understand PZ’s complaint, being a specific target and all. Still, a lot of energy seems to be spent on this hateration.

Well, on to the next topic . . .

Respeck!