{"id":783,"date":"2010-07-20T20:45:53","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T20:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2010\/07\/20\/in_which_i_go_to_the_movies\/"},"modified":"2010-07-20T20:45:53","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T20:45:53","slug":"in_which_i_go_to_the_movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2010\/07\/20\/in_which_i_go_to_the_movies\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I go to the movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week the BBC asked me to go along to a press screening of the film Splice to give my opinions on the science. It was great fun to be sitting amongst all the other journalists in the small Soho theatre; I could even make out the distinctive quiff of horror film critic Mark Kermode down in the front row, silhouetted against the screen. Meanwhile, the NPG journalist Adam Rutherford offered around sweets (politely refused in most cases), and my BBC companion and I exchanged snide comments throughout the film. <\/p>\n

\nYou can read my thoughts in today’s piece<\/a>, but the executive summary is that the film was so bad it was almost good – Frankenstein with Oedipal issues. I’ll also add that it’s seldom a brilliant sign when an audience keeps laughing at things that are quite clearly not intended to be funny. <\/p>\n

\nI was billed as a “DNA expert” on the front page of the BBC News this morning, which earned me a lot of ribbing from my colleagues:<\/p>\n

\n\"fly.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAfter seeing the film, I was surprised to read in the press pack that its director, Vincenzo Natali, thought his film was not<\/em> about hubristic scientists playing god and meddling with things that man was not meant to know – that he did not, in fact, actually intend to make a cautionary statement about the dangers of unrestrained biotechnology. As this was indeed the overriding message coming through, I can only assume that Natali lost control of his own creation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week the BBC asked me to go along to a press screening of the film Splice to give my opinions on the science. It was great fun to be sitting amongst all the other journalists in the small Soho … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}