Review: The Midnight Sky

During the pandemic, we now get to watch some theatrical movies from home, and this time I caught The Midnight Sky on Netflix. The trailer's pretty good, so I had to watch -- it looks like good hard sci-fi.

Overall I have good reactions to the movie. I understand where it was going, and I like the ending. But the science turned out to be pretty bad. More on that in a minute.

Disaster has struck the world, and nowhere is safe. Everyone is going to die. Augustine (played by George Clooney), a scientist, is stationed at an arctic observatory. He's got a terminal disease and no one waiting at home, so when his team decides to evacuate, he stays behind alone to hold down the fort. However, he doesn't know that someone else got left behind.

At the same time, Aether, a spacecraft, is returning from K-23, a habitable moon of Jupiter that Augustine discovered. He decides that he needs to contact the spacecraft and warn them to stay away from Earth.

The movie has pretty imagery and cinematography. Most of the acting is top notch, with Clooney carrying most of the cast. The music is okay.

But then there's the science, and what feels like a convoluted setup so we can have the good scenes. 

You may already have questions after reading just my synopsis. "But wait ... why should Augustine need to warn Aether to stay away? Don't they already know what's going on?" Good question! It turns out that when you're too far away, you can't talk to Earth. You have to be within range.

Yeah ... what? We can still currently talk with our ancient Voyager probes that launched into space decades ago. I know there's that square-inverse law thingy, but believe me -- we already got this. We've been able to send and receive signals anywhere in our solar system for a very long time. You may remember receiving pictures of Pluto a few years ago. Well, if you believe this movie -- such a feat would be impossible!

And while Aether is traveling back to Earth, they suddenly go off course -- with no explanation. Does our solar system have hidden gravity wells? And then they must do fancy calculations to get back on course, and go through ... get this ... uncharted territory!!! Ugh. We've got every major asteroid in our solar system mapped. I believe we've got the whole thing covered. There exists no uncharted territory. And when asteroids attack, they look more like big rocks slowly bouncing off the ship rather than super fast piercing all the way through the hull. Also, any moon of Jupiter large enough to support our kind of life would have already been discovered as well.

But hey -- I got to be nice. At least they did get gravity right. That is, it's facing in the right direction, and we even get to see a character changing directions in the middle of the spin. That's a step in the right direction.

Then again, if you don't know that much about science, this stuff probably won't bother you. I was able to turn off the science alarms and enjoy the movie -- the story and the imagery. It's not one of my faves, but at least it kept my attention with no boring parts, and some good story.

So, while you're stuck at home, give it a try. You may like it -- you might not.

Reviewing 2020

Happy New Year! 2020 is gone, and good riddance. I don't think I've ever been this excited to see the beginning of a new year, and it can't possibly get any worse.

As I mentioned last year, I've done away with the yearly goals, as they're just not effective (and 7 Habits agrees). But it's still fun to look over the past year.

Some have reported an increase in productivity due to being at home longer, but I'm not one of those. In fact, the opposite may have happened. Stresses at work increased because of COVID19 and a recent large merger, and at the same time I experienced an effective pay cut (I did get a nominal raise, but it was overcome by considerably higher insurance premiums and the fact they stopped paying my professional dues and for my continuing education). This stress led to much more depression and lower productivity at home. I do really wish I could have accomplished more tasks that I've been planning for years.

In the second half of the year I came out of it and started producing again. As far as blogging is concerned, 2020 saw this blog with my 2nd lowest number of posts ever. So, I beat 2019. Yay! I've resurrected the reviews I had done in the past, and after my December hiatus, I intend on continuing weekly reviews of movies, TV shows, and other things.

My Mormon and Economy blogs, on the other hand, have seen their highest level of posts ever -- coming mainly from the last half of the year. #1! This is due to my introduction of the weekly spiritual thoughts, and weekly coronavirus newsletters (which I've just now ended).

I will also, this coming week, introduce yet another blog -- a new initiative called "Always Be Better," which will be a Blogger/YouTube cross post thing. I will place the videos on YouTube and the transcripts in the new blog. Each week will feature a roughly 5 minute video touching on some random subject with the goal of helping us all to become better people.

Here are my favorite posts from this past year:

What Can You Do To Stop the Spread? -- Learn the simple steps that *you* can do to help join the fight against the virus and save lives. You can also see a list of actions to avoid.

Is Purple Really Not in the Rainbow? -- Read this to learn how "purple" isn't in the rainbow, but "blue-ish purple" is. I take on the Minute Physics guy and propose experiments you can conduct to find out the answer to this question for yourselves.

The Christmas Star -- Read about the "Christmas Star" event of Jupiter converging with Saturn in the sky, check out my pictures, and consider different theories as to what the actual Christmas Star might have been two millennia ago.

The Sonata Book -- Read about how I accidentally bought one of the most difficult collection of piano pieces, and how I turned it into a lifetime goal -- how it helped me to reach out for the impossible and hopefully to inspire others to do the same.

I also released to the public, my short story "When Time Flows West," which is remarkably similar to the recent movie TENET. You should check it out and see what you think.

Also, reviewing my past years of blogging, I came across a very important piece of insight. In this blog entry from 2014, I announced that I was going to take a break to devote 100% of my time to studying for an actuarial exam. I think I killed that exam -- wouldn't be surprised if it was a 10. But, I see now that I totally lost momentum at that time. And as far as writing is concerned, I have not gotten anywhere close to where I had been, despite several times that I've tried to reboot. 

I'm still trying ... I want to write more. I want to create more. I want to put down on paper all these ideas floating around in my head. I just have to build up that momentum again ... something my life coach advises. It sucks that that exam was 6 years ago, and it's taking me this long to reboot, but it's not too late.

What comes next? I'm currently devoting more time to music -- see if I can get momentum in that area. At the same time, I'll continue rebuilding my fiction writing momentum as well. So much to accomplish in this life!

So, in summary -- I had a rough first half of the year, did a lot of stuff the second half, and am now trying to build up momentum going forward.

How did you do in 2020?