Book and media reviews from the journal Science, edited by Valerie Thompson.

Valerie Thompson, Editor

Posts tagged with "Film"

• Film Science lives

  The life and legacy of Nobel laureate Muhammad Abdus Salam come into focus in a new film

  10 October, 2018

  The film Salam: The First ****** Nobel Laureate begins and ends with a gravestone in a quiet mass cemetery in Pakistan. We see the deceased’s name: “Professor Muhammad Abdus Salam,” followed by his birth and death dates, 1926 and 1996, and a puzzling inscription that declares that Salam “in 1979 became the first Nobel laureate… Read More
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  The Most Unknown
  Ian Cheney, director

  Film Collaboration, Cross-disciplinary

  Conversations spark connections as scientists search for inspiration in other fields

  10 July, 2018

  If you knocked on Heaven’s door, and God greeted you, what question would you ask? What is the nature of human consciousness, and how can it be expanded? Where does the Universe begin and end? What is time, and why isn’t it constant? What causes deviance? And further still, if you received an answer, could… Read More

• Film Research Ethics

  A tale of triplets separated at birth raises red flags and questions about the role of nature and nurture

  13 March, 2018

  How much are we shaped by our genetic makeup, and how much does the environment in which we are raised contribute to our physical appearance, our personalities, and our preferences? The relative importance of nature versus nurture is a fundamental question in biology and is notably difficult to study in humans, due to ethical concerns. Read More

• Film Science Communication

  A new film celebrates a mid-century illustrator who stoked imaginations with prescient comics

  29 January, 2018

  Directed by Brett Ryan Bonowicz (The Perfect 46, 2014), Closer Than We Think is an eponymous documentary about a mid–20th-century comic strip and its creator, Arthur Radebaugh. The film provides important insight into what made the comic a foundation for other popular science fiction endeavors. More important, however, it shows how the strip directly encouraged… Read More

• Film Science lives

  A new documentary reveals the underappreciated intellectual contributions of ’40s film star Hedy Lamarr

  19 December, 2017

  Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story begins with a quote from the notoriously beautiful actress: “Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” This sets the tone for the rest of the film, as Lamarr wrestles with her public image as a Hollywood star, and sometime sex symbol… Read More
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  An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
  Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, directors

  Film Climate change, Documentary Film

  Al Gore’s climate activism takes center stage once again

  24 July, 2017

  An Inconvenient Sequel, directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, offers a snapshot of the superstorms, global summits, and political shake-ups that have occurred in the decade since the premiere of the groundbreaking climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Widely credited with having helped to bring global warming to the fore in public policy discussions… Read More

• Film Nuclear Energy, Russia

  City 40

  1 May, 2017

  In 1945, the USSR built “City 40” along Lake Irtyash for workers and families linked to its Mayak plutonium production plant. It was a “closed city,” fenced in by barbed wire, heavily guarded, and left off of all maps to protect its nuclear secrets. (Russia had 28 such closed cities during the Cold War; the… Read More

• Film Dakota Access Pipeline, Standing Rock

  Sacred Water: Standing Rock

  1 May, 2017

  When filmmaker Michelle Latimer arrived last spring at the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota to document opposition to the nearby construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, she was underwhelmed. Surveying the small group of Native American activists assembled in support of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, she thought, “I don’t know if I can… Read More

• Film Animal Agriculture, Conservation

  Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman

  1 May, 2017

  Commercial-scale food production and environmental conservation are often viewed as fundamentally at odds with one another. This documentary, based on the book of the same title by Miriam Horn, challenges that idea by bringing viewers face to face with people who produce our food and whose livelihoods depend on the land and sea. Following a… Read More

• Film

  Light on Earth

  1 May, 2017

  From natural sunlight to bulbs that glow and lasers that produce narrow beams, we use light to explore our world, to communicate, for security, and even as a weapon. But turn down the brightness and you can find a range of creatures that create their own light for similar purposes. Aided by advances in the… Read More