String Kings – The Director’s Cut

Posted on April 13, 2007 by woit

I just learned from Cosmic Variance that a review of the Director’s Cut version of String Kings is now out. It seems that the Director’s Cut version includes more scenes featuring a certain “man on the edge” in New York City…

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7 Responses to String Kings – The Director’s Cut

  1. milkshake says:
    April 13, 2007 at 4:35 pm

    In the String Kings III the crime syndicate with its new ruthless and increasingly decoherent Czech boss comes crashing down in a violent showdown and in the final visceral balcony scene the gutters of arXiv will be overflowing with freshly-spilled data

  2. Kea says:
    April 13, 2007 at 5:46 pm

    OK, I laughed a lot. But the film is a little light on its female casting.

  3. Jimbo says:
    April 13, 2007 at 9:27 pm

    If this does’nt cause you to crack up repeatedly, you are BAD CRAZY ! My only critique of the casting is that Segal is approx. 1/2 meter taller than Brian Greene !

  4. joe says:
    April 14, 2007 at 8:31 am

    The movie “The Red Violin” could be used as parody of the futility/tragedy of ST. Links: 1, 2, 3

    From this review are some hauntingly relevant remarks on the hubris of “Beauty”:

    “The soul is born in beauty and feeds on beauty, requires beauty for its life.”
    — James Hillman

    “..is a spiritually rich and musically sublime drama about the soulful dimensions of beauty. It also presents some of the ways in which beauty has been perverted by people’s hubris and their treating it as a commodity.”

    “..predicting a long journey [ Italy, Austria, Oxford/England, China, Montreal ] characterized by moments of great happiness and disaster”

    “New York expert Charles Morritz (Samuel L. Jackson) appraises it as “the perfect marriage of science and beauty.”

    As I understand it, the ST “gang” is fixated & in love with mathematical beauty?

    Is this movie an example of “Life imitating Art [ which is itself imitating Life ]”?

    “Theory & Experiment”:

    I was impressed by one scene, where the violin teacher schools the student on the important of Theory:

    “violin..cheese.
    There’s something about your playing that eludes me..I’ve decided to analyze it systematically with a scientifc method.
    First , your bowing. And your left hand phrasing. Your detache, ornamention, and your taste.
    And theory! Theory, too, is important
    You need a lot more than inspriation to play the violin.
    You need method, you must think.. and work.
    ..
    if you play well, you’ll enjoy the finest fare. My boy, play well, and there will be cheese.
    violin..cheese”

    The ST critics are claiming that 2 decades later of “stringing”, there is no sign of “cheese”. I guess ST gang would claim the critics are guilty of “Whine”, or as the popular phrase goes “If they bring the Whine, I’ll bring the Cheese”. As pointed out recently, ST conferences should have a “Alternatives” to ST for balance..thus making it a “Whine & Cheese” exhibition.

    BTW, there was a good sequence where the female Communist party leader said “Sometimes the teacher can learn from the student”. This is reminiscent of Feynman’s philosophy, of not taking a position where teacher-student interaction is non-existent (like at IAS/Princeton). Take this metaphor further, maybe a “counter-point” to ST by critics could be useful to ST development.

    There is also a good sequence about “dogma VS revolution”:

    “The [ Communist Chinese ] authorities denounce Western music as decadent and the old music teacher reminds them that Beethoven was a great revolutionary.”

    Is ST “revolution” (its intention), or just a dogma by the “Gang of 4”?

  5. Jonathan Vos Post says:
    April 14, 2007 at 4:57 pm

    It still doesn’t sound like Space Opera. Close, but not hitting on all 20 criteria.

    Brian W. Aldiss, in his anthology “Space Opera” [Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1974]
    identifies various key indicators of “Space Opera” as (if I may interpolate
    from his delightful introduction):

    (1) Style and Mood staunchly traditional
    (2) Hitherto unknown places to explore
    (3) Continuity between Past and Future
    (4) Tremendous sphere of space/time
    (5) A pinch of reality inflated with melodrama
    (6) A seasoning of screwy ideas
    (7) Heady escapist stuff
    (8) Charging on with little regard for logic or literacy
    (9) Often throwing off great images, excitements, aspirations
    (10) The Earth should be in peril
    (11) There must be a quest
    (12) There must be a man to match the mighty hour
    (13) That man must confront aliens and exotic creatures
    (14) Space must flow past the ports like wine from a pitcher
    (15) Blood must run down the palace steps
    (16) Ships must launch out into the louring dark
    (17) There must be a woman fairer than the skies
    (18) There must be a villain darker than a Black Hole
    (19) All must come right in the end
    (20) The future in space, seen mistily through the eyes of yesterday

    Well, not all these indicators are valid even for each of the stories he’s assembled, but his list is indicative.

    For details, see:

    http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/thisthat.html#spaceopera

  6. Kea says:
    April 14, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    …and they somehow missed the large Elephant walking through Manhattan.

  7. Pingback: The physics of general relativity « Quantum field theory

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