Equinox, Eclipse and all that stuff 

It's officially Spring again!

Despite serious neglect, apart from by the weather itself, the bulbs in our window boxes have come up and bloomed again. Alice feels they have forgiven her for not carefully storing them in the dark and replacing with summer flowers last year.

Now who's being a bit silly? She was the one in the dark cupboard, as it were,
and she's blooming again now. There, there. . .

It's the Equinox today. Equal day and night. We wrote at length about that two years ago, both from an Astronomical and an Astrological point of view. Have a look here. Alice has carefully checked every link in that post, and they still work.

Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain

All you astrology-sceptics, take note. Especially if your name is Dara O'Briain. He, and the oh-so-charming Brian Cox have been dissing the ancient art for years, despite petitions to the BBC. They did it again last night, in the post-eclipse Stargazing Live programme on BBC2.

Alice, who is an afficionado of both sciences is particularly peeved by their ignorance of what astrology does and does not claim.

Scientists like Cox have a tedious habit of criticising astrologers for beliefs they do not actually hold. Such as the old carp saying there should be 13 Signs of the Zodiac, the additional one being Ophiuchus, because there are 13 constellations along the ecliptic. See the detailed reply to this gross misunderstanding by astrologer Deborah Houlding.

Ophiuchus, from Urania's Mirror c. 1825

A Zodiacal sign is essentially defined as a 12-fold mathematical division of the ecliptic circle . . . the tropical zodiac signs now only retain a symbolic memory of the constellations they were close to at the time of their creation. Traditionally, both astronomers and astrologers understood that the zodiac is a mathematical and idealised division of the Sun's ecliptic circle, whose exact proportions cannot be precisely divided by the visual groupings of the background stars.

Shame in a way, Ophiuchus looks pretty amazing I think, holding up the serpent.

Astrology is a science, in terms of the precise data required and calculations involved (now mostly done by computer) but it is an art indeed in how the complex results are then interpreted.

Try it out for yourself at astro.com but note you'll need your time and place of birth, as well as the date. More than just your so called "star sign" indeed.

If you wonder how all this can be turned by a computer into an intelligible reading, see this article about the AI expert system based on Liz Greene's interpretations.

Moreover, serious astrologers (most of whom don't write those brief paragraphs in the newspapers) do not believe that the position of the planets, relative to degrees of the ecliptic (not to the actual constellations, which move with the precession of the equinoxes) has an effect on human beings! Rather they say there are thousands of years of observed correlations between these two.

To show details, click for larger size

Alice was grunting, huffing and puffing an awful lot here, so I felt obliged to let her put in some bold and underlinings etc. She ended up with so many, though, it was aesthetically most unpleasing, and we had to take a few of them out again. We'll just have to trust the intelligence of our readers.

Whilst Googling away for references, we came upon this interactive animation demonstrating the ecliptic and the seasons. It's not essential to our argument, but great fun to play with!
The screenshot above shows the setup at our own Latitude, today. But you can alter it in various ways and set the animation going.

Oh dear . . .

What about the eclipse? We're coming to that. Unfortunately we weren't able to get any of those special protective glasses for viewing the sun - everywhere online was sold out or outrageously expensive.

The Daily Record advertised (in the Metro) that there would be a free pair with Thursday's issue. In fact one could only claim them at Morrison's, and not just a local one either. The nice young man in our nearest branch told us we had better phone the big supermarket first, as stocks were very low. We gave up.

What a con! No links for them.

The eclipse through our window and cloud!

So we saw most of it on TV, apart from the image to the right which is our only direct observation.

Not very impressive on here, but it was exciting at the time.

Sorry, Alice has no idea why there seems to be a double crescent sun.

We'll add below some of our favourite eclipse photos from the internet.

The one to the left is from the European Space Agency's Proba-2 satellite. So not what anyone on earth would actually see.

But, goodness me, it is pretty, isn't it?

Don't forget to click on the images to see a larger version.

This photo was taken near Stonehenge by Christopher Ison and is wonderfully atmospheric.

A lot of people made a trip to the Faroe Islands (half way between Scotland and Iceland) where the eclipse was going to be complete.

Cloudy skies masked the sun itself for most of these visitors, although the sudden transition to total darkness was pretty impressive. See that as shown on the BBC. There are more photos and video there, too.

Nevertheless, some spectators apparently demanded their money back from the tour operators!!

People frequently mystify me.

A good friend of ours clearly took a much better option, and texted that she had seen a wonderful total eclipse, at sea, 100 miles north of Faroe Islands! We're green with envy. But why "green"? I asked. Try these explanations on WiseGeek.

Toby Melville took this from near Bridgwater, in south western England. Beautifully artistic.

Our favourite "find" of the day however was a video of Hamferð, a doom-metal band (what?!) playing Deyðir Varðar live during the eclipse above the village of Kvívík in The Faroe Islands.

Still from the video on YouTube. Do go watch it, it's fabulous. Hurrah for YouTube!

The track is from their album Evst [go to SHOW MORE] about the journey of a man searching for his son who went missing in the mountains, during a storm. This song is about him realising the son is gone, then desperately looking for him. We found it quite ethereal and haunting.

Jupiter Ascending (etc) - updated

We've been extra busy recently, and haven't managed to get round to Jupiter for a while. Astrologically, Alice actually has Jupiter "rising" in Virgo, in her first house. She says it means she wants to know everything, and is obsessive about detail. Hmmmm.

On  the negative side, there have been hassles about being forced to change our ISP because Virgin sold off  97,700 of their non-cable customers, including us, to TalkTalk. See this article in The Telegraph. Alice didn't want to go to TalkTalk, who have a poor reputation, and was somewhat stressed about it, so we won't go into all that. Suffice to say she swore an awful lot at the various telephone menus, because they never gave an option for exactly what she wanted. She adds that she wasn't back Underground, just fretting quite normally for her. And there is some progress afoot since she finally decided to move to good old BT. . .

Update: we're so very behind with this blog! The technical part of the digital move went very smoothly - Alice plugged all the bits together most efficiently (she's positively grinning now) and stress levels are back down again all round. BUT informing everyone of her change of email address has taken hours. Very boring for poor me.

Still, she also caught up with all those distant friends and relatives (we mean geographically, of course) whom she'd promised to bring up to date when she sent her Christmas cards. She made them the same promise in 2013 too, but her sojourn in the Underground had postponed the enterprise for a year. That's why the whole "informing" process took so many hours. Maybe now she'll get back to keeping this up to date.

The Wachowskis on set - do click!

On the positive side, we've been on an exciting surprise trip: but you'll have to wait for another post for that. Not as long as this time, I hope.

So, back to - Jupiter Ascending. It may well have had a poor rating on Rotten Tomatoes (26% from critics, and 46% from audiences) and it did have its flaws, but we're fans of the Wachowskis, and wanted to see it regardless. Even Mark Kermode, although he called the film "bonkers, all over the place" with "ridiculous dialogue", said he did enjoy it, and even had fun.

We loved it!  It just looked so gorgeous. To get a good idea, if you don't actually want to go and see it (or order the DVD/BluRay) take a look instead at the designs on the film's website.

The artist, or "conceptual designer" we should say, George Hull, was interviewed by io9 and explained some of the influences on his work - such as Japanese fighting fish, for example. I thought a few of them looked like butterflies, but Alice says I'm being silly. He apparently likes "juxtaposing high tech with low tech." So there was plenty of that. He's worked on other Wachowski films, and with Neill Blomkamp too. (We've got his Chappie on our watchlist now, as well.)

Lana and Andy in the DePaul Visiting Artists Series

You can see the Wachowskis take part in a very philosophical full-length discussion about their approach to film aesthetics on YouTube. Yeh, Lana even talks about "interrogating a framework of meaning." Well, search me. Alice lapped it up, as you might expect.

There are simply loads of articles and reviews of Jupiter, plus interviews with the sibling directors. That's partly why writing up our view of it has taken so very long: Alice got carried away, then overwhelmed by her own research.

I kept telling her, Just make a list of links and add a few quotes, in no particular order, and sprinkle with the odd image. Be as sprawling as the movie tself!  Thank goodness she's finally given in. So here goes:

HITFIX interview Part 1 and Part 2.

Jupiter and Caine with his anit-gravity boots

Both parts are fascinating and full of information.

For instance: they shot the gravity boots chase sequence through Chicago, a few six-minute shots at a time over the course of seven full months - to get the same Chicago skyline at dawn. They prefer stunt action to CGI, and these shots involved stunt skateboarders whizzing about on giant ramps.

[Watch Lana waxing lyrical about this decision on YouTube]

They admit they over-write, and then cut down, so the back-stories are still there for the actors. Maybe they aren't always there for us, though.

Screen Rant
Lana: We seem not to be very good at making small things. We keep saying Let's go make a small movie. But then they always end up being enormously complex. We want to somehow always find something that is different or that no one has tried.

Collider 
Lots of interesting stuff here too, plus more details on the Chicago dawn shoots.

From the beginning we were like, Why are spaceships so damn ugly?... Human beings since the time we were designing chariots and basically litters in Egyptian times through carriages and boats, even Viking ships. They have a beauty and an aesthetic care to them ... human beings are always interested in expressing their conception of beauty.  ... 

Let's extrapolate that out into this million year old culture. ... we were really excited about the idea of bringing a baroque in the way the baroque represents exuberance with logic and rationality underneath the surface of it. We wanted this kind of baroque design and aesthetic for our science fiction world.

The Mary Sue
Is this one a bad review or not? Whatever, it's an enjoyable read.

Jupiter meets Sean Bean's bees

Jupiter Ascending is the worst movie ever: go see it immediately - it's so stupid it's beautiful. ...  just preposterous, but so preposterous it was really kind of amazing ... Jupiter Ascending is also one of the rare instances where the film would have benefitted from being longer. ...  Anyways, Sean Bean is a hybrid sad space dad bee marine named Stinger who may ... actually live to see the end of the film.

The Verge
After numerous criticisms, Bryan Bishop adds: For every narrative weakness, however, Jupiter Ascending soars as a visual accomplishment. It's outrageously gorgeous, full of life and color and intricately designed spectacle. None of it may be particularly original, but it's a wonderful screensaver of a movie.

7M Pictures

Terry Gilliam in "Jupiter Ascending"

With names like Jupiter Jones as heroine, Caine Wise as the genetic hybrid dog soldier and Stinger as a character who was spliced with bee DNA, how could this not be a deliberate choice? 

Add to this all the winks and nods the Wachowskis do to classic science fiction from "Flash Gordon" movie riffs to a brilliant cameo by Terry Gilliam in the most "Brazil"-esque sequences in the film.

Time Out
We'd love to say that the Wachowskis manage to wrangle all these disparate elements into a satisfying whole, but this is one mad mess from start to finish, crammed with flying dinosaur sidekicks, fetish-mask robots, impossible-to-follow intrigue and ripe, bizarrely straight-faced dialogue. But the sheer ambition is impossible to ignore, and the sense of fun is infectious: you may fear for your sanity during 'Jupiter Ascending', but you'll come out smiling.

Eddie Redmane as Balem Abrasax

Now back to us.

Many have made moan over Eddie Redmane's peculiar quiet-and-husky tones, with the occasional extremely loud outbursts. But my theory is that Balem has had his throat ripped out (probably by the wolf side of Caine, who tells Jupiter he did commit such an act) and his ornate collar protects his damaged voicebox.

Alice thinks it's more likely a take-off of Darth Vader.

And she's rather proud that she spotted the reference to Ganesha. Did you?

Enough! Let's stop there. You get the picture.