Netflix (or should I say N3tfl1×) got the first season of Numb3rs this week, and I watched the first four episodes with mixed reactions. On one hand, any popular presentation of mathematics in the real world is a treat. But would it be so hard to cut some of the tritest Television Drama Moments in favor of a fuller explanation of the math and some acknowledgement of its limits?

The pilot episode is the best of these. Charlie the mathematician sees a map of attacks by a serial rapist and says, I cannot predict where the next attack will be but I can tell you where he lives. He takes a crash course in criminal psychology from his brother Don the detective, generates a model of the rapist’s behavior, and announces with 96% confidence that the rapist lives in the yellow zone on his map. (Later he insists that 96% is equivalent to certainty.) The map is the output of a single “equation”. In his place I would try several different models and see where their conclusions overlap, but there’s no sign that Charlie even tries varying the weights in his model.

Episode 4 “Structural Corruption” is nonsense. Charlie takes some measurements of a skyscraper’s movement in wind, and announces that the structure is flawed (without saying why he thinks so) but he doesn’t know how. He whips up a software model of the building — it would have to be a very simple model — and extrapolates what would happen in a major earthquake; and from this extrapolation, if I understand right, he infers that the flaw is in the foundation. Huh?

大菩薩峠 (Dai-Bosatsu Pass aka Sword of Doom) (dir. 岡本 喜八,). The fight scenes are more preposterous than average: not only do the red shirts attack the champion one by one rather than rushing him, they seem to be aiming to strike someone two or three paces beyond him.

The Naked Prey (dir. Cornel Wilde). Not available on disc but I saw it once on television. It’s essentially one long chase scene, but a gripping one.

Born Free (dir. James H. Hill, Tom McGowan). Kid stuff, of course. I’m curious about how it was made. Some scenes show Elsa’s personality so distinctly that it’s hard to believe they could be played by a stunt cat; yet they look too good to be “home movies” shot by Adamson.

Alfie (dir. Lewis Gilbert); Georgy Girl (dir. Silvio Narizzano). Similar enough in content and tone that I wonder, what from recent years is most comparable to these?

座頭市の歌が聞える (Zatoichi’s Vengeance, #13, dir. Tanaka Tokuzo). Even more formulaic than most of the series.

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (dir. Norman Jewison). Likable farce. I saw it as a child and remembered almost nothing. — Jonathan Winters has a supporting role, and as usual I could do without. I can think of two movies in which he wasn’t mugging all the time: in The Loved One he played two roles, one of which had to have some different mannerisms, and in Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad he played a dead body (narrating to us from Beyond).

The Endless Summer (dir. Bruce Brown), a famous documentary on surfing: pretty but monotonous.

座頭市海を渡る (Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage, #14, dir. Ikehiro Kazuo) — For some reason this one is controlled (at least for the US) by a different company from the others in the series, and is not available with English subtitles.

The Fortune Cookie: your standard Billy Wilder comedy, which is no bad thing.

The Professionals (dir. Richard Brooks). A pretty good Western in the vein of The Magnificent Seven.

Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains) (dir. Jiří Menzel). A coming-of-age story in occupied Böhmen und Mahren. A doctor tells young Milos that he suffers from ejaculatio præcox, and Milos repeats the phrase to several people – but in the subtitles the Latin (which I didn’t notice until the last time) was put into English, wrecking the humor and some of the plausibility. I suspect that was not the only thing lost in translation.

A Man for All Seasons (dir. Fred Zinnemann). Excellent.

El Dorado (dir. Howard Hawks). Mediocre.

Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) (dir. Sergio Leone). Seriously flawed, in that much of the plot follows from “good” Blondie’s frivolous betrayal of “ugly” Tuco. The latter half, after the quest gets going in earnest, is pretty good, but I still prefer Leone’s C’era una volta il West (1968).

Hee hee. The Economist says of V for Vendetta:

. . . only fans of detention centres, torture, unfettered government surveillance, screaming-mad television pundits and laws against alternative lifestyles will find anything here that could possibly offend.

Perhaps I’ll go see it today.

In the old Bill Cosby Show, Chet Kincaid was a PE teacher who, in one memorable episode, substituted for an algebra teacher. (Come to think of it, that episode was probably my first exposure to algebra!) Does anyone remember the problem that stumped him? It was of this form: A customer buys some candy at p cents/pound and some other candy at q cents/pound; the total weight is m pounds and the total price $k; how much of each kind of candy?

I was reminded of this by a rant about the importance of algebra.

侍 Samurai aka Samurai Assassin (dir. 岡本 喜八). Talk, talk, talk, talk, bloodbath, End.

How To Murder Your Wife (dir. Richard Quine). Phooey. For comedy we make some allowance for a contrived story and an immoral resolution, but this one “takes a mile.”

Repulsion (dir. Roman Polanski). Slow and not my cup of tea, but technically somewhat interesting. — Near the end, Carol “writes” on a window: that is, she moves a stylus (or maybe it’s only her finger) in the manner of writing, but makes no mark. Someone must know what she writes, but I haven’t found the right keywords!

Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie (The Saragossa Manuscript) (dir. Wojciech Has). Tales within tales: I’m not sure there is a point to it, but it was good fun along the way. Duels, hauntings, lovers climbing in at windows, the Spanish Inquisition (don’t tell me you didn’t see that coming) . . . . — At one point someone used a word that sounded like English nonsense; does any of my readers speak enough Polish to confirm that it has been borrowed?

Lord Jim (dir. Richard Brooks). After Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’Toole went further back in time and up the river Kwai to destroy a warlord (Eli Wallach), with pretty much the results you’d expect, which is to say a quite competent adventure flick: not quite a classic but a good way to pass the time. James Mason plays a pirate.

赤ひげ (Red Beard) (dir. 黒澤 明). A young physician is shocked to find himself assigned to a primitively-equipped charity hospital rather than to the Shōgun’s staff. You can guess the plot from that premise; but the patients’ stories told along the way are, though almost unrelievedly sorrowful, not without interest.

座頭市二段斬り (Zatōichi’s Revenge) (#10; dir. Inoue Akira). The corrupt village boss this time around is more evil than usual. — I begin to wonder whether I miss anything by forgetting the names mentioned in previous instalments, because this is the second or third in which (as a minor part of the story) someone is hired to kill Ichi on account of one or another of his past exploits.

Alphaville (dir. Jean-Luc Godard). An awesomely advanced computer rules the city, rationally of course, which means the arts are long forgotten along with the word love. Once the foregoing was expounded (after about half an hour), I put it away.

Shenandoah (dir. Andrew V. McLaglen).

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (dir. Ken Annakin). Like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, it could be improved by cutting half an hour of slapstick.

The Collector (dir. William Wyler). I watched about twenty minutes; couldn’t get into it. Perhaps some other time.

What’s New, Pussycat (dir. Clive Donner). Thin.

獣の剣 Sword of the Beast (dir. 五社 英雄). Unusually complex samurai flick. — One of the players, Kato Go, looks strikingly like Gregory Peck.

Cat Ballou (dir. Elliot Silverstein). Light (though less comical than I expected), but warm.

The Knack . . and how to get it (dir. Richard Lester). Abandoned in twenty minutes or less. Lucky that I didn’t see this before A Hard Day’s Night or A Funny Thing Happened or The Three Musketeers or The Ritz.

The Great Race (dir. Blake Edwards). I remember watching this with Dad, on television in 197x. “Push the button, Max! Not that button!” — We see Professor Fate and his assistant on a pedal-powered mini-blimp; I wonder, could such a thing be practical? — Miss Dubois’s feminism is established with some annoyingly nonsensical conversations. — The fencing bout of Tony Curtis and Ross Martin is more realistic, with less wild slashing, than usual.

Lost In Space. The opening shot announces the date as October 16, 1997. Funny, I don’t remember hearing it mentioned back when people were talking about prominent fictional dates that were then approaching, such as the pivotal disasters in Space: 1999 and Terminator 2. — Anyway. It’s so well-meaning that I hate to criticize it for such details as bad science and trite slow-moving plots. (I suppose it wasn’t quite so trite then.)

Hogan’s Heroes (first seven episodes). Better than I expected.

The Wild Wild West; Get Smart; I Dream of Jeannie. Not available. Does that seem right to you?

座頭市逆手斬り (Zatōichi and the Doomed Man) (#11, dir. Mori Kazuo). Ichi’s fame has now spread enough that a rogue briefly profits by impersonating him. — The climactic battle is more ‘stagey’ than usual.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (dir. Otto Preminger). For the first hour it’s an absorbing, if slow-moving, mystery. But when the criminal is revealed to us he takes on a new personality, a madness incompatible with his previous cunning, which wrecks the show for me. — In the first few minutes an American is made to say “marketing” where most of us, so far as I know, would say “shopping”. Is there such a dialect?

Lásky Jedné Plavovlásky (Loves of a Blonde) (dir. Milos Forman).

La Decima Vittima (Tenth Victim) (dir. Elio Petri). From a story by Robert Sheckley, who died 15 days before I saw it. — One brief scene reminds me of a throw-away line from Heinlein’s “All You Zombies”.

Doctor Zhivago (dir. David Lean). I spotted a small error: in the “peaceful demonstration” the first banner is missing a letter from svoboda i bratstvo (freedom and brotherhood).

座頭市地獄旅 (Zatōichi and the Chess Expert) (#12, dir. Misumi Kenji). As in #6, some of the violence in #12 is more graphic than usual. — Ichi plays a shamisen; I think that’s a first; previously he has often played a pennywhistle.

For Dad‘s birthday I sent him the first season of Northern Exposure and of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am gratified to hear that both he and Mrs Dad are enjoying them; Ruth particularly raves about NX.

words fail me. (cited here almost five months ago)