Snap Judgment: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the latest film from Kevin Smith, and in some ways, that's all you really need to know about it. In other words, if you like Kevin Smith movies, you'll probably like Zack and Miri, which stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as the quintessential Kevin Smith movie couple - a pair of lifelong friends working dead end jobs (badly) and dutifully avoiding anything resembling an adult responsibility. And naturally, they're also totally in love with each other, even though they would never admit it, and, due to being sort of putzy, convincingly don't seem to know it.

Being a Kevin Smith movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno features a cast of adults in various stages of badly arrested development swearing a lot and making dick and fart jokes. There are awkward confessions of love and long rants in which characters loudly reprimand themselves for cramming a seeming lifetime of poor decisions and fuck-uppery into only their late twenties. Since the film revolves around the titular making of a porno, there are plenty of boob shots sure to get the seal of approval from the adolescents and adolescents-at-heart (yes, myself included) who make up Smith's bread and butter audience. Then there are some more dick and fart jokes, the power gets turned off, and somebody gets their face shat on. And for the most part, it's pretty goddamned hilarious. But just below the veneer of this mostly by the numbers romantic comedy is a genuinely touching love letter to independent filmmaking and the power it has to change lives.

It's this subtle sweetness, along with strong performances all around by a cast including porn icon Traci Lords that keeps Zack and Miri Make a Porno from collapsing into a goofy, scatalogical melange and keeps things rolling along for a mostly enjoyable film. That's not to say it's without problems, as evidenced by the stumbling, stereotypical portrayals of black and gay characters in the film, an especially disappointing turn of events in light of the fact that Smith has proven before, most notably in Chasing Amy, that he's capable of penning smart, convincing gay and black characters. It's just that he chooses not to here, and it's a loss to th film. But mostly, things stay above the board in Zack and Miri and audiences are left with a lowbrow, hilarious mirror image of what Michel Gondry's Be Kind, Rewind might have been - an homage to the beauty of filmmaking, and the capacity of creating to help us find who we are. With poop jokes.

The Week's Other Winners and Losers

In the wake of Tuesday's historic U.S. presidential election, it would be easy to overlook the rest of the weeks news, but there were a few other big victories and notable setbacks this week.

Let's start with the winners:

Old School Reptiles - A nest of tuatara eggs was discovered in a wildlife sanctuary near Wellington, New Zealand. This marks the first evidence of wild breeding of tuataras on the main island in nearly two centuries, and could be the start of a comeback for this ancient reptile which has been on the verge of extinction since the introduction of Polynesian rats to it's habitat in the 1700's. Kudos to you, you dragon-like reptile with a scale covered third eye, and many happy returns.

Endangered Species and Potential Woolly Mammoths - Japanese scientists at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology have successfully cloned a mouse from cells that had been frozen for 16 years. While earlier similar experiments have also proven successful, this is the first time that a clone has been created from cells not chemically treated for preservation. This is one more small step forward in cloning technology that could rescue critically endangered species from extinction with just a cabinet freezer and a Hefty bag, according to Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology. It may not be glamorous, but hey, don't knock results, right?
Less pragmatically, it means that the future cloning of long extinct but preserved animals "is no longer science fiction," according to Teruhiko Wakayama, the project's leader. Sadly, Michael Crichton won't be around to see it. R.I.P.

The Internet - While Barack Obama and Democrats nationwide were busily wiping the floor with an ailing GOP, the FCC unanimously approved the opening of the existing 'white space' TV spectrum to broadband providers. The opening of the spectrum, which can deliver a more powerful, Uber-Wi-Fi signal without significantly interfering with television broadcasts, may well usher in a new generation of peer to peer wireless devices and, more importantly, provide under served rural and urban areas with affordable, reliable Internet access.

And lest we get to full of ourselves, a reminder that even after a good week, things ain't all rainbows and kittens. Here's a small selection of the week's losers:

The Environment, At Least in the U.S. - No Longer content simply to fiddle while Rome burns, the Bush administration is spending it's waning days in power taking a flame thrower to federal environmental protections. The administration's current proposals include easing power plant emissions standards, giving a helping hand to the incredibly hazardous practice of mountaintop coal mining and, oh yeah, lowering safety standards for drinking water. So for all you liberals rejoicing in an Obama win and asking "How much damage can Bush do in less than three months?" - the answer is quite a lot, especially since the proposed rules may prove exceptionally difficult to undo.

European Particle Physicists - Illinois' Tevatron particle accelerator may have stolen some thunder from CERN's Large Hadron Collider when it's CDF experiment released a 70 page paper detailing a statistically significant number of experiments which suggest the presence of previously undetected fundamental particles. It's very early to think that they've actually discovered a new particle or process, especially considering that nearly a third of the experiment's 600 participants refused to sign the paper, suggesting that more testing needed to be done. But to their credit, CDF isn't making any claims - they're just presenting a set of data that's interesting, exciting, and could be a huge discovery. And could also be nothing - time will tell.

Fantastic Four Fans - A manned trip to Mars just got a lot safer for astronauts, as researchers have used computer simulations to show that a portable magnetic field generator that could be easily worked into spacecraft design would likely protect the ship's crew from the hazardous effects of 'space weather' they would almost certainly encounter during the lengthy trip to the red planet. And while I'm all for protecting these brave explorers from bombardment by solar wind and cosmic rays, one has to wonder - who's going to save the planet from an army of long forgotten underground beasts when these folks return without super powers?

ICC/USF Vote Nixed - White Space To Go Ahead...Probably?

It looks like rural cell phone providers will get their wish, or at least a stay of execution - a vote on a big revamp of the structure of the telecom industry has been put off until December, when a lame duck FCC will presumably be too busy getting their resumes in order to make any big decisions.

But despite the best efforts of strange bedfellows Dolly Parton and Axl Rose, it appears that FCC Chair Kevin Martin hasn't buckled on at least one point - the vote on whether to allow white space between TV channels to be and used for wireless computing, a move that could mark a great leap forward in broadband accessibility, will take place tomorrow. With proof-of-concept results arriving last month that demonstrated that wireless computing could, with proper safeguards in place, take place on the 'white space' spectrum without interfering with TV or wireless microphone signals, the FCC looks poised to open the spectrum and allow comunications companies to start playing in a new sandbox.

The upside is that higher quality internet access could be provided to underserved communities across the nation. The downside is that the wireless microphones used by NFL coaches and evangelical mega-church pastors may be adversely affected, making for more exciting, entertaining Sundays all around. Sounds like a chance worth taking.

Secretary in Charge of Ray Guns, Cloning, and Complaining About Vista

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has sent a letter to Senators Obama and McCain, urging whoever becomes the next President to appoint a cabinet level science adviser, and to do so by Inauguration Day. The AAAS hopes that the next President will "...seek out and rely upon sound scientific and technological advice I and often in the next administration." It's a stance on good science that has been profoundly lacking over the past eight years, with topics like stem cell research and climate change treated as political fodder rather than valid scientific issues.

With McCain choosing a woman who thinks genetic testing on fruit flies is some sort of cockamamie scheme put together by the French and may not believe in dinosaurs, it's no surprise that the GOP candidate has been fairly quiet on the role good science would play in shaping the policies of a McCain administration. But how would this position mesh with the Chief Technology Officer position that Obama would create in his cabinet?

Poorly.

The CTO cabinet position would be primarily an economic advisory one, concerned mainly with job creation via the expansion of broadband Internet throughout the nation, a much less holistic position than the one being urged by the AAAS. Though one of the top presumptive candidates for the position, Princeton computer science and public affairs professor Ed Felten (who has not officially been approached) assumes that the position would also act as a "cybersecurity czar" of sorts. But with it's main focus being entrepreneurial and it's technological aspects leaning heavily towards communications, the CTO isn't exactly what the AAAS had in mind. It remains to be seen if an Obama administration would be open to the addition of another new cabinet post concerned with biotech, burgeoning green energy technologies and the rest of the science world that's easily as important to both policy and economic development in the U.S., and how these advisers would interact with the heads of current bodies like the FCC and FDA.