.
I should probably say something about the Robot Girl.
The 'robot dictionary girl' is an attractive young multinational young lady whose full stature is shown with arms to the side, not very clearly as if seen through a fine mist or as a holograph. She's supposed to be a futuristic speaking dictionary. Her purpose is to define new words as they arrive in use by the numerous prominent scientists being interviewed in the film. This is a most crucial and difficult problem that could be the breaking point of any film like this intended for general consumption. The word in question appears across the screen as it were written in a smoky computer-generated banner that passes in front of the robot girl's torso. She then recites its definition.
It is essential that the viewing audience hears such definitions, so they will be able to understand how the words are being used. Otherwise, if the audience does not hear the words defined, they will be lost hearing the interviewees using the words. Having taken geology in college, for example, I recall how the professor not only did this same thing on a daily basis, writing the new vocabulary words on the board every day, also, the very topics for lecture were arranged such that only the cuмulatively and previously defined words were found in the successive each day's lecture, for obvious reasons. Let's put it this way: the students who learned the new vocabulary were eventually found at the top of the class. Likewise the inverse corollary.
After about the third time I saw the 'robot dictionary girl' I started to enjoy looking forward to seeing her again. If that is a common reaction that viewers have, then a logical consequence will be that they will look forward to learning a new vocabulary word. And the more of these words they learn, the better they're going to understand the content of this fast-paced and energetic tour of the known universe and ugly underbelly of history's Copernican deception.
I don't recall how she was dressed, because I was not looking for that aspect of her image.
But by traditional Catholic standards, it seems she was likely not very modestly dressed.
Her arms had short sleeves, her neckline was low-cut, and it seems her skirt was probably above the knee.
But her image was not very clear, so there wasn't "much to look at" one might say. I was paying more attention to the words appearing in front of her on the screen, because she was speaking them, and they were words that were going to be important in understanding what the interviewees would be saying.
The Robot Girl was evoked upon the first use of any of these words, and it seems the viewer is expected to recall what had been said with the word in context, even before hearing the definition.
It is an effective device to arouse a curiosity in the reader by having a sentence that might not be very intelligible because of one unusual word in it, to get the viewer to pay attention to the word when its meaning is provided. I have no problem with this, because it's how I read such material anyway, with a good dictionary at my elbow! But for some viewers, it might be too much "work."
This movie is not your normal "sitcom" or "Western" where you only have to think about who's making the jokes and what part so-and-so played in the last movie you saw yesterday. In a way, it's more like a tutorial in what's going on with our understanding of the movement of the sun and planets in our solar system.
And the Robot Girl does a good job in keeping us informed about that.
.
Topic: The Principle of the Universe 010714 (Read 8026 times)