Monday, August 03, 2009

Movie Pan - 21



What an underwhelming, long flick!

Put it this way, any film that casts blonde bimbo Kate Bosworth, as an MIT math genius is all but guaranteed to be a joke. Don't let the presence of Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne fool you....avoid this one.

Looks like IMDB rates it poorly too.

2 comments:

west coast tom said...

I didn't see the movie but I read the book (and the follow up - Busting Vegas). I expected some comments on the math they used. One phrase in particular where the organizer of the group states that math runs everything, the trick is to make is profitable - to paraphrase.

CaptiousNut said...

There was no math in the movie save for one incident in the MIT classroom.

The lead character, whatever the dork's name was, supposedly displayed his genius by snappily solving the Let's Make A Deal query.

Put it this way, I can just about guarantee you that every single student in a high level MIT mathematics class has known that elegant, if counter-intuitive, solution since their high school days - as I, an MIT reject, did.

Ergo, that was a ridiculous movie scene to dramatize the *genius* of said dork. Furthermore, Kevin Spacey, as solid of an actor as he is, was thoroughly unconvincing as a Cambridge math prof. He needed a little more snot, a la that guy from Good Will Hunting.

Was there math in the book? I'd assume the book to be interesting. Was it?