dvd of the week
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reboot of Carl Sagan’s iconic PBS series Cosmos is the best nonfiction on television this year, updating Sagan’s science and the show’s visuals and using Tyson’s remarkable explanatory power to make astrophysics, evolutionary biology, geology and the history of science as entertaining as most network dramas. Tyson, who is America’s greatest public intellectual, flies through the universe when he’s not walking through Earth’s most wondrous spaces. He both poetically and clearly teaches his audience about how tectonic plates shift, stars explode and microbes evolved into animals that evolved into human beings. The visuals that show all of this span Terrence Malick-level film of our planet’s natural wonders to CGI that rivals the best Hollywood blockbuster. Historical tales of scientists discovering gravity or the age of the stars are artfully animated and voiced by actors like Patrick Stewart. It’s a great show, and there’s a bonus: It drives the Christian right mad because Tyson treats Creationism as it should, a convenient fairy tale.
I remember carl,and I believe you’re the best.