The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I really liked it. I was sort of like an action movie, except the villain is invisible to the naked eye. However I thought it was really well-written, from an entertainment and pacing standpoint, and my mother approved as a doctor. She gave my dad and I kind of a running-brief-commentary on events that were accurate or not, and overall she thought it was fairly accurate.

The most inaccurate part, she said, was the bat involvement. I think she meant the fact that it was a bat virus spreading to humans, but possibly she meant the pig/bat crossover. As I'm not an epidemiologist, I don't know. But I do like bats, and ( SPOILER )

She did say she thought they probably used bats just to differentiate it from the bird flus as of late. (I had a bird fall out of the sky, dead, next to me a few years back. DEFINITELY weirds you out. I don't think it was "bird flu" though.)

I saw that Bat Conservation International is going to write an article on that aspect, so I'll probably repost that whenever it comes out. I love my batties :C And we don't need any more public fear of them, jesus. They don't fly into people's hair, they're not actually blind, and although if a bat gets inside you should treat it as rabid, rabies is actually pretty rare. (I wish there were a better way than killing trapped bats to test for rabies, but alas. *tears*)

I figured my mom would like it, when H1N1 hit campus two years ago (she's the head doc in the health center) she was all about getting shots and telling people to buy hand sanitizer and isolating people. It was interesting to hear, after we saw Contagion, about everything she did to prep for H1N1 when it started spreading. She said she wanted at least her department to be prepared if none of the others were, and they ordered a 3-month supply of N95 masks, which was like 5000 of them or something. And in a meeting she mentioned to other departments (her boss? student services? not sure) that if it was as bad as the 1918 Spanish Flu (which people were suggesting originally that it was, or worse, but she said that was the worst-case projection they were using until it stats came in), they would need a morgue for 10% of the student population. (Which seemed high to me, but, I am not a doctor, and she might have meant 10% of the infected population, but I can guarantee with a bunch of college students living in such close proximity that's probably most of campus anyway.)

ANYWAY.

My dad made the comment that he didn't think they successfully showed societal breakdown. People could still get gas and electricity even though garbage wasn't being picked up. ( SPOILER ) And he thought they didn't successfully show the emotional impact of that sort of thing, especially when ( SPOILER )

I told my dad that they probably wanted to avoid that because there's SO MUCH of it in movies like 28 Days Later and Zombieland, and they wanted to avoid that zombie-movie sort of stereotype. I think it's kind of an interesting commentary, though, considering that the US seems to expect riots and violence, but as we witnessed (and someone pointed out to me) when the earthquake hit Japan, they were very calm, helped eachother, et cetera. Is that humanity or local culture? A worthy discussion point, I think.

But anyway. THE SCARIEST THING ABOUT THAT MOVIE (other than I hope people don't start hating bats because of it): Jude Law's snaggletooth. For reals! He has some super-close-ups, and it was a terrifying thing.

When they brought out his character I thought they were going in a different direction with it, and I wonder if the people who wrote/worked on Contagion had any influence from Mira Grant's book Feed. I thought it was interesting that they both brought bloggers into the mix, but good to see they went in different directions. However, I'm not sure Contagion really went all the way with Jude Law's character, especially considering that they had A TON of medical advisors, and they mention both homeopathy and vaccination-autism fears. Two things which have no scientific support, and yet, it seemed to me that whatever the "natural" remedy was supposed to be (whether homeopathic or not), there was one line (I can't remember) that seemed to be evidence that it worked. And not only that, but that ( SPOILERS )

As for Marion Cotillard's character, I think they forgot to wrap up her storyline?! ( SPOILERS )


Anyway, it was entertaining, and it reinforces my desire to create an emergency-preparedness kit (aaaand maybe a bugout bag). I'm glad my mom enjoyed it, especially after she forwarded the CDC's "zombie preparedness" page, which she thought was cute. I got her to see Shaun of the Dead last year, and after talking about Contagion there's a chance I can convince her and dad to see Zombieland or 28 Days Later.

So if you like that kind of movie, I definitely recommend it! It had an all-star cast and I thought the acting was great. And if the science was 95% great, too, that's excellent.

Side note: didn't see Madagascar get red-ed on any of the maps, heh. (joke source...ish)

EDIT: Here's an adorable battie gif. Just because :3