The most unknown documentary ian cheney tv#

General Tso The City Dark) The Most Unknown has a visually resplendent and musically trippy quality, no doubt attributable to the advisory role by world-renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog ( Fitzcarraldo ДЄguirre, The Wrath of God Grizzly Man). Ingenious.Дirected by Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Ian Cheney ( The Search for And then, like passing a baton, that person will get on a bus, train or plane to travel to the location of the next вЂextremologistвЂ™ on the list, to learn about an area of science he/she knows nothing about, hence placing themselves on the same level as we the audience.

In short successive chapters, we are introduced to each scientist to see him/her in their natural habitat and get an orientation to their respective area of scientific research. From a cave deep in the Italian countryside to a physics lab in Milan exploring Dark Matter, a neuroscience centerВ in Belgium analyzing the realms of human consciousness, a deep space telescope in Hawaii, the original atomic clock and its role in instrumentation/measurement, an underwater exploration of the ocean floor, and an island completely inhabited by monkeys (just to name a few) the film introduces us to the people who are pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. The Most UnknownВ is an inventive and exhilarating documentary that transports its audience from the smallest forms of life to the outer reaches of the Cosmos, vis a vis a simple premise: a Round Robin globetrotting tour.

The most unknown documentary ian cheney tv#

But one wonders if the experience would be richer as a TV series, with each interaction getting an episode to itself -В possibly with a third-wheel host sitting in on all the meetings of strangers, pointing out common themes in their conversations.WhatвЂ™s It All About? (Documentary Review: вЂњThe Most UnknownвЂќ)ДЄ unique approach to a science documentary in which вЂ“ like a game of global tag вЂ“ nine cutting edge researchers exploring the outer limits of human knowledge literally drop in on each otherвЂ™s вЂlaboratoriesвЂ™ to get aВ peek at an area of scientific exploration they know nothing about. Nearly all these subjects would be fascinating dinner companions, and watching them interact is enjoyable. Fortuitously, this takes us around the globe, allowing for the occasional beautiful aerial shot of Costa Rican coastline, NevadaвЂ™s Black Rock Desert, et cetera.Д«ut with so many discussions to drop in on, each with its own stuff to show off -В we see the worldвЂ™s most accurate atomic clock here, go spelunking for furry cave-grown slime there, then put on a swimming cap studded with electrodes to try to control robots with nothing but brain wavesВ - each sequence can only hint at whatвЂ™s fascinating about its field. The third goes to visit a fourth, and so on. One visits another in the lab or in the field, then, after theyвЂ™ve picked each otherвЂ™s brains a bit and maybe shared a pint, the second interviewee goes off to meet a third. In other cases, as with Axel CleeremansвЂ™ work on that connection between the brain and the self, experimenters are treading ground previously reserved for philosophers.Д¬heneyвЂ™s conceit here is to hang out with the eggheads in groups of two, setting up blind dates between them. Luke McKay, an astrobiologist who collects samples of microbes in EarthвЂ™s hot springs while trying to imagine the forms life might take elsewhere in the galaxy, draws a visitor a tree of life - from humans to palm trees to microscopic organisms -В to illustrate the vast diversity of species we havenвЂ™t yet been able to study. In some cases, that possible unattainability is just a question of daunting numbers. Selecting nine scientists from disciplines ranging from psychology to astrophysics, Cheney finds one thing they all have in common: Whether itвЂ™s dark matter or the question of how billions of synapses host a single human consciousness, each spends his or her days pursuing knowledge that may be unattainable. His latest effort, The Most Unknown, which seeks intellectual common ground between researchers in a slew of scientific fields, goes in rather the opposite direction: diving into the mysteries of the cosmos, but finding itself stuck in the shallow end of the pool. A few years ago, Ian CheneyвЂ™s charming documentary The Search for General Tso turned a look at one tiny piece of Chinese-American history into an eye-opening commentary on immigration, assimilation and cultural myth-making.