A Brief History of Time

Rating:
Summary: Interesting developments in science
Review: This short film is about a monumental cosmologist attempting to delve into the unknown in order to know it. It poses the question as to whether there is a God behind the universe or a self-contained boundless system running blindly by its own physical laws (or perhaps there is a God but one who is impersonal to the universe). Today there are two theories about the expansion of the universe. Some believe that it will continue to expand forever while others think it will slow down, contract, and collapse with the cycle continuing infinitely. Hawkings clearly thinks the latter is more plausible. This probably explains his agnostic stance on creationism, while many theologians would naturally be more inclined to reject the theory of a collapsing and expanding universe because it does seem to do away with the idea of a "beginning" and "end." As an ignoramus in the field of physics and cosmology, I found this film to be a good compliment to his book (which is a read somewhat difficult for a person without a background in physics). Hawking's idealism is vibrant as he sounds hopeful that scientists are close to developing a unified theory of the universe that will be explicable not only to philosophers and scientists, but to the average person as well. This films only flaw is that it doesn't have captions telling us who is being interviewed and what their relation is to Stephen, but that's only a minor one at most.

Rating:
Summary: A brief comment on a brief history of time
Review: This video should have rather been called a brief biography of Stephen Hawking. It only touched very lightly on his theories and works. I thought it would be a video version of his famous book but the video can not compare to the book at all. There are many interviews with people but one has no idea who these people are or what their relationship is to Dr Hawking as there are no subtitles. I suggest viewers first view the credits at the end of the movie where a list of interviewees is given and then go back and watch the film. The video is also dissappointingly short lasting only for 80 minutes.