Dennis Lim at the New York Times has a review of the upcoming virus thriller ‘Contagion’. According to script consultant (and my CU colleague) Ian Lipkin, he went through great efforts to make the movie realistic:
There isn’t anything in the laboratory part of the film that hasn’t either been done with a bona fide surrogate or assembled from something that was real.
I hope Ian is right. In science fiction movies liberties are always taken to make the story more compelling and scary. For me this is problematic because non-scientists often think what they see in such stories is real.
I’m sure we’ll have a rousing discussion here about the movie once it is released in September.
Let’s hope so. This director had a movie 10 years ago titled “Traffic” which was supposed to be an accurate description of drug-related social issues and, despite all the hype around the movie, ended up being a catalog of clichés.
As the owner of the online discussion forum at Avianflutalk.com (started 6 years ago), I personally have high hopes for this movie.
Best to all,
Albert
At least it will bring some interest among students to go to Graduate programs in infectious diseases. free marketing.