One of the first victims is a truck driver in Glasgow. After recovering from a fit of grief, he finds his sense of smell has vanished. Soon a pandemic explodes across the globe, chipping away at people’s emotions and obliterating their senses. Part sci-fi thriller, part love story, Perfect Sense follows an improbable couple—a cocksure chef (played by Ewan McGregor) and a prickly epidemiologist (Eva Green)—who fall for each other just as the disease strikes. As scientists race to find a cure, the pair struggle to stay together in a world where all emotions have gone haywire. Beyond the trappings of plague and romance—the familiar hazmat suits and longing glances—the film explores an intriguing question: How do we make sense of the world when our senses slip away? Showing now in limited release..
Finding Life Beyond Earth
As manned space programs face an uncertain future, powerful telescopes are uncovering a wealth of new planets across the galaxy—some of which could harbor life. In this two-hour PBS special (a fine companion to The Life of Super-Earths), NOVA combines cutting-edge planetary science with the thrill of human exploration, putting astronomers and astrobiologists “on location” across the solar system as they explain the scientific search for life on other worlds.
As the program shows, that quest is essentially a hunt for traces of life’s basic ingredients: liquids, organic molecules, and energy. With the help of computer-
generated scenery, scientists act as tour guides through exotic spacescapes—
clambering around the surface of a comet, for instance, while describing the supersonic jets of ice that erupt from its surface. Through footage from NASA missions, viewers also visit those places in our solar system most likely to harbor elusive life-forms, including Mars and the moons Titan, Io, Europa, and Enceladus, and explore analogous habitats found right here on Earth. Available now..
—M. B. G.