Contagion: why I can’t wait to see it – Montreal Gazette (blog)
It’s got a cast of world traveling microbes, a HollyEuro star-studded cast (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, and Kate Winslet) some of whom drop dead because of said germs, plus the movie house actually grew its own ads made of live bacteria. How wild is that?
I saw it on ADFREAK: Truly Infectious ‘Contagion’ Billboard Is Made of Bacteria Grow your ad, grow your audience
“Here’s a disgusting but cool out-of-home ad: Warner Bros. Pictures Canada hired microbiologists and immunologists to create a one-of-a-kind billboard made of growing bacteria in an abandoned storefront window in Toronto—to promote Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion. On Aug. 28, the scientists inoculated two large Petri dishes with live bacteria—including penicillin, mold and pigmented bacteria—which rapidly grew to spell out the name of the movie on the board.”
There’s a yuk factor to the billboards. But what a clever ad for a thriller about a global health crisis, a must for germophobes. Be sure to watch touching nothing, especially not the face. The thing is, while the film will likely fuel irrational fears, making some viewers want to steep in bleach, the premise of a deadly virus starting in one part of the world and spreading to all corners, isn’t far from reality.Remember the SARS panic, the H1N1 pandemic alert…
Two Canadian scientists at the forefront of global pandemic research and preparedness told Theresa Boyle of healthzone.ca that Contagion writers went to great lengths to get it right. Dr. Kamran Khan, who studies the flight paths of billions of international travellers to anticipate how infectious diseases will spread, said it would be naive to assume that future pandemics would not be severe.
For one of the best explanations of what’s brewing in the field, go to a terrific story by Helen Branswell in Scientific American: Flu Factories.
“The 2009 influenza pandemic appeared to come out of nowhere. It started as what seemed like a lethal outbreak in Mexico, then spread north of the border. By the time health officials learned that the virus responsible for the alarming explosion of cases was new and an infection threat to most of humankind, they had no way to keep it from spreading around the world. By a stroke of luck, symptoms were mild in the vast majority of cases. What if next time we are not so lucky?
“That question weighs heavily on the minds of influenza scientists and public health planners as they prepare for the next big outbreak. And there will be a next time.” Read the rest of the story here.