I only recently saw AFTER EARTH, a big-budget movie from last year that went nowhere at the box office. Rotten Tomatoes called it "a dull, ploddingly paced exercise in sci-fi." It had some heavy-duty talent: Will Smith both produced and starred, Night Shyamalan directed. And it had an engaging premise: in some distant future the human race has abandoned Earth and the various creatures of the planet are now intensely hostile to humans, two of whom (father and son) nonetheless survive a crash-landing there and must somehow manage to get a distress beacon working while evading various monsters. Will Smith is credited with the story idea. Shyamalan and Gary Whitta then apparently co-wrote a screenplay from that idea. Anna Rane and Hilary Momberger get credit as "script supervisors." Personally I enjoyed it. But I'll only comment today on the Moby Dick theme. This ran throughout the movie. Almost the first words spoken are a father/son exchange on that no...