Looking forward to the fun. I could have lived without knowing Pratt thinks God personally designed his stardom, but I’ll cope.
Oh. This looks … boring. Are there really any jolts or surprises here?
Hadn’t even heard of this one. Looking forward to seeing it.
Netflix is pouring on the new, one of them being Bright, The movie has Will Smith playing a cop in a gritty version of Earth where orcs and elves and fairies exist. There are more Netflix trailers at the link!
Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone held a rally in Harrisburg earlier this week where he announced that he intends to run for the U.S. Senate against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. next year.
If anyone could be said to be the very embodiment of evil, fanatical conservatism, it’s Saccone, who often drapes himself in American flag clothing, totes a bible, and is most seriously pro-gun. Now Saccone is claiming to be the very important representative of one ‘god’ to rule all.
In the radio interview, Saccone said that if Christians “don’t get involved in government, the government will get involved in you, and you won’t like the results. The government will run over you and you won’t have any say it. So Christians have to stand up and make sure that they have a say in their government and that they’re protecting their rights and our religious liberties which are being trampled on every day across this nation. If we don’t speak out, those liberties will be taken away. You can see it day after day, case after case.”
Right, much better to have our rights trampled by fanatical christians! It will be a more righteous kind of slavery, you’ll see!
“God has set out a plan for us,” he continued. “He wants godly men and women in all aspects of life. He wants people who will rule with the fear of God in them to rule over us. And if they don’t, then the evil side will take over and the government will control and run over the good people and so they have to stand up, that’s just part of it. If you don’t have good people in government, then you’ll have bad people in government—and when bad people are reigning over us, the people will not be happy.”
Well, you got part of that right. Yes, we have bad people in government, you would be one of them, dipshit. All those bad people in government do indeed make me unhappy, and that’s an understatement. There are no fucking gods, but if you want to delude yourself, fine. Keep your delusion to yourself, please. It has zero business intruding into my life, at any level. Decent people of Pennsylvania, I think you know what to do. Make sure this wannabe Sauron is smacked down, hard.
Via RWW.
Today we have a bonus near-fatal eyeroll, from Lance Wallnau, of course.
“A lot of us don’t watch the Academy Awards because it’s so irritating with the politics,” Wallnau said. “All night they’re bashing Trump, all night they set up this imaginary Donald Trump figure and beat him like a pinata. And then when it comes time for them to do the best picture, they screw it up, they have the wrong envelope. Hollywood evidently knows enough to lecture the president and the rest of the country on what the president’s policy should be, but they don’t know enough to find their own envelopes.”
“All night long they’re beating up on Donald Trump and the headlines the next day [are] how screwed up the Academy Awards was,” Wallnau continued. “I don’t know how long this grace is going to be on Donald Trump but, I’ll tell you what, there’s an anointing on that guy and God literally makes his enemies look foolish.”
This is what your puny god has? And you’re…bragging about that? Holy shit, dude, that’s flat out embarrassing. You should be having a chat with ol’ Jehovah, let it know that it really needs to step up its game.
Via RWW.
Joe Hisaishi, the composer who put music to nearly all of Hayao Miyazaki‘s 11 feature films, once remarked in an interview that, “Many of his works have flying scenes and flying has always been the dream of human beings.” In fact, few artists have so successfully captured how the imagination defies gravity than the My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke director. A new film essay by Zach Prewitt gathers some of the 76-year-old director and producer’s finest flights of fancy into a rejuvenating three-minute video.
Miyazaki, who recently announced he was coming out of retirement (again!), explains the paradox of his love for military airplanes and his hatred of war in the video below. While little is known about the narrative of his upcoming film, currently titled Boro the Caterpillar, an ending in which the protagonist transforms into a butterfly and attains flight would align with Miyazaki’s fascination with airships, fantastical insect-winged aircraft, flying castles, and early 20th century aircraft. All of the above and more stretch their wings and take to the skies in Prewitt’s Fandor-produced video.
Via The Creators Project.
Daniel Kaluuya in “Get Out.” CREDIT: Universal Pictures.
What Get Out encapsulates so well is that modern racism can manifest not just as straightforward hate but also as a mix of jealousy and disdain that, in many ways, can be much more sinister. Disgust, on the part of white people, that black people have the audacity to excel at anything, joined with a desire to siphon off that excellence, to restore some rightful order.
Peele’s comedy and horror bonafides are well established from his run on Key and Peele, as is his ability to be deft and analytical about race without sacrificing the joke or the story at hand. Get Out, which Peele wrote and directed, marks his feature debut. He started making the movie when Trayvon Martin was killed; as he told the New York Times, “What originally started as a movie to combat the lie that America had become post-racial became a movie where the cat is out of bag, and now we’re having this conversation.”
Though he expected the movie to premiere in a different kind of America — namely, one with a different president — Peele said this 2017 context made the movie “more relevant. The liberal elite who communicates that we’re not racist in any way is as much of the problem as anything else. This movie is about the lack of acknowledgment that racism exists.”
I haven’t yet seen Spa Night, but it’s on my must see list.
Did you know the latest Lego Batman flick promotes the …. Gay Agenda!?! It does. Even worse, it promotes gay adoption, oh no! I haven’t seen the latest Lego superhero flicks, but I’ve seen the others, and they are nice, lightweight fun. I even have a little Lego Batman somewhere. It’s possible Batman met the rats and lost. Anyroad, John-Henry Westen of Life Site is a tad upsetty over all the homo queerness infecting Lego Batman.
It was chock full of pro-gay propaganda. Think the sexual innuendo of the Flintstones minus the real humor. It seemed the creators were so anxious to subtly indoctrinate the little ones into the gender ideology that making it humorous came as a distant second thought.
You watch The Flinstones for sexual innuendo? And humor? Really. I think some xians should simply not be allowed to watch television or movies. That stuff isn’t mentioned in the bible, anyway. Mr. Westen couldn’t actually be bothered to be specific about what bothered him, or provide examples of that chock fullness of the gay. Instead, he quotes a rambling, rather strange review by Michael Hamilton at PJ media, who apparently had a really difficult time with a few “my two dads” references, along with Batman and The Joker resolving their relationship into one of happy hate, realizing that a superhero will always need a villain, and I guess in this case, The Joker really needs the attention of a superhero, or else it’s just not fun. I’m sure I’ll see this at some point, and enjoy it in the same way as the others. They all fall a little flat here and there, humour wise, but I’m not a sprog, either, so what do I know about what they might find screamingly funny? Mostly, the latest Lego effort is about the importance of family, even for stoics like Batman, and sometimes, you have to make that family yourself. That seems a good message to me.
I have to wonder if either of these men watched the 1960s Batman, because I did, and that was one of the most flamingly camp shows ever. I loved that show, and I can guarantee it had a hell of a lot more innuendo than a slew of Lego movies will ever have. To the Batpoles! And as far as Jokers go, Cesar Romero was the most flamboyantly fabulous Joker ever, and always will be. I think the Christian homophobes are better off coping with the minor league jokes of Lego movies, but definitely stay away from Batman.
Cesar Romero as The Joker. He had style.
Matt Damon as William Garin in The Great Wall. Jason Boland/Universal Pictures.
Chinese director Zhang Yimou, of Hero and House of Flying Daggers fame, made his English-language debut with The Great Wall, which opened Friday. But in a story set in ancient China, Matt Damon’s character sticks out like a sore thumb. The presence of his pale mug in movie posters and trailers drew backlash even before the film’s release. “We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world,” Fresh Off the Boat actress Constance Wu wrote in a Twitter tirade. “We don’t need salvation.” Damon and Yimou both publicly defended the film, with Damon calling it “historical fantasy.”
[…]
The Great Wall exemplifies a related Hollywood trend where white characters play a dominant role in a foreign situation, while nonwhite locals are reduced to sidekicks or people “to be killed or rescued—or to have sex with,” as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen put it recently. Vogue recently added to the outrage over cultural tone-deafness by presenting Karlie Kloss, an American model of German and Danish descent, as a geisha—for the magazine’s diversity issue, no less. Vogue later removed the photographs from its website and Kloss apologized for her participation, but it was yet another episode in America’s long history of whitewashing Asians. We’ll leave you with this brief history of the same. Dig around and you’re sure to find plenty more.
Mother Jones provides a very brief history of Hollywood’s more infamous whitewashing efforts when it comes Asian-based movies, starting with Charlie Chan in 1926, and ending with The Great Wall in 2017. Click over to see them all.
Matt Damon plays a European mercenary who saves China from monsters in The Great Wall. Actress Constance Wu takes issue: “We like our color and our culture and our strengths and our own stories,” she writes. “Hollywood is supposed to be about making great stories. So make them.”
Well, in response to The Great Wall’s upcoming release, people got the #ThankYouMattDamon hashtag trending, and it’s a hilariously sarcastic way for people to “thank” Damon for his all that’s he’s done to help stop people from thinking only white men can save the day. *eye-roll*
Signe Baumane wants to make a new film, and the bits I’ve seen are captivating, to say the least. Watch the video, and if you have a bit of pocket change to send Signe’s way, that would be fantastic! Or just spread the word. Or both!
Watch. Just watch.
Via Films for Action.
John Hurt.
Actor John Hurt, who gave us all so many great and iconic characters, has walked on at age 77. He has long been one of my most favourite actors, his name in a film would be all I needed to see it.
Born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK, Hurt was the son of an actress and a vicar, and, after training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), made his film debut in 1966’s A Man for All Seasons. With his pained British voice and poignant stare, the actor would make an indelible impact on cinema, earning his first Academy Award nomination as Max, a heroin addict trapped in a Turkish prison, in Midnight Express, before performing one of film’s most memorable death scenes in Ridley Scott’s Alien. His next two films, as the severely deformed and chastised John Merrick in The Elephant Man (Oscar-nominated for Best Actor) and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, cemented his status as one of the greats, and marks a stellar 4-film run.
Goodbye, Mr. Hurt, and thank you. I’d watch V for Vendetta again, but right now, it hits too close to home.
Via Daily Beast.
Mary Tyler Moore.
Popular television actress Mary Tyler Moore has passed away at age 80, Bradd Jaffy of NBC News is reporting.
“Mary will be remembered as a fearless visionary who turned the world on with her smile,” Moore’s representative said in a statement.
The former dancer turned comedic actress was taken to a Connecticut hospital on Wednesday where she had been listed in grave condition.
Moore has long battled diabetes, and underwent brain surgery in 2011.
For many of us, Ms. Moore was a part of our lives over decades. She was tremendously talented in the really hard stuff, comedy, and equally talented when it came to drama. She fought for little things that were truly big – like one episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show having Mary looking for, and referring to her birth control pills. That might seem like a tiny insignificant thing, but it wasn’t. Back in the day, that was one hell of a daring move, making it a fact that the lovely, very single Mary was sexually active.
Ms. Moore was also a tireless activist for diabetes awareness and research. She gave a great deal to so very many people, and she was widely and dearly loved. She’ll be widely and dearly missed, too. Goodbye, Mary, and thank you.
Via Raw Story.
THE RED TURTLE – an animated fantasy movie | Official Trailer [HD].
La Tortue Rouge at Rotten Tomatoes.
Auburn Engineering graduate student Armin VahidMohammadi won first place in a national research organization’s Science as Art competition for his depiction of an engineered nanomaterial as a character from the “Harry Potter” movie series.
VahidMohammadi, a doctoral student in materials engineering, created a digitally enhanced image of his research that bears a resemblance to Lord Voldemort, the villain in the “Harry Potter” series. After submitting the image for consideration to the Materials Research Society’s Science as Art competition, he won first place out of 168 submissions. The award comes with a $400 cash prize.
“I am honored to have my work showcased and recognized by such a prestigious organization,” VahidMohammadi said. “It was exciting that the competition allowed me to connect materials science with popular culture in a way that the general public can appreciate.”
Held since 2006, the Science as Art competition offers materials engineers and students the opportunity to transform their research into images renowned for their aesthetic qualities.
Using a scanning electron microscope, VahidMohammadi was examining particles of an engineered nanomaterial when he noticed a particular particle that resembled Lord Voldemort. He colorized the image and digitally enhanced it by adding eyes and teeth.
The particle pictured is known as Ti2C, which is a member of a family of two-dimensional, layered materials called MXenes. Ti2C has a wide array of applications, including as electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors. The particle shown in the image is five microns in length, or roughly 10 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Very cool work, this! It would make a great poster.
Via OANOW.