I have written several times before about the so-called ‘incels’ (which stands for involuntarily celibate) who blame everyone else but themselves for the fact that women do not want to have sex with them even though they think that they deserve it. Their frustration has led some of them to go on murderous rampages.
Via Andrea James, I came across this tense short (about 14 minutes) film about an incel.
When I read that Walt Disney studios were doing another Mary Poppins film, I was dismayed, thinking that they were doing a remake of the classic original that I enjoyed and could only compare unfavorably with the original. But the new Mary Poppins Returns is not a remake but a sequel that shifts the story to 25 years later, though Poppins remains a young woman. Emily Blunt takes over the role immortalized by Julie Andrews and returns to the same house to assist the two children in the original who are now adults and dealing with their own problems. Dick Van Dyke also appears in the film, not as the chimney sweep Bert but as the son of the head of the bank and thus without the atrocious Cockney accent that he was forever being asked about. Lin-Manuel Miranda seems to be the new chimney sweep.
The trailer looks pretty promising. The film releases on December 19.
In 2003, four undergraduates at two universities in Lexington, Kentucky cooked up an utterly hare-brained scheme, providing further evidence that young men (and I say this from personal experience) are basically stupid and should not be trusted to operate even a toaster. What was their plan? To dress up as old men and steal rare books, including those by naturalist John J. Audubon and Charles Darwin, from the collection held in Transylvania University.
[Read more…]
I have written before about my enjoyment of the excellent TV comedy The Good Place and gave it a rave review. One of the things I noticed is that there are many hidden jokes that either fly by very fast or that are on the periphery of your vision. Some of those involve the complicated points system for every single action and whose final total at death is used to determine whether you are a good person, deserving to go to the Good Place or a bad person who needs to go to the Bad Place. Samples of the point system flash by on a screen too fast to see more than one or two. You have to freeze the frame to read them all and this website has grabbed a couple of them.
[Read more…]
There are fans who painstakingly document all the errors that inevitably creep in when creating such a complicated thing as a film. Via David Pescovitz I was alerted to this Twitter feed by someone named Sean who points out ‘goofs’ that are not. Some of my favorites:
[Read more…]
This week will see the anniversary of the Unite the Right rally of white supremacists and neo-Nazis that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11 and 12, 2017. The same people wanted to hold an anniversary rally in Charlottesville but their application for a permit was turned down. But their application to hold a rally in Washington, DC was approved by the National Park Service and they are planning what they call a ‘White Civil Rights Rally’ this weekend in front of the White House. No word yet if Donald Trump has been invited to address the groups, since they clearly see him as a supporter. But a coalition of 18 groups under the umbrella ‘DC Against Hate’ plan a massive counter-protest. This has again reignited the debate as to the best way to deal with hate groups: whether to ignore them and that, starved of attention, they will disappear, or that letting them to do their thing with impunity just emboldens them.
[Read more…]
I have written before about the fascinating sound effects produced by Foley artists for films. They use mostly everyday items to create sounds for films and then have to carefully sync those sounds with the final film. They do that by matching the image to the sound film clip while watching the film. In this clip, Matt Davies eats tomatoes and peppers and other assorted food items, plus does other things to them to create the gross-out sounds of horror films, such as zombies eating brains and flesh and so on.
[Read more…]
I have been really enjoying this musical comedy series, described as Monty Python meets The Princess Bride, that originally aired on the ABC TV network but is now available on Netflix. There were only two seasons of eight and ten episodes that aired in 2015 and 2016. It is set in the 13th century and the plot involves a heroic knight Sir Galavant, his squire Sid, and a princess Isabella who seek to liberate Isabella’s kingdom of Valencia after it was captured by the king from another kingdom. That king Richard is inept and childish and it is his assistant Gareth who really gets things done.
[Read more…]
I have long had a soft spot for Fred Rogers, host of the long running children’s show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, that I used to watch with my children when they were little. This was not because of the show itself. While its wholesome messages were universal and timeless, the presentation unabashedly aimed itself at very young children and its languid pace, low production values, and simple format made it somewhat dull for adults. It did not have the fast pace and dualistic sensibilities of Sesame Street that catered to children and also to their parents. The reason I like him was because of a very specific incident that occurred when my older daughter was just about to enter kindergarten at the local public school.
[Read more…]
I had been eagerly anticipating the release of this film ever since I heard about its debut in England lost November. This is because it is the creation of Armando Iannucci, who has a string of successful political satires such as the British TV series The Thick of It, the American TV series Veep, and the transatlantic comedy film In The Loop (2009) that dealt with how the American and British governments colluded to sell the phony case for the invasion of Iraq. Iannucci is a writer of sharp insight and dialogue and the topic of this film, dealing with all the political infighting for power immediately following the death of Stalin, got rave reviews on its release.
[Read more…]
