Tag: Movies

A Forty Year Mystery

Saturday and I found my first post of the day…..if you are an old fart as I am then you would have watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in a movie theater and quite possibly you we stoned out of your mind…..but for 40+ years there has been a debate raging about the ending of the movie……basically…..what the Hell was that all about?

What do you think the ending scene is all about?

There is now an answer and the mystery can be solved…..but will it end the debate?

Ever wondered what Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey is all about? Well, keep wondering, but an excerpt from an unreleased Japanese documentary has Kubrick explaining the film’s mysterious ending, BoingBoing reports. “I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it, but I’ll try,” the famed director of Dr. Strangelove and The Shining tells TV personality Jun’ichi Yaio in a phone call. “The idea was supposed to be that [the astronaut played by actor Keir Dullea] is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time.”

After discussing the “deliberately” inaccurate French architecture of the room in the closing scene, Kubrick says that “when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.” The footage, posted online late last month, was bought on eBay in 2016 and appeared in time for the film’s 50th anniversary, Esquire reports.

Okay we all can sleep a little better having found out what the ending of the film was all about.

Those Were The Days

Sunday and I want to wax poetic…..the older one gets the more one thinks of those magic days of our youth…..and one of those amazing things that no longer exists were the late nite shows at the local Drive-In movie…..there were three where I live…Beach Drive-In, Don Drive-In and the one I frequented the Do-In Movie.

Let’s step back in history for the answers to the questions…..

Whatever happened to the institution and the fun of the Drive-Ins?

Sometime in the 1970s, my older cousin and her husband took me and a neighbor girl to a drive-in theater in Texas, and I still remember how amazing it was to be watching a movie from the back of a station wagon. I mean, you’re sitting there in a car, watching a movie and listening to the audio over a speaker. As a kid, it was about one of the coolest things ever. Nowadays you have cars with built-in DVD players, video game systems, and LCD flatscreens, but nothing really beats the experience of going to the good old drive-in.

You’ll be happy to know the the drive-in phenomenon isn’t quite dead yet, despite being well over 50 years old. While it might be in intensive care, there are still over hundreds of drive-in theaters out there that need your love. You might consider tracking one down near you and showing it some love the next time you have an itch to get out of the house and check out a flick. You’ll be glad that you did. In today’s GeekBomb, we’re charting the history of the drive-in theater experience, and we’ll be letting you know how you can check one out yourself. Brace yourself, we’re pulling the pin…

http://www.slashfilm.com/geekbomb-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-drive-in-movie-theater/

If you would like to share some memories of the drive-ins then please feel free to let us know your thoughts….

Whatcha Reading?

The weekend and I try to find something interesting to post or at least an FYI post…..

First of all….does the world need another Jurassic movie?  What could be said in a new one that has not already been said?

I read a lot…..most of my reading is non-fiction and most of my books relate to the studies I have pursued……international relations, conflict management, political science, history…..but I realize that most people are not as boring as I am and they consume a lot of fiction….

My daughter is one of those people that likes to be scared both by book and by movies…..so I did a little research and found the books that supposedly scares the pants off its readers……

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not your love of horror movies and scary stories is creepy, this should give you some peace of mind: There’s actually a science behind the thrill. In a study published in the Journal of Media Psychology, Glenn D. Walters, PhD, found that the genre tends to lure us in because it delivers tension, relevance, and unrealism. In other words, the mystery, suspense, and shock factors grip and excite us, while the themes tend to tap into our deepest fears without actually making them a reality. And as thrill-seeking bookworms, we’ll be the first to admit that horror novels make for the best beach reads, thanks to the entertaining plots and the promise of a heightened sensory experience.

There’s also just something about the intimacy of reading a book—and the fact that they leave so much more up to the imagination, where monsters and demons are quick to rear their ugly heads—that make them freakier than the freakiest of movies (in a good way, of course). If you agree, you’ll want to add all of the best horror novels from our reading list to your library. From classic Stephen King must-reads to under-the-radar discoveries, horrifying true crime reports, psychological thrillers, supernatural spooks, and everything in between, these are the best horror novels around. Get a sense of each below.

The 50 Scariest Books of All Time

NOTE:  I apologize for the original link has seemed to have disappeared…please forgive me…but please let my readers know the scariest books that you have ever read….chuq

Since I will not read these books….please let me know if you have any knowledge of their scariness…..

Thanx for the visits….my day of posting is done….I will go enjoy the rest of my day…..peace out…..chuq

Eugene V. Debs

My weekend begins and as usual I have something different to post…..I do not usually do book or movie reviews but I will make an exception in this case.

In my past I was a member and organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and as a member I learned all about the early days of the workers movement of the early 20th century and one of the giants of the labor movement in those days was Eugene V. Debs.

Tuesday was May Day and a new movie was released about the life of Eugene V. Debs and since I live in a jerkwater town in Mississippi it will not show here so I will have to wait for streaming or the DVD.

I did find a good review of the movie in The American Conservative…….

May Day is a workers’ holiday in socialist history, greeted with joy, celebration, picnics and speeches since at least the 1880s. In contrast, and exactly a century ago, May 1918 was a time of trepidation. The government of Woodrow Wilson, reacting to opposition of US entry into WWI, set out to squelch the free speech of antiwar protesters. At the same time, labor struggles had reached a point that threatened the administration, and so Wilson also set out to drive the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World out of business entirely, if possible.

Imagine the great socialist hero Eugene Debs at this moment. Sixty-two years old and physically worn out, discouraged because the socialist presidential vote two years earlier had fallen sharply from 1912, he nevertheless rallied his energies. He would speak about the horrors of war and the hopes of socialism, no matter the dangers to himself.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/44254-american-socialist-film-chronicles-the-life-of-labor-hero-eugene-v-debs

If you live where the movie is showing then you should go watch if you like American history and the people that made this country great and see just what the American worker had to go through to get to where they are today.

Time for a breakfast and a walk……TTFN

Closing Thought–23Mar18

More propaganda From Hollywood!

I see Hollywood is doing what it always does…..acting as the major purveyor of propaganda….in this case it is working as an Israeli agent.

Now why would I make such an observation?

Every time there is a bit of a decline in their popularity rating then another piece of propaganda is rolled out…..Schindler’s List, the Holocaust (the movie/documentary) so many to list…..but the newest incarnation of Israel sympathy manufacturing “7 Days in Entebbe”…..a remake of the 1977 movie “Raid On Entebbe” starring Peter Finch and Charles Bronson….

The new movie was a typical Hollywood crap….good guys vs bad guys and the heroic rescue……

In 1976, an Air France airplane carrying 250 passengers to Paris from Tel Aviv was hijacked by terrorists. The Israeli mission to rescue them, known as Operation Entebbe or Operation Thunderbolt, is the latest historical event to be given the Hollywood treatment, in director José Padilha’s 7 Days in Entebbe, out March 16.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/true-story-behind-movie-7-110044357.html

First of all, Entebbe in 1976 was a shit hole (to use a presidential phrase)….but hear it be told some make it sound like it was akin to downtown Chicago…just not the case.

Thanx to the magic of Hollywood this event was a game changer for Israel and like most movies/documentaries/TV shows the situation was not like it is portrayed….

In reality this action was riddle with fuck ups and oh shit moments…..

The commandos had just three minutes to evade a cordon of paratroopers, storm the old terminal and kill the terrorists. Much could go wrong – and it almost did.

According to Amnon Biran, the mission’s intelligence officer, there was a gap in the planners’ knowledge of at least 30 per cent. “We didn’t know,” he admitted, “the exact location of the hostages, whether the building had been wired with explosives or even the proper layout of the airport.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11701064/Israels-raid-on-Entebbe-was-almost-a-disaster.html

Did this event need to be relived?

Yes it did!

Trump’s bonehead decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem has caused a good portion of the world to condemn the decision and when the move actually takes place, some say in May of 2018, there will be trouble and Israel will need all the good PR it can muster to head off criticism and what better way to do this than give the world a poor pitiful Israel against those mean bad guys.

This is a fluff movie that serves only one purpose…..to make Israel out as a victim.

Sorry but the world’s debt that was owed Israel because of the Holocaust has been paid in full many years ago……we need to hold them to the same standards as we hold other countries.

Telling Good Guys From Bad Guys

Another Sunday and we see the sun for the first time in about a week…..I think I will go outside for awhile and enjoy a mild day……

AS per my tradition I try to post on something that has little to do with the horrid news of the day….in case you missed it…..the government has been shut down and the blame game abounds…it is all so much crap especially from the GOP but do not count the Dems out they are capable of being worthless as well.

Not much more will have legs in the MSM for awhile……

Onward!

Have you ever noticed that in kids cartoons the bad guys seem to always have an accent…..why is that?

When the sociolinguist Calvin Gidney saw The Lion King in theaters two decades ago, he was struck by the differences between Mufasa and Scar. The characters don’t have much in common: Mufasa is heroic and steadfast, while Scar is cynical and power-hungry. But what Gidney noticed most was how they each spoke: Mufasa has an American accent, while Scar, the lion of the dark side, roars in British English. In a climactic scene in which Scar accuses Simba of being the “murderer!” responsible for Mufasa’s death, the final “r” in his declaration floats up into a sky bursting with lightning, and it’s hard to imagine it sounding quite as monstrous in another tone.

Gidney, an associate professor in child study and human development at Tufts University who specializes in sociolinguistics, saw Scar’s accent as part of a disturbing pattern in the film: Foreign accents and non-standard dialects were being used to voice all of the “bad” characters. Gidney also noticed that Scar’s minions, the hyenas, spoke in either African American English or English with a Spanish accent. Gidney found this trend concerning, especially since the theme of the movie could be described as “the ‘natural order of things,’” he said. “I thought it was really disturbing that it was necessary to ‘take back the jungle’ from the British-sounding evil lion, plus the African American-sounding and Latino-sounding hyenas.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/why-do-cartoon-villains-speak-in-foreign-accents/549527/

Enough of the worthless stuff…..I’m off like a dirty shirt….see you guys tomorrow….chuq

Christmas Eve–2017

It is the day before Christmas and all through the house….the presents are wrapped and under the tree…..family members are starting to arrive for the big day…..food has been bought and waiting for the stove…..now what to do?  Gather the family…….Pop some popcorn and settle back and watch a Christmas classic….”It’s A Wonderful Life”.

Did you know that in 1946 the FBI was thinking that the movie offered up some hidden “Communist” ideals?

As the Smithsonian Magazine points out, an unnamed FBI agent in 1946 filed a report after watching the film, in which he called the movie “entertaining,” but warned of that it contained themes and tropes that could be used to promote communism.

According to scholar John A. Noakes, the agent identified “a malignant undercurrent in the film” that he alleged “employed two common tricks used by Communists to inject propaganda into the film.”

It’s A Wonderful Life bombed at the box office before becoming a Christmas classic. Along the way, it also caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The movie’s preview showing at New York’s Globe Theater took place on this day in 1946, a day before the movie opened to the public. “Though it has become a quintessential American classic, It’s a Wonderful Life was not an immediate hit with audiences,” writes Jennifer M. Wood for Mental Floss. The film’s producer and director, Frank Capra, ended up $25,000 in debt. In spite of this, Capra said he thought the tale of a suicidal man and his guardian angel was “the greatest film I ever made.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/weird-story-fbi-and-its-wonderful-life-180967587/

That is my gift to my readers a little history and nostalgia….

Have a great day my friends…..chuq

Let’s Go To The Movies

Another beautiful Saturday and a day to kick back and enjoy some mental relief……

Movies.  What I will write about is the historical context of a new movie, The Promise….personally I NO longer make the trip to see movies in theaters…..I have a problem with the price and then there is the highway robbery from the “snack bar”…..These days I either rent or buy the movies I would like to watch……

I will probably get this movie simply because of the historic context……

“The Promise” is a movie about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 (World War 1)…..

In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, some 1.5 million of Turkey’s Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. Today, most historians call this event a genocide–a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, the Turkish government does not acknowledge the enormity or scope of these events. Despite pressure from Armenians and social justice advocates throughout the world, it is still illegal in Turkey to talk about what happened to Armenians during this era.

Source: Armenian Genocide – Facts & Summary – HISTORY.com

I will not go see this I will wait….but if some of my readers are so inclined to view this then I want to help….and they could learn a little history that most of the world has tried to forget……

Source: The Promise Movie Review

Of course this will have the “Hollywood” spin to it…..it is done to make the audience more into the movie…..love story, armed conflict and dialog…..

The Genocide happened, even if the US refuses to acknowledge it, but that will be about as far as the “real” story will go….the rest will be “Hollywood” spin…..

Enjoy your day and get some rest and some fun into your life…..this is it for today my friends….I will be back tomorrow for more stuff…..be well, be safe…..chuq

The Prophetic Movies

Sunday and a day in the sun….doing boring stuff like getting the garden ready….

 Spring has sprung….nothing smells better than the citrus in bloom….my five trees have the yard smelling like heaven. (too bad I do not have scratch and sniff…..your loss)……NOTHING smells better than citrus in bloom.
 Now moving on…….

For a  couple of months all the American society has been a bit …..(thinking)….screwed up.

If you are looking for some entertainment this fine day then may I suggest a couple of movies that can help to explain the situation brewing in the good old US of A…..

Bring me the soothsayer!

Throughout history there have been those talented folks that some called prophets, seers, soothsayers, etc.

But these days we do not hold much interests in soothsayers….but what if our popular form of entertainment, movies, were filling that gap?

Since the election of Trump there has been an uptick in the interest in the prophetic movies like 1984…books as well….but there are 5 dystopic movies to watch…..

Watch the short video……

Source: 5 Dystopic Movies That Are Coming True Right Now

And since most of these are older than the last election….we can safely say that this is……”Life Imitating Art”…..

Enjoy you day and I will return tomorrow to start a new week of posting and ranting…..be well my friends…..

Who Knew A Movie Could Be Prophetic?

It is the weekend and I will take the rest of the day to kick back and enjoy the simpler things in life……

We all have that one movie that speaks to us…..Steel Magnolias or Day After Tomorrow…..those sort of movies……mine is a bit different….mine is about a disturbing trend in our politics….

I have commented many times about the stupidity that this country is experiencing and has been experiencing for a couple of decades now…….I have used the movie, “Idiocracy” as an example of what could happen if this trend continues……

Well all my efforts have not been in vain……the creator of the movie has weighed in on this trend also……

Idiocracy, 2016, Donald Trump, Election, Documentary

The man behind the 2006 cult sci-fi film “Idiocracy” is lamenting that his fictional movie appears to have become reality.

“I never expected #idiocracy to become a documentary,” tweeted screenwriter Etan Cohen in an apparent jab at the 2016 presidential race.

Together with “Beavis & Butt-head” creator Mike Judge, Cohen co-wrote the time-travel comedy. The plot revolves around the misadventures of a man who wakes up in a futuristic America only to discover that everyone around him, including lawmakers and government officials, is an idiot.

“I thought the worst thing that would come true was everyone wearing Crocs,” Cohen told his Twitter followers.

“Idiocracy” star Terry Crews, famous for his role as President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, also used the satirical film to take a shot at the surreal election cycle.

“All y’all need to stop tripping,” Crews tweeted in character. “Chill the F out, ‘Merica.”

(The Hill)

May I suggest that you, my readers, need to see this film……a look into the future of this country…..

Who knew a work of cinematic fiction could be so damn prophetic?