E.R. Torre's Blog, page 176

19 WTF Celebrity Cameos…

…thanks to Cracked.com, 19 mostly blink-and-you’ll-miss-them celebrity cameos in various feature films and television shows:

I caught several of them beforehand (one of the strangest is the very first one presented) but some were a big surprise, like Glenn Close’s appearance in Hook!

Strange New Tattoo Discovered on Otzi the Iceman…

For those unfamiliar with Otzi the Iceman, this little video provides you with an introduction:

Well, there appears to be one more tattoo found on Otzi’s body:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/otzi-iceman-new-tattoo_n_6546884.html

The most fascinating thing about Otzi is that, as mentioned in the intro above, he was a murder victim.  The fact that he died and was preserved for 5300 years makes him the old mummified corpse ever.

Stuff like this just absolutely fascinates me.

First Glimpse of New Fantastic Four Costumes…

I found the following picture on io9.com (http://io9.com/first-glimpse-of-fantastic-four-costumes-reveals-a-cro-1681960834) which shows (Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch) on the set of the new “reboot” of The Fantastic Four:

Count me among those that are confused and -now- disturbed by this upcoming film.  If this is the new Fantastic Four outfit, it certainly looks absolutely nothing like what was presented in the original books.

   

Add to the fact that in the above link the director talks about making the film “Cronenberg-ian” and I’m really, really confused.

Sometimes one uses a book or a comic book more as an inspiration for the movie you’re making than adhering to the original source.  Sometimes, that works.  Men In Black, for instance, was almost nothing like the original comic book and the end result, I believe, was for the better.

But Men In Black was a little known comic book and The Fantastic Four is quite the opposite.  The Fantastic Four are a very well known and established entity.  The comic books are beloved by many fans because of the elements found in them.

While you can find similarities in the Fantastic Four to other superhero concepts, it is quite a stretch -at least for me- to look at any of the fifty or so year history of the book and think there are elements within it that are “Cronenberg-ian”.

Of course, I haven’t seen the film yet.  Indeed, like most people out there, the above picture and the cast/creator listings are the only things I know about it so far.  Perhaps the film will surprise me and be something fresh and exciting and, despite much evidence to the contrary, adhere to the spirit of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby books this film is supposedly based on.

But at this moment, I have grave doubts.

Deflated balls…

So you’re an American football fan looking forward to the Super Bowl this coming Sunday and, unless you also happen to be one of those rare football fans living in a cave, have heard about Deflategate or Ballghazi or whatever they’re calling it:  The fact that the New England Patriots were found to have 11 of their 12 footballs deflated below the level they should be dictated by the NFL’s rules in the semi-final game against the Indianapolis Colts.  (Worth noting: in the NFL, each team brings and plays with their own set of balls and it was found almost every one of the Patriots’ balls were underinflated while none of the Colt’s balls were)

I’ve heard a lot from commentators since then.  Some outright state that deflating the ball to the levels found in the Patriots’ balls is not worth making much of.  Others feel this is part and parcel of the Patriots’ modus operandi, ie they were already were found and punished for cheated a few years before and this is par for the course.

Frankly, I didn’t know if underinflating a ball would have that much of an impact on a game until I read this:

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/01/ballghazi-the-new-england-patriots-lose-an-insanely-low-number-of-fumbles.html

To all those who either scoff at the underinflation of balls or were, like me, unsure if such a thing would matter, please consider the statistics presented above.  It shows the Patriots since around 2007 have led the league -strikingly!- in having the least amount of fumbles despite the large amount of plays performed, by an order of magnitude which is statistically incredible.

A few years back there were those who scoffed at the advantages of using performance enhancing drugs for baseball players, noting that having more muscles doesn’t help you hit a fastball.  Yet the reality was that when the baseball league decided to clean up their act, the number of home runs dropped dramatically and are now near the norm statistically.

For me, this relates directly with “Deflategate”: The Patriots were using underinflated balls, who knows for how long now, and they were doing so because they obviously felt it was beneficial for them to do so.  The statistics above may well point out the “why”.

Now that the Patriots’ have been “found out” and I’m sure the league will be far more careful in checking out ball pressure, I’ll be very curious to see how the Patriots’ fumble statistics look like in the future.  Will they fall more within the normal range of other teams?

I will not be shocked if they do.

Monday morning…

Nothing like starting the work week in total panic…thanks to your alarm not going off.

Will have to check what exactly happened.  Electricity went out for a while on Saturday and I thought we had the alarm clock squared away.  Turned out not to be the case and I feel like I’m still trying to catch up on things.

Kennewick Man mystery soon solved…?

So says the article by Jacqueline Howard on Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/kennewick-man-dna-test_n_6516562.html

The mystery of Kennewick Man is a fascinating one as it relates to the skeletal remains of someone who died 9500 years ago and whose remains were found on the shores of the Kennewick River in Washington.  Given the age of the skeleton, a great deal of curiosity surrounds his ancestry.  Native Americans claim him for their own as a distant ancestor and want his remains returned to them so that he may be properly reburied.  Scientists want to keep and study the remains so they may get a clearer idea of who this very ancient American was and what his genetic ties are to other ancient peoples.

It would appear that that later question may soon be answered.

Fascinating, fascinating stuff.

I’ll Follow You Down (2013) a (mildly) belated review

A confession: I’m in the middle of the “dog days” of Netflix film arrivals.  The movies I’ve really wanted to see I’ve either bought and/or seen by now and what I have on my Netflix Que are secondary choices.  By this I mean films that I’ve sniffed out that look interesting enough but are on my list until other films -the films I more want to see- arrive.

One such film is the 2013 mystery/sci-fi hybrid I’ll Follow You Down.  I truly cannot remember how this particular movie reached my awareness, only that I put it down on my list of films to see and about a month ago it arrived in the mail.  Because of a great many things that took up my time during the holidays, I wasn’t able to see it until yesterday.

I’ll Follow You Down features a grown up (Sixth Sense) as Erol, an intellectual prodigy.  As a young boy, Erol’s equally gifted father (played by ) mysteriously vanished without a trace after going to a physics conference.  Erol’s grandfather (), turned out to be the last person to see him alive when he arrived at that conference and helped him bring some mysterious boxes to an abandoned room within the university where the conference was being held.

Erol’s father’s disappearance, we find as we fast forward a decade plus, has destroyed Erol’s mother ().  She is an emotional wreck who is reliant on medication she doesn’t want to take to stabilize herself.  The young adult Erol holds off going to MIT and getting on with his life because he feels he has to take care of his fragile mother.  Meanwhile, he is also dealing with his childhood sweetheart, also grown, and the life they may have for each other.

Into all this Erol’s grandfather reveals a startling theory he has as to what happened to Erol’s father…and the possibility that together they might just be able to find him and “set things right”.

I’m trying to dance around the central “big surprise” in this story but if you do even a cursory investigation of the movie’s plot that reveal will inevitably be made.  Still, you might enjoy the film a lot more if you let this surprise reveal come on its own.

Judging the film itself, I found it an entertaining and serious piece of work, even given the the more science fictional third act.  It seems the film’s makers gave a good deal of thought and effort in their presentation and for the most part it works despite the movie’s obvious low budget (I suspect they might have loved to use more effects toward the end).

The problem with the film is that it never reaches the suspenseful/emotional heights I also believe the film’s makers were trying to get to.  The material is presenting at times in an almost too clinical manner and the viewer is never quite as invested in the characters and situations as s/he should be.  Thus, despite plenty of good, I can only give this film a mild recommendation.  You shouldn’t regret seeing it, but the film doesn’t engage as much as it should.

Ancient Scrolls Burned by Mt. Vesuvius…

…deciphered by new X-Ray technique?  Read all about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/science/more-progress-made-toward-learning-contents-of-herculaneum-scrolls.html

Basically we have several scrolls that were found burned in the town of Herculaneum, a town close to Pompeii, which suffered the same fate during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius back in 79 A.D.

Until now there was no way to “pull apart” the scrolls to try to read the material on them as doing so would destroy them.  Now, however, thanks to a new X-Ray technique, there is a way to “see” the indentations of the writing on the scrolls without actually doing anything to them.

The exciting part of this?  David Sider, a professor of classics at New York University put it succinctly within the article:

“For a scholar, it would be wonderful to have a manuscript of Virgil written in his lifetime, because what we have are medieval manuscripts which have suffered many changes at the hands of copyists.”

Fascinating stuff!

9 Baffling First Drafts of Classic Movie Posters…

Used to be one of the biggest selling points for movies (before the internet gave you all manner of information about the film as it was being made) was the movie poster.  I’ve commented before on how I first learned of Escape From New York thanks to its beautiful, iconic poster…

But like all things in life, the “perfect” image in a movie poster often arrived after considerable work and the discarding of ideas.  Some of those early poster ideas, it turns out, were really terrible given the iconic images we eventually got.

Cracked.com offers a delightful list of 9 “Baffling” first drafts of movie posters, and each and every one of them certainly fits the bill:

http://www.cracked.com/article_22046_9-baffling-first-drafts-classic-movie-posters.html

Alas, there is no “baffling” first draft of Escape From New York presented within this list, but easily my favorite “what the hell were they thinking” first poster draft has to go to:

…Good God…

If you liked that, you need to check out the rest!

 

 

American Sniper…and liar?

When the first trailers for American Sniper, Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial film starring Bradley Cooper (already a HUGE box office success) came out, I was entranced.  The trailer connected with me like few recent trailers have.  After seeing it, I absolutely, positively wanted to see the film.

Today, shortly after the film’s release, my huge interest in seeing the film has dropped to zero and I no longer have any interest in seeing it.  The reason is simple: The book this film was based on has been found to be, to put it kindly, fast and loose with certain facts.

One of the novel’s “facts”, in particular, is author and “American Sniper” Chris Kyle’s assertion (repeated several times by him to the media) that he got into a fight with -and beat up on- Jesse Ventura.  This assertion landed Mr. Kyle and, after he was killed, his estate, in court.

Mr. Ventura claimed Mr. Kyle’s story was an outright lie and that this lie defamed his character.  Though defamation of character suits are often hard to prove, much less win, Mr. Ventura did both and stands to make a tidy sum from the victory:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news-and-politics/jurisprudence/2015/01/american-sniper-lawsuit-chris-kyle-told-lies-about-jesse-ventura.html

The article linked to above mentions other “dubious” claims made by Mr. Kyle in his book.  While many, if not most, involve things that happened outside his military life and therefore are hard to verify, I nonetheless completely lost my interest in this work.

Understand, I know almost all biographical films stretch/compress/change the truth to suit their needs.  For that matter, I know there have been biographical films that merged several real life people into one character for the sake of streamlining their story.

But at least in these cases the biographical material follows something that actually happened and, one hopes, the makers get the spirit if not the complete and total minute by minute reality of the situations they’re presenting.

I know the whole Jesse Ventura thing is not used in the film and it has been purged from the book but, again, if several untruths are uncovered, does it not make us question how much of what is presented is “real”?

Again, for me, this is a no-brainer.  If the film was presented as a fictional work, I’d be there.  But as a biography, I’m uncomfortable supporting something that can’t be trusted to be real.