Captain Puerto Rico?

Via.

High praise for the "Chernobyl" HBO miniseries

I've seen several positive reviews, this one from The Atlantic:

...Ulana Khomyuk (played by Emily Watson) has a conversation with a Soviet apparatchik about the “incident” at Chernobyl that brings the analogy fully home. “I’ve been assured there’s no problem,” the bureaucrat says. “I’m telling you that there is,” Khomyuk replies. “I prefer my opinion to yours,” he says. “I’m a nuclear physicist,” she counters, adding, “Before you were deputy secretary, you worked in a shoe factory.”

The action veers between ludicrous, Death of Stalin–style farce (the radiation level is reported as 3.6 roentgens per second, since that’s as high as the counters go) and grindingly tense body horror (babies burned bright red, incessant retching, open sores). Johan Renck, who directed all five episodes, instills a sense of visceral fear that culminates in one striking scene where nearby townsfolk bask joyfully with their children under falling flakes of deadly nuclear ash...

Chernobyl is a thorough historical analysis, a gruesome disaster epic replete with oozing blisters and the ominous rattle of Geiger counters, and a mostly riveting drama. But it’s also a warning—one that straddles the line between prescience and portentousness. Whether you apply its message to climate change, the “alternative facts” administration of the current moment, or anti-vaccine screeds on Facebook, Mazin’s moral stands: The truth will eventually come out. The question he poses, however self-consciously, is whether hundreds of thousands of lives must always be sacrificed to misinformation along the way.

The series starts on HBO tonight.

Reposted from May to add this video -

YouTube link.

 - and a comment that I thought the series was superbly done.

Incorrect masks used in the movie "Alien"

During my brief break from blogging, I had a chance to watch part of Ridly Scott's "Alien," and noticed an error in the filming that I hadn't been aware of during previous viewings.  After John Hurt is brought back to Nostromo, he is placed in the infirmary; Ash and Captain Dallas enter and ponder how to remove the facehugger.

For this scene they are dressed in surgical gowns and are wearing masks - BUT the masks chosen for the film are not isolation masks; in fact these masks have absolutely zero filtering capacity.  They are simple oxygen masks.  In the screenshot above, the mask Ash is wearing clearly displays the nipple to which in real life one would attach the green oxygen tubing.  He is also wearing the mask improperly; it should fit under his chin, not be lodged against his lower lip.

Captain Dallas wears the same oxygen mask (and obviously without any oxygen).  When Hurt's body is moved into the scanner, they stay in the room but remove the masks (which would not be appropriate in an infectious environment) until his body comes out of the scanner.

Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of hospital procedures and equipment should know that these masks are not isolation masks.  I presume the director opted for being able to visualize more of the actors' faces rather than for scientific accuracy.

This error is not recorded at the Movie Mistakes website - but there are 47 others listed, some of them quite interesting.

Reposted from 2011 because next month will be the 40th anniversary of the first screening of the movie.

Over the past four decades, dozens of books, hundreds of journal articles and innumerable college courses have analysed, frame by frame, Ridley Scott’s story of a bloodthirsty creature stalking the crew of the spaceship Nostromo. No other film, not even The Godfather or Psycho, has generated quite that amount of attention.

And now that academic outpouring is about to reach a new peak as the film approaches its anniversary next month. Events will include the release of new Blu-ray versions of the film, the screening of a documentary of its making, Memory: The Origins of Alien; and the staging of a two-day symposium, 40 years of Alien, that will be held at Bangor University in May. Speakers will give talks on “Alien and race, ethnicity and otherness”; “Alien and psychoanalysis”; and “Alien and neoliberalism, post-industrialism and the rise of multinational corporations”. Proceedings are scheduled to be published by Oxford University Press.

There are some excellent observations in the Comments section for this post.

Forced perspective

As used in the filming of the movie Elf.  Via.

"Blade Runner Suite"

YouTube link.

Via Neatorama.

Westworld simplified

I thought about each panel in sequence, then laughed when I finally got to the final one, because I totally enjoyed the Westworld TV series, but before it was over I too was resorting to some recreational beverages.

Some discussion at the via.

Recognize this mountain?

You've probably seen it a hundred times.

"Implacable. Inexorable. It WILL win."

YouTube link.

"Iris" was released in 2001, but I saw it for the first time last evening.  It's really not so much a biography of Iris Murdoch as it is a lamentation on the ravages of Alzheimer's.  Anyone who has a family member with this affliction will appreciate the forthright but sensitive treatment of the subject in this film.

Captain Hook was a graduate of Eton

In J. M. Barrie's original play, Captain Hook's final words are "Floreat Etona", Eton's motto.

I heard this on a recent podcast of No Such Thing As A Fish.   You learn something every day.

"The Tillman Story" - official trailer

YouTube link. 

"They lied to the wrong family."

In spite of the best efforts of the White House and the Pentagon, the world would come to know he had been killed in an act of fratricide that was then covered up in favor of a horrible series of official lies.

But that we know the truth at all is owed to the extraordinary determination of Tillman's family, a foulmouthed and eclectic bunch of square-jawed hippies from San Jose, California, and in particular his mother, Mary. A more compliant family, more easily bamboozled by the institutions of American power at the highest levels, might have meekly, or readily, accepted the government's vigorous effort to turn Pat Tillman into a Sergeant York fantasy that it could then exploit relentlessly for propaganda purposes. 

Comments excerpted from a review at Esquire.  Those not familiar with the Pat Tillman saga can review the basics of it at Wikipedia.  My understanding is that the outrage by the family and by knowledgeable members of the public is not directed at the friendly-fire death per se, but on the extensive coverup that ensued.

Addendum:  Those interested in this subject should read Andred O-Hehir's analysis at Salon:

The film is also meant, to some extent, as an antidote to journalist Jon Krakauer's 2009 book "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman," which the family strongly disliked...

He was a football star and avid outdoorsman who read Emerson; an agnostic or atheist who read the Bible, the Quran and the Book of Mormon out of intellectual curiosity; a man who relished the high-testosterone simulated combat of sports, and excelled at it, while also maintaining an introspective personal journal he allowed no one to read. As a friend of mine recently observed, many of Tillman's characteristics would seem completely normal among the metropolitan educated classes: He never went anywhere without a book, and typically rode his bike rather than driving a car. But Tillman wasn't a bearded, chai-drinking grad student riding that bike to yoga class in Brooklyn or Silverlake or Ann Arbor. He was the starting strong safety for the Arizona Cardinals, and parked his bike next to his teammates' Porsches and tricked-out Escalades...

I'm only guessing here, but one of the things the Tillman family hated about Jon Krakauer's book was probably the author's tendency to view Pat Tillman's death as a case study in the evils of war and the limits of idealism. I might incline toward that view myself, but the Tillmans don't. Right-wing propagandists quickly learned that the Tillman family wasn't going to stick to the pious, patriotic script. (Pat's drunken younger brother, Rich, at the nationally televised funeral: "Pat isn't with God. He's fucking dead.") But the Tillmans aren't interested in starring in an antiwar morality play either. As they see it, Pat Tillman died as he lived, as an American who thought for himself, hewed to his own course and kept his word. It's the rest of us who have betrayed him.

More at the link.

Reposted in 2011 because I just this week finally got an opportunity to view the film. It is excellent (confirmed by a 93% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes).

Reposted in 2017 because Donald Trump, for whatever reason, chose to retweet Pat Tillman in support of his criticism of professional football players.  Pat Tillman's widow is justifiably pushing back:

"The very action of self-expression and the freedom to speak from one's heart — no matter those views — is what Pat and so many other Americans have given their lives for," Marie Tillman said. "Even if they didn't always agree with those views."

Murdered again on the Orient Express

YouTube link.

When I heard that this classic novel was being remade into a movie, I thought ?why remake a near-perfect movie (the 1974 version rates 95% on Rotten Tomatoes), especially one with such an unforgettable surprise ending.  But I have to admit the trailer does look tempting...

From the credits for Fargo (1996 movie)

I remember seeing this symbol in the rolling credits at the end of the movie, and like many others I wondered if Prince had been involved in a cameo or as a joke.

For years, it was a source of mystery, with Fargo's cult following not 100% sure if Prince was actually in the film, but The Huffington Post caught up with the film's main villain—Gaear Grimsrud, a.k.a. actor Peter Stormare—and he laid the full story out. As Stormare tells it, Prince and the Coen brothers are actually friends, primarily because they are all from Minnesota. Apparently Prince wanted to have a small role (what would seem to be a dead victim laying in a field) in the film, but was ultimately unable to do it. The symbol was thrown in, with a smile, seemingly to add mystique to the entire Prince/Warner Bros. situation, but the rumor of Prince actually being in the film grew into a wild piece of lore.

And note there is a tiny smiley face inside the symbol.

Movie villain dermatology

As reported in JAMA Dermatology:

Dichotomous dermatologic depictions between heroes and villains date back to the silent film age and have been used to visually illustrate the contrasting morality between these character types. Classic dermatologic features of villainous characters include facial scars, alopecia, deep rhytides, periorbital hyperpigmentation, rhinophyma, verruca vulgaris, extensive tattoos, large facial nevi, poliosis, and albinism or gray-hued complexions. These visual cues evoke in the audience apprehension or fear of the unfamiliar and provide a perceptible parallel to the villainous character’s inward corruption...

These portrayals have ignited the formation of advocacy groups aimed at diminishing the perpetuation of existing discrimination by discouraging the use of degrading stereotypes in film. Notably, the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation (NOAH) has protested the portrayal of people with albinism as villains, although with limited success...

The all-time top 10 American film villains and heroes were obtained from the American Film Institute 100 Greatest Heroes and Villains List.

Six of the all-time top 10 American film villains (60%) have dermatologic findings, all of which are located on the face and scalp and are persistent in presentation. Dermatologic findings include cosmetically significant (Norwood-Hamilton stage ≥3) alopecia (30%), periorbital hyperpigmentation (30%), deep rhytides on the face (20%), multiple scars on the face (20%), verruca vulgaris on the face (20%), and rhinophyma (10%). Three of the villains (30%) have gray-hued complexions or unnatural skin color. Excluding cosmetically insignificant androgenic alopecia (Norwood-Hamilton stage ≤2), single facial scars, and transient lacerations or ecchymoses, none of the all-time top 10 American film heroes have significant dermatologic findings. All heroes have natural, non–gray-hued complexions. The top 10 villains have a higher incidence of significant dermatologic findings than the top 10 heroes (60% vs 0%; P = .03). Two villains (20%) and 2 heroes (20%) have red hair.

Detailed discussion at the link.   And a related article at The Guardian ("Disfigured heroes like Deadpool help people like me fight prejudice."

Rhytides clarified.

Who you gonna call ?

Image cropped for emphasis from the one found here.

Another type of chess "problem"

Broadcast media (movies, television) have persistent difficulties incorporating chess into their storylines without introducing errors:

“There are a ton of chess mistakes in TV and in film,” says Mike Klein, a writer and videographer for Chess.com. While different experts cite different error ratios, from “20 percent” to “much more often than not,” all agree: Hollywood is terrible at chess, even though they really don’t have to be. “There are so many [errors], it’s hard to keep track,” says Grandmaster Ilja Zaragatski, of chess24. “And there are constantly [new ones] coming out.”

Chess errors come in a few different flavors, these experts say. The most common is what we’ll call the Bad Setup. When you set up a chessboard, you’re supposed to orient it so that the square nearest to each player’s right side is light-colored. (There’s even a mnemonic for this—“right is light.”) Next, when you array the pieces, the white queen goes on white, and the black queen goes on black. “When I teach six-year-old girls, I say ‘the queen’s shoes have to match her dress!’” says Klein.

Six-year-olds may get this, but filmmakers often do not. Along with The Seventh Seal, movies that suffer from Bad Setups include Blade Runner, Austin Powers, From Russia with Love, The Shawshank Redemption, and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Shaft and What’s New Pussycat may not have much in common, but they do both feature backwards chessboards.

Further discussion (re dramatic checkmates and tipped-over kings) at Atlas Obscura via Neatorama.

E.T. was a vegetable

Or a fruit perhaps.  On the "animal/vegetable/mineral" scale he was designated a "vegetable."

"E.T. and his extra-terrestrial brethren are not animal or mineral but vegetable. This idea of E.T. being a plant of some kind led the team designing him – headed up by the Oscar-winning Carlo Rambaldi – to create “plant-like” glowing hearts, first seen here, en masse."

Lots of other tidbits about the movie here, but I heard this fact on No Such Thing As A Fish.

Image via.

The Hundred-foot Journey

YouTube link.

Watched this a few nights ago.   The Hundred-Foot Journey is a very pleasant and enjoyable movie.  A predictable plot keeps it from reaching 4+ on my arbitrary scale, but good acting sprinkled with smatterings of food porn and an absence of the killing and explosions so common in Hollywood movies makes it a refreshing change from the usual fare.

Anna walks out of Holly's life

I saw this image on a Twitter post by Roger Ebert, and it took me a while to recall the name of the movie...

YouTube link.

Does anyone know if this is a famous street in Vienna?

The Third Man is perhaps better known for its musical theme than for its plot (note how excited the women are to be listening to the music).

Reposted from 2011 to replace the video, which was taken down.  This one will probably be taken down soon.

"The Lady in the Van"

YouTube link.

I watched this movie last night.  Absolutely delightful.  A tour de force by Maggie Smith.

The Lady in the Van is a 2015 British comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner, written by Alan Bennett, and starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings. It tells the true story of Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on Bennett's driveway in London for 15 years. Smith previously portrayed Shepherd twice: in the original 1999 theatrical production, which earned her a Best Actress nomination at the 2000 Olivier Awards; and in the 2009 BBC Radio 4 adaptation.

Disney's deceptive "White Wilderness"

v YouTube link.

The video above has exited excerpts from the 1958 classic, which was recently discussed in a report on nature documentaries:

But most infamous of all was the lemming sequence, also in White Wilderness. Ironically, the film-makers set out of disprove the myth that the animals sometimes commit mass suicide. Instead, they show what appears to be hundreds of lemmings “migrating” senselessly into the sea. “It’s not given to man to understand all of nature’s mysteries,” says Winston Hibler in his best fireside tones. “But, as nearly as he can surmise, it would appear that these lemmings consider this body of water just another lake.”

In fact, man did know better, or some men did – because the footage was shot in Alberta, Canada, where there aren’t any lemmings. To fix this problem, the crew paid children in Canada’s northern Manitoba region 25¢ per lemming to round some up. The animals were then driven south and placed on purpose-built turntables to make it seem like a horde of them was passing the camera. Finally, they were taken to the Bow river and shovelled off the bank. “Soon,” we are told, to the sound of a mournful clarinet, “the Arctic Sea is dotted with tiny bobbing bodies.”

Despite drowning very convincingly, the brown lemmings were actually miscast, because that species does not migrate. It’s the yellow-tufted Norway lemming they should have had. Whatever. White Wilderness and The Living Desert each won an Oscar, and Disney continues to market the films, and other True-Life Adventures, despite Roy Disney himself having said: “There was a time when we were presenting a lot of footage – that we knew was staged – as having occurred naturally.”