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nintendroid · 5 years

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Returning to the first ever convention we had the pleasure of covering, Nintendroid went back to the Lexington Comic and Toy Convention in Lexington Kentucky! A sequel that doesn’t disappoint!

When we got the go-ahead to cover LCTC, I was questioning if we could even make the trip. Sure it’s only a three hour trek, but the difference this time around is my new eight-month-old baby, and a wonderful job I’m very grateful for, but demands six days of my week. After some compromises, my wife being the trooper she is decided to stay home with baby droid. That left me going alone for the first time to cover the event by myself.

The drive on top of the early wake-up, working the previous day and dealing with my responsibilities as a dad had me beat by the time I made it to the doorstep of the Lexington Arena by eleven o’clock that Sunday morning. As worn out as I felt, was I going to be in the mood to even walk around this massive convention and enjoy myself?

Entering the building, it was like a jolt of electricity. The energy of the crowd, coupled with the pandemonium of activity covering every square inch of the entire building gave me the much-needed boost of adrenaline I needed. Even though I had missed the year prior, I felt so at home.

To LCTC’s credit, they’ve grown and boy do I mean grown. When I covered the event back in 2017, It mostly covered the bottom floor of the building. Now it was all three floors and the massive and historical Rupp Arena! It was big then, but it’s even bigger now and the crowd seemed to have tripled. Seeing the sell-out announcements, I was worried I was even going to make it into the place.

I didn’t get to cover everything I wanted to, because it just would’ve been impossible with the mass of activities and events all going on at one time. So what I’m going to do here is pick out some of my favorite little things I encountered while at LCTC 2019...

1. Imported Video Games!

Convention vendor spaces are my favorite. It’s like a geeky flea market you just want to walk around for hours. Being the pack-rat that I am, it’s always the height of any convention for me. What made this experience special was that it was the first time I ever seen vendors bringing foreign gaming consoles and games to sell! And to my relief, the prices were for the most part reasonable and not ridiculous.

This moment led to me purchasing my first ever Japanese import and I’m proud to say that I now own the Japanese version of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat with the bongo accessory for Gamecube! This gem only set me back forty bones, so needless to say we we’re off to an amazing start.

2. Mark Paul Gosselaar Q & A!

Being that I grew up in the 90s, I was a fan of Saved By The Bell. I was more of a closet fan, but nowadays my enjoyment of the show is loud and proud. I don’t follow the career of “Zack Morris” outside of the ‘Bell, but I thought it would be fun to hear what the dude was up to and if he ever married Kelly (Spoiler: he didn’t)

To my surprise, dude has a lot of fans of his more recent television works like Franklin and Bash. I was happy for the guy, because teen idols seem to get stuck in the time that they’re perceived to have peaked, and I’m glad to see he got away from that. Some interesting notes from the Q & A: His son dyed his hair blonde and said “look dad I’m you huh huh huh. He’s open to a reunion but no one has ever presented him with any material. He wants to get the cast together to read fan scripts at conventions. He still talks to the cast often. He also laughed at the caffeine addiction episode as most of us did. Thank me later, Saved By The Bell fans.

3. The Celebrity Signing Area!

As mentioned several times, LCTC has grown. The celebrities all do signings now in the Rupp Arena. I’m not an autograph hound because of my painful awkwardness but I appreciate it for other people. I went to get some pictures of the arena from the stands and found myself just enjoying the sites of all the celebrities interacting with the crowd. Seeing pro wrestling legend Sting sitting next to Meridith from The Office is something I could only think of in my wildest dreams.

Speaking of the guests, holy jeez did LCTC bring it this year. Half of The Office cast, Spongebob himself Tom Kenny (who had by far the biggest line there), a slew of Power Rangers, friggin’ Val Kilmer. That’s just a few names, trust me when I say it was pretty staggering how much talent was in that room.

4. This Bootleg Mega Man Doll!

This might seem out of place but I’m a sucker for bootleg toys for whatever reason, so imagine my joy and laughter when I came across this Mega Man. Where did it come from? Who made it? Why the hell is it fifteen dollars? I debated buying it, but at the end of the day I couldn’t justify purchasing it. I have the memory and that’s what matters. Serious though, how great/awful is this thing. Dr Light is rolling in his grave seeing his beloved creation bastardized like this. Definitely the work of Wily.

5. These Pikachus!

Hats off to these two cosplayers. I don’t even think they knew one another, but because they were both Pikachus, they hung out and danced at the doors for a long time. They should’ve had a seat in the arena with the celebrities, because everyone and their mom was taking pictures with them. More than any other cosplayer in the place, these dudes were the stars of the show. If I was these two, I’d take this act on the road. Imagine the money to be made at birthday parties and get togethers. One Pikachu is cool, but two puts it over the top.

At the end of the day, I was exhausted but so happy I got to experience the LCTC all over again. If you’re a seasoned convention goer, or looking to attend your first one, I recommend LCTC highly. It’s well staffed, well planned and well organized and you’ll have an awesome time taking in all the sights and enjoying everything offered here. I want to thank the people behind the scenes for having us back this year. This event will always hold a special place in my heart and I’m excited to see how it continues to grow throughout the years.

#lexington comic and toy convention #pokemon #pikachu #saved by the bell #nintendo #retro gaming #nintendroid

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prettyoddfever · 3 years

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from Seventeen’s site in March 2008

“panic at the disco answer our 17 questions!”

1. When was your first kiss? Spencer: Eighth grade. It was while we were at the movie Save the Last Dance. 2. Who's your celebrity crush? Spencer: Jessica Biel. She’s very attractive. I’ve seen her in some serious interviews and she came off very, very intelligent and seemed like a normal person. 3. What's a girl fashion trend that confuses you? Brendon: Those big sunglasses that cover their faces. Spencer: I don’t like the waist-high jeans. I just saw that yesterday. I guess it’s not flattering. Jon: Uggs — especially the white ones that get really dirty and disgusting. 4. What's the girly movie you secretly love? Jon: The Notebook. Spencer: 10 Things I Hate About You is a funny movie. Oh, and I liked Josie and the Pussycats. 5. What's your TV guilty pleasure? Spencer: Project Runway. It was The OC for a while. Jon: Yeah, for me it’s The OC. But The Office is really good, too. 6. Who would play you in the movie version of your life? Jon: Val Kilmer. Brendon: Leslie Nielsen. Spencer: Wesley Snipes. 7. What's your dream job? Jon: Golf. Spencer: Chef. Brendon: Cosmetology. I’m serious. I cut my own hair. 8. If you could trade places with anyone in the world for one day, who would it be? Brendon: Johnny Depp. I call him. No hesitation. For at least one day. You could do whatever you want to. Spencer: My girlfriend would want me to be Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. 9. Who in your family are you closest to? Jon: The cats! I have two cats, both tabbies. Brendon: Everyone. My whole family. Spencer: The pets. I have two boxers; one’s a boy and one’s a girl. 10. What's your favorite Website? Jon: Myspace.com/panicatthedisco. 11. What's the fast food you can't live without? Brendon: Burger King. Jon: Sub Shop. I don’t like fast food, but I like this. Spencer: Port of Subs. It’s really only in Las Vegas, California, and Arizona. 12. What's your worst habit? Brendon: I bite my nails. Spencer: I bite the inside of my gums. It’s just annoying. 13. What's the last song you listened to on your iPod? Brendon: “Three Little Birds,” by Bob Marley. Spencer: “The Boys Are Back in Town,” by Thin Lizzy. 14. What's the last thing you bought? Jon: Shoes. These shoes. I literally just got these shoes. I took off my old shoes and wore these out of the store. Spencer: A shirt. 15. What did you dream about last night? Jon: That our hotel room caught on fire and I had to jump out of the room with a mattress. Spencer: I had a dream the other night that some other band that I didn’t know was covering our song. I don’t know what that means. 16. How much money is in your wallet right now? Ryan: Zero cash. I have no money, but I have some credit cards. 17. Fill in the blank: When I was 17, I was ____________. Spencer: Touring. Brendon: Having tropical smoothies. Ryan: Chillaxing. I was also really good-looking. Jon: Actually, we were just getting signed. I guess I turned 18 as we were getting done.

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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Meet The Genetic Sleuths Solving Decades-Old Trans Murders

On the blustery morning of November 26, 1983, a beachgoer spotted a still-warm body in Half Moon Bay, California. The victim, who looked about 20 years old, had been stabbed more than 20 times and left in the sands near Pillar Point Bluff. Their wrists were slashed, their face bruised and swollen. (Out of respect for the victim’s unknown gender identity, Motherboard is using they/them as a pronoun.)

At their time of death, the person was presenting as a stylish, slender woman. They were 5-foot-10 inches tall, wearing an auburn pixie cut and casual clothes: yellow capri pants and a turtleneck over a foam-form bra, fishnet hose, and two pairs of feminine underwear. A Madonna-style white metal crucifix hung around their neck.

When taken to a medical examiner, the victim's body was misidentified as male, and nobody ever came to claim it. In an effort to identify the individual, cops dubbed them “John Doe #83-26” and released a crime sketch depicting a man. It failed to convey their gender identity or expression, including that they were likely wearing makeup and going by a woman’s name.

The case of Pillar Point Doe soon went cold and their identity remained a mystery for 35 years—until two genealogy sleuths recently cracked the case. The trans couple, who specialize in cold cases involving trans and gender non-conforming people, found the forgotten victim’s birth name through an online DNA database, reviving the hunt for their killer.

“I would work until I passed out”

Lee and Anthony Redgrave traced Pillar Point Doe’s relatives from Wales to Utah using the family history site GEDmatch, known for its role in finding the notorious Golden State Killer. The search was close to home for the Redgraves, who toiled obsessively for months without pay.

“I would work until I passed out. I’d cry myself to sleep at night, and have dreams where I was woken up thinking that [the victim] was telling me their name,” said Anthony, who along with Lee, ran a small team for the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit that identifies deceased people through forensic genealogy.

Lee added: “There are a lot of factors—and homicide detectives have absolutely no idea how to do this.”

The Redgraves were inspired by personal tragedy to help solve the case. In January 2018, a transgender friend of theirs, Christa Steele-Knudslien—a beauty pageant organizer and trans activist—was beaten and stabbed to death. The attack, which came after another friend’s suicide, sent Lee spiraling into a depression.

“It really tore my brain up,” said Lee, 41, a non-binary night owl with arms full of tattoos. “I got depressed, and when that happens I usually throw myself into a project.”

Anthony and Lee Redgrave

When a true crime-loving friend recommended they volunteer for the DNA Doe Project, it seemed like a good distraction.“Partially, I’m sure, it was her being like, ‘You have to stop being in a funk,’” Lee said. “We both felt really helpless about Christa—and this was something we actually could help with.”

They had plenty of experience with genetic genealogy, but they knew the limits of DNA and family tree matches for transgender victims. Database searches often lead to “dead names”—birth names victims no longer use, and aren’t known by in their communities. And most law enforcement systems don’t allow searches across sex marker categories, blinding them to some gender non-conforming folks.

A “trans-informed” perspective could shed some light, considering trans people are more likely to be the target of violent, unresolved crime. “Being a trans person, I know I’ve been incredibly fortunate not to have had a bunch of horrible things happen to me,” said Anthony, 38, a soft-spoken Civil War buff with a long ginger beard. “That was a driving force.”

When the Redgraves first heard about the Pillar Point Doe case in July 2018, they knew almost immediately it was ripe for a genetic gumshoeing.

An Unlikely Partnership

The victim, who was carrying no identification, had been found only two hours after they were stabbed in the neck and chest, allowing cops to collect a piece of blood-soaked blotter paper known as a “blood card.” This meant Pillar Point Doe’s DNA didn’t have to be extracted from bone, a longer and more expensive process. And yet it would likely show a complete picture of the victim’s entire genetic makeup, one that could be extracted in a lab and uploaded to GEDmatch, they said.

But the couple still had to convince the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to hand over the blood sample—and to team up with them on the investigation.

The Redgraves had a hunch cops would be willing. Their request came on the heels of the Golden State Killer’s arrest a few counties away, and in a section of northern California that tends to be queer-friendly.

“The thought was it was a good case because it was the Bay Area. We expected there would be more friendly law enforcement and a LBGTQ liaison in the Bay Area,” said Anthony. “We had to give an elevator pitch to the department, like, ‘This is why we want this specific case, and this is how it will benefit you.’”

The cops, it turned out, were game. The Redgraves signed non-disclosure agreements and— in a rare move—police released Pillar Point Doe’s private case files, including the blood card along with crime scene and coroner photos.

The Redgraves agreed to do the genetic sleuthing, then pass off next of kin matches to police, who would talk to relatives, collect DNA samples and handle the investigation from there.

It was an unlikely partnership. Many trans people refuse to work with cops since law enforcement has routinely targeted the community, trans activists and experts said. According to a 2015 survey, at least 57 percent of trans respondents said they would be afraid or uncomfortable going to police for help.

“It comes from being abused or not taken seriously by officers who historically have been disrespectful or dismissive of trans people,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, a policy expert for the National Center for Transgender Equality. “There’s a real stigma. Sometimes just being visibly trans in public is enough to get stopped or harassed by police on suspicion of being a sex worker—whether or not you actually are.”

Cases with trans victims have long been de-prioritized by cops, who assume victims are sex workers, living a “high risk” lifestyle or are “disowned” by their families, Heng-Lehtinen said.

But a lack of trans awareness is bad for police, too. Detectives who are ignorant about the community are more likely to use a transgender person’s dead name because it was printed on a government-issued ID, or to seek outdated information from estranged family members who knew them pre-transition, he said. It keeps those investigators from understanding the whole picture.

“If you’re an officer who’s asking around for Mark Smith and everybody in the neighborhood knows her as Marcia, that’s not helping anybody,” Heng-Lehtinen said.

Lee chalks it up to lack of education and training. “If you look at popular media over the past 20 years, the characters that are dressing opposite of what they’re ‘supposed to be’ are usually trying to trick somebody or get away with something—the end of ‘Ace Ventura’ is a classic example, or ‘The Crying Game,’” Lee said. “You get a lot of that mentality still in law enforcement, just because they haven’t had an alternate education.”

Identifying Doe

The Redgraves quickly got to work on creating a more gender-accurate forensic sketch of Pillar Point Doe. In the 80s and 90s, at least three drawings had been made of them, all wildly different.

One showed a “partially-Asian goth” guy with boxy slicked-back black hair, Lee said. Another depicted a shaggy-haired Val Kilmer look-alike with almond eyes. All were of men, and none were quite right.

“It seemed like [police artists] were trying to make this person look male,” Lee said. “Considering they had natural hair, not a wig, and were wearing pants with multiple layers of hose and underwear, it’s likely that they were tucking to have a more female appearance,” Lee said, citing details about the victim's outfit.

“They were probably attempting to pass as female as opposed to someone who was [a] drag performer or engaging in prostitution while cross-dressing.”

Based on those clues, the male sketch on fliers would have likely been lost on Pillar Point Doe’s queer “chosen family”—or anyone who saw them the night of the murder, the couple said. So using crime scene and coroner photos, the Redgraves and an artist came up with a new sketch that depicts the victim with a more feminine look, a yellow outfit and natural-style makeup.

In March 2019, Pillar Point’s blood card came back from the lab. It showed Pillar Point Doe’s entire genome sequence on a huge hard drive.

From their cozy home office in central Massachusetts, the Redgraves and a small team plugged those chunks of genetic code into GEDmatch, which compares DNA from testing sites like 23andMe and ancestry.com to find possible relatives with similar genetic makeups. Unlike law enforcement’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the site can pinpoint distant ancestors, not just immediate family members.

It works like this: Say you find a painting in a park with no signature and you want to learn the name of the artist. If you could somehow scan the piece’s complex colors and brush strokes into a massive database of art, you might be able to match it to the person who made it. Other paintings by the artist with similar patterns—a distant cousin, in this analogy—may also pop up.

In general, DNA evidence is only as accurate as the people who collect and analyze it. Technicians have been known to misinterpret samples, and police have submitted tainted or mixed genetic material. But Pillar Point’s blood card appeared to be a solid sample, the couple said.

The search led the Redgraves to a small town in Wales, where Pillar Point Doe’s distant relatives once worked at a glove factory. “We kept finding people who descended from this really specific family, but then finding the right branch turned out to be really hard,” Lee said.

Scores of unwed mothers hailed from the town for unknown reasons, leading to frustrating genealogy dead-ends. “It happened over and over again in this one little town,” Lee said.

The couple built a massive family tree and cross-referenced names with public records. They traced that to a group of relatives to a Utah pioneer community with roots in the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “When you work on someone’s genealogy, you get to know them in a really intimate way through their ancestors,” Lee said. “You know you’re getting close when they start looking like who you’re looking for.”

The couple soon discovered Pillar Point’s cousins belonged to an intermarried clan of families. Some men had multiple wives and children, amounting to a genealogy headache. “It’s a problem that’s common in isolated religious communities. The fancy word is endogamy,” Lee said. “You end up with a whole lot of half-relations and unreliable predictions.”

Setbacks

Then a fiasco unfolded. The arrest of the Golden State Killer in 2018 had sparked privacy fears from critics who claimed GEDMatch could be used for nefarious reasons. When a criminal case centering on a minor stirred up more controversy on the site the next year, the owners abruptly purged the “law enforcement matching” section of it in May 2019, according to the Redgraves.

With no warning, it left the couple with only about 20 percent of the genetic clues they’d had before. “Think of it as the number of letters turned around on your ‘Wheel of Fortune’ puzzle. [Afterwards] there were 80 percent less letters, and we still had to guess the phrase,” Lee said.

The setback forced them to get creative. They sought uploads from people who descended from early settlers in Utah, along with the Mormon church, and mapped out “clusters” of potential relatives.

Anthony spent hours tinkering with DNA Painter, a tool that helps genealogists make sense of matches. Eventually, it led to Pillar Point’s possible great grandfather.

During an all-nighter in October 2019, they had a breakthrough. When they got to one of the possible great grandfather’s relatives, they checked records for proof of the person’s life after 1983, and found none. Lee pulled out Pillar Point’s crime scene photo and checked it against a high school yearbook photo of the grandchild.

It all added up: Here was the long-forgotten face of Pillar Point Doe.

They both burst into tears. “There were periods of crying and shaking for a few days afterwards. It was really intense,” Lee said.

The team then sent Pillar Point’s birth name to cops, who collected DNA from a relative to confirm the match, reinvigorating the investigation.

San Mateo County police have since declined to release Pillar Point Doe’s birth name—or to allow the couple to—saying it could hurt their hunt for the killer. “This homicide is actively being investigated. Unfortunately, disclosing information about the details may hinder our investigation,” Sergeant William Young, from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, told Motherboard.

Cold Case, Close To Home

Now, the Redgraves want more answers. “Ideally, police will find the perpetrator,” Lee said. “[Cops] definitely want to tell us something but they can’t. It makes us feel hopeful.”

Not long ago, Lee got a tattoo of poppies in Pillar Point Doe’s honor. It was inspired by the California flower bloom that could be seen from space in March 2019, the week the couple began searching for the victim's identity. “I am absolutely forever changed from working on this case,” Lee said.

Ultimately, the Redgraves hope Pillar Point Doe will be remembered for who they were—a complex and loved person, not a forgotten John Doe. “Hopefully someone who loved them will carry on their memory,” Lee said.

The couple now runs the Trans Doe Task Force, a research group that helps police and medical examiners with transgender and gender-expansive cold cases. Recently, they launched a database that allows for DNA comparisons across sex marker categories. They also founded their own firm, Redgrave Research Forensic Services, and Anthony has helped train law enforcement departments on five continents.

These days, the couple has a small framed high school photo of Pillar Point Doe in their home, near portraits of other people from cases close to their hearts.

“Pillar Point has become part of our family. I feel like we are basically like their foster parents,” Anthony said. “I’m going to feel that way until I know exactly how this case ends.”

Meet The Genetic Sleuths Solving Decades-Old Trans Murders syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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oscopelabs · 7 years

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From Script to Screen: The Strange Alchemy of ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’ by Soheil Rezayazdi

The word “iguana” doesn’t appear in the shooting script of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. And why should it? Written by veteran TV writer William Finkelstein, the script unfolds with the cause-and-effect logic of a tight police procedural. Prior to penning Bad Lieutenant, Finkelstein wrote more than 50 episodes of L.A. Law, created and wrote on Brooklyn South, and contributed to such cop show staples as Law & Order and NYPD Blue. The man knows how to write a coherent crime drama. He’s devoted his career to the genre, mastering its plot points and character arcs for network television.

So why, in Bad Lieutenant, does a routine scene of police surveillance devolve into a full minute of shaky close-ups of iguanas? Why do scenes end with mystifying non-sequiturs like “Shoot him again...his soul is still dancing”? Why does its protagonist enter a bar shouting, “Sup! Sup! Sup, motherfucker!” for no reason? And why does he aim a gun at an old lady’s head and seethe “Maybe you should drop dead, you selfish cunt!” long after a director should have shouted “cut”?

William Finkelstein wrote none of that. His script originated in the early 2000s as a New York-set TV pilot. Over time, he reworked the material—first into a feature, then into a New Orleans noir. He finished revisions on the script in 2008 as the film was in production. The final script, which he sent me prior to our recent meet-up at an Italian bakery in the West Village, bears the signature of a police procedural master craftsman. Over espressos and lemon ices, I implored Finkelstein to discuss the brazen changes made to his script by the erratic tag team of Nicolas Cage and director Werner Herzog.

Our discussion, along with a close look at the unpublished shooting script, reveals how many of Bad Lieutenant’s most singularly strange moments were born.

“I always wanted to pull back to the procedural nature [of the script],” Finkelstein said, “and Werner basically didn’t give a shit about any of that.”

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Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a true curiosity. Neither a remake nor a sequel to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant, the film attempts to turn that film’s premise—a cop with a severe drug problem—into a franchise. Finkelstein likened the connection between his film and Ferrara’s to the Bond series. “From Russia with Love is not a sequel to Dr. No,” he said. “It’s a different movie with different bad guys and settings, but there’s a character in the midst of it—who’s played by different people over the years—who has certain traits that make James Bond James Bond.”

And so the refined Bond martini, shaken not stirred, becomes the bump of coke before work, the hit of crack with your local dealer, the shot of heroin to end the night. Take your pick. Both bad lieutenants love it all. Not surprisingly, there’s no word yet on a third installment to a film franchise whose trademarks include hardcore drug use, gambling debts, and sexual bribery.

The 2009 film is a gleeful exercise in provoking head scratches, raised eyebrows, dropped jaws. Where to start? That a Nic Cage cop drama is the biggest budgeted film of Werner Herzog’s career? Or how about its supporting cast, a grab bag of the formerly famous (Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk, Xzibit) that gives the film its straight-to-video flavor? Or maybe we focus on the title, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a name as indecisive and unwieldy as the film itself?

Above all, though, we have the enchanting interplay between three distinct voices: Herzog, Cage, and Finkelstein. The three operate as something of a jazz trio— Finkelstein keeps time while Herzog and Cage solo over his material. Each player takes turns taking control of what’s on screen. Cage brings the Tourettic outbursts of a repressed superstar unchained. Herzog injects the film with lyrical (and often very goofy) interludes. And Finkelstein gives contrast to his partners’ more self-indulgent noodling. Together, the three don’t exactly harmonize; their agendas clash on the screen, birthing moments of wondrous strangeness. You either dig the contrapuntal pleasures, or you hear nothing but noise.

This piece focuses on the film’s noisiest moments: those flashes of improvisation and left-field obsession smuggled into Bad Lieutenant. I select four scenes where the film erupts into delicious chaos. These are the scenes where a genre picture, penned by an industry veteran, morphs into a kind of madness no screenwriter could dream up.

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“You’re the fucking reason this country’s going down the drain!”

A police officer investigates a homicide while battling his own demons. Bad Lieutenant, for all its digressions, hinges on a fairly straightforward premise. As the film’s tagline cutely puts it, the only criminal Lt. Terence McDonagh can’t catch…is himself. Our protagonist stumbles around New Orleans, getting into all kinds of trouble, as he gathers evidence against the likely perp, a local drug dealer named Big Fate (Xzibit). McDonagh has shades of the great stoner detectives—The Dude, Doc Sportello, Altman’s Philip Marlowe—only he doesn’t shy away from conflict; he seeks it out like a commuter with low blood sugar.

His biggest meltdown arrives in a luxury nursing home. McDonagh’s there to interrogate Binnie, a nursing home assistant, on the whereabouts of her grandson. In the script, he badgers Binnie and a patient in her care, an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Binnie refuses to talk—until McDonagh cuts off the patient’s oxygen supply. Aghast, Binnie gives up her grandson’s location. McDonagh reattaches the oxygen tubes, having extracted the information he needs to move the plot forward, and leaves. End scene.

This two-page exchange runs a sadistic three minutes in Bad Lieutenant. The unscripted touches start right away: Cage hides behind the old lady’s bedroom door as she enters, surreally shaving with an electric razor. He attacks this material with the whisper-or-scream volatility of his famed freakouts. Dialogue-wise, he sticks to Finkelstein’s words for the first two minutes, drawing out lines like “Children...were executed” for maximum menace. From there, he transforms the moment into macabre humor. Cage introduces a gun into the scene, shoving it up against Binnie’s temple as he fumes, “Where the fuck is he?” Once he gets his answer, Cage extends the scene with a virtuoso verbal assault on the old lady. “Maybe you should drop dead you selfish cunt!” he erupts after a few seconds of silence.

It’s too much to print here in full. You can find it in any Nic Cage supercut worth your time.

“You’re the fucking reason this country’s going down the drain!” he screams to close the scene, a head-spinning non-sequitur from a character who’s never expressed concern for the state of the nation.

For Finkelstein, the scene was way too much.

“When I first saw it I thought, ‘Wow, we can’t do this,’” he said. “‘This is terrible. It’s so extreme. It takes us out of the scene.”

Finkelstein wrote the sequence as an homage to the 1947 noir Kiss of Death, in which Richard Widmark shoves a woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. He saw an early cut of the film and dined that night at Herzog’s house. He decided, rather than suggest a dozen small edits, he would focus on two or three big asks. This scene was one of them. Cage’s assault serves no real purpose. It’s just a full minute of over-the-top Cage rage. I’d imagine most writers would question the inclusion of such a tone-shattering addition to their script. Herzog overruled him.

“I saw it again at the premiere, and I’m sitting there in the theater and I just loved it,” Finkelstein said. “I thought it was funny as hell. The extreme nature of the annunciation is what sold it. I think I was a little conservative, a little cautious.”

“I was so happy that nobody listened to me in the end,” he said.

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“What’re these fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table?”

Little can prepare first-time viewers of Bad Lieutenant for the iguana interlude. In perhaps Herzog’s most ostentatious addition to the script, he stretches less than a page of script action here into two minutes of on-screen delirium. It’s the film’s most infamous scene, a narrative and aesthetic sideswipe of the highest order.

On the page, the moment unfolds without much incident. McDonagh arrives in an apartment being used to surveil a drug dealer. He has a routine exchange with two officers about the suspect’s whereabouts. McDonagh and Stevie (Val Kilmer) disagree about whether to call the SWAT team. Soon, all five cops leave to apprehend the suspect. No outbursts, no obscenities, no iguanas.

In the film, Herzog opens this sequence with a shot of Cage snorting heroin in a bathroom stall. This bit appears elsewhere in the script; Herzog moves it here, we can presume, to prime us for the psychedelic journey to come.

Cage enters the surveillance site with an un-holstered gun comically bulging out of his pants. Finkelstein was on set the day Cage decided to wear his gun like this throughout the film. Initially, he felt compelled to protest.

“There’s times when an actor wants something like this, and you got to say no,” Finkelstein said. Having worked on cop dramas for decades, he took pride in getting these details right.

“Cops don’t carry their guns like that,” he said. “But as extravagant as this was as a gesture, Nic understood something about this character. He was playing this guy bigger than I’d imagined, but in fact he was right and I was too cautious.”

Heroin in his veins, gun in his groin, Cage storms into the scene and spots two iguanas matter-of-factly lounging on a coffee table. He stutters in extreme agitation, turning script lines like “Let ’em stay there” to “Naw! No...just no SWAT, let ’em stay there.” He then drifts into a fugue state with the invisible iguanas. Amid a story of cops and criminals, Herzog asks us to stare at garish close-ups of the animals for 60-some seconds. Louisiana native Johnny Adams wails on the soundtrack. To make the narrative rupture even more pronounced, he films the ordeal in ugly, consumer-grade digital video.

I’m not so concerned with what this all means. Animals and nature have long fascinated Herzog, from the “fiendish stupidity” of chickens to the “obscene, explicit malice” of the jungle. Animals permeate Bad Lieutenant—fish, iguanas, gators—and almost all of them were introduced by Herzog. As a viewer, a part of me wants to rationalize these moments. Perhaps Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters brought the wilderness into the city, turning New Orleans into a literal asphalt jungle? Or maybe it’s more intuitive: “There is nothing more wondrous,” Herzog has said, “than seeing Nicolas Cage and a lizard together in one shot.”

Finkelstein gave his blessing for the iguana hallucination, despite its total disruption of the story. The scene came at the expense of an action sequence Finkelstein had written. In the shooting screenplay, Cage’s character has a coke-fueled fight with some strangers at a gas station. Herzog refused to shoot the scene to ensure his iguanas made the final cut. Finkelstein tried to sell him on the merits of the rest stop melee, and lost.

“Herzog said ‘I think we’re going to go long, and then [the producers] are going to make me lose my iguanas—and if they make me lose my iguanas I feel like I can’t be a filmmaker anymore,’” Finkelstein recalled. “And I thought ‘Whoa, this cat is serious. He’s not fucking around.’ I just had so much respect for him as an artist. I didn’t give a good goddamn if he shot the scene or not once he said that. That beats anything.”

---

“To the break of daaaawn, baby!”

Bad Lieutenant’s script detours tend to arrive at the start or end of a given scene. Consider the above examples: Herzog and Cage hit the scenes’ narrative beats, and then they start riffing. As Finkelstein put it, the two “always knew what had to happen in the scene.” Once they hit those notes, they had carte blanche to treat the script like mere bullet points to a freeform lecture of their choosing.

“Nicolas knew that sometimes after a scene was shot I would not shut down the camera if I sensed there was more to it,” Herzog wrote in 2009. “I simply would not call ‘cut’ and leave him exposed and suspended under the pressure of the moment.”

The film’s catchphrase grew from this loose set dynamic. Toward the end of Bad Lieutenant, Cage’s character cons Big Fate to both gather evidence against him and score some of his drugs. In the script, McDonagh, Big Fate, and his men share a moment together after a successful drug deal. McDonagh demands his cut of the money and a cut of the drugs. He pulls a gun on Big Fate and wins the exchange, closing the scene with an unambiguous threat to a car full of drug dealers: “I’ll kill all of you.”

Cage doesn’t end the scene there. To begin, he colors the exchange with spastic ad libs like “Sup!” to get the men’s attention. The actors stray from the particulars of the screenplay, but they convey all the key information to move the story forward. Then the scene trails off into loopy nonsense. Cage waves his gun around like a toy and, sensing radio silence, mutters—and then roars—“I’ll kill all of you...to the break of dawn. To the break of daaaaawn, baby!”

You can see the smirk sneak onto Cage’s face just before he opens his mouth. Clearly pleased with himself, he delivers the line with the Elvis-like drawl he used in Wild at Heart. All four actors erupt in laughter, and suddenly it’s as though we’re watching a closing credits gag reel. Cage swings the mood from sinister to silly; Herzog, the enabler, lets him get away with it.

“This was pure Nic,” Finkelstein said. “That was one of my favorite moments because he can’t help but get this smile on his face when he says it. He’s so enthused.”

I smiled, myself, upon hearing this. As a viewer, I’d long wondered if Finkelstein found moments like this offensive. Here’s Cage, after all, undercutting his words, cracking up fellow actors for kicks. It could be interpreted as mockery. For Finkelstein, though, Cage’s untethered rambles “all seemed to work of a piece.” Finkelstein had years of experience making on-set changes to other writers’ scripts as a TV showrunner. His words, he told me, need not be “cherished” by an actor struck with inspiration.

“The story felt like it could incorporate all that,” he said. “There was a basis for it because this guy was fucked up all the time.”

---

“Shoot him again...his soul is still dancing.”

The script revisions get downright operatic by the film’s climactic shootout. Over an eternal five and a half minutes, Cage and Herzog here transform the script’s most violent moment into a surreal and comic medley of their wildest impulses.

They make far too many edits to detail them all. In Finkelstein’s text, the scene begins as a meeting between Big Fate, his henchmen, and McDonagh. Spirits high, McDonagh smokes crack with the men to test out their new product. He proposes that, in lieu of his cash payment, he gets a cut of the dope. The men agree, and McDonagh spoons his share into a baggie. He then invites Big Fate to take a hit from his “lucky crack pipe.” McDonagh, we later learn, will plant the pipe at a crime scene to seal his case against Big Fate.

A trio of thuggish debt collectors arrives at Big Fate’s home to shake down McDonagh for the money he owes them. McDonagh suggests they take his dope as payment; the head gangster, Dave, threatens to take all of the dope, Big Fate’s included. A tense moment follows. The debt collectors reach for the dope on the table; Big Fate and his men shoot all three of them. “Clean this shit up,” Big Fate says to close the scene.

Cage and Herzog’s gonzo take on this material is at once faithful and ludicrous. The scene begins, as in the script, with the characters in a celebratory mood. The four men smoke as Xzibit orders his men to “light the Caucasian’s rock”—the first of many ad libs smuggled into the scene. For Cage, the drugs are a green light to go berserk. He proposes a business idea and explodes into a pipe-bursting laugh few on this earth could imitate. From there, the floodgates open. Cage runs through a nonsense story about a football player who sprouts antlers. We’ve all been there: loaded, desperate to tell a story with no point. Wild-eyed and blissed-out, he ends the unscripted monologue with another abrasive laugh. Pure Cage, uncaged.

Xzibit and his men worry Cage might die from the crack intake. Here, the actors use snippets of Finkelstein’s dialogue about other drug users dying and apply it to Cage, given how feral he’s decided to play the scene. “Easy, easy, easy...cuz I’m not Eazy-E!” Cage retorts, another improv line that makes Xzibit laugh.

From there, the scene plays out as written for two minutes. Finkelstein, a native New Yorker with an agreeably gruff voice, plays Dave, the lead debt collector. The confrontation between him, Xzibit, and Cage ends in a shootout set to “Lost John,” the same song Herzog used for the dancing chicken sequence in Stroszek.

Cage then passes the freak flag to Herzog. Instead of “clean this shit up,” Herzog has Cage implore the gangsters to shoot Finkelstein again because “his soul is still dancing.” Cage erupts into his asthmatic laugh as Herzog pans to reveal a breakdancer dressed like Finkelstein spinning near his dead body. Cage stares ahead, transfixed by the breakdancing soul. An iguana saunters through the room, an emblem of his hallucination. A shootout has devolved into a freakout.

None of this, of course, was scripted. It’s all too perfect: A screenwriter gets his work butchered, and then he gets killed on camera. Finkelstein called these edits “happy bastardizations.”

“Some of that big shootout was improvised, yeah,” he said. “That thing about the gazelle sprouting antlers, Cage made that up. The breakdancing was Werner. Absolutely Werner.”

Finkelstein compared Bad Lieutenant to other gangster films freed from the shackles of genre, from Breathless to the crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville. He also likened it to Cop Rock, a short-lived ABC show he co-created. A true curio, the 1990 show operated as part cop drama, part musical. It was a fascinating, supremely awkward marriage. “Audiences were not happily startled,” as Finkelstein put it. Though he didn’t write it that way, Bad Lieutenant became a similar experiment in police procedural storytelling.

“There’s a tradition of being able to take the form and blow it up and make a movie that’s more lyrical and not realistic,” he said. “I think that’s what we all wound up doing.”

---

Who captains this ship? The answer changes from scene to scene, shot to shot, line to line. A big-name actor, an art-house iconoclast, and a veteran TV writer each take turns steering. Finkelstein guides much of the first act; his instincts as a successful writer/producer orient viewers into this world. Herzog takes the film on its strangest journeys, refashioning this material into an exploration of what he calls “the bliss of evil.” And Cage grabs the mic like a drunk wedding guest, holding viewers hostage to his artful, overlong eruptions. Each contributor has his marquee moments. Like a stoner pizza topped with cream cheese, bacon, and Nutella, it shouldn’t work—but it does.

Bad Lieutenant reveals cinema for what it is: a messily collaborative medium. Every film is the work of many voices. What makes the film wonderful is that, despite their strong and distinct personalities, Cage, Herzog, and Finkelstein’s voices don’t compete; they complement. They produce a sound neither could create on his own.

Finkelstein stressed this point throughout our talks. His impulses did, at times, conflict with the liberties taken to his work. He returned several times to Cage’s unhinged attack in the nursing home. Finkelstein’s voice, calibrated over decades on television, couldn’t make sense of such excess. Of course he came around. Had he been in charge that day, though, he “almost assuredly would have pulled back,” he told me. “That Nic didn’t is a testament to one of the joys of a collaborative process.”

The word “alchemy” feels appropriate for a film this volatile. To watch Bad Lieutenant is to witness a bizarre and unlikely combination of elements collide on a screen. We’ve seen these elements before, in isolation: Cage’s tantrums, Herzog’s lyricism, Finkelstein’s cop drama chops. Together, they produce something new, unclassifiable—a drug you’ve never taken before. As with all great cult films, my recommendation comes with a warning: Be careful. It’ll mess with your head.

#werner herzog #nic cage #nicolas cage #william finkelstein #bad lieutenant #bad lieutenant: port of call new orleans #xzibit #val kilmer #abel ferrara #nypd blue #law & order #iguana

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blueeyeddarkknight · 2 months

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Rare stills of famous rock and roll star Nick Rivers ❤️🥹🕺🎶

Source : eBay, old Val kilmer sites and others

#val kilmer #top secret #Top secret 1984 #nick rivers #mark kilmer #how silly can you get #zaz #zucker brothers #hot #rares #took me days to find pics I haven't seen before

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costumet · 5 years

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Dress Like Doc Holliday (Tombstone) Costume

Doc Holliday didn’t become well-known because he was a dentist. He was better known for his gun slinging skills and his role during the famous O.K. Corral Gunfight. It also helps that he was friends people like Wyatt Earp.

In Tombstone, Doc Holliday looked so dapper in his Old West attire. For this outfit, he was wearing a white collared top, black pants, blue paisley vest, black blazer, and a red cravat. He also wears a black Gunslinger hat. Here’s everything you need to look like Doc Holliday.

How to Make Doc Holliday Costume

#ItemDescription1White Collared Top Wear this white collared top as the base of your outfit.2 Red CravatA red cravat is a good accessory to show the old style of yesteryears.3 Black PantsA pair of black pants are comfortable and versatile.4 Blue Paisley VestA blue paisley vest is both functional and uniquely stylish.5Black Blazer Doc Holliday finishes his look with a black blazer.6 Black Gunslinger HatDoc Holliday likes to wear his Gunslinger hat.7Fake Moustache If you don’t have the same moustache as Doc Holliday, wear a fake one.8 Cowboy AccessoriesUse this accessories set for a more detailed costume.9 Gun Shoulder HolsterKeep your fake weapons near you with this gun shoulder holster.10 Costume SetNo time to DIY? Get this costume set instead.

About Doc Holliday

Doc Holliday was portrayed by Val Kilmer. Doc Holliday’s real name is John Henry.

Check out these sites to read more about Doc Holliday and the other characters from Tombstone:

Wikipedia

IMDb

Disney Wiki

source https://www.costumet.com/tombstone/doc-holliday/

#halloween #costume #cosplay #diy

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thatsnotcanonpodcasts · 5 years

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GB Studios, Batman & Human Gene Editing

Hi, hello and welcome to another amazing episode from Nerds Amalgamated. Once again we enjoy bringing you this slice of entertainment from the world of the NERD pop culture news, where all are welcome. We pause for a moment to pay our respect to the victims of the cowardly bombings in Sri Lanka over Easter. Also we pause to honour the ANZACs, those individuals who have helped defend Australia and New Zealand for over a century.

First topic is from the Professor, and it is about an open source game making program that enables the creation of 8-bit type games. Useable on web-browsers and portable devices such as the Nintendo Gameboy (All trademarks acknowledged – so don’t sue us please Nintendo, Buck is still not happy with you). This is looking like a fun way of making your own games and also introducing coding and game development to a new generation.

Then we look at a birthday celebration for Batman, 80 years old and still giving crime a beat down. Yep, there is a return of the quadrilogy from the 90’s to cinemas. So grab you friends, dig those happy pants out of the cupboard and shake up that hair spray and head on down. You get to see the two Michael Keaton Batman movies, followed by Val Kilmer and then George Clooney. We discuss Bat-nipple gate and how fun these movies were. Plus we hear how tragic Buck was at decorating his bedroom as a teenager.

Next up we look at further plans to make use of CRISPR for gene editing, this time to prevent hereditary diseases. Say hi to the start of Gattaca folks, we have a group of mad scientists running around with questionable ethics who don’t watch movies. Next they will be telling us about how they want to remake dinosaurs and release them into the wild, like that other movie. Don’t these people ever learn to think about the consequences of their actions?

We finish off with the usual shout out, remembrances, birthdays and events. As always take care of each other and stay hydrated.

EPISODE NOTES:

Sri Lankan Easter Bombing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Sri_Lanka_Easter_bombings

Anzac Day - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day

GB Studios - https://www.gbstudio.dev/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bg1xej/gb_studio_is_an_opensource_visual_game_maker_to/

Original Batman Quadrilogy - https://screenrant.com/batman-original-movie-quadrilogy-returning-theaters/

CRISPR Human Gene Editing - http://discovermagazine.com/2019/may/repairing-the-future

Games Currently playing

– Mortal Kombat 11 – https://store.steampowered.com/app/976310/Mortal_Kombat11/

Buck

– Assassin’s Creed Unity - https://store.steampowered.com/app/289650/Assassins_Creed_Unity/

Professor

– Adrenaline the board game - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/202408/adrenaline

Other topics discussed

Anzac Day road closures

- https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/full-list-of-anzac-day-road-closures-in-brisbane/news-story/21e0848fde4b685faaa4a416adf98018

Nintendo shuts down Emuparadise

- https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/275146-retro-gaming-site-emuparadise-shuts-down-as-nintendo-hits-the-warpath

Nintendo shuts down Pokemon Uranium

- https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/14/12472616/pokemon-uranium-taken-down-nintendo

Nintendo takes down Commodore 64 Remake of Super Mario Bros

- https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/04/nintendo-takes-down-c64-remake-of-super-mario-bros/

Batman Movies

- Batman (1989 film) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(1989_film)

- Batman Returns (1992 film) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_Returns

- Batman Forever (1992 film) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_Forever

- Batman & Robin (1995 film) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_%26_Robin_(film)

Joker actors in Batman movies and other media

- Jack Nicholson (1989 Batman film Joker) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nicholson

- Heath Ledger (2008 Batman film Joker) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Ledger

- Mark Hamill (1992 Batman: The Animated Series Joker) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hamill

Alicia Silverstone (Batgirl in Batman & Robin 1997)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Silverstone

Actors portraying as Batman

- Michael Keaton (1989 & 1992 Batman) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Keaton

- Val Kilmer (1992 Batman) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Kilmer

- George Clooney (1997 Batman) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clooney

Gattaca (1997 film)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

Dynamite also known as TNT – TriNitroToluene is a compound in dynamite but is not the same, there is another piece of trivia you can use in the trivia night to stump people

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamite

Guided bombs also known as Smart bombs, but smart bombs also have many other variants ranging from types of explosions, for example the bunker busters, to warhead variants on ICBMs which separate and loose multiple strikes over an extended area or separate targets.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_bomb

Eugenics

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

U.N findings: US Forces kill more Afghan Civilians than ISIS & Taliban in 2019

- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/24/unprecedented-un-finds-us-backed-forces-killed-more-afghan-civilians-taliban-and?fbclid=IwAR3xU6beak4Ega5DO8VeaoF77-Mn3lPSR6m5E_Ibg8lhTPMYgC4MHkSoeiA

Image comparison of Mortal Kombat Sonya Blade (MK 9 vs MK 11)

- https://am21.akamaized.net/tms/cnt/uploads/2019/01/Sonya-Blade.jpg

Frank Welker (voice actor)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Welker

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (actor)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cary-Hiroyuki_Tagawa

MK 11 Skins total cost = $6440

- https://www.vg247.com/2019/04/24/mortal-kombat-11-skin-price-6440/

Ed Boon’s response to total cost of MK 11 skins

- https://twitter.com/noobde/status/1121243237388357632

Mortal Kombat 11 voice cast list

- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9398566/

Master Chief (Halo character)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Chief_(Halo)

Last chance to download Assassin’s Creed Unity for free (Now expired)

- https://www.gamespot.com/articles/last-chance-to-get-assassins-creed-unity-for-free-/1100-6466327/

Star Trek Beyond (2016 film)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Beyond

Did Shakespeare write his own plays

- https://www.history.com/news/did-shakespeare-really-write-his-own-plays

Shirley Temple (drink)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Temple_(drink)

Email Bomb (internet virus)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_bomb

Monkey selfie copyright dispute

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute

Kanellos Kanellopoulos (Greek cyclist who piloted the 1988 MIT Daedalus project)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanellos_Kanellopoulos

Shoutouts

20 Apr 1887 - World's First Motor Race, Georges Bouton “won the world’s first motor race” with a steam-powered quadricycle. The event was a “test” organised by the newspaper Le Velocipede to see if Bouton’s machine, which had boasted speeds of 60kmph, could make the 29-kilometre distance between Neuilly Bridge in Paris and the Bois de Boulogne. Bouton and de Dion completed the test course in 1 hour and 14 minutes riding La Marquise, the quadricycle named after the aristocrat’s mother. - https://www.onthisday.com/articles/the-worlds-first-motor-race

14 Apr 2019 – 1000th Formula 1 Grand Prix race at Shanghai, China - https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.top-shots-the-drivers-1000th-race-helmet-designs.nFP8yFNcrzI7yybxLMUXs.html

23 Apr 2013 - "Star Trek Into Darkness" directed by J. J. Abrams starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto premieres in Sydney - https://www.startrek.com/article/star-trek-into-darkness-premieres-in-australia

23 Apr 2018 - Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War" directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr and large ensemble cast premieres in Los Angeles - https://variety.com/2018/film/news/avengers-infinity-war-premiere-marvel-1202784555/

Remembrances

22 Apr 2019 - Kiyoshi Kawakubo, Japanese voice actor, his prominent anime roles include Guame in Gurren Lagann, Kevin Yeegar in D.Gray-man, Quincy in Bubblegum Crisis and Scramble Wars. He passed away on 16 Apr 2019 at 89

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyoshi_Kawakubo

- https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-04-22/voice-actor-kiyoshi-kawakubo-passes-away/.145984

23 Apr 1616 - William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He died of a fever at 52 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

23 Apr 1850 - William Wordsworth, English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publicationLyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. Wordsworth was Britain's poet laureate from 1843 to 1850. He died of aggravated case of pleurisy at 80 in Rydal, Westmorland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth

Birthdays

23 Apr 1901 – E.B Ford, British ecological geneticist. He was a leader among those British biologists who investigated the role of natural selection in nature. As a schoolboy Ford became interested in lepidoptera, the group of insects which includes butterflies and moths. He went on to study the genetics of natural populations, and invented the field of ecological genetics. He was born in Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._Ford

26 Apr 1616 - William Shakespeare, same as above, he baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

23 Apr 1928 – Shirley Temple, American actress, singer, dancer, businesswoman, and diplomat who was Hollywood's number one box-office draw as a child actress from 1935 to 1938. As an adult, she was named United States ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia, and also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States. Temple began her film career at the age of three in 1932. Two years later, she achieved international fame in Bright Eyes, a feature film designed specifically for her talents. She appeared in 14 films such as Heidi and Curly Top from the ages of 14 to 21. Temple retired from film in 1950 at the age of 22. She began her diplomatic career in 1969, when she was appointed to represent the United States at a session of the United Nations General Assembly, where she worked at the U.S Mission under Ambassador Charles W. Yost. Temple was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Kennedy Center Honors and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. She is 18th on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female American screen legends of Classic Hollywood cinema. She was born in Santa Monica, California - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Temple

23 Apr 1941 - Ray Tomlinson, a pioneering American computer programmer who implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; he is internationally known and credited as the inventor of email. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the user name from the name of their machine, a scheme which has been used in email addresses ever since.[9] The Internet Hall of Fame in its account of his work commented "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate". He was born in Amsterdam, New York - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Tomlinson

Events of Interest

23 Apr 1516 - German Beer Purity Law or Reinheitsgebot, is a series of regulations limiting the ingredients used to brew beer in Germany and the states of the former Holy Roman Empire.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot

- https://www.onthisday.com/photos/german-beer-purity-law

23 Apr 2005 - The first ever YouTube video, titled "Me at the zoo", was published by user "jawed". It was uploaded on April 23, 2005 at 20:27:12 PTD (April 24, 2005 at 3:27:12 UTC) by the site's co-founder Jawed Karim, with the username "jawed" and recorded by his high school friend Yakov Lapitsky. He created a YouTube account on the same day. The nineteen-second video was shot by Yakov at the San Diego Zoo, featuring Karim in front of the elephants in their old exhibit in Elephant Mesa, making note of their lengthy trunks.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_at_the_zoo

- First ever YouTube video “Me at the Zoo” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw

23 Apr 1988 – A Greek makes world record with the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department's Daedalus, a human-powered aircraft flew a distance of 72.4 mi (115.11 km) in 3 hours, 54 minutes, from Heraklion on the island of Crete to the island of Santorini. The flight holds official FAI world records for total distance, straight-line distance, and duration for human-powered aircraft. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamated

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrS

iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094

RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rss

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gossipnetwork-blog · 6 years

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The '80s Return: New Info on 'Lethal Weapon' and 'Top Gun' Sequels, Plus 'Young Guns' Reboot

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/the-80s-return-new-info-on-lethal-weapon-and-top-gun-sequels-plus-young-guns-reboot/

The '80s Return: New Info on 'Lethal Weapon' and 'Top Gun' Sequels, Plus 'Young Guns' Reboot

It’s a big week for ’80s nostalgia, as Stranger Things is back for another season on Netflix and details on sequels to and reboots of big Reagan-era movies are in the news. Here’s the latest on Lethal Weapon 5, Top Gun 2 and the return of Young Guns and more:

The Lethal Weapon movies may resume with original cast

Despite there being a Lethal Weapon TV series in its second season on Fox right now, the original movie franchise might not be dead. According to Deadline, stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover and director Richard Donner, who has helmed every installment so far, are discussing the 30-year-old buddy-cop property’s return to the big screen with Lethal Weapon 5. Part 4’s screenwriter, Channing Gibson, would also be back for the sequel. That last one arrived almost 20 years ago, but apparently this team is not “too old for this…”

Top Gun 2 will introduce Goose’s son

Sequels to old movies tend to involve a new generation of characters, and Top Gun 2: Maverick won’t be any different. The follow-up to the 1986 blockbuster will bring back original stars Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer as Maverick and Iceman, but we’ll also meet the son of Maverick’s fallen wingman, Goose (played by Anthony Edwards). We actually saw his boy briefly in the first movie, and now he’s grown up with a certain grudge against his father’s old friend. Here’s what That Hashtag Show dug up about the character:

RIOT FKA WRIGLEY: Supporting Male (20-29) Goose’s son. All-American good looks. Rode a football scholarship to an Ivy League degree. He is in love with Sugar. He distrusts Maverick and dislikes what he stands for, although they have a lot of similarities. Eventually, comes to respect Maverick and uses his techniques. He is forced to eject in enemy territory and Maverick comes to save him.

The site also has details on other new characters, including a single-mother love interest for Maverick/Cruise, a Latina love interest for Goose’s son and a bunch of other twentysomething members of Maverick’s flight school class.

Young Guns and more Morgan Creek properties will be rebooted

Almost 30 years after the first Young Guns put a fresh twist on iconic Western heroes, Deadline reports that the franchise is due for a movie and TV series reboot with “another group of up-and-comers.” This is part of a large initiative by Morgan Creek Entertainment Group to relaunch a number of its classic properties on the big and small screen, though mostly the latter. Other titles from the ’80s and ’90s to be revisited include Major League, Ace Ventura, Dead Ringers, Pacific Heights and Nightbreed.

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deltamovies · 7 years

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Song to Song Free Full HD watch online & movie trailer

Release Year: 2017

Rating: 6.4/10 ( voted)

Critic's Score: /100

Director: Terrence Malick

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender

Storyline Two intersecting love triangles. Obsession and betrayal set against the music scene in Austin, Texas.

Cast: Ryan Gosling –

Rooney Mara –

Faye

Michael Fassbender –

Cook

Natalie Portman –

Rhonda

Cate Blanchett –

Amanda

Holly Hunter –

Miranda

Bérénice Marlohe –

Zoey

Val Kilmer –

Duane

Lykke Li –

Lykke

Olivia Grace Applegate –

Emma

(as Olivia Applegate)

Dana Falconberry –

Faye's Sister

Linda Emond –

BV's Mother Judy

Louanne Stephens –

Mrs. Gansmer

Christin Sawyer Davis –

Angry Woman

Tom Sturridge –

BV's Brother

Taglines: Love. Obsession. Betrayal.

Details

Official Website: Official Facebook |

Official site |

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 3 Jan 2017

Filming Locations: Austin, Texas, USA

Opening Weekend: $50,559

(USA) (17 March 2017)

Gross: $421,856

(USA) (14 April 2017)

Technical Specs

Runtime: 129 min

Did You Know?

Trivia: Shot in only 40 days over a time period of nearly 2 years. The shooting days were long, starting in the morning, with only a 30-minute break for lunch. The actors were even shot in the car, moving from one location to the next, just in case it turned into interesting footage that could be used in the movie. [Variety 2017] See more »

Quotes:

User Review

Author:

Rating: 4/10 First off, I must say I am not a Terrence Malick hater. On the contrary: I used to worship the man. I even took an entire course in film school dedicated to him, Orson Welles, and Stanley Kubrick. I think the 5 films Malick did in the first 38 years of his career ("Badlands," "Days of Heaven," "The Thin Red Line," "The New World," and "The Tree of Life") are all masterpieces. I even liked "To the Wonder," which was almost universally panned, even though it was clearly not in the same league as his previous films. After the acclaimed "The Tree of Life," Malick (now 73 years old) has been working on several projects in different stages of production. He filmed "Song to Song" immediately after "Knight of Cups" (released last year) back in 2012, and it's only being released now, as a 129-minute film, after almost five years of post-production and at least 8 editors to turn it into something remotely coherent (reportedly, the first cut was 8 hours long). Unfortunately, like "Knight of Cups," "Song to Song" feels like a parody of Malick's work: the extensive, mumbling voice-over narration by all the main characters (taken to the extreme), the stunning imagery of nature and high-end real estate, and gorgeous people literally walking in circles and acting cute (or mean) to one another. The very thin plot revolves, as you heard, around two intersecting love triangles set against the music scene in Austin, Texas. But music doesn't play a great part in this story, and it certainly could have elevated it.

As abstract as Malick's earlier films could be, they all had tangible, rich, philosophical and often universal themes. "Knight of Cups" and "Song to Song" are pure cinematic masturbation. Malick's trick is getting some of the biggest (and best-looking) film stars in the world, and his main actors (Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman) have faces that one can easily watch for hours. But not even these great stars can masquerade the emptiness of the film. Mara has the most screen time of them all, being the only true leading character here, while Cate Blanchett, Holly Hunter, Val Kilmer, and Berenice Marlohe are reduced to cameos. There's at least one painfully genuine moment, near the end, featuring Hunter's character, but it only lasts a few seconds; Malick's gaze isn't interested in her emotions. He'd rather show us, for the umpteenth time, Mara and Fassbender being flirty and sexy instead.

I am all about experimental cinema, but when you realize that this is the deepest sort of "experimental" project that Hollywood can put out (made by a revered auteur that movie stars almost pay to work with), you feel even more nostalgic for the daring collaborations between Tilda Swinton and the late Derek Jarman. I know people who deemed "Knight of Cups" a "masterpiece" and will probably say the same about "Song to Song." I try to be respectful of other people's opinions, but I really don't think we're seeing this film through the same lens. I still admire and respect Malick; I just liked his work more when he had something to say. Right now, I see him as someone who can afford to make gorgeous-looking home movies just for his pleasure, but he's a much more interesting artist when he expands his canvas into something we can truly care about.

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#Song to Song #Drama #Movies

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