Marty goes nuts and imagines virtually the entirety of the “Back To The Future” franchise:
Mar 102022
Mar 092022
Disney has released the first real trailer for the “Obi Wan Kenobi” series.
Mar 072022
There is a subtle message here:
I watched this entire trilogy twice and still have no fucking idea what’s going on pic.twitter.com/8wXYl9Ao2K
— Adam (@adamthealright) March 5, 2021
Feb 242022
Given current events, perhaps buying model kits is not the top priority… but if it *is,* now might be the time (if it’s not already too late). In recent years, Russian and Ukrainian model kit companies have done a fine job of producing unusual subjects and high quality kits, and sometimes both at the same time… but now, it’s safe to assume that for the time being nothing will be coming out of Ukraine, and the only things coming out of Russia will be via expensive back channels.
Examples available from Amazon (remember, if you buy *anything* after going through these links, I’ll get a pittance, so if you want to support this blog, here’s a way to do it):
Ukranian company “Mikro-Mir” produced a surprising range of submarine model kits in 1/350 scale, 1/144 scale and even 1/35 scale. You can click on this link to see the wider subjects, or here are a few specific kits that might be of interest (just text links to save space; as of this typing, they are listed as available):
1/350 USS Thresher 1/350 USS George Washington 1/350 USS Skipjack 1/350 USS Nautilus 1/144 Holland class 1/35 “Turtle” 1/350 USS Growler 1/35 CSS Hunley
A Russian kit company with a really good reputation for quality is Zvezda Models, which has a wide range of armor and aircraft, military and civilian. Really far too many to link to, but here are a few of interest:
1/144 TU 160 “Blackjack” 1/72 Sukhoi SU-50 1/35 T-14 Armata 1/72 SU-57 1/350 Kursk submarine 1/2700 Imperial Star Destroyer 1/144 Beriev BE-200ES
Also Ukrainian is the company Amodel. They have a bunch of different aircraft kits, but these two might be of particular interest:
And under the circumstances, the German Revell AN-225 might be of interest, because that plane, even if at this very moment it’s intact, is almost certainly doomed. If fighting doesn’t damage/destroy it, when the Russians are eventually driven out they will either steal the plane or wreck it.
Feb 222022
The one where it is claimed that Sonequa Martin-Green’s character of Michael Burnham is loudly touted as the first black female captain in the Star Trek franchise…
And yet…
Star Trek IV gave us the Captain of the Yorktown:
Star Trek: the Next Generation gave us Captain Tryla Scott:
Star Trek: The Next Generation gave us Captain Silva La Forge:
Star Trek: The Next generation gave us Fleet Admiral Taela Shanthi. OK, not a Captain, but I imagine “Captain” is in her bio somewhere unless she skipped a few steps:
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine gave us Kassidy Yates. Sure, she wasn’t a Starfleet Captain… but she OWNED HER OWN SHIP:
I guess it should not be surprising that major figures in the worst of the Star Trek series cannot be bothered to remember Star Trek canon and precedent… the writers of STD cannot remember their *own* continuity.
Feb 212022
Feb 172022
“Moonfall” is, hands down, the silliest movie I’ve seen in a *long* time. That said, it’s also fairly entertaining.
You *have* to go into this one with your higher brain functions turned off. It’s not so much that they got the science wrong; it’s more like they took a look at the science and said “FU, Science!” and did what they wanted to do anyway. The moon has a white dwarf inside it. A Space Shuttle solid rocket booster just… shuts off for no reason. The Moon gets close enough to scrape the atmosphere and, somehow, gains a surface gravity as great as that of the Earth… and yet the Earth isn’t torn asunder. The US and Europeans are able to cobble together a manned lunar SLS mission in days; and then NASA is able to pull a Space Shuttle out of a museum, stack it up at Vandenberg, and launch it with a ground crew of *two* *guys.* A guy is able to land a completely powered-down space shuttle simply by twiddling some valves. Gravity and orbital dynamics follow the Star Wars model at the best of times.
Yeah, no.
Still, it was *largely* entertaining. There are a lot of plot-unnecessary diversions to The Folks At Home, with the now expected divorced parents, kids, hapless stepfathers. Some editing could chop those out and make a tight little hour of quality splosion-riffic entertainment.
Lots of pretty disasterpalooza.
The movie ends with a hook for a sequel. But given that the production budget was $140 million and int he first two weeks its brought in around $17 million domestically… yeah, I’m not betting on a sequel happening. The local theater is now down to two showing a day, and there were a grand total of two people in the theater when I was there. Well, at least the mask mandate thing could be ignored…
Feb 132022
The first Jordan Peele movie that looks like something I want to watch:
Looks like the basic idea is “alien abduction.” I suppose, though, coming from Peele, it’ll turn out to be white racism.
Feb 092022
Feb 092022
Astronomers Discover First Quadruple Asteroid
130 Elektra is a potato-shaped rock about 160 miles along the long axis, and now it has been seen to have three moons, all a mile or more across, orbiting it. I’m not sure if that’s terribly useful from a scientific or industrial point of view… but long-term, it’d probably make the asteroid a neat place to live. A spherical transparent bubble around the asteroid, just very slightly smaller in diameter than the length of the asteroid, should hold in an atmosphere; where the asteroid intersects the sphere can be the polar airlocks for ships, cargo and people. The surface gravity would be a meager 0.001 G’s or so; probably enough to hold stuff more or less down on the surface, but certainly low enough to permit easy manual flapping-winged flight. The moons could be simply “art” in the sky, but they might serve a practical purpose: since the asteroid orbits between 2.5 and 3.8 AU from the sun, it would be cold and the moons, fitted with fusion reactors, could serve as small artificial suns to light and warm the place. The asteroid rotates once about every 5 hours; this could be slowed to a 24 hour day if needed, although if it has multiple mini-suns orbiting it, the length of the day would be pretty weird no matter what.
