“2001” Space Suit

 art, awesomeness, history, science fiction  No Responses »
Sep 232023
 

Do you want your very own genuine space suit from “2001: A Space Odyssey?” Sure, we all do. Got at least eighty grand to start bidding on it? Sure, we all don’t. But at least you can look at the pictures and dream.

Astronaut Space Suit (6) Piece Ensemble from 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, 1968)

 

 

 

 Posted by at 10:09 pm

One Life

 art, awesomeness, history, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 232023
 

Well before the BBC fell into ruin and self-parody, it had a moment of undeniable awesomeness. Nicolas Winton was a British banker who rescued nearly 700 mostly Jewish children from the Nazis just before the outbreak of WWII, getting them to new lives in Britain. Afterwards, he did little to nothing to glorify himself or his deeds; it only really came out in 1988 when his wife found an old notebook with the names and passed them on to a Holocaust researcher. There followed a couple TV programs culminating in an episode of “That’s Life” where, unbeknownst to Winton, the *entire* audience was filled with the children and descendants of children he’d saved.

That’s how you fricken’ do it.

And now there’s to be a movie about Winton starring Anthony Hopkins.

 

 Posted by at 12:36 pm

The LotR 25th Anniversary cut

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Sep 182023
 

It turns out that Peter Jackson filmed about 1,300 *hours* of footage for the Lord of the Rings. Seven million feet of negative is sitting in a Warner Brothers vault, not doin’ nuthin’. Granted the majority of this is alternate takes and bloopers, but almost certainty there is enough quality additional scenes there that the already massive Extended Version could be greatly further extended. Guy in the video below suggests that Warner Bros cutting Jackson loose to create six-hour miniseries from each movie for release on HBO/Max would be the way to go for the 25th anniversary of each flick, in much the same way they gave “The Justice League” back to Zack Snyder. I can’t say as that I disagree: a proper Ridiculously Extended Cut, overseen by Jackson, would be a dandy way to get over the nightmare of “the Rings of Power.”

The legalities of such things elude me. I *assume* that Warner retains all the rights to do with their stuff what they see fit, but who knows.

 Posted by at 11:24 pm

Slooooooooooooow

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Sep 172023
 

Normally people are impressed with aircraft going higher, faster. And that’s certainly worth getting impressed about. But prepare to be impressed with aircraft going *incredibly* slow…

Someday it will be practical to 3D print structures of incredibly lightness using carbon fiber, with structures decimeters long and hair-thin, while still rigid. With skins of graphene and “rubber bands” made out of… well, I don’t know what, imagine the wondrously impractical ghostlike aircraft that will be built. With equally advanced optics and electronics, such aircraft could have cameras and transmitters. carried aloft by high altitude balloons, they could be released at the edge of space to fly for potentially days, covering hundreds or thousands of miles, their weak signals picked up by ground or space based receivers. I don’t know if cameras and transmitters will be good enough to make them useful intelligence gathering systems,  but they are very unlikely to be detected by IR or radar. With their carbon constructions and extreme surface area to volume rations, when they are done they will likely degrade away to almost nothing very quickly.

 Posted by at 11:47 pm

If you really feel the need to give Disney money…

 AARRRGH, art, Hmm...  No Responses »
Sep 112023
 

Disney Celebrates 100 Years With a $1,500 Box Set

I guess $15 per movie is reasonable enough, but the article doesn’t say whether these are Blu Ray or 4K. Oddly, “Song of the South” doesn’t seem to be included, so if you were thinking of investing in order to be censorship-resistant, I have some bad news for you.

 

My very first thought was “who would give $1500 to Disney,” but then I remembered how much a trip to Disneyworld would probably run.

 Posted by at 11:00 am

Blue Beetle Bomb

 AARRRGH, art, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., news, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 062023
 

It sure seems like the era of “superhero movies” being a license to print money is over. Granted the DCEU flicks have not had  a great track record, but the latest outing, “Blue Beetle,” seems to be shaping up to be a *disaster.*

The production budget was $104 million. The marketing was probably the same, so the cost of the movie was $208 million. As of today, it has taken in $59M domestic, $46M foreign. But the studio only gets half the US box office ($29.5M) and about a third of the foreign ($15.3M), for a total of $44.8M. The movie was released 19 days ago, so it still has time to rake in some more moolah, but unless some amazing miracle occurs I have trouble seeing it reaching $60 in actual returns to the studio. If it does it will have lost Warner bros “only” $148 *million* dollars.

Couple “superhero fatigue” with “Blue Beetle? Who’s that?” and you could have predicted that this wouldn’t do so great. Add in the disastrous marketing (a DC superhero movie that features a prominent character calling Batman a fascist is not a great idea) and this flick was doomed from the get-go.

 Posted by at 11:17 pm
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