He returns to review “The Northman” and “Prey.” One he liked, one he hated. Agree with him or not, can’t argue that he’s not entertaining.
Sep 102023
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.
Sep 012023
A sad percentage of my cyanotypes fail… faded, blurry or spotty. Sometimes these failure are due to bad craftsmanship; sometimes to material deficiencies, and surprisingly often, environmental factors (humidity has wreaked havoc, see the “spots”). Mostly these get simply tossed, meaning a lot of material, time and effort are wasted.
But it occurred to me that while they’d stink as proper blueprints, they might make dandy giftwrapping paper. So I’ll try that. I’m thinking of ebaying this lot of A-12 diagrams. These are all about 24X36 inches. Five sheets; if these were all successful, that’d be more than three hundred dollars worth of blueprints. Obviously not worth that, some fraction. And instead of being mailed rolled, they’ll be simply folded and sent in a padded envelope. If interested, send an email. 
If I get an offer that overcomes my depression at the failure these otherwise represent, that’d be great. Otherwise, ebay.
Sep 012023
The rewards for August, 2023, have been released. They include:
Document: Report No. ZD-013, “Preliminary Detail Specification for United States Navy Class VP Long Range Patrol Seaplane,” Convair, 1 April 1946
Document: “Space Shuttle: What Will It Do?” A 1970’s brochure describing the Shuttle, with six full-color full page illustrations
Art: McDonnell-Douglas lithograph of “NASA Earth Orbital Space Station”
CAD Diagram: Northrop Grumman Next Generation Long Range Strike
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
And as happens far too often, I’ve been remiss in my PR campaign. The rewards for July, released a month ago, included:
Document: “C-5 Galaxy Pocket Guide,” brochure giving info on the C-5
Document: GDIC-64 O29-21, “Alighting Gear Convair Model 48 Light Armed Reconnaissance Airplane,” an illustrated report on the landing gear for Convairs competitor for the OV-10
Document: “Police Department Lecture #3 Effects of Atomic Weapons,” an early-50’s paper describing what NYC could expect int he event of a nuclear strike
Diagram: EMW “Wasserfall,” German WWII surface to air guided missile
CAD Diagram: Boeing 2707-100-derived bomber
Aug 252023
J. Robert Oppenheimer is justly famed for his role in developing the A-bomb. He is considered to be something of a martyr for what happened later… during the “Red Scare” he was stripped of his security clearance. But was it actually wrong to do so? Was his interest in the Communist Party some minor childish dalliance from his earlier years… or was it more serious? The recent movie, and most modern depictions, portray him in a positive light.
But he *was* a Communist. What’s worse, there’s good evidence – lots of it from the actual Soviets – that he actively worked for them. He apparently slipped them heaps of data to help their bomb program, and then once the Soviets had the bomb, he worked to sabotage the American bomb program.
It’s probably well past time that Oppenheimer be re-examined. And if it’s finally concluded that he was a traitor, which there’s good evidence that he was, his name needs to be appropriately blackened as any Communists should be. We tear down statues of people who supported slavery 250 years ago; we tear down statues of people who supported the CSA for *whatever* reason 160 years ago; we would tear down statues of anyone who supported the Nazis 80 years ago. We should tear down statues and monuments and hagiographies of anyone who supported Communists a hundred years ago, fifty years ago or today.
Hollywood Rewrites History Again: What the Oppenheimer Deification Movie Didn’t Tell You
Communism is every bit as bad as Fascism, and arguably worse; Communists *today* are universally terrible people because they have a century of blood-soaked failure that they *choose* to ignore. Communists, their supporters and their wishy-washy Socialist wannabes need to be called out for the monsters and morons that they are. And that includes historical figures.
Aug 242023
So, there’s this movie coming:
It looks like your bog-standard Supernatural Entity Scary Horror Movie, with the twist being that the main characters are Indian immigrant and the Entity is something out of Indian folklore. OK, sure. We’ve all seen this before, with folk monsters from various ethnicities/nationalities/whatever pestering the appropriate people.
Here’s my idea, though.
Main characters are Popular Ethnic Minority Types… Indians, Japanese, Native Americans, Nigerians, whatever. They end up plagued by some magical critter from their homelands folklore. 80 to 90% of the movie is them on the run from Scary Monster, occasionally bumping into Clueless Standard White Americans. You know, the people who in these stories can be relied upon to be of no help whatsoever, because they have no knowledge of Diverse Supernatural Entity. But one member of the Doomed Ethnic Cast – let’s say a small-ish child, willing to talk to outsiders – explains the problem to Clueless White Guy. The Ethic Cast then runs off, leaving Clueless White Guy to look after them with a look of confusion. But then at the end of the movie, when Scary Monster looks about ready to pounce and kill everybody or send them all to Hell, or whatever it does, Clueless White Guy shows up.
I see two possibilities that I’d like:
1) Clueless White Guy shows up and sees Scary Ethnic Monster about ready to pounce. “Huh,” he says. Then he looks to the empty space to his right and says, “Hey, can you help out here?” Then there’s a rumbling sound that transitions to deep laughter. Scary Ethnic Monster Turns to look at Clueless White Guy, turns to eat *him,* but then stops. Because something from Clueless White Guys ethnic folklore, in this case Thor, manifests, whips out Mjolnir, and proceeds to beat Scary Ethnic Monster into a mess of ectoplasm. When Scary Ethnic Monster is finally destroyed, Thor hefts Mjolnir, leans, back, laughs some more. Winks at Little Kid, turns, pats Clueless White Guy on the shoulder (who hands him a bottle of beer), says, “I haven’t had that much fun in ages,” then walks off/fades away.
Or…
2) Clueless White Guy shows up and sees Scary Ethnic Monster about ready to pounce. “Huh,” he says. “You know what my cultural heritage is?” he asks the monster as it begins to pay attention to him. “Science, bitch!” Whereupon he whips out something akin to a proton pack and converts said monster into nonexistence. I would also accept “Doing some basic research,” whereupon he hits the monster with holy water, garlic, salt, holy books, silver, electricity, UV, ashes, tax forms, white oak, a handful of gerbils, a pissed-off housecat… whatever it is that is appropriate for the particular threat in question.
Aug 182023
Thanks to ebay and my fabulously lean bank account, I have recently procured a number of items of potential interest:
“NASA Earth Orbital Space Station,” a poster-sized lithograph from McDonnell Douglas depicting a space station that tumbles for artificial-G.
“Re-Entry Payload Launch Vehicle,” A *brief* General Dynamics presentation on a vehicle to launch re-entry vehicles such as MIRV warhead shapes
“Proposed Development Program on Rocket-Type Missiles,” a 1948 Convair report on early ballistic/boost glide missile concepts, that would lead to Atlas. Includes some fantastic large format layout diagrams.
“Detail Specification for Consolidated Vultee Model 117 Airplane Class VR Transport Flying Boat,” August 1950, all the details on the then-brand new Tradewind.
“Detail Specification for Class VP Long Range Patrol Seaplane,” Consolidated Vultee 1946, all the details on a proposed flying boat patrol/bomber
32 issues of “Astronautics” magazine from 1957 to 1969, mostly 57-59 and 63 or so.
The lithograph and the reports will be scanned and put forward for consideration for monthly rewards; the magazines will have the interesting bits scanned and made available to the subscribers/patrons.
Aug 172023
So a lone 23-year old decided to make a Scooby-Doo fan film. To do this, he used computer generated stop-motion to replicate the look of a Rankin-Bass holiday TV movie from back in the day… and an AI voice generator. This latter was due to the fact that this project had no budget to afford voice actors. The resulting dialog is a *little* stilted and stiff, but it really does sound like the original Scooby cast, and if you didn’t know it was done by AI, you might not pick up on it. Well, ok, who cares. It’s just a little fan film. However, some professional voice acting units got in a snit, pitched a fit… and basically ticked off the majority of those who gave a damn. The result of *that* is some blowback against the actors strike. The end result will likely be *more* acceptance of the use of AI for voices.
Heh.
A Fan Wanted To Make a Scooby-Doo Cartoon, But Ended Up Sparking an AI Debate
The fan film in question:
Right now the professional writers and actors don’t want to write or act. But they also don’t want the *amateurs* to do their thing, either. This sort of attitude is exactly the sort of thing that irritates the public. This sort of thing will accelerate the obsolescence of actors and writers… and studios as well.
Aug 162023
“Our heroes aircraft is falling from the sky! Will they pull out in time to avoid a firey crash and bring the episode, nay, the entire series, to a screeching and unexpected halt, requiring not only clever writing but also difficult actor contract negotiations with the attendant risk of turning off the existing fans?”
Bah. No, of course the aircraft will pull out at the last second. Of course.
Lazy.
Those old enough to remember TV from the 80’s will doubtless *vaguely* recall any of a number of the same scene: the *enemy* aircraft, often a helicopter, has been struck. Gun, missile, onboard explosion, someone whacked the pilot, whatever, the vehicle is going down. Will it crash? Well, since these are the bad guys and, what’s more, *unimportant* bad guy characters, yes. It’ll crash. But at the last moment it’ll go down *behind* the nearest hill. You’ll know it crashed because a fireball that sure looks a whole lot like some combination of back powder and gasoline will go FOOOOM from behind the hill. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than crashing an actual aircraft on camera, and slightly less visually awful than using bad scale models or, perhaps worse, stock footage, to depict the event. But it still got to be an incredibly tired and predictable shot.
Aug 072023
14:25 into this video is an *astounding* scratchuilt Saturn V. Cutaways of not just all three stages, but also of the Command and Service Modules. unfortunately the camera moves too fast to make out anything that might say *who* built this masterpiece.