Apropos of the Laurel and Hardy post earlier this week, and the fact that Christmas with the extended Munsons always involves receiving and watching films on Christmas Day, the recent inductees into the National Film Registry include the 1927 classic “Battle of the Century.” Dave McNary over at Variety details the other inductees.
Julie Nolke’s four-part time-travel series documenting 2020 has been great (links to part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 here). And Turner Classic Movies’ remembrances are great (even though they often make me verklempt). This year, I’ve delved into the briar patch that can be Reddit — and I have to admit, their video is pretty good: UPDATE: After debuting on their Twitter feed and via Facebook, TCM has finally put their annual…
For my colleagues who are going back into production, stay safe. Aimee La Joie has your back.
As longtime perusers of the site may know, I count myself among the legion of Stan Lee fans. Being introduced to “The Man” at an early age helps. So I was delighted to see this animated rendition of an outtake made by Stan Lee about what has been termed “the Queen Mother of dirty words.” So, yeah, this is not safe for most workplaces or kids’ ears. But it’s delightful in a @#$%ing wrong way.
I’d heard earlier that a particular radiation-loving fungus had been observed near Chernobyl, but this article by Stephen Johnson in Big Think explains how they’ve been testing it for SPAAACE TRAVEL. Specifically, they’ve been testing it on the International Space Station with the idea that some form of this radiotrophic fungus could help shield astronauts bound for Mars. So, in other words: really, really cool. And will I work this into some future episode of…
I saw this last week, but decided to hold off, because I didn’t want to dwell on it, but here it is: a metal monolith was accidentally discovered in the middle of the Utah wilderness and although it’s probably made by humans, the level of effort to get it and “install” it like it’s some weird “think-piece” in the middle of nowhere is deeply weird. In other words, it’s peak 2020. I’m not sure what’s…
This past weekend was Thanksgiving weekend, which meant it was time to rediscover how to make Thanksgiving leftovers last for multiple meals, play more board games than usual, and set up the Christmas tree. But it was also Thanksgiving weekend on an even year, which meant time to start prepping for my biennial Favorite Films sort. I’m a lifelong movie buff and have watched literally thousands of movies. Not all of them are good. Some…
Hey! Since we here in the United States are not traveling so much on this traditional week of travel, how about we take that time and read this longform article by Jonathan English all about mass transit in the United States. It unearths some assumptions about what mass transit is and can be and how those assumptions developed over the past 100 years or so. Besides the fond memories evoked by seeing the picture above…
Back in September, I did a ranking of every episode of every Star Trek series. But what if you haven’s seen all of the Star Trek series? And what if you’re all ready to binge-watch another series this year? If you haven’t seen Enterprise, the Trek franchise’s first prequel series, you’re probably not alone. While I have found several people who consider it their favorite, anecdotally, it appears to be the least watched series outside…
I’ve been kind of preoccupied with some minor things over the past couple weeks. So let’s talk about matters of true importance: capes in Science Fiction. (Sorry, Edna Mode).