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Here's a CSPAN host giving a maga jerk an English lesson.

("Democrat" is not an adjective.)

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Chain Reaction (1996)

Some researchers discover a super-duper energy source and end up getting chased around by bad guys from the fossil fuel industry or the defense industry. This seems to me like it's a propaganda film trying to fool people into thinking that they shouldn't develop alternate energy sources for fear of being persecuted for doing so. (In real life, researchers who develop breakthrough energy tech are actually highly esteemed.)

The movie was made in the mid-90s but the cinematographic techniques are from about 10-20 years before that time. It consists of mostly tropes and stock characters, as you can see in the trailer.

It’s quite sexist in the way it treats the character played by Rachel Weisz. (This was her first major movie role.) She plays a physicist while Keanu Reeves plays a machinist, but his character is the dominant one, while Weisz’s character is portrayed as weak and vulnerable. This treatment of female characters was common in the 20th century and can still be seen in films today.

The acting is pretty well done and very watchable given the material, but they get most of the science facts wrong. I've included some of them in this unauthorized trailer, for example, hydrogen doesn't burn bright orange like that, of course. And they also conflate the chemical burning of hydrogen with nuclear fusion throughout the film. So yeah, a lot of mistakes in this one.

That underground explosion at the beginning of this trailer was not in the actual final cut of the film, but it was included as an end-credit bonus.

Even though this film is just a bunch of stock characters and trite plot elements, the acting is mostly well done and some of the special effects are really pretty impressive. And the sound engineering is top-notch.

If you can keep the propaganda element of the film in perspective and keep in mind the contemporary context of the sexist nature of movies from that period, the film is watchable and even entertaining at some points.

Accessible description of video:

Opening title says “Produced and released by 20th Century Fox” followed by a very large underground nuclear explosion causing a surface collapse; then showing scenes of an Industrial area with Smoke Stacks with smoke flowing into the air; then a guy talking to an audience about hydrogen and water, the scene cuts back and forth between the guy and Keanu Reeves packing something up into his backpack, the guy continues talking and Reeves rides away on a motorcycle with his backpack, then the guy ignites some butane/propane producing an orange flame and he says that it's hydrogen; then cut to a night scene with bad guys with a remote control device that has a gas meter and when it reaches a point he pushes the button to make an explosion happen; there’s a big explosion that starts off as a chemical gas explosion throughout an industrial building then somehow it morphs into a nuclear blast, the blast wave slowly expands out throughout a very wide area in the city as Keanu Reeves on a motorcycle tries to outrun the blast wave and he lays down the bike and slides behind a berm with vehicles and debris flying above him; then some cops are interviewing Reeves and Rachel Weisz; then cut to Morgan Freeman walking through a warehouse/parking garage and meets Keanu and Rachel; then cut to Reese running through a crowded city at night with tense music playing, cops are trying to catch him; then Reeves grabs a pipe and shoves it into some big gear mechanism that stops the gears from moving which stops a drawbridge from moving; Rachel Weisz, in her first big movie role, is pacing in a train station prominently carrying a train ticket that says “save up to 70%” and she briefly talks with a conductor; then fade to a scene with Weisz and Reeves walking through a museum and they meet Morgan Freeman who is smoking a big cigar; then cut to a meeting of the Senate select committee on intelligence with Morgan Freeman talking to a politician who is complaining about money; then Keanu and Rachel are running and Keanu tells Rachel to get into an air boat that has a flat bottom and a big airplane propeller on the back of it, it spins in circles and then heads off across a frozen lake and a helicopter chases it and catches up to it; then cut to title graphic that says, “Chain Reaction” while the letters get big and turn into a scene of an industrial area; fade out.

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Pat


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There's a clever math trick to convert from Celsius to Centigrade without using a calculator…


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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

(PD image from Wikimedia commons)

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

THX 1138 (1971)

Starting out as a student project, this film was George Lucas's first. Apparently Warner Brothers thought it was good enough and decided to back it. Francis Ford Coppola who was already seeing a lot of success by that time also joined the project to help produce.

The film didn’t get many rave reviews when it was first released, but when Lucas went on to make Star Wars just six years later, THX 1138 enjoyed a significant bump in its esteem.

One of the features of the dystopian world depicted in this film is a drug to suppress everyone’s emotions. This is an idea loosely borrowed from A Brave New World, except in Huxley’s story the controlling drug is a happy pill not an emotion-suppression pill. This same idea of a society with suppressed emotions has been used from time to time in science fiction, more recently by the film Equals (2015).

It’s been released in several different cuts (some parts of the original release were censored by Warner Bros). Generally, I’d say the longer cuts are probably closer Lucas’ vision.

There was a director's cut released in 2004 by Lucas himself which is a true director's cut, however if you watch that one you'll be looking at his vision in 2004, and may not be what he would have done 1971 as director’s cut.

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Pat

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Cocoon (1985)

Here's another first contact science fiction film. This one’s directed by Ron Howard. Many of the characters in this film are elderly people, who are played by long time veteran actors including Don Amiche who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in this film.

The actors who played the elderly people in this film we're all born very early in the 20th century with the exception Wilfred Brimley who often played characters who were older than he was. Brimley began his career as a stuntman and later as a character actor, but I'm not sure if he did his own stunts in this film or not.

One nice aspect of this film is that it has an original plot formed from elements of previous films, it's not a typical first-contact-with-aliens type of film. The special effects were well done also.

Young people may not have heard of this one and it could easily get lost in the backlist of a film catalog, so if you've never heard of this film you should check it out.

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(I apologize for the Trump toot, but this one is a real gem)

Where does Trump stand on the Second Amendment and on the government trying to take away people's guns?

(make sure as many maga folks as possible hear this)

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NASA needs to launch a project to investigate the sources of these meteors.

(punchline is at the end of the video)

(meteor image CC-BT-3.0, Navicore; cspan clip fair use)

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Pat

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Twilight Zone, To Serve Man (1962)

A lot of people rate this episode as one of their favorite Twilight Zone episodes. It's about a first contact with an alien species that comes to Earth. I recently found out that this was based on a short story of the same name written by Damon Knight a dozen years earlier and it pretty much follows very closely to that story, accept in the short story the aliens are humanoid pigs while in the Twilight Zone episode they're just tall, 350-pound humanoids called Kanimits.

The Kanimits don’t talk like humans, they use a voice synthesizer. They promise the people of Earth that they will share their advanced technology with humans for the betterment of humanity. But people are skeptical and they give the alien representative a lie detector test which the alien passes.

This episode is highly recommended.

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Accessible video description:

a black and white video of one of the aliens who is seated with wires hooked up to him taking a lie detector test, the alien is dressed in a white robe and has a large, bald head with dark circles under his eyes, two humans are in the room operating the equipment which shows the needles of the chart recorder on a polygraph machine.

(fair use clip from the episode in which the alien demonstrates how to pass a polygraph test.)

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It's still rough out there. Please remember to wear your respirator.

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Virginia Caroline Rappe died at the young age of 30 under suspicious circumstances. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was falsely accused of her death in a widely publicized Hollywood scandal, but was later completely exonerated by a jury. Had she not died at such a young age, today she would be 131 years old.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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Pat

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

This is one of the better-made films that I've seen in a while. The acting in this film is world class starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in the lead roles, with Anthony Mackie in the primary supporting role. John Slattery gives a good supporting performance as one the antagonists and character actor Terence Stamp delivers a stunning performance as the evil guy. The writing is very good with regard to the characters and dialogue and there's great chemistry between Damon and Blunt as the romantic couple. Overall it's very well made.

There are not a lot of technology devices shown in this film. In fact almost all of them are shown in this unauthorized trailer attached this toot. One of the issues that people might have with this film is that the technology that is demonstrated in the movie is done in a manner that makes it look like it's magic or supernatural because there aren't devices that are associated with it. (kind of hard to explain without spoilers)

In any case this film requires a little bit more suspension of disbelief than your typical scifi just because of the mode in which it's done.

I highly recommend this one.

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accessible video description:
fade in Emily Blunt's character as a ballet dancer with Matt Damon's character watching her, Terence Stamp’s character walks up and makes a comment to Damon about Blunt, then Damon and Blunt are on a bus flirting, the bus pulls up to a stop and Damon spill some coffee on Blunt's lap, cut to Damon walking into an office where some of the people are frozen in place, there are men in helmets with devices that are scanning the people who are frozen in place, the men look startled by Damon, there's a man in a suit, John Slattery, who orders others to grab Damon, cut to Damon walking through a medium-sized crowd of people to give a speech as a candidate for Senator with the Brooklyn bridge in the background, then Anthony Mackey is sitting in a very large opulent library looking pensive as music plays, he gets up to leave and walks through the large library, then cut to Damon and Mackey talking in a bar, Damon is wearing a baseball cap, Mackey is wearing a suit, then a woman bartender asks them if they need something, then Mackey's character says that they can’t talk there, and to meet him later and he leaves, then Damon and Mackey meet on a boat in the harbor, cut to Damon and Blunt dancing in a large crowded dance club with flashing lights, then cut to two men in suits looking at a book that is displaying animated graphics and looks very high tech, they are talking about inflection points, then Damon and Blunt walk out of a subway onto a city street as tense music plays, they are moving quickly then a quick cut to men in suits busting open a door, then cut back to Damon and Blunt running through the city, Blunt stops running and looks visibly confused and distressed Damon convinces her to keep running, so they continue running and almost get hit by a car but continue running, then fade out and fade in to the movie title The Adjustment Bureau, in a gold typeface.
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**** Content warning: flashing lights ****

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is an avid history buff. He studied history at Harvard and probably would have been a history professor if he had not chosen law as a profession.

Here he gives a brief, careful analysis of the US Civil War.

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Pat

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

The title of this film is very misleading. It makes it sound like a low-budget 50s scifi, but this is actually a very well made movie. I think it's on par with The Day the Earth Stood Still (1952), except this film had a lot more special effects. They used a combination of stop action and other practical effects as well as post processing techniques.

The guy who did the special effects on this film, Ray Harryhauser, invented a technique called Dynamation, a special type of stop action effect. He went on to work on the 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1956) which is probably one of the most well-known stop action/live action films of the era. But this film uses a wide variety of techniques as well as stop action.

The writing and acting are also top-notch. The actors weren't big stars but they were accomplished character actors. It has a fully developed plot and the dialogue was well written. Also, they got a lot of the science facts right on this one, at least more than usual for a Hollywood scifi. They even tried to explain special relativity, incorrectly of course, but they tried.

I highly recommend this film to anyone who likes old science fiction movies.

It’s just unfortunate that they gave this film such a cheap-sounding name. They even released it as a double-feature with The Werewolf. (I guess film marketing has improved since then as well as special effects. 😆 )
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accessible image description:

an ugly movie poster with orange and white headlines, muted colors, with images of flying saucers that are shooting rays to the ground and robot creatures walking around, the large headlines say flying saucers attack! warning! take cover! earth vs the flying saucers, small headlines say flying saucers invade our planet: washington, london, paris, moscow, take cover!, a smaller inset image of a man and woman looking scared and holding each other.

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Pat

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Day After (1983)

Last week the Retro SciFi Film of the Week was On the Beach (1959), a film about nuclear war. This is another film about nuclear war, but this one is much more realistic. Whereas On the Beach showed no dead bodies, injuries, or destruction at all, this film shows in graphic detail just how horrific nuclear war is.

Each of the films are propaganda films, designed to influence public opinion, but with On The Beach the purpose appears to have been to keep the arms race going, and is told from the perspective of the military. The Day After appears to want to eliminate nuclear weapons, and explicitly says it wants to avert nuclear war.

The special effects and the overall quality are astonishing considering that it's a made-for-TV movie created in the early 80s. It was a really big deal when this movie was released. Some sources say it's the most watched TV movie ever. It was highly promoted and it had a huge impact on society.

It follows the same basic formula as any other disaster movie -- the first half of the film is character development and shows people doing ordinary things and then in the second half of the movie all hell breaks loose.

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(fair use video clips)

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accessible video description:

content warning - graphic descriptions of death and injury

A male TV announcer announcing political events as a gray-haired man and a woman watch; then another man and a woman arguing in their home, the man is wearing an Air Force uniform; then men in a barber shop discuss the situation; then cut to a crow in a wheat field flying away; then cut to a scene inside a silo bunker where Air Force personnel are going through a sequence to launch nuclear missiles, pushing buttons and turning keys; then missiles blasting off as ordinary people watch; then on a highway a nuclear bomb detonates in the distance, the gray haired man is in his car and lies down to shield himself from the thermal radiation and blast; an orange mushroom cloud raises into the air; scenes of fire; people frantically running; then another detonation with two mushroom clouds in the distance; then people are being vaporized by thermal radiation with their skeletons briefly appearing as they are vaporized; then fade to a quiet scene with the gray-haired man slowly walking down the street with destruction everywhere and flakes of fallout beginning to fall; then a Geiger counter and a man talking about the fallout coming; then two people dressed in scrubs, one holding a flashlight the other tending to a serious facial burn on a patient; then a farmer walks out into his field and sees his horse dead on the ground; then a night scene and a man is talking about his radiation injuries; then a boy with radiation injuries talks to a doctor, and a nurse gestures with her head that the boy likely will not survive; then back to the man talking about his radiation injuries and asks what can be done; then people gathering dead bodies from a field using horse-drawn carts; then people listen to the president talking on the radio as the screen shows scenes of despair; then cut to a scene of people burying bodies in a mass grave; then the gray-haired man looking exhausted, now with facial burns and patches of hair missing from his head talks to another doctor, then they hug. Fade Out.

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Pat

The Agronomic Revolution happened about 538 million years ago.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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Pat

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

On the Beach (1959)

Just a happy-go-lucky nuclear Armageddon film…

Three years before the Cuban Missile Crisis and about a decade and a half after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this film presented its story about the aftermath of global nuclear war. There were a couple of other movies made earlier in the 50s about nuclear war, and of course all those goofy scifi’s about giant insects, but this was the first major film. It starred Gregory Peck, Eva Gardner, Anthony Hopkins, and Fred Astaire, who were all big movie stars at the time. It was kind of a big deal when it came out.

News coverage of the bombings of Japan were highly censored as to the most gruesome parts of the bombings. Film and photographs produced immediately after the bombings by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey were classified until the late 60s, so although people had heard about radiation burns and radiation sickness, most people had not seen any graphic images.

The US didn't want people to understand just how horrible those bombings were, but they wanted to inform people about the possibility of all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union, which, with certain types of thermonuclear weapons, had the potential to kill most or all of the world’s population.

The result was this film, On the Beach (1959) which showed no dead bodies at all, it showed no destruction, no burned and leveled buildings, nothing. There's only one guy in the film who was shown to be sick in the entire movie and he was smiling or flirting with the nurse throughout the 45 seconds that he was on the screen. Everyone was almost always shown with smiling faces and having fun and the score was upbeat or silly most of time.

I think if you changed about a half dozen lines in the film, removed five minutes of the guy walking around in a hazmat suit, and adjusted a minute or two of score, people would think it was a romantic drama.

Contrast this with the TV movie The Day After (1983), which was released 24 years later, which showed shocking graphic images of just how horrible nuclear war could be.

The clips from the film that I’ve attached to this toot show just a few of the many upbeat scenes from the film. All the characters in the film knew from the beginning that a nuclear war had happened and that the deadly radiation was heading to where they were in Australia, but they just acted happy and didn’t appear to care at all. Very weird.

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(fair use video clips)
Sorry, I messed up the aspect ratio on this video and cut off a little bit on the bottom.
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accessible video description:

Video opens with a submarine in the ocean with a number on the side that says 623, then a man in a lighthouse makes a phone call as a radio announcer talks about the nuclear war, then it shows a man and a woman on a bed talking, then it shows two military guys talking about a country club, then people on a beach where a man flicks a woman in the butt with a towel, then it shows Peck and Gardner talking and smiling, then sailors ogling at a pretty woman (Gardner) as she walks near their ship, then people dancing, then Peck and Gardner walking as she talks, then a bucolic scene of a horse in a field as the horse does a trick for a sugar cube, then a guy pretending to be sick lying in bed smiling and flirting with the male nurse with Peck and Dr. King giving him false hope, finally the closing title over an image of the same submarine moving on the surface of the ocean.

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Did you know that a respirator helps with allergies?

If you wear your respirator when you are around pollen or pet dander, you most likely won't get your allergy symptoms.

Also, a properly worn respirator, like a N95 mask, prevents infection and spread of disease from all variants of the flu, as well as COVID-19.

Take care out there.

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populist: n. - a believer in the rights, wisdom, and virtues of the people.
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Pat

The Pilgrims were illegal immigrants, but the Americans still used them as farm workers to pick corn.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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Fun Fact

Did you know that when someone uses the word "dog whistle", they may not be talking about an actual dog whistle?

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