Pat @Pat@qoto.org

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

After Earth (2013)

Here’s another film by M. Night Shyamalan that was produced in collaboration with Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and others. It stars Smith and his son, Jaden on a far future Earth that has been overrun by a variety of dangerous genetically modified and evolved organisms.

The plot is rather simple, basically about a father and son relationship and facing adversity, but the characters are deep and multi-dimensional. And there are plenty of symbols and metaphors throughout. There’s a lot of action, of course, but this is not some formula, Mac-Hollywood scifi movie with a bunch of CG and non-stop chase scenes. It’s a real character study with a deliberate pace.

It’s rare to find a young actor who can pull off a role like this – young actors usually don’t have enough experience to give great performances -- but Jaden gives a convincing performance. In part, I think it’s because throughout most of the film his character is experiencing fear and facing challenges, which I believe is basically what Jaden, as a young actor, was likely experiencing during the filming of this major, high-stakes project.

Technically, the film has all the world-class production value of a Shyamalan film, so I don’t think you will be disappointed with this one.

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #Earth
#monster #fear #journey #character #GMO

#covid19 #respirator #mask #pandemic #airborne

People who don't recover from COVID-19 are less likely to share their experiences about being sick with the disease.

(image: Free Art Licence, 13-11-12-rechtsmedizin-berlin-charite-by-RalfR-20)

#covid19 #virus #vax #weaponsofmassdestruction

The Department of Energy says they think SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab.

I think I'm going to wait to hear what the Postal Department says about it before I make up my mind...

(sarcasm)

#qoto #transparency

Muting @mapto for not responding to toots.

(Probably a bot)

#trump #Russia #collusion #treason

Trump was accused of asking the Russians to break into the computer systems of his political opponent during the 2016 election and steal embarrassing emails. He has denied the allegation.

Here are the results from a careful investigation and analysis that answers that question once and for all...

(very short video from CSPAN)

#lightning #Benjamen #Franklin #electricity #kite #experiment

Benjamin Franklin published his proposed kite experiment on May 10, 1752.

A little more than a year later on July 26, 1753, Russian physicist Georg Wilhelm Richman electrocuted himself trying to conduct a version of the experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Richmann

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Village (2004)

This is probably more of a horror than a science fiction film, those genres often get conflated -- definitely a mystery. It’s all about a village, as the title implies, but what is this village about? Who are these people? Where are they? And who are those they don’t speak of?

It’s a very well made film. The acting and writing is flawless, the script is original and compelling, filled with metaphors and symbolism, and ultimately a commentary on society and the human condition. The cast includes some of the greatest stars in Hollywood -- William Hurt, who we lost recently, along with Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Sigourney Weaver, and Brendan Gleeson.

The film is scored by James Newton Howard with brilliant performances by violinist Hilary Hahn.

However, there are about 100 people in this cast and they are all white. Every one of them. One guy looks like he may be of mixed Asian heritage, maybe not. Actually, the director has a cameo in the film, but he is seen from behind and you can’t tell from the camera angle that he is Indian. This film was made in 2004, with a cast of some of the most progressive stars in Hollywood. How did that happen?

It was written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, so he’s ultimately responsible for the quality of the film, as well as the extreme racial bias in the cast. Some of his more recent films are more racially balanced, so maybe he woke up.

Even though this is a well-made film, I can’t recommend it because of the extreme racial bias in the cast.

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #village
#horror #mystery #society #humanity #progress #thosewedontspeakof #biglie

Should I mute everyone who uses the abbreviation "RT" in their toots?

"RT" stands for "retweet" and of course there is no such thing here on Mastodon. Here that concept is known as a "boost".

I'm guessing that most if not all toots that contain "RT" are just bots that are barfing out whatever they found on twitter.

#creationists #evolutionists #evolution #dinosaur #film #joke

Here is definitive proof that humans and dinosaurs lived on Earth at the same time...

#COVID19 #covid #mask #naturalImmunity #logic #coronavirus #respirator

Here's an explanation of natural immunity that anyone can understand...

If you become infected with the COVID-19 virus and you die, then you will never get infected again.

#sacrasm

#joke #relativity #spacetime #gravity #blackhole #quantummechanics

A wormhole is...

#qoto #transparency

Muting @DecaturNature for continually putting political content behind a CW.

#covid19 #deaths #respirator #CDC #ZeroCovid

Here are the latest totals in the US. (Source: Johns Hopkins Univ.)

US
Cases: 103,125,921
Deaths: 1,117,503

That's more than 425 deaths per day. Please take care out there and remember to wear your respirator!

(Note: For some reason, JHU is no longer reporting stats out of China, so those numbers are not included here.)

#joke

A man who had been hiding in a deep bunker in Baghdad since the beginning of the war finally crawled out, looked around and asked a guy, "So where's Saddam Hussein?"

The guy says, "What? Have you been living under Iraq?"

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #StarTrek #vulcan #deltan #klingons #CarbonUnits #Vger #AI #trekies #kolinahr

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

This film is about a bald, long-legged alien… and other stuff.

It’s hard to convey how anticipated this film was when it was released. The original TV series had been canceled a decade prior, which disappointed loyal fans and by time this film was made, the series had been widely syndicated and gathered a huge fan base. It was a really big deal. The first Star Trek movie, ever.

Production for the film was a real mess. The suits at Paramount thought the thing was some kind of Star Wars knockoff and the script was rewritten several times before production began. They even wanted to turn it into a new TV series at one point. When production finally started, the script was still unsatisfactory to everyone. Creator Gene Roddenberry and director Robert Wise struggled over the project throughout. Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and other cast members, and even the special effect guy were contributing to the script as the production was going on. The final script at the end of production contained only a fraction of what was in the original script when shooting started.

In the end the narrative wasn’t the tightest story ever produced, but it was original. However, it lacked any contemporary social commentary, which was a hallmark of the original series. The special effects were fantastic (for 1979), as was the score.

Douglass Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey) did the special effects which were almost entirely done with models, lighting, hand-painted mattes and photographic special effects; only a few simple computer generated images were used. The score was done by Jerry Goldsmith who continued on with the franchise, providing it with it’s distinctive theme music.

Because the film was so rushed, Wise was not totally satisfied with it and a directors cut was eventually made years later, which he thought was the best edit of the film.

Even with its flaws, I highly recommend this film.

#Turkey #Syria #earthquake

Al Jazeera is reporting more than 45,000 people killed from the earthquake in Turkey.

That's more than three times the number of people who are killed during an entire year in the US from gun homicides.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/2/18/turkey-syria-updates-death-toll-from-earthquakes-passes-45000

Here's a picture of Uranus next to a pic of Earth, to scale.

(PD image per Wikimedia Commons)

I decided to mark the image as sensitive.

I didn't notice it until I was writing the image description, but this image could be seen as offensive. They (I assume CIA) choose to do the eyes in yellow and they made them slanted and squinted (or maybe those are just the pupils that are squinted) so it looks kind of like a caricature.

At the time in the 1960s, nobody even saw anything wrong with these types of caricatures of Asian people and they were common, but today those images are considered offensive.

#cia #taiwan #U2 #spy #globophobia #weather
#caturday

The Black Cat Squadron was a secret spying project run out of Taiwan during the 60s into the mid 70s. It was run by the CIA using ROCAF pilots under the cover of a weather research unit of the Taiwanese Air force.

Most of the missions were flown over China using a small fleet of just two U2 spy planes. The US would replace the planes whenever they were shot down or crashed.