Star Wars

Star Wars

Fantastic

This is fantastic. You should watch it whether or not you watched the movie. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - The Danish National Symphony Orchestra (Live)"

This chess game from a movie, you might be interested in it even if you don't play chess. "Magnus Carlsen Breaks Down Harmon vs Borgov From The Queen's Gambit."

The Vietnam war was a never ending terrible thing. The United States lost. What were we doing there? Ask the dead politicians, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

“Godzilla vs. Kong” on HBO Max." AT&T owns HBO Max. I own lots of shares of AT&T. So this movie is a good thing.

                    April 16, 2021

On Godzilla, King Kong and Other Monsters

By Alan Burdick

It’s fair to say that the premises of both Godzilla and King Kong — much less “Godzilla vs. Kong” — are scientifically absurd.

On the one hand a colossal, amphibious, radioactive T. rex. On the other, and only slightly more plausibly, a colossal ape on a small island in the middle of nowhere, with no progenitors or potential mates in sight. Godzilla at least has the atomic-bomb tests of the 1950s for an origin; King Kong somehow arose de novo, with zero help from natural selection.

Both began, like all good monsters, as walking parables. Godzilla, a synthetic creature at heart, is what we humans get when we tinker with the fundamental forces — a supersize Frankenstein with nuclear breath. (Blue Oyster Cult said it best: “History shows again and again / How nature points out the folly of men.”) Kong is all unadulterated nature, fated to be roadkill on humanity’s rapacious drive across Earth. Together, they are two visions of our relationship to nature writ very, very large.

So what happens when these two morality tales collide? Which would prevail: the product of plunder or the byproduct of invention? That’s what I found myself asking, not very hopefully, a couple of nights ago as I watched “Godzilla vs. Kong” on HBO Max. The winner was, well, neither the viewer nor the bystanders. The face-off involved yet a third human-relationship-to-nature trope in a plot so convoluted that I couldn’t explain it to my teenage son when he showed up near the end. The one takeaway came from my other teenage son, who gleaned it from a year of remote learning on the sofa: “Dad, why were special effects better 30 years ago?”

Really, who needs imaginary monsters anyway? Science is constantly turning up evidence of actual organisms that defy common sense: azhdarchids, enormous pterosaurs that had necks like giraffes; modern-day ants that shrink their brains in order to become queens; slugs that chew off their own heads; octopuses that punch fish. This week the Times reporter Kenneth Chang spoke to researchers who calculated that roughly 20,000 adult T. rexes roamed the planet at any given moment in time. They weren’t radioactive or even colossal, but they reigned for 2.4 million years, all 2.5 billion of them. If cinematography is what you want, why not watch one of the many nature documentaries now sprouting up like weeds: David Attenborough’s “Life in Color,” “My Octopus Teacher,” “Tiny World.” (Here’s a whole list.) Except that these serve up a different fiction, insofar as they mostly leave humans off screen. “By consistently presenting nature as an untouched wilderness,” Emma Marris noted recently in The Atlantic, “many nature documentaries mislead viewers into thinking that there are lots of untouched wildernesses left.” What Hollywood monsters offer is the fantasy of a physical force vastly more powerful than us that might keep our own in check. But aside from natural disasters and perhaps microbes, that luxury is unavailable; it’s just us versus us. The only true, living monsters out there are we humans: both of nature and lonely in our impression that we alone are above it. I thought about all that as I turned off the TV, said good night to my kids and crawled into bed beside my wife on our little island in the middle of the dark.

TITANIC Theme Song - My Heart Will Go On - Harp / Violin

This blog has 16 posts about movies at movies.

Man on Fire ...that was a smirk....

The Queen's Gambit (2020) Episode 7 Ending Scene + Official Trailer / Anya Taylor-Joy

I remember watching the movie about this thing.

        New York Times

BREAKING NEWS

Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, has died at 97. He became a national celebrity thanks to “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe.

Monday, December 7, 2020 11:18 PM EST

His signal achievement came on Oct. 14, 1947, when he climbed out of a B-29 bomber as it ascended over California’s Mojave Desert from what was then known as Muroc Air Force Base, and entered the cockpit of an orange, bullet-shaped, rocket-powered experimental plane attached to the bomb bay. An Air Force captain at the time, he zoomed off in the plane, a Bell Aircraft X-1, at an altitude of 23,000 feet, and when he reached about 43,000 feet above the desert, history’s first sonic boom reverberated across the floor of the dry lake beds. He had reached a speed of 700 miles an hour, breaking the sound barrier and dispelling the long-held fear that any plane flying at or beyond the speed of sound would be torn apart by shock waves.

Read the latest

A Wall Street Journal article about chess.

They wrote about my favorite chess website:

https://lichess.org

Wall Street Journal

Netflix’s ‘Queen’s Gambit’ Sparks a Chess Boom—Here’s How to Get In on It

A drama about a fictional prodigy has newcomers signing up to play online and in real life.

“The Queen’s Gambit,” Netflix’s fictional drama about a female chess prodigy, has pulled off an unlikely gambit of its own: It’s prompted one of the biggest surges in the popularity of chess among Americans since the days of Bobby Fischer’s dominance in the 1970s.

The show has become Netflix’s most widely viewed scripted limited series, with 62 million households tuning in during the first 28 days after its Oct. 23 debut, the streaming company said. (Netflix now counts two minutes of watching as a view.) The impact is clear: Google search queries for chess doubled from October to November. Participation in online chess sites is soaring and it is getting harder to buy some chess sets.

“We’re setting a new record, for most new members in a single day, almost every day of November,” said Nick Barton, director of business development at Chess.com, a site for chess education and online play. That influx of more than 100,000 members daily is mostly beginners, Mr. Barton said. The newcomers have been mostly in the 18-to-24 demographic (as high as 60%), and slightly more female than usual, at 25% of new members compared with 22% among the site’s base of 46 million members. During the spring, pandemic lockdowns gave a bump to chess sites, he said. “The Queen’s Gambit” built on that to create a pop-culture sensation.

Jeff Myers, owner of online retailer thechessstore.com, said his sales this month are triple November’s last year. Demand is running up against a Covid-related supply slowdown, he said, and his inventory is dwindling. “We source our best quality Staunton wood chess pieces from India, and India has really been locked down. They haven’t been able to harvest trees for the sets, and carving factories for the pieces have been closed,” Mr. Myers said. His domestic supply of chess boards also has been disrupted: “The boards I have coming from New York won’t last until Christmas at the rate we are selling.”

Netflix’s seven-episode series is based on a 1983 novel by Walter Tevis. Beth Harmon, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, is a red-headed Kentucky orphan in the 1960s who sees chessboard patterns in her head at age 8. The world opens to Beth as she advances from local curiosity to world champion, all while struggling with substance abuse.

The show feels like a cousin of Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” sharing its swanky mid-century set designs and fashions, international travel and a strong-willed protagonist in a male-dominated field. Its impact, though, has been more like that of “Stranger Things,” another Netflix series that is credited with spurring a revival of the game Dungeons & Dragons.

What is the secret for injecting chess into the mainstream?

“We had a running joke when we were making it, that we were putting the sexy back in chess,” said Bill Horberg, the executive producer of the series. “We even had T-shirts printed up for the crew that said, ‘Sex, drugs and rook and roll.’ ”

The chess prodigy “is the perfect character for our time,” said Bruce Pandolfini, a chess expert who consulted on the novel and the Netflix series. “Beth is a tremendous survivor.”

Imad Khachan, owner of the Chess Forum in New York City’s Greenwich Village, realized early this month that the show had become a phenomenon. Working in the store after midnight, “I heard the voice of a young woman as she walked by,” Mr. Khachan recalled. “She said ‘Queen’s Gambit!’ Usually passersby just yell ‘Chess!’ Or, if we are open, invariably someone walks in to ask ‘Can I play Bobby Fischer?’ ”

Want to join the chess craze? Here are resources:

PLAY

THIS IS A SHIT WEBSITE: Chess.com has created a Beth Harmon chess bot that beginners and experts can play against. Novices can take on Beth at age 8; experts can challenge versions of Beth up to grandmaster level.

THIS IS THE BEST CHESS WEBSITE IN THE UNIVERSE: Lichess.org, which recently reached 100,000 simultaneous players online, is a free site where one can take on global opponents at the same level of expertise. It offers puzzles for mastering tactics and variants like Antichess and Crazyhouse.

BUY

Stores like New York’s Chess Forum are open and also offer online shopping. Your Move Chess and Games, of North Massapequa, N.Y., bills itself as America’s largest chess store. The U.S. Chess Federation, the World Chess Hall of Fame’s Q Boutique, and Thechess store.com offer entry-level and luxury equipment. Shoppers can find handcrafted sets on Etsy and vintage ones on eBay. And Beth Harmon T-shirts are for sale all over the web.

WATCH and LEARN

The chess masters who share expertise on YouTube and Twitch can be entertaining and educational, and they have created a video subgenre analyzing matches played in “The Queen’s Gambit,” which are based on real ones. Antonio Radic, known online as agadmator, attracted 2.2 million views for his analysis of the final episode’s Beth Harmon-Vasily Borgov championship match, based on a 1993 one between Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk and American Patrick Wolff. Other video teachers worth checking out include soft-spoken International Master Eric Rosen, the trash-talking grandmasters at Chess Brah, and sisters Alexandra and Andrea Botez, who beat up on the boys as much as Beth Harmon does.

VISIT

The World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis physically and virtually offers exhibits, including one on the real pioneering women of chess. The Hall plans to include Beth Harmon in a coming exhibit on chess prodigies.

John Williams - Star Wars Theme (Live, 1984) (HQ áudio)

Wikipedia

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, pianist and trombonist. Regarded by many as the greatest film composer of all time, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scores in cinematic history in a career spanning over six decades. Williams has won 25 Grammy Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, five Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 52 Academy Award nominations, he is the second most-nominated individual, after Walt Disney. In 2005 the American Film Institute selected Williams's score to 1977's Star Wars as the greatest film score of all time. The Library of Congress also entered the Star Wars soundtrack into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

"Are they slow moving chief?" "Yeah, they're dead, they're all messed up." Do you want to watch an interesting zombie movie for free? Click the link.

http://darwinkilledgod.blogspot.com/2020/06/night-of-living-dead-full-movie-one.html

The Art Institute of Chicago. I have been there many times when I used to live in Chicago.

Mulan

When the Emperor of China issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Army to defend the country from Northern invaders, Hua Mulan, the eldest daughter of an honored warrior, steps in to take the place of her ailing father. Masquerading as a man, Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her inner-strength and embrace her true potential. It is an epic journey that will transform her into an honored warrior and earn her the respect of a grateful nation…and a proud father. “Mulan” features a celebrated international cast that includes: Yifei Liu as Mulan; Donnie Yen as Commander Tung; Jason Scott Lee as Böri Khan; Yoson An as Cheng Honghui; with Gong Li as Xianniang and Jet Li as the Emperor. The film is directed by Niki Caro from a screenplay by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Elizabeth Martin & Lauren Hynek based on the narrative poem “The Ballad of Mulan.”

I saw every movie and I read the 7 books twice.

An interesting fact: Harry Potter, aka Daniel Radcliffe, is an atheist.

http://darwinkilledgod.blogspot.com/2011/07/another-reason-for-young-people-to.html

I recommend this movie: IDIOCRACY

Wikipedia - Idiocracy

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/idiocracy

In 2005, average in every way private Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) is selected to take part in a secret military experiment to put him in hibernation for a year along with a woman named Rita (Maya Rudolph). The slumbering duo is forgotten when the base they are stored on is closed down and are left in stasis until 2505. When they finally wake up, they discover the average intelligence of humans has decreased so much that Joe is now the smartest man in the world.

My favorite quote in the movie NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Are they slow moving chief?

Yeah, they're dead, they're all messed up.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: Full Movie - One hour and 35 minutes

Wikipedia - Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film written, directed, photographed and edited by George A. Romero, co-written by John Russo, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea. The story follows seven people who are trapped in a rural farmhouse in western Pennsylvania, which is under assault by an enlargening group of cannibalistic, undead corpses.

The film was completed on a US$114,000 budget and shot outside Pittsburgh, where it had its theatrical premiere on October 1, 1968. The film grossed US$12 million domestically and US$18 million internationally, earning more than 250 times its budget. Night of the Living Dead has been regarded as a cult classic by film scholars and critics, despite being heavily criticized upon its release for its explicit gore. It eventually garnered critical acclaim and was selected in 1999 by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Night of the Living Dead led to five subsequent films between 1978 and 2009, also directed by Romero, and inspired several remakes; the most well-known remake was released in 1990, directed by Tom Savini.