erosdiscordia
cutting the other edge
T-minus Five More Launches: STS-130 Endeavour (4:39a.m. Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010)
Feb 6th
NASA prepares to launch Endeavour tomorrow, in what should be its second-to-last flight.
I’m alternately relieved and appalled at the planned 2010 decommissionings of all 3 of the Shuttles—relieved, as they’ve been in service 18-26 years, and I’ve no wish to watch my third Shuttle disaster; appalled, because as of Discovery’s final flight in September, for the first time in my life, the United States will be grounded from space.
Sure, we could hitch rides with other countries. But what a comedown for the country that first put a human being on the moon.
I don’t know what will come of our space program—people much smarter than me, working for NASA, probably wonder the same thing right now. It’s one of the few things in which I totally disagree with President Obama. The space race and its magnificent fruits were what inspired generations of children to take science seriously. How will we motivate students to refocus on science now, if one of its greatest achievements can be so visibly abandoned?
New Year’s Eve, Sweeties!
Dec 31st
Just a quick post to thank you for visiting. Here’s hoping that the next decade, and the next five years of this blog, bring even more zany BS to cover and rant about. Get smashed, turn it up, take photos, and remember: never try to relight duds!…
Heaviest Iran protests since June
Dec 27th
Under the guise of celebrating the Shia festival of Ashura, when street parades are common, hundreds of thousands of Iranians in Tehran protested today, in what many reported as the heaviest demonstrations since they began this past summer.
Some streets were dominated by protestors, who shouted for the downfall of Ayatollah Khamenei and burned police vehicles. Other streets saw the police with the upper hand, using gas and clubs to intimidate demonstrators. Unofficial witnesses claim that for people were shot by police, when they fired a warning shot and then fired into the crowd. One of the victims is claimed to be Seyed Ali Mousavi, the nephew of the reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Four more people may have been killed in Tabriz, and hundreds arrested around the country.
link to iranprotest’s YouTube channel
photo uploaded to Flickr by leemellonjr
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Dec 25th
It’s been a long year. And I’ve been sick of Tallahassee, and of the south, for most of it.
And because I can’t let the year run out without giving some sort of nod to Der Alte and Nummer Eins, here’s another GWAR clip. I don’t normally do this, but I’m in Florida, and I’m feelin’ the love:
Movie Review: “Killing Cars”, 1985 (3/5)
Dec 15th
For Prochnow fans only…
…But if you like the old boy, you’ll enjoy this perhaps more than you might expect.
People who even know who Jürgen Prochnow is tend to already be fans of the character actor. And why not? He’s a talented combination of intense, wry, sexy and slightly nuts. He’ll be genuinely tender with the female characters, in a way that can’t be faked, and then smile mischievously while having another character horribly tortured. He can do more acting with his eyes alone in one film, than the overpaid wads of fluff populating the average DVD collection can do in a whole career.
Too bad he was born in Germany, apparently rendering him unfit to play anything but villains in American films.
I sat down to watch “Killing Cars”, in which Prochnow is the self-absorbed romantic lead, after reading a review elsewhere by a Prochnow fangirl. I wanted to see what was on the other end of the spectrum of his movies from the immortal “Das Boot”, one of my favorite films. I was expecting utter garbage—I mean, a low-budget foreign car movie shot in 1985? I thought I’d be watching it through my fingers. Actually, it was surprisingly entertaining.
The early 80s sleaze factor is turned up to eleven here, especially in the beginning. Porsches, neon, punks, industrial lofts, feathered hair, smoking, spy subplots…it’s utter camp. Prochnow actually puts on sunglasses at night to drive. But the characters—at least the core 3 or 4—become a bit more sympathetic as the movie goes on, largely due to the understated seriousness with which Prochnow approached the role. What is it with that guy?
I thought this would be an interesting case of how a good actor could be dragged down by a bad script, low budget, and subpar supporting actors. In fact, through sheer talent and force of will, Prochnow made the movie gel. Sure, it gels into a barely-comprehensible, badly-lit study in hilarious industrial surrealism…but by the climax of the movie, I actually really gave a damn what happened to that ugly car.
The ability of this movie to make me care about it, despite my plans to mock it, hinged on one obscure German actor. That’s talent.
The most popular movies nowadays are filled with actors dumber than the average viewer, lending a much-needed ego boost to the audience. People seem content to watch what they know is terrible acting disguised with world-class special effects. After all, special effects don’t require emotional engagement, and bad acting presents no mental intimidation.
I guess I just like my actors brilliant and my movies puzzling. If anybody else enjoys feeling their scorn turned to curiosity by intelligent, subtle acting, there are much worse investments of your time than this movie. And if you’re a Prochnow fanatic trying to decide whether this is worth the pain, know that he has a nude scene.
(review at Amazon.com)
Purple Bar, die Dritte!
Dec 1st
And this, my friends, was how I got here (no cheating at all):
What a month…once again.