hollywood
gregladen | October 2, 2014According to popular literature (some fiction, some not) and movies, Ebola can cause havoc, infecting thousands of people, killing over half of them, and threatening an entire nation if it were to become airborne. Turns out that's not true. Ebola can do all those things without becoming airborne. In several nations.
The confusion caused by this misconception is further enhanced in a more subtle way. Since the Hollywood version of Ebola (or some other similar disease) indicates that it is dangerous because it becomes airborne, we see constant claims today on the Internet that Ebola must be…
milhayser | August 1, 2014Like Rocket—a genetically engineered, cybernetically enhanced raccoon—Guardians of the Galaxy is a strange beast. Wanting to make a little cash, Rocket and his talking tree-buddy Groot try to collect a bounty on that guy from Parks and Recreation (and Zero Dark Thirty [Chris Pratt]). But the human, who wishes he were known as Star-Lord, not only has a 40,000 unit bounty on his head, but a softball-sized orb of power that every bigwig in the galaxy wants to steal or buy. Gamora, a femme fatale working for her supervillain step-daddy, crashes the party as Rocket and Groot try to bag Star-Lord,…
milhayser | November 10, 2013This movie was already spoiled for me because I read the book many years ago. But the movie can't help but spoil itself. It's a great film and one of the best adaptations of a novel to ever appear onscreen, but if you really know nothing about Ender's Game, and can read at a 9th grade level, honestly go read the book first. If you have time.
The problem is that by the time of Ender's "final exam," it's hard to imagine anyone in the audience sympathizing with Ender's shock that he hasn't really been playing a video game; he and his tween friends have been controlling actual spaceships…
pgleick | March 20, 2013Water is a theme that runs through all forms of popular culture, from books to myths to Hollywood and international films, with a growing number of shorter video pieces posted online at YouTube and similar sites. Having trouble keeping your Netflix list populated? Below are some classic (good and bad) movies – good and bad – with some kind of water theme: conflict over water in classic western movies; science-fiction thrillers with a water component; visions of the apocalypse where water access or contamination plays a role; and more. (An early version of this list was published in the last…
stoat | January 27, 2012 Well, this is an interesting take on SOPA (h/t Paul, and the atheist FAQ is worth reading too):
Hollywood appears to have peaked... [But] The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down... The main reason we want to fund such startups is not to protect the world from more SOPAs, but because SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying. They must be dying if they're resorting to such tactics... SOPA shows Hollywood is beaten. And yet the audiences to be captured from movies…
grrlscientist | May 22, 2010tags: The Chatty Duel, The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Hollywood, film, offbeat, streaming video
For this week's Silly Saturday, I am sharing this video of the fight between the Man in Black (Cary Elwes) and Inigo (Mandy Patinkin) from the Princess Bride. It's actually funny to watch these two chat while sword fighting.
I thought these lines were quite amusing:
"You've done nothing but study swordplay?"
"More pursue than study lately.. you see, I can no' find him. It's been 20 years now, I'm starting to lose confidence. I just work for Vizzini to pay the bills. There's not…
grrlscientist | March 9, 2010tags: movies, oscar-winning movie trailer, Academy Awards, spoof, humor, funny, parody, offbeat, social commentary, streaming video
This video is an amusing trailer for every Oscar-winning movie ever made!
"It's not gonna be an entirely dramatic film. 'Cause we laugh there."
jstemwedel | February 8, 2010Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.)
This was sort of an odd session for me -- not so much because of the topics taken up by session leaders Tamara Krinsky and Jennifer Ouellette, but because of my own sense of ambivalence about a lot of "entertainment" these days.
The session itself had lots of interesting glimpses of the work scientists are doing to help support filmmakers (and television producers, and game designers, and producers of other kinds of entertainment) who want to…
grrlscientist | September 23, 2009tags: healthcare, medical insurance, politics, satire, Will Ferrell, streaming video
It's a rotten job, but someone has got to do it: in this video ad, Will Ferrell stands up for the real victims in this health care debate: health insurance providers themselves!
Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell
sciencewoman | April 2, 2009
Today's free book is "Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World" by Sydney Perkowitz. (If you click over the Amazon page linked above, you'll see a review by scibling Brian Switek of Laelaps.)
Remember: To claim the book, be the first commenter to earnestly affirm that you will read and review the book in less than 6 months. Then send me your snail mail address via my science (dot) woman account on google's mail service.