August 2015 archive

Look, let’s be clear.  The fact that Han shot first is absolutely essential to understanding the Solo character and his actions and motivations for the rest of the trilogy and you Lucas bootlicking naysayers probably liked Jar-Jar.

Oh, yeah, I’ll go there.

But today we’re talking about another Solo, much cooler and more black and white.

I must confess I had a mad English teacher that thought The Magnificent Seven was the best picture ever and devoted 6 weeks of independent study to it’s intricacies (which I could bore you with, but I got a 98 so whatever).  Among his favorite story arcs is Robert Vaughn’s Lee, the gunslinger that has lost his edge and lives in constant fear of both dying and being exposed as a coward.

“There was a time when I would have have caught all three.”

Vaughn’s career has sunk so low that his must memorable current stuff is standups for Mall Lawyers, but there was a time when he was the next Bill Shatner (I remember the 5th season of The A-Team).  You’d be surprised to know he was a recurring character on Coronation Street as Milton Fanshaw.

Number One of Section Two was a mini-Bond created by Ian Fleming for the show.  Looking at the episodes is instructive in an early ’60s Feminist sense of demonstrating many of the common tropes and memes of that time.  Remember, while tongue-in-cheek, the character is supposed to exude an inescapable charm of wit and elegance.  Vaughn brought a perfect edge of arrogance, ennui, and superficiality.

If you were a brainiac like me though the one you totally dug was Illya.

He holds a Master’s degree from the Sorbonne and a PhD in Quantum Mechanics from the University of Cambridge, though he admits to not keeping up-to-date with the field. He appears to have been an undergraduate at the University of Georgia in Tbilisi, where he practiced gymnastics. Kuryakin is a polymath. He is well-read in English literature, he has an in-depth knowledge of music and plays the bass viol, the English horn and guitar. He also sings, and he speaks many languages, including French, German and Japanese.

His technical skills are also well honed. He is an explosives expert who stayed on at the U.N.C.L.E. Survival School a month after he graduated to teach a class on the subject.

David McCallum is now known as “Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard” from NCIS which is just as ridiculous a name as I can possibly imagine but he’s still a heart throb at 80, which is not so bad for the guy they used to call “the blond Beatle”.

Now neither the cinematic reboot’s box office or critical reception are as bad as you might think although it’s already generating negative buzz so it’s unlikely to be Warner’s summer blockbuster.  I’ll probably watch it as I did the Avengers (no not that one) on free TV when it comes around.

Zaki’s Review, not the worst one, from Huffington Post

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is less about any particular surprises the script (by Ritchie and Lionel Wigram) may offer — though, admittedly, there are a few. Instead, it’s similar to the Bond formula in that it’s all about the simple pleasure of knowing things have to come to a preordained conclusion, and watching it done well. Stylistically, U.N.C.L.E. is very much of a piece with Ritchie’s two Sherlock Holmes flicks (the first of which I enjoyed quite a bit, the second less so), so I suspect one’s appreciation for it will depend greatly on their tolerance for the Snatch helmer’s specific tics.

Of course, the real joy of the film is in watching the game cast (which includes Hugh Grant and Jared Harris) go through their paces. Cavill in particular is a lot of fun as Our Man Solo, adopting an exaggerated affect to his delivery that neatly mimics Vaughn’s staccato style and also feels like the character’s sly commentary on the genre itself, as if he’s standing to the side and winking at the audience. Hammer arguably has the tougher job: trying to make his character seem sympathetic and understandable all while speaking in a Russian accent that could very easily tip into Boris Badanov territory. Luckily, he manages to pulls it off admirably.

From Kingsman earlier this year and Mission: Impossible last month to the 007 epic Spectre in November, 2015 is proving quite the fertile year for big screen spying (and that’s not even mentioning Melissa McCarthy in Spy!). Though The Man From U.N.C.L.E. lacks the wit of Kingsman and the spectacle of Rogue Nation (any comparisons to the new Bond will have to wait, natch), it nonetheless sits comfortably alongside its spy movie siblings.

Entertainment

• Straight Outta Compton: Black Lives Matter, By Deborah Nesbit, Crooks & Liars
• This New TV Show About The Robot Uprising Reminds Us How Complicated It Is To Get Out Of Housework, by Kay Steiger, Think Progress
• ‘Key & Peele’ Ends While Nation Could Still Use a Laugh, By DAVE ITZKOFF, The New York Times
• NBC Confirms Plans For ‘Xena’ Reboot, by Kevin Melrose, Comic Book Resource
• Exclusive: George R.R. Martin Says ‘Game of Thrones’ Ending Will Be ‘Bittersweet’, By Sean T Collins, The Observer
• Orlando Bloom Is Officially Back In ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ 5, by Bill Bradley, Huffington Post
• ‘Frozen 2′ Details: Director Teases a Different Side of Elsa, by Angie Han, Slash Film
• Hannibal Recap: season three, episode 11 – And the Beast From the Sea, by Eric Thurm, The Guardian
• Beetlejuice 2 is really happening, confirms Winona Ryder, by Nancy Groves, The Guardian
• Syfy’s new “Childhood’s End” could be the perfect show for our quasi-populist, government-hating times, by Scott Timberg, Salon

Sports

On Thursday Little League Baseball starts its World Series (which is really worthy of the name involving, as it does, other countries).

Thursday

• Caribbean (Los Bravos de Pontezuela, DR) vs. Europe-Africa (AVRS Secondary School, Uganda)
• Southwest (Pearland West, Pearland, TX) vs. Northwest (Wilshire/Riverside, Portland, OR)
• Latin America (Cardenales, Barquisimeto, Venezuela) vs. Australia (Cronulla, Sydney)
• Great Lakes (Bowling Green Eastern, Bowling Green, KY) vs. West (Sweetwater Valley, Bonita, CA)

Friday

• Canada (White Rock South Surrey, BC) vs. Mexico (Seguro Social, Mexicali)
• New England (Cranston Western, Cranston, RI) vs. Southeast (Northwood, Taylors, SC)
• Japan (Tokyo Kitasuna) vs. Asia-Pacific (Tung Yuan, Taipei)
• Midwest (Webb City, MO) vs. Mid-Atlantic (Red Land, Lewisberry, PA)

Saturday is the Semi-Finals (two teams will emerge) of the National and International Championships, I’ll probably tell you about the finals next wee.

• All Blacks Rout Australia to Retain Bledisloe Cup, By EMMA STONEY, The New York Times
• ‘We’ll Be Back,’ They Vowed, and They Are, By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY, The New York Times
• Top Spanish matador gored by bull, AFP
• Brazil prosecutors find Olympic village workers living in squalor, Reuters

Mets 4.5 games up after a miserable series.

Damn Yankees, still half a game in front.

Bonus Baseball- We’re in a golden age of hitters who can pitch – but some guys are better than others.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

–Aristotle

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

August 17 is the 229th day of the year (230th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 136 days remaining until the end of the year.

The Dakota War of 1862 (also known as the Sioux Uprising, Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 or Little Crow’s War) was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux or Dakota which began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. It ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.

Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that the government give the annuity payments directly to them (introducing the possibility of unfair dealing between the agents and the traders to the exclusion of the Dakota). In mid-1862 the Dakota demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit under those conditions, and negotiations reached an impasse.

On August 17, 1862, four Dakota killed five American settlers while on a hunting expedition. That night a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley to try to drive whites out of the area. There has never been an official report on the number of settlers killed, but estimates range from 400 to 800. It is said that until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the civilian wartime toll from the Dakota conflict was the highest in U.S. history (excluding those of the Civil War).

Over the next several months, continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota bands. By late December 1862, soldiers had taken captive more than a thousand Dakota, who were interned in jails in Minnesota. After trials and sentencing, 38 Dakota were hanged on December 26, 1862, in the largest one-day execution in American history. In April 1863 the rest of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota. The United States Congress abolished their reservations.

According to NOAA, the El Nino that is developing in the Pacific Ocean is fast becoming the most powerful on record bringing with it record temperatures and sever weather conditions:

El Nino could be among strongest on record, raising risk of floods

By Erin McClam, MSNBC

The phenomenon known as El Niño is brewing in the Pacific Ocean – and it could be one of the strongest on record, raising the risk of floods and mudslides this winter in Southern California, forecasters said Thursday.

It won’t produce enough rain to end the historic drought in California, they said.

Still, it could rival the most powerful El Niño since records were first kept in 1950, experts from the government’s Climate Prediction Center said. That was during the winter of 1997-98, when Southern California was drenched with twice its normal rainfall.

El Niño, an occasional warming of the Pacific waters around the equator, can change weather patterns around the world. In the United States, it usually means heavier than normal winter rain in California and much of the South and East.

It also generally suppresses hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean – and this has been an extremely quiet Atlantic hurricane season. There have been three tropical storms and not a single hurricane.

This year’s ocean warming could make for what some climatologists are calling a Super El Niño. One went so far as to tell the Los Angeles Times that it “has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño.” And a NOAA blogger cheekily suggested naming it Bruce Lee.

Scientists have already recorded unusual warmth in the zone of Pacific Ocean in question, and it could reach 2 degrees Celsius above normal. That has only happened three times in 65 years – in 1997-98, 1982-83 and 1972-73.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 16 is the 228th day of the year (229th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 137 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1896, Gold discovered in the Yukon.

While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory on this day in 1896, George Carmack reportedly spots nuggets of gold in a creek bed. His lucky discovery sparks the last great gold rush in the American West.

Hoping to cash in on reported gold strikes in Alaska, Carmack had traveled there from California in 1881. After running into a dead end, he headed north into the isolated Yukon Territory, just across the Canadian border. In 1896, another prospector, Robert Henderson, told Carmack of finding gold in a tributary of the Klondike River. Carmack headed to the region with two Native American companions, known as Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie. On August 16, while camping near Rabbit Creek, Carmack reportedly spotted a nugget of gold jutting out from the creek bank. His two companions later agreed that Skookum Jim–Carmack’s brother-in-law–actually made the discovery.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Breakfast Tune: Sean Lennon at Occupy Wall St, Oct 23, 2011 (Day 37) cover Madonna’s Material Girl

Recorded October 23, 2011, 6pm. Sean Lennon, his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Rufus Wainwright, Dustin Hamman, and others perform an impromptu cover of “Material Girl” by Madonna ….but not until Josh Fox of the film “Gasland” talks to the crowd about hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”. They dedicate the song to Ben Bernanke, and Hank Paulson.

Seemed they picked this song only because of the verse, “Living in a material world” which they repeat over, and over again.

sean lennon guitar charlotte kemp muhl accordion dustin hamman guitar josh fox banjo rufus wainwright vocals eden rice cymbals shawn

Today in History

August 16th Elvis Presley, the King of Rock n’ Roll, dies at Graceland; Baseball’s Babe Ruth dies in New York; Uganda’s Idi Amin dies in Saudi Arabia; ‘Sports Illustrated’ hits newsstands; Singer Madonna born. (Aug. 16)

Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC): Republican presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson.

The roundtable guests are: ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd; Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; and Hugh Hewitt, host of the “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

Face the Nation: Host John Dickerson guess are: Gov. John Kasich (R-OH); Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC); former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD).

His panel guests are: The National Journal‘s Ron Fournier; Washington Post‘s Robert Costa; Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan; Bloomberg‘s Mark Halperin; and Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie.(

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on Sunday’s “MTP” are: GOP presidential contender Donald Trump; and Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Roundtable guest are a puzzlement once again.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Gov. John Kasich (R-OH); former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR); and senior adviser to Draft Biden 2016, Joshua Alcorn.

One of his panel guests is former Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT).

Fears for missing firefighters as China toll climbs

  Nearly 100 people missing from Tianjin blasts, including 85 firefighters, officials say, as death toll rises to 112.

16 Aug 2015 05:54 GMT

Scores of Chinese firefighters are still missing following the massive explosions that hit an industrial area in Tianjin, officials have said.

At an official press conference on Sunday, authorities announced that the death toll had risen to 112, but added that 95 people had been confirmed missing – including 85 firefighters.

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Tianjin, a port city in the country’s northeast, said it was now possible that the death toll will climb past 200, “making it one of China’s worst industrial accidents”.

Freaky interior of Japanese hospital appears to be made from the stuff of nightmares

Jamie Koide

They say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but that seems to be more of a guideline than a prescription for any and all maladies, and eventually we all find ourselves in the waiting room of a clinic or a hospital for a check-up or to get our head stapled back together.

Medical staff are well aware that clinics and hospitals aren’t exactly the kinds of places that make patients feel at home, so many medical facilities have tried improving their drab décor and entertainment options to help patrons feel more comfortable about their visit.

One clinic in Japan, however, appears to have gone a little overboard in the interior design department, and is making many of its patients feel like they’ve walked straight into a psychedelic nightmare instead.

In still another sign of how the TPP is unraveling we have the story of Chile from Truthout.

Where the Trans-Pacific Partnership Could Lose

By Julia Paley, Truthout

Friday, 14 August 2015 00:00

In Chile, where the administration of President Michelle Bachelet has moved forward with the TPP negotiation process, opposition is strong in the legislature. Even Bachelet’s minister of foreign affairs has indicated that Chile won’t sign the agreement if the TPP doesn’t meet certain criteria.

The Chilean controversy over the TPP highlights some of the biggest problems with the agreement – for working people in Chile, the United States, and around the world – and it makes plain the false promises the Obama administration used to push Democrats to support fast track.

…

Under ordinary circumstances, signing on to a free trade agreement would be a no brainer for Chile. It has agreements with more countries than any other nation, and additional ones are on the way. In fact, Chile already has trade agreements with all the other countries involved in the TPP.

…

As critics in many countries agree, the TPP is expected to harm health by extending the duration of patents for medicines and medical procedures, making them unaffordable for millions of people and increasing the cost of implementing public health measures. The TPP is predicted to limit culture and education by increasing the time before movies, music, and books enter the public domain – thereby keeping the price too high for low-income people as well as schools and libraries. And the TPP could curtail Internet freedoms by impeding innovation and criminalizing popular forms of sharing. All of these, which could impact people in the United States as well, hit other countries especially hard.

What’s particularly thorny for Chile is that standards for these issues were already hammered out in bilateral agreements with the United States and other countries. The concern is that joining the TPP will be tantamount to renegotiating the terms of trade – and coming out with less favorable results than before.

…

The fact that Chile already has free trade agreements with all the other countries in the pact means it has no particularly strong incentive to sign on. Unlike countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, whose access to investment and export markets are likely to increase substantially under the TPP, the agreement won’t bring major trade benefits to Chile. Meanwhile, the costs to the country – in terms of its own ability to create laws in the future and extensions of intellectual property protections – could be high.

As the negotiation process nears a close, congressional representatives in Chile have renewed their opposition.

…

Minister of Foreign Affairs Heraldo Muñoz made declarations about how far the Bachelet government was – and was not – willing to go. In response to deputies’ concerns, he declared that in the area of intellectual property, patents, and services, Chile would not accept any terms worse than those already negotiated in its existing free trade agreements. Specifically, in relation to patent protection for pharmaceuticals, he said that Chile would insist on the five years allowed for in existing treaties and not agree to the 12 years proposed for the TPP. “If there isn’t an agreement that’s acceptable, we won’t sign it,” he declared. Moreover, with regard to the US certification process, he affirmed, “we will not accept any interference in our sovereignty, and if that were the case, the agreement would not go into effect.”