There are ten movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards this Sunday. But you have probably seen two or maybe three of them at most. It's possible you haven't even heard of most of them! Screen Junkies knows that, and so every year they compile an Honest Trailer to let us in on  what all the fuss is about for the ten nominated films. They haven't done Honest Trailers for any of these movies except for Elvis, because, uh, no one requested them (they tell us Avatar 2 is being edited now). Best Picture nominees are expensive art films that are "good," by most metrics, but we, the audience, mainly watch movies so we can escape the real world and feel good for a couple of hours. But you might get to know at least one film in this video that you'd like to see in its entirety.

This Sunday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present its 95th annual awards to the movies of the previous year. While Hollywood is excited, the nationwide ratings for the Oscar awards show have been declining for years now. The show is too long, scheduled for four hours but often running five, so even avid movie fans tend to skip watching it live.  

The problem is that the producers are working with obsolete concepts of drawing a television audience: keep them tuned in, and keep them waiting. In the 20th century, the audience had no choice. If you wanted to see how many awards your favorite movie won, you had to sit through production numbers, technical awards, and stand-up routines. With the internet, you can get notifications for the parts you really care for. Yet movie fans all have different parts they care about.

The Ringer proposes a plan to bring viewers back to the Oscar ceremony by breaking the telecast into three parts aimed at different kinds of movie fans. It sounds ingenious. On its face, the plan appears to be sacrificing a captive four-hour audience, but those viewers are already gone. It could bring back many of those viewers, albeit for shorter segments. The reasoning behind each part of the new plan is explained in detail, and it might just work. The sad part is that this plan is not only too late for the ceremony coming up March 12, but also that it was not proposed by the Academy itself. -via Digg

You can often tell where someone is from by the way they pronounce the letter "r." Bostonians and the British don't pronounce it at all when it's in a word, but sometimes tack one on the end of a word when you least expect it. But some linguists say that under some circumstances, "r" can be a vowel. That theory won't change our spelling, and probably won't change any pronunciation. We won't soon be seeing bird spelled "brd," even though we do see it spelled "birb" quite a bit these days. The series Storied from PBS explains the different ways different languages and cultures use "r" and how it could be considered a vowel, under the strange standards of linguistics. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Illness and disease were once inescapable parts of life before germ theory, antibiotics, and vaccines. People did what they could to avoid diseases, but sometimes just had to work around them. That affected clothing and fashion styles. When just enough men discovered that wearing a codpiece protected their junk while undergoing the useless syphilis treatments of the 16th century, the look caught on with the general public. But their hair still fell out, which led to powdered wigs, which had an upside in that they attracted lice away from the rest of their bodies. Are you keeping up?

Tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox were not easy subjects to talk about, but they were all too common once upon a time. Read about five bygone fashion trends that were instigated by people either trying to prevent these diseases or trying to live with them, whether their fashion followers knew it or not, at Cracked.

(Image credit: Wellcome Images)

When you drape a big city over a group of mountains, you end up with a lot of stairs, hairpin streets, and workarounds. Wellington, New Zealand, is such a city. Public transport is offered by cable cars, which lift people uphill and then downhill like in San Francisco. But there are also around 100 private cable cars that people install just to reach their house! While that may seem extravagant, it will come in handy when you buy a new table, or break your leg, or come home drunk, or want to invite Grandma to visit, or when you're just too tired to climb many flights of stairs to get home. And if you want to stay in your Wellington hillside home through your advanced years, a private cable car, or "inclinator," makes a lot of sense. Tom Scott shows us how these private cable cars work in Wellington.

Where I live, there are a lot of houses that cling to the sides of mountains, too, but they are spread out enough that we can build access roads and bridges to reach them. I can tell you from experience that some of those roads out in the middle of nowhere are terrifying.

The 1939 film Gone With the Wind was a sweeping epic soap opera about one Georgia woman's life during the Civil War, based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Mitchell. The finished product featured big Hollywood stars and beautiful cinematography, won eight Academy Awards, and was the top movie of all time for 30 years. But putting that story in its historical backdrop was a struggle behind the scenes. Director David O. Selznick went through a dozen script writers, and working scripts were changed constantly.

The script writers were divided into two camps: The "Romantics" who wanted to depict the South as a genteel and honorable place where enslaved people were happy, and the "Realists" who were keen to show an accurate depiction of the brutality and dehumanization of slavery. The Romantics won out, and the movie projected a whitewashed version of the Confederacy that pleased white audiences in Atlanta but gave generations of viewers a distorted idea of the Civil War era South. The movie was shaped by many scenes that were written and some even filmed, but were then discarded. Evidence of the battle between the Romantics and the Realists remain in surviving working copies of the script, with notes from Selznick and others, that the director had ordered destroyed.

Read about the script decisions that shaped Gone With the Wind and the scenes that never made it into the film at The Ankler. Then imagine the same film with the deleted scenes retained. It would have been six hours long, but it would have told a more complete story. -via Mental Floss 

It's been almost seven years since we first saw the amazing puppet designing skills of Barnaby Dixon. With more videos over the years, we've also come to appreciate his ability to operate them in such a way as to trick our minds into seeing them as real characters separate from the puppeteer. This is because Dixon spent years studying anatomy and movement in order to make stop-motion animated films. The puppets came later because he was looking for a way to save time! And since he had no background in puppetry, he was free to think outside the box. In this video, we learn what goes into Dixon's puppets, in designing them, building them, and bringing them to life. -via Digg

The idea that alien beings come to earth in flying saucers has been a thing in the US since 1947. The saucer shape of our pop culture UFOs is due to a misinterpretation of that 1947 sighting. Or is it? Documentation of a UFO in Japan in 1803 involved a saucer-shaped vessel. In this case, UFO stand for unidentified floating object. It has become known as the utsurobune legend, although there are contemporary accounts that describe the event.

During the Edo period, Japan was officially closed off to foreigners, and any "invasion" should have drawn officials and caused a diplomatic incident. But this incident is a simple tale. A strange, saucer-shaped vessel floated to shore, and when it opened, people could see it was hollow. A woman emerged, speaking an unknown language and carrying a box. The vessel had writing on it no one could read. Unable to communicate, the Japanese witnesses sent her back to the ocean, never to be seen again.

While later accounts varied as to the date and place of the incident, there are several from 1803, placing it in the city of Hitachi. That lead researchers to believe that something really happened, but what it was is a mystery. -via Nag on the Lake

Build in the 11th century, Colditz Castle is an imposing fortress overlooking the town of Colditz, Germany. Rebuilt in the 16th century with 700 rooms, it was used as a political prison by the Nazis and during World War II it became a POW camp called Oflag IV-C. Since the fortress was considered impossible to escape from, it was a destination for Allied troublemakers and those who had attempted to escape from other prisons. However, these prisoners considered that a challenge.

The POWs at Colditz collaborated with each other on escape plans. They built trap doors, tunnels, shafts through the buildings, and even set up a telephone system to communicate warnings. Over five years, there were 300 escape attempts, 30 of which were successful. One prisoner was catapulted over the wall by his fellow inmates. Two men managed to tunnel to a guard house, where they donned German uniforms and then walked out as if they were going home from work. The most audacious escape plan was when prisoners worked together to build a glider on the roof! Read about the World War II prison at Colditz Castle and the many escape attempts at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Jörg Blobelt)

Jon Townsend (previously at Neatorama) is an expert in the lifestyles of colonial America, particularly the food of the era. The food was good if you had it, but there were no grocery stores, no refrigeration, and no canned food. If you wanted to preserve fresh food for later, you had to have salt. That wasn't always easy, especially during wartime. The tensions leading up to the Revolutionary War and the war itself caused disruptions in the salt supply lines that threatened to ruin the food cycle the colonists had established. The story of salt in colonial America is like many that Townsend tells: the struggles of everyday people in a new land just trying to get by. You'd never learn these things in high school history class, so we are glad we now get the chance.

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. It certainly was windy in Kentucky on Friday. Redditor ThirstGoblin was driving from Huntsville, Alabama, to Toledo, Ohio, with his fiancée and stopped at Bowling Green, Kentucky, to get something to eat. Oddly, Bowling Green is one of those rare towns that has both Kystal and White Castle outlets. He first went to Krystal, but found it closed. So he went to White Castle. About 15 seconds after getting out of the car, this happened.

ThirstGoblin bought $7.99 in food (no free lunch) and was so rattled, he ordered fries instead of onion rings. And he posted a picture to reddit. We assume that somewhere in all that activity, there was some notification of insurance companies. There were plenty of pictures taken, Twitter was on it immediately, and eventually the newspapers.

White Castle sign fell on top of a parked car in Bowling Green, KY. https://t.co/Ehc2zAKoXl pic.twitter.com/ze3R82vYCm

— Justin Hicks (@Hicks_JustinM) March 3, 2023

We hope that the couple will eventually get to their destination in Ohio.

(Image credit: ThirstGoblin)

The devastation of the earthquakes that flattened large parts of Turkey and Syria almost a month ago is unimaginable. Yet amid the horror, there are a few heartwarming stories of rescue. One involved the cat pictured above, now named Enkaz. The cat spent ten days buried under the rubble of a building in the city of Nurdagi, in southern Turkey. She was unearthed by a firefighter named Ali Cakas. The cat immediately perched on Cakas' shoulder, and posed for a series of pictures by photojournalist Halil Fidan. Unable to find her owner, Cakas took the cat home and named her Enkaz, which means "rubble" in Turkish.



Enkaz is adjusting to her new life well, and sticks close to Cakas. She has become a viral sensation in Turkey and all over the world. There is an Instagram gallery highlighting her post-earthquake life and displaying artworks sent in by fans.   



-via Laughing Squid 

In 2007, the Royal Canadian Mint issued a coin worth a million dollars. It was made of 100 kilograms of the purest gold in the world, certified 99.999% pure. The coin, called Big Maple Leaf, was the size of an automobile tire and held the Guinness World Record for the biggest coin for several years. After the first coin was minted, there were enough offers to buy it that the Canadians eventually minted six coins in total. Since then, the value of the gold in those coins rose to about four times the face value of the coin.

One of the coins still resides at the Royal Canadian Mint. The others went to private buyers, one of whom loaned the coin to the Bode Museum in Berlin, where it went on display to the public in 2010. While the Bode has 24-hour security, no one thought it would be possible to steal the giant gold coin because of its size. Until a gang made off with the coin in 2017. And it was never to be seen again. Read about the Big Maple Leaf and the audacious heist at Hazlitt. -via Damn Interesting

The candles shown above were used in the Victorian era, and they are kind of genius. The box they came in had a hole just the right size to be a candle holder. The candles themselves sometimes came with a phosphorus coating on the exposed wick, so that they could also be their own match. They are described as "brothel candles," because they were used in Victorian houses of ill repute as a timer. Light a candle when you go behind doors with a client, and when the candle is completely melted seven minutes later, his time is up.

Except that there is no truth to those last two sentences at all. Victorian prostitutes had their own watches and clocks that didn't need to be replenished. Besides, seven minutes is a long time when there are others waiting and money to be made. The brothel candle is a myth, a sexy story to tell, but that doesn't mean these candles aren't interesting in their own way. Read the real purpose of what were once called pocket candles at Fake History Hunter. -via Strange Company

In an excerpt from his new book, entomologist Frank Nischk tells us the story of that time he was alone at the research station at Reserva Otonga in the Ecuadorian Andes and battled a horde of army ants. He wasn't all that concerned for himself, but wanted to protect a collection of crickets he had spent two weeks finding and identifying. His weapon against millions of ants? A broom.

But interspersed with the fighting, Nischk explains the impact of army ants (Eciton burchellii) on some of the 559 identified other animal species that have evolved to rely on the ants for survival. If army ants went extinct, so could those other species. Several dozen species of birds follow army ants on the march, to scoop up the insects that the ants frighten out of their hiding places. Butterflies also follow, to feed on the bird droppings. Parasitic wasps also follow to find the scurrying insects. Other creatures feed on the carcasses of animals that army ants kill but can't carry with them. There are beetles that evolved to look like army ants and hide in plain sight right in an army ant's nest, for protection and to take advantage of the bits of food they bring in to feed their larvae. Come for the battle of human vs. army ants, and stay for the fascinating ecosystem they create, in the book excerpt at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Geoff Gallice)