The talk of the Sundance Film Festival this year was Swiss Army Man, a movie in which stranded castaway Paul Dano finds a corpse washed up on the beach. The corpse, played by Daniel Radcliffe, is filled with gas. Dano harnesses the awesome power of Radcliffe’s farts for all kinds of purposes, including using the corpse as a jet ski to escape the island he was stranded on.
Reviewers who wrote about the movie back in January compared it to Cast Away crossed with Weekend at Bernie’s. Although quite a few people walked out on it at Sundance, it still won the Best Director(s) award. Now the first trailer is out, and Swiss Army Man will hit theaters June 17. -via Viral Viral Videos
Do you see the face in this image by Wenceslas Hollar? At first, it looks like someone just painted what they saw in the countryside. But it’s a made-up landscape with an illusion embedded. These pictures became somewhat of a fad in the Netherlands during the 1600s.
Prior to the Renaissance, landscape was principally used as a scene-setting backdrop for figurative art. Trees, fields, mountains, and storm-tossed seas were only present to add verisimilitude to the human activity contained within the frame. It seemed as if landscape was nothing without a human narrative. But this gradually changed. Landscape painting soon became an artistic form of its own. During the transitory period between the two forms there was a moment when figurative art and the desire to depict landscape briefly coalesced in anthropomorphic etchings and paintings.
Okay, this deal gives you a lot of options. Which would you take? Maybe 25% off the full set, or maybe pay only 75%, but the buy three and get one free still seems like the best deal. However you parse it, giving the customer a choice is always the best way to go. This ad was spotted in Wellington, New Zealand.
In between takes, the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens had plenty of time to fool around and do stuff that was far, far away from the galaxy they were recreating. In this home video bonus feature, Daisy Ridley (Rey) shows us how she and John Boyega (Finn) came up with a rap during filming.
But there’s more, because the impromptu song is accompanied by film clips of the Star Wars cast dancing, including Carrie Fisher and Admiral Akbar. The Force Awakens is available on home video starting today, but this feature is only on the Target edition. And now that Entertainment Weekly has uploaded it to YouTube, it shouldn't make any difference where you buy yours. -via Uproxx
Movie actors become celebrities, and then we make movies about celebrities because people like that. Also, Hollywood screenwriters can feel very comfortable writing about things they know firsthand, which is Hollywood. The result is quite a few movies about movie actors, which you get movie actors to play. The most obvious example of an actor playing himself is Being John Malkovich, because who else would they get to play the part of Malkovich? But things get even more meta with Robert Englund doing two roles in the 1994 movie Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.
In New Nightmare, Freddy Krueger invades our world and terrorizes the actors and crew who helped make the Nightmare on Elm Street films. Englund reprises his role as the iconic killer, but as this movie is set in the “real” world, he also plays himself, the actor who played Freddy Krueger.
In 1990, the number of cable channels was exploding, and programmers were looking for a way to stand out among the crowd. At the same time, stand-up comedy was surging, with clubs replacing live music with live comedians. And The Comedy Channel was born -later to become Comedy Central. The creators, comedians, and participants got together for to talk about the creation of the channel, its shows, and the people who put it together. Here’s a snippet about Mystery Science Theater 3000.
[Joel] Hodgson: We had done I think 22 shows locally, so once it appeared that the Comedy Channel was going to get going, we cut together a sell tape. That was important, because when I started, it wasn’t clear to me how much we should be riffing. How much people could dual-task—watching a movie and hearing commentary—wasn’t really clear. When we made that eight-minute tape, it was basically a highlights reel. When I saw that, suddenly it made all the sense in the world to me: “Oh, this is how the show has to be. We have to have jokes all the time.”
[Stu] Smiley: Somebody sent it to us in the mail. We opened this package and saw it, and said, “Gee, this is kind of cool!” We were not so dumb as to not see something in it.
[Art] Bell: It was the two puppets and Joel Hodgson sitting in front of the movie and commenting… I think they actually used The Godfather. They were literally using movies they’d just pulled off the shelf. No rights involved, no licensing fees, none of that. Why complicate life? When they put that in front of us, it looked great; our challenge was to turn it into something you could put on television legally. We had to find really crummy, often public-domain movies or movies that could be licensed for almost nothing.
Hodgson: It registered with them right away. It was so ambitious to try and do an all-comedy channel: They needed a show like ours that was 90 minutes long and filled a lot of time.
The story of Comedy Central is a long one, divided into sections by years. You can skip back and forth if you want to, but you’ll end up enjoying it all.
The Brothers Green give us step-by-step instructions for making classic Taco Bell items at home. You might think this is more trouble than its worth, but listen: I’ve been a fan of the Taco Bell Meximelt since they were introduced in the early ‘80s. Back then they were meat- and cheese-filled and heavenly. I still like them, but now they have very little of anything inside. Sometimes they forget the meat completely, sometimes you can’t find any cheese, and you can take a couple of bites with no tomato, so making them at home would be nice.
The first video explains the ground beef, refried beans, fire sauce, nacho cheese sauce, tacos, crunch wrap supreme, double decker taco, and Mexican pizza. Although you really can’t explain Mexican pizza.
The second video has the seasoned steak, marinated chicken, creamy jalapeño (Baja) sauce, quesadillas, Baja gordita, chalupa, grilled stuffed burrito, and the cheesy gordita crunch. If your favorite isn’t here, remember that most of Taco Bell’s dishes are combination of basic items that are pretty easy to figure out. And I’m going to make that quesadilla, sans steak, as soon I stock up on groceries. -via Digg
by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff
The industrial revolution may have contributed to an increase in navel lint production,1 but inventors have created few truly new tools for bellybutton lint removal. That changed, slightly, in 2007.
A patent application (US #2007/0041923) filed by Takao Okajima and Susumu Fujinami is titled “Body recessed portion cleaning agent.” It describes:
A body cavity cleansing agent which is either poured into or applied to a navel cavity or an ear hole, solidifies after a specified period of time and takes a form that can be removed from said navel cavity or said ear hole together with dirt in said navel cavity or said ear hole...
Uncle Rob has a fun arts and crafts project you can do with your kids. It involves using a lawn mower to apply spray paint to a canvas. What could possibly go wrong? Seriously, try to guess how this turns out.
Liz Hammett and her mother have the most interesting text conversations. Yes, these texts could be fiction, but they are still gems. Liz has apparently always been a brat, but she’s inherited her sense of humor from her mom. And sometimes Mom gets her revenge.
Randall Munroe came up with an elaborate interactive comic for April Fool’s Day, but due to technical difficulties, couldn’t get it online until Sunday night. Called Garden, it’s a game of sorts, but requires patience. The hover text says, “relax.” You are given what I first thought were UFOs, but they are adjustable grow lights. Set up to three grow lights and leave your garden to grow. According to the site Explain xkcd,
If you leave the lights on and wait (or relax) then the plants in your garden start to grow slowly. The plants appear one at a time slowly, but only a few of them actually grow. There is a large tree that does, but most other plants just appear. Some of the plants sway in the breeze.
Every so often the image will refresh. You can change the number of lights, their position, direction, beam width and the color temperature from red to yellow to white to blue. How much this affects the growth is hard to say, but there seems to be some correlation.
They have tips there to help you out. As your garden grows, the URL will change. You can copy the URL at any point to share and show people how your garden looks, and they won’t be able to change it. What you see above is my garden from a few minutes ago. Who knows what will happen if I manage to leave that tab open for the rest of the day!
Optina Monastery is an Eastern Orthodox refuge in Kozelsk, Russia. The monks who live there follow the rituals of their spiritual ancestors, including a daily procession of blessings. Father Sergey Kuzmich walks the grounds, giving blessings to the monks. And the cats. The monastery has become home to ten stray cats who found shelter there in return for their pest control services. The cats follow Kuzmich as he does his daily procession.
Kuzmich doesn’t call the cats, but he manages to give them a blessing along the way. The walk just became a habit for them. The monastery found it charming, and made a video to show “something simple and kind.” -via Buzzfeed
Joseph Medicine Crow-High Bird, the last war chief of the Crow Nation, died Sunday. Nicknamed CrowJoe, he was a writer, historian, and activist. During his life, he received the Bronze Star Medal and the Légion d'honneur for his wartime service and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. The Washington Post has more.
According to Crow tradition, a man must fulfill certain requirements to become chief of the tribe: command a war party successfully, enter an enemy camp at night and steal a horse, wrestle a weapon away from his enemy and touch the first enemy fallen, without killing him.
Joe Medicine Crow was the last person to meet that code, though far from the windswept plains where his ancestors conceived it. During World War II, when he was a scout for the 103rd Infantry in Europe, he strode into battle wearing war paint beneath his uniform and a yellow eagle feather inside his helmet. So armed, he led a mission through German lines to procure ammunition. He helped capture a German village and disarmed — but didn’t kill — an enemy soldier. And, in the minutes before a planned attack, he set off a stampede of 50 horses from a Nazi stable, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode away.
After the war, Crow led a distinguished life as an educator, tribal historian, and advocate. He was 102.
Seven years ago, we celebrated Square Root Day on March 3, 2009, because it is abbreviated as 3-3-09. Even in Europe. At the time, we considered the next Square Root Day to be a long way off, and here it is! Today is 4-4-16, and since 4x4=16, four is the square root of 16. The holiday is the brainchild of Ron Gordon, the master of calendar holidays. On his website dedicated to Square Root Day, Gordon is celebrating the convergence of Square Root Day with Major League Baseball’s Opening Day. You know, the game where men run around all four sides of a square to get home. Tonight is the championship game of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, too! It’s a good day to "root" for your team.
There are plenty of ways to celebrate Square Root Day, including going to a ballgame, planting root vegetables, eating your carrots and other root vegetables cut into squares, watching math videos, etc. Gordon has more ideas, and a contest!
It's a good day to.......get things squared away, try to fit a square peg into a round hole, go square dancing, tie a square knot, travel on Route 66, drink rootbeer from a square glass, root for the underdog, eat a square meal, or watch the pigs root around.
We've established a contest with two prize packets. Each group of winners will share the date in dollars---$441.6. One packet will be divided among 4 + 4 + 16 U.S. winners. A second grouping will share the international prize, also totaling $441.6. The winners will be those who involve the most people in a Square Root celebration. Entries can include creating the largest square root sign from people, serving rootbeer in square glasses to the most folks, or cutting many roots into squares (well, cubes) for a square root stew.
When Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were robbing banks in the 1930s, they became folk heroes because they fought against the Establishment as represented by the evil banks that many felt caused the Great Depression. When the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway movie about them came out in 1967, it happened all over again as the duo’s adventures resonated with the counterculture of the time. Almost 50 years later, the movie is still a rollicking action film. Let’s learn some trivia about Bonnie and Clyde.
2. FAYE DUNAWAY'S STAR-MAKING PERFORMANCE ALMOST DIDN'T HAPPEN.
Warren Beatty, doing double duty as star and producer, and director Arthur Penn considered many other actresses first, including Tuesday Weld, Jane Fonda, Natalie Wood, Sharon Tate, Leslie Caron, and Ann-Margret. (Back when he was only producing it and not starring in it, Beatty had also considered his sister, Shirley MacLaine, for the role.) Beatty said they were turned down "by about 10 women," though he would later say Weld was the only one they made a firm offer to. When Beatty met Dunaway, he didn't think she was right for the part, but he told her to meet with Penn, who he thought would think she was perfect. Beatty was right.
6. THE STUDIO THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO FLOP AND TREATED IT ACCORDINGLY.
Jack Warner, who measured films according to how well they convinced him not to leave the screening room to use the bathroom, hated Bonnie and Clyde. "That's the longest two hours and 11 minutes I've ever seen!" he reportedly said after seeing an early cut. "That was a three-piss picture!" (Also: "This gangster stuff went out with [James] Cagney!") Thinking they had a turkey on their hands, and despite a warm reception at a film festival in Montreal, Warner Bros. dumped the movie in drive-ins and second-run theaters in August of 1967.
The studio was wrong, and Bonnie and Clyde not only became a hit, but a classic. Read more about the movie in a trivia list at mental_floss.
