Did you know?

Here we are, Monday morning and it is time for more Eccentric Spheres.

Today we look at fun facts from around the world, mostly because it's been a long time since I did that.

So, sit back and enjoy.

Did you know that the simple strawberry is in the same family as roses? And that it's not actually a berry at all? In fact, the strawberry is a so called aggregate accessory fruit. The watermelon on the other hand is a berry, as are tomatoes and bananas.

That the Kennedy family has money is hardly a surprise, but did you know that JFK's upbringing was so privileged that he didn't know about the Great Depression until he read about it in college, even though he grew up in it?

Most of you are probably familiar with a small Mexican cartoon mouse called Speedy Gonzales. What you may not be familiar with is that Cartoon Network banned him for being racially insensitive until the League of United Latin American Citizens insisted they bring him back, since they considered the mouse a cultural icon.

Fred Flintstone and the other characters live in the town of Bedrock. There is a Bedrock in Colorado, and they get so many letters addressed to the Hanna-Barbera figures they had to make a separate stamp that says “Return to sender – Fictitious Cartoon Character."

Originally, Superman couldn't fly. Thus the 'Able to leap tall building is a single bound'. Later on, the animators thought it looked stupid and petitioned to let him fly instead.

When WWII ended, the Russians partied so hard Moscow ran out of vodka.

Back in the day, Adriana Ferrarese del Bene was a very popular singer, but Mozart despised her for her habit of lowering her head on low notes and raising it on the high ones. So he wrote a song with multiple quick alternating highs and lows, just to ”see her head bob like a chicken.”

When We Are The World was being recorded, Stevie Wonder informed arriving singers that if they didn't get the song on the first try, he and Ray Charles would be driving everyone home.

The reason why Bic has a hole in their pen caps is to eliminate the risk of suffocation if the cap is accidentally inhaled.

Apparently, spiders have a taste in music. An experiment at Miami University showed that when rap and techno was played, the spider moved their webs as far away as possible, but they moved closer when Bach was played. I feel the same way...

There we go, ten things you might not have known. Until next week, take it easy!

My who is a what?

Time for another blast from the past. Enter:

My stepmother is an alien (1988).

What we have here is a pretty typical 80's comedy, starring Kim Basinger, Dan Aykroyd, Jon Lovitz, Alyson Hannigan and many more. This movie was also Juliette Lewis' first movie appearance and we get a very young Seth Green, but this was not his first.

So if you've never heard of this film here's the synopsis:

Aykroyd plays a scientist involved with the search for extra terrestrial life or SETI. He accidentally sends a signal way further into space than intended, and an alien shows up. The alien, Celeste (Basinger) is desperate to recreate the signal or her planet is doomed. Comedy and romance ensues.

At it's core, this is a kind of dumb movie. The plot is simplistic, boy meets girls, fall in love, solve problem, happy ever after, the end. But, it's also charming, innocent (when it want's to be), well made and funny. The way Celeste tries to understand how we do things and how our society works is hilarious, and Basinger did an amazing job with her expressions and reactions, in essence she is the movie.

The other actors are good, but Aykroyd is Aykroyd, like he kind of always is, and the others do what they are supposed to do. Basinger shines. There is a scene where she speed-reads a few books, and with no words, she show you all her emotions is seconds. Stellar work, pun intended.

Some of the scenes are cringy by moderns standards, but I'd say it holds up quite well. The effects are surprisingly still pretty good, even thirty years later. The dialogue is also pretty good at times, but you have to pay attention to find it.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend doing so, just leave your expectations in another room and have yourself a good time.

Until next time, have a wonderful week and don't contact aliens. Unless that's your job.

What did I just watch?

Last night, the wife and I watched a movie that while not good, was sadly interesting.

Today's topic is Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter (2017).

This is where I normally put in the spoiler warning, but I can't. Not really, as I don't actually understand the film. Sure, the title is just as corny as the film and it is a sci-fi action flick, but the story? Eh... Okay, let me go back a bit.

This is what I know: a robot AI is wiping out humanity. And there's space travel, worm holes, an attempt at exploring transhumanism and what it truly means to be human and alive. There's action and drama, special effects...

Sounds pretty good right? It wasn't and that is what makes me sad. At the core of RW:RF lurks a really interesting story, a story that if properly told, could become a classic in the sci-fi genre. But as it stands, it's a wonder if anyone is going to watch it, and it is such a shame.

There are so many problems with this film but we'll start with budget, what little there is of it. Now don't think I'm ragging on low budget movies here, because I'm not. My go to for a good low budget movie is Outpost (I wrote about it ages ago). If you have no money you have to work around it, and to be fair, sci-fi is the absolutely worst genre to go cheap on. You can film a horror movie in a darkened room but sci-fi action demands a little bit more. And in RW:RF it falls completely flat. Sad to say, the action scenes are not good. I'll just leave it at that.

They did a decent job with props and some of the green screen / CGI is alright, but it doesn't always work that well.

The cinematography is easily the best part of the movie, and as the writer/director Neil Johnson got his start directing music videos, it's not that odd. Some of the panning and panoramic shots are awesome, but since most of the scenes are filmed in deserts and other barren places, there's not much to look at.

The acting. Some people on IMDB say that the actors suck, but I disagree. Keep in mind that no actor can shine through bad direction. Natalie Portman (she's not in this movie) is a good actor, but if you judge her solely on the Star Wars prequels, you'd never say so. George Lucas has many talents, but directing people is not one of them. It's the same way here. Most of the actors are probably going to spend their careers in the direct-to-dvd pile, and that's fine, but they could do better.

Finally, the biggest, most enormous, glaring problem: the cutting. My wife and I both got the feeling that they filmed way too much and then ran out of time, and in desperation cut and glued together what they could to avoid the wrath of the investors, leaving a confused pile of spaghetti and disjointed scenes. I have no proof here, it's just a theory, but the end result is a mess. Scenes are interrupted by three second snippets that mean nothing. Entire plot points are mangled and torn, and if you want any kind of cohesion in your storytelling, look elsewhere.

Example with genuine spoiler:

The main character, Sienna gets hold of a dagger and shows it to a friend (I think). The friend explains that there is a planet near the galactic core that holds a super weapon that can wipe out the evil AI. With me? Cool. Sienna then sits on a hill and says she needs him and that she wants the codes. Shortly there after. Sienna and her “friend” Blister head off in a space ship, and she explains that they are busting him out of space jail. Blister objects and gets threatened with violence. They use the codes to gain access to land on the space-jail-station. Then a door opens and he says 'nice to see ya'. All three shoot at some security bots, plant a tiny bomb and in the next shot fly away from the exploding station.

Did that make any sense? With twenty minutes more footage, it might have, but as it sits it's mangled garbage. To really hammer it home, he also known as Skullcrusher, swaggers about a bit, has a three second sex scene with Sienna and then promptly gets killed. Makes. No. Sense.

Long term readers will know that I don't like to speak ill of others hard work, but Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter could be good, and it frankly pisses me off that it isn't. A remake with a proper budget and a more experienced director is in order, or better yet, a TV series that has time to explore the deep subjects of transhumanism and the soul.

Well that's enough ranting for me. Until next time, have a great week!

Heroes of another kind.

Okay, time for another classic movie. And another on that I have missed, somehow.

Today we're looking at Kelly's Heroes (1970).

Billed as a war-comedy, and filmed in former Yugoslavia, this movie stars Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Don Rickles and Carroll O'Connor and more. So a pretty good cast all in all. Yugoslavia was chosen as the shooting location because they still had WWII armors in use, particularly old American Sherman tanks.

The plot in a non-spoilery way is this; Private Kelly (Eastwood) finds out that the Germans have a huge pile of gold squirreled away in a small french town. He convinces his platoon to go get it since they have three days off. As extra help, they are joined by Oddball (Sutherland) and his crew of three shermans. The rest is spoiler territory so, watch it yourself to see how this goes.

What really confused me, is the comedic aspect. There were a few scenes that I found a bit funny, but there wasn't a single scene that made me laugh. I'd say the horrors of war and the pain of seeing friends die far outweigh the humorous elements. That said, it's an excellent film. It wonderfully produced and have in spades what a good war movie needs: Destruction.

They blew the hell out of their set pieces, which is good since you never get the same visceral felling from a bunch of guys firing blanks at each other as you do when a building collapses in smoke and fire.

The actors are of course amazing. Did you expect anything else? But the music is strange. Very 60's-70's, which adds a strange feeling to many scenes. At the end of the day, I'd have to say I liked it, but I don't think I'm ever going to watch it again. Give it a shot and see what you think.

That's that. Until next time, have a great week and stay away from Tiger tanks.

Murky business

Okay, so today we're doing something a little different. Today we're talking about ink.

No, not the stuff inside pens or the bottle you dip your quill in to write poetry on parchment with. We are looking at printer ink.

If you google “most expensive liquid” you'll find things like human blood ($1330 per gallon), Chanel No. 5 ($23.300 per gallon) and King Cobra venom ($135.500 per gallon). No problem, expensive stuff, but did you know that black printer ink clocks in at around $2380 per gallon?

So what? I hear you ask. It's expensive to produce, so of course it costs a lot. But that's not the truth. The fluid that costs more than human blood is actually very cheap to produce. I'll link a video below that I highly recommend that you watch. In it you'll learn that a tech company that sells ink cartridges for $59.95 spends no more than $00.23 to produce them. That is not a typo by the way. The ink costs 23 cents to produce, but they sell them for 60 dollars.

If you go to a shop and look around, you'll quickly see that the printers usually costs the same as the ink. You can of course spend a lot more for a high quality printer, but most home printers hover around the $60 mark. The companies actually sell them at a loss in order to sell you ink. Much like razor companies sell the razor handle at a loss, but mark up the changeable blades a great deal. The video goes in to more detail about this, so I'm not going to repeat it all here. That would be pointless.

The actual point is that the entire printer ink business is essentially a scam. Your printer may actually be programmed to waste ink or to lie to you about how much it has left. The question is of course why we allow it. And that is a very good question. I have no answer, but I do know that the first step is to spread information, and that's what I'm doing. You should too.

Alright, enough of that. Here's the direct link if you're reading this by email:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHX6tHdQGiQ

And with that, I'll see you all next time. Until then, have a spotless week!