Did you know?

Hello and welcome to Eccentric Spheres for another movie trivia post.

Today, we're looking at ten interesting movie facts:

1. It's common for a director to shoot more than he needs but some took it a bit too far. Apocalypse Now has a running time of 153 minutes, but Coppola shot 230 hours of film. That's 1.250000 feet or 381 kilometers of film.
2. In the same vein, when Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A Space Odyssey, he allegedly shot 200 times the length of the movie. According to Wikipedia, 2001 is 142 minutes so that is 28400 minutes or 473.3 hours of film. In other words 19.7 days of raw film.
3. In 1939 Wuthering Heights was released, starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven. A then rather unknown actor called Vivien Leigh auditioned only to be told that the studio had no intention to cast “a nobody” in an important piece like Wuthering. Instead she starred in Gone with the Wind the same year. Gone with the Wind was nominated for thirteen Oscars, winning eight, including Best Actress. Wuthering Heights won Best black and white cinematography...
4. Daniel Radcliffe went through 160 pairs of prop glasses during the Harry Potter series.
5. In 2002, Stephen Spielberg went back and finished college after a 33 year break. As his student film, he handed in Schindler's List. You think they could have just handed him his diploma immediately and sent him on his way.
6. Pierce Brosnan played James Bond between 1995-2002, and during that time he couldn't appear in a non Bond film wearing a tuxedo. It was in the contract.
7. In the final scene of Grease (1978) Olivia Newton John wears skin tight black clothes. So skin tight in fact that she couldn't take off her pants. They were sewn on due to a zipper constantly breaking.
8. The original Fast and the Furious became a hit and spawned a long franchise but the during the filming, neither Jordana Brewster nor Michelle Rodriguez had a drivers license. Not even learners permits.
9. In Pulp Fiction when John Travolta has to inject Uma Thurman's character with adrenaline, the entire scene is shot backwards.
10. In Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio slams his fist on a dinner table and cuts his hand. In fact he cut himself for real but just kept on with the scene. The blood is real and the discomfort the other actors seems to feel is just as real.

There you have it, more amazing facts from the world of film. Until next time, have a great week!

Ookaaay....

So, this morning I discovered that I have some stuff that has to be handled now. Annoying but can't be helped.
I had a whole thing planned but no time to handle it today. Instead, enjoy these sketches and have a great week!

Stasi

Hello all you fine people!

A bit of a short one today since I'm feeling completely uninspired and the painkiller I took against my headache hasn't kicked in yet.

Still, you showed up so here is a documentary about the East German security police, Stasi.
Now, I haven't had time to watch this, so I hope it's good.

Direct Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQFJsOHI68


Until next time, have a good week and stay generally safe!

How not to design a game.

On Tuesday, last week, gaming news site Kotaku published a long article by Jason Schreier concerning BioWare's latest game; Anthem. He talked to 19 current and former employees and their tale is both sad and baffling.

Following Anthem's development was weird for me, personally. From the footage shown, you flew around in futuristic combat armors, sort of like Iron Man, and you fought some type of enemy, but that was it, that was all I could puzzle out. Was it an RPG? A Mass Effect style action RPG? A Battle Royale? No one knew and the only answers BioWare gave were even more confusing.

Thanks to Jason Schreier's article, it has now come to light that BioWare didn't really know either. Reading the article (and fair warning, it's long) was almost surreal. For fifteen years, the name BioWare stood for quality and excellence. They made games like Knights of the Old Republic (Kotor), Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1-3, Dragon Age 1-3... Not exactly small potatoes, you know?

But now? Mediocre performance to hot garbage, depending on who you ask.

The amazing talent that made the games I just listed are no longer with the company, they have in fact been hemorrhaging talent over the last few years. Management is in shambles, with executives believing in “BioWare magic” instead of listening to their developers. A toxic work environment and since they sold out to Electronic Arts, dumb decisions from above. It's actually kind of amazing that they produce anything at all, really.

If someone wants to make a sitcom about a dysfunctional game company in the vein of The Office, all they have to do is use Jason's article as a foundation for the script. It's that mind-boggling.

I highly urge you to read the article in full, but here are some highlights:

Anthem was in development since 2012 but it was actually made in a mere 18 months, as they kept floundering about, playing with concepts, designing by committee and constantly starting over.

Two weeks before E3 2017 the game was still called Beyond. They had shirts printed up and all. Then EA told them to change the name as they couldn't get the trademarks to work. They changed the name two weeks before they announced it to the world... Wow...

BioWare's main studio in Edmonton refused to listen to their studio in Austin, because they are inferior, somehow.

EA demanded that they would use the Frostbite engine, even though it's not an engine suited for this kind of game. Even though no one at BioWare really knew how to use Frostbite. Even though they were supposed to get lots of technical support and never really got it. The list of horror goes on...

At this point I'm sure you're starting to get the point and still it's actually worse. As I said, read it. Here's the link:

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

Well that's that. Until next time, have a great week!

April Fools...

Today is April 1^st, a day celebrated by some and reviled by others. Personally, I have never really liked it, as it's so hard to find a prank that is neither cruel or that raises false expectations, but still works.

But where does this somewhat bizarre tradition come from and where did it start? The short answer is, we don't know, but there are some speculations.

A fairly popular theory is that Chaucer referenced it in his classic Canterbury Tales, where Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox on “Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two ”. Some take this to mean March 32^nd or April first, but it could likely be a translation error with the actual meaning being 32 days after March, or May 2^nd. The jury is definitely out on that one.

However in 1508 the French poet Eloy d'Armeval referred to “poisson d'avril” or Fish of April, which could well be the earliest surviving reference to April Fools Day. This is commonly held to be connected to a calendar change where the new year was placed on January 1^st instead of the old March 25^th. It then became fashionable to play pranks on the fools who held to the old calendar.

In 1686, John Aubrey mentions the first British April Fools Day, calling it “Fooles holy day”, and in 1698 people were fooled to go to the Tower of London to see lions being washed.

In 1769 the London Public Advertiser claimed that it was righteous to punish people who forgot that Noah sent out the pigeon to find land after the flood, by sending them out on a fools errand. Make of that what you will.

This is what we know of the history in a nutshell, but did you know that April Fools Day is celebrated in different ways and even times depending on where you are? Here are some examples.

In the UK and most countries that got their modern culture from there, custom held that April Fools pranks were only acceptable before 12 am. Anyone playing a prank after midday was himself considered the fool.

In Ireland the traditional joke was to trick a person into delivering a hoax letter, and in order to avoid being the fool, they then had to pass on the task to someone else and so on.

April Fools was so important in Poland, and the officials and the media would get so into it that the Polish anti-Turkish alliance with Leopold I of April 1^st, 1683 was backdated to March 31^st just in case no one would take it seriously otherwise.

In Italy, France, Belgium and the french speaking parts of Switzerland and Canada they still often call it April fish. (see above). Apart from the commonplace fake news stories, it was popular to try to attach a paper fish on someones back without them noticing it. Much like the old “kick me” sign.

Finally, in Spain, Hispanic America and the Philippines, the day in question is actually December 28^th, know as Day of the Holy Innocents.

Of course, whether you like the pranking or not is up to you. The most important thing is that no laws are broken, and that no ones feelings are seriously hurt. Try to be safe.

That's that. Join me again next time, and for today, believe nothing!