I enjoyed ELEVATION.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, March 02, 2025 - 04:37 pm: Edit

FORCE OF IMPACT
Free on YouTube with Antonio Sabato Jr.
Another low-science/high-fiction movie, with a script by people who dropped out of scriptwriter school during the first semester.
Every astronomer in the world is watching a gigantic meteor they all know will miss Earth. Only one (with a new kind of telescope) detects a second smaller asteroid sneaking in behind it. She calls the Air Force Operation Safe Skies but they don't believe her, order her to shut up, and assign two spooks to follow her and keep her from telling anyone (as opposed to just locking her up). She secretly meets a disgraced officer who was kicked out of Operation Safe Skies.

It seems that Air Force Operation Safe Skies has a secret laser able to deflect the asteroid. (Light has force?) But the laser never worked because the disgraced officer sabotaged it to keep it from being used as an offensive anti-city weapon by the Air Force, which was using the money from Operation Safe Skies to build offensive weapons after the Cold War ended and there were no more offensive weapons being built.

Then the scientist gets a secret message and away we go....

The script has serious problems. Here is one. Vehicle 1 carrying hero A and hero B leaves point X followed moments later by vehicle 2 carrying hero C and hero D. They arrive at the secret laser gate minutes apart. (They get through the gate by an over-complicated operation when they could have just shot the guards.) Hero A then orders Hero D to join him and Hero B in vehicle 1 while Hero C struggles to push button to lock down the gate. Vehicle 1 then arrives at The Building where hero D is directed to wait for vehicle 2 to arrive with Hero C. (Why didn't Hero C stay in vehicle 2?) Meanwhile, Hero A enters The Building with Hero B and armloads of stuff, one item of which is a suitcase which he leaves by the window on the way to The Control Panel with Hero B. Heroes C and D then enter the building, where Hero D goes to The Control Panel while Hero C goes to the window and opens the suitcase to reveal a sniper rifle he will use to keep the good guys from entering the gate. Why didn't Hero C just keep the suitcase with him the entire time?

I think they overcharged for this movie.

At least Garth and Chuck will be thrilled to learn that the Air Force now has corporals who are all assigned as gate guards.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Monday, March 03, 2025 - 10:46 pm: Edit

The laser deflects asteroids by heating the asteroid's surface and ejecting material, creating thrust that changes the asteroid's trajectory.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, March 04, 2025 - 03:07 pm: Edit

Well, in the real world, sure, but in the movie, it blew the asteroid to pieces in less than a minute.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Tuesday, March 04, 2025 - 05:07 pm: Edit

Well then, that's different.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 01:41 pm: Edit

In 2023, Bumble changed their policy that women make the First Contact, because women felt it was too much work....
This week, ran across a video, with Bumble announcing that members could create an AI membership, where the members AIs would have date to consider whether the actual man and woman were compatible to date...

Wasn't enough of the video, to know whether it was a joke or something actually serious...

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 07:00 pm: Edit

I think somewhere Douglas Adam's made a joke about answering machines for phone calls we don't want to take, and VCRs for TV we don't have time to watch; I forget what his rule-of-three capper was, AI for dating we don't want to do will work.

By Oliver Dewey Upshaw III (Oliverupshaw) on Friday, March 07, 2025 - 12:32 pm: Edit

I went and saw “My Dead Friend Zoe” this past Tuesday and thought that it was a good movie. It has Sonequa Martin-Green, Michael Burnham on Star Trek: Discovery, in the role of a person who has lost a best friend that she made while serving in Afghanistan. While Zoe haunts her she has to deal with her own life falling apart and her Grandfather, played by Ed Harris, suffering from early Alzheimer.

I thought it was a good movie and would encourage people who go to see it to stay through the credits to see interviews with the cast and crew as well as a little back story on the real life events that the movie is based on.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, March 16, 2025 - 10:29 pm: Edit

YOU'RE IN THE NAVY NOW
Free on YouTube, a "war movie" staring Gary Cooper from 1951
Someone we never see convinced the Navy's civilian leaders that his genius design for a super-heated steam engine would give the Navy's ships a 10-knot speed boost. The Navy officers, ordered to test this out, install it on a sub-chaser. The crew has only two men who have been to sea before (the two chief petty officers); everyone else is a draftee or a 90-day officer who has never been to sea. Gary Cooper, an engineer from Rutgers University who knows a lot about steam engines, is picked to command, having never been to sea. The struggle is that the engine works and delivers the promised power, but consumes distilled water. (It boils the water for steam and recycles it, losing a little all the time. To compensate, an evaporator is installed to desalinate and distill sea water and replace what is lost, but it just cannot keep up. The officers struggle to pull the crew together and make the engine work, having various misadventures along the way.
It's an interesting film (for me, a military engineer, anyway) as a class in leadership, technology, clever work around tricks, and seeing how the Navy (or any military) pulls together when a war starts and the size of the force expands ten fold in a few weeks.
The movie was a money-loser at the box office, partly because it could never really decide if it was a serious drama about civilians in uniform doing their best or a comedy as the civilians in uniform try to understand that they are "in the Navy now" and have to perform to save their country.
An example: Gary Cooper gets orders to get the ship away from the dock and take it to a different dock and right away. None of the officers have any idea how to drive a ship, but they all read the instruction book. One officer says "I don't know how, but they can't shoot me for trying." Gary Cooper says "Don't be so sure."

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, March 16, 2025 - 10:51 pm: Edit

The movies was also released under an alternate title:

“The U.S.S. Teakettle.”

The list of co stars is stellar. Charles Bronson, Jack Webb, eddie Albert, about twenty others (most credited, some not.)

A number of late ww2 and post war ships appear in cameo.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, March 16, 2025 - 11:12 pm: Edit

Another movie to check out (also free on you tube) is “air force”, a 1943 film about a fictional B-17D bomber that was on its way to Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

I forgot who stars in it, but there were a number of veteran and new actors, Harry Carey senior, john Garfield, a number of others.

Also on you tube, the Museum of the pUnited States Air Force (which owns the B-17D used in the Movie “Air Force”,) announced three days ago, that the swoose goose aircraft is now scheduled for full restoration. (Estimates vary but comments on the you tube link are talking about a 2 1/2 year restoration process.)

Later model B-17 model parts, while rare and hard to get, are still available, but this model aircraft was the last of the 299 model aitframe B-17s, prewar production. No power turrets, no tail gun position, no ball turret.

I am not aware of any still flying original B-17D examples, and apparently, this particular aircraft will be unique in that it was a unit of the last prewar produced B-17s in a museum any where.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, March 30, 2025 - 07:25 pm: Edit

DISNEY/ABC VS FCC
I am going to mention this here so that anyone interested can go find all the info they want. We won't be discussing it here.
Disney and ABC (parts of the game company) have been notified that the FCC is investigating (and has already decided what it will find) ABC and Disney for violations of FCC codes and US law in discriminatory hiring practices. Basically, they took DEI a step too far when they said that 50% of characters, actors, and writers had to be from one (collective) list of groups of people based on race, gender, and whatever else instead of merit. It's good and proper (so the theory goes) to give minority groups of various types a fair shot; it's illegal to exclude hiring some groups to make space for others. Click baiters are speculating that ABC could be shut down and have its broadcast license revoked, but the obvious result is going to be a horrendous fine to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes, Colonel, we all heard you before, Go Woke Go Broke. I'll save you from saying it again.

Yes, Millady, we all heard you before, Trump is experimenting with novel and dangerous legal theories that could have wide ranging impacts that cannot be predicted but would certainly be awful. I'll save you from saying it again.

Move along now. If you want to find this story including a copy of the FCC's letter to Bob Eiger, it's all on line, somewhere.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, March 31, 2025 - 10:24 am: Edit

[I can always count on Mike G to be the first to ignore the rules.]

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, March 31, 2025 - 12:04 pm: Edit

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, March 31, 2025 - 04:08 pm: Edit

Probably no better place to post this, but looney toons had its last hurrah with the "the day the earth blew up' starring Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Petunia Pig guest appearance by the astronomer from an earlier episode, and a previously unseen alien. it appears to be the last hurrah as the Looney Labs building has been torn down with no plans to rebuild or make any more episodes and the existing files have apparently been destroyed as there is not perceived too be any value in them.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 03, 2025 - 07:48 pm: Edit

SNOW WHITE 2025: WOAT
IMDB rates the recent Snow White debacle as somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6 out of 10. The official worst movie of all time (before now) rates 1.9 out of 10, so as soon as the "bottom 100" ratings are renewed, Snow White will break into the list as the worst of all time.
It looks like Snow White will lose $350 million, not a record but BAD.
Is "the message" dead? Can we get back to real stories people really identify with and not woke girl boss movies that are indescribably bad?
Well, radar on the horizon says that "bad movies with no plot but at least without woke" will be coming for the next two years.
Meanwhile....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 03, 2025 - 07:52 pm: Edit

NIGHT AGENT on Netflex has dropped the second season and the third is being shot. It is brilliantly written, acted, and produced.
This is the story of "Night Action", a secret government agency that deals with corruption and counter-intelligence. Agents look into conspiracy theories that turn out to be real. Agents in trouble call a secret telephone number where lonely FBI agents working rotating shifts sit by a phone that never rings. Until it does, meaning an agent is in deep trouble.
The two seasons each focus on a secret plot of one kind or another. I won't want to spoil what it is but corruption and dirty tricks coming back to haunt the geniuses who did the dirty deeds are the order of the day.
The second season has a curious weak point when the UN agrees to hide a US scandal because the US has the UN twisted around their little fingers, a laughable concept in the world you and I live in, but it makes the plot work.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, April 04, 2025 - 09:27 am: Edit

You seen the Recruit about the CIA Lawyer? Over the top...

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Friday, April 11, 2025 - 11:29 pm: Edit

Someone posted a photoshop of AF-1 taking off, with Sharkteeth/eyes motif.....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, May 13, 2025 - 10:04 pm: Edit

READY PLAYER ONE
On HBO/MAX, this Spielberg movie is a two-hour fun romp with a plot that hangs together.
The world is a mess, but the really cool computer game OASIS allows people to escape reality. It's about the only thing people do for entertainment, and given the state of the world, entertainment is needed desperately.

The guy who built the game died but created a puzzle in which someone had to solve a bunch of challenges to crack the secret and win. The eventually winner would get ownership of the company and the ability to rewrite the game any way they wanted. Everyone on Planet Earth struggled to win (including teams of employees from other game companies) but no one could get past the first challenge, until someone did.

The result is a romp of a chase through the real world and the AI world.

The movie is packed full of references to other movies including Terminator 2, the Iron Giant, the Matrix series, and a lot more. You find yourself, over and over, saying "I saw that in ..."

But somehow it all fits together into a brilliantly written story.

By Steve Stewart (Stevestewart) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 07:02 am: Edit

The book is even better.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Saturday, June 28, 2025 - 10:47 pm: Edit

I'm watching Strange New Worlds for the first time and am watching S1E10 A Quality of Mercy.

Cloaked Romulan Ships attack Federation outposts. It reminds me of the Cap Log 43 Story "A Measure of Fear".

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Sunday, June 29, 2025 - 07:36 pm: Edit

It's also a decent redux of "Balance of Terror" in TOS.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Sunday, June 29, 2025 - 07:44 pm: Edit

A bit late, but in answer to SVC's question in this quote:

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Quote:

It seems that Air Force Operation Safe Skies has a secret laser able to deflect the asteroid. (Light has force?) But the laser never worked because the disgraced officer sabotaged it to keep it from being used as an offensive anti-city weapon by the Air Force, which was using the money from Operation Safe Skies to build offensive weapons after the Cold War ended and there were no more offensive weapons being built.

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By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Sunday, June 29, 2025 - 09:57 pm: Edit

A sufficiently powerful laser can also vaporize small amounts of material on whatever it targets, and the vapor provides far more force/accelleration than simple light presure would. This has been suggested as a way to clear debris from near Earth orbit.

If the asteroid makes a close pass prior to it's impact pass (likely for an actual impactor), then you can lase it during the close pass and get vaporization to generate a miss.