Much of Today’s Issue
And we’ll lead with a story from The Ringer about the visual effects from TWISTER, a film that, released in the same summer as INDEPENDENCE DAY, was a combined ten Halloweens worth of candy mainlined into 9-year old me. It ushered me out of the JURASSIC PARK-induced dinosaur phase into a “wouldn’t it be neat to follow tornados?”/meteorology phase. While I’m a little too risk-averse to go actually go out and live the life of a storm-chaser (for a great look at that, read The Man Who Caught the Storm), TWISTER is a snapshot of quite a few actors who would go on to greatness, including Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton and a very youthful Philip Seymour Hoffman to boot. The article does a great job articulating the challenges of creating the twisters from scratch, as the team at Industrial Light and Magic had no existing assets to base their work upon, though I don’t buy that the filmmakers didn’t anticipate people loving the flying cow come on now.
WATCH THIS: EXTRACTION - available via Netflix
Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) just wants to die, won’t you please let him die? That’s the driving motivation behind EXTRACTION, a goofy, fun film that fulfills the promise of the *NOUN* HAS FALLEN franchise, in that it sends a jacked man out into the world to knife and gun murder enough non-Americans to spend several eternities in the Hague.
The film, based off a graphic novel written by Ande Parks and the Russo Brothers (The last two Captain America and Avengers films), sees Tyler Rake, a mercenary with a very obvious death wish, contracted to recover the son of a local gangster from a rival, with only half the population of Bangladesh to stand in his way. It turns out that the rescue mission is itself a trap, as the boy’s father doesn’t actually have the money to pay Rake, and intends to kill him after he completes the Hard Mode portion of festivities. This in turn pits the other half of Bangladesh against him as well, and thus begins gratuitous knife-death. The action itself is fun, and while Hemsworth doesn’t have too much to do besides be incredibly glum all the time, he sells everything well enough to get you to the next neck snap or headshot, and that’s about as much as you need from films of this genre.
Speaking of Industrial Light and Magic, this Wired article isn’t especially recent, but it is a great history of the visual effects pioneers who got their start with STAR WARS.
In a case of reality outstripping the imagination of comedy, this fella at a re-opening rally in North Carolina was spotted with a (likely) no-joke bazooka inside a Subway.
A group of about 11 mostly-armed demonstrators protesting the stay at home order marched around downtown Raleigh and ordered sandwiches at a Subway. #Covid_19 #ncpol #MealTeamSix
In a better world these people would be ostracized out of normal society, maybe given an island to relive their dollar-store Call of Duty fantasies until the sea gets to them.
On the flip side of those freaks, here’s something wholly good: a donkey being used to carry baby goats down a mountain, record-holder for most adorable transit system on this rock .
This is a thread from a possible real-life Uncle Who Works At Nintendo, about the challenges of localizing the latest Animal Crossing game for the English market. I’ve already gone on at length about the game, but the timing of its release did allow it to achieve a cultural awareness that’s an order or two of magnitude more than it might have otherwise, and it’s been interesting to see all the various corners of the internet warm to its simple charms.
In wrasslin news, this weekend saw the release of the first in a five-part documentary series about The Undertaker, far and away the longest-lasting performer currently in the WWE. Titled The Last Ride, early reviews are that it offers more truthful insight into its subject than the Michael Jordan series The Last Dance, which I think has benefited from the complete vacuum of sports (Korean baseball notwithstanding). To commemorate the occasion, ESPN ran an interview with Mark Calaway, the real-life man behind the robe, on his thinking behind pulling back the curtain on a character that, up until this point, he’s played without ever really breaking.
Finally, to close out, two videos: the first, a great use of some green-screen outtakes from ATTACK OF THE CLONES:
And the second, a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the “cowbell from ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’” of our generation:
