Even the dog seems baffled by this guy’s wife’s ability to anticipate his every thought:
Link: https://youtu.be/0oKk8ygH3Iw
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Link: https://youtu.be/0oKk8ygH3Iw
by Link: https://youtu.be/0oKk8ygH3Iw
by A parent trying to encourage a baby to say “Mama” by offering a treat, and the family dog wants in on the action:
Link: https://youtu.be/I_zW6APE1qQ
Update: This video was made private for a while, possibly in an effort to discourage its being swiped by jerks. Downloading somebody else’s videos and re-uploading them to a different YouTube channel is something talentless people do to try to get more subscribers.
(In case you’re wondering if I’m guilty of something similar here, I assure you I’m not. I make an effort to embed the original video whenever I can figure out where it is, not a re-upload. The original YouTube Channel can disable embedding, but usually an embedded video benefits the video’s legitimate owner by increasing the number of people who see it — along with any pre-roll or superimposed ads, which brings them a little income — and people who like the video can click through to subscribe to the channel. Other video sites, such as news organizations and Comedy Central, typically authorized embedding as well for similar reasons.)
It has since been made public again, but in case it’s again made unavailable, what it shows is a baby being coaxed to say “Mama” by offer of a spoonful of food, while a very earnest-looking dog standing next to the baby and wanting food a well woofs and eventually says, quite clearly, “Mama.” The baby then takes umbrage at the dog’s greater success and tries to push the dog away.
by Remember Hitchbot, the hitchhiking robot mentioned in a previous post? A few days ago it was vandalized in Philadelphia and its creators, a couple of professors in Canada, have decided it is damaged beyond repair. Meanwhile, an unlikely “surveillance video” allegedly showing the vandalism turned out to be an infantile fake created by a couple of Internet wannabe celebrities, and there is speculation that they might also be responsible for the real vandalism.
The good news is that a second try at Hitchbot is planned for next year.
For more see this article at Ars Technica, this one from NBC News, and the Hitchbot website.
by One of my numerous character flaws is a tolerance for cheap laff-a-minute parodies, which is why I sat through two parodies of The Hunger Games. This one is slightly worse than The Hungover Games, though it has its moments and really isn’t hugely worse than, say, the bulk of The Interview. The lead actress, Maiara Walsh, is quite appealing, and I was glad to see on her IMDb page that she’s been in a lot of better movies and television shows. In fact, a lot of the cast rises above the material.
Writers-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have made a number of movies skewering various film genres (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck) and were also part of the writing team for the original Scary Movie. According to IMDb, this is the first of their films to be a box-office flop, though one IMDb commenter thought it was the least awful thing they’d done.
One segment features a team of lookalikes for major action stars (Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Bruce Willis, et al), and the actors in question reportedly got along so well during the filming that they now hang out together and call themselves The Expandables.
Link: https://youtu.be/r8yOSMspR1k
by A lot of doctors favor tort reform — limiting patients’ right to sue — as a way to reduce the cost of malpractice insurance. There’s also a tendency to order unnecessary tests to cover themselves in the event they are sued, something often called practicing “defensive medicine.” Both are sometimes cited as a reason U.S. healthcare costs are so high, but in reality those costs are a small fraction of the total. (It isn’t insurance industry profits and executive salaries either, though the unbelievable complexity of U.S. health insurance and billing does add a huge amount of waste to the system.)
But malpractice costs aren’t trivial either, and here pediatrician Aaron Carroll (who has an obvious personal interest in the topic) describes research going back decades that shows that what really helps reduce malpractice costs, much more than tort reform or defensive medicine, is communicating better with patients. That, and being honest with them.
Link: https://youtu.be/pm6kmaGuQe0
See also Dr Carroll’s article on the subject for The New York Times.
Incidentally, years ago I read that anesthesiologists has once had some of the highest malpractice insurance rates of all doctors but had managed to get those costs greatly reduced. They achieved this in a very clever way. They got together and decided to figure out how to kill fewer patients.
Speaking of being honest with patients, back when I was in the Navy and stationed in Charleston SC I had wisdom teeth so severely impacted that two dental surgeons performed oral surgery on me. It was so complicated they ran out of hands and I volunteered to run suction myself. (This was under local anesthesia.) At one point the guy with the scalpel said, “Oops.” I said, “Ooh?” He said, “I just cut a little more than I meant to. I’ll have to give you a couple of stitches.” He then admitted he probably shouldn’t have said “Oops” and told me he used to have a dental assistant who would say things like “Ooh, Doctor, look at all that blood!” OK, maybe it’s possible to be too honest.
by This is the sort of film that’s more fun for the cast and crew than the audience. The premise: What if the characters from The Hangover and its sequels suddenly found themselves competing in The Hunger Games against their counterparts from various other film genres? It’s predictably dumb and obscene but better than the third Hangover film, not that this is saying much. A couple of the actors who stand in for the Hangover stars are virtual Doppelgängers for the originals.
The opponents they’re forced to battle include imitation Muppets, an oversized and anatomically correct (except for the fuzziness) version of the teddy bear from Ted, reality-show housewives, topless soft-pore corn actresses, Django, “Gay Thor,” and several characters originally played by Johnny Depp. Katnip from the Hunger Games is here as well, played by the highly appealing Rita Volk, who deserves better roles.
The cast also features some moderately familiar if not A-list stars including Jamie Kennedy (in three roles), Tara Reid, and Bruce Jenner. The reality-show housewives are played by actual alumnae of The Real Housewives of Beverley Hills, including Kelsey Grammer’s ex-wife Camille.
Caitly Wachs, who plays a parody of Stephen King’s Carrie, was apparently a hit with the rest of the cast for her willingness to spend days covered in uncomfortable fake blood while remaining sweet and good humored except when on camera, when she was abruptly terrifyingly scary until the director called cut, whereupon she was again instantly pleasant and cheerful. I know this only because I sat through the brief making-of documentary accompanying the film, mainly to see more of Rita Volk.
I have a fairly high tolerance for dumb parodies, so I derived some amusement if not a lot of laughs from this, but I don’t really recommend it unless you’re feeling blah and don’t want to watch something that’s actually good for fear you won’t appreciate it.
Warning: The trailer is way better than the movie.
Link: https://youtu.be/-zwtZgV3_hQ
by The first film in the series was an OK dystopian science fiction adventure aimed (like the trilogy of novels the films are based on) primarily at an adolescent audience, but this sequel is quite a lot better, with more depth and complexity, and not incidentally placing additional demands on the actors, especially the star, Jennifer Lawrence, whose excellent performance adds humanity and nuance.
The story is set in a future America ruled by a central metropolis called, with arrogantly bad spelling, The Capitol. In continuing punishment for a rebellion against The Capitol 75 years earlier, each of the country’s 12 districts is required to send one male and one female teenager as “tribute” to battle to the death in the annual Hunger Games, a multi-day combination gladiatorial contest and reality television show. Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) survived last year’s Games—hardly a surprise if you’ve seen the poster for this film—and became hugely popular in the process. At the start of this film she’s sent on a victory tour during which she gradually realizes that she’s become the focus of a revolutionary sentiment building among the populations of the districts, especially the poorer ones.
This rather annoys head bad guy President Snow (Donald Sutherland), so to discourage rebellion he orders a zero-tolerance crackdown on even the mildest dissent (beatings will continue until morale improves and that sort of thing), and he threatens her loved ones to get Katniss to cooperate in distracting people from their grievances.
She responds not with predictable heroic defiance but as a real human being desperate to save herself and her family and friends, which makes her later heroism all the more believable and admirable.
This was the top grossing film of 2013, and it’s surprising to note that the previous box-office winner to give top billing to an actress was The Exorcist in 1973, and the last one to focus primarily on a female protagonist was The Sound of Music in 1965. There’s probably no precedent among box office winners in the science fiction or adventure genres.
Link: https://youtu.be/MkvUNfySGQU
by This is the first of a series of movies adapted from a popular trilogy of young adult science fiction novels by Suzanne Collins, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gary Ross and Billy Ray.
Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) lives with her mother and little sister in a dystopian future version of the United States, now known as Panem (as in the Roman expressions panem et circenses — “bread and circuses”). District 12, where Katniss lives, seems a lot like 1930s Appalachia in terms of incomes and technology, both presumably limited by the central dictatorship as a means of control. Katniss hunts with a bow and arrow, selling what her family doesn’t eat, in order to supplement their rations and meagre income.
There was a rebellion seventy-some years before the start of the film, and ever since each district has been required to send an annual “tribute” in the form of a two teenagers, a boy and a girl, to take part in the Hunger Games, a multi-day televised fight to the death that ends with a single survivor. Each district’s tributes are chosen randomly (though some volunteer), and families earn extra rations by entering their children’s names into the lottery more than once. This is one reason Katniss hunts—to minimize the risk to herself and her sister of becoming a tribute.
Of course, Katniss becomes a tribute anyway, so it’s fortunate she’s a good archer. She and her male counterpart travel by luxurious bullet train to Panem’s capital city, which the tyrants insist on calling “the Capitol,” just daring you to say something about their spelling. In the Capitol the tributes are housed in luxurious quarters while undergoing training. Pretty much everything in the Capitol is luxurious, but to make up for it the residents are forced to dress like toy poodles.
Woody Harrelson is a hard-drinking former Hunger Games champion from District 12 whose job it is to mentor Katniss and her male counterpart. He’s not happy about it, probably from experience, given that District 12 rarely produces winners.
There’s not a lot of depth here, but there are some nice touches. Some tributes form temporary alliances and even friendships. Some are reluctant, some pretty much pure evil. The male tribute from her district claims to have long had a crush on her from afar, but she suspects he’s lying, and in any case the rules say that at most one of them can live (and she already has a boyfriend).
It’s not a great film but it’s not bad either, and in spots it’s emotionally affecting. Two sequels have been released with a final installment coming this year.
Link: https://youtu.be/mfmrPu43DF8
by What if Doctor Who were a Japanese production? It might look something like this:
Link: https://youtu.be/eak26ohx1Y8
Bonus: Tina Fey, Jane Krakowski, and Tituss Burgess lip sync to Beyoncé on a flight. Why are may airline trips never this cool?
Link: https://youtu.be/wVC–n46J74
by James Franco plays the not-very-bright host of a popular celebrity interview show. Seth Rogen is his producer and best friend but regrets not having followed his dream of being a serious journalist. But then he scores a journalistic coup: It turns out that North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, a big pop culture fan, watches Franco’s show on satellite and is willing to be interviewed live and in person in Pyongyang. Not only are Franco and Rogen delighted, so is the CIA, which concocts a way for them to assassinate Kim with a slow-acting poison.
Randall Park plays Kim Jong-Un, which Kim should probably find flattering. Lizzy Kaplan plays a hot CIA agent and Diana Bang is the stern North Korea propaganda official Rogen finds himself lusting after even though she never smiles and earnestly insists that Supreme Leader Kim lacks a lower orifice since his excellence precludes any need for him to poop.
As you no doubt recall, North Korea threw an international hissy fit on learning of this film and theater chains canceled bookings in response to terror threats, but public outrage led to Sony’s releasing it on schedule (as a Christmas movie yet).
Some cynics have suggested that the studio might have engineered at least some of this, because the film probably wouldn’t have done as well financially on its own merits. That might be giving them too much credit for cleverness.
James Franco is mainly annoying, though he has his moments. Seth Rogen (who also co-directed with Evan Goldberg) has most of the funny bits, and there are enough to keep the film from being downright bad if not sufficient to make it good. That assessment seems shared by most reviewers, though at least one (Drew McWeeny at HitFix) found the film “laugh out loud funny all the way through” and another (Scott Foundas at Variety) called it an “alleged satire that’s about as funny as a communist food shortage, and just as protracted.” Even the fratboys who might be the film’s target audience are apt to be disappointed, perhaps even outraged, by the tiny amount of screen time allocated to breasts.
Link: https://youtu.be/KpyVENBPj5c
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