TV & Film

The World’s Smallest Movie

world's smallest movieThis tiny film doesn’t feature any big stars like Brad Pitt, or even any littler stars—because there literally wasn’t enough room for them. Instead, A Boy and His Atom stars, amazingly, just a few microscopic particles. Guinness World Records has declared the stop-motion-animated short film “the world’s smallest movie.” The 90-second film consists of a “boy” bouncing an atom-sized ball while dancing and jumping around. There’s not much of a plot but given the methods involved, it’s pretty incredible.

IBM scientists created the film with a “scanning tunneling microscope” that manipulated a few dozen carbon atoms placed atop a copper surface. First they had to chill the microscope to just above absolute zero (-450° F) because at a higher temp, the “excitable” atoms would have ignored their stage directions.

Iron Man vs. The Mandarin vs. Racism

Iron Man 3Surefire blockbuster Iron Man 3 gets the summer movie season going when it’s released tonight. The villain who will try to take down Tony Stark this time: The Mandarin, an original character from comic books of the 1960s. Fortunately, the blatantly racist, stereotypically Asian elements of the character have been toned down for the movies (and he’s played by Sir Ben Kingsley).

Here are couple other questionable—and offensive—comic book characters.

RIP Roger Ebert

Aw, rotten news:

Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 70.

His death was announced by The Chicago Sun-Times, where he had worked for many years.

Mr. Ebert’s struggle with cancer, starting in 2002, gave him an altogether different public image — as someone who refused to surrender to illness. Though he had operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, lost his ability to eat, drink and speak (a prosthesis partly obscured the loss of much of his chin, and he was fed through a tube) and became a gaunter version of his once-portly self, he continued to write reviews and commentary and published a cookbook he had started, on meals that could be made with a rice cooker.

Much more at the paper he wrote for for decades, The Chicago Sun-Times.

And he had a very funny and wise FaceBook presence, and the same on Twitter – where he was posting up until very recently.

Oh – just saw this: just two days ago Ebert announced that his cancer had returned – and that he was taking a “A Leave of Presence“:

When Celebrities Meet Bad Guys

Former NBA rebounding champion (and all-around weirdo) Dennis Rodman recently made headlines during an ill-advised trip to North Korea to meet its “Supreme Leader,” Kim Jong-un.

While this sounds like a PR stunt or an article from The Onion, Rodman isn’t the first American celebrity to associate themselves with dubious elements. Here are a few more examples.

Patty Hearst. After being kidnapped by a far-left revolutionary group calling itself the “Symbionese Liberation Army,” newspaper heiress Patty Hearst succumbed to the effects of brainwashing and Stockholm Syndrome and willingly helped the SLA rob a San Francisco bank in 1974. Hearst was arrested in 1975 and imprisoned for two years before her sentence was commuted by President Carter.

Four Weird and Oz-Mazing ‘Oz’ Facts

Oz: the Great and Powerful crashes into movies theaters today harder than Dorothy’s farmhouse killed a witch. Brush up on your Oz knowledge before you go see the movie.

Wizard of Oz• Published in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the first Oz book, and the basis for the classic 1939 film, but it’s not the first thing author L. Frank Baum ever published. Decades earlier, he was a chicken farmer, specializing in Hamburgs, a rare German breed. In 1886, Baum published a chicken raising guide called The Book of the Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise Upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs. (The Oz novels are much more entertaining.)

Lost TV Pilots & The Nat King Cole Show

Our Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader TUNES INTO TV, which had been a reader request for many years, has turned out to be a darn big hit. An excerpt from a review over at Amazon:

Some great articles here, there are brief histories on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS. Inventors such as Smirnoff and Farnsworth are given their due, and since modern day tv wouldn’t be where it is without them, it’s wonderful that they’re mentioned.

I really enjoyed their piece about the 1968 showing of Heidi, and the uproar it caused. I would recommend this book, for any up and coming tv historians who need to get a quick overview of the medium. It helped refresh my memory, and introduced me to a few stories I didn’t know about.

JThree
Williston North Dakota

Why thank you, JThree, much obliged.

We thought you might like a look at what’s inside this book, so here are two excerpts for your reading pleasure.

First, some TV pilots you may not have heard about.

“George Clooney Paid Your Bill”

From the Huffington Post:

As the customer finished his meal at Grill Royal restaurant and went to pay, he learned the $134.66 bill had been covered, UPI reported.

The waiter told him George Clooney was behind the gesture. The actor thought he and his friends, who were seated at the next table, had disturbed the man.

“That’s not true at all,” the man told Bild newspaper. “They had behaved in a very cultivated manner. I was stunned.”

Uncle John Says:

James Bond Exposed?

James Bond Exposed
From Flickr | By brava_67

Skyfall hit theaters in November so it should be safe to finally talk about a popular (but strange) fan theory regarding James Bond. (If you still haven’t seen the latest—and best-reviewed and highest-grossing—Bond movie ever, there’s spoilers ahead.)

Theory: There is no one real James Bond. “James Bond” and “007” are just code names used by multiple spies over the years.

6 People Who Rejected Awards

By itupictures on Flickr
By itupictures on Flickr

We’re right in the middle of Awards Season. Last month Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes were awarded, followed by the Golden Globes, and in the next few weeks, we’ll see the Emmys and Oscars. And while most artists and performers would be thrilled to get any one of these awards, there’s always the occasional grump who gets a prize from his/her peers and says “no thanks.” Here are a few prize examples of people who rejected awards.

Ving Rhames. In 1998, the actor won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a made for TV movie or miniseries for his title role in HBO’s Don King: Only in America. When he went on stage to receive his award, he turned it down, and, in the spirit of “giving,” gave the trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon, nominated for 12 Angry Men. Lemmon said it was “one of the sweetest moments of his life.” Rhames insisted Lemmon keep the award; the Globes’ governing body later quietly had a second trophy sent to Rhames.

But Wait, There’s More! (Infomercials)

They’re loud. They’re obnoxious. They’re mesmerizing. “Infomercials”— ads for silly household products have been a part of TV since the early 1970s, usually airing in the wee hours when ad time is cheapest. Here’s the story behind three memorable “as seen on TV” products.

Casey Affleck to Make Film @ Former Crack Addict MLB Player Josh Hamilton


Could be interesting:

EXCLUSIVE: Josh Hamilton’s rise from the depths of an addiction to crack to become the American League’s most feared slugger is dramatic enough to have been scripted. Sure enough, Hamilton has entrusted his rights to producer Basil Iwanyk and Thunder Road Pictures to be shopped for a feature that will be written and directed by Casey Affleck. Iwanyk has partnered with Kevin Walsh and The Walsh Company on the film, which he and Affleck will pitch to the town shortly.

RIP, Dick Clark

“America’s oldest teenager” has left us:

Dick Clark, the music industry maverick, longtime TV host and powerhouse producer who changed the way we listened to pop music with “American Bandstand,” and whose trademark “Rockin’ Eve” became a fixture of New Year’s celebrations, died today at the age of 82.

Clark’s agent Paul Shefrin said in statement that the veteran host died this morning following a “massive heart attack.”

We’ve written about Dick Clark a bunch of times, going all the way back to BR #2. The guy played a larger part in the ushering in of the Rock and Roll era than most people imagine. From USA Today, this morning:

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