It is an interesting idea, that the Kerrigan-Harding situation, and Tonya herself, were different from what we came to understand at the time. It will take a bit of a shove to get me to not think Harding was an utter asshole, but that is what the movie apparently purports.

Have a look at this discussion:

To be honest, I’m skeptical about the whole idea, but, at the same time, hearing what Allison says in that clip causes me to put that aside and go see the film with an open mind.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

The graphic above is the budget breakdown for the film, indicating what has already been invested and what the Kickstarter campaign will fund. Here is a note from the film’s team:

With just over one week left in our campaign, we wanted to show you how your contributions, if our project is successfully funded, will affect the production of our film.

Your support enables us to finish building our sets, create the first ever live-action Bothan, bring practical, tangible effects to the film, and provide comfort and a place to rest for our cast and crew to stay in top shape throughout the production of the film.

In order to make this project a reality though, we need your support now more than ever, as we enter into our final week tomorrow.

Spread the word on social media, and share our page with friends and family. Chances are, someone you know is a Star Wars fan! Show them what we’re trying to accomplish, and encourage them to contribute even as little as $1. The more backers we have, the more popular our project becomes, and the better chance we have of bringing this tribute to Star Wars to life, and having you all along for the ride.

Remember – if our project does not reach it’s fundraising goal, we receive none of the funds, and this film can’t be made.

Strap yourselves in…. Time to make the jump to lightspeed.

– The Recompense Team

So, here is the kickstarter you are looking for.

A New Star Wars Fan Film

And that is the setup for The Recompense, a Star Wars fan film directed by Ben Enke. “Making a Star Wars fan film has been unlike any experience in independent filmmaking for me so far,” Enke mused. “Upon receiving permission from the Star Wars ?gods themselves at Lucasfilms, we immediately began to feel a responsibility to ensure that the content we were producing was of the highest quality.”

The Recompense will will develop the seedy side of the Star Wars world, relating the characters’ past and present to produce a futuristic film noir.

The screenplay is written by Conrad Flemming, though with a great deal of feedback from the others involved in the film. Flemming told me, “I did write the script, but felt it was more of a collaborative effort, as many fans, filmmakers, authors, and friends provided feedback for each draft I turned over to them for review. I wanted to get it perfect, because this is Star Wars after all, and we’re being watched closely.”

The lenses have a slightly radioactive coating made with Throium. “Upon doing more research I discovered that Canon also made still photography lenses (SLR lenses) that had this same coating. The still lenses work beautifully and cost a fraction of the cinema lenses cost, so using them was a no-brainer,” Duncan told me. “The next step was to find a vintage anamorphic lens that would help solidify the look to match as best we could the look of the films we all loved growing up. Once I found that, all the pieces fell in place and we were able to achieve a look that we were all very pleased with and that is, in my opinion at least, very close to Blade Runner and the other late 70’s and early 80’s sci-fi masterpieces.”

I asked director Ben Enke what technologies Star Wars fans might be looking for are used in the film. He told me, “our most obvious one would be our spaceship, which has a fully functional cockpit with all sorts of buttons and switches that are operable. We have a crotchety old Clone War vulture droid built into the ship that you’ll never really get a chance to see, but he’s definitely part of what gives our ship some personality and life, and he’s fantastic.” Regarding weapons, Enke said there are “plenty of blasters (some really cool ones being developed for this, particularly a modular gun that serves as a few different weapons), and there may or may not be a vibroblade battle! But definitely no lightsabers. That was a very conscious decision by myself and Conrad, based on previous fan films that overuse lightsabers to death.” Screenplay writer Flemming added, “Ben and I decided early on, since this was taking place in a time when the ‘Jedi are all but extinct’ there wouldn’t be a whole lot of lightsaber battles taking place in the middle of city streets and in back alleys. Ben and I each had specific shots we wanted in the movie that ultimately got cut from the script. Ben wanted our hero to shoot a thermal detonator out of the air, and I wanted our villain to fly around on a speeder bike.”

Enke also told me, “we’re developing some original tech as well, based on the kind of planet and environment we’re going to be in. Ord Mantell, which is the planet that this entire film takes place on, has rain, and it rains all the time, so we’re coming up with some neat tech that plays into that aspect of it.”

One of the most interesting aspects of this film is how it is being made. Aside from the selection of period radioactive lenses to create a vintage look and feel, the film makers have built sets with a higher than usual degree of interactivity with the actors, and created actual alien prosthetics rather than using motion capture or green screen suits. They make creative use of rear-projection screens to simulate different environments.

You can help make this film, as it is being crowd funded on Kickstarter. There are a number of cool rewards, including early access packages, an autographed DVD with the original soundtrack, original concept art, your rights to name a character, and props and costumes. At the highest level, you can have the Greasy Mynock itself. See this page for more details!

The final production will have a 45 minute runtime, and will be shown in 15 minute segments on the internet. Enke also hopes to show the film at various Conventions and similar venues.

Here’s a tease:

And, if you are interested in some more Sci Fi, check out my novella about an elusive African Ape, aliens, Bigfoot, and the origins of the Skeptics movement: In Search of Sungudogo.

Here is a short film by the same production house, TruHaven Studio, “Three Card Draw”:

Meanwhile, back in the Atlantic Ocean, Tropical Storm Ana has formed, nearly three weeks before the official start of the Atlantic Hurricane Season. A few days ago Ana was a disorganized disturbance (I’m talking about the storm here) and now Ana is a full on tropical storm tracking the very warm Gulf Stream. Winds are steady at 60 miles per hour, gusting to 70.

From the National Weather Service:

Deep convection has increased somewhat near the center of the storm, and SFMR observations from the Air Force Hurricane Hunters continue to support an intensity of 50 kt. Ana will be moving over the cooler waters to the northwest of the Gulf Stream later today, and water vapor imagery shows a belt of upper-level northerly flow advancing toward the tropical cyclone. The decreasing sea surface temperatures and increasing northerly shear should cause Ana to weaken as it nears the coast. The official intensity forecast is similar to that from the previous package, and very close to the latest intensity model consensus, IVCN.

The initial motion estimate is 320/3. The track forecast reasoning remains basically unchanged from the past few advisories. Global models continue to predict that the blocking mid-level ridge to the north of Ana will shift eastward and weaken over the next couple of days. These models also show a broad trough moving from the central to the eastern U.S. over the next 72 hours or so. This should result in the cyclone turning northward and north-northeastward with a gradual increase in forward speed. The official track forecast is similar to the previous one and in good agreement with the latest dynamical model consensus, TVCN.

Hey, good news, the NWS is implementing the long-ago announced policy of GETTING RID OF ALL CAPS!!1!! Meanwhile, Ana the Storm is expected to strike the coast of South Carolina, and/or North Carolina, tonight. The storm, once over land, will turn northeast and make its way back out to sea off Delmarva, and eventually menace, a little, southern New England. The middle of the storm will probably be crossing the Carolina coast about 8:00 AM Sunday, and what is left of it will be re-joining the coast and the Atlantic early Monday.

See Also: The Physics of Superheroes–Jim Kaklios

My Great Aunt Tillie spoke of experiences, as a child, with poltergeists. When I had the mumps my grandmother sprayed me with holy water. We had a special cross on the wall with a compartment in the back of it holding holy candles, holy water, a bone chip of a saint’s femur, and instructions for both Extreme Unction and Exorcism. Just in case. We were trained not to use those rites but to meet the priest at the door carrying the candles, lit, inserted in the handy holes in the back of the cross, where we would say “He’s in there” pointing to the room with the dead person, or demonically possessed person, in it. As needed. The Rite is framed by these two rites, the Last Rites first and the Exorcism last. You’ll understand when you watch it. Nobody had any saint’s bones, though.

My appreciation for this sort of drama is helped by the fact that I grew up down the street from the grave of Hattie the Hitchhiker, and within sight of the famous Baptist Church where a woman’s hair turned white when the priest giving an unscheduled mass turned around and turned out to be the priest who had died the previous week, and just a few blocks from both the Ghost of Russel Sage and the Ghost of Cherry Hill. Ghosts overlap with Poltergeists, and Poltergeists overlap with Demons, and it was Demons what possessed Anthony Hopkins in the new movie The Rite.

Well, actually, it was one demon in particular, and one of the better ones. One you know. But I won’t tell you who because that would be a spoiler. I guessed before he was forced by the power of Jesus and stuff to reveal it. See if you can too!

The Rite is done just like the Exorcist. It is supposed to be real. They tell you in the beginning that “The story you are about to see is based on real events” and the tell you at the end “So and so now lives in Chicago and is an official Exorcist, and so and so still lives in Rome and has performed 2,000 exorcisms.”³ In between these truthy bookends is a tour de force of demonic activity, unrequited romance (he is an almost-priest after all), freaky family business (specifically, undertaking), and subtle but good special effects. And one mule with red eyes.

The central theme of the movie is the atheism of the younger of the two main characters, the almost-priest. And it is annoying that the movie ends with his atheism firmly denounced and his faith in the Catholic God affirmed. Well, he had to do that in order to defeat He Who’s Name is … (nope, I’m not telling). Yes, it was annoying, but that is the price one pays to watch a good possession flick.

So if you like movies based on The Dogma, this one has it’s strong points including some modernized dialog. If not, you might try something funnier, like my favorite Catholic movie ever made (Dogma).

The Rite, directed by Mikael HÃ¥fström, staring Colin O’Donoghue, Anthony Hopkins and Ciarán Hinds. At local theaters. Bring holy water.

¹That one was for you, Bug Girl.
²Like the one about the Cherub, the Sebalim, and the Tapsarim that walked into the bar …. Also, see footnote 1.
³It isn’t real though. They actually tell you that in the fine print after they tell you it is real. I wonder how many people miss that.

In fact, it was so icy this morning that my father in law had to tape sandpaper to his feet to make it down the driveway to get the newspaper. I think that was a very clever idea but I’m not sure the local newspaper is worth it these days. They always seem to have the same stuff, a day late, and are often out of touch with any reality I’m currently participating in. For instance, they ran a piece the other day listing a dozen of the “best little known” places to eat in Minneapolis. I’d eaten in most of them, and a few, more than a few times. Does that make me a little known eater? I’m not sure, but I am happy that they did not discover the truly little known places that even I don’t know about but still eat at now and then.

Anyway, about the movie. This is the seventh of eight in a series of seven, the last one being the last book split in two parts, of the Harry Potter story. I’m glad they split this one into two parts. I think they should have split the last one into two parts as well. In fact, more than half of the movies they make from books should probably be split into two parts.

People who like movies will like this a lot. People who tend to not like the movies they’ve seen will find much to complain about. Harry potter movies, since the first one, seem to assume that we’ve read the books, and this one does so to the Nth degree. That actually allows the movies to be better than they otherwise might be. Like the ideal classroom lecture on a complex subject, where you’ve assigned 100 pages of reading and know that everyone has absorbed that material and fully understands it, and has formulated just exactly the right questions in their minds that will provide the motivation for enthrallment in the day’s lesson.

But enough fantasy, let’s get back to the movie.

I laughed, I cried, but that was mostly in the parking lot before the movie and in regards to driving conditions. The movie itself was, indeed, a Harry Potter tear jerker. By this time in the story, not everyone is surviving every scene (that started in the last book IIRC). There is real adolescent angst going on among Harry, Ron and Hermione. It was most shocking to see a nude sex scene involving all three of them (am I giving too much away?)

To calibrate, we watched the first Harry Potter movie last night. This latest one is an order of magnitude better, if only because the ability to make good special effects has actually improved a great deal during the course of these few years. Also, as you know from reading the books, the pace has changed considerably. That’s not good or bad, just notable. The first 25% of the first movie is all about getting a letter delivered. The world as we know it changes once or twice during the first 25% of this latest one.

The movie was the best of the lot so far, but only of value if you know the story and have seen the other movies. There is no question that you’ll be seeing it if that is the case, so I have no interest in trying to persuade you one way or another. The real question that remains is this: Of all the characters, which one aged most since the start of the series? Here’s my list, most aging to least

1) Snape
2) Ollivander
3) Hermione
4) The Twins
5) Ron
6) Harry
7) Everybody else

My interest here is in looking at how things African are depicted in movies and other aspects of popular culture, especially historical events and “traditional” cultures. (I am not an expert on modern African studies.)

I will write about that at another time: Suffice it to say that at this point it is obvious that the overall pattern of divergences from historical (probable) fact in the movie can be best understood in reference to the by then well developed African in Western Eyes trope. One of the more blatant divergences is the invention of a person who simply was not present at the event (interestingly, there seems to be only one significant example of this in the movie) and it is “the young white woman” without which no Western movie about Africa would be complete.

Anyway, in reviewing these Wikipedia entries, I noticed that the Wikipedia process has it’s own pattern, including a preponderance of (amateur?) military historians at the keyboard who are unable to leave a single fact unturned no matter how insignificant, and a nearly complete lack of proportion so that very important facts get glossed. In addition, if you are Black or African, don’t expect your dead to be honored like the white dead will be. Shame.

And so, this all inspired me to make fun of Wikipedia with the following parody:

The following is a brief characterization of World War Two:

• Japanese Imperial, German Nazi, and Italian Fascists, and others, formed an axis intent on taking over large areas of the world.
• They were opposed by British, French, Soviets, American and others who formed an alliance.
• The main part of the war, involving numerous military forces, lasted about five years, and the total death toll from fighting and ancillary strife reached tens of millions.
• Notable was the attempt by the Nazis to systematically exterminate the Jews and some other groups, a project which resulted in the death of about six million people mainly in death camps.
• The war changed the global map of nations, the world’s economy, and gave rise to movements and organizations intent on making sure that large scale war of this type would not happen again.
• The allies won.

The following is a brief characterization of World War Two after the dweebs who write and edit Wikipedia get hold of it:

• Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, is the common name for the country of Germany while governed by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) from 1933 to 1945.
• Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich) denotes the Nazi state as a historical successor to the medieval Holy Roman Empire (962-1806) and to the modern German Empire (1871-1918).
• A major part of the German military was the Schutzstaffel.
• While a multitude of uniforms existed for the SS, often depending on the theatre of war where they were stationed, the all black SS uniform is the most well known.
• The very first SA uniforms and insignia were paramilitary uniforms fashioned by early Nazis which incorporated parts from World War I uniforms to include such features used by other Freikorps formation such as high boots, daggers, and the kepi hat.
• Nazi Germany had two official names, the Deutsches Reich (German Reich), from 1933 to 1943, when it became GroÃ?deutsches Reich (Greater German Reich).
• For the Japanese Army, the Type 3 Officers Uniform, was introduced in 1943 and was similar to the Type 98 but was made of cheaper materials.
• There were many helmets
• Adrian helmet – As with many countries, the IJA adopted and produced the French Adrian helmet.
• There were war crimes.
• Type 92 – The Adrian helmet was later replaced by a Japanese designed helmet called the Type 92 (1932).
• Six million Jews and others were exterminated by the Nazis.
• Type 90 – was like the cork helmet issued by the European imperial powers.
• Up to nearly 80 million people died as a direct result of the war.
• Type 92 – This was a cork version of the Type 92 steel helmet.
• The US marines came to their own as a major military force during this war.
• The Marine Corps dress uniform is an elaborate uniform worn for formal or ceremonial occasions.
• The marines attacked Guadalcanal on August 7th 1942.
• During the ensuing battle, over 10,000 marines were wounded.
• The dress uniform for the US marines has used a single brass button on the sleeve since 1923.
• And so on and so forth

Saw the strangest insect thing we’ve seen in a long time. A wasp of some sort was covered … the entire body but not the head was covered … with little tiny things that looked like mites or itty bitty spiders or ticks or something. They were two or three thick over the wasp’s entire body. On first seeing this, I thought it was a wasp covered with bubble-bath. When Amanda first saw the insect staggering among old flooring debris, she thought it was a large drunken bumble bee, and not the lightly built wasp that it was.

(Added: It may not be a wasp. It is kind of hard to tell, being enveloped in several layers of tiny organisms and all.)

We put it in a jar so we can figure it out later.

We all sat down to watch a movie last night after a long day of prying and pounding and cutting and dragging stuff. The Informant, staring Matt Damon. I was the only one who did not drift off to sleep before the end, so I was the only one that saw the film to its rather bizarre conclusion. The movie is about one of the first major anti price fixing suits of the modern era, in the 1980s and early 1990s. It reminded me of a conversation I had with someone back in the 1970s, before any of that happened. He was an economist who worked for the international organization representing paper pulp manufacturers. He told me, with a few drinks in him and with a little too much hubris, about how price fixing worked in his industry. Apparently, he was more or less in charge of fixing production and pricing internationally for pulp manufacturers (or, at least, head organizer of this effort). He told me that the regulators would actually watch them at their international meetings (I did not know if he meant overly or covertly), so the representatives of each major pulp producing company would play it totally cool and do nothing about production and price fixing at said meetings. Then there would be a private golf game, at which the representatives of the various manufacturers would fix the prices. He was very proud of how he outsmarted to cops. I wonder if he ever got caught? Anyway, the movie was interesting, I recommend it.