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Comments and opinions expressed on THE KNIGHT SHIFT are those of Christopher Knight and not necessarily those of subjects discussed in this blog, of advertisers appearing on it or of any reasonable human being. Any correspondence/irate letters/lawsuit threats/Nigerian e-mail scams can be sent to theknightshift@gmail.com.
Smurf on the smurfy link above for more shots of Azaria as Gargamel, who in the film chases the Smurfs into modern-day Manhattan. This looks like it's gonna be a fun movie! I shall have to smurf it when it comes out :-)
A hunter named Charles Olsen has been hit with a $7000 fine after being found guilty of violating game and wildlife laws, after illegally shooting and killing a bear.
It's how Olsen led the unwitting bear to its doom that particularly raises eyebrows: with a trail of donuts.
Charles Olsen, 39, who has been nicknamed the 'Pastry Poacher', was found guilty of violating game laws after he lured the creature with the sweet treats and illegally shot it.
He first attracted the attention of a Game Commission Wildlife Conservation Officer when he was spotted driving his truck, which was loaded with pastries, on a highway just one week before the start of bear season.
Charles Olsen was fined after luring the bear with doughnuts and then shooting it.
The wildlife officer then reported Mr Olsen's truck license number to bear check stations.
Officer Cory Bentzoni is quoted as saying: 'Being that we were so close to bear season, seeing that person drive by with an unusual amount of pastries was like watching an individual go down a row of parked vehicles testing each handle to see if it would open.
'Something just didn't seem right.'
In addition to the fine, Olsen is also looking at losing his hunting privileges for the next three years.
I can't figure out why the cops at the donut shop weren't already suspicious of him to begin with...
"We know who you are." That's the message from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue in this spot - paid for with the tax dollars of Pennsylvania citizens - that obviously has but one purpose: to SCARE us.
Who exactly is "we" here? And who is "you" intended to represent?
Has our government really become so divorced from the people it's supposed to be comprised of and represent, that it has now resorted to active measures of intimidation?
Here. See for yourself...
This is not freedom, people. This is blatant tyranny. This is everything that the Founders and too many others since their time have fought against and far more than that. And if I were a resident of Pennsylvania, I would be mad as #&@$ at the state government there for this. It indicates way too much else gone screwy, not just in Pennsylvania but across this country.
As V said in V for Vendetta: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
Rose Cutuli Wray, our abundantly effervescent director for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of The King and I, has just informed me that in addition to playing Phra Alack (the King's secretary), that I have been given another role as well.
From her e-mail...
Also you have been chosen to be one of our 5 ballet ninja's for Small House of Uncle Thomas. No dancing is necessary, but you will be doing numerous things in the ballet.
A "ballet ninja".
A "ballet ninja"?!
What the...?!?!?
I have no idea what this means exactly, and with a name like "ballet ninja" I'm rather scared to contemplate upon it.
But hey, this is art. The potential silliness is temporary but the show is forever!
I couldn't resist posting a lil' vintage Vanessa Redgrave (one of the most talented actresses in the history of anything) from the film version of Camelot to celebrate the occasion!
It's almost a half-century later... and we still don't have that personal one-man sub! Or domed cities on Mars. Or cars with interchangeable bodies. Or robots to decorate our Christmas trees.
Relief pitcher Charlie Kerfeld asked for and received 37 boxes of orange Jell-O as a bonus when he signed a new contract with the Astros in 1987. Roy Oswalt got a shiny new bulldozer for helping his team get to the World Series. A.J. Burnett required the Blue Jays to give his wife eight round-trip limo rides per season from their home in Maryland to Toronto when he signed as a free agent five years ago.
Those are just a few of the wacky stipulations that professional baseball players have demanded or agreed to in their signing contracts, according to this entertaining lil' article at CNN.com. One thing that I didn't know until reading this: Michael Jordan was still getting paid by the owner of the NBA's Chicago Bulls when Jordan tried his luck at baseball in the early Nineties. Why? 'Cuz Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf was also the owner of Jordan's baseball team :-)
Well done guys! All the more praiseworthy given your present location. I just hope that this won't become an issue when it gets to be time for your next evaluation :-P
As much as I have come to loathe remakes in general - for reasons which I will get to shortly - and even knowing that my opinion is probably going to be in a solid minority, I must confess that I was pleasantly surprised by and rather quite enjoyed the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
What's my beef with remakes? It's like this: I can always tell when a movie project rehashing of an earlier successful film is being overly-driven by the pursuit of excess lucre. Look at Clash of the Titans: no I haven't seen its remake yet but I've heard nothing but unbelievably bad things about it (and even worse about it, ahem, "3-D" version, but that's a rant for another time). And then there are films like Peter Jackson's adaptation of King Kong: the movies that don't put the potential for dollars in front of the product's quality on the list of priorities.
What's the difference between the two? What qualifies a remake as being "great" as opposed to being "irredeemably baaaad? It's whether the director, the writers, the entire production choose to remain faithful to the spirit of the original.
And that, I believe Samuel Bayer and his crew have done with Platinum Dunes' retelling of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
This movie hails back to the tone and vibe that Wes Craven evoked in the original movie all the way back in 1983, before Freddy Krueger developed from a demonically-empowered dream-stalkin' homicidal child molester into a character plagued with self-parody. Freddy Krueger 1983 was scary. By the time Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare came out eight years later, Freddy was even being aped on the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And as much as I loved the concept of the Elm Street universe and its central character, it was enough to make me cringe...
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 isn't like that. Its Freddy Krueger (played by Jackie Earle Haley, inheriting the hat and sweater from the original series' Robert Englund) is not the Freddy who cracks too many corny jokes before killing you with cockroaches or comic books or a Nintendo Power Glove. Haley's Freddy Krueger is about revenge and murder... and then he'll go for the laugh. In the same way that Heath Ledger's Joker had that "it's funny but it's also not funny" aspect of his character in The Dark Knight.
I guess that's what I appreciated most about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2.0. This movie marked the return of Freddy Krueger as a primal avatar of the natural forces of fear. Which in my mind is the best way to handle Freddy as a character.
Overall, this movie is a smart update of the original's concept. All of the classic elements are still here: Freddy's claw rising out of the bathwater, the rhyming girls playing jump-rope, the parents hiding a terrible secret... But it's also a movie that isn't afraid to change things up some. Freddy's backstory is changed significantly: in the 2010 version he's not a child murderer in his mortal life. But I still have to nod in approval to what scribes Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer have come up with. And I have to say something about the score (composed by Steve Jablonsky, which y'all who've been following this blog already for a few years know how much I love his work :-) as well. If 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street had the familiar "Elm Street theme", I can't recall it. Jablonsky has delivered a fresh and terrific score that is totally in keeping with the atmosphere of Springwood, USA while at the same time not retreading the music of the original series. I'll probably be buying the soundtrack if it's available (and if it's not, no I won't be doing an online petition again, sorry. It's just have too much else going on at the moment :-)
I saw this movie in a packed theater last night at midnight along with friend and fellow blogger Steven Glaspie. And it's been awhile since I've seen an audience react with that much genuine terror and serious screaming at what's happening up on the screen. And we happened to overhear a number of other people saying that they enjoyed it. I doubt it'll ever hold the same place as the original series and its mythology, but I for one wouldn't mind seeing two or three more of the "new universe" of Elm Street movies. But not more than that: this movie was infinitely better than the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween... but I don't want it to become another Saw series either.
So if you want a fun springtime popcorn flick and wanna feel good 'n scared, leave your preconceptions in the parking lot and give A Nightmare on Elm Street a shot. I think you just might be quite surprised by it as well.
E-mails have flooded (pun shamefully intended) into my box since early Tuesday morning asking "Have you heard about Noah's ark being discovered on Mount Ararat?!"
I've been following this story from the time it first broke. And I've been pondering it a lot, wondering what exactly to make of it, before adding my own two cents into the discussion at large...
In case you've missed it, a group of Chinese and Turkish researchers are claiming to have found a massive artificial wooden structure on the slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey: the place which depending on how you translate the original texts, was the place where the ark of Noah landed after the worldwide deluge recorded in the Book of Genesis (some argue that it should translate into the "mountains of Ararat", making the possible location of the Ark anywhere between Turkey and Iran).
Now, people have been looking for Noah's Ark for literally hundreds of years. Reports of sightings have been documented throughout antiquity. Even during the twentieth century there have been stories about it being spotted from afar (and not a few who said they walked on its top decks), including some admittedly very curious aerial photographs. But so far, nobody has come up with solid physical evidence of the ark being there.
I've heard 'em all over the years. So when I first read about Noah's Ark Ministries International out of Hong Kong, you could have immediately colored me skeptical.
Except that these guys arrived with something that to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever produced before. Namely, photographs, wood samples, and full-color video.
Here's the problem I have with it however: as well-meaning as Noah's Ark Ministries International likely is, they should not have full-bore declared with little uncertainty that they have found the biblical boat. It would have been much more professional and scholarly if they had announced to the international community that they had discovered strong evidence of a man-made wooden structure on Mount Ararat, and then proceeded to allow their findings to withstand rigorous academic scrutiny.
Which leads to my next point: we don't know where exactly these photographs and video footage were made. However, I definitely could understand if the group wants to keep it under wraps for the time being, lest the site become contaminated (or worse, vandalized). But at some point they must be prepared to come forward with the location, and open it up to further study: both organized and independent. That isn't being mistrustful of the explorers' claim at all. I like to think that it's trying to validate it.
So that said, I'll make this commentary for the time being: assuming that Noah's Ark Ministries International has (a) located something that is indeed on Mount Ararat, (b) it can be determined that the site and its evidence has not been planted, (c) operating without the pre-conceived notion that this must be Noah's Ark...
...what then is it that they have found?
Because if the group is being absolutely honest with us, they have discovered something on Mount Ararat. Whether or not it is Noah's Ark or not, it will still be an amazing archaeological find!
And even if it isn't the ark of Noah, it won't alter the matter of my own beliefs one way or another. The historical witness and far more than that has already in my estimation more than confirmed the greatest and most central tenet of my faith: that God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son to free us from the burdens of sin and legalism. Our faith is founded on things yet unseen, not those things which we can behold with our eyes.
But that said: I'm still gonna be keeping my eye on this story :-)
I hope these kids understand that emergency first aid in the real world is kinda hard to do while running around the landscape looking for medpacks.
The Boy Scouts of America is now offering a Video Games merit award for its younger members: those who are part of the Tiger Cubs, Cub Scouts and Webelos Scouts. There are actually two awards: the Video Games belt loop (one of those metal belt ornaments, which I always thought were pretty innovative) and an academics pin, which is earned after getting the belt loop. Among the requirements for the decoration: "Teach an adult or a friend how to play a video game", "Play a video game that will help you practice your math, spelling, or another skill that helps you in your schoolwork", and "With an adult’s supervision, install a gaming system" (click here for the full list of requirements).
Now, I love a good video game as much as the next person. But being an Eagle Scout and having been a Cub Scout before that, I have to say that this is about the silliest thing that the Boy Scouts of America has done in a great many moon. And lest y'all think that I'm being old-fashioned or a "stick in the mud", consider this: there are already awards in Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts for things like computer skills. So one for video gaming is plenty redundant. What's next: a merit badge for Facebook and Twitter skillz?
In addition to Video Games, the Boy Scouts are also rolling out awards for Disability Awareness, Family Travel, Good Manners, Hiking, Hockey, Horseback Riding, Kickball, Nutrition, Pet Care, Photography, Reading and Writing, and Skateboarding. I can see at least two on that list that are not only fun to do, but very strong skills that can follow a young lad (or young lass, no male chauvinists we!) into a life of productive success. Seems like the Cub Scouts could be doing more to encourage early forays into things like that.
(But then, who knows? One of those Cub Scouts might grow up to be the next Ken Levine or Cliff Bleszinski...)
This is part of the PowerPoint presentation that was shown to General Stanley McChrystal and other United States military officers leading operations in Afghanistan. It's supposed to clearly and concisely diagram why the situation there is so dire.
No wonder...
McChrystal, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, quipped that "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."
Few words when spoken by a politician or associated sycophant should raise the red flag of alarm more than the word "comprehensive".
(I heard it used a few minutes ago on the Fox News Channel. Per my longtime observation of such matters, whenever anyone in elected office or the "mainstream" press uses the word "comprehensive", 99.999% of the time what it really means is "there's more bullsh-t going on behind the scenes than you seriously want to know about...")
I'm still not entirely persuaded that this wasn't a planned stunt. Like last week's to-do about the 4G-equipped iPhone that some Apple engineer, ahem, "drunkenly" left in a bar. Sure got the Intertubes abuzz about it, aye? So yeah, mark me down as being in the "planned marketing conspiracy" column on that one.
Nearly a full quarter-century earlier, something similar happened to another American mega corporation. That time it was The Coca-Cola Company. On April 23rd 1985, executives announced that the original, world-famous Coca-Cola formula was being retired. Seems that the "old Coke" wasn't cutting it anymore in the "cola wars" between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. So the time-honored Coca Cola was to be put to pasture. In its place we would be getting something called "New Coke".
Witness anew what is arguably the lowest point of the illustrious career of Bill Cosby...
"Better than ever"?? I still remember the one time that I tried to drink New Coke. It tasted like crap! What were you thinking, Bill?! We trusted you! And Coca-Cola betrayed us! No Jell-O Pudding for you.
With a wrathful vehemence not seen since the Cabbage Patch Kid riots of '83, Coca-Cola found itself besieged with angry phone calls, letters and organized protests. Three months later then-CEO Roberto Goizueta announced - via a televised spot with all the gravitas of an Oval Office address - that the crisis was ending: the old Coca-Cola was coming back as "Coca-Cola Classic".
And within days of hitting shelves again for the first time, sales of original Coca-Cola soared. Coca-Cola Classic fast eclipsed sales of Pepsi. To this day, Coca-Cola remains the best-selling soft drink in the world.
How could it not have? By that point in the summer of 1985 Coca-Cola dominated much of the pop cultural discussion, both here and abroad. People were talking about Coke like they had never talked about it before.
New Coke by itself was a business failure... but New Coke did make people want the original Coke like never before. New Coke pulled off what had never been done on this large a scale before: it created genuine demand for something that was already so successful it didn't need demand.
I don't care what the "official" documents say: I'm fairly convinced that the New Coke fiasco in my book was brilliant and quite intentional psychological marketing. Not completely convinced though. Wanna know why? Because it does bother me, that the mass of people can be manipulated by something so simple. And so part of my mind doesn't want to acknowledge a great fear that history and human nature have perhaps confirmed too many times already. But anyhoo...
If you want to know more about New Coke, which we got ambushed with twenty-five years ago this week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a good write-up about it, including how Coca-Cola is now chronicling the New Coke episode at the World of Coca-Cola.
(If nothing else, it has to be said that New Coke was a product so bad that it made Billy Beer taste good.)
