THREADS: A British movie that will scare the hell out of you

Working on a few things behind the scenes, but felt like posting something tonight. And that's when I discovered that YouTube is hosting Threads.

Sure, why not.

I first saw this movie in July of 1986 but it wasn't until I was in college a long time later that I found out the title. We were visiting family in Florida and playing a game of Monopoly in our motel room with my cousins and we thought we'd put some TV on. It was a PBS station showing... some very dark and gritty film about nuclear war in England.

I was 12 years old. I soon lost all interest in Monopoly and became transfixed to this film. The image of the young woman chewing through her newborn baby's umbilical cord is something that has haunted me to this day.

Threads originally aired on BBC Two in Great Britain in September of 1984. That wasn't very long after the network ABC aired The Day After here in America. If you've seen The Day After, well that's mild compared to Threads. And that's sayin' something. I was 9 when The Day After broadcast and it made darn near everybody watching (which was, well... darn near everybody) turn white with fright.

Threads, however, is a far more gruesome beast.

I'm posting this because Threads is a fascinating example of Cold War cinema. That was a very different time for those of us who grew up during it. We were the last of the children who came up scared about nuclear holocaust breaking out at any moment. And it could have happened...

Why didn't it? I've no doubt that history will remember that communism in Russia, could not sustain itself. Its people wanted to be free. An unsustainable economy failing to provide for a citizenry wanting better is a perfect combination for a government's collapse. We can see that in hindsight perfectly. But at that time...

Well anyway, here it is: from British television in 1984, a horrific yet intriguing relic of a world that nearly was: Threads.

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Happy 80th Birthday to John Williams!

The Knight Shift and its eclectic proprietor wishes a VERY Happy Birthday today to composer/conductor John Williams!

This dude is 80 years young... and still composing some of the freshest-sounding movie scoring around!

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The Knight Shift has QR code!

Simply aim your smartphone's camera at this QR code and it will take you right to this blog!

Of course, since you're already looking at this blog, that kinda defeats the purpose of the QR code to begin with...

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You are your own best protection

A few days ago, roughly a mile or so from where I'm writing these words, there was a home break-in. A husband and wife were murdered. They are being laid to rest today.

I did not know the family, but I know lots of people who do. I have heard nothing but very good things about Doug and Ladonna French. They leave behind two children, including one who was at home during the robbery and barely escaped. As of this writing, no one has been arrested.

In light of this, I'm feeling led to say something that really shouldn't have to be said...

You really are your own best protection. No offense to the men and women serving in law enforcement, but in the real world they can't possibly be a 100% effective safeguard against criminal wrongdoing. Call 911 and it's going to be at least 5 minutes, in the vast majority of situations, before a sheriff's deputy or police officer can arrive at your house. A lot can happen in that time. A lot of bad. Happening toward you.

A person who is breaking into your house will not care about legal niceties. A person breaking into your house will not care about how much money it will cost you to defend yourself in court. A person breaking into your house will not care how many attorneys you will have to hire. A person breaking into your house will not care that you might get arrested for a firearms charge. A person breaking into your house will not care that you might be in jail for a day or so.

And neither should you.

You can always replace money. You can never replace a loved one. You can never replace your own life either.

It sounds cliche, but it's true: an armed society is a polite society. It's a documented fact that places with higher gun ownership by those with property enjoy statistically and considerably lower crime rates.

If anyone breaks into my house, I will defend myself and my loved ones, with deadly force. And I don't give a flying rat's ass how much it will personally cost me.

Remember folks: it is better to be judged by twelve than to be carried out by six.

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5secondfilms presents... COOKING WITH CRAZY!!!

In a perfect world, this would be a real TV show:

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THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN trailer is up!

All of a sudden, we have a huge fight at the box office come July between Batman and this guy...

Can't put my finger on it but... this seems spot-on Spider-Man, in all the right places. Now I love love love what Sam Raimi did with his 2002 Spider-Man flick. But The Amazing Spider-Man already seems darker, more serious a take on the Spidey mythos. Looking forward to seeing this. Along with The Avengers, 2012 is shaping up to be Marvel's year to shine!

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It's Super Bowl weekend!

Oops... I forgot. Am I even allowed to write "Super Bowl"? Might get hit by the NFL for copyright infringement by not calling it the "big game" instead.

Well anyway, no matter who who're rooting for tomorrow or even if you're not a sports fan at all, here's something we can all enjoy: Andy Griffith's classic comedy monologue "What It Was, Was Football", accompanied by George Woodbridge's illustrations from MAD Magazine!

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An observation about Susan G. Komen For The Cure and Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood shouldn't be complaining one measly bit about Susan G. Komen For The Cure dropping its funding.

After all, Planned Parenthood became something not wanted or needed... and so Komen gave it an abortion.

What? I thought Planned Parenthood was pro-choice. Komen made a choice. It chose to abort its relationship with Planned Parenthood. Komen has the right to choose, doesn't it?

And now a dozen or so senators are condemning Komen for what it has done to Planned Parenthood. I thought the government was supposed to stay out of people's private lives where pro-choice is concerned. Guess I was wrong.

Personally, I don't see how anyone with a shred of conscience can support Planned Parenthood. Its founder Margaret Sanger was a notorious racist and believer in eugenics. This has been well documented. Planned Parenthood was an organization intended to kill off minorities, the mentally ill and everyone else who didn't measure up to Sanger's ideal of humanity. How could anybody possessing a soul at all defend such a ghoulish group?

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Time to post something beautiful again...

So it's been a few months since my ravishingly beautiful cousin Lauryn got married. She had been The Knight Shift's official pin-up girl for a number of years and she did a magnificent job... and we all wish her well :-)

But don't y'all think that this place could use some more loveliness from my family? 'Cuz I sure can't offer any of my own!

So then, here is The Knight Shift's new pin-up girl: amazingly sweet, talented, beautiful, and one of the most wonderful young ladies in the Lord that I have had the pleasure of knowing: Rachael!

I know what some of y'all of the masculine persuasion are already thinking... and I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Rachael is taken, fellas. Not only that but her father (I was the ringbearer for her parents' wedding years ago) is like eight feet tall or something. So even if you get past me, you'd have your work cut out for you :-P

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"Although you shot at me twice before I left, I did not want to hear of you being hurt."

Jourdon Anderson was a freed slave who for thirty years had been the property of Colonel P.H. Anderson, a Tennessee plantation owner. Four months after the end of the Civil War, Jourdon Anderson wrote a letter to his former master, who had asked Jourdon to return to work on his farm.

Jourdon's letter was subsequently published in The New York Daily Tribune later that same month, and it then found its way into Lydia Maria Child's The Freedman's Book (which is enjoying republication this very week!). And now Jourdon's letter to his previous owner has been published at the Mail Online's website.

Y'all have got to read Jourdon's letter! This freed slave - who had to dictate it to a writer - uses better English than a darn lot of modern-day college students. And then there is the wit and irony that Jourdon employs... along with a considerable amount of great humor. It's not terribly long, but there are some real gems in Jourdon's letter. And the final sentence is a real zinger.

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"Popcorn Sutton the Moonshine Man"

The past several weeks have seen an exploding amount of interest in the life and art of Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton: the legendary brewer of moonshine. It will be three years next month that he left us... but Popcorn Sutton has gotta be smiling and laughing his butt off in Heaven at how his myth has grown down here on Earth! Ever since his family began legally selling Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey I've seen it going for $150 a jar on eBay. And then a few days ago Kellie Pickler introduced it to Ellen DeGeneres on national television, in a clip that simply must be seen.

Meanwhile, there are things going on behind the scenes that I've been sworn to secrecy on that... well, y'all will just have to wait and see how uberawesome this is all gonna be! I can tell you that the third annual Popcorn Sutton Tribute is set for Maggie Valley, North Carolina this coming summer and when I know more details I'll be sure to post 'em!

In the meantime, singer/songwriter Alonzo Pennington has written and recorded an awesome ballad about our favorite Appalachian moonshiner. So without further ado, here is... "Popcorn Sutton the Moonshine Man"!

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Just finished reading THE HUNGER GAMES

I began reading Suzanne Collins' novel The Hunger Games, as it turned out, a few day before Mom passed away. It took me awhile to get back to it but I picked it up again a coupl'a nights ago.

I thought it was a most excellent and enjoyable read. Maybe not as rich in allegory as it could have been but, I'm willing to defer final judgment on this series until I finish the third book.

In case you haven't had the pleasure of discovering it yet, The Hunger Games takes place in a distant future where what was once North America collapsed into ruin and from the ashes arose a cruel dictatorship called Panem. It's a place ruled by The Capitol: a megalopolis populated by a decadent people who do nothing but eating, drinking, getting plastic surgery and probably getting laid. They live at the expense of the peons of twelve districts who provide all the necessities like fuel, food and power. To keep the districts from getting uppity (and also as reminder of who's in charge following an age-old rebellion) the Capitol makes each district send one boy and one girl to the yearly Hunger Games: a combination fashion show, popularity pageant and gladiator battle from which only one can emerge as victor. It's now the seventy-fourth Hunger Games and sixteen-year old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to play for District 12 in place of her younger sister (picked by lottery, in something of a nod to Shirley Jackson).

That's all I'll say for the book, which I decided I wanted to read before the film adaptation comes out next month. For a young adult novel, it's rife with plenty of plot, grisly violence and budding romance that never gets too mushy. Here's hoping the movie is even half as good!

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DC Comics is making WATCHMEN 2. No, really.

What. The. F-CK?!?!?

(I came waaaaaay too close to writing out that full word, folks. Only the better angels of my nature intervened, but not nearly enough.)

"It's a joke. It's all a joke."

Except it's not. This is actually happening.

Why? Well from the story at IGN's Comics News...

"It's our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant," said DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. "After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original."

DiDio and Lee don't have an effin' clue, do they? Makes me wonder if they've even read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel. Me, I've read Watchmen at least 200 times since first discovering it in the winter of 1990. And every time that I re-read it, I discover something new.

This new project isn't a sequel, and "Watchmen 2" isn't even its proper title. It's being called Before Watchmen: a series of prequels, each one focusing on a different character from Watchmen. And none of them are needed or even wanted at all. Looking around the Intertubes today, all I'm seeing is disgust that this is happening. Indeed, I'm seeing some raw hatred toward DC Comics right now over this.

Suffice it to say, Alan Moore is not happy either...

"I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago... I don't want money. What I want is for this not to happen. As far as I know, there weren't that many prequels or sequels to Moby Dick."

Mash here for more about this damnable sacrilege that sucks donkeys balls to no end.

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How George Washington nearly became our first zombie President

Immediately following his death in 1799 at the age of 67, a plan was proposed to reanimate the corpse of George Washington.

The strange but true tale of raising up the first President of the United States as one of the undead is found on IO9.com's Secret History feature. It's long been known that Washington likely died from waaaay too much bleeding at the hands of physicians who were trying to treat the great man's case of sore throat. Back in the day it was prevailing wisdom that one of the primary causes of illness was "bad blood". Get a flu or fever or something and the village doctor would come over with his bloodlettin' instruments (or in some cases, live leeches) and commence to draining the precious red vino of life from your veins. And that's what happened to poor George, who probably would have survived the sore throat if left to his own devices.

Anyhoo, Washington's body was put on ice until time to bury him (he'd instructed that to wait a few days so he wouldn't be prematurely buried). And that's when William Thornton comes into the story. The designer of the United States Capitol building had the radical idea of thawing Washington's corpse with blankets, then pumping the lungs full of air and giving it a transfusion of lamb's blood (thought at the time to have magical reanimation powers). This would, theoretically, bring George Washington back to life.

Washington's family didn't give Thornton a chance to attempt his experiment. Maybe it was for the best.

(Living or dead or undead, George Washington still has more leadership and intelligence than everyone working in the city bearing his name put together.)

Mash down here for more about the saga of Zombie George Washington.

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Kermit and Miss Piggy slam Fox News!

The Muppets opened in cinemas domestically on the week of this past Thanksgiving. The ladyfriend and I saw it and loved it!! I keep hoping and praying that somebody will make an '80s Robot toy so I can put it on my desk: 'twould look so nice next to my chunk of the Berlin Wall, my Darth Sidious figure and other stuff.

Okay well anyway, it turns out that back when the movie first came out, Fox News claimed that The Muppets was a front for some devious liberal agenda! Because the film's villain, Tex Richman (played and rapped by Chris Cooper) is an eeeee-vil oil baron out to acquire the Muppets Theater by any means necessary. Seems that Fox News thinks that little kids are going to be turned off from capitalism.

Ehhhhh... whatever. I saw that movie and the only thing "liberal" is a cameo appearance by James Carville (speaking no lines) as one of several celebrities manning the phone banks during the telethon.

So The Muppets is on the eve of its international release and during the press conference the Fox News matter came up. And Kermit and Miss Piggy addressed it brilliantly! Here's the clip!

Might we be seeing a feud soon between Kermit and Bill O'Reilly? Personally, my money's on the frog.

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Saw THE ARTIST for the second time yesterday

Is it really that good? Why, yes. Yes it is!

And I think that I enjoyed it even more the second time!

Incidentally, it was literally a sold-out screening yesterday afternoon when we caught The Artist for the second time together. Even knowing what was coming, Kristen and I were still thrilling and reacting to it as if it were last week's showing all over again. It was already my favorite movie from 2011 and the more I see it and think about it, the more it's becoming one of my all-time favorite movies ever!

Here's my original review of The Artist: one of the most captivating and creative motion pictures that I've seen in a woefully long time. I'm so looking forward to owning the Blu-ray of this as soon as it comes out :-)

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3-D Printing: The next battleground for digital copyright law?

Been a might busy on numerous fronts lately so I haven't had much of a chance to get in a game of Warhammer 40,000 in awhile (though that also owes to the fact that I've been building up my army of Orks, muhahahahahaha!!!)

Anyhoo, it's from the world of 40K which this next item comes from. Seems that Swedish torrent-trackin' site/political party/new religious denomination The Pirate Bay, which has already made a name for itself letting users search for songs, movies, video games and books, has now added 3-D models to its database.

Which means that through the ever-improving technology of 3-D printing, it is now possible to download physical objects via the Internet.

Here's how it works: you download the model and using a 3-D printer, the computer lays down layer upon layer of plastic or resinous material, gradually building-up a physical object. Right now the technology is still pretty rough, not to mention hideously expensive. But, it's rapidly getting cheaper and more refined...

So only a week or so since The Pirate Bay started offering links to 3-D models and already they're in legal trouble. Lo and behold this first bit o' litigation comes from Games Workshop, the producers of the wildly popular Warhammer 40,000 miniatures wargame. As was reported on the Huffington Post's website, Games Workshop sent a cease and desist order to The Pirate Bay after finding that one user had uploaded a 3-D file from which folks could download a Space Marines Dreadnought.

Lemme 'splain why this is significant. In the universe of 40K, a Dreadnought is a bipedal walking tank piloted by a Space Marine who, though grievously wounded and near death on his own, is given a new lease on life as a cyborg. And the model for this attractive bit of tactical tabletop weaponry costs in the neighborhood of fifty dollars American.

Now you start to understand why Games Workshop is eager to nip this in the bud before it has a chance to blossom. Games Workshop is charging copyright infringement and The Pirate Bay has acquiesced by removing the link to the model's file.

I can see why this will be a problem. And as much as many people complain about the high cost of Games Workshop's models, I for one can understand it. The craftsmanship of that company's artists is top-notch: we're not only buying the models, we're giving compensation to the men and women who come up with these crazy good minis!

But even so, and as many of this blog's readers know already, I have a lot of issues with much of digital copyright law, while at the same time absolutely respecting the rights of the content's originators.

Wanna know what I think? The quality of the finished products are fairly crappy. At least, they are right now. That won't last for much longer though. And when the time comes when 3-D printing is as ubiquitous on our desktops as the monitor and speakers, companies like Games Workshop should not only be ready for it but embrace it as a new market. I can certainly see Games Workshop selling official 3-D models to print via a client application right at your own computer. Need some new appendages for those Tyranids? Just click "buy" and you'll be entitled to one digitally-rights managed set of horrific slashing arms for your gene-stealers! Need more? Simply add to your quantity of purchased product. Easy-peasey, Japan-easy! Games Workshop gets its due and the end user gets official models and parts for his or her army! Hey, that's the model which has worked wonders for iTunes. I don't see any reason why it won't work for 3-D printing either.

There's some exuberant discussion going on right now at Bell of Lost Souls, my favorite 40K-dedicated blog (I visit it several times a day, and they cover a lot of other wargaming mini systems as well). Definitely worth checking out to see what other, more seasoned wargamers are saying about the implications of 3-D printing not only on this hobby but on culture as a whole.

As for how things stack up currently, I don't think Games Workshop needs to worry itself too much. Here's a picture of the printable Dreadnought in question...

Good Lord, that thing is HIDEOUS!! I wouldn't dare bring such a fugly model to the table. Nor would any other respectable 40K player. Even the ones who allowed that one guy to use a Coke can as a substitute for a Carnifex.

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