Rock the Kasbah (2015) *

Another movie that takes an actual non-white, non-male person's hard fought battle and turns it into a story about a white male's struggle to redeem himself. Reprehensible AND a waste of a top notch cast. Incredibly cliched script including, but not limited to, a hooker with a heart of gold.

The Rewrite (2014) **

Watchable thanks to an appealing and adept cast but the director keeps piling on the cliches to its detriment. Hugh Grant is actually quite good in this weak romcom.

Love & Friendship (2016) ***

A period piece/romcom impeccably cast and performed, well directed by Whit Stillman. Clever, subtle, beautiful.

Festival Drops Band Whose Drummer Supported Brock Turner

“I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him,” Rasmussen wrote in a letter, obtained by The Cut, to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky. “I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn’t right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists.”

Yikes where does one even BEGIN with such statements? Basic logic doesn't stand a chance. We must remember though, she IS a drummer. ;-)

How Did Consciousness Evolve? - The Atlantic

Consider an unlikely thought experiment. If you could somehow attach an external speech mechanism to a crocodile, and the speech mechanism had access to the information in that attention schema in the crocodile’s wulst, that technology-assisted crocodile might report, “I’ve got something intangible inside me. It’s not an eyeball or a head or an arm. It exists without substance. It’s my mental possession of things. It moves around from one set of items to another. When that mysterious process in me grasps hold of something, it allows me to understand, to remember, and to respond.”

The crocodile would be wrong, of course. Covert attention isn’t intangible. It has a physical basis, but that physical basis lies in the microscopic details of neurons, synapses, and signals. The brain has no need to know those details. The attention schema is therefore strategically vague. It depicts covert attention in a physically incoherent way, as a non-physical essence. And this, according to the theory, is the origin of consciousness. We say we have consciousness because deep in the brain, something quite primitive is computing that semi-magical self-description. Alas crocodiles can’t really talk. But in this theory, they’re likely to have at least a simple form of an attention schema.

Dame Helen Mirren: 'I love no longer being a sex symbol'

‘I have absolutely no beauty regime,’ she says in that perfectly modulated, husky voice. ‘I sunbathe – I know I shouldn’t but I love sitting in the sun. I drink wine and occasionally I’ll drink to excess. I eat French fries. I’ve never managed to go to the gym for longer than two months. I always forget to take my vitamins.

‘I’ve done everything but I haven’t done too much of anything – I’ve never had a Coca-Cola, ever. Sometimes I use hotel body lotion as conditioner for my hair. I’m not particular. Life is too short and too precious.’

Roetemeyer, Joanne "Josie" - Kutis Funeral Home

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going — Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
-- Kozan Ichikyo's Death Poem

The Good Dinosaur (2015) *

Unsettling combination of photo-realistic background animation (they have NAILED oceans, rivers, all things aquatic by the way) and Flintstones-style dinosaurs (who have developed language, agriculture and animal husbandry) in a by-the-numbers story. Disappointing from Pixar.

Bowfinger (1999) **

Some laughs especially in the first half, but falters badly in the second. Disappointing for Steve Martin.

Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer | Aeon Essays

Misleading headlines notwithstanding, no one really has the slightest idea how the brain changes after we have learned to sing a song or recite a poem. But neither the song nor the poem has been ‘stored’ in it. The brain has simply changed in an orderly way that now allows us to sing the song or recite the poem under certain conditions. When called on to perform, neither the song nor the poem is in any sense ‘retrieved’ from anywhere in the brain, any more than my finger movements are ‘retrieved’ when I tap my finger on my desk. We simply sing or recite – no retrieval necessary.

Dear "Skeptics," Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More - Scientific American Blog Network

Over the past half-century, physicians and hospitals have introduced increasingly sophisticated, expensive tests. They assure us that early detection of disease will lead to better health.
But tests often do more harm than good. For every woman whose life is extended because a mammogram detected a tumor, up to 33 receive unnecessary treatment, including biopsies, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. For men diagnosed with prostate cancer after a PSA test, the ratio is 47 to one. Similar data are emerging on colonoscopies and other tests.

Too Late (2016) ****

A masterpiece of film making from start to finish. A stern rebuke to the fast edit, quick cut, extreme closeup directing style. Terrific cast, imaginative direction, excellent neo-noir beautifully shot on real film. An instant classic.

[The film was completed in 2015 but not released in theaters until 2016.]

Interview: Dennis Hauck on Taking on “Too Late”

Was there a fair amount of running through the scenes beforehand or would you run a lot of takes?

It was usually about 10 takes per scene. [Each scene being 20 minutes long!] We almost invariably ended up using the last take of the day, just because everyone was so dialed in and we knew the sun was going down, or the sun was coming up and just the whole crew knew, “Okay, this is our last chance to really knock it out of the park.” Three out of the five scenes were the last take of the day.

William Friedkin on Cannes Masterclass, ‘Disaster’ of ‘Sorcerer’ | Variety

Friedkin also reveals that at one point he had superstar Steve McQueen interested in the lead role, which eventually went to his “French Connection” star Roy Scheider. McQueen backed out of the project when Friedkin refused to give a producer credit to McQueen’s then-wife Ali MacGraw or shoot the film in the states, since he had already found beautiful locations around the world. “I was so stupid and so arrogant and so out of it that I did not realize at the time — which I do now — that a close-up of Steve McQueen is worth the most beautiful landscape in the world.”

To Catch a Thief (1955) **

Eminently enjoyable, but not in Hitch's top tier. Cary, Grace and La Côte d'Azur are well worth watching regardless.

Daisy Miller (1974) ****

Terrific showcase for Cybill Shepherd and she delivers a standout performance in a well directed period piece. Cast, photography, costumes, production design, it's all there and all top notch.

The Jungle Book (2016) **

Convincingly solves at least 2 problems with previous CGI heavy films: they got the eyes right, and the lighting (typically very dark) is not an issue. Hard to call this a "live action" film since everything but Mowgli is purportedly animated, but it is a technical marvel and enjoyable on that level alone. Everything else is mediocre owing to director Jon Favreau's constant eye on the bottom line approach to film making.

'Taxi Driver' Oral History: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster, Schrader Spill All on 40th Anniversary - Hollywood Reporter

PAUL SCHRADER (screenwriter) I had a series of things falling apart, a breakdown of my marriage, a dispute with the AFI, I lost my reviewing job. I didn't have any money and I took to drifting, more or less living in my car, drinking a lot, fantasizing. The Pussycat Theater in L.A. would be open all night long, and I'd go there to sleep. Between the drinking and the morbid thinking and the pornography, I went to the emergency room with a bleeding ulcer. I was about 27, and when I was in the hospital, I realized I hadn't spoken to anyone in almost a month. So that's when the metaphor of the taxi cab occurred to me — this metal coffin that moves through the city with this kid trapped in it who seems to be in the middle of society but is in fact all alone. I knew if I didn't write about this character I was going to start to become him — if I hadn't already.

Robert De Niro: 'Every day for 40 years someone has said: You talkin' to me?' | Film | The Guardian

Bernard Herrmann’s jazzy score for Taxi Driver is justly revered. Yet the legendary composer almost didn’t do the project, which would turn out to be his last. Producer Michael Phillips recalled a meeting with Herrmann, where the musician sneered: “I don’t do movies about cabbies.” Scorsese then met with Herrmann, convincing him to give Taxi Driver a shot. “[Herrmann] liked it,” Scorsese said of the script. “Especially when Travis poured peach brandy on his cereal in the morning. He really liked that.”

Scientists can now make lithium-ion batteries last a lifetime | Computerworld

"Mya was playing around, and she coated this whole thing with a very thin gel layer and started to cycle it," Penner, chair of UCI's chemistry department, said in a statement. "She discovered that just by using this gel, she could cycle it hundreds of thousands of times without losing any capacity."

"That was crazy," he added, "because these things typically die in dramatic fashion after 5,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 cycles at most."