I’m in between movie releases, so I didn’t see anything new this week. Sorry.
Although…I did have some free time, so I wandered around this old theater and found some potential spiders to track down. Next time I volunteer there I’m bringing my camera to find some spiders in the old dusty parts of the building.
I’ll be very brief today — I didn’t see a movie. I was volunteering at the theater last night, but we’re at the end of our run of Supergirl, and Minions&Monsters is still going strong, so I just did my job and didn’t pay any attention to the movie. Starting tonight, we’re playing Moana, the live action version of the animated Disney movie, which I have no interest in seeing. Disney’s live-action rehashes of their old movies are never very good and suffer in comparison with the originals, so why bother?
Minions&Monsters was a big win for the theater, even on a Thursday night it brought in lots of families and lots of money for the Morris Theater Co-op. Supergirl was kind of a dud. Family movies are pretty profitable for us, and Minions seems to draw in lots of kids and their parents. I’ll be interested to see if Moana has similar appeal.
Unfortunately for me, it was so busy that I had to serve on concessions, and discovered that I don’t really know how to us a cash register. For a while, I was the bottleneck and was slowing the flow until a more practiced person took over. In addition to being slow, I made mistakes.
At the end of the movie, one person came up to me and said she was pretty sure I undercharged her, and she had me add up a few of her purchases, and she was right — I came up $9 short. So she paid me on the spot! Minnesota nice sometimes actually means nice.
OK, that’s all. I do want to mention that we’re participating in the “Better Together Film Festival”, and on Wednesday, 22 July at 7pm, we’ll be showing a free movie, The [Conserv]atives, highlighting Republicans who are bucking against the general awfulness of the Republican party to support action on climate issues.
From their information…
From summer 2021 through Donald Trump’s re-election
campaign, four Republican insiders wage an uphill battle to transform their party’s stance on
climate change from within. A young grassroots organizer, a big-city mayor, an Iowa farmer, and
an evangelical pastor — each embedded in different corners of the conservative ecosystem —
risk alienation from their own communities as they attempt to reframe climate action as a
conservative value.
As extreme weather intensifies and the 2024 election approaches, they confront a political
machine built on denial, testing whether personal conviction can overcome tribal loyalty. This is
a deeply personal story about the cost of defying your own side and the haunting question that
drives them all: will their efforts be enough before time runs out?
I’ll probably attend that one.
I thought the Democrats controlled the climate?
stuffin @ 1
Just during bad weather.
For some strange reason, never explicitly articulated by the GQP morons (redundantly redundant), they can’t seem to get their own Hurricane Guns or Jewish Space Lasers to retaliate against those radical far left “blue” states. So, the Muskrat can’t launch the latter for the red team? Why is that? It is MUCH closer than MARS, which he claimed he would land people on in 2024, and easier than having 1M robotaxis by the end of 2022, and FSD Teslas by 2018 (ref: his fake demo in 2916).
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-hurricane-gun-china-world-war-1350638/
https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-control-weather-1963686
[meta]
Once upon a time, many commenters here would have called out your lexical choice, calling it an ableist slur.
(Times do change, no?)
Heh. Nothing wrong with an existence proof. Inadvertent, but obvious.
BTW, Cleese went ‘funny’ in 2020-21, then pivoted straight to an anti-woke stance and railing about cancel culture and political correctness. In case you were unaware.
Here, for you: https://www.newstatesman.com/thestaggers/2022/10/john-cleese-hero-right
Certainly, not my go-to for erudite explanations of stupidity, but clearly working on it. ;)
(And, of course, D-K was always misunderstood by the general types and is now deprecated in its strong form)
Here I rely on PZ now for my weekly movie review and he falls back on spider hunting. Seriously?
I never saw the other Moanas so I’ll pass on live action Dwayne Johnson muscle rippling too.
I guess PZ needs some cash register training.
The conservative climate movie sounds interesting, though no spoiler how that ends. Good to see Republicans still fighting the uphill battle on certain issues, but so many others had defected long ago. Bill Kristol is posting about abolishing ICE on Bluesky quite often. I’m no longer sure which way is up anymore. But still being a Republican during Trump 2.0 indicates deplorability. At least Hillary empathized with the other basket who were enticed by Trump 1.0. No more.
Per movies Obsession streams on Peacock soon. Sadly one must pay like $25 bucks for Backrooms coming soon to Amazon and Apple TV. Meh!
Hemidactylus, this is 2026.
(There is no ‘must’ about paying for it unless one objects to not paying for copyright and profiteering)
I don’t pirate. Full stop!
I doubt PZ would show Evil Dead Burn but one wonders based on recent experience if this one is a review or a verdict, because that’s been shown to me to be an important distinction:
All hands on deck verdict or review? Kinda gun shy so not so sure how to categorize it…
Guy on right in video I posted is wearing a Terrifier 2 shirt. Nobody should be watching that crap, not to be confused with the far superior Terrified. Art the Clown is a POS and not even early Freddy Krueger quality villain. Horrible franchise IMO! That I made it through 2 of those before tapping out on 3 reflects very poorly on me. It got that much worse I guess?
Fair enough. But that was my very point: “unless one objects to not paying for copyright and profiteering”.
Point being, without that personal conviction, there is no actual need.
Me, I don’t think of it as ‘pirating’.
More like borrowing a book from the library.
Download, read/watch/listen, delete.
Since I would never ever have paid for it anyway, no loss to them.
See here: https://libguides.wvu.edu/c.php?g=418810&p=10754839
The idea is the author’s beneficiaries would get some recompense for the author’s work, but now it is become a commodity. But the copyright, profit beyond the predictable horizon. At least 70 years!
Fuck that shit.
In the spirit of it, I note I rather enjoyed the YouTube serial ‘Adult Wednesday Addams’; alas, that too got ripped-off by big media, and so Netflix ripped it off.
No idea whether the originator was recompensed, but I suspect exactly the opposite.
(This is verifiable)
It still lives on here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMYK5dRGMPuc2gD0684sp5EJaExwEFPs4
Anyway. The Netflix (copyrighted!) version is utter shit. Classic USAnian college hijinks. entirely loses the brilliant satirical notes of the original. Basically, a corrupted version giving no credit to the originator of the idea.
My other go to “Ghost Pirate” who really lost an eye to something is mailing it in with a co-host kinda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?is=LTxvyFW-aRGWLIhD&v=StxpahUG5ME
It really is a slow week at the movie reviews on Youtube PZ included.
[OT]
Hemidactylus, be aware that
is=LTxvyFW-aRGWLIhDis purely a session tracking ID.Whoever clicks on it is linked to you clicking on it.
The
vparameter is the video ID, get it?See how you got the tracker before the ID? To me, that is informative.
The nakkid video link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StxpahUG5ME — no tracker needed.
Supergirl and Moana were schoolmates in Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-11/sydney-high-school-students-lead-movies-moana-supergirl/106891646
Is there a Siskel to your Ebert?
I saw a little bit of one Terrifier movie. Left it in disgust.
The only terrifiers I approve of are the alien xenomorphs, the yautja and the T-800 series. Maybe the protagonist in American Psycho. He is a misogynist, but he murders both genders.
For “so bad it is good” I recommend ,”Brandon’s Cult Film reviews” at Youtube.
Also, Check out The Hidden, with the wossname, Twin Peaks actor.
TV scary people: Mads Mikkelsen does the best Hannibal Lecter. Fight me.
Also, Check out The Hidden, with the wossname, Twin Peaks actor.
TV scary people: Mads Mikkelsen does the best Hannibal Lecter. Fight me.
Deadpan horror comedy: Rare Exports.
BTW Cleese is an octagenarian with a longing for the London of his past.
Ca. 1980 he fought against a religious outcry against Life of Brian. It stuck in his mind, and he perceives wossname Potter author to be in a similar situation, although she is genuinely hurting a minority of vulnerable people. I will not defend him. Some people retain an elastic intellect, other get rigid in their thinking with age.
I certainly get rigid in some ways, I just try to not dump on vulnerable people the way wossname does.
I am suspicious of Disney. For full-length cartoons, try Ghost In The Shell.
Or you can run the three OVAs of Gunsmith Cats as one full-length film. Very well made. They even sent a team from Japan to record the genuine sound of the protagonist’s choice of car. Chicago environments are lovingly reproduced.
PZ and others, be careful about your food!
(Crossposted with the infinite thread)
From HuffPost:
“The country is in the midst of a nationwide outbreak of explosive diarrhea caused by cyclospora, a parasite the CDC stopped surveilling at the federal level in July 2025.”
Nobody could have seen this coming. Except everybody outside the government.
Everything ‘He’ does turns to shit, literally this time. He is the anti-king Midas.
Birger, it is not ‘the country’, it is quite localised.
It’s happened before. Mostly due to factory ‘farming’.
It’s already all over the news, too.
cf. https://www.vox.com/health/494977/explosive-diarrhea-parasite-outbreak-cyclosporiasis-michigan-ohio
(And how ‘He’ is to blame is left to conspiracy theorists like you to explain, given both those prior outbreaks preceded ‘He’ — the apparently unnameable one)
John Morales @ 23
I am in Europe so I do not have a direct view of how good or bad things are in USA.
As for Trump you are right he is not (yet?) in evil wizard territory.
I might argue he is like a very small kaiju. Maybe like Godzilla’s failed cousin, that he is embarrassed about.
The Dead Don’t Die is technically a comedy, but weird.
Scorcese’s Bringing Out The Dead has been described as a comedy by some, but it is definitely a minority position.