The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi

Posted on by

I’ve been a fan of The Amazing Randi since I first heard of him decades ago.

Despite The Amazing Randi’s stage name, and ability to perform what appear to be supernatural feats, The Amazing Randi is quite the opposite of what you might expect.

While it is true that Randi can perform mind-reading stunts, bend spoons just as those who claim to do so via mental powers, escape from padlocked chains and the like, The Amazing Randi claims no supernatural powers.

In fact since 1964, Randi has been offering up an ever-increasing amount of his own money to anyone who can show scientific evidence of supernatural powers.  The amount is now up to one million dollars and no one has ever collected.  The challenge has become so popular it is now an annual weekend event attended by over 1,000 believers and skeptics alike.

The NY Times.com recently posted The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi by Adam Higginbotham and it is well worth a read!

Behind The Scenes With Ray Harryhausen And His Special Effects Models

Posted on by

Mighty  Joe  Young.   The  Beast  From 20,000 Fathoms.   20  Million  Miles  to  Earth.   The  7th  Voyage of Sinbad.   Jason  and  the  Argonauts.   The Valley  of  Gwangi.   The  Clash  of  the  Titans.

If these movies take you back to your childhood, you’ll get a kick out of i09’s   Behind The Scenes With Ray Harryhausen And His Special Effects Models.  

Rarely Seen Pilot to “The Orson Welles Show”

Posted on by

The video embedded below is to the rarely seen pilot to The Orson Welles Show.

The Orson Welles Show  had it been picked up would have been a weekly anthology series hosted by, you guessed it, Orson Welles.

Sadly that was not to be.  Otherwise Welles  could have been mentioned right there with Serling and Hitchcock when folks spoke about the great anthology series that used to be on tv.

Source: io9.

Remembering Kotter and His Sweathogs

Posted on by

Welcome Back, Kotter  burst onto the scene in September 1975 and was an instant hit.  The initial idea was to focus on a young newly married teacher [Gabe Kaplan] returning to teach remedial students [called Sweathogs] at his former high school where he had been a remedial student.  The show’s breakout stars turned out to be the Sweathogs.

So the focus changed.

Soon the spotlight was on the students with their teacher in a co-star or even supporting role.  The teacher’s wife usually had a scene in the shows opening and again in the closing where she got to laugh at an old joke told by teacher.  There were stories of an unhappy set.

Things became more complicated when Kaplan butted heads with the show’s producer and John Travolta [one of the remedial students] made it big in the movies.  Both Kaplan and Travolta didn’t even appear in many of the last season episodes.

The show ran four seasons and for the first two and maybe the third it was “must-see” tv.  Sadly during the the fourth and final season the audience graduated even if the Sweathogs didn’t.

The AV Club posted a piece by Noel Murray titled 10 Episodes That Show How Welcome Back, Kotter Was Like a Class in Comedy History.  While that may be a bit of an overstatement, the article did bring back some fun memories of Kotter and his Sweathogs.

39 Things We Learned from the Banned “Dr. No” Commentary

Posted on by

Film School Rejects presents 39 Things We Learned from the Banned “Dr. No” Commentary  by Kevin Carr.  Here are five of my favorites…

1. The iconic James Bond theme was not in the original picture. The score had “Underneath the Mango Tree” as Bond’s theme, and Young thought “that’s a really stupid idea” because eventually they would make a James Bond movie without mango trees. John Barry was referred to him, and he wrote the recognizable theme without even seeing the film.

7. It took ten takes of Bond tossing his hat onto the coat tree to get the shot. In later films, Connery became good enough to hit the mark on the first try.

23. When the Three Blind Mice try to assassinate Bond in the parking lot, Hunt did not have a shot of the passing car’s headlight that distract them from following through because Young never shot it. In order ot make the shot work, Hunt flared the film on the actors in post production to show the flash of light.

31. Young discovered Ursula Andress in a pile of photographs on the desk of a producer. He asked if he could keep the photo and took it to Cubby Broccoli to find her for the role of Honey Ryder. They cast her primarily because of her looks and never had a formal audition or test of her acting ability.

34. Ursula Andress was overdubbed by actress Nikki Van der Zyl because her accent was too thick and the filmmakers could not understand all of her lines.