Browsing: Cinema & TV

A Brief History On March 3, 1951, music history was made when the first song deemed to be “rock and roll” was recorded.  Called “Rocket 88,” the lively song was recorded by Chess Records at Sam Phillip’s studio in Memphis and is credited to Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats who were actually Ike Turners’s band, the Kings of Rhythm.  In fact, the song was written by Brenston and Turner, though Turner was not originally credited.  As we know, the Rock and Roll genre of music has taken off ever since then, especially with the gyrations of Elvis Presley bringing…

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A Brief History On February 18, 2010, the international hacker and leaker organization, WikiLeaks, released the first batch of an enormous trove of classified American documents, in fact, hundreds of thousands of top secret files turned over to WikiLeaks by a US Army soldier, Bradley Manning.  Manning was soon arrested and later convicted of violations of laws governing national secrets, and along the way announced his intention to live as a female, changing his name to Chelsea Manning.  Manning is but one of many well known transsexual or transgender persons, and today we take a look at some of the…

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A Brief History On February 4, 2020, we have had a couple days to digest the array of highly expensive television ads pertaining to Super Bowl LIV (played and aired on February 2, 2020).  Among those television commercials were a few in particular that really seem out of place with a sporting event geared toward entertainment.  We take a look at these ill-considered ads…  (Note:  If you are wondering what sort of Super Bowl ads we actually approve of, think about Dachshunds wearing hot dog outfits running toward Ketchup and Mustard and Relish.  Or cute horse and dog Budweiser commercials. …

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A Brief History On January 10, 2020, a not so latest science fiction/horror movie, Underwater, was released across the country after sitting in whatever box movies sit it while they await release for the past couple years.  Despite being filmed back in 2017, the film apparently got caught up with corporate shuffling by 20th Century Fox which had been the target of acquisition by media giant Disney in 2017, and successfully swallowed up by Disney in 2018 in a deal called a “merger,” which was finally put into effect in 2019.  Meanwhile, Underwater languished in a sort of movie limbo…

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A Brief History On January 10, 2020, the latest World War I combat epic film, simply titled 1917, makes its widespread opening across the United States.  Though the film deals with British, rather than American main characters, the incredible levels of tension, tragedy, terror, and heart pounding action combine to make this film a certain contender for the Best Picture Oscar. Digging Deeper Set in the year, 1917, the movie captures the drudgery and crushingly oppressiveness of 3 long years of war seemingly without end.  Set designers made elaborate trenches and battlefield depictions to capture the surreal mien of that…

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