Browsing: Arts & Entertainment

A Brief History On March 1, 2024, American sci-fi movie fans will be treated to the opening of the latest of the movies based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, Dune.  After the highly successful Denis Villeneuve 2021 reboot of the Dune story, the 2024 film, Dune: Part Two, is a sequel also brought to us by Villeneuve and with the same main cast. Digging Deeper Casting is indeed great, with Timothée Chalamet returning as the main character, Paul, and his frenemy/love interest Chani played by Zendaya. The all-star cast includes Christopher Walken, David Bautista, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Rebecca Ferguson,…

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A Brief History On February 28, 1983, the 11-season journey of TV viewers finally came to an end with the airing of the final episode of M*A*S*H.  An incredible audience of 110 million people watched the bittersweet finale, with their beloved characters planning their return to a non-war America. Digging Deeper A major downer in the episode was key character Hawkeye Pierce receiving psychiatric care due to extreme trauma caused by an incident where he witnessed a mother smother her own baby to avoid detection by a communist patrol.  The rest of the episode is a blur eclipsed by this…

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A Brief History On February 26, 1909, the Palace Theatre in London, England, boasted the first public showing of color motion picture film, a product called Kinemacolor invented by English hypnotist and magician, George Albert Smith in 1906. Digging Deeper Smith’s invention had been demonstrated to professionals prior to the public display, and the process used red/orange and blue/green filters with regular black and white motion picture film to give the colorized effect. Kinemacolor was used commercially from 1909 until 1915, because a rival, William Friese-Greene, sued for a patent of a process he called Biocolour and won his case…

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A Brief History On February 21, 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, a book that has become the antithesis of capitalists everywhere and to many, synonymous with all that is wrong with the communist sympathizers of the world. Digging Deeper Another book that has achieved a distinct level of distaste among a large part of humanity is Mein Kampf, the fascist manifesto by Adolf Hitler that inspired the catastrophe of World War II and the Holocaust, and continues to inspire haters even today. Obviously, people of certain religions detest the holy books of competing religions, such…

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A Brief History On February 17, 1996, Chess champion Garry Kasparov bested the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer in an historic chess game between man and machine.  The battle between organic and electronic brains went far beyond a single match, as Kasparov beat the special-built chess playing machine three games to one and two ties. Digging Deeper Not content with beating the Grand Master once, IBM reworked their computer, doubling its computing speed, and a rematch was held in 1997, this time resulting in a win for Deep Blue.  An irate Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM had taken the computer…

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