“My name is David Wong. I once saw a man’s kidneys grow tentacles,” intones our genial narrator and protagonist (the heretofore unknown Chase Williamson) who boasts psychic abilities that include communicating with the dead. He and his best bud, John (Rob Mayes, MTV’s The American Mall), operate as freelance ghostbusters when they’re not beer-drinking slackers. […]
science
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The Four
It takes a good half-hour before we begin to comprehend who’s who and who’s aligned with whom. Even then, the story — based on a presumably popular novel — is plotted with spying and more than one alliance switcheroo. Everyone seems concerned about locating a stolen coin cast, yet the object is almost a MacGuffin; […]
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Monster mash
The Phantom of the Opera7:30 p.m. Thursday Lon Chaney’s name is forever associated with 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera, and for good reason: It’s one of the great performances in silent films. I don’t care how old you are or how many times you’ve seen it: When Christine (Mary Philbin) unmasks the Phantom 38 […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXVI
Besides, fans of MST3K only need know that another collection exists, and they’re sold. The latest, Volume XXVI (aka 26, if you don’t like maths), may not have any classics among its four-ep offering, but any episode is worth owning. Among this batch, my favorite is the most recent: 1988’s Alien from L.A., a sci-fi […]
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Boxy, but good
Fill a box with 18 random items. Give it to a team of employees from local businesses. See what happens. Science Museum Oklahoma has done just that with its second Out of the Box exhibition, featuring the creations of 11 local businesses whose task was to take those random items — such as springs, hinges, […]
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Wrong again
Claiming authority from a long-dead scientist is nonsense. Louis Pasteur was a great scientist in large part because of his commitment to methodological naturalism. He rejected religious supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation, the idea that organisms appear fully formed. What he disproved was special creationism, not evolution. Furthermore, there is no […]
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What evolutionists fear
Whenever a bill comes up before our Legislature that gives teachers in our public schools the freedom to teach the positives and negatives of evolution, they immediately cry “foul” because anything that might bring doubt on their beloved theory must be religious. The reason why they are so touchy is because they know how weak […]
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The Millennium Bug
For his feature debut, The Millennium Bug, writer/director Kenneth Cran imagines that Something Actually Happened besides a world’s collective “whew!” Taking place on Dec. 31, 1999 (natch), the movie follows the Haskin family, whose three members head for the mountains in order to escape the panic and presumed riots. Instead, the happy campers find trouble […]
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Holy Motors
Now that the French film is out on DVD and Blu-ray, it’s the next best thing to the theatrical experience we were denied. Love it or hate it, Holy Motors is nothing if not an experience. Carax regular Denis Lavant (The Lovers on the Bridge) is front and center of this weird, wonderful ride as […]
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Same ol’, same ol’
How does that work? Both bills claim to support teachers’ freedom to address scientific strengths and weaknesses of scientific issues (House Bill 1674 cites evolution specifically, Senate Bill 758 doesn’t). The most obvious problem is that we do not need new laws to free science teachers to do that: such discussions are always part of […]