OT - Trivia anyone?

[TommyRude]

Oscars trivia:  The statuette was designed by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and sculpted by Los Angeles artist George Stanley in 1928. It depicts a knight holding a crusader’s sword while standing on a film reel with five spokes, representing the five original branches of the Academy1. It is made of gold-plated bronze and weighs 8.5 pounds.

 

As for the Oscars tonight, moving very fast.  Lady Gaga just did a pretty intense very stripped down performance.

[o0Ampy0o]

On 3/10/2023 at 9:30 AM, Husker said:

Ronin.

 

(Bond fanatic here).

 

Up until he started doing comedy (as opposed to playing somewhat of the straight man to an ensemble of supporting funny characters in Midnight Run) I was a De Niro fanatic. He is such a good actor but comedy is not his forte IMO. Ronin is one of my favorite De Niro films. I especially love how the characters are portrayed like real people not Hollywood's stereotypes of people. Of course there are obvious stereotypical traits but these are not action characters. They are more realistic. I have seen it somewhere pushing 20 times. I was able to get lost in it when two close family members died. This and Michael Douglas's The Game.

 

As for Bond films you may not agree, probably not, but Daniel Craig's Casino Royale was close to perfect. One flaw stands out, the casting of Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter. He just was not in the same league as Craig and Mads Mikkelsen at that poker game. It wasn't his skill at the game. He wasn't plausible while Craig and Mikkelsen were.

[Tom Williams]

Ronin was my first introduction to Stellan Skarsgard.  IMO he stole the show with his credible intensity.

[TommyRude]

16 hours ago, o0Ampy0o said:

One flaw stands out, the casting of Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter. He just was not in the same league as Craig and Mads Mikkelsen at that poker game. It wasn't his skill at the game. He wasn't plausible while Craig and Mikkelsen were.

yeah, but the final hand was very believable... nut flush, 2nd nut full house, nut full house, and a straight flush all in the same hand. That happens all the time. Oh yeah, let's not forget the guys at the table, one guy bleeding from his eyes, another guy during a table break engaging in a crazy fight and killing another guy, takes shower with hot chick and goes back to game, same guy gets poisoned at the table, same guy staggers through the hotel, gargles with salt water, staggers to his car, gets in, magically pulls out a defibrillator, tries to zap himself, fails, his girlfriend shows up and attaches the lead at the last second while they orchestrate the medical service from thousands of miles away, then he casually returns to the poker table to finish the match.   hahahaha Ampy just joshin', remembering that poker game and all the shenanigens, one of the best ever.

 

Oh, and Felix Leiter, he didn't need to be good at the game, he just needed to provide the bankroll to James.  And as he said, it's not like they need the money!   

 

Another good 'believable' poker match in movies - "In Time" with Justin Timberlake v. Vincent Kartheiser.  I digress 

[David Emm]

18 hours ago, TommyRude said:

Oscars trivia:  The statuette was designed by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and sculpted by Los Angeles artist George Stanley in 1928. It depicts a knight holding a crusader’s sword while standing on a film reel with five spokes, representing the five original branches of the Academy1. It is made of gold-plated bronze and weighs 8.5 pounds.

 

 In other Oscar trivia, if you have the muscle, an Oscar will knock a potential car jacker senseless with much more KAZANGO! than a puny Grammy.

[stoken6]

On 3/10/2023 at 5:05 PM, Husker said:

Barry Manilow had a short career as a jingle writer. 

This was sung by Elvis Costello's dad: 

 

 

Cheers, Mike.

[o0Ampy0o]

5 hours ago, TommyRude said:

Another good 'believable' poker match in movies - "In Time" with Justin Timberlake v. Vincent Kartheiser.  I digress 

 

Cool moment in movie card game history: Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday in Tombstone. To appreciate what he does you need to see what leads up to it. This is a few minutes of the best Hollywood has ever produced.

 

You have to go to YT because YT doesn't allow it to be embedded

 

 

[NewImprov]

On 3/5/2023 at 11:17 AM, KuruPrionz said:

There are tiny shrews that are omnivorous but primarily eat critters (bugs are meat too!!!). 

Both shrews and weasels vary in size. No solid info online about this obscure topic. 

 

Meanwhile, the Tarheels cut down all the turpentine pines back east and moved to central Skagit county in Washington where they founded 2 small towns - Sedro and Wooley. The two towns grew together into Sedro Wooley. Some of them liked eating the Virginia Opossum so they brought some along and let them go. 

Which is why we now have a range of the Virginia Opossum up into British Columbia and down into Oregon. 

 

Next time I have to crawl under my porch to extricate a dead possum corpse, I'll know who to be cursing! Thanks!

[bill5]

There are about 10 times as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on our entire planet.

 

That is also about the same number of molecules in ten drops of water. 

 

 

[jazzpiano88]

The total number of atoms in your body is about 10^28, and the total number of elementary particles—protons and neutrons and electrons—in the observable universe is about 10^80

[bill5]

And yet those numbers still pale in comparison to all the unfinished songs I have.    

[bill5]

Attempted murder by a president?

 

In 1921, Harding appointed his pal Charles Forbes as director of the new Veteran's Bureau, where Forbes embarked on a dazzling spree of graft and corruption, embezzling millions of dollars, selling medical supplies for personal gain, and ignoring tens of thousands of applications for aid from U.S. servicemen injured in the First World War. After resigning from office in disgrace, Forbes visited Harding in the White House, at which point the otherwise colorless (but six-foot-tall) president grabbed him by the throat and attempted to choke him to death. Forbes managed to escape with his life, thanks to the intervention of the next visitor on the president's calendar, but wound up spending the next couple of years in Leavenworth prison. 

 

And I have a new found respect for Harding.    

[TommyRude]

4 hours ago, bill5 said:

Attempted murder by a president?  

That's a great story.  I checked in with Bingchat, here's more...

 

There is no evidence that President Harding tried to kill his friend Forbes, but he did force him to resign from his position as the head of the Veterans’ Bureau for corruption and embezzlement. Forbes was one of the members of the so-called Ohio Gang, a group of Harding’s friends and associates who were involved in various scandals during his presidency. Harding himself was not directly implicated in the scandals, but he was aware of them and failed to stop them. He died of a heart attack in 1923, before the full extent of the corruption was exposed.

 

There is a claim that Harding tried to choke Forbes during a heated argument in the White House, but this claim is not verified by any reliable sources. It is based on a memoir by Forbes’s son-in-law, who said he witnessed the incident, but he also admitted that he embellished some details for dramatic effect. The claim is also contradicted by other accounts that say Harding and Forbes remained on friendly terms even after Forbes’s resignation. Therefore, it is not clear if Harding ever tried to choke Forbes, or if this was a fabrication or an exaggeration.

[bill5]

Hm - well I don't know that Bingchat is any more of an authoritative source than where I saw it, but yeah I checked further and it doesn't seem to be verifiable. My bad then, and thanks for the catch. The site I saw it on seemed reputable enough and I did see it on several other sites (and if it's on the internet it must be true  ).