Day: March 7, 2012

Take it from Snee: Movie pet peeves


Between the podcast I do and the reviews I write on my own site, I watch a lot of movies. Like any fan of cinema, there are films I love, films I hate and the vast majority fall somewhere between those extremes.

But, no matter how good or bad a movie may be, there are certain elements that I dread popping up. Imagine you’re invested in the story on screen, sitting on the edge of your seat, wondering how the plot is going to turn next, when suddenly — BAM! — you’re ripped out of, say, Middle Earth by some cliché you’ve seen in a million other movies. Frodo turns back into that kid from North touring New Zealand with Rudy.

This article is a plea to the sound editors, stunt coordinators and screenwriters of the world. These might be cool inside jokes to your friends in the industry, but they’re sucking the life out of your films. Continue reading Take it from Snee: Movie pet peeves

Newest animal threat: metrosexual bears

For years, right-wing demagogues like Rick Santorum have warned us that homosexuality will lead to sexual behavior with animals (“man on dog,” for instance). And, conservationists have warned us that destroying animals’ native environments will push more animals into direct contact with humans.

Now we have evidence that both were right.

Volker Deecke of the University of Cumbria, UK, was spying on the enemy — in this case, a brown bear in Alaska’s Glacier Bay national park — and caught this dangerous animal exfoliating with a rock.

People, if you think gay pride parades are dangerous now, just wait until they include bears. (You know which bears we mean.)

Music from the brain doesn’t equal good music

Looks like there is a way to create music without singing and/or playing musical instruments, and Masaki Batoh has figured out a method. As a means to remember those affected by Japan’s earthquake, Masaki gathered some of the survivors to help out in his grand scheme.

Utilizing a modified EEG machine, Masaki uses the brain waves of the people he selected and converts them into sound. Masaki would show his volunteers images of Japan, and he would take their brain waves from the reaction to create the songs for his musical track known as Brain Pulse Music.

As noble as his act is, the end result is not very pretty. The sounds created from the brain waves come out as high pitch sounds, which is definitely not good for the ears. Screeching sounds are not good either. Overall, the entire process concept is intriguing, but not something that should ever want to put into their ears again. Though it would be neat to see if the device gets modified in the future to produce better sounds that refrain from giving our ears any sort of pain, I’ll take my brain-Twitter implant, thank you very much science.

Gramps was a slithery type

Millions of years ago, we evolved from primates, and became something more, which is why the animals all envy us now. (Alternate lead sentence for the Christian right-wing: God made us in his image, and gave us dominion over all of the animals, which is why they all envy us now.) But, did we come from eels?

Scientists in Canada have found one of the oldest life forms to have a spine: an eel about 505-million years old. Since we have spines, too, that means that there’s a pretty strong chance that we are all related to this eel in a very icky, slimy way. Not a pleasant thought, is it?