All that is Mad Max Captured for Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road goes something like this.  Max, who is tortured by those who died in his past, must run "from the living and the dead." Max runs afoul of one of the local tribes and is captured.  Max is, through a series of both unfortunate and lucky events, escapes, helps a group of people who are also fleeing the bad tribe.  During the pursuit, Max, aided by a female counterpart and one of the local crazies, finally must turn and fight said tribe, killing most of them, including the truly insane tribal leader.  Having saved all can, he quietly disappears to continue running "from the living and the dead."

Yes, I know that is basically the plot of every Mad Max movie ever made.  I have given nothing away.  The plot is not the reason we go to see the dystopic, post-apocalyptic Road Warrior series. It is also incredibly violent and there are awesome and silly costumes and really cool over-the-top cars.  Mad Max: Fury Road has all that we expect in these movies  in spades.

The iconic role of Max, originally played by Mel Gibson, has been given over to Tom Hardy. Max's group that he must save is led by Furiosa who is a super action hero in her own right and played by Charlize Theron. Aided by the crazy Nux, played by Nicholas Hoult, Max and Furiosa must save a group of supermodels...I mean women from the evil leader of the tribe, Immortan Joe played by Hugh Keays-Byrne. Byrne has the distinction of having played Toecutter the bad guy in the original Mad Max.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a curious kind of movie.  It is disturbing, exciting and the cinematography is stunning.  It must be both a stunt coordinator's dream and nightmare. It is an intense and involving chase. There was none of that cumbersome stuff, like dialog, to get in the way.  Mad Max: Fury Road is, after all, a Road Warrior movie. It is well worth the  time.

I liked it more than I anticipated.  Over-the-top though it is, it is a true action movie.  It is not for kids.  Mad Max: Fury Road is rated "R" for graphic violence and brief nudity.  I liked the 3-D, but I don't think it added that much if you would rather go without the glasses.  So if you are looking for something that is both stunning in its staging and a pretty good action flick, go see Mad Max: Fury Road.

What is Valid

A friend told me that if I could tell people how to tell if the information they are getting was accurate, she would share my post again and again.  Sadly, there is no simple solution to the problem.  No magic set of words to look for or site addresses or for that matter any guarantee that even reliable sites won't occasionally get it wrong.  Reliable sites will, however, admit their wrong and correct. The unreliable will most likely double down or attack the challenge to the information they spread.

There is no simple solution to becoming well-informed.  It takes actual work and time.  The well-informed check carefully what they are told.  The well-informed will go back occasionally to make sure that what they have learned is still relevant and accurate.  It is like a great athlete.  No amount of natural talent will get them to the pros if they never hone that talent.  They could be the Michael Jordan of their sport, but if they never actually practice, they will still be only slightly more effective than the guy coaching from his recliner.  A prodigy must be trained. A writer must write.  To make sure what you post is as good and true as you can make it - to become well-informed- you must look weigh, consider, judge, verify, and labor.  There is no magic.

There is a tremendous difference between academic research and what is typically posted on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites. These sites frequently post almost anything that someone's bias might hold.  Believe in Big Foot? there's a Facebook page for that. Alien Bases on Mars? There's a Facebook page for that.  Some of these stories are largely harmless.  There are, however, a host of sites that proclaim themselves as health, expert political analysis, etc. that do nothing but spread lies, hate, and fear.  So here is my feeble attempt to help you know if the news stories you are posting are even close to accurate. Chances are pretty good that if you are posting links to your favorite political Facebook page, they aren't.

Let's get the easy stuff out of the way.  An academic paper using the internet as a source must meet much stricter standards to be considered valid. There are several good sites that list for what you should be looking. It includes simple stuff like the author, his expertise, the validity of links, footnotes and host of things.  If you're getting ready to do this kind of research try one of these great sites for what is considered documentable information.  This list on Georgetown University is a pretty good one.

Memes too are pretty easy because, for the most part, those that are not humorous are probably carefully selected propaganda.  What If they offer statistics, check them for accuracy.  Take, for example, the recent use of the three cops holding signs after Ferguson and the New York attacks.  What makes these viral memes interesting is that you can find different words on the signs depending on what was Photoshopped on them.  What is more, the signs didn't originally had anything to do with attacks on police.  They were part of an advertising campaign in Tennesse to be sure to "move over" in cone zones because all lives matter.

All polls are not equal. Information from major news organizations or places like Pew tends to be more carefully constructed whereas political organizations like MSNBC and FoxNews stilt their poll questions to get the answers they want.  I've been on the receiving end of several of these so-called polls.

The easiest ones to dismiss is basically all of Facebook.  If you're cutting and pasting some lovely little article or clip, then you are not being well-informed.  If the page you are following only links one source, it is propaganda.  Conservative Daily uses only IJReview.com.  while Progressive America uses only BlueNationReview.com.  You've heard the saying "because science" well how about a new one, "bias much"? I have friends that post from these sites almost weekly if not daily.  I like these folks, but I would not consider them well-informed. There is not an article on IJReview or BlueNation that I would not vet carefully for accuracy.  Sadly, there are even a few friends whose feed on my Facebook page I've had to unfollow.  The vitriol they spewed and links they post were just too filled with hate and fear. I quit following them.  No, I didn't respond. First rule: Never argue with a crazy person.

From:
 http://www.ntnu.no/viko/english/evaluating

So that brings us to the best way to check for accuracy. It will always involve work.  You will become faster.  Start here:

Reliability or Authority means the author or information is an actual expert.  An article should always have an identifiable author.  I know it is hard to believe, but movie stars and politicians are not reliable or authoritative sources. Lobbyists of political organizations or ads placed by super PACs are not reliable either.  Next time you hear the head of the NRA or that leader of one of the political parties giving a speech they have no real authority.  They are in fact using or misusing the same information you can look up.

Objectivity means the person writing or speaking uses factual language, avoids loaded words, and seems to be fair and balanced.  The article is not driven by personal bias.

Accuracy is the one that takes time.  There are a few tips though that the article is attempting to be accurate.  They include links to other relevant sources.  The article is detailed.  The sources are recent and also have sources.  The link should lead you to more information, not just the original article.  Too frequently, articles are just a re-posting of the exact same article.  The article's title indicates information.  It should not be sensational or what has become known as "click bait."

Finally comes Relevance or Currency.  No dates are offered.  Many of the links are broken.  There are no dates on the page. Information is stale or undated. All this means that chances are pretty good the article fails the reliability smell test.

The more of these ROAR items that an article meets the more accurate the article.  You can't just dismiss and article because it is biased, but you will approach its information more carefully.  After all, if we all didn't rant once in a while, the web would be a boring place.

My last recommendations: Don't get all your information from the same source. Change up your sources and your news. Organizations like MSNBC and FoxNews are going to influence you in ways you won't realize.

And...READ.

Is Avengers: The Age of Ultron the Ultimate Marvel?

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS HERE

I liked Avengers: The Age of Ultron but not because it is the best of the Marvel Universe, it isn't.  Guardians of the Galaxy and Winter Soldier will both be tough to beat.  What I liked about the Avengers and many of the Marvel movies is they get the idea that even special effects movies must have strong characters, a cohesive theme, and that superheroes need to be heroes.

There is character in Age of Ultron, and while we get a few origin stories for new characters like Quicksilver, Vision, and the Scarlet Witch, we also see characters who interact with each other.  Bruce Banner (the Hulk) loves Natalia "Natasha" Romanov (Black Widow) in a doomed to fail romance...maybe.  We learn that Clint Barton (Hawkeye) has a very secret life that was protected by Nick Fury.  We see friction between great egos. Captain America believes the Avengers need to lead through the transparency that Fury and Shield failed to do. Captain America tells Tony Stark that he has never seen his dark side. This conflicts with Stark who wants to save all through technology at any cost.  It is Stark's drive that causes the release of Ultron. We view the conflict between Thor and Tony and Captain America. Thor feels the human heroes too often meddle in affairs that humans don't understand, but Thor also tends to make sudden decisions without consulting the rest of the team.  In short, the heroes who unlike other comic book heroes have no alter-egos, are very human.

The actors who play these roles all have gravitas as they play in what should be considered a very over-the-top genre. Chris Evans as Captain America plays the "boy scout" like super soldier delivers his reminder to his team to watch their language with ease and without seeming like he should be standing with his hands balled in fists at his waist with a flag waving in the background.  Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has managed to take the most egotistical superhero ever created and make him likable. Mark Ruffalo has even overcome the stand-alone movie versions of the Hulk that have come before.  Finally, Robert Downey Jr. owns the Ironman role. We accept these characters not as the silly stereotypes movies and television of the past but as real within the confines of the world created.  I mean who came up with the idea of wiping out life on Earth by dropping a city on the planet?  It is a ludicrous idea and yet we are as watchers easily are drawn in.  Marvel has found a blend of actors and humor that truly works.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron has, as other Marvel movies before them, a unifying idea.  Comic books are, after all, morality tales.  The driving idea in this one starts a little with the one started in Winter Soldier about the dangers of hidden power, but it quickly develops the idea that all are capable of behaving like monsters.  The obvious monsters are Ultron and the Hulk, but there are also the inner demons like that of the trained assassin Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) or Thor's vision of having so many die because of his failed leadership. The twins, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Wanda Maximoff) learn that just because Stark built bombs he is not a monster and that an artificial intelligence claiming to want peace, Ultron (James Spader) is.  Not all monsters are visible.

Finally, there is a simple idea that the DC movies have forgotten of late.  Superheroes need to be heroic.  They should do all they can to save lives.  Each of the heroes in one way or another value the lives of those they fight for. The under-utilized until now Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) gives a strong performance as what a human hero should be.  Each Avenger demonstrates the willingness to lay down his or her life to save the innocent.  The movie is not about the destruction but about what the heroes do.  Superheroes can die, but they die protecting others.

The usual issues with these movies apply.  There are points where the CGI overpower the performance.  I love James Spader. I am less enamored of a completely CGI villain.  As was the case with many of the newer comic book movies, too much is made of the CGI scenes and particularly with the larger digital projection and IMAX screens the effects become blurry.  The new slow motion effect is, to put it bluntly, trite.  The first time the Avengers power out in slow motion is fun and very comic book oriented.  The number of times that this effect is used detracts from the pacing.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron works because it is for comic book nerds like watching a live action comic book.  I don't grow tired talking about the easter eggs or explaining to my wife who Thanos is.  I will probably get tired of the debate of "Is Quicksilver really dead?" or "Which of the original Avengers will return now that we have the first rotation of new Avengers?" or "Will Mark Ruffalo ever get his stand-alone Hulk?" or "Why is Quicksilver different in Avengers than the one in X-Men?"  Ahh well, let the speculation begin.  Go see Avengers: Age of Ultron.  I will buy the Blu-Ray.

A Little Logic

I had a little logic passed on the other day by comedian, Lewis Black. No, it was not particularly liberal. But it made so much sense to me, I thought I should pass it on.

When I was growing up, my dad always taught me to leave a place better.  If you use someone's tools or their work area, you should always return the tool or the space cleaner than when you got it or used it.  Every home I've owned or rented, I always tried to leave it in better shape.  My current home has been steadily updated and improved.  It was the way we always approached a site when we went camping.  In other words, it is a typical life lesson, try to leave things better than you found it. It was something I tried to teach my own children.

This brings me to the bit of logic from Lewis Black.  It's about climate change.  Even if you don't believe in climate change, why wouldn't you want to leave this planet - this Earth - a better place than you found it for your children so they can leave it a better place for their children? For that matter, why wouldn't you want to make life better and the planet better for everyone?

Well, why wouldn't you?

It really is that simple.

The Choosing of My Directorial Debut

In 1979, I was hired right out of the University of Northern Colorado to teach English, direct the school play, do one, speech meet, and was  eventually appointed as the assistant basketball coach at South Park High School.  I had a degree in English, a minor in theatre, had only done speeches for classes, and I could identify a basketball at least four out of five times.

So, I had a lot to learn. I mean....I-HAD-A-LOT-TO-LEARN.

Besides the fact that I was an actual contracted, certified teacher, I was excited that I would get to direct a play.  I had directed a scene in college directing class.  I'd even "directed" a skit in my high school.  I had seen some really great directors and some really bad ones as well.  I felt competent to the task. Little did I know how much I didn't know.

All that said, I still believed I could do something to build the struggling theater program at South Park High School.  The training, I'd received in college gave me some understanding of staging.

Like many small high schools, South Park had done what many small high schools had done by appointing some teacher, usually the English teacher, to direct a class play.  It would sometimes be a Senior Play or if the class was small the Junior/Senior Play.  My first act was to ask permission to open auditions to any South Park High student, freshmen through senior.  Permission was granted.

Next, I looked at the scripts from previous plays.  To say the plays the school had done were some of the poorest dreck ever to be printed would be an understatement.  The script file consisted of I called "high school"  (and not in a good way) plays and mediocre melodramas.  What they all had in common was they were bad to begin with and cheap to do and required virtually no skill to perform.  So I decided we needed to do something else.  Something of a little more classic nature.

There was one other problem: money.  I think I was given a total budget of about $50.  This sum dictated that the play had to be minimal royalty to no royalty or public domain.  We had to make do with whatever costumes the actors could come up with and we would have to survive on my small makeup supply.  We also had no scenery of any kind.  Public domain, then it was.  I refused to pick another of the cheap "high school" (and not in a good way) play.  I also wanted real scripts for the actors. I chose a favorite of mine, The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde.  (As a side note, I discovered a short time later that Wilde had actually come to the South Park and Leadville area  as a guest of Horace Tabor.)

Scripts were, I think, about $1.75 each so I bought the exact number of scripts for the actors plus one for me.  I'd never actually built a director's script.  I simply wrote all movement into my script as we rehearsed.  So having spent $17.50 plus shipping.  I had about $30 to build a set for a multiset show. I purchased enough lumber to build two door frames, a large window frame, and a fake fireplace.  I also bought some chicken wire in order to make a hedge from tissue paper and some fishing line and a few eyelets and hooks. The idea was a simple one.  We could place the window and door frames anywhere on stage.  All we had to do was put up the fishing line and hooks from the curtain pipes where we wanted to hang entry doors and windows.  Any needed furniture would be borrowed.  Oh, did I mention the stage sat at one end of an old elementary gym?  The stage at Edith Teeter Elementary was 12 feet deep and 24 feet wide at the proscenium.  There was no wing storage and acoustics were slightly better than a cavern in Carlsbad.


I cast my first play. I think every person that auditioned ended up with a part or technical position.  Turn out was not huge.  I was disorganized, and it would be several more plays and a Masters Degree in Theater with a directing emphasis from an amazing theatre professor before I actually knew what I was doing, but I was fortunate.  I had actors who were willing to help and work with me.  Together we learned, and we did a real play.  We did two shows: a matinee for the entire school, elementary through high school, and an evening performance.

 It was a sad turn out for the evening show.  There were perhaps 18 or 20 people in the house.  The cast and running crew were almost as many. The dearth of "high school" (and not in a good way) plays had taken its toll. I would also discover that because that I wasn't choosing simple, slap schtick plays, elementary and younger students were going home and announcing that the plays were boring because they didn't understand the play.  Killing the all school matinee a couple of years later also increased attendance.


It would be a couple of years before we would get a bigger attendance to the evening shows. I was, however, thrilled with my small cast who  put on this classic and challenging play.  They would become my first core group of performers from which we would build the program over the next ten years.  It was this group of nine or so actors and a few stagehands, that would give me my start in educational theater.  I cherish this time.  We did real shows (and in a good way).  Thank you goes out to those early actors and technicians who struggled with my learning curve but shared with me a moment in the arts.

Meme Time...

I have a few memes that have been piling up.

I am also going to be evil and make you look up to see if what I say is true.  So here you go.

1.
History much?

Washington was the only president who was not endorsed by any political party.  Jefferson was a member of the Democratic-Republican party.  Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican who left the party to form the Bull Moose Party and was a leader of the Progressive Movement.  He did reconcile with the Republican leadership but died before he could run again in 1920.  Abraham Lincoln was the first elected president of what we would now consider the current Republican party, but it should be noted that up until the early 1950s it was the Democrats who were considered conservative and it was FDR's New Deal that would move the Democrats to the left.  The South was  largely Democrats who were even referred to as War Democrats in the time of Lincoln. Lincoln, who was fairly liberal, worked with the many divided factions of the Republican, Democrat and the dying Whig party which was more business oriented.  

2.

Does this mean the argument has changed?

If guns gave us freedom then does this now mean that guns do kill people?  You cannot have it both ways.

I know a number of folks who would disagree with this idea, including Mohandas Gandhi who brought the British Empire in India to its knees without the use of weapons, The Selma Freedom Marchers who forced the passage of civil rights voting rights act without the use of weapons, and Nelson Mandella who was also an advocate of nonviolence, although it should be noted he did, before his arrest, work with a group of terrorist saboteurs.  I suppose I could include Martin Luther King and Jesus, but that would just be piling on.

3.
No.  Washington did not say this.

This is what he actually said: "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies."

Its meaning is just a bit different than the distorted quote.

4.
The next two are just silly, and I include them for fun.

If you didn't survive riding in the back of a truck, I suppose you won't be sharing.

And I simply have no words for this Valentine.

I suppose her Valentine will remain faithful, at least while he is in range.

More soon.

Part of the Problem Part 5: You Are Being Lied To

Ever wonder how it was that people could allow such horrible thing such as death camps to occur.  They were steadily lead there by misrepresentation.  I honestly worry about people who spend all their time on right wing or left wing sites. It is easy to fall into the trap of propaganda and sadly the leading cable news network is one of the lowest rated in its accuracy.  Fact Checking sites rate news regularly and one of the lowest rated is Fox News. Politifact, for example, rated Fox, Fox News, and Fox Business and their pundits as only half true to pants on fire 121 times out of 129 stories they've investigated. Bill O'Reilly, Fox's lead pundit, has received only true and mostly true marks 6 out of the 18 times he was checked.  Another political station is NBC/MSNBC which has been checked 123 times have been classified as half true to pants on fire 82 times.  Rachael Maddow*, MSNBC's lead pundit,  has been rated true to mostly true 9 out of 24 times they have fact checked her.  If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, Politifact has never given him a True rating and only mostly true twice out of the 30 times they have fact checked him.  Glenn Beck, of TV, radio, and internet fame, has been classified as true to partly true only 4 out of the 27 times he was fact checked. No political pundit or political network have good records.  If something is half true, then that means it is also half lie.  In my book that makes it pretty suspect as to that person's intent.  Shading the truth is still lying.


If you don't think that some of these stations will protect this lying, then you are not paying attention.  Bill O'Reilly has been recently caught in a number of misrepresentations in his news reporting past.  Brian Williams was suspended for his misrepresenting a past story.  Lara Logan of 60 Minutes was suspended for putting a report out on Benghazi that used lies told by a "witness." Martin Bashir resigned from MSNBC following his attack on Sarah Palin.  Bill O'Reilly, despite other reporters announcing that a some of his news reports are lies at most and inaccurate embellishments at the least, has also been accused of threatening a reporter at the NY Times and sexual harassment.  While it is true he is a pundit now, when he made those reports, he was a news reporter.  Fox has remained mute on the subject except to point to his ratings, and O'Reilly has basically attacked anyone who has a different story. He also says in an interview in the Washington Post, "This is splitting hairs trying anything they can to bring down me because of the Brian Williams situation.” I am not sure who "they" is. A former FoxNews member told CNN that no one actually expects O'Reilly to tell the truth.  That is, indeed, a sad comment on the most watched cable news network.

But it gets worse.

If you use sources from Facebook pages, you are going to find even more lies, half-truths, and shadings.  Several friends I have on Facebook post stories almost daily from the Conservative Daily Facebook page.  I did some wandering around on that page and every single "news" item comes from the IJReviw.com. Doesn't it bother them that the page makes no attempt to hide what it is? Do you really expect unbiased news from a page called Conservative Daily? That's like expecting a site called GumChewersof America to post nothing but anti-gum memes and kitten videos.  You are living in a fool's paradise.  IJReview, which stands for Independent Journal Review, is about as independent in its politics as AllThingDemocrat.com is favorable to Republicans.

The Baltimore Sun recently posted a Pew Research poll on how trusted are news source.  Pew has long been held as fairly independent with a slight conservative lean.  They found that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are the two least trusted news sources in their poll.  Fox is the number one cable news source and Limbaugh has the number one talk radio show, and yet in the poll, they led the pack in least trustworthy.  And many of you post from these people daily. So how does Fox become the "Most trusted" in other surveys? It is because of who they serve.  If you convince your audience that all other networks are liberal shills, then when the survey is run, the only conservative network is bound to show as most trusted.  If you ran an election with one conservative and five liberal candidates, then the conservative wins because the liberals split the rest of the vote.  So if Fox, as it did in one survey, shows as 19% "trusted a great deal."   Other networks divide the rest.  NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC, all of which are supposed to be "left of center," receive 71% as "trusted a great deal." The over-all rating by voters of 29% for Fox means that the rest of these ratings are then divided by the so-called liberal media.

I know. There is a defense.  Politifact and its subsidiary Punditfact which rated Fox as on the false side about 60 percent of the time and MSNBC about 46 percent of the time is a liberally driven media outlet.  Really? That's the defense?  Well, who told you that? Conservative Daily? Fox News? IJReview? Having a conservative website tell you that fact checking sites are driven by liberals is kind of like listening to Charles Manson tell you he is all about love or Bill Clinton announce that he didn't have sexual relations with that woman.  With that kind of defense, we don't need juries any longer. We just rely on the defendant to tell us if he is guilty or not and accept his words. Wolves won't bother the chickens and you can sit at ease as you are surrounded by starving lions. To quote Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."


Do you want to stop the dividing of America?  Then get off Conservative Daily, TeaParty Patriots, Americans Against the Tea Party, Think Progress and actually find the truth.  You are being lied to and your acceptance of it makes you part of the problem.


*Full disclosure, Rachael Maddow is one of the political pundits I follow on Facebook.  It does not mean I believe her.