Archive for February 14th, 2021

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 320

Sunday, February 14th, 2021

Science Sunday!

I’ve been thinking about volcanoes. Why? No reason, really.

This seems right up RoadRich’s alley, and possibly Lawrence’s as well. I’m trying to find this on blu-ray, but the only versions I’ve found so far are not US region discs.

(What I really want to do is a double-bill of this and “Krakatoa, East of Java”. The latter actually does seem to be available on a US region disc at a reasonable price.)

Anyway…

I like this video because it clearly solves two problems at once: heating up the ravioli and opening the can. And because the ravioli is in the can, you avoid the gas problems you get when you try to toast marshmallows over hot lava. Now if you could just figure out a way to contain the hot ravioli once the can explodes.

Anyway, that was just the appetizer. From Gresham College and visiting professor Sir Stephen Sparks CBE, “Enormous Volcanic Eruptions”.

Bonus #1: “Volcano!”, a NatGeo documentary.

Bonus #2: “Life on the Rim: Working as a Volcanologist”, also from NatGeo, but short.

Bonus #3: Professor Tamsin Mather on “Volcanoes: from fuming vents to extinction events”.

Posted in Geek, History, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 14, 2021.

Sunday, February 14th, 2021

Lawrence sent over an obit for Lynn Stalmaster, Hollywood casting director.

Nicknamed “The Master Caster,” Stalmaster has more than 400 casting credits listed on IMDb, with the too-many highlights to mention including I Want to Live! (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), The Great Escape (1963), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Harold and Maude (1971), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Onion Field (1979), Tootsie (1982), Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Battlefield Earth (2000).

…

For John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), Stalmaster set up a casting call at a Georgia elementary school and found Billy Redden to play the quirky youngster in the movie’s famous banjo scene. And he suggested that Ned Beatty (making his film debut) play one of the businessmen who takes that fateful canoe trip down the river.
Stalmaster also was instrumental in the career of William Shatner (Judgment at Nuremberg); discovered LeVar Burton, then a sophomore at USC, for the landmark ABC miniseries Roots; cast country singer Mac Davis to play a pro quarterback in North Dallas Forty (1979); and insisted that eventual Oscar nominee Sam Shepard portray Chuck Yeager in 1983’s The Right Stuff (“It’s the only time I thought the film couldn’t be made without one specific actor,” he once said). He cast more than 100 roles for that movie alone.

He also was responsible for getting Dustin Hoffman into “The Graduate”, Christoper Reeve into “Superman”, and John Travolta into “Welcome Back, Kotter” among almost 400 credits in both movies and TV. He was the first casting director in history to receive an Academy Award.

Brayden Smith. He was a recent five-time “Jeopardy” champion:

Mr. Smith, she said, had achieved a lifelong dream by winning “Jeopardy!” as a contestant on some of the final shows hosted by Mr. Trebek before Mr. Trebek died in November at age 80 after a battle with cancer.

He was only 24.

He graduated last year from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with a degree in economics and had planned to become a lawyer in the federal government. He had recently served as an intern at the Cato Institute in Washington, researching criminal justice reform.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »