text:
Wali Khan (sometimes spelled Vālī-khan) was a member of the Ak Taghliq clan of East Turkestan Khojas, who invaded Kashgaria from the Kokand during the Afaqi Khoja revolts on several occasions in the 1850s, and succeeded in ruling Kashgar for a short while.

Although Ak Taghliks had been expelled from Kashgaria by the Qing in the 1760s, they had not abandoned their hopes of reconquering the region, and regularly invaded it from their base in Khanate of Kokand. Wali Khan followed in the footsteps of his father, Jahangir Khoja, his uncle Yusuf, and cousin Katti Torah, who had all invaded Kashgaria with various success through the first half of the 19th century.

He invaded Kashgaria in 1852 (with Divan Quli), 1855 (with Husayn Ishan Khoja), and most famously in 1857. Wali Khan, who was reputed for his brutality and tyranny, let a rebellion in 1855 and began by attacking Kashgar.

Chinese were massacred and the daughters and wives of the subordinates of the loyalist Turki governor were seized. Adolphe Schlagintweit, a German, was executed by beheading by Wali Khan and his head put on display. Wali Khan was infamous for his cruelty and if courtiers "raised their eyes" to him he would murder them, when the call to prayer was made by a muezzin and his voice was too loud the muezzin was murdered by Wali Khan. A 12,000 strong Chinese army crushed and defeated the 20,000 strong army of Wali Khan in 77 days of combat. Wali Khan was abandoned by his "allies" due to his cruelty. The Chinese inflicted harsh reprisals upon Wali Khan's forces and had his son and father in law executed in harsh manners.

In the West Wali Khan is mostly known for his execution of the German explorer Adolf Schlagintweit in 1857, but his cruelty found many other reflections in the local legends. It is said that he killed so many innocent Muslims that four or six minarets were built from the skulls of the victims ( kala minara ); or that once, when an artisan made a sabre for him, he instantly tested the weapon with the words, "Well, I'll try it now," by cutting off the artisan's son head, who had come with his father and was standing nearby. Then, with the words, "Yes, it's a really good sabre," he presented artisan with a gift. This treatment did not make Kashgarians miss the khoja too much when he was defeated by the Chinese troops after ruling the city for four months.

The local Uyghurs of Altishahr grew to hate and despite Wali Khan for his forcible introduction of Kokandi culture and suppression of Kashgari culture and for his brutality.

In 1865, after Kokand Khanate had been successfully invaded by the Russian and its ruler Alimqul killed, Wali Khan joined a large group of Kokandian officials who decided to try their luck in Kashgaria. They appeared in Kashgar in September 1865, but had to submit to the fellow Kokandian Yaqub Beg, who had already firmly established himself as the ruler of the city. Wali Khan's followers attempts to bring him to power again very easily foiled by Yaqub Beg, who had Wali Khan arrested and sent to Yangihissar under armed guard, where he was later poisoned.

References

 Kim Hodong, "Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877". Stanford University Press (March 2004). . (Searchable text available on Amazon.com)
 Mayo Williamson Hazeltine, Demetrius Charles Boulger. "China".  Full text available at Google Books.

History of Xinjiang
Khanate of Kokand

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
31 March 2020 / SF News / Jay Barmann
Under New Public Health Orders, Funerals in SF Are Limited to 10 People
Under newly released orders from the San Francisco Department of Public Health and five other Bay Area counties, the current stay-at-home guidelines are extended through May 3, and there are some new restrictions as well.
Health officers in six counties — San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin — issued a joint extension order today that extends the previous shelter-in-place orders issued the week of March 16 through May 3 — the original order had only gone through April 7.
And, as ABC 7 and other outlets are reporting, the updated order makes further specific restrictions around playgrounds, golf courses, and picnic areas — all are closed and off limits — and funerals that occur before May 3 are officially limited to 10 or fewer attendees.
This is a sad affair but reflects similar restrictions that were put in place in Italy, where over 10,000 people have now perished from COVID-19 and have mostly had to do so without formal funeral ceremonies.
In Germany, restrictions announced last week prohibited gatherings of more than two people.
The guidelines around funerals also follow reports of further outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel and New Jersey, where community members are flouting social-distancing orders in order to adhere to strict funeral gathering rituals.
The new Bay Area orders place further restrictions on construction, and they command all businesses deemed essential that remain open to establish "social distancing protocols" by April 3. Most grocery stores in the six counties included have already established these — and, for now, as before, Napa, Sonoma, and Solano counties are lagging behind and may issue similarly revised orders soon.
Also: No playing sports involving the touching of a shared ball with anyone outside your household.
Related: Shocking Report: Bay Area Getting Drunk as Hell During Shelter-in-Place
Photo: Rhodi Lopez
40-Year-Old Man and 9-Year-Old Boy Found Dead in Marina District in Possible Murder-Suicide
3.8M Earthquake Rumbles Under East Bay
Oakland Police Face New Possible Scandal Involving Social Media Accounts, Racist and Sexist Memes
Burning Man Ticket Sales Put On Hold As Event Remains In Limbo
Still unsure whether Burning Man will even happen in 2020, given everything, organizers announced Tuesday that the original scheduled dates for registration and ticket-buying are being postponed to an as-yet-undetermined future date.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink
Shocking Report: Bay Area Getting Drunk as Hell During Shelter-in-Place
Wine.com reports spirits orders are up 400 percent during stay-at-home orders, as bottoms up is the top activity in these shut in times.
Jay Barmann
Jay C. Barmann is a fiction writer and web editor who's lived in San Francisco for 19 years.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Men's Health: Nasal spray boosts sexual arousal
Experimental drug is a possible alternative to pill-based treatments for impotence
By Chatelaine Updated June 26, 2007
Men who have difficulty getting an erection may soon be able to inhale their way to a better sex life thanks to an experimental drug that's delivered in the form of a nasal spray.
The drug, called bremelanotide, increases arousal by acting on the nervous system. In contrast, Viagra and similar pills for impotence act on blood vessels in the penis.
Dr. Jed Kaminetsky, a clinical assistant professor of urology at New York University, says it's good to have alternatives to Viagra-type drugs because some men don't respond to them, while others can't take them because of side-effects or conflicts with other medication. "It's exciting that there's a new drug with a different mechanism of action."
Kaminetsky and his colleagues studied 726 men who had erection problems for an average of six years, but who did not have diabetes, a condition that can make treatment of impotence more difficult.
The men were randomly assigned to several different doses of bremelanotide or to inactive placebo pills, and were asked to attempt intercourse at least twice a week for the first month. After 12 weeks, the men had improved two to eight points on a 30-point scale that measures "erectile function," with the higher doses generally leading to greater improvement.
The most common side-effect was mild nausea, which affected up to one-quarter of men in the higher-dose groups. More than half the men in the highest-dose group stopped using the medication.
Kaminetsky says absorption of the drug varies from person to person, so that men would likely start out with a lower dose and work their way up. "There is a place that you're going to get the efficacy and you're not going to have the side-effects." And there is the possibility that bremelanotide could be used in conjunction with pill treatments.
The drug is also being tested for its potential to boost sexual arousal in women.


text:
You are here: Home / Archives for Hannity
Grading Obama: The Wall Street Test
The day Obama was sworn into office the stock market dived and Fox News knew who to blame: The President. They called it The Obama Bear Market though the market had been in free fall well earlier. (See transcript after the jump.)
However, now that the President has had time to implement many of his ideas into actual policy, the banking, automobile and housing sectors are back on their feet as the economy has turned around, and the stock market soared to new heights. According to the Bespoke Investment Group, Obama has joined an elite group of Presidents who have Presidencies were marked by rallies in the Dow Jones of 50% or more during their first three years in office:
Dwight Eisenhower
Calvin Collidge
Strangely enough, Fox News has stopped using the stock market as a criteria to judge presidential performance.
Extract from Fox News' Hannity (March 5, 2009) follows the jump.
Fox News' Hannity (March 5, 2009)
HANNITY: The Dow is literally tanking. It's going down here. The president said he's not watching the gyrations of the stock market.
OBENSHAIN: Oh, my gosh.
HANNITY: I'm thinking, this is like, well, it's just like a political poll. And I'm thinking, well, a political poll? When people lose now —
OBENSHAIN: Unbelievable.
HANNITY: — we're heading to 5,000? And people lost, you know, 60 percent of their money?
OBENSHAIN: In two and a half months, Barack Obama has added more to the deficit than George Bush did in eight years fighting two wars and dealing with Katrina. Of course, the markets are in a free-fall, because they recognize what's happening here.
NICK DiPAOLO (comedian): Exactly.
STEVE MURPHY (Democratic strategist): That's not what it is, but go ahead, Nick.
OBENSHAIN: That's part of what it is.
MURPHY: That's not what it is.
DiPAOLO: The free market is allergic to socialism. This is the reaction you should — the Wall Street — it should be.
HANNITY: Well, wait a minute.
DiPAOLO: Wouldn't you get scared if it went up?
MURPHY: Nick, they're all socialists on Wall Street themselves.
HANNITY: Well, but I mean, that's the point. It is a reaction. Wait, it is a reaction.
DiPAOLO: It's an allergic reaction to his baloney.
HANNITY: If they had so much faith and confidence in his plan — because, remember, markets don't react emotionally. Markets react to numbers.
OBENSHAIN: Right.
HANNITY: If they had faith and hope in his plan, why wouldn't they react more confidently?
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bespoke, Clinton, Collidge, Dow Jones, Eisenhower, FDR, Fox News, Hannity, Obama Bear Market, Roosevelt, Wall Street
Jewish Values Not on the Agenda For the 2011 Values Voter Summit
October 7, 2011 by PJV Contributor Leave a Comment
— David Streeter
2011 "Values Voter" Summit Schedule Featuring GOP Presidential Candidates To Conflict Yet Again with the Jewish High Holidays
The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) today criticized the 2011 Values Voter Summit in part because — for the third consecutive year* — the conservative conference coincides with the Jewish High Holidays. The 2011 Values Voter Summit, which will feature a majority of the Republican presidential candidates, perfectly symbolizes how the modern conservative movement does not include Jewish values under its umbrella. This year, the conference occurs on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris said:
Conservatives have been aggressively targeting Jews recently by touting their pro-Israel positions. But what they continually fail to understand is that pro-Israel rhetoric only goes so far. Polling consistently shows that the sweeping majority of American Jews abhor the conservative domestic policy positions — particularly on social issues — that will be discussed this weekend. With this in mind, American conservatives should explain how they intend to make Jews feel welcome in a political movement that advances an agenda opposed by most in the Jewish community and continually holds its flagship conference on the Jewish High Holidays.
This year's conference falls on Yom Kippur — the holiest day of the year — and will likely have significant ramifications for the 2012 Republican presidential ticket. Such a repeated scheduling conflict further symbolizes that the conservative movement and the Republican Party do not represent the values of most American Jews. Quite simply, this weekend's confab is a textbook example of why Jews remain solidly committed to the Democratic Party and its positions.
Republican presidential candidates attending this year's summit include:
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney
Texas Governor Rick Perry
Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Godfather Pizza CEO Herman Cain
Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
Other Republican elected officials speaking this weekend include:
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Roy Blunt (R-MO)
Representatives Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Mike Pompeo (K-KS), Steve King (R-IA), and Jim Jordan (R-OH)
Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli
Leading conservative media personalities Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are also scheduled to speak.
In addition, the 2011 Values Voter Summit has many breakout sessions scheduled for the weekend that conflict with the sensibilities of most Jewish voters. While Republicans on Capitol Hill pay lip service to a supposed jobs agenda, this conservative summit focuses on such hot-button social issues as "How the Welfare State Erodes the Family," "Exposing and Defunding Planned Parenthood, America's Abortion Giant," and "Straight Talk on Gay 'Marriage'" [Values Voter Summit] — conflicting with the positions of the vast majority of American Jews.
With such an extreme lineup, most Jews would be unlikely to attend. But the scheduling of the event — which makes it impossible for any Jew observing Yom Kippur to attend — takes this year's conference to new heights in repelling Jews from the conservative movement.
The 2011 Values Voter Summit's content, in addition to its scheduling, contains nearly all of the elements that remind most Jews that today's conservative movement and its Republican leaders do not reflect their values. Events such as this are a prime example of why the Democratic Party remains the historic and continued political home for the sweeping majority of American Jews.
* – Details:
In 2010, the Values Voter Summit was held September 16-19 — conflicting with Yom Kippur, which fell on September 17-18.
In 2009, the Values Voter Summit was held September 18-20 — conflicting with Rosh Hashanah, which fell on September 18-20.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bachmann, Beck, Blunt, Boehner, Buerkle, Cain, Cantor, Cuccinelli, Gingrich, GOP, Hannity, Harris, Hartzler, Jindal, Jordan, Judaism, King, NJDC, Perry, Pompeo, Romney, Rosh Hashanah, Santorum, Sessions, Streeter, Value Voters, Yom Kippur
Candle Lighting Time: 11:42 PM
Havdalah (42 min): 12:42 AM


Evotec AG announces today the publication of a DDup Special Edition, which focuses on its drug discovery service offering. All capabilities of the company are highlighted in this edition, supporting the whole value chain of drug discovery: state-of-the-art technology platforms, combined with highly experienced scientists with expertise in a broad range of therapeutic areas. Evotec delivers an industrialised, cutting-edge, comprehensive and unbiased drug discovery infrastructure to support its partner's needs for innovation efficiency either through stand-alone services or as part of a fully integrated solution.


text:
Church leaders in Jerusalem demand more protection for Holy Land Christians
A group of church leaders in Jerusalem have issued a joint statement calling for greater protection for Christians living in the Middle East, as well as a special cultural heritage zone for Christians in Jerusalem.
In a statement issued earlier this week, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem spoke with concern about the rising trend of violence against Christians in the Holy Land.
"Since 2012 there have been countless incidents of physical and verbal assaults against priests and other clergy, attacks on Christian churches, with holy sites regularly vandalized and desecrated, and ongoing intimidation of local Christians who simply seek to worship freely and go about their daily lives," they stated.
"These tactics are being used by such radical groups in a systematic attempt to drive the Christian community out of Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land."
The church leaders went on to note that while they appreciated the Israeli government's commitment "to uphold a safe and secure home for Christians in the Holy Land," they believed that this commitment was being undermined by "local politicians, officials and law enforcement agencies to curb the activities of radical groups."
"The principle that the spiritual and cultural character of Jerusalem's distinct and historic quarters should be protected is already recognized in Israeli law with respect to the Jewish Quarter," continued the church leaders.
"Yet radical groups continue to acquire strategic property in the Christian Quarter, with the aim of diminishing the Christian presence, often using underhanded dealings and intimidation tactics to evict residents from their homes, dramatically decreasing the Christian presence, and further disrupting the historic pilgrim routes between Bethlehem and Jerusalem."
The church leadership called on political authorities in Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories to dialogue with them, to deal with the radical groups, and to work on the "creation of a special Christian cultural and heritage zone to safeguard the integrity of the Christian Quarter in Old City Jerusalem."
TagsIsraelJerusalemMiddle EastMiddle East ChristiansPalestine
ADF warns that Afghan Christians will be "targeted with deadly violence"
Tristan Azbej congratulated the graduate students of HHP scholarship program


Vivo, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, has become the first company to showcase a fingerprint sensor under the display of a smartphone technology at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Shanghai. It is based on Qualcomm technology and was shown running on prototype device on the current Vivo Xplay 6 phone.
Presently, Big screen devices are ruling the smartphone business, and now Vivo is aiming to boost their sales by launching a phone that has a fingerprint sensor embedded under the display. This development will make sure that device-makers will be able to achieve sleeker designs.
The company has said the component could also work with wet fingers or underwater and could be used to measure heart rates, and Fingerprint sensors are used to unlock devices without having to type in the code, to authenticate payments and to provide other identity checks. Until now, they have typically taken up room beneath the touchscreen or been placed on the rear of a device.
The fingerprints recognition technology can be expanded further to apprehend user interaction, such as gesture recognizing, security verifying and other areas, which will greatly enhance the user experience, the sensing technology can be utilized across the entire screen, but that it would significantly raise product cost.
However, one expert said Apple could still beat Qualcomm to market with a rival screen-integrated sensor of its own. Apple's forthcoming "iPhone 8" is reported to carry a fingerprint-sensing display, but the company has reportedly faced critical challenges in its efforts to develop the technology for its entirely redesigned flagship device, due to release in the fall.


Chief Executive Officer of EIB Network Group and Empire Entertainment, Nathan Kwabena Anokye Adisi popularly known as Bola Ray has told Mynd Fm Entertainment Crew that, he has forgiven loud-mouth Showbiz critic and manager of Speech Productions, Enoch Agyapong.
Enoch Agyapong in a thread of Facebook posts made various wild allegations against Bola Ray including claims that he benefited $350,000 from Nana Appiah Mensah alias NAM 1 Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of embattled gold dealership firm , MenzGold before linking him up with organizers of the BET Awards.
He was later invited by the police over the litany of allegations in that respect but was released same day after using the same medium to render an unqualified apology to the renowned media personality.
Agyapong's envious and mischievous allegations which could not be proven almost earned him a legal suit until some interventions were made on his behalf for Bola Ray to soften his stance.
Mynd Fm Entertainment Crew gathered that, it is not the first time Enoch Agyapong has embarked on a desperate attempt to run some persons in the industry down.


Ted Nugent lit up VH1 this summer with the "Supergroup" reality show. But the Motor City Madman says not to expect to hear much more from Damnocracy, his 12-day collaboration with ex-Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach, Antrhax's Scott Ian, Biohazard's Even Seinfeld and Jason Bonham.
Nugent says the coolest thing on his meter now is his own music, a set of songs that includes titles such as "Girl Scout Cookies," "Raisin' Hell," "Funk You" and "Bridge Over Troubled Daughters." He's already hatching plans to hit the studio with his current rhythm section — bassist Barry Sparks and drummer Mick Brown — with hopes of getting a new studio album out sooner rather than later.
Whenever it comes out, the album will be Nugent's first set of all-new material since 2002's "Craveman." He's currently on the North American leg of his Unleash the Beast tour, which wraps up Sept. 4 — after which Nugent will spend the fall and early winter leading hunting expeditions in his native Michigan and other locales.


On June 25 & 26, 2011, Dr. Jeffrey C. Yuen will investigate the role of the Zheng Jia in Classical Chinese Medicine. Many serious and difficult reproductive problems are associated with "Zheng Jia" or the accumulations and concentrations. These include diseases such as: myomas (fibroids), ovarian cysts, endometriomas, cervical and uterine cancers, benign prostatic hypertrophy, testicular and prostate cancer. Dr. Yuen will discuss how these accumulations and concentrations occur, how we identify what level of pathology they are in and how we treat them through acupuncture, exercise, massage, nutrition and herbs.
On June 27, 2011, Monday, Dr. Yuen will demonstrate strategies, techniques and will be a practical day that will include specific instructions on pulse, tongue and palpational diagnosis and case study (in-person).


text:
The Ultimate Dog Show Guide
Home Tags Dog Shows
Tag: Dog Shows
A dog show is commonly called a conformation event, intended to evaluate and assess the breeding stock of different dogs. The size of the event...
Becoming a Show Dog: A Beginner's Guide on How to Get...
Cheryl Howell - Aug 16, 2021
Do you think your fido has the potential to be a show dog that can rack up records? Then competing on a dog show is...
Dog Modeling and Acting: Beginner's Guide
Diana Beth Miller - May 27, 2021
Could your dog be the next top dog model? If you have aspirations of your dog being the next Purina pup or the next...
How to Turn Your Dog Into a Show Dog
Camden Savage - Jun 13, 2020
Showing dogs can be a great way to develop a bond between you are your pet, and get involved into a very active community...
Thanksgiving Dog Show 2018: When Is It and 4 Reasons to...
Diana Beth Miller - Nov 10, 2018
The Thanksgiving Dog Show is becoming a tradition in many pet owners' households in the U.S. the same way as watching Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, special...
How Dog Shows May Incite Puppy Mill Cruelty
Camden Savage - Oct 13, 2018
There's an argument to be made that televised dog shows are for marketing purposes and they may be a partial cause of cruelty through...
TOP #57: How to Get Started in Dog Shows
Samantha Randall - Sep 25, 2018
Have you ever considered showing your dog? In this podcast episode, we were lucky to have Gail Miller Bisher of Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show who provided many tips on how to get started in dog shows and more.
The Results of 2017 National Dog Show Are Here
Cody Griffin - Nov 24, 2017
More than 2,000 dogs of every breed went head to head competing for best in show, and the results have people wondering if Chewbacca...
9 Famous Dogs That Are the Biggest Movie Stars
Connor Knight - Apr 16, 2015
1Rin Tin Tin Rin Tin Tin was a household name for many families in the age of silent film, and rightfully so. Rin Tin Tin on IMDb The famous...
How to Get Your Dog into Movies
Connor Knight - Apr 5, 2015
Everyone thinks their pet is a star. But does your dog show true Hollywood potential? Getting him or her into show business may seem...
Irish Setter Poisoned at Crufts Dog Show
Samantha Randall - Mar 10, 2015
Crufts Dog Show, one of the largest in the world, is being plagued by claims of sabotage and poisoning. Last week, Jagger, a 3-year-old...


text:
Guilty Pleasures: Julie Salamon's The Devil's Candy & Wendy and the Lost Boys
Michael Bourne October 12, 2011 | 10 books mentioned 4 min read
Today's media machine is so consumed with Lindsay Lohan's latest perp walk and whether Ashton really did cheat on Demi that the general moviegoing public is as functionally illiterate about the day-to-day workings of the film business as it is about the financial industry. Some day Michael Lewis may turn his sardonic eye from the business of sports to the business of Hollywood make-believe, but until then, those of us who want a smart, well-reported peek behind the camera will have to return to Julie Salamon's The Devil's Candy, her classic behind-the-scenes tale of the making of The Bonfire of the Vanities, published 20 years ago next month.
The magic of The Devil's Candy is that it wasn't conceived or written as a hit piece. The book is subtitled "The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco," but when Salamon, then a film critic for the Wall Street Journal, began following Brian De Palma around the Bonfire set, he was riding high on the success of Scarface and The Untouchables, and he saw Bonfire as a prestige project that could boost him into the first rank of Hollywood auteurs. It didn't turn out that way, but no one — not the studio executives, the stars, the film crew, nor De Palma and Salamon herself — knew just how disastrous a flop the film would be until it opened in the winter of 1990.
As much as The Devil's Candy benefits from the reader's foreknowledge that the film everyone in the book is struggling to get made will turn out to be a notorious turkey, the true value of the book lies in Salamon's reporting. She is blessed with that rare talent for not missing the forest for the trees while, at the same time, being able to see the trees. She places the production, a big-budget adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, a bestselling novel about the fiscal excesses of the 1980s, squarely in the age of Hollywood excess. The Studio System, with its tight budgets and cookie-cutter approach to filmmaking, was long gone, replaced by high-stakes, risk-hungry corporate culture designed to chase blockbuster hits like Jaws and Star Wars. Unlike the founding generation of immigrants who built Hollywood, she writes, the crop of executives then heading the major studios were "refugees not from Russia but from Wall Street."
They were the young M.B.A.'s and lawyers who had come of age during the eighties, men and women who had never built or run a company, but who thought nothing of buying and selling them — before they were thirty… It didn't matter whether [their companies] made food or furniture, or if the food or the furniture was any good. The companies were merely components. The thing that mattered was the deal.
Gifted financial reporter that she is, Salamon walks the reader through how this deal-centric mentality led studio executives not only to lavish multi-million dollar salaries on the movie's director and stars, but also to squander many more millions satisfying De Palma's every artistic whim. In one gripping sequence, De Palma's second-unit director Eric Schwab spends hundreds of thousands of dollars choreographing a shot of the Concorde landing at JFK against a background of the sun setting over the New York skyline — a shot that, while breathtaking, lasts all of a few seconds in the final version of the film.
At the same time, Salamon allows all the book's characters, from the most egomaniacal stars to the lowliest production assistant, to shine with real humanity. For me, the most poignant figure in the book is Melanie Griffith, who is cast as the blonde bimbo mistress of Sherman McCoy, a wealthy bond trader played by Tom Hanks. Hanks comes off as a talented, hard-working young actor skillfully climbing the ladder to stardom, but Griffith, who was 33 and coming off her second pregnancy, was already on the downslope of her career. The film's creative team holds meetings to discuss what to do about the age lines on her face ("Use Preparation H," one producer says. "That'll shrink 'em.") and everybody on the set feels free to discuss whether she is too fat to be believable as a rich bond trader's mistress. Griffith throws diva-like hissy fits about the size of her trailer and the crowds of onlookers on the set during her scenes, but for once, in Salamon's telling, one understands Griffith's neurotic rage, and even sympathizes with her.
This keen insight into the artistic personality, more so than her reportorial skill, is on display in Wendy and the Lost Boys, Salamon's new biography of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, published in August. As the title implies, Salamon appears to have intended to use Wasserstein's life story as a springboard for a group portrait of New York's off-Broadway theater scene in the 1970s and 80s. Wasserstein, best known for her plays Uncommon Women and Others and The Heidi Chronicles, knew everyone who was anyone in New York theater and seemed to have a singular talent for falling hopelessly in love with the dreamy, driven gay men who made the theater world of that era tick.
The book is very well done, and if you are a Wasserstein fan, Wendy and the Lost Boys is a must-read, but it pales in comparison to The Devil's Candy. In part, this is because Wasserstein, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Heidi Chronicles, is just not an important or interesting enough writer to merit the attention Salamon lavishes on her. At the same time, any effort on Salamon's part to use Wasserstein's career as a window to the broader theater scene is eclipsed by the sheer complexity of Wasserstein's private life.
Wasserstein, the youngest daughter of a wealthy, hyper-successful Brooklyn Jewish family (her brother was billionaire investment banker Bruce Wasserstein), had a succession of tortured love affairs with gay men and finally a daughter, via artificial insemination, at age 48. In 2006, just seven years later, she died of lymphoma. The levels of secret-keeping and duplicity this life required is worthy of an Elizabethan drama, but ultimately Wasserstein comes off less poignant and plucky than self-deluded and bullheaded. In this telling, Wasserstein is a woman who simply refused to give up in the face of insurmountable odds, whether those odds were that the gay man she was in love with would return her affections or that the cancer she was hiding from the world would simply go away. This can be charming in characters of romantic comedies for whom all turns out well in the end, but for a real person, who leaves her daughter motherless and alone, it can get a trifle infuriating.
None of this is Salamon's fault, of course, but books on the entertainment industry work best as guilty pleasures, and while the pleasures of Wendy and the Lost Boys are many, for sheer guiltiness, nothing can touch the pleasures of The Devil's Candy.
Michael Bourne is a staff writer for The Millions and a contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Salon, and The Economist. His fiction has appeared in Tin House, December, The Southampton Review, and The Cortland Review. www.michaelbournewriter.com
Screening Room Staff Picks
Father, Son, and Silver Screen: David Gilmour's The Film Club
Andrew Saikali February 27, 2010 | 10 books mentioned 1
With the Oscars just around the corner, here's a wonderfully curious memoir of a father, his son, and their shared love of film.
A few years ago, Canadian novelist and occasional CBC arts commentator David Gilmour was faced with a family crisis. His teenage son Jesse was struggling with school and with life. A deal was struck. Gilmour would let his son leave school on condition that they watch three films together, at home, each and every week. Running the gamut from classics to popcorn, these films – or more accurately, the shared experience of watching them together – prompted discussion where there had been no discussion and generated inspiration to fill a void.
The Film Club is David Gilmour's memoir of this period in his life. Written with a novelist's attention to detail and a film buff's ear for dialogue, this is a gripping tale of a father and son and the desperate desire to get a loved one's life back on track, to inspire and be inspired by.
Andrew Saikali | 10 books mentioned 1
Staff Picks: Richard P. Feynman's Six Easy Pieces
Janet Potter May 27, 2011 | 10 books mentioned 4 3 min read
To cure a recent bout of cerebral malaise, I decided to learn about quantum physics, so I turned to Richard P. Feynman. Feynman was a legendary physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, won the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum field theory, and helped develop the atomic bomb. He is also well known for his books, mostly memoirs and collections of lectures, which have earned him a reputation I think is unique to him – an approachable physics genius.
Six Easy Pieces is billed as "essential physics explained by its most brilliant teacher," and is marketed as physics for beginners, a notion that Feynman contradicts in his preface to the book. As he tells it, he kept seeing students come to Caltech to study physics, and drop out of the program before they got to the interesting stuff. So they reworked the curriculum.
The special problem we tried to get at with these lectures was to maintain the interest of the very enthusiastic and rather smart students coming out of the high schools and into Caltech. By the end of two years of our previous course, many would be very discouraged because there were really very few grand, new, modern ideas presented to them.
This is not really physics for beginners, then, but extremely advanced physics explained conversationally, so that students with a working knowledge of the sciences will be intrigued and inspired by the majestic complexity of the discipline, even if they can't grasp it yet. For as Feynman also says, "even the most intelligent student was unable to completely encompass everything that was in the lectures."
Armed with this daunting knowledge, along with the knowledge that I was a Russian lit major and took a class in high school called "liberal arts chemistry," I pressed on. If the eponymous six lectures are not exactly easy to comprehend, they are at least easy to digest, at about 20 pages each. More than once he lost me about two-thirds of the way through, but happily you do not have to master each lecture before moving on to the next.
I did not finish the book with fluency in physics, although I did learn a lot of interesting things about tides, the temperature of gas, the hexagonal nature of ice crystals, and what quantum electrodynamics is. What I did gain was a picture of the journey physics has been on, from the days when it was called "natural philosophy" to the enormous strides of Newton and Einstein to the state of physics theory today, which Feynman calls "an expanding frontier of ignorance." He is always quick to note when he's reached point where established physics ends and conjecture begins.
At one point, he describes a theory involving the nucleus of an atom (its make-up is full of unknowns), but says it has yet to be proven. "It turns out that the calculations that are involved in this theory are so difficult that no one has ever been able to figure out what the consequences of the theory are, or to check it against experiment, and this has been going on now for almost twenty years!"
The book is full of these unanswered questions, or unproven theories. Feynman compares physics to a game of chess. By watching the game long enough, you can catch on to what the basic rules are, and which pieces are allowed to move in which ways. "Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does."
It's comforting to see physics portrayed in this way – as a set of theories under constant revision – rather than an intimidating discipline. Because Feynman is so candid about the limitations of physics, his book feels very welcoming and instructive at the same time. Like a really great teacher.
Janet Potter | 10 books mentioned 4 3 min read
Staff Pick: Terese Svoboda's Tin God
Emily St. John Mandel April 2, 2013 | 10 books mentioned 2 min read
There's a feeling, reading this book, of encountering something that hasn't been done before. It seems to me that Terese Svoboda is a true original.
Emily St. John Mandel | 10 books mentioned 2 min read
The Jagged Arc: Wilson by Dan Clowes
Jacob Lambert May 18, 2010 | 10 books mentioned 2 min read
The cartoons pass and the narrative builds, and all the while, so does a sense that all this pain, all this unfiltered hate, had better be worth it—for this pathetic character and for ourselves.
Jacob Lambert | 10 books mentioned 2 min read
Through A Glass, Clearly: Steve Coll's Ghost Wars
Michael Bourne July 28, 2011 | 10 books mentioned 5 4 min read
Like millions of other Americans, I spent the weeks after September 11, 2001, struggling to understand how the tragic events of that day could have happened. CNN's Aaron Brown and Paula Zahn came to feel like permanent guests in our living room. I watched Frontline documentaries. I scoured obscure websites on Islamic fundamentalism. I read – or, rather, tried to read – Ahmed Rashid's Taliban, one of the few English-language books then in print on recent Afghan history. I wasn't a complete moron. I had heard of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and I was old enough to remember the tales of the plucky Afghan mujahideen bringing the Soviet military to its knees in the waning years of the Cold War. But none of what I already knew, even when combined with the new facts I learned that fall, added up to 19 guys hijacking four planes and flying them into buildings full of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
It is only recently, through Steve Coll's masterly Ghost Wars, first published in 2004, that I have begun to feel like I understand, viscerally as well as intellectually, what started the terrible train of events that ended that bright fall morning now almost ten years ago. There are armloads of first-class histories of the period, ranging from Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower to the U.S. government's own 9/11 Commission Report [pdf], and I heartily recommend all of them, but if you only have time for one book on the subject, make it Ghost Wars.
Histories of Islamic extremism written for an American audience have to confront this country's fundamental ignorance of the Muslim world. In Taliban, Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, deals with this problem by ignoring it and diving headlong into the hellish cauldron of military alliances that beset the Afghan capital of Kabul after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 as if the rival Afghan leaders Ahmad Shah Massoud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Mohammad Najibullah were household names. For this reason, Taliban may be one of the least-finished bestsellers in recent memory. In contrast, in The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan refugee who has lived in the U.S. since 1980, presents the rise of the Taliban in a way guaranteed to make Americans feel at home. Hosseini, who lived only a few years in Afghanistan as a child, portrays the sectarian conflicts between the Pashtun and Hazara factions in the country of his birth as analogous to racial strife between white and black people in the American South, and in case that isn't familiar enough, he gives his principal baddie, a neighborhood bully who becomes a Taliban leader, a Hitler fixation. The Kite Runner has sold millions of copies and been made into a Hollywood film, but really it says more about the lenses through which Americans see the Muslim world than it does about how the Muslim world actually works.
Coll handles his readers' ignorance of his subject by rolling up his sleeves and explaining, in a remarkably patient, non-partisan way, the whole ugly history of America's involvement in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979. Naturally, this takes some time – the book is almost 600 pages long – but it makes for riveting reading. One comes away from Ghost Wars with two seemingly paradoxical impressions: 1. unlike most American civilians, U.S. politicians and military leaders saw 9/11 coming years before it happened; and 2. barring a run of stupid luck, they had almost zero chance of stopping it, given the geopolitical realities of the pre-9/11 world.
American diplomats and spies spent years pressing our Islamic allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to force the Taliban to give up bin Laden. President Clinton and his security team spent hundreds of hours poring over satellite images and intelligence reports, trying to pin bin Laden down so they could kill him before he attacked us. They failed, and thousands of Americans died, followed by thousands more in the two wars that followed, but a fair reading of history suggests they were fighting with both hands tied behind their backs.
The Original Sin of America's involvement in Afghanistan – our clandestine arming of the mujahideen and our abandonment of the country after the Soviet retreat – makes a great deal more sense when viewed in context. It would have been politically foolish, and morally craven, to leave the Afghans defenseless against the Soviets in the 1980s, and once the Soviets left, there was exactly no political support for getting in the middle of a civil war in a distant country many Americans would have had trouble finding on a map. Likewise, while in hindsight it is hard to understand how American politicians allowed Pakistan to so openly drag its feet in challenging its Islamist allies in the Taliban, at the time the far greater worry among Western policymakers was that nuclear-armed Pakistan would pick a fight with its nuclear-armed neighbor, India, and blow Central Asia off the map.
The past is a foreign country, as the British novelist L.P. Hartley famously said, but every now and then a work of history offers a guidebook to that country, not as it looks to us now, but as it was then. It is a cause for celebration, then, that in an age when telegenic polemicists like Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow dominate the public debate, that real journalists like Steve Coll can still do their work.
Michael Bourne | 10 books mentioned 5 4 min read
Staff Pick: Two Crime Novels
Emily St. John Mandel April 14, 2011 | 10 books mentioned 12 3 min read
Video Games Are a Metaphor for Life: Austin Grossman's You
The Maples Stories, Backward
Garth Risk Hallberg October 20, 2009 | 10 books mentioned 1 2 min read
A couple of weeks ago, Harvard University's acquired the late John Updike's papers, which will take up something like 380 shelf-feet in Houghton Library. For context: that's the length of a football field, endzones included, plus enough parking lot to tailgate in.
Now the sorting of the Updike archives begins. Where to start? What to read? My own first forays into Updike's back pages earlier this year revealed a different writer than the one I thought I remembered… one more to my liking, if less sure of himself. Then, a few months later, I picked up The Maples Stories – a series published from the late '50s to the late '70s (with a '90s coda), covering the contemporaneous unraveling of a suburban family. The jacket copy made the stories sound classically, even off-puttingly, Updikean. Perhaps still clinging to the ragged edges of Rabbit Redux, I decided to extend to The Maples a formal adventurousness Updike only occasionally indulged in his short fiction: I would read the stories backward.
The effect was strangely thrilling, like watching a time-lapse photograph in reverse, the oak tree imploding into the seed. The slight, sketched quality of the early "Snowing in Greenwich Village" and the lyrical carnality (bordering on self-parody) of "Wife-Wooing," gained weight from the more mature pain of later stories like "Gesturing." And the relative callowness of young Richard Maple – not initially one of Updike's richest characters – acquired a tragic dimension from foreknowledge of where this callowness would lead him. In short, The Maples Stories, read backward, seemed too me to draw on the best of both Updikes: the younger writer's curiosity, anxiety, and social preoccupations; the older's greater security of technique and earned sense of pathos.
These stories have appeared in several incarnations – a paperback called Too Far to Go, a television script of the same name, a retitled edition called Your Lover Just Called, and a selection in The Early Stories: 1953 – 1975. Now Everyman's Library has gathered them in a single, compact, novel-like, and apparently definitive hardcover. I recommend reading them in whatever order strikes your fancy.
Garth Risk Hallberg | 10 books mentioned 1 2 min read


text:
Miami-Dade County GOP Mayor Blames BLM Protests for Coronavirus Case Spike
By Benjamin Fearnow On 7/6/20 at 10:53 AM EDT
Politics Protests Blame Coronavirus Florida
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez responded to rapidly rising cases across South Florida by pointing to "thousands of young people" in protests as partially responsible.
The Republican mayor reacted to Florida's overall case count surging past 200,000 Sunday after 10,059 confirmed new coronavirus cases emerged in just 24 hours over the weekend. Giménez told CBS' Face the Nation Sunday that many Miami area residents "let their guard down" in terms of social distancing. But he also pointed directly toward racial injustice protests in the wake of George Floyd's May 25 death as part of the cause behind the COVID-19 case spike.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez gave reasons why state COVID cases have spiked through the roof: 'Protests had a lot to do with it' pic.twitter.com/TVG11ZqnxM
— Wayne Dupree Media, LLC (@WayneDupreeShow) July 5, 2020
"Some of the protests that we had here, I think contributed to it," Giménez said Sunday. "We saw a rapid rise in young people in getting—being positive to COVID-19 around mid-June. And I think that that had a lot to do with probably socializing, young kids going to parties, maybe graduation parties at homes, because it's—it's been pretty locked down here for some time."
"I think, obviously, the protests had a lot to do with it. We had, you know, thousands of young people together outside, a lot of them not wearing masks. And we know that when you're—when you do that, and you are talking and you are chanting etc., that really spreads the virus," Giménez said when asked to clarify whether he is blaming Black Lives Matter or other Floyd-related protests for the Miami case increase.
Giménez and City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez both appeared on Sunday morning TV programs to detail the strict new mask orders and another shut down of Miami beaches amid the latest spike in new cases.
Giménez, however, offered one of the few public Republican Party criticisms of President Donald Trump's remark Saturday that "99 percent" of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless." The Miami-Dade County mayor rebuked the president's dubious health claim, saying he's "absolutely" incorrect in downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic.
Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan on Sunday pressed Giménez to respond to Trump's "99 percent" characterization of COVID-19—something the FDA commissioner repeatedly refused to do Sunday morning on CNN.
"No, the virus is not harmless," Giménez said. "Absolutely not. I mean that's why, if it were harmless, I wouldn't be taking the steps we're taking here in Miami-Dade."
Florida has hit record highs for new cases several times over the past 10 days, reporting more than 11,400 new cases on Saturday alone, according to The New York Times official database.
Public health officials and lawmakers in cities like Houston have outright rejected claims that Floyd or Black Lives Matter protests contributed to regional spikes in coronavirus cases. Even Suarez, who is a registered Republican, said "there is no doubt" that the re-opening of businesses was the primary factor behind the new case spike.
Newsweek reached out to the offices of Giménez and Suarez Monday morning for any additional remarks but did not hear back in time for publication.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez responded to rapidly rising cases across South Florida by pointing to "thousands of young people" in protests as at least partially responsible. JASON KOERNER / Stringer/Getty Images


text:
Puzzle Games #20
Kero Kero Keroppi no Daibouken (1991)
By: Character Soft Genre: Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
There are several members of the animal kingdom whose presence in a game is usually a good sign of its quality. Everyone knows if a game stars a monkey or a penguin, it's likely to be good, for example, and frogs have a pretty good track-record so far too. I was therefore keen to check out this game after seeing its smiling amphibious star beaming out from its cover, who is, I believe, named Keroppi. It's hard to be totally sure as the game was perhaps unsurprisingly a Japanese exclusive, but he shall henceforth be referred to accordingly anyway. After muddling through a couple of options screens (which allow you to choose one or two players, and whether to start a new game or enter a code), it quickly becomes clear that his game is not only a puzzle-based one but also aimed at younger players too. As Keroppi (probably), it's your job to rescue what appears to be a female frog named Keroleen (so identified by her large eyelashes and what look like pigtails) who has become 'trapped in the castle'.
Labels: Game Reviews, Games - Puzzle, System - Nintendo NES / Famicom
I'm not sure why but I've always enjoyed watching serial killer films. It's a bit weird given my aversion to horror films, but 'normal' serial killers? That's just fine by me. I have of course seen the most famous ones such as Seven, Natural Born Killers, the Lecter films etc, but I recently decided it was time to watch some new ones (well, new to me at least). Here, consequently, are the wondrous titles I selected:
God Bless America (2011)
I hadn't heard of this one prior to this feature but I now get the feeling it's one that a lot of people might be able to relate to, myself included. It stars Joel Murray as a seemingly normal salesman, but one who has become sick with the state of American society. Upon receiving several bits of bad news in quick succession, he decides he has nothing left to lose and goes on a killing spree, soon finding himself joined by a like-minded schoolgirl (Tara Lynne Barr). Their targets? Bratty 'reality' TV stars, disruptive cinema patrons, bad parkers, and all the other kinds people that they (and I, and no doubt many of you too) so despise sharing the world with. Okay, so maybe killing them is a little extreme but how many of us haven't felt like doing something similar at least once in our lives? As you might've guessed, it was intended as a black comedy, and it is indeed mighty amusing to people with a mildly twisted sense of humour like me. Murray and Barr are both great in their roles, as are most of their targets I suppose since they are indeed annoying, and their quest is a very satisfying one for anyone with a similar outlook on life and society. Is it too much to call it cinematic wish-fulfilment? ... 8/10
Retro News - New 2D Sonic Speeds Our Way!
Sonic Mania by Sega & Others (2017) - PS4, Xbone, PC
I don't usually cover special game anniversaries here, I'm not all that bothered by them to be honest, but news reached me today of a special one. Or rather, one that was accompanied by some special news. The recipient of this grand gesture is the incomparable Sonic the Hedgehog who is now 25 years young, and that means, besides making me feel rather old, it's time to celebrate! Sega's chosen method of doing this is to release not one but two new games starring the Blue Blur. The first of these is a new 3D adventure codenamed Project Sonic 2017 which is due for release sometime that year for PS4, Xbone, and Nintendo's new system, the NX. Of much more interest to us is the other title.
Labels: Company - Sega, Game News, Games - Platform
Currently Playing...
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger (2002)
By: Krome Studios / EA Studios Genre: Platform Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Microsoft Xbox
Also Available For: PlayStation 2, GameCube, PC
Let's face it, as much fun as most of them were, the heyday of fuzzy animal game characters was definitely in the 16-bit era. By the time the PS2 and Xbox arrived with all their almost-realistic human characters and corresponding blood and violence, controlling a cute animal seemed a little childish didn't it? I guess that's down to personal preference but they certainly weren't seen as often. One of the more recent I've come across (outside of indie gaming) is this effort by Krome Studios which was actually the first part of a trilogy starring their feisty marsupial.
It's interesting that they've actually gone for an extinct animal for their game but the Australian setting in which he dwells immediately opens up a number of possibilities. The story is as silly as you might imagine and involves Boss Cass, an evil cassowary (a kind of bird if you didn't know) who wants to become the supreme ruler of Australia. This, he will apparently achieve, by activating 'the Dreamtime' for which he has stolen the five mystical talismans. While attempting this, Boss Cass traps all but one of the thylacines (Tasmanian tigers) in a portal to the Dreamtime before his plan is foiled and the talismans are scattered across Tasmania. Unfortunately, this still leaves the thylacines trapped, however.
Labels: Company - Electronic Arts, Game Reviews, Games - Currently Playing..., Games - Platform 3D, System - Xbox
First Look PSN #7
MicroBot by Naked Sky Entertainment / EA (2011) - PlayStation Network (PSN)
Exploring inside the human body in microscopic form isn't a particularly new concept for the gaming world but this latest effort by Naked Sky must surely be a contender for the most realistic attempt yet. You play as a teeny robot designed to fight infection, and are in fact the fourth generation of such a device. The previous three are still in the body and, after having apparently gone haywire, have caused a load of problems including many infections. The game takes the form of a twin-stick shooter with your job being to travel around the body destroying all of these ghastly viruses, curing diseases, and tracking down the pesky microscopic culprits themselves, which are found across five areas of the body which are each split into four procedurally generated stages.
Labels: Company - Electronic Arts, Game First Look, Games - Homebrew / Doujin / Indie, Games - Shmups, System - Sony PlayStation 3
Strip Fighter II (1993)
By: Games Express Genre: Maze Players: 1-5 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: NEC PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 First Day Score: 388,100
Also Available For: X68000
It was only a few weeks past that I finally got around to looking at Street Fighter II properly here at Red Parsley, and not before time. It is of course a true classic which, as mentioned in its review, had an enormous influence on pretty much every other developer around at the time, and soon they were busy releasing similar-looking fighting games of their own. Unsurprisingly, these varied in quality a great deal and even included direct rip-offs and spoofs. Ticking all these boxes is Strip Fighter II. There is no Strip Fighter I - it was named purely to riff on Capcom's most popular and successful instalment in the long-running series, and it does this by injecting a bit of sauciness into proceedings (as if it wasn't obvious from the name!). So, after the worryingly-pornographic content of the last 'adult' game I looked at here, we're back in more familiar territory for this PC Engine release it seems, and that's fine by me.
Labels: Game Reviews, Games - Adult, Games - Fighting, System - NEC PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16
Robot & Frank (2012)
Director: Jake Schreier Starring: Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Peter Sarsgaard, James Marsden, Liv Tyler, Rachael Ma, Jeremy Strong, Jeremy Sisto
Certificate: 12 Running Time: 89 Minutes
Tagline: "Friendship doesn't have an off switch."
There have been a load of films about robots over the years. Most of them feature scary examples equipped with advanced A.I. that usually rise up against their idiotic human oppressors and smack us all up. Robot & Frank, however, is a little bit different. It's the début feature for both director, Jake Schreier, and writer, Christopher D. Ford, it's set in the near future, and focuses on just the one human. Frank (Langella) is a retired cat-burglar - a retirement forced upon him by old age and a failing memory. His son Hunter (Marsden), an attorney with a family of his own, has grown tired of checking up on him, so rather than put him into care, he instead buys him a robot 'butler' to look after him, improve his diet, and get him into a routine to help his memory. Frank, of course, has other ideas and resents the thought of his new 'death machine' waiting for a chance to 'murder him in his sleep'. Chortle!
Retro News - The N64 Shmup That Nearly Was!
I meant to post about this quite a while ago now and I thought I had, but it seems not - oops! Anyway, it's long lost game time again, this time for the N64 - a system many retro gamers bemoan for its lack of 'proper' shoot 'em ups. I imagine it may well cause many rankles among them, therefore, to hear that Sammy Corp were in the process of developing just such a title at the tail end of the 20th century.
As most of you are probably aware already, the original Viewpoint was an isometric shooter, developed by Aicom, published by Sammy, and released first for the Neo Geo and later receiving conversions for the PS1 and MegaDrive, but it seems Sammy later decided to release a sequel of sorts for Nintendo's 3D powerhouse as well. Appropriately enough they switched the titular perspective, making their game an into-the-screen blaster in addition to the original isometric. It sounds promising, I'm sure you agree; kind of like mixing the first game with Star Fox, and indeed it looks promising too - just check out the video below which shows the game in what seems to be a near-finished state which includes some epic-looking boss battles. Sadly, despite showing it off at Nintendo's Spaceworld expo in 1999, Sammy pulled the plug shortly thereafter due to what has been described as 'development issues', and that, as they say, was that.
Labels: Game News, Games - Shmups 3D, System - Nintendo N64