BQB EDITORIAL NOTE: Seeing as how his mind contains a wealth of scientific information that can be shared with my 3.5 readers, I have decided to let bygones be bygones and reinstate Dr. Hugo Von Science as a Bookshelf Battle columnist.
I’m nothing if not a turner of the other cheek.
Dr. Hugo Returns!
Guten tag, Herr 3.5 Readers!
Dr. Hugo Von Science here, finally out of zie dog house with mein old student Bookshelf Q. Battler and ready to educate you once again with mein column, You Can’t Argue With Science!
You really can’t, can you 3.5 readers? A meteor will always have the upper hand no matter what you do.
Perhaps you might remember me from one of mein many fantastic inventions:
The Taco-fier – Save the world by turning trash into tacos. Yummy and delicious tacos? Nein. It just makes taco shells filled with trash. However, I’m confident that I will be able to turn used syringes and condoms into delicious taco meat by 2035. So many cows will be saved.
Hat in a Can – Did you forget your hat today? Just spray one on your stupid head. Mold it to whatever kind of hat you want. Spray yourself a derby, a bowler, or a fedora. The government demands I notify you that spray on hats have caused 999 out of 1,000 lab rats to die horrible deaths involving intense seizures and bowel eruptions but please. You’re a human. You’re much stronger than a stupid mouse.
Ninja Socks – Put them on your feet and you will be able to perform death defying ninja like kicks! However, you’ll inevitably lose one in the washing machine and then if you only wear one of them you will only be able to kick like a Rockette, which, though impressive, is not as awesome as kicking like a ninja. Don’t split up your ninja socks. They work best as a set.
Undt last but not least…
Das Sun Blocker 3000 – Ha ha. Ha ha….Muah ha ha! Turn over the world’s riches to me or else mein latest invention will block out the sun for 3,000 years! The world will turn into a frozen wasteland and no one will ever wear a swimsuit ever again! (Let’s be honest many of you shouldn’t have been wearing one to begin with and…woopsie! I wasn’t supposed to mention this doohickey just yet.)
Anyhoodles, das Zika virus!
Those pesky little mosquitos have really been wreaking havoc across Brazil, threatening to even ruin the upcoming Olympic Games.
Zika virus can even cause microcephaly which, long story short, can cause women to give birth to babies with small, deformed heads.
Undt now, das news outlets are reporting that scientists believe the virus may even be transmitted through the oral sexenheisen.
To prove that Bookshelf Q. Battler and I have buried das hatchet and set our differences aside, I shall now relay all the jokes that BQB told me when he heard this discovery:
Who would blow a mosquito?
Great, yet another excuse for women to avoid polishing the pickle.
A little head could lead to a baby with a little head. (What? Too soon? Oh stop it and get a sense of humor.)
Finally, 3.5 readers, scientists have even suggested that deep kissing could lead to the Zika virus.
So, as if you all didn’t have enough to worry about, watch out for those mosquitos and also, what you’re putting in your pie hole, you terrible, terrible perverts.
Dr. Hugo Von Science is the Bookshelf Battle Blog’s Science Correspondent, as well as an Esteemed Professor of Science at the Advanced Science Institute of Science University. Additionally, he may or may not be a mad scientist attempting to conquer the world through the power of science in his spare time.
I mean, I’m not British and I wouldn’t set foot near a ski jump if you paid me but still…I am a nerd who knows the harsh oppression that nerds face when they seek to make their dreams come true.
SPOILERS!
BQB here with a review of Eddie the Eagle.
Michael “Eddie” Edwards had one dream growing up – to become an Olympian.
That’s a lofty goal for anyone but especially for him. He was in a leg brace for most of his early childhood and even had to stay at a hospital for a year.
As a youngster, he tries his hand at every sport only to fail miserably and end up with a box full of broken glasses.
Miraculously, he does make it onto the British downhill ski team only to be cut. Eddie is poor, unsophisticated and ultimately, the British Olympic Committee just doesn’t like him.
Speaking of poverty, he’s at odds with his Dad who wants him to quit skiing and get a job, preferably as a plasterer, as that’s what his father does for a living.
Eddie is about to pack it all in until he concocts an idea to become a ski jumper. Britain hasn’t had one since the 1920’s so all he has to do is land a good jump to qualify.
Easier said than done. After running off to a ski training facility in Germany, Eddie befriends former American ski jumper Bronson Peary. Perry is a down and out drunk, torn between a desire to find greatness again by becoming Eddie’s coach and not wanting to see Eddie die.
For, Bronson explains, even the most skilled and qualified jumpers wipe out and end up gruesomely mangled all the time.
In case you’re not convinced, you’ll see Eddie get knocked all over the slopes all throughout the film. It almost makes you wonder who thought ski jumping would be a good sport to begin with.
I don’t want to give too much more away. Like Rocky, Eddie competes. He tries. He gets in the game and his victory doesn’t come from gold (he comes nowhere close) but that he did so much better than expected, especially when no one expected anything from him.
If you’re not a ski jumper, that’s ok. This movie can be applied to any dream. On this blog, we talk about our writing aspirations, hopes, and dreams.
I can tell you I can relate to Eddie. Maybe not with the hurling myself into the air, but I know what it’s like to be told by family and friends to quit writing, to be told by experts it can’t be done, to wonder myself what other productive things I could be doing instead of gluing myself to my keyboard.
But we do what we do because we can’t stop ourselves.
Taron Egerton is a great Eddie just as Hugh Jackman is an excellent Bronson.
It is too bad this movie came out so early in the year. I see Oscar potential. I know it made me shed a tear or too.
Then again, the Oscars are So Pretty, and they probably wouldn’t want to promote a movie that gives nerds a crazy idea like they can be somebody.
This movie looks great. An unathletic nerd dreams of becoming an Olympian, chooses ski jumping because the UK hasn’t had one since 1929, and goes for it.
As a spokesman for nerds everywhere, I demand this film sweep the Oscars in 2017.
And so many scantily clad dudes rolling around on the floor that I swear I caught Aunt Gertie staring at the screen just a little too longingly.
Bookshelf Q. Battler here after FINALLY having had the chance to catch last year’s Foxcatcher.
I’m loathe to use the word “SPOILERS” for a film about a horrific crime that’s nearly 20 years old but honestly, while I’d generally heard about the case, I didn’t know the specifics until I began reading about the film. If you’d like to find out on your own as you watch, you might want to rent it first and then read this review later.
Movieclips Trailers – Foxcatcher – Sony Pictures
Wealth. For some it’s a blessing. For others it’s a curse.
Throughout history, there have been people who have been born into great circumstances, their lives preordained before they even opened their eyes and took a look at the world for the first time.
Some individuals take the vast resources at their disposal and do their families proud, achieving new levels of greatness.
Others party hearty and are destined to become paparazzi fodder.
In the middle, there are folks who enjoy their riches, coast along and somehow manage to make jackasses of themselves.
Then there’s John du Pont. Heir to a massive chemical company fortune, he’s an odd duck to say the least. He’s socially awkward, almost painfully so. It’s like he knows what he wants to say but has a hard time expressing himself, assumably because he’s lived such a sheltered life.
The majority of the film takes place in the late 1980’s, when du Pont is in his late fifties. He lives on a sprawling estate which he dubs Foxcatcher Farm, fox hunting having been a popular activity for well-to-do visitors to the grounds.
The movie makes it clear – du Pont believes himself to be a great man and he wants the rest of the world to agree. He doesn’t really want to do anything to achieve that goal. He just wants to spend large sums of money and purchase the acclaim he believes he deserves.
At the heart of his need for glory? A rivalry with his mother Jean (played by one of the few remaining Old Hollywood stars Vanessa Redgrave) leaves him with a burning desire to prove his worth to her.
One gets the impression that the rivalry is one sided. Jean trains show horses on the estate and proudly displays her trophies in the family mansion. du Pont envies the horses and wants his mother’s attention. Despite being almost 60 years old, he’s like a little kid yearning for Mommy’s approval.
Meanwhile, brothers David (Mark Ruffalo) and Mark (Channing Tatum) Schultz have each won an Olympic gold medal for wrestling. Keep in mind we’re talking about real wrestling, the kind that involves knowledge of various moves and techniques, and not the scripted garbage on Monday night.
From the film, it’s clear the brothers have a deep love and admiration of one another, but while David has found happiness with a loving wife and family, Mark is alone, living on ramen noodles in a tiny house and at the start of the film, earning a twenty dollar gratuity for speaking at an elementary school (it’s made obvious that Mark needs that twenty bucks).
Mark feels that even though he’s earned his notoriety, anything he does is overshadowed by his brother. If he has success, the public attributes it to David’s mentorship of Mark and not Mark himself. Mark wants to accomplish something on his own, and to make matters worse, he needs money.
Enter du Pont with a miraculous offer for the Schultz brothers. du Pont wants them to come to his estate, select a wrestling team, train themselves to compete in the upcoming 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul and train their team mates while they’re at it. He’ll pay them and give them houses on his property to live in for free.
David, not wanting to uproot his family, isn’t interested. Mark, seeing a chance to break out of his brother’s shadow, takes the deal.
And for awhile he excels at Foxcatcher.
But alas, it is an understatement to say that du Pont is weird.
He insists that people refer to him as “America’s Golden Eagle.” He orchestrates a large awards ceremony for himself, and in a sad commentary about society, it’s well-attended by the rich and the powerful. He wants to be a wrestler too and organizes a senior citizen wrestling competition, only to pay off his geriatric competitor to take a dive.
That’s not all. du Pont purchases a tank with the ease that one might order a book from Amazon. When it arrives, he throws a fit that it doesn’t include a 50-caliber machine gun as promised and refuses to sign for the shipment.
He snorts cocaine with reckless abandon, takes his helicopter everywhere, and its not-so-subtly implied that his generosity towards the sport of wrestling might have been a front to allow him to roll around with young sweaty men.
Throughout his Pennsylvania community, du Pont is known as a gracious benefactor, a man who doles out the cash just so he can be a part of everything. The local police department practice on his shooting range and he shoots guns alongside them.
Poor and crazy? You’re crazy. Rich and crazy? You’re eccentric. Not to fault the movie, but if you perform a web search on du Pont, you’ll come up with an endless supply of allegations, many of which weren’t portrayed in the film. That’s not a knock on the film at all. It’s just that the man was so nuts that there just wasn’t enough time to capture it all on screen:
Some of the allegations I was able to find on the web that weren’t featured in the film:
That du Pont put razor wire in the walls of his house because he thought it was haunted by ghosts
He crashed multiple cars into a pond on his property
He bought a look-alike police car and pulled over people who drove near his property.
Believed that Nazis and Russian spies were frequenting the property, often demanding that his employees search for them.
Kicked black wrestlers off the team claiming “the KKK runs this place”
That du Pont, after his mother’s death, sets her horse barn on fire with the horses inside. The film only shows Carrell let the horses go. Perhaps horses being burnt up is too graphic for the screen.
Again, there wasn’t just enough time in the movie, but the film more than manages to portray the fact that the man just was not right in the head.
Steve Carrell is no stranger to playing characters who aren’t exactly grounded in reality. After all, he played the dimwitted bumbling boss Michael Scott on The Office for years. But while Scott’s antics were relatively harmless, du Pont’s instability is (and as we see later) a disaster waiting to happen.
Barely recognizable under gray hair and a large prosthetic nose, Carrell earns his Oscar nomination as he plays du Pont, capturing his overall style of a hopelessly depressed ego-maniac slash elderly man child.
If I keep going, I’ll give too much of the film away. It climaxes when du Pont, spurred on by his ongoing desire to achieve greatness (by letting others earn it for him) makes David an offer he can’t refuse to come be part of the Foxcatcher wrestling program. Mark, who’s been sucked into du Pont’s unhealthy drugging lifestyle, feels betrayed by du Pont (at one point du Pont tells Mark he understands and supports his desire to win on his own), that he’s lost his chance to win without his brother’s help, not to mention he’s under intense pressure from du Pont to succeed.
Later, Ruffalo as David makes a face as if he’s losing his soul when a documentary film maker du Pont has hired to produce a glowing film about himself asks David to say du Pont is his mentor. David is perhaps the most genuinely lovable character of the whole film, caring for his family, concerned for his brother’s well-being and at a crucial moment in the film, stands up to du Pont on Mark’s behalf.
SPOILER ALERT (Again, I hate using that term here but I have no idea what else to say.)
After losing in the 1988 Olympic games, Mark leaves the Foxcatcher program and the film ends with du Pont driving his car to David’s house.
Here’s the scary part. I’ve known for years that du Pont shot David Schultz just because it was a well-known, highly reported on crime. And I’ve been reading more about it since the movie came out.
Yet, even though I knew it was coming, I just wasn’t prepared for it and was startled anyway. While David is standing in his driveway, du Pont pulls up, asks, “Do you have a problem with me?” then shoots David.
An employee riding with du Pont who had no idea what his boss was up to tries to stop him. David’s wife comes out of the house and du Pont points his gun at her, sending her back in the house.
David struggles to crawl to safety but du Pont shoots him twice more in the back then drives back to his house to hole up.
The expressionless face, the clear lack of interest in the gravity of what he’s done…Carrell as du Pont arguably portrays a villain in that short moment that rivals Hannibal Lecter.
But while Lecter made it clear he wants to eat you, du Pont is one of those people who seems off, but no one realized just how off he was or what he was capable of until it was too late.
Accounts I’ve read online typically describe the situation in that du Pont was known throughout his community as being an oddball but his antics seemed harmless and people were happy to take advantage of the generous donations he offered, thus placating his bad behavior while failing to realize he was a ticking time bomb all along.
One can’t help but feel sorry for the Schultz brothers throughout the film. Olympic wrestlers are in a tough position. They’re paid no money to train and yet have to a) train all day in order to compete and b) still somehow find a source of income to pay their bills.
A benefactor swoops in and offers to pay them a salary and gives them houses on his estate to live in while they practice the sport they love?
Hell, be honest. You’d ignore the tank too.
If you’re interested in reading more about the case, here are two articles I found helpful:
Bookshelf Battle 