Questions for the Cosmos (or Anyone Who Would Care to Comment)

1.   What would it be like to have a giant, mutant amoeba as a pet?

2.   Why does watching NASCAR races on TV make me sleepy? Am I missing something?

3.   Why do foods that are horrendously fattening taste so good? I'm convinced that macaroni and cheese will eventually be proven healthy as well as promote world peace.

4.   When you were a kid, did you have to walk to school? If so, was it really up hill both ways? Prove it.

5.   The last time you were abducted by space aliens, what kind of brain extractor did they use? Mine was powered by astro-squirrels.

Movie Reviews of the Old, Odd, and Obscure (Part 4)

Dogora starts out as a space cell

A nice shot of Dogora lifting a bridge

This photo exemplifies the gorgeous colors used in the film for these shots

The DVD cover

Dogora, the Space Monster (1964) Toho


The movie begins and occasionally reverts back to a silly plot about Japanese diamond thieves trying to figure out who or what is taking their stash of gems. Well, you guessed it. Large floating cellular creatures are eating these gems and as they continue to consume they eventually mutate into giant jellyfish looking creatures from space. They are ultimately revealed hovering in the upper atmosphere and are then shown sucking up carbon based material from the earth. At first we see a jewel thief, vehicles, and then eventually scenes of whole piles of coal being pulled up into the clouds. After a while, the creatures use more and more power and eventually trains, bridges, and other structures are shown breaking apart and then flying up into the sky.

Dogora is fascinating to me for no other reasons than it's weird and kind of cool. Although the movie is not exactly a thrill ride and the characters are rather dull and wooden (not to mention the atrocious dubbing of American actors voices in place of the original Japanese - worse than usual anyway), the movie contains some absolutely beautiful special effects shots. Once the goofy plot gets out of the way and the creatures are finally revealed floating in the atmosphere, the viewer is treated to some really nifty shots of destruction. The scenes of coal, trains, and bridges flying into the air are probably the best effects work ever created by Eiji Tsuburaya (Toho special effects master behind most of the original Godzilla movies as well as other Toho creations). The movie was also directed by Ishiro Honda who helmed most of those same movies.

The DVD showcases a nice clean print with vivid colors and very few blemishes from the original film source. If you're not a rabid fan of these kinds of movies like I am, it's probably best to just skip ahead to all the monster sequences and ignore the dull and annoying dialog scenes.

The "Heart" of the Republican Party?

Midterm elections are fast approaching. The average poll is showing that Republicans will probably be taking back a number of seats (based on the mood of the country). As a liberal leaning guy, I find that news unfortunate but certainly not surprising being that the country’s economy is not recovering very fast. Historically, whichever party is in charge during tough economic times is typically punished on election day. Assuming this is what happens in November, Republicans will likely take control of Congress. (and with fear being shoved down the throats of so many people getting most of their information from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, Democrats could lose big).

Now, I’m a reasonable guy. I’m perfectly fine with another political party coming into power as long as it has the best interest of America at heart. What worries me, though, is that I’ve yet to hear any alternate solutions to our economic troubles from the Republican party - other than helping the rich with continued tax breaks and continued deregulation of the financial industry - the latter helping us into this mess to begin with. There also continues to be a flourishing lobbying industry happily giving millions of dollars to our politicians. It seems obvious to me that our politicians care more about helping the companies who give them money than helping lower and middle class Americans. This has been going on for many years with no end in sight. Nothing like stating the obvious…duh. Yet here we sit with this problem.

Worse still and even more problematic in my opinion are certain elements on the extreme right-wing fringe of the Republican party. An element that has become louder and getting a lot of media attention during the past year - brought to the forefront during last summer’s town hall meetings. Right-wing media continues to fuel these people’s fears of an evil socialist government that was hell bent on taking away their guns, forcing them to believe in science, and starting some kind of socialist health care system that would likely kill their grandma. No Muslim president who was really born in Kenya was going to take away their right to have expensive insurance that refuses to cover them when they have a pre-existing condition.

Now, if more Republicans would speak out against these fringe elements, I might be able to respect them a bit more. So far, though, most of them seem to encourage the behavior. Why? Is it really so important to have the votes of these dumb-ass rednecks? It probably is. Here are a couple of examples of Republicans who actually spoke out against this behavior and the backlash it caused:

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2010/08/its-getting-to-be-embarrassing-to-be-a-conservative.html

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty