Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

The words do not have to be perfect.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

T R E 4 5 O N

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Fight them, without becoming them!

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

You are here: Home / TV & Movies / Movies / Late Night Open Thread: Misdirection

Late Night Open Thread: Misdirection

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I was sure this would be based on one of the plethora of YA series where novelists mine the fanfic of ‘Harry Potter x Twilight x vintage British PBS television series’, but no — it’s from a real book by a British (stage) magician. Whether or not he was quite the dashing hero of his memoirs, Jasper Maskelnye certainly seems a perfect role for Mr. Cumberbatch’s talents…

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Not Cumberbatch’s horror show but the “magician” movies Now You See Me 1 & 2 were the dumbest movies ever made until Tag: The Movie came out.

  8. 8.

    Kent

    I’ve gone down the rabbit hole a lot on Amazon Prime with the huge number of Russian WW2 movies and TV series that one can find there.  It’s basically a slice of the war that is so different from the typical American or British centric focus.

  10. 10.

    West of the Rockies

    The movie looks quite interesting.  I will happily watch.

    OT… DeSantis has, to my eyes, a compressed face.  His head looks vertically squashed.  That is all.

  11. 11.

    geg6

    I will NEVER understand the fascination with this guy.  He’s not a very good actor and he can’t even make up for it with looks.  I wouldn’t hire him to take out my garbage.  He grosses me out.

    Someone please explain.  It’s totally beyond my ability to understand.  Kinda like Tom Cruise.  Ugh.  Can’t watch.  Ever.

  12. 12.

    HumboldtBlue

    I adored college sports immensely as a child, a young fan, a student and later as an adult and sportswriter and the thought of exploitation was always lingering, very faintly at first but as one gained more experience a reality that became more and more clear.

    Penn State and Paterno broke the back for me. There were a thousand other stories told and untold that should have soured me to the power imbalance, the shameless and frankly boastful condescension to exploitable black bodies and minds that is the multi-billion dollar college sports industry and that story is now being told.

    The Guardian has one.

  13. 13.

    Mathguy

    @wmd: Atrocity Archives would be an excellent movie, though the walk through said archives wold be terrible to put on the screen (I’d hate to give 3%ers any new ideas).

  14. 14.

    Mary G

    @geg6: He has that upper, upper class British accent that appeals to some people. I am always reminded of Monty Python’s upper class twits and want to laugh, which works against him in a drama.

    I am getting tired of magic stories. Give me some nice aliens with slime if you’re going to make something up. I adored Harry Potter, but the magic was bullshit. If they could modify body parts, why do both Harry and Mr. Weasley wear glasses?

  16. 16.

    Mary G

    The usual suspects can’t be bothered, but there is a lot of information about the Atlanta shooter’s victims in this thread:

    Atlanta K's report says of the four Korean workers shot dead yesterday, two are in their 70s, one is in her 50s and another is in her 60s. They've all lived and worked at their spa, per this report: https://t.co/5Ak2TKwxKj— Jeong Park (@JeongPark52) March 17, 2021

    Not sex workers.

  17. 17.

    West of the Rockies

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Anybody who plays football at even high school level (regardless of color) risks serious TBI.  (Ditto for boxing, MMA, and other hard-contact sports, too, such as hockey).  It does make watching problematic.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    There’s a whole bunch o’ them, that’s for sure. Some so heavy-handed I expected everyone’s knuckles to be raw and bleeding from scraping the ground.

  21. 21.

    Emma from FL

    Interesting factoid: Cumberbatch is a second cousin to Richard III and participated in the King’s reinterment ceremony.

  23. 23.

    Poe Larity

    I, for one, would read a GPT-3 version of our former blogmaster. Surely we have the geek power here to reanimate him.

  26. 26.

    Martin

    @Amir Khalid: Honestly, what would make it perfect is to make a serious WWII period film and just drop Dr Strange in there, and have neither side acknowledge the disconnect.

  27. 27.

    ZoePaddyJ Johnson

    British magicians in WW2 are a major part of the back story of Ben Aaronovich’s Rivers of London. I loved this series at first but they lost me when they switched to mostly graphic novels.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mary G:
    And how have they been living among Muggles all this while and acquired absolutely no understanding of Muggle technology — even Arthur Weasley, who is obsessed with it?

  29. 29.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    While never did get around to trying them out so have no opinion pro, con or meh, Cumberbatch played young Horace Rumpole in a number of BBC radio plays.

  30. 30.

    gwangung

    @Mary G: Lots of details on the women in the Korean language newspapers.

     

    None of it is in the mainstream papers.

     

    Hm.

     

    And, yeah. Not indicative of sex workers; just more poor women eking out a living, living above their shop (which a LOT of immigrants did…both my grandparents did that)

  31. 31.

    Ascap_scab

    @dmsilev:

    Tag 3 – Tag 3-D!

    Tag 4 – Oh, Hell No!

    Tag 5 – Tokyo Tag.

    Tag 6 – Tag vs. Twister.

    Tag 7 – Tag on Elm Street.

    Tag 8 – Tag. We got nuthin’.

  34. 34.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mary G: and @Amir Khalid:

    The Harry Potter world building is actually terrible.  It’s a cosplay wizard world.  Substitute ‘space’ for ‘wizard’ in the names of stuff (Space Chess!) and you’ll see just how much it’s not intended to be realistic or consistent.  And, honestly, it doesn’t have to be.  It was aiming at fun imagery, and achieved that.  Try to pick it apart, and it comes apart instantly because it’s not a world.  Quidditch is the most obviously fake sport imaginable, designed solely to make Harry important.  And again, it did what it meant to do, just don’t go looking for more.

  37. 37.

    The Fat White Duchess

    This evening I went down a Facebook rabbit hole and landed in…perhaps the most blatant Russian disinformation site I’ve ever seen.  Very weird.
    I need sleep.

  42. 42.

    Yutsano

    When you come for the Delegate from Guam, you best not miss. Representative Michael San Nicolas almost didn’t leave a corpse. Not to mention the Guamanian Guard looks like they could win any war on their own.

  45. 45.

    eclare

    @Yutsano:  My gawd!  That anchor was a dog with a bone!  “Yes we appreciate your family’s sacrifice *but* people are saying…”

  46. 46.

    karen marie

    @Major Major Major Major: The only Sherlock for me is Jeremy Brett. Cumberbatch’s was a nasty one. His Watson’s servile attachment made no sense given the abuse. I couldn’t make it through two episodes.

  47. 47.

    Yutsano

    @eclare: She had her talking point. She was damn sure gonna run with it. The delegate wasn’t having none of her shite. It’s a master class in how to handle the stupid news corpse.

  48. 48.

    Kathleen

    @HumboldtBlue: Do you watch Real Sports on HBO? It has been covering this issue for several years, along with stories about the danger of head injuries. I think it’s the best news show on television because they always frame sports in the context of the larger issues of racism, poverty, etc.

  49. 49.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Kathleen: ​
     

    Oh yes, it’s not new. Just hit me that I’m not taking part in the March Madness family text threads anymore. I haven’t talked college sports in depth with anyone in quite a while.

  52. 52.

    Kathleen

    @Yutsano: I don’t watch CNN or MSNBROC etc and 2 minutes of her spouting about nothing in high dudgeon is a jolt of mellow harshening. I loathe these people.

  53. 53.

    montanareddog

    Not sure if I have shared this anecdote here before. Cumberbatch’s mother is Wanda Ventham, a highly-attractive woman who was well known on British TV in the ’60s and ’70s, frequently in “sexpot” roles. Cumberbatch was on a chat show with another, older British male celebrity (I cannot remember who) and the host mentioned who Cumberbatch’s mother was. The other guest was astounded. “Wanda Ventham was your mum?” “She still is, actually” was the laconic reply.

  55. 55.

    burnspbesq

    T.R. Crandall Guitars is offering a Strat that it says was used on stage by Stevie Ray. The asking price is USD 100k.

    Makes you wonder what the asking price for Tony Rice’s D-28 will be.

  56. 56.

    James E Powell

    @Yutsano:

    What’s galling is that no matter how bigoted, hateful, or just plain stupid a Republican is, the cable shows will call her “controversial” and make her a star. That a hole from Georgia is like a top ten star on cable news.

  57. 57.

    Amir Khalid

    @burnspbesq:
    You don’t buy Stevie Ray’s old Strat to play; you buy it to put in a display case. That’s where this one will end up, alas.

  58. 58.

    Kathleen

    @HumboldtBlue:  Good for you! I’ve read where football fans stopped watching NFL games because of its history of covering up danger of concussions. I admire people who love a sport but choose to no longer support it. I’m sure it’s difficult.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    Vice President Harris will swear in Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior today at 10:30am. New Mexico media has good coverage of Haaland’s farewell speech to the House.  She recounted her long journey from life as a struggling single mother, who applied to college for the first time at age 28, to her historic appointment as Interior Secretary.

  63. 63.

    Ken

    @burnspbesq: T.R. Crandall Guitars is offering a Strat that it says was used on stage by Stevie Ray. The asking price is USD 100k.

    The associated NFT, containing an encryption of the string “The Strat was used on stage by Stevie Ray”, is expected to sell for over USD 3.5 million.

  64. 64.

    FlyingToaster

    @geg6:

    I will NEVER understand the fascination with this guy. He’s not a very good actor and he can’t even make up for it with looks.

    Ahem.  Beg to disagree.

    I first saw Cumberbatch in “The Last Enemy” on PBS.  Like most actors, he has a specific range, and plays those parts really, really well.  The articulate-geek-lack-of-affect guy.  A taller version of Matthew Broderick.

    I liked his Sherlock.  I didn’t like Martin Freeman’s Watson (Jeebus, dude, leave, change your #, block his calls, or just shoot him and go to jail).

    I liked his Doctor Strange, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking.  I hate (hate hate hate) his Khan.  His Peter Guillam seems to have been mailed in.

    I like his looks; I find the whole “different hair color for every role” just plum weird.  Although he’s a ginger, he looks better with black hair, imho.

  66. 66.

    fancycwabs

    “Magician helps the war effort” was the subplot of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that ended up being a kinda throwaway “and they defeated Napoleon with a fog bank, now back to the family intrigue” thing, and I thought it would have made a fine book on its own.

    Not sure if winning WWII by showing Hitler which card he picked is what I had in mind, though.

  67. 67.

    Origuy

    Lammas Night is a novel by Katharine Kurtz about a coven of British witches who work to counter the Nazi witchcraft planned to support Operation Sealion. There were real efforts by various pagans and wiccans to support the British war effort. The novel also recalls the legend that Sir Francis Drake was an occultist who cast spells to raise the storms that decimated the Spanish Armada.

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