A few days ago, my pal Mark Evanier had a very funny video about a white Labrador retriever called "Stella's Best Leaf Jumps of All Time." It's great fun and worth checking out here. I was intrigued and did a little of my own exploring. It turns out that there are a whole bunch of videos about Stella, under the heading of "A Dog Named Stella." They're an awful lot of fun. Stella really is quite the hoot. Here's one I particularly enjoyed. "The Struggles of Stella."
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A "virtual" meeting of G7 foreign ministers split yesterday. And the reason was that for the joint statement intended to be released, the United States wanted the coronavirus to be identified as the "Wuhan virus." The other nations wouldn't agree to that and rejected that, releasing separate statements.
Since the United States holds the presidency for the G7, it was responsible for writing the initial draft. The proposed by the United States also blamed China for the pandemic's spread.. However, one of the European diplomats said, "What the State Department has suggested is a red line. You cannot agree with this branding of this virus and trying to communicate this." Oddly, since two statements were released, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ended up signing a G7 finance ministers' statement that they were extending their nations' coordination "to respond to the global health, economic, and financial impacts associated with the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)." But, I mean, seriously, folks? This is what Trump was willing to split a coalition statement during a worldwide pandemic over??? One of the most iconic record album covers has brought about a couple of interesting photos that I thought wer worth passing along. This first comes in a tweet from a British TV writer -- And then, with thanks to Eric Boardman for the head's up, there's this social distancing fix -- A couple days ago, I saw an ad on TNT about a new, upcoming series that will be premiering on the channel in two months, on May 31, called Snowpiercer. It looks uncommon for a TV show, a dystopian story set on board a train. The iMDB describes its plot as, "Set over seven years after the world has become a frozen wasteland, Snowpiercer centers on the remnants of humanity, who inhabit a gigantic, perpetually-moving train that circles the globe." The series stars Jennifer Connelly, who won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for A Beautiful Mind, and Daveed Diggs who won a Best Supporting Actor Tony Award for the musical Hamilton.. There's a point to all this. Bear with me. Here's the trailer. As I said, it's unique for a TV series. And a good trailer. Except for one thing. For some surprising reason, they chose not to add this line -- "Based on the movie, Snowpiercer, directed and co-written by Bong Joon Ho, creator of the Oscar-winning Best Picture, Parasite." Really. The movie Snowpiercer is absolutely terrific, a dazzling, tour-de-force 2013 film that won 33 international awards. Why on earth they don't mention the TV series' connection to this year's Oscar-winner is beyond me. Perhaps because it's on a foreign film, but I doubt that because countless TV series have been based on movies -- and few (if any) based on Oscar-winning Best Pictures. Maybe because the original source is a French graphic novel and they only bought the rights to that -- though I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't buy up all the rights. By the way, although a Korean movie, it was in English for its international release and had an impressive cast, including Chris Evans (from Captain America and the Avengers movies), Tilda Swinton (Oscar-winner for Michael Clayton). Jamie Bell (who played Elton John's songwriting partner Bernie Taupin in Rocketman), John Hurt (two Oscar nominations for The Elephant Man and Midnight Express), three-time Oscar nominee Octavia Spencer,(who won for The Help). and Ed Harris from The Truman Show, Apollo 13 and Oscar-nominated for Pollock. Even one of my faves, the wonderful Allison Pill (from HBO's The Newsroom and currently Star Trek: Picard and Devs) has a small role. The iMDB description of the film is "In a future where a failed climate-change experiment has killed all life except for the lucky few who boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe, a new class system emerges." In fact, like Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, the film has a strong class warfare center -- with a heavy emphasis on the warfare. Here's the trailer of the original movie. It doesn't do the film justice, but you'll get a good idea. And it's highly recommended. And yes, the movie is included on my list of train movies that I post every National Train Day. While the museum is shut down and people are shuttered at home, the Art Institute of Chicago is creating short "video tours" of some of their exhibits. As a member, I get their email updates, and figured that I should pass them along. This first is a brief, 2-minute exploration of the exhibition El Greco: Ambition and Defiance, led by curator Rebecca Long and research associate Jena Carvana. "Follow along as they lead you through the galleries and share some of the reasons El Greco and his work continue to fascinate us." While this doesn't fall under the heading of Good News, it is positive -- and these days that's a leap in the right direction.
When a coronavirus vaccine is available -- in months, or a year, or two years -- the Washington Post reports that scientists studying its genetic code believe the vaccine will be a long-lasting one, and not something needed to be developed for each new strain. For instance, the SARS epidemic a few years back was also a coronavirus. (The coronavirus is the generic name for this virus. The name of this specific, new strain is COVID-19.) The vaccine would most likely be more along the lines of the measles or chickenpox vaccines, something that would provide immunity for many years. “That’s a relatively small number of mutations for having passed through a large number of people,” said Peter Thielen, a molecular geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “At this point, the mutation rate of the virus would suggest that the vaccine developed for SARS-CoV-2 would be a single vaccine, rather than a new vaccine every year like the flu vaccine.” You can read the full article here. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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