Bonus Episode: Most Absorbed Part Deux!

It's part 2 of 2 of the bonus episode where Cir and Nick talk documentaries, albums, movies, and then slip into five minutes straight of Swingers quotes. Take a listen, because it's your last chance to hear bad audio quality before we unleash the new Beast Duels/On The Rocks Studio next week.

Top Ten Movies of 2012, Part 2

No time to waste. It's part 2 of the best 10 movies from last year.

8. Skyfall

I have been critical of Sam Mendes in the past, particularly of his vapid and self-indulgent (yet Oscar award-winning) family drama American Beauty. Mostly because that movie is fucking terrible. But the fears I had of his helming the most recent project involving the worlds most beloved spy were assuaged when I saw Skyfall.

Again starring the blonde Bond Daniel Craig, Skyfall immediately has the vibe of a departure from the Bond oeuvre as we witness 007 get shot and apparently fall to his death. Mendes succeeds here in mixing great action with acting and character development, elements often overlooked in similar successful blockbusters. And while the Asian/French female of the two Bond girls in the film is wasted and essentially meaningless, we are introduced to Eve, a sexy rookie spy played by Naomie Harris of 28 Days Later fame. Craig again shines as the smooth yet tortured Bond, and is successfully joined by Academy Award winners Judi Dench and the intensely creepy Javier Bardem.

In addition to wondrous action scenes, the film also includes sly references to other films. When we're introduced to the primary villain, he slowly and methodically walks down a forest of computer machinery, akin to the final scene of Welles' The Third Man.

And earlier, when Bond gets an impromptu visit from a lovely young lady, they share a sexy asexual moment reminiscent of Angie Dickinson and John Wayne in Rio Bravo.

But most importantly, the way Mendes excels here is in creating a fun action film which finds a way to be emotionally compelling and artistically stunning.

7. Django Unchained

In 2003, Quentin Tarantino released Kill Bill Part I, in which an unnamed female assassin played by Uma Thurman begins her revenge on her former colleagues who had previously attempted to murder her. Later, in 2009, Tarantino took his revenge fantasy one step further with Inglourious Basterds, a retelling of World War II in which young soldiers are on the hunt for Nazi scalps. In 2012's Django Unchained, Tarantino's latest feature film, he again delves into revisionist history and revenge thrills, this time on behalf of the black slaves in America.

Django Unchained re-teams Tarantino with the  Oscar-winning star of Inglourious Basterds Christoph Waltz (in another film that netted him an Academy Award) and introduces Tarantino to two successful young actors in Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. While it lacks the rhetorical panache which opened the film Inglourious Basterds, Django combines majestic cinematography, quick-paced and witty dialogue (primarily by Waltz) and two of the year's most vile characters in Calvin Candie and Stephen. In the particularly brutal Mandingo-fighting related scenes we see the depths of the depravity, and Tarantino shows us the extent of what is truly at stake in this movie.

Stay tuned to the Beast Duels Blog for numbers 1-6 from 2012 soon...

Bonus Episode: Most Absorbed Part 1

It's another Beast Duels Bonus episode. Join Nick and Cir as they talk about the things they absorbed the most; those movies, TV shows and books they re-visited hundreds of times until they knew them by heart.

Also stay tuned at the end for a brief sneak peak at the new Beast Duels/On The Rocks Studios.

When Can We Have Ray Guns?

I love Science Fiction. Who doesn’t, right? So, like many, many other people out there, I would love to have a raygun or a personal space ship or a virtual environment that I can step in to and experience amazing things. Now, I realize that these things are entirely fictional and stand no chance of being made available to the public, or being developed at all.

That’s the bad news.

I know, the government having no desire to make moving at the speed of sound and instantly vaporizing mountains is a bummer, but some good has come from the pages of comic books and old novels with unevenly cut pages.

For instance, did you know radar was actually invented while trying to create rayguns before World War II?

Boring. I know.

Experiments into making lasers into high powered weapons has made some headway though. Science and engineering have figured out how to destroy objects with lasers and blind people with them (not a joke, there is actually a UN protocol on blinding combatants with lasers), but the major issue out there is making a portable power source capable of deploying the lethal beam.

So if there are any of you junior scientists out there, working on lasers won’t give us rayguns any fasts. What we really need you to be developing tiny batteries that contain the force of a thousand white hot suns.

©2013 DEDWIN HEDON

REVIEW: THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD

Hello my scholars! Can't get enough of the California desert? Have you been wondering what else could possibly be lurking in the Salton Sea? Wouldn't you be delighted to know there's a classic 1950s monster movie with the perfect combination of atomic absurdity and realism?

MST3K smarty-pants fanboys might think they know everything about The Monster That Challenged the World, but lemme tell you, they are dead-ass wrong. 'Monster has everything you could want: badass cars, useless children ruining things, very official sounding SCIENTIFIC theories, the dilemmas of being a working mother, the plight of small-town museum owners, and an only slightly Freudian mollusk monster spraying toxic mucus. 

It's streaming, I don't know what you're waiting for.

Top Ten Movies of 2012, Part 1

Well, it's the middle of March which means it's time to take a look back at the best films from 2012. Yeah, we're not very punctual on the Beast Duels blog, but for chrissake it's free so cool your jets. Anyways, here are the first couple of films that cracked the top 10.

  10. Secret World Of Arrietty 



In the year's best animated film, the legendary Studio Ghibli of Japan released their 16th feature film. Based on the children's book The Borrowers, Secret World of Arrietty takes place in... well, the secretive world of Arrietty. Arrietty is a plucky and adventurous teenage girl who lives with her parents in the countryside of Japan. Arrietty is sweet, likable, and so small that she's barely larger than a sugar cube. Arrietty and her family are borrowers, diminutive people who live among us. They "borrow" household items from us under the cloak of night, creating their own fully-developed world within our own. Voiced by Atonement's Saoirse Ronan in the UK and Bridgit Mendler of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel fame in the US, Arrietty is accidentally spotted by one of the people living within the house. Fortunately, her fear is assuaged when she learns that the boy who spotted her is, despite being a hundred times her size, her own age. The two form a sweet friendship that verges on romance, were it not for the prejudices held by their families and huge discrepancies in stature. The relationships formed in this movie are wonderfully developed, but what makes this a true Studio Ghibli film is the world it fashions. Arrietty's home is fully-formed and imagined with intricate detail, a beautiful look into the holes in the walls within our homes.

  9. Cabin In The Woods



There have been a number of self-referential horror movies in the past, most notably 1996's Scream and more recently Tucker and Dale versus Evil. But no film has managed to deconstruct the entire genre as intelligently or as funnily as Drew Goddard's Cabin In The Woods. We meet the protagonists early in the film, a redhead, her blonde friend and her boyfriend, his jock friend and the token pothead. They travel to the titular Cabin In The Woods for a weekend vacation and to get off the grid. What follows is a laughably absurd barrage of horror movie tropes, from the (not-so) virginal protagonist to inexplicably splitting up to cover more ground when danger strikes. In sending up the slasher flicks, what director and co-writer Joss Whedon accomplish is a hilarious descent into well-worn cliches. They offer an explanation for audiences' reactions for decades as they've shouted at their TVs "don't do that! Why are you doing that???" Their film is half-homage and half-mockery of the genre, constantly reminding the audience that they are indeed watching a film. They repeatedly ask of the audience why it is they attend and enjoy horror films, while simultaneously celebrating the genre. With Cabin, Joss Whedon again proves he can be relevant in a post Buffy and Firefly world. That and the billion dollars Avengers made.

Stay tuned for numbers 7 and 8 on the Beast Duels Blog.

SCIENCE: THE SALTON SEA

First, some background info: I grew up in a very old house, filled with very old things. I spent a lot of my childhood listening to 100.7 WMMS (when it was still good) and digging through the attic, then assembling my treasures in a way that suited my tastes. One of my favorite collections (that now lives in my kitchen) is old, brightly colored cookbooks: the kind published by the appliance manufacturer or a particular brand of evaporated milk or vegetable shortening. And the highlight of my cookbook collection is one from the Imperial Valley Date Farmers, called DATE MAGIC.

Doesn't that look FABULOUS? Anyhow, this little book inspired a lifelong Aspergerian obsession with all things California Desert---dates, Queens of the Stone Age (and all that that implies), and most of all, the Salton Sea.







At the turn of the last century, the Colorado River was diverted in an effort to irrigate the Imperial Valley. Flooding combined with above-average rainfall over the next few years created a new body of water where an ancient lake once was. Birds flocked to it, and some intrepid fishermen introduced mullet, sargo, and corvina. Commercial fishing BOOMED; in fact, Salton Sea fishing replaced Atlantic ocean fishing during WWII.

By the 1950s, the real estate market descended on our little inland lake. The Salton Sea area was marketed as Palm Springs with a waterfront, "The Riviera of the West," and all the cool kids were there.

(source)

How could all this possibly go wrong? Well, years of above-average rainfall meant flooding of waterfront property. Agricultural runoff increased salinity, decreased the oxygen levels, and there were massive, grisly die-offs of fish, then the birds contracted a vicious case of avian botulism, then cholera. Anyone with means moved away. 

These days, the area around the Salton Sea is reminiscent of your favorite post-apocalyptic wonderlands: vast expanses of undeveloped land (purchased decades ago as investment property and forgotten), flooded mobile homes,  painted garbage mountains, an abandoned military base, roadside nudists, and the occasional pile-up of fish and bird corpses. Before his death in 1998, Representative Sonny Bono pushed for legislation to preserve and restore the sea, but that could take decades, and the lake may dry up on its own account by then.

If you want to learn more about a century of well-intentioned agricultural interference turned into an ecological time bomb, check out the documentary Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, narrated by the only man who could do the place justice, John Waters.

Episode 17: Science!

This week, Nick, Kyle and Mike discuss Science! 

Some of everyone’s all time favorite movies and television shows come up, including Star Wars, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy, The Terminator and Firefly! 

Things take a left turn quick though and soon Albert Einstein and Bill Nye, the Science Guy are in a knock down, drag out, fight to the death over the Greatest Scientist in History! 

Everything finally gets back on track when the boys discuss their Top Five Bad Science Movie Moments. 

Even if you hate science, this weeks episode is sure to have you donning your lab coat and safety goggles.

Sponsored by Nikola Tesla’s Hugh Jackman Cloning Machine!

00:30 Meet the Beast, Science

16:43 Beast Duel: Einstein vs. Bill Nye, the Science Guy

24:38 Top 5 Bad Science Moments in Movies

The Original Assassins

Through history, many things have been said about the original order of the Assassins. Their enemies claim and continued the lies that they were users of hashish, making them into villains in their drug-free, Muslim culture. This has been said of them for hundreds of years, that the only reason the great Hassan-i Sabbah kept his followers in check was with drugs and illusions of paradise.

The truth is a little simpler than that. Hassan-i Sabbah liked to call his followers Asasiyun, or the people who are loyal to the foundation of the faith. He used the younger, stronger, most agile of recruits to carry out murders against his enemies and their supporters. They weren’t only skilled at killing, they were smart enough to blend within the lives of their target. The men, what we would consider high schoolers would be able to speak like their target, move like their target and think like their target, but the most important part of their mission was to never sympathize with their target.

The Assassins were formed at a very tumultuous times in the history of Islam. Not only were they fighting for strength against Christianity, who had their own force of super soldiers in the Knights Templar, but also against other sects of Islam who sought the Holy Land and the power it included for their own.

Just like it is portrayed in video games and movies, Assassins preferred to kill their targets in a public space, blending in with the crowd and eliminating or threatening their prey in broad daylight. After all, what better way is there to win the favor of a people you wish to oppress, by killing their oppressors right in front of their eyes.

Two centuries of murder, intrigue and espionage is a lot for the modern order of Assassins to live up to.

©2013 DEDWIN HEDON

How to Survive an Assassination Attempt

In today’s day and age of Australian internet revolutionaries, neo-robber barons and street gangs called “F**k Being Broke”, pretty much anyone can get clipped.

We here at Beast Duels believe preparedness is next to coolness.

Coolness.

So here's a handy three step guide to surviving a hit.

# 1. Don’t be a target

People get bodied for a number of reasons. Here are some of the most common.

- Engaging in what’s known as 'la vida loca'.

The crazy life.

You know what we mean. Petty scams, drug smuggling, book-making,  all the way to prostitution, armed robbery and contract killing. The higher you climb the ladder in these activities the more likely your haters will turn into determined plotters.

- Being well known

Living in the public eye has its pros and cons. One of the cons is that some people are insane, and associate you with whatever is bothering them. That can cause problems.

-Being yourself

Occasionally speaking up about something you're passionate about can land you in hot water. Or cement. Still, self – expression is a must.

Freedom of Speech.

So what to do if for some reason you can’t fulfill Step One?

# 2. Be Prepared

There's that P word again.

-Mental fitness
Do whatever works for you to maintain a calm, positive state of mind. Know yourself. Learn your own reactions. Learn what to do in the event of an attack.

-Physical fitness
You don’t need expensive equipment. Just body-weight squats, sit-ups,  push-ups, and or pull-ups every day or so. It works in the Army.

Other than that, breathe deeply, eat real food, get enough sleep, and think moderate thoughts about others.

-Alertness
Do your best to maintain awareness throughout the day. Being mindful of the present moment can increase your effectiveness and your enjoyment of life.

Sometimes even the best buckle. What to do if they catch you slippin’?

# 3. React

React now.

The key here is to stay calm and move quickly. Trust your instincts. Stay focused on the goal of staying alive. You may have to deal with various threats, including...

-Explosions

Whether caused by car bomb, drone attack or old timey hand grenade, fire and shrapnel are a major issue. Move toward safety, find cover, and protect your vital areas (fetal position works well for this). If you're lucid, check for any damage and get out of the area.

-Gun-play

Cinema and video games have fueled a lot of misconception about how gunfights work. 

Impossible to aim.

Addressing that in full is beyond the scope of this post. To get some real answers I recommend Col. Jeff Cooper and Massad Ayoob. They're two of the most respected gun writers in American history and can get you on the right track.

The basics of getting shot at are keep moving, find cover, stay calm, call for help in a safe way, get out of the area.

-Close combat
So maybe your assassin believes in doing things the old fashioned way and you find yourself in a fight to the death.

For hand to hand combat training I'd go with a grappling art. Think judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or amateur wrestling. Striking can be useful. However it can also cause injury and waste time during a serious attack. Knowing how to control the human body can carry you through a lot of scrapes.

Here's Anthony Soprano from New Jersey showing us how it's done.

Being the capo of a small crime family caused him to instantly fail at Step One.

However his therapy appointments and basement work out routine have prepared him and he's alert during the attack, Step Two.

Step Three is fulfilled by his tank-like dispatching of his attackers. Notice he's always aware of where the gun is pointed and his primary goal is getting away.

So whether you're a small town gangster, seedy politician, or rogue blogger, remember these tips if you want to survive a 187 attempt.

REVIEW: I SHOT JESSE JAMES

“Assassino è colui che uccide altrui per danari”

“An assassin is one who kills others for money.”

- Dante Aligheri

In The Divine Comedy, Dante punishes the traitors far more severely than mere murderers: they are trapped in pools of ice up to their eyebrows, and any struggling efforts to free themselves only makes a breeze that freezes more water to trap them further. The past century and a half hasn't been much kinder to Robert Ford, that dirty coward who gunned down Confederate guerrilla turned train robber and folk hero Jesse James. As the song goes, “he ate of Jesse's bread and slept in Jesse's bed,” and worst of all, he shot a defenseless man in the back. His quick release by the governor suggested that the governor was in on the plan all along, and in Reconstruction-era Missouri, this was another example of a government acting as an adversary to the people. But to Sam Fuller, the death of Jesse James was something he'd had coming to him for quite some time. In 1949, Fuller sought to make a film that could elevate the people's opinion of Robert Ford. In I Shot Jesse James, Fuller suggests it was the love of a woman and a conscience, not just money, that made him pull the trigger.

Ford (played by John Ireland, a fine Western actor who later appeared on all the TV classics: Branded, Bonanza, Rawhide, and later Little House on the Prairie) is in love with actress with Cynthy Waters (Barbara Britton, later star of Bwana Devil), an actress. He longs for a proper life with Cynthy, a farm and a family, but that life can never happen when he's hiding out with the James gang. The governor of Missouri offers amnesty and $10,000 for Jesse James, dead or alive. Ford does the deed and is quickly pardoned, but finds himself perceived not as a hero, but a traitor. With only a fraction of the money he was originally offered, Ford sets out for Colorado to seek his fortune in a silver mine and provide Cynthy the life she deserves. Unfortunately, Cynthy is not waiting for him. She is humiliated by Ford's cowardly act and sees herself as the impetus for it. She tells her new love that she could never bear to be with a man who would do that to a friend, and that she never cared for him that much in the first place. Ford, who seems to have totally lost touch with reality by this point, cannot see the situation for what it is and seems doomed for destruction.

Our distaste for the way Jesse James met his end only works if we perceive it as something undeserved. As time rolled on into the Populist and Progressive movements, Jesse James took on the mantle of a Robin Hood of the rails, stealing only from the 'express' cars or robbing those evil banks, and distributing the spoils to the poor. However, there is no evidence, no matter how anecdotal, that the James gang shared the money with anyone but themselves. Train robberies in particular were seen as an act of Confederate resistance to Union modernization. Before the robbery days, Frank James was a member of Quantrill's gang*, who attacked Lawrence Kansas and killed every man and boy they found; Jesse was in a lesser-known group of bushwhackers who also participated. “Mr. Howard,” Jesse's alias, may have been a defenseless man in St. Joseph who was killed as he hung a picture on a wall, but Jesse James himself was a paranoid outlaw, a die-hard Confederate, a torturer of injured soldiers, a scalper, a murderer in his own right.

I Shot Jesse James is far from a perfect film. It's more character- than plot-driven, yet it's hard to feel bad for Robert Ford when his plan doesn't work out the way he'd planned. The adaptation of the tediously titled Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is certainly a more plausible explanation of Ford's motivations. But what Fuller’s debut achieves is reminding viewers that both parties are complicated men, and there is no honor among thieves.


* John Ireland, our Robert Ford, went on to play Gen. Quantrill in 1951’s Red Mountain.

Episode 16: Assassins Summary

In Episode 16 of the Beast Duels Radio Hour, Nick, Kyle, Cir and Mike discuss badass murderers and creepy, horrible people known as Assassins.

How many questions do you think they answer? 

Is there a difference between Assassins and Hitmen?

Are there really people in skintight leather outfits shooting people in the face from hundreds of yards away like O-Ren Ishii? 

Are the real Assassins goofy, nobodies like Mark David Chapman? 

We hire out Anton Chigurh to Assassinate Emperor Palpatine and run play-by-play on the live feed from space in this weeks Beast Duel. 

The show wraps in a hail of bullets as they discuss the Top Five Movie Shootouts.

0:00: Intro

00:43: Assassins

The gang talks the best movie assassins, and the difference between assassins and hit-men.

12:59: Beast Duel

Anton Chigurh vs The Emperor

20:41: Top Five Shootouts In Movies Ever

The Gang talks Shootouts, man crushes on Clive Owen, and Jason Statham and we ruin movies for you on Beast Duels Radio Hour

Assassins