May 29

Better Than News

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  Restricted Airspace is an American musical fantasy thriller film starring Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins, an arms dealer with supernatural powers who visits a dysfunctional military contractor in London and employs her unique brand of leverage to improve the corporation's income.

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  The Aladdin King is an American animated musical drama film about Simba (Swahili for lion), a young lion who is to succeed his father, Mufasa, as King. However, Simba's paternal uncle Scar uses a magical lamp which grants wishes to murder Mufasa and send Simba into exile.

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  The Eyes of Laura Mars Strike Back is an American neo-noir supernatural space opera thriller film directed by Irvin Kershner and starring Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher.

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  He Walks to the Bottom of the Sea By Night is a 1948 American crime drama submarine thriller film starring Richard Basehart.

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  Beach Party A-Go-Gaugin is a beach party art film starring Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, and Paul Gaugin.

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  Hey Skinny is a line of self-help cartoon publications.

Are You Sure

... that psychologist, computer scientist, and author Christopher Evans had a significant friendship and collaboration with the writer J. G. Ballard; that they they developed ideas (circa 1968) for a play about a car crash, later evolving into an exhibition of crashed cars at The New Arts Lab in London in 1970, and ultimately Ballard's novel Crash, published in 1973; that Evans' charismatic appearance as a "hoodlum scientist" (in Ballard's description) was an inspiration for the character of Dr. Robert Vaughan in Crash; that that Evans also appears in Ballard's fictionalized life story The Kindness of Women as the psychologist Dr. Richard Sutherland?

... that Julie Andrews spent several months shadowing actual arms dealers in preparation for her role as weapons designer Mary Poppins in the musical fantasy spy thriller film Restricted Airspace?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1777: Physician and engineer John Mudge elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the same year was awarded the Copley medal for his 'Directions for making the best Composition for the Metals for reflecting Telescopes; together with a Description of the Process for Grinding, Polishing, and giving the great Speculum the true Parabolic Curve'.

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  1917: Politician John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, born.

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  1919: Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin view a solar eclipse as a test of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

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  1931: Psychologist, computer scientist, and author Christopher Evans born.

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  2023: Self portrait.

Topic of the Day

Microorganisms

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  Euglena Junction is a reality television program about the life of Euglena, a genus of single-celled flagellate protists. It is loosely based on the television program Petticoat Junction, with various species of Euglena playing the roles of Kate Bradley, her three daughters Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, and Betty Jo, and her uncle Joe Carson.

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  Bacteria Ranch is an American television series about gastrointestinal bacterial ranching.

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  A Pocket Guide to Cholera is a handbook for cholera cosplay.