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"What is a cult film? A cult film is one that has a passionate following, but does not appeal to everyone. James Bond movies are not cult films, but chainsaw movies are. Just because a film has become a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some are very bad; others are very, very good. Some make an awful lot of money at the box office; others make no money at all. Some are considered quality films; others are exploitation movies. One thing cult movies do have in common is that they are all genre films - for example gangster films or westerns. They also have a tendency to slosh over from one genre into another, so that a science fiction film might also be a detective movie, or vice versa. They share common themes as well, themes that are found in all drama: love, murder and greed." - of the British TV film slots accompanied by an introduction perhaps the most celebrated is Moviedrome, running between 1988 and 2000 and presented first by Repo Man director Alex Cox and then film critic Mark Cousins. [more inside]
posted by Artw at 11:40 PM PST - 88 comments

Cups and Balls, via crank (slyt)
posted by Marky at 10:55 PM PST - 47 comments

When I Grow Up (SLYT)
posted by zarq at 8:36 PM PST - 29 comments

35 years ago today, Tandy Corporation announced the most expensive product yet offered in its chain of Radio Shack stores: the TRS-80 personal computer. [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen at 7:16 PM PST - 115 comments

On an empty plot of the family farm, [the father] built a state-of-the-art $100,000 recording studio. And in that studio, the boys recorded the newly reissued "Dreamin' Wild"... [more inside]
posted by absqua at 5:53 PM PST - 19 comments

Hey! Do you like auto racing? Perhaps you’ve wished to see a race featuring a Ford 150 pickup body mounted backwards on a Crown Vic chassis. Or maybe a two-stroke/three-cylinder powerhouse 1967 Saab, complete with Antarctic emergency airdrop sled mounted to the roof. Or even a totally ludicrous self-powered pop-out camper. [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 4:34 PM PST - 16 comments

EA, the publisher behind The Sims and Facebook game The Sims Social, is suing Zynga over copyright infringement found in Zynga's Facebook game The Ville. [more inside]
posted by thecjm at 3:32 PM PST - 57 comments

Comedian/podcaster Ari Shaffir interviews comedian Ralphie May on the realities of being morbidly obese, including very frank, often touching, sometimes hilarious discussions of health issues (including his near-death experience), social acceptance, fashion, personal demons, sex, comedy, and cannabis use.

"Fat" pt 1 (direct mp3) "Fat" pt 2 (direct mp3) (NSFW audio)
posted by LordSludge at 2:41 PM PST - 23 comments

This is now uses real-time instagram updates to capture "a cities movement, in a fluid story."
posted by Memo at 2:11 PM PST - 21 comments

Want to see how much more you'd pay if Mitt Romney becomes President? The Tax Policy Center has published a report (pdf) saying that Romney's proposed tax plan would result in lighter taxes for the rich -- and a heavier tax burden for middle class taxpayers. The Obama campaign has been quick to provide the on-line app which is the first link above, for voters to calculate the difference for themselves. They've also released an ad, vetted as quite accurate, on the issue.
posted by bearwife at 2:08 PM PST - 225 comments

Xanga user Criscoh is a talented concept artist who is kind enough to share his work on recent films, including: Fantastic Mr Fox, Coraline, Hotel for Dogs, and City of Ember.
posted by hellojed at 1:35 PM PST - 9 comments

What if every Olympic sport was photographed like beach volleyball?
posted by bq at 1:12 PM PST - 174 comments

Despite not raising any money or updating his campaign website (cache) since 2009, 35 year-old flooring installer Mark Clayton has won the Democratic Party primary in Tennessee and will be running for US Senate against Republican incumbent Bob Corker. Clayton's policy positions are unusual for a Democratic candidate. [more inside]
posted by ghharr at 12:19 PM PST - 101 comments

Grant Morrison's Guide to Batman on the Big Screen
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:27 AM PST - 113 comments

This is a Special Time [more inside]
posted by stresstwig at 9:42 AM PST - 36 comments

John Daker is going to sing a song that's very popular nowadays, it's Christ The Lord Is Risen Today, and he's going to do Amore too, okay? There is a subtitled and animated version also.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:39 AM PST - 35 comments

It's Paratrooper's Day in Russia and Russia is draining all of its fountains. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 9:13 AM PST - 31 comments

This baby kangaroo and this baby wombat are friends. BEST FRIENDS. Warning: near-unparalleled levels of OMFGCUTE.
posted by davidjmcgee at 8:58 AM PST - 59 comments

"If nobody cares about the art that's inside the museum, then I'll burn it," vowed Antonio Manfredi, director of the cash-starved Contemporary Art Museum of Casoria in Italy. In February, he started burning.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 8:58 AM PST - 21 comments

The Evolution Documentary channel (autoplays video) has collected documentaries and clips about evolution available on youtube, including documentaries from BBC, Nova, and National Geographic. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 8:57 AM PST - 8 comments

The Big Three of EU Foreign Policy: Stefan Lehne on the contrasting roles of Germany, France and the UK.
posted by rollick at 8:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Being an object of compassion is not the same thing as being the subject of a story. “I used to joke—and I want to emphasize this is a joke—that you could write that you’d wandered into some obscure backwater in Africa where people had three ears", tells a former NYT correspondent to the Boston Review. The expression white savior industrial complex, coined by Teju Cole in response to the Kony 2012 debâcle highlights the problem of reifying historical processes: it becomes something to be used and milked either as NGO "margins" or as fodder for disaster media. How many older people equate India with "endemic hunger" rather than "emerging power", and how many roads must Africa walk down before we stop calling them war-hungry savages? And is the objectifying discourse a cause or a symptom (or both) of the complex problem of even thinking about Africa?
posted by syntaxfree at 8:02 AM PST - 90 comments

How Babies Are Made SLYT
posted by Deathalicious at 8:00 AM PST - 26 comments

Adam Diment was once considered the heir to Ian Fleming with his wildly successful series of novels (The Dolly Dolly Spy, The Great Spy Race, The Bang Bang Birds, Think, Inc.) about the spy Philip McAlpine. Diment, writing in the swinging ‘60s and ‘70s, was known for his debonair lifestyle and casual flirtation with drugs. He had it all: success, wealth, sex. Then he disappeared. [more inside]
posted by librarylis at 7:22 AM PST - 10 comments

From Vanity Fair, The Murder Hustle: In 1988, 'When businessman Gene Hanson died in a California doctor's office, his partner, John Hawkins, a former Studio 54 bartender, got $1 million in insurance. Nine months later, Hanson was caught in Texas with a new face and a new name, Wolfgang Von Snowden. He and the doctor are awaiting trial for murder. Hawkins, a scam artist and sex addict, has disappeared with the money. Ann Louise Bardach investigates three double lives in the business community of Columbus, Ohio, the Genet underground of West Hollywood, and the luxury condos of Miami's Biscayne Bay.' Part 1. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:19 AM PST - 18 comments

Just when you thought summer movies couldn't get any dumber... here comes HEIGLR, a series of almost plausible films starring professional Hollywood casualty Katherine Heigl.
posted by hermitosis at 7:02 AM PST - 118 comments

Bennett Foddy's CLOP is like Bennett Foddy's QWOP, but with Unicorns.
posted by nobody at 6:45 AM PST - 24 comments

What happens when charged particles travel faster than the speed of light of the medium they're in? Cherenkov Radiation. Like this. Or this. Not this. More like this. Certainly not this. But definitely this or this or this. Not this.
posted by griphus at 6:40 AM PST - 26 comments

Jason Degraaf does unbelievable photorealistic acrylic paintings. [more inside]
posted by quin at 6:02 AM PST - 52 comments

Olympic athletes come in all shapes and sizes. The BBC's handy new app allows you to see which athlete you are the closest body match with. [more inside]
posted by MuffinMan at 5:12 AM PST - 109 comments

Two-year-old Emma wanted to play with blocks, but a condition called arthrogryposis meant she couldn't move her arms. So researchers at a Delaware hospital 3D printed a durable custom exoskeleton with the tiny, lightweight parts she needed.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:03 AM PST - 26 comments

National Night: Days of post-war baby boom long gone, Singapore's fertility rate has been plummeting for years now. The government's efforts at matchmaking through the SDU have been disappointing; baby-bonuses haven't been helping. So this National Day, if the official songs aren't doing it for you, if you're further than a heartbeat to love at first sight, Mentos encourages you to kick-back and do your patriotic duty.
posted by the cydonian at 4:30 AM PST - 32 comments