RESULTS ARE IN: Benedict Cumberbatch as DOCTOR STRANGE has made an estimated $185 million domestically for its opening this weekend, according to Disney..
That is on the higher end of expectations..It had the been predicted that it would make around $170 million to $185 million in North America. It also makes “Multiverse of Madness” the 11th biggest opening in domestic box office history.
The film’s more than doubled the opening weekend of the original “Doctor Strange.” ..
The summer box office season appears to have started with a bang.. call it the post COVID boom?
Other films are slated to be big hits in the summer months.
Marvel will premiere another potential hit in July:
“Thor: Love and Thunder,” the next film in the blockbuster franchise starring Chris Hemsworth in the mid summer..
INTERESTINGLY, the newest STRANGER did not get the grand ratings that SPIDER-MAN did.. Right now on Rotten Tomatoes, the critics score is hovering in the mid 70% range and fan rating did not have the movie above 90%..
The horror version of Doctor Strange?
Some felt the Sam Raimi style made the film more of a horror than action–but that played well among several demos..
But… perhaps who cares when showcased aside of the box office results..
Media figures react to COVID positive cases after White House correspondents dinner outbreak
“I’m yet another [White House Correspondents Association] weekend casualty,” tweeted Julia Ioffe, a correspondent at Puck News. “I knew I was taking a risk and, well, here we are!”
Jada Yuan, who covered the dinner for The Washington Post, also tweeted she tested positive afterwards and would have to miss an international work trip she had been looking forward to. “Hindsight and all that, but wear a mask or leave or tell your employer you can’t go if you’re in a situation where you feel uncomfortable,” she tweeted. “Those consequences are usually better than the ones you’ll face if you get sick.”
“We worked hard to publicize our protocols and encouraged those eligible to get booster shots in the weeks leading up to the dinner,” Steve Portnoy, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, wrote in an email. “Our event implemented protocols that went beyond any guidance or regulation issued by the CDC or the DC health department. We wish anyone who may not be feeling well a speedy recovery.”
Attendees at the White House Correspondents Dinner are generally privileged and well-connected people, who have much better access to treatments like Paxlovid, as well as paid time off and other benefits, than some Americans.
In January of 2014, the Indianapolis Star broke the story of mysterious events that played out in 2011, in Gary, Ind. Latoya Ammons; her mother, Rosa Campbell; her daughter and two sons moved into a rental house and within a month trouble started — swarms of black flies, a shadowy man in the living room, footsteps climbing the stairs when no one was there.
Ammons’ 12-year-old daughter reported feeling held down and choked. She heard voices saying that her family would die. Ammons’ youngest son was propelled out of the bathroom as if he’d been thrown; he growled and thrashed.
Ammons could find no help. When one episode sent the family to the ER, the Department of Child Services was called. The children were found to be healthy; a hospital psychiatrist determined Ammons to be of “sound mind.” But a Department of Child Services caseworker and a hospital nurse reported that Ammons’ 9-year-son walked backward up the wall in a hospital exam room. The caseworker told the police that she believed there could be an “evil influence” affecting the family.
Ultimately, Latoya Ammons would lose custody of her children for six months. But once the Rev. Michael Maginot, a Catholic priest, performed three exorcisms for the family, the events stopped.
The exorcists are the skeptics now. Baffled and frustrated psychiatrists have turned to exorcists seeking help for patients whose torment does not follow the path of schizophrenia or delusional disassociation and does not respond to treatment.
Highway concludes,
Joseph Laycock, an assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State University, who has taught courses on demonology agrees. He makes the point that an uptick in exorcism could be cyclical, due to social upheaval and uncertainty. A belief in demonic manipulation and exorcism, Laycock has written, offers a way of “interpreting contemporary political issues,” of “framing changing social mores.”
As we suffer through war, disease and division, the spiritual may help when rationality and science do not. I’ve listened to those who feel they have been under demonic attack; their explanation for why they sought out the age-old practice of exorcism is simple: They were desperate for a way to heal.
Authorities are saying no foul play at this time..
Interesting description of the three deaths–and similar ways they succumbed..
Preliminary reports indicate that the bodies were found unresponsive in two different locations; a man was found first in one villa with no signs of trauma, and the couple in a second villa, police said in the statement issued on Saturday.
The couple complained of illness the previous evening, according to the report.
“The officers found a Caucasian male slumped against a wall in a bathroom, unresponsive,” the Royal Bahamas Police Force said. “The woman was also unresponsive. Both individuals showed signs of convulsion. The officers examined the bodies and found no signs of trauma.”
Where the dolls came from is a mystery but the Mission-Aransas Reserve has been collecting the scary figures as they find them along a 40-mile stretch of coastline, Jace Tunnell, director of the Mission Aransas Reserve at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
MORE..
“You never know what you’re going to find washing in. About twice a month we find these crazy-looking dolls that are washing in,” Tunnell said.
So far, the Reserve has collected about 30 dolls, Tunnell said in a Facebook video in October. Some are missing arms or legs and others have algae growing inside the eyes and mouth as well as barnacles. Some have clearly been chewed on.
The marketing for the new FIRESTARTER Stephen King movie coming out next week has been next to zero .. nothing online.. no targeted ads on social media.
Few commercials… no TV trailers.. What gives?
A new John Carpenter score too? But no word of mouth bragging that up?
And a horror movie debut on FRIDAY THE 13TH couldn’t go wrong, right? Unless no one knows it’s premiering..
Of course maybe it will be just THAT BAD of a movie..?
US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York, an Obama appointee, last week ordered every US internet service provider to block three streaming sites for enabling piracy, effectively enacting by judicial decree the SOPA legislation Congress rejected a decade ago…
At least in broad terms, the lawsuits were relatively unremarkable. They followed traditional lines by demanding $150,000 in statutory damages for every copyrighted work infringed and an injunction to prevent infringement moving forward. From the beginning it seemed highly unlikely that the operators of these sites would turn up in court to defend themselves, meaning that a win for the plaintiffs in these cases was never really in doubt.
Late last week, the plaintiffs won all three lawsuits via default judgments. The court ordered the operators of Israel-tv.com, Israel.tv and Sdarot.tv to each pay $7,650,000 in statutory copyright infringement damages related to 51 registered works owned by the plaintiffs.
While almost $23 million in damages isn’t an inconsiderable amount, the injunctions handed down in all three cases are something never seen before in a TV/movie piracy case.
The plaintiffs are United King Film Distribution, D.B.S. Satellite Services (1998), HOT Communication Systems, Reshet Media, and Keshet Broadcasting. While the plaintiffs “transmit their programming in an encrypted form,” the defendants’ “various services and hardware permit end-user consumers to bypass the Plaintiffs’ encryption to view Plaintiffs’ content,” the rulings said.
The judge ordered domain registrars and registries to transfer the domain names to the plaintiffs. The rulings include injunctions against “third parties providing services used in connection with Defendants’ operations,” including web hosts, content delivery networks, DNS providers, VPN providers, web designers, search-based online advertising services, and others.
We have been following oneterabyteofkilobyteage for several years–amazing old content.. It’s less nostalgia and more a document of the life and times of Geocities sites that once were (kids these days probably would never understand how weird and wonderful Geocities was when it existed) ..
Nonetheless, this one struck us.. A screen shot of a old site for a kid named Justin, or J.T., who apparently died.. It’s difficult to know what the story of this human being was by a simple screen shot..
So we dug a little deeper ..
His name was Justin Tandan Schumacher, and he died when he was 16.
He was born on February 25, 1980 and died on July 25, 1996 when a drunk driver struck him..
A visit to the site on the Wayback Machine appears to show that Justin’s parent created the Geocities site at that time..
On the page, someone writes the details of the crash and also includes photographs of the car that was involved.. from the text:
Have you ever thought, in your wildest dreams, that while on your way to pick up a pizza, you could end up in a mess like this? This is what happened to my two boys and two of their friends.
After a long day of working on Justin’s pick up these 4 boys, ages 16 & 14, decided that they were hungry. It was only 9:30 at night, so they called and ordered a pizza and were on their way to pick it up. It’s only 5 or so miles from where they were. What can happen in that short of time, on a week night, that early? Well, plenty, when you encounter some person, who has decided to take a handful of pills and DRINK and DRIVE!!!
You see this man was on a back road, going east and had come to a T in the road, where there was a stop sign. Apparently, because of the .32 Blood Alcohol Level in his system and the unconfirmed report of narcotics, it prevented him from seeing the stop sign. The boys’, heading south, couldn’t see him, because of a corn field.
In a matter of seconds, they were hit broadside and pushed into a tree. My oldest son, Justin was dead. Killed on impact. Jim, my 14 year old, was taken to the nearest hospital, along with the other 2 boys and the Drunk Driver. Jim was stabilized enough to be transported via helicopter to the nearest trauma center. Jim coded, quit breathing, on the way there and they had to bag him, breath for him until they could put him on a respirator. He also had a broken cheek bone, broken 1st rib, broken collar bone, broken jaw and soft tissue damage to his neck, along with lung and brain contusions. The 16 year old in the back driver’s seat broke his neck and the driver of the car, also 16, (Josh) suffered extreme trauma to his head, that eventually lead to him going into a comma for approx. 2 months. He now has TBI (traumatic brain injury), and is partially parilized on his right side.
Upon investigation, it was found that the Drunk Driver, a Drug and Alcohol Councilor, from California had a cooler of ice in the front seat. They also found an open bottle of vodka, 100’s of prescription narcotics, a television set and a shot gun in the trunk of his car.
Of course, as is standards, Blood Alcohol tests were run on the boys’ as well. None of them had, had anything in their systems.
After spending 3 days in the hospital, the Drunk Driver was turned over to the Authorities and held in the County Jail under $100,000.00 bond. After, approximately, 1 week he posted $11,000.00 cash bond and was released, with the stipulations that he had to check in at the jail 3 days a week and have random drug and alcohol testing done. He was let out of jail on a Wednesday. He reported to the Authorities on Thursday and on Friday, when he didn’t report, they found him dead, in his motel room, of a drug and alcohol overdose.
It goes without saying that oneterabyteofkilobyteage is often fun and humorous, showcasing old website with terrible moving GIFs and awful graphics.. but sometimes the deeper you go on some of these sites, the more you realize the quality and reality of the early web. There were no fancy selfies .. So many people originally saw the internet as their little place to share intimate details in writing… use Xanga or other sites to create a diary for friends, but mostly strangers, to read.. To connect in some form, to use this new weird technology to find a voice and a place.
Now it has been taken over by socials… by the anti-socials.. and by corporations.
But when you visit old Geocities sites as featured by oneterabyteofkilobyteage, especially this one, you get a glance into a time and place of a family.. a parent agonizing over the loss of her child.. and you realize that despite what everyone says, things on the internet actually DO disappear over time. That is tragic for voices that needed to be heard loud and clear..
