Sometimes I Think That Without The First Blade Movie And Dark City (1998), There Would Have Been No Matrix

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (French: Notre-Dame de Paris, meaning "Our Lady of Paris" originally titled "Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482") by Victor Hugo.

Echoes of Gothic Romance mixed with scathing social/religious criticism.

A profoundly moving book.

Gotta say, I think this is a great movie. But I wouldn't say it's the best adaptation. As great of a film as it is, it is emotionally draining and it's not something that I would consider watching repeatedly. I just can't get my head around Watchmen being two or three hours long. I always felt like the series depends on an almost-miniseries build-up.

No, it doesn't bother me at all that the Extra-Dimensional Biological Entity is not in it (however, if that bothers you, I understand, and you have my sympathies). The one change that bothered me was how they changed Rorschach's origin scene, because the filmmakers felt that it was way too similar to the climax of the first Saw movie, and my feeling on that is that Rorschach's origin was already a rip-off of Mad Max's origin. So why is this an issue now? Other than that, I really enjoyed this film.

As much as I don't like Zack Snyder, I can't deny that he is a brilliant visual creator and everything in the trailer seemed right, if not completely spot-on. To be totally honest, I even geeked out a little when I first saw it.

Fun Fact:

Humans have been astral planing a LOT longer than we thought.

Researchers analyzed hair strands from a burial site in Menorca and detected scopolamine, ephedrine and atropine. Atropine and scopolamine are naturally occurring substances in the nightshade plant family that cause hallucinations and altered sensory perception, while ephedrine is a stimulant taken from certain shrubs and pines that boosts excitement and physical activity. Before this discovery, we'd only found indirect evidence of psychedelic use in ancient cultures. The cave that the analyzed hair strands were taken from was first occupied around 1600 BCE and featured a chamber that was used as a funeral space until around 800 BCE. It's estimated that 210 individuals were laid to rest here, but only certain people had their hair dyed red, placed in containers and sealed in a chamber further back in the cave. We don't know what made these individuals so special that their hair had to be preserved but we are certain that a major psychedelic discovery was just made in Spain.

Blade Runner by Ridley Scott.

Based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

I'm a huge fan of this film, it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies of all time.

Blade Runner is simply one of those cinematic candies, that when I first saw it on Netflix, I never saw the world the same way again.

Check it out and feel the visual boundaries of cinema expand.

Fun Fact:

Archaeologists have found some of the oldest artistic depictions of domesticated dogs.

In recent years, archaeologists have uncovered more than 1400 rock carving panels in Northwestern Saudi Arabia depicting ancient hunting dogs. All of the dogs depicted are medium in size with upright ears, short snouts and curled tails. They look a lot like the modern Canaan breed, a largely feral breed that roamed the deserts, indicating these dogs were chosen based on their natural ability to navigate the surrounding terrain.

The carving showed dogs taking down animals like wild donkeys, ibexes and gazelles, and a few even depict them leashed to the humans they're hunting for. These carvings are an estimated eight thousand to nine thousand years old and may even be older than the Iranian pottery that was previously labeled as the oldest art of domesticated dogs. As the carvings are studied more, we should have a more concrete idea of the culture that left them behind.

Allison Schulnik's great claymation short, “Eager”.

"Conan the Barbarian" by Frank Frazetta.

"They’re my friends. I made them."

- J.F. Sebastian, Blade Runner

Turns out there's a Greek myth for everything...

Where did soulmates come from? Why is love a thing?

According to Greek playwright Aristophanes, there were originally three kinds of human beings: the Children of the Moon were male and female in one body. The Sun's Children were two males in one body and the Earth's were two females in one body. With two united minds and eight strong limbs each, they planned to overthrow the gods and live on Mt. Olympus themselves. But Zeus, wanting to end this rebellion before it started, sliced every couple into two, had Apollo smoothen them out and gave them belly buttons as an eternal reminder of their failure and made it possible for them to reproduce as we do now. Having been whole all their lives, they refused to do anything apart and started dying because of it. So Zeus reshaped their bodies again, making becoming physically one temporarily possible.

Now it's the inborn fate of every person to seek wholeness in another. Those who were once a man and woman desire the other gender and those who descended from a combo of the same gender seek to unite with the same gender.

They are soulmates, and this pursuit is love.

"Perhaps Madame Leota can establish contact. She has a remarkable head for materializing the disembodied."

- The Ghost Host