A compilations of some of my attempts at special effects, from when I was 9 to 19, inspired by the work of special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, who died Tuesday at age 92:
A compilations of some of my attempts at special effects, from when I was 9 to 19, inspired by the work of special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, who died Tuesday at age 92:
For some 30 years now, small clusters of movie teenagers have made the journey to various cabins in various woods. The return ratio for such trips is one surviving, bloodied, traumatized, hospitalized teenager for every 10 dead friends left behind. And the ratio of entertaining, original movies about attractive young people and the hideous monsters that stalk them is about the same. For every clever remake or freshly twisted spin, there are innumerable gore fests with nothing original to say.
Hello, "Evil Dead," 2013 edition.
This isn't a strict remake of Sam Raimi's hugely influential 1981 horror classic, but it does include the basic framework and some visual nods to the original. On its own, it's an irredeemable, sadistic torture chamber reveling in the bloody, cringe-inducing deaths of some of the stupidest people ever to spend a rainy night in a remote cabin in the woods.
Shiloh Fernandez is the dull and dimwitted David, who returns to the family's old cabin along with his new girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore); his former childhood friends Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Olivia (Jessica Lucas), and his little sister, Mia (Jane Levy). Even before we learn Mia's trying to kick smack, we know this kid has problems because she's got a bit of a goth look going, she believes in the spirit world, and she likes to sketch.
Like most cabins in the woods, this cabin in the woods seems to be miles away from any other cabins or any signs of life. Gee, the family must have had a blast there, especially with Mom battling insanity, and Dad — well, we never hear about Dad.
Within a few hours, the dog finds a blood-covered trap door leading to a basement filled with strung-up cat carcasses and a book of evil curses. Soon after that, Mia starts having visions and speaking in a demonic voice. Yet these morons stay put. (When they finally do try to leave, there's a conveniently biblical-style rainstorm flooding the exit road.)
Olivia's a registered nurse, but she doesn't seem smart enough to know how to register for Google Plus. Eric, who for some reason is groomed and dressed as if he'd just come back from a Kurt Cobain look-alike contest, opens a book that says "leave this book alone" and starts reciting a chant that should never be recited. Geez, whose idea was it to invite Eric on this trip?
Enter the she-bitch from hell, who's possessing Mia and intent on offing everyone in sight in the most disgusting, prolonged manner possible. Cue the ominous score, the cheap scares and the increasingly moronic behavior by David and his dunderheaded friends. The gore factor goes all the way to 11, with admittedly impressive makeup and special effects. Over the course of a rainy night that seems like it'll never end, we're treated to multiple scenes of projectile vomiting, dozens of nail-gun shots penetrating flesh and bone, black ooze and blood everywhere, dismemberment and stabbings. All shown in excruciating detail.
Save for a few darkly funny one-liners, there's almost no wicked humor here, and there's certainly nothing original about the plot. The actors do a pretty fair job of conveying terror, but the characters they're playing are such one-dimensional idiots, you begin rooting for the demonic she-bitch from hell to take 'em out.
I love horror films that truly shock, scare and provoke. But after 30 years of this stuff, I'm bored to death and sick to death of movies that seem to have one goal: How can we gross out the audience by torturing nearly every major character in the movie?
It's not news that many CEOs wake up extremely early. The pressure of the job makes it one of the only ways to keep up and still get in a minimum of exercise, family, or personal time.
The Guardian spoke to some top CEOs, who revealed that the definition of work-life balance for CEOs is pretty far off from what most of us would consider reasonable.
The reward for making it to the top seems to be more, not less work.
Below are some typical schedules when they're at home and things are as close to normal as they get. But the life of a CEO is also full of travel and corporate crises, which are likely to stretch many days even further.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wakes up around 5 a.m., is out of the house and working from his car by 7 a.m., and works until 7 p.m. He used to start sending emails immediately after waking up, but now restrains himself until 7 a.m.
Weekends are family time, but he's back at it again after 7 p.m. on Sundays.
Helena Morrissey, CEO of Newton Investment, gets up "at 5 in the morning, sometimes earlier," and immediately starts sending emails until her kids get up. She has family dinner scheduled at 7:30 p.m., but works again after that, sometimes for as much as two hours, prepping for the next morning's meetings.
Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao is up at 6 a.m., exercises for 40 minutes, then works nearly continuously until 10:45 p.m., pausing for family dinner.
He exercises for four hours on weekends, then preps for his work week in between spending time with his wife and children.
That's in line with other famous CEOs, like GE's Jeff Immelt, who's up at 5:30, or GM's Dan Akerson, who rarely makes it past 4:30 or 5 a.m. before he gets up and starts calling Asia.
Some take it even further. Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne runs businesses based on two different continents. When he's in America, he gets up at 3:30 a.m. to start dealing with Europe.
Being CEO is the goal of many driven business professionals. They should keep the tradeoffs in mind.
SEE ALSO: More CEOs who get up extremely early
Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
For many, it is difficult to accept how great LeBron James is because his statistics just don't compare to some of history's greatest players. However, James' deflated numbers can easily be explained by just looking at how slow the NBA has become.
Below is a look at how many shots teams averaged per game throughout the history of the NBA. For the last 20 years, the average has remained steady at approximately 81 shots per game. However, things were much different years ago.
For example, in 1961-62, the year Oscar Robertson famously averaged a triple-double, teams averaged 107.7 shots per game, the third-most in NBA history, and 31.5% more than this year (81.9 FGA/gm). If you increased James' numbers by the same rate, he would be averaging 35.4 points, 10.7 rebounds and 9.6 assists per game this year (Robertson averaged 30.8, 12.5, and 11.4 respectively).
This is not to diminish what Robertson accomplished. But his numbers do need to be taken in the context of a league that did not emphasize defense in the same manner as today's game. And when we do that we can see just how great LeBron is performing...
Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisors.
It's Time For Investors To Get Defensive (BMO Capital Markets)
While stocks have hit all-time highs in the first quarter. The past three years have got investors thinking that there will be a pullback in "middle" quarters. In fact they expected a correction in the second quarter.
"Given the prolonged absence of “real” money investing within US stocks (stock inflows have certainly improved lately but remain far too weak to compensate for the massive outflows exhibited over the past several years), we believe there is a high likelihood for patterns to repeat themselves yet again this year. This is one reason we have remained cautious with our 2013 S&P 500 price target of 1,575 while the index has quickly approached this level.
"As a result, we believe it is an appropriate time to for investors to become tactically more defensive within portfolios and not abandon US stock investing in the upcoming months."
Advisors Can Learn A Lot From Yale's Endowment Fund (Advisor Perspectives)
Yale University's endowment funds has 10-year return that's 400 basis points higher than the Wilshire 5000 – a market-cap weighted index of all stocks that are traded in the U.S.. The principles used in it can also be used to manage client portfolios, write C. Thomas Howard and Lambert Bunker.
Some of these principles include 1. "Separate short-term and long-term investment buckets" to help whittle out emotions from investing. They recommend three investment buckets, the emergency fund/short-term income bucket; capital growth bucket; non-standard bucket. 2 "Careful strategic allocation." 3. "Select superior active managers," this involves separating active and passive managers and understanding the "consistency and conviction" of his/her strategy.
Most Of The Cash Returned To Stockholders Has Been In The Form Of Share Buybacks (Musings on Markets)
"While there are some strict value investors who believe that dividends are qualitatively better than buybacks, because they are less volatile, the aggregate amount returned by US companies in buybacks is too large to be ignored.
"...Over the last decade, buybacks have been more volatile than dividends but the bulk of the cash flows returned to stockholders has come in buybacks."
SAC Manager Michael Steinberg Arrested (Thomson Reuters News & Insight)
SAC Capital's Michael Steinberg was arrested in New York on Friday in connection with an insider-trading probe by the FBI. Prosecutors are investigating whether he traded shares of Dell on insider information. He is the most senior SAC manager to be charged, and his lawyer Barry Berke maintains that Steinberg has done "absolutely nothing wrong."
"If We Avoid A Fiscal Mistake Then The Risks Of A Recession Go Down Sharply" (Gluskin Sheff)
While economic indicators suggest the U.S. economic recovery is picking up and many analysts are upwardly revising their GDP forecasts some still worry that certain events can tip the economy into a recession. Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg says this won't be the Fed pulling the plug on QE, or contagion from Europe's debt crisis, a crisis in the Middle East or even a Chinese hard landing. Instead, he thinks the biggest threat is Washington.
"If there is a risk, it is probably on the fiscal front and that policymakers pull off some sort of 1937-38 stunt (the FDR recession) or the premature sales tax hike in Japan in 1997-98 which sent the economy back into a tailspin.
"…If in fact we avoid a fiscal mistake, then the risks of a recession go down sharply (some Fed district banks peg the odds at a mere 6%) and what we are left with is what we have had all along, which is a muddle-through post-bubble deleveraging economy."
Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
China's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week AW 2013/2014 was held in Beijing this past week, and the clothing was equal parts intricate, beautiful, and absurd.
While some of the 30-plus participating designers sent relatively tame outfits down the runways, fashion students from Maogeping Image Design Art School and Minzu University of China took some bigger risks.
Attended twice yearly by China's wealthy elite and movie stars, China's Fashion Week has been growing in popularity since it first launched 15 years ago in 1997.
From gorgeous face appliques to wearing an elaborate bag over one's head, here are some of the most jaw-dropping moments from the past week in Beijing.
Please follow The Life on Twitter and Facebook.
FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisors.
It's Time For Investors To Get Defensive (BMO Capital Markets)
While stocks have hit all-time highs in the first quarter. The past three years have got investors thinking that there will be a pullback in "middle" quarters. In fact they expected a correction in the second quarter.
"Given the prolonged absence of “real” money investing within US stocks (stock inflows have certainly improved lately but remain far too weak to compensate for the massive outflows exhibited over the past several years), we believe there is a high likelihood for patterns to repeat themselves yet again this year. This is one reason we have remained cautious with our 2013 S&P 500 price target of 1,575 while the index has quickly approached this level.
"As a result, we believe it is an appropriate time to for investors to become tactically more defensive within portfolios and not abandon US stock investing in the upcoming months."
Advisors Can Learn A Lot From Yale's Endowment Fund (Advisor Perspectives)
Yale University's endowment funds has 10-year return that's 400 basis points higher than the Wilshire 5000 – a market-cap weighted index of all stocks that are traded in the U.S.. The principles used in it can also be used to manage client portfolios, write C. Thomas Howard and Lambert Bunker.
Some of these principles include 1. "Separate short-term and long-term investment buckets" to help whittle out emotions from investing. They recommend three investment buckets, the emergency fund/short-term income bucket; capital growth bucket; non-standard bucket. 2 "Careful strategic allocation." 3. "Select superior active managers," this involves separating active and passive managers and understanding the "consistency and conviction" of his/her strategy.
Most Of The Cash Returned To Stockholders Has Been In The Form Of Share Buybacks (Musings on Markets)
"While there are some strict value investors who believe that dividends are qualitatively better than buybacks, because they are less volatile, the aggregate amount returned by US companies in buybacks is too large to be ignored.
"...Over the last decade, buybacks have been more volatile than dividends but the bulk of the cash flows returned to stockholders has come in buybacks."
SAC Manager Michael Steinberg Arrested (Thomson Reuters News & Insight)
SAC Capital's Michael Steinberg was arrested in New York on Friday in connection with an insider-trading probe by the FBI. Prosecutors are investigating whether he traded shares of Dell on insider information. He is the most senior SAC manager to be charged, and his lawyer Barry Berke maintains that Steinberg has done "absolutely nothing wrong."
"If We Avoid A Fiscal Mistake Then The Risks Of A Recession Go Down Sharply" (Gluskin Sheff)
While economic indicators suggest the U.S. economic recovery is picking up and many analysts are upwardly revising their GDP forecasts some still worry that certain events can tip the economy into a recession. Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg says this won't be the Fed pulling the plug on QE, or contagion from Europe's debt crisis, a crisis in the Middle East or even a Chinese hard landing. Instead, he thinks the biggest threat is Washington.
"If there is a risk, it is probably on the fiscal front and that policymakers pull off some sort of 1937-38 stunt (the FDR recession) or the premature sales tax hike in Japan in 1997-98 which sent the economy back into a tailspin.
"…If in fact we avoid a fiscal mistake, then the risks of a recession go down sharply (some Fed district banks peg the odds at a mere 6%) and what we are left with is what we have had all along, which is a muddle-through post-bubble deleveraging economy."
Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »