Dark of the Sun (1968)

Hey there, Internet People! It's time for another movie review, and today I'll be reviewing my recently received copy of the 1968 man-on-a-mission film, Dark of the Sun.

It has a reputation for being extremely violent and Tarantino even used some of the films score in Inglorious Basterds, so we must be in for a treat, right? In any case, I can check another fi7lm off of my "Watch All the Films Referenced in a Tarantino Movie" list. (Okay, I don't actually have a list of all the films referenced by Tarantino movies.)

Set during the Congo Crisis that was unfolding while the film was in production, it follows a band of mercenaries hired by the President of the Congo ostensibly to rescue a town full of Europeans civilians from the advancing rebel Simbas, but in reality their mission is to retrieve fifty million dollars worth of diamonds from a mining company vault before the rebels can seize them (Blood Diamonds anyone? Looks like I'm gonna have read those Wikipedia articles, too...)

Despite the ripped-from-the-headlines-plot, it feels very much like the other war movies of the era. The mercenaries include Bruce Curry (played by Rod Taylor), as the leader, Rufo (football player and 70s and 80s action movie regular Jim Brown), the friend, Doctor Wreid (British actor Kenneth Moore), as the alcoholic or perhaps as the british guy, and Ex-Nazi Heinlein (Peter Carsten) as the expert and to provide the obligitory tension in the group. He's even wearing a swastika pinned to his uniform in his first scene. None of the rest of team trusts him, but he does bring a company of trained soldiers with him, so they tolerate him for the time being. Of course, by the rules of the genre, we all know that by the end of the movie they'll have this all worked out and probably sacrifice himself for one of them... or he will have betrayed them to the Simbas in a ploy to get the diamonds for himself.

Things soon go wrong when their train is strafed by a UN plane despite having UN clearance. Exploding train cars and machine gun fire ensues, it looks like this movie's going to have non-stop action from the first reel. When they're not fighting the movie goes full soap opera. Curry argues with Dr Wreid over his drinking the moment the bullets stop flying and the fires are all put out, they he takes one of the congolese soldiers to task for choking up when the UN plane was strafing them.

The film also has lots of gorgeous scenery. It was filmed in Jamaica along the Jamaican railway system and there is plenty of shots of the forests.

Yes, this movie really does have a CHAINSAW FIGHT.

In one early scene Heinlein machine guns to Congolese children believing them to be spies while the rest of the hardened mercenaries watch shocked. In the next scene Curry asked Rufo "why don't you hate whites?" They don't make movies like this anymore.

Then Heinlein goes after Curry with a chainsaw in an effort to resolve their differences. And then Curry tries to crush Heinlein's skull under the wheels of their train. Forget all about what I wrote earlier about this movie feeling like any other 60s war movie. They didn't have chainsaw duels in The Dirty Dozen. This movie is amazing.

Once the train arrives in the town, the mercenaries get to have even more character development. After Dr Wreid and Heinlein get drunk and shoot up an (empty) bar, Curry hauls Wreid off to the local church where he is needed to help deliver a baby despite the fact that Dr Wreid is a, drunk and b, apparently only qualified to remove patch up bullet wounds. Dr. Wreid then decides to stay behind so he can be murdered by the Simbas once they arrive.

All hell breaks loose when they Simbas arrive right before the time lock on the diamond vault door opens. Fortunately, it seems the simbas are armed with wooden spears while the mercenaries have machine guns. Unfortunately things turn into a running firefight with the rebels firing on the fleeing train with mortars (yeah, they have mortars now.) Then their train gets blown up an they have to flee on foot. The mercenaries, the evacuating civilians, and the diamonds, surrounded by an army of leftist guerrillas who want to torture them all to death. And to make things even worse in all this the diamonds get left in the hotel in town. The same town that the Simbas just seized.

Curry and Rufo have a plan for retrieving the diamonds that is pure awesome. Rufo walks into town with Curry stripped to the waist and slung over one shoulder. They just wander into the hotel past the crowd of guerillas caught up in a frenzy of looting, pillaging, raping, and killing. (Did I mention that this movie totally deserves it's reputation? 'Cause it does.) Once inside they snatch the diamonds off the table and then kill everybody with machine guns and blow up everything that hasn't burned down yet.

Rufo and Curry follow up their moment of badass by spending the next scene arguing over Curry fighting because he's a mercenary versus Rufo fighting for his country.  Then Heinlein shows up and murders Rufo while Curry is away from the group. It looks like they've elected not to have them settle their difference with Heinlein and instead they went with the other option. That's probably not surprising after the Chainsaw Incident.

Then Curry gets back from wherever he was and finds the rest of the cast holding a funeral for Rufo. At this point he seems to forget all about the diamonds and heard of refugees he's leading. Yeah, this movie is awesome. And brutal.

This is messed up in so many ways, but it comes with a very surprising moral at the end of the movie. One that the whole rest of the movie was just one big setup for. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wanted to see something in the vein of Blood Diamond.

Trailer

Imdb
Rotten Tomatoes

Python Collatz Conjecture Script

One of my current ongoing projects is to teach myself to code in Python. While I have been going through the lessons in Learn Python the Hard Way, (I've been on lesson 23 for a few weeks now), I have been on the lookout for things to code with Python.

Then, the Collatz Conjecture popped up on my Google Plus feed...

The Conjecture states that for any natural number:

• If even, divide by 2.
• If odd, multiply by 3 and add 1.
• Repeat these steps until you end up with 1. 

The conjecture states that as long as you are using a natural number, you will eventually end up with the number one.

Sounds like a good thing to practice coding with. Here's what I've got:

i = 0
x = int(raw_input("Please input a number> "))

while x != 1:
 i = i + 1
 if x % 2 == 0:
  x = x/2
  print "%d> %d" % (i, x)
 elif x != 1:
  x = 3 * x + 1
  print "%d> %d" % (i, x)
 else:
  print "%d> %d" % (i, x)

For every step, it prints out the step number and the current number. Example output:

Please input a number> 94
1> 47
2> 142
3> 71
4> 214
5> 107
6> 322
7> 161
8> 484
9> 242
10> 121
11> 364
12> 182
13> 91
14> 274
15> 137
16> 412
17> 206
18> 103
19> 310
20> 155
21> 466
22> 233
23> 700
24> 350
25> 175
26> 526
27> 263
28> 790
29> 395
30> 1186
31> 593
32> 1780
33> 890
34> 445
35> 1336
36> 668
37> 334
38> 167
39> 502
40> 251
41> 754
42> 377
43> 1132
44> 566
45> 283
46> 850
47> 425
48> 1276
49> 638
50> 319
51> 958
52> 479
53> 1438
54> 719
55> 2158
56> 1079
57> 3238
58> 1619
59> 4858
60> 2429
61> 7288
62> 3644
63> 1822
64> 911
65> 2734
66> 1367
67> 4102
68> 2051
69> 6154
70> 3077
71> 9232
72> 4616
73> 2308
74> 1154
75> 577
76> 1732
77> 866
78> 433
79> 1300
80> 650
81> 325
82> 976
83> 488
84> 244
85> 122
86> 61
87> 184
88> 92
89> 46
90> 23
91> 70
92> 35
93> 106
94> 53
95> 160
96> 80
97> 40
98> 20
99> 10
100> 5
101> 16
102> 8
103> 4
104> 2
105> 1

Tales From Overguilds, Part 13

1st Granite, 1054

The Coming Of Werelizard Akul Icgasom

or

 Why you fear the night.

Well, I have an angry werelizard in my back yard. And he managed to bring a bunch of terrified troglodytes to the surface with him. Time to summon my military, and observe the fun. 

No. Wait. It seems the terrified troglodytes are fighting back.

I'll let them fight it out instead. Then my military will polish off the victor.

And Akul is all ready sporting wounds on his head, right lower arm, left lower arm, and left upper leg. Akul, you dissapoint me.

Or not. I also find an unconscious troglodyte who is unconscious and has been seriously mauled. About this point, I see a flashing pale blue U appear on screen followed by this announcement:

The human Akul Icgasom flees off the edge of the map. An angry troglodyte pursues him, but unlike Akul, it does not leave the map.

Assuming I don't have to put down any disturbances by angry troglodytes, it seems my dwarves can get back to whatever it is I was working on.

And after a brief computer problem forcing me to reboot everything, I do return to whatever it was I was working on.

Or at least I try to get back to whatever I was doing...

I read the announcement that one of my woodcutters has bled to death.

His body is laying in a pool of his own blood while an infant crawls nearby and a small group of dwarves hang out near a pond. It would be a great scene to be masterfully engraved on somebody's bedroom wall.

He's big and covered in dwarf blood.

Several of my dwarves have reported being scared by a Dwarf Eating Feral Draltha, so I have dispatched the military to kill it. I anticipate that should solve that problem.

Two of my military dwarves and a blue peacock chase down the big scary herbivore and kill it.

I hope my poor jeweler wasn't too badly injured...

My engravers continue their efforts to smooth and engrave high traffic corridors and living spaces. I currently have them working in a busy hallway connecting the farming and related workshops to my warehouse and trade level. I also have a series of alcoves carved along the sides, it is my plan to position statues along the corridor
once the engravings are completed.

And NOW there's a troglodyte chasing around a mule. Time to call up the militia (and peacock?) again. Likot Ebalkeskal showed up quickly and killed it with her *bronze battle axe*. They're much more effective not that they have real weapons.

This troglodyte makes her fourth kill (although I was hoping that the peacock would get credit for killing the draltha), if I manage to get her some armor now and more training, my milita just might be lethal yet.

I had plans for building a danger room for my military to train in, but this cycle of having to kill a dangerous animal every time I try to do something productive seems to be working too.

And before I finish my session, I am greeted with the scariest message I have seen today:

 More Tales from Overguilds.

Celebrate Snow Days with Sock Puppets!

Cure cabin fever by conversing with homemade sock puppets. 

The "polar vortex" has parked itself in my front yard and it's too cold to contemplate opening the front door, let alone leaving the house...

So, what's the best way avoid becoming a half-crazed shut in during this blast of arctic weather? The answer is obvious- make a sock puppet and become a fully-crazed shut in!

I used an old (and only slightly worn) sock and strips of an old t-shirt for the hair and inside of the mouth. Also inside the mouth is strips of cardboard. The eyes are embroidered on with black thread.