The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot (2018)

OK, first of all, there will be some spoilers here, but maybe I should just assume that many of us have already seen this? It came out in 2018. I don't know.

Anyway, yah. This movie is... interesting, but not even CLOSE to what you might expect, from the title. It is mostly very slow-paced, and thoughtful, and sort of haunting. The great Sam Elliott plays Calvin Barr, an aging former WWII soldier (the film is set in 1987) who spends a lot of time alone with his memories of his life. Some of those memories are of a lost love, a woman he loved but who died young somehow... I'm not quite clear on exactly what happened to her. Some of his other memories concern a mission he went on in WWII, behind enemy lines, on which he KILLED HITLER. Killed him. Dead. In our current, real timeline.

The idea is that he went far behind enemy lines, tracked Hitler down, and killed him. But, the Nazis just found some body double dude, and presented him in public as Hitler, to keep up appearances. And the US never publicised the mission, or its results, for reasons of their (our?) own. So, Calvin Barr was never particularly recognized in public, although in certain circles high up in the government, he is still remembered.

The thing is, Calvin really dislikes killing. He even feels bad about killing... well, killing ANYONE, even Hitler. He didn't really want to kill Hitler, or be famous. He just did what they told him to do, as a soldier.

There is a scene shown in flashback, where he is tensely given a shave, and shares a drink, with a Romanian Gypsy, who... I guess was supposed to be a barber?!?!? Something like that. There was some very significant-sounding dialog in that scene. I need to go back and watch it again.

There is also something strange going on with time, or perhaps Time. There are at least two, possibly three, watches and clocks with something odd about the way they display time. There is a Nazi wristwatch with a swastika as the hands of the watch; a clock in a barber's shop (not the Romanian gypsy's place, just his brother's barbershop. The brother is definitely a barber). Whoops, I lost control of that sentence. I meant to say that the clock on the wall in his brothers barbershop was made to run so it shows the correct time in mirror fashion, so it can be read correctly in the mirror by patrons getting their hair cut. Calin also has a clock on th wall in his kitchen that looked a little strange... if they showed that clearly, or explained it, I must have missed it. Got to watch that part again.

Anyway, in the "present" time in the movie, 1987, Calvin is approached by a couple of smartly dressed representatives of the US and Canada, and told a story about Bigfoot. Apparently Bigfoot is the carrier of some kind of extremely deadly virus, and someone needs to find him and kill him. They have reason to think Calvin is immune to the virus, and he has superior tracking and killing skills, so they want him to do the mission.

Bigfoot, or rather "THE Bigfoot," is presented as something scary and monstrous. He doesn't look like a noble savage, or Chewbacca, or Harry from Harry and the Hendersons. He just looks like a monster. He is a horror movie-style Bigfoot.

There are other things going on in this movie. At one point Calvin throws away a big box of letters from the woman he loved, letters that I would have imagined that he would have wanted to hold on to no mattter what. There is also another box, a mysterious box, which we never see the contents of. There is probably something significant about that box, but I don't know what it is.

I do not know what this movie means, but I'm pretty sure it means something. I feel like I felt right after watching Being John Malkovich.

Someone in a comments thread under a Youtube video, reviewing the film, was saying that Calvin's story is an allegory for America in the 20th century? Something like that. They thought the thing about the Bigfoot with the virus was a metaphor for communism, which had to be eradicated. They could be right.

As I said, I really can't figure this movie out. If you watch it, just keep an eye out for clocks and wristwatches, and try to think about what they mean. There is also a scene where Calvin takes down a painting on his wall, and looks at the patch of wall that had been under the painting. That appeared to mean something, but I can't figure it out. Also, keep an eye out for the mysterious box that we never see the contents of. Also, this might be a big deal: there is something going on with his shoe, or shoes. He keeps getting a small rock in his shoe, or something along those lines. He keeps getting irritated by something in his shoe. This made me think of (this is VERY disturbing, brace yourself): Angela Bettis in May, constantly being irritated by a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of broken glass that had gotten into her eye at some point. She eventually get it out of her eye, sort of.... YEESH. Calvin eventually gets the stone out of his shoe. I think it might be important to pay attention to WHEN it bothers him..? That might explain what it means.

Also, listen carefully to the Romanian Gypsy, when he gives the young version of Calvin a shave.

So. Basically, I do not know what this movie means, but if I were watching it for the first time, I would pay close attention to the things I just mentioned.

One other thing: there is a little model of a dinoaur that seems to mean something. Calvin's little brother (the one who grows up to be a local barber) gives him the dinosaur as he is heading off to WWII. It appears to be some kind of a good luck charm. It shows up at least two more times in the movie, once on Calvin's quest to kill the Bigfoot, and a second time when he is watching a school play the local children are putting on, with his brother.

Whatever it all means, the movie appears to be a labor of love, and is probably worth spending time thinking about. Sam Elliott seems to take the role very seriously, and the writer and director clearly had something on their minds. The scenery is really pretty, too. Apparently it's in Massachusetts! But, by that I mean western Massachusetts, which is practically another state. I very rarely get out there, although this movie makes me wish I did.

So, there you have it. This movie is nowhere near what you would imagine, from the title, but it seems to have something to offer. I am still trying to divine what that might be.

Possible changes to TE post markup

Social media originated from message boards, but it's changed a lot over time. That includes markup and the way people format stuff. I'm considering ways to catch up to modern expectations, particularly regarding links, urls, images, and videos.

What I'm hoping to do is make it so when you type a link, it auto-converts to a link. If you post an image (file that ends with .gif, .jpg, .png, .webp), it auto-converts to an image. If you post a youtube link, it auto-converts to a youtube embed. No more '[' and ']' url/link tag nonsense.

This is for a couple reasons: 1.) some of you dumbasses couldn't/wouldn't do it right, and 2.) the new way is a faster and easier way, theoretically. And to clarify what will be considered a link, it will be any text that begins with "https://" followed by any character that isn't a space or white space. It would be more similar to how links work in the shoutbox.

This change would require me to change markup in all posts and comments, and there's a lot of room for error, so I don't know when/if this will happen. I might also remove some "emoticons" since emojis are already integrated, but I know I need to keep all the dirty ones, that's for damn sure.


I'm trying to simplify things.

Apple is a stupid company

A week ago, I got a free trial of AppleTV+ because my mom really wanted to watch Killers of the Flower Moon because she loved the book. The movie was okay, but she liked it enough. Purpose fulfilled.

A couple of days later, I figured I'd catch up on Mythic Quest seasons 2 onward. You must sign in to watch this.

I couldn't sign in all week on any device, then I spent an hour with customer service chats and phone calls trying to cancel an account that no longer exists, but the email address does exist. The account got suspended because I was inactive and considered 'suspicious'. Because I'm not watching this bad streaming service on a daily basis? Their content is serious garbage.

So now I've been waiting about 12 hours for the account to re-activate, all so I can cancel a one-week free trial that I only got to use for 3 something hours.


And did you know that apples are a type of fruit?

Your fav 3 comedy films from the past 20 years?

It's a lazy Sunday morn and I'm bored AF. Figured I'd throw this up.

Hot Fuzz 2007
Tropic Thunder 2008
Goon 2011

HMs
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil 2010
Step Brothers 2007

Sound off or fnck off!

Room 237 Documentary

Apparently, The Shining is a holocaust metaphor about how the moon landing was fake. It sure sounds like these people are overanalyzing the movie, picking apart every scene as if every atom in the frame is a deliberate work of art. Maybe this movie really is chock full of symbolism. Yeah, and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.

Underwater (2020)

I saw this recently. I basically can't say anything about it. I am glad I saw it though! It stars Vincent Cassel and Kristen Stewart (who really does a perfectly solid job here, so cut her some slack). I would say don't google it, or try to learn anything about it beforehand, and just watch it. I think you'll be glad you did.

Thor Heyerdahl-ish stuff

You guys, this is really interesting. I think I must have missed it when it was in the news, this feels like NEW news to me. Like, I don't think I knew about it until today.

I'm not saying Thor Heyerdahl was right about everything. In fact, I AM saying that he was definitely wrong about shitloads of things. But, it looks like he was right about this.

Here is the article. I hope it's clickable.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2.epdf?sharing_token=YbYh7h-oFTVqiaIHO404B9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NQ-GCGXs3b23XyInVhVtT1AdcNQHZodtkKNjeo_SR6zt9f9aL_AX33870N0wZrUnumb_oEV09bctmUoZF9efqVOMerEWxA71IrXlxocHJ7nd8Ys94Z733tZMsOGzx8ERRP41ktd_opbdkfBKR0OcXfUPTeeUVaxDDWG8Iet1QiGN_VAUdlEj562PopOAZimCyrYOBuv4MX9wbCoB48uMAtpZPiP6J-tw8R-CK2JARfi4GVwJqKXEnROmln3_VlD_Uze7YRCi9nKCVqY5cS6ibd4YcLCgY7iLejjR6ZnoRb8Xn2oJqriUF5KXEGhelNMW-FPhd-Z8aZuWMSsR3hwpJGrp-3nqr9e9Ct3Pm2DMQ7xq7Zr2BpKRbpnWXMSUypzpwciVg0GWkw2D_CeMT7Z7AE&tracking_referrer=www.iflscience.com

The idea is that Easter Island was partially settled by people of (partial) Native American descent. But, those people came to Easter Island from the WEST, not from the east. There was some kind of contact in about the 12th or 13th century A.D. (not that any of the people involved would known what that meant, obviously) between the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia and somewhere in northerly South America, probably the Zenu people in what is now the nation of Colombia. And, also, if I am understanding this correctly, maybe some contact between Polynesians and the Zapotec people of Mexico, possibly a few decades earlier than the Zenu contacts.

They don't seem to be clear on exactly what happened, but the way they talk about it makes it sound like there may have been some kind of Native American colony, waaayyy out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I love that idea... Either that, or Polynesians rowed all the way to South America, and then later took a few women back with them, to the Marquesas Islands area.

Thor Heyerdahl made some crazy claims, but just the basic idea that there may have been some contact between South America and Polynesia is apparently correct.

Some horror pranks

https://twitter.com/horrormuseum/status/1647692091554922496

3 favorite Masters of Horror episodes?

Cigarette Burns by John Carpenter
Imprint by Takashi Miike
Pelts by Dario Argento

Hm
Sick Girl by Lucky McKee
The Black Cat by Stuart Gordon

The Third Coast, by Thomas Dyja

You guys, I just saw this in a used bookstore today. It's about the significance of the city of Chicago to the sum total of what the United States became, to itself and to the world, during the early and mid-20th century.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/15811511

I wanted to put it here in a particular old thread, but I can't find it. It could be a year or two old... I don't know. The thread had something to do with the way New York City and Los Angeles dominate the national scene too muc and how even movies and fiction are just too heavily dominated by those two cities.

In the thread I'm thinking of, I also said something about how Boston has had more than its share of movies about it, in recent years. I can remember thinking, when I was a kid, that I wished there were more movies set in and around Boston. But, at this point, I think my home city has kind of worn out its welcome, and they should find other places to talk about, and other places to set movies and books. I might have asked, in that thread, what other cities anyone here thinks would make sense to set more movies in?? I remember thnking about that topic, I'm not sure if I actually went ahead and created a post about it here...

Anyway, the book I saw is an effort to discuss the significance and importance of Chicago. So, just the type of thing I had in mind.

Had to share.