Here’s the poster of Where Do We Go From Here in 1945. They prominently refer to it as a 20th Century-Fox film.
The square version declares it the 30th anniversary of the company, counting from Fox’s founding in 1915, not 20th Century’s in 1932, which would be very strange if they were 20th Century in the public eye. But I can’t find a really readable version of that one online.
Feds get a better deal. It would be considered a RIF (Reduction In Force) and a bunch of protections kick in; relocation, severance packages, and a system of job shifting called “bumping” for any Federal jobs that are not being eliminated (and if you bump to a normally lower-paying job you can “save-pay” to an extent). It’s complicated.
My annoyance is quite simple. I’ve lived in Minnesota my entire life and it irks me to no end when I’m watching a movie/tv show set at Christmas time or anytime in the winter and the fake snow is blown all over trees and bushes that still have leaves!! AARRGGHH
And on the same subject…some characters in the movie are wearing winter jackets, hats and scarves and some won’t have any winter garb on at all.
The TV show Revolution had a scene early on that made me shut of the TV and never return to the show. This episode featured the plucky band of rebels acquiring a sniper rifle. They are chased into a building and the supposed “military expert” hands the gun to the “best shot in the unit” and tells him to not let them get closer than 10 yards. Umm, it’s a scoped sniper rifle. You should be shooting at hundreds of yards. At 10 yards the guy with the musket has as good of a chance of shooting you as you do of shooting him. And what he should have said was “Shoot the officers first, then any heavy weapons or anyone giving orders.”
I can ignore the whole trope of the guy is a deadeye shot against everyone except the main character thing, but the idea of a sniper rifle being used for close in defense just irritated the shit out of me.
Here’s the pre-Fox-merger 20th Century Pictures logo from 1933, two years before the mergers:
It looks identical, except for the lack of "Fox" in that monumental image. The searchlights and the fanfare are the same. Here's another, from 1935:
There’s a show on the Smithsonian Channel called Air Disasters (shown under a different name in other countries) that dramatizes aircraft accidents and the follow-up investigations. Last night I saw an episode about British Airways flight 009; a 747 which flew through a volcanic ash cloud and all four of its engines shut down. The incident took place in 1982, but animations of the aircraft showed a British Airways livery that wasn’t adopted until 1984.
How’s that for a tiny error?
Actually, the “20th Century Pictures” logo is in the link I posted. Like you said, it’s exactly the same as “20th Century Fox” except for the “Pictures/Fox” swap.
Not uncommon in New England; dead leaves stay on the trees as late as February through April.
Pretty tiny. I’m impressed.
One that just came up in my household:
Watching The West Wing, there’s an episode featuring a choir singing Vivaldi’s Gloria, but the choir is singing in German Latin [in ɛk-sɛl-sis deo], instead of Italian/liturgical Latin.
I may be a choir geek.
This description of a cat from Odd Thomas:
“Terrible Chester is the color of a rubescent pumpkin, with black markings. Judging by the black-and-orange patterns on his face, you might think he was the satanic familiar of that old rock group, Kiss.”
Boy cats don’t generally come in black and orange. It’s not impossible, but it is unusual to the point where it would merit some comment to that effect.
So Terrible Chester is an. . . ‘odd Thomas (cat).’
Are you saying the sɛl part should be t͡ʃɛl (“chel”)? Because it’s been a spell, but I remember the soft version being fine in church.
Generally [ʃɛl] (“shell”) is fine for “excelsis”. But [sɛl] (“sell”) (and the general case of -ce or -ci being pronounced as “s”) is something I’ve only encountered in German Latin. Also, the bright closed [e] instead of [ɛ] in “deo” (sounding almost like dee-o) is pretty typical in German. In church Latin you’d expect [dɛ-o].
It’s Season 4, Episode 4 (The Red Mass) at about 37:40 if you want to hear for yourself.
Well, for you Latin geeks, O Caritas by Yusuf Stevens is an interesting study. He pronounces “concipitur” as “consipitur”, which is maybe not all that odd; “homines” sounds a lot like “hominis”; I think “magnus” is supposed to be like “manyoos”, not “mag-noos”; but at the last line, “resurgit” completely loses any “g” sound, which to me sounds kind of wrong. Perhaps it is just down to poetic license (or licence).
My peeve…
On The Voice, the coaches select teams of singers during the auditions, then they immediately begin paring their teams down through Battle rounds and Knockouts. Two singers from a team are paired up, and the coach selects which one to keep.
However, they have this feature they call the Steal, whereby the other coaches can elect to take on the eliminated contestant to their team. Each coach has two steals in the Battles and one in Knockouts.
What annoys me is that they call it a steal. Steal implies taking something the other person is keeping. What they are doing is Saving the contestant the other coach has eliminated.
This annoys me every damn time.
Uh, the Texas city was named after Sam Houston, who pronounced it the way you’re accustomed to. Houston Street was named after William Houstoun, who was a Continental Congress delegate (pronounced the way that bothers you). The street predates Mr. Sam, who was a Tennessee teenager when it was so christened. So if you’re going to be pissy about it, Sam and the city are pronouncing it wrong.
See the wiki on the street and have ignorance fought Houston Street
Nobody pronounces their own name wrong.
Yes, but she pronounces it “Throat-warbler Mangrave”.
Part of the problem is that English does not (to the best of my knowledge) distinguish between the opposites for “less” and “fewer”. What is the opposite of “less”? “More”. What is the opposite of “fewer”? “More”.
Another data point: In arithmetic, the symbol “<” is regarded as “less than”, so we would interpret “3 < 4” as “three is less than four”, in a situation where we are speaking of numbers. So, it becomes natural to say, “Three apples are less than four apples.”
I think this usage may also relate to units of measure. Would we say that a person’s height is “fewer” than six feet? (Now that I think about it, though, in this usage, we are really talking about an amount rather than a distinct quantity.)
