What Makes A Film Flop?

Cue: tumbleweed. Iwan Gabovitch/flickr, CC BY-SA

By Suman Ghosh, Bath Spa University

Some films succeed, others don’t. Success comes in many forms. Some films are an instant hit from the opening night, some are slower on the uptake while others generate interest only after they have been commended by critics, discerning bloggers or widespread word of mouth.

The producers, director, cast and crew of 2015’s Momentum, which managed to eke out a miserable £46 in its UK opening weekend across the 10 theatres where it was released, could scarcely have feared a worse outcome for their $20 million film about a hi-tech bank robbery.

With a 27% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and searing reviews in the media, its fortunes are unlikely to improve, despite the star appeal of Morgan Freeman.

What Is A UFO And Why Are They So Fascinating?

A UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. Based on that definition, anything you see in the sky that you do not recognize as something you’ve seen before (or at least something you know is natively found in our world) would be a UFO. A new type of airplane an unusual looking hot air balloon, and a large R/C aircraft could all be called UFO's.

Doesn’t sound like the UFO’s you have heard of in the media and entertainment fields, does it? That’s because our society is obsessed with another common understanding of the term UFO, which is alien spaceships.

An obsession with aliens is something that dates back a century or more. Comic books in the early to mid 1900’s commonly were about alien invasions or abductions. Today’s movies still pay homage to this fantasy.

But why do we find UFO’s to be such an amazing fascination? Is it because we are fascinated by the possibility of aliens? And if so, then why is that so interesting?

The 'Holy Sh*t!' Response To Climate Change

"A NASA scientist says we've hit the "holy shit" climate moment when irreversible damage to our planet is about to spin out of control. It needs a "holy shit" response. On the weekend of September 20th we can meet world leaders with the largest global climate day of action ever that puts the power back in our hands." 

The One about The Mystery Sphere Recovered In Alabama In 2008

By: Bill Knell

It first appeared on Google Maps in a satellite photo and looked like a white sphere that appeared to be vibrating as it passed over Magnolia Park, Florida in 2005. The pearl-like object hovered at around 20,000 feet. Fast forward to April 25, 2008. Just around the time when strange lights were being seen in the skies over Indiana, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Arizona, they appeared over Decatur, Alabama.

TV Stations in nearby Huntsville, Alabama, reported that people were seeing lights in the sky over Decatur on April 25th around 11pm. A number of calls were received by emergency services and one witness, 17 year old Codey Terry (a student at Bob Jones High School in Madison) reported a frightening encounter. She described two bluish-white lights that suddenly appeared in front of her windshield while she was driving past the courthouse and on to Central Parkway in Decatur just after 11pm.

The Flushing Meadows Park Zoo Animal Mutilations and UFO Mystery

By: Bill Knell

Flushing Meadows Park has a long and unusual history. It is located ten miles east of Manhattan on Long Island in the Borough of Queens, New York City, between the towns of Flushing and Corona. The park started out as swampy land situated along Flushing Creek. The area skirted ancient Native American trails that were later developed into Rodman Street (today it’s called College Point Boulevard), Roosevelt Avenue and other paved roadways.

Because of its location and inability to be used for much else, the swampy land became a dumping area for ashes. By the 1920’s, it was known as the Corona Ash Dumps. F. Scott Fitzgerald called the place “a valley of ashes” in The Great Gatsby, his famous 1925 novel about Long Island Society. However, the once worthless area was about to be transformed into a marvelous showplace thanks to a grand event known as the World’s Fair.

Because it was one of the few large blocks of land still available for development in the New York City area, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and city planners devised a plan to clear and fill the land for use as the site of the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. Most of the ashes and refuse were incorporated into the bases of new highways that were being built around and through that area. These later became the Grand Central Parkway, Van Wyck Expressway, Interboro Parkway and Long Island Expressway.

After the 1939-1940 World’s Fair ended in 1940, many of the structures from the fair were leveled and the area became known as Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. A few of the buildings that remained included the New York State Pavilion that was used as the first home to the United Nations from 1946 until 1951 when that organization moved into their permanent location in Manhattan. That building still exists today and has become the Queens Museum of Art.

Airport Delays And Computer Glitches: What The Government Will Not Tell You

By: Bill Knell

The Beatles released a song called Fool on the Hill in the late 1960s. Music journalists at that time said that the British rock group wrote the song after being disillusioned by the shaman of a religious sect. The Fab Four traveled all the way to India to meet a man they were told was very spiritual, hoping he had the answers to what they were religiously seeking. Instead, they found a cult leader that isolated himself from the world while enjoying the fruits of his female followers. It was alleged that he tried to proposition one or more of the female members of their entourage which included wives and girl friends.

The Fool on the Hill seems to envision a person with access to everything that sees nothing. What he does see, he doesn’t bother to try and understand. Have we become the fools on the hill when it comes to what is happening around us? I think many of us have and that’s what the government counts on to keep information from us that they deem as too sensitive for public consumption. That may be the real explanation for a series of bizarre events that have occurred over the decade. These events may involve Alien life forms.

Milton Sprouse: The Roswell UFO Crash Interview

By Bill Knell

Like most UFO incidents denied by the U.S. Government, the 1947 Roswell crash refuses to go away quietly. Each time a government spokesperson invents a new explanation to contradict the theory that an alien spacecraft crashed near Roswell, one or more new witnesses come forward to support the original Air Force statement. That statement called the object a ’flying disc’ and left us with the impression that the occupants weren’t quite human.

A Quality Eyewitness UFO-Alien Account

By: Douglas Bower 
 
The main problem with an eyewitness account of any event is reliability. Whether someone witnesses a homicide, car wreck, plane crash, or whether someone catches his mate in bed with someone else and they scream, "It isn't what it looks like." or whether someone claims to see an extraterrestrial spacecraft with a bunch of ET's crawling all over it trying to repair a malfunction, reliability is the issue with personal testimony. It doesn't mean that a personal testimony is a false one. It does not mean that when the milkman takes the witness stand in a court of law and says he saw Mr. Jones throw his wife's mother from the third story bedroom that he is lying. Mr. Jones' mother-in-law could have fallen out the window and Mr. Jones was trying to catch her before falling. Perspective is everything.

Multiple variables can affect the reliability of an eyewitness account. Whether the testifier is man or woman, child or adult, different worldviews through which interpretations are made, emotions, stress, authority figures like police, or even the age of the person telling the story can affect reliability.

"A University of Virginia study suggests that eyewitness reliability is linked to the age of the eyewitness. According to the study, older eyewitnesses are more likely to be mistaken in recollecting details and are also more likely to be certain about their erroneous recollections." [apublicdefender.com/2007/02/22/eyewitness-reliability-diminishes-with-age/]

Someone giving testimony can be absolutely sincere and be sincerely wrong in what he says happened. This is just the nature of the beast when it comes to eyewitness testimony.

This does not mean that someone who sincerely reports something as having happened is lying or even necessarily wrong. It does mean that the reliability of the testimony has to be considered in light of a heck of a lot of circumstances that might affect what the person thinks he saw. The variables that surrounded the witnessing of an event have to be considered. This is only fair. You have to consider what the person says he or she saw and then you have to consider what else it could have been. I apply this principle to my own sightings and close encounters of the third kind.

In any group consisting of human beings, there is going to be a kooky-fringe contingency. Whether it's church, the Boy Scouts, The Lion's Club, or the UFO-Alien enthusiasts, you are going to have the nut cases that give the goal and effort of the group a bad reputation. I think that's why I hesitated all these years in writing about this subject. It certainly is a departure from my usual genre, travel writing.

What the UFO-Alien field of study needs is to weed out the kooky reports and stick to the quality events that do get reported. There are some, believe it or not. There are events of not only eyewitness accounts but also accounts that are of such quality that one simply cannot commit intellectual suicide in dismissing them out-of-hand.

Bright Lights in the Sky

By: Marcus T. Anthony

Some people ask me how I got interested in knowledge that might be considered "alternative" in some circles. Here is a little story about an extraordinary experience that certainly helped me along my way! So here goes my story, and 100% true.

In 1996 I was living in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, a small coastal town. One day I was walking along the street downtown, and I saw a sign which read: "Psychic readings, $10". I had never had a psychic reading up till that time, and curiosity got the better of me. So I went inside and met a woman named Leslie who gave me a "reading." The reading itself was nothing particularly special. But what followed certainly was.

Chinese Lanterns Blamed For Uk UFO Sightings, But Is That Really The Truth?

By Bill Knell

A clerk at the Tern Hill Hall Hotel told UK newspapers that the
launch of Chinese lanterns for a wedding reception was behind
the mass sighting of UFOs by soldiers and civilians on June 7,
2008. However, some experts disagree. Even if the lanterns were
released as claimed, they would have been too small to account
for the objects that were witnessed, photographed and filmed.
Mark Hanley, a British UFO Researcher says that he has
investigated many cases involving the release of Chinese
lanterns.

Project Montauk: The Time Travel Chronicles

By: Bill Knell

It was during my first visit to the historic Montauk Lighthouse that I noticed the huge radar dish which immediately identifies the base. I must have been about eight years old and remember asking my parents about the monstrous structure. My father said it was part of a system to detect incoming enemy aircraft or missiles. As a retired Air Force Officer, he would know about that. However, I’m certain that he had no idea what future (or past) events would give that base such an infamous reputation.

The One About Dr Michael Wolf And The Gateway Treatment To Summon Aliens

By Bill Knell

It’s impossible to define or even try and explain the late Dr. Michael Wolf. I knew this less than five minutes after I first spoke with him on the phone over twenty years ago. If I had to define Wolf in one statement, I would say that he was one of the most well-connected U.S. Government Insiders that I ever met.

My association with Wolf began after my friend and fellow paranormal researcher, Dick Criswell, told me about him and offered an introduction by phone in the late 1980s. Although I was initially skeptical of Wolf’s claims regarding UFOs and his government insider status, those concerns vanished after our first conversation. I found him to be intelligent, knowledgeable and easily able to answer most any question that I threw his way.

The Dennis Kucinich Incident: UFO Encounters By Politicians And Celebrities

By: Bill Knell

Shirley MacLaine had some things to say about Dennis Kucinich and UFOs in her book, Sage-ing While Age-ing. According to Ms MacLaine, Dennis Kucinich had a UFO sighting while he was visiting her home in Graham, Washington, about fifteen years ago. She writes, “And then the smell of roses drew him out to my balcony, where he looked up. He saw a gigantic, triangular craft, silent and observing him. He said it hovered, soundless, for ten minutes or so and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend." Kucinich was later asked if he really did see a UFO by Tim Russert of NBC News during a debate involving the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate hopefuls and replied, “I did…you have to keep in mind that Jimmy Carter saw a UFO." I’m guessing that the Congressman felt a need to play the Carter card to add credibility to his answer.

Did Howard Hughes View a Captured UFO and Its Occupants?

By Bill l

Did Howard Hughes ever get a chance to view a captured or crashed UFO and its occupants? I have long pondered this question and there may now be an answer to it. According to a former employee of Hughes Aircraft, he did. The visit allegedly occurred not long after the crash of an alien spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. You may think this story belongs in the BELIEVE OR NOT file and you may be right, but I feel compelled to pass it on to you anyway.

Three Dumbest Theories About The Environment

Climate sceptics don’t actually mind that we mock, belittle and ignore them. It feeds into that narrative they have that they’re the brave Galileo standing up to the massive, dogmatic church accusing them of heresy for their daring new ideas. Of course, there’s a few problems with this metaphor. For starters, instead of a single, monolithic church opposing the climate sceptics, there’s that vast majority of scientists, who come from a diverse range of background and have all sorts of disagreements and conflicting interests and yet somehow, are pretty much all able to agree that mankind has been causing global warming, because that’s what the evidence says. While on the side of the small, maverick group telling truth to power, there’s Fox News, huge chunks of the Republican Party and the entire fossil fuels industry.

Still, even among these crazy mavericks there are some theories that make you spit out your coffee and go “Huh?”

 Theories like:
 

UFOs: Lightnin' Strikin' Again!

 Merely having offered a mundane alternate explanation for a paranormal or UFO event doesn't make that explanation the correct one. Occam's razor slices differently from different perspectives. "Uncle Phaed's UFO Investigator's Handbook"

In the fall of 1965, a series of UFO sightings took place at Exeter, New Hampshire that were documented by John G. Fuller in an article in LOOK Magazine and later in a book titled Incident at Exeter.

The sightings at Exeter began with a young man named Norman Muscarello, who was hitchhiking home to Exeter on Route 150 in the wee hours of September 3, 1965. At about two in the morning, near Kensington, NH, he was startled by an object that suddenly came out of the clear sky towards him. He described it as about 90 feet in diameter, with bright, pulsating lights around what appeared to be a rim. It silently wobbled and floated towards him, and when it seemed about to hit him, he dropped to the ground on the shoulder of the road. The object then backed away, and Muscarello jumped up and ran to a nearby house and pounded on the door without results. He then ran out into the middle of the highway and flagged down a car. The middle-aged couple inside drove him to the Exeter Police Station, where he excitedly told his story to the officer on duty. The officer called in Patrolman Eugene Bertrand, who was out on patrol.

Ufology: Truth Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

According to Fox Mulder of the well missed X-Files, the truth is out there... 
According to Bill Knell, our guest writer for today, the truth is in the eye of the beholder.

The One About UFO and Flying Saucer Encounters

The following post by Joy Healey, our Guest Writer for today, could be seen as a "back to basic" kind of UFO related article as it takes us to the late 40's (when the term "flying saucer" was first used) and the 50's...It might be a tad more traditional and conservative than the previous articles we've previously published on here, but it is about a very important period of the history of UFOs and I felt that because of that  (but not just because of that though) it definitely needed to be added to our UFOs and Aliens Related category.

It's like making a ufologic trip down memory lane... from the comfort of your computer chair (unless you're reading it on a laptop from somewhere else, of course, but you got the idea...), courtesy of LoupDargent.info.

Enjoy...

Loup Dargent

PS: Actually, let's make it two ufologic trips down memory lane as we've added a video-clip on a talk from Stanton T Friedman on the subject as well for good measure...

UFOs: Abduction Experiences - Signs and Symptoms

 Image via Wikipedia

It looks like LoupDargent.info is going to be back into X-Files mode for a while thanks to Gregory Volz, our Guest Writer for today, and a series of articles of his that we're definitely going to enjoy posting here. In some of our previous posts (see "Faeries, Aliens & Otherworlds - Keys to Parallel Worlds and Multidimensions?" and "Are Aliens and Demons One And The Same?") , we've mentioned the similarities between the modern alien close encounters/abductions and the more ancient fairies or/and demons ones.... so, a post about abductions experiences seemed quite appropriate and timely.

Faeries, Aliens and Otherworlds - Keys to Parallel Worlds and Multidimensions?

Image via Wikipedia

Larry Christopher, our Guest Writer for today's post, is taking us back to a topic we've previously touched with our "Are Aliens and Demons One And The Same?" article last year, but, this time, fairies are being thrown in as well...
 
Talking about fairies, I remember having read many years ago that some of those Men in Black, that so many people believe only appeared since the 1940s, could actually have been some of the "fairies" sighted many centuries ago (well, the original ones anyway).

[Of course, in those days, people had never heard of aliens (or visitors from parallel universes or, even, time travelers) and had to refer to things they've heard about when confronted to "out of this world" experiences...]

But, that's another story... 
So, I'll now give the floor to Larry for today's one.

Enjoy...

Loup Dargent

Image via Wikipedia

Faeries, Aliens & Otherworlds - Keys to Parallel Worlds and Multidimensions?
Larry Christopher

 Tales of Otherworlds are almost universal in folklore and myth.
There is not space to recount all of them, but today there has
been a renewed interest in tales from the British Isles and
Scandinavia, specifically those related to faeries, elves and
other such Otherworldly creatures.

An interesting question to consider is whether these ancient
tales were perhaps references to what modern philosophers and
quantum physicists now call multidimensions, parallel worlds or
possible worlds. These are all terms for the theory that reality
is made of many dimensions, not all of them conforming to the
same laws, especially in terms of time.

Faerie stories from the British Isles are of particular
interest here, because they often specifically refer to the
distortion of time that occurs when mortals interact with
denizens of faerie. One of the most popular stories, from
Ireland, is that of Oisin, a young man who falls in love with a
faery woman, Niamh, and follows her to Tir Na Nog, the Land of
Eternal Youth. Tir Na Nog is a fascinating topic of its own, as
it is a place where time as we know it does not exist. Oisin, of
course, is mortal, but has the choice of remaining in Tir Na Nog
where he would become immune to the passage of time. As often
occurs in such tales, he makes the mistake of returning to his
native land, where he finds that hundreds of years have passed
and everyone he knew are long dead.

Stories from other lands have similar themes. The Welsh version
of Tir Na Nog is Annwn, which is featured in the Mabinogion
collection of stories. The Norse have Valhalla, though this is
less a parallel world and more like the Christian heaven, as it
is a place where mortals go after dying a heroic death.

Yet another, more modern, version of time distortion occurs in
stories (whether true or not) of alien abductions. These are
often frightening experiences, though sometimes the aliens
encountered are friendly. In many cases, a common feature is
that when the person is fortunate enough to be returned to
earth, a distortion of time has occurred. As with faerie
stories, this time distortion can go either way -even much more
or much less time has passed than the "victim" believed.

We can, of course, simply categorize all of these tales as just
that -tales, based on superstition, imagination or just plain
fabrication, perhaps with alcohol or drugs thrown in the mix.
However, when we consider the enormous number of such tales that
are similar in so many respects, we might just as likely
consider that there may be something to them. Could there not be
a myriad of realities, some of which, under certain conditions,
overlap with our own?

Shamans have traditionally believed something similar. Shamanic
journeying involves visits to other realities and interacting
with spirits and beings who reside there. Another aspect of
shamanism is the belief that the dream world is just as real as
the waking world, and that we are actually "journeying" to these
Otherworlds when dreaming. That is why we often encounter people
in dreams who are deceased in "real life."

It would be difficult, probably impossible, to prove in a
rationalistic way that any of these tales or experiences
represent actual shifts in reality or visits to Otherworlds.
Those interested in pursuing this possibility, however, might do
well to study folklore alongside some modern theories of
philosophy and physics and consider the similarities.

Image via Wikipedia

About The Author:

For more about possible worlds and quantum
physics, visit www.squidoo.com/possibleworlds

Explore the world of faerie at www.faerierealms.info