Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened - I knew it was a shit show from the headlines and few images I saw, but wow, I didn't realise it was this much of a shit show!!! I don't know what's more unbelievable, the way Billy carried on or Ja Rule describing himself as a "media mogul".  There's a couple of nice needle drops of Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross music from one or two David Fincher movies in this one. The one at the very end is "Like Home" from Gone Girl and fits in perfectly with the tone. They could otherwise call this "Schadenfreude: The Movie".
A Fish Called Wanda - co-written by and starring John Cleese, this crime caper also stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin, and Kevin Kline. It's a little slow initially, but once it settles into a groove you sink right into it and the hilarity ensues. There's some brilliantly farcical scenes once the film finds its mojo.
Behind The Curve - okay, so you convinced me to watch this, bassman ... the morbid curiosity won out ... ... ... ... ... bloody hell.  Aside from the exceptional amount of narcicism and wilful ignorance sweeping through this documentary's subjects like a tidal wave, there's some very telling moments that centre around the psychology of these individuals. The fascination and absolute belief in a whole range of conspiracies (including chem trails, 9/11, and anti-vax bullshit) comes as no surprise, but what was also quite interesting was their respective "outsider" status in their various walks of life (people who have no loved ones, or whose loved ones have ditched them after (supposedly) they revealed they were flat earthers). One of the most resonant moments was that one scientist dude with the dreadlocks, near the end of the film, where he speaks about not mocking these people but bringing them back into the fold with facts, science, and rational logical thought. That very same ideal should also be applied politically (i.e. you're not going to win over a Trump supporter by calling them "stupid" and various other things), indeed, there's an excellent episode of SModcast in which Kevin Smith interviews Megan Phelps-Roeper (formerly of the Phelps family) where she spoke of exactly that: she was brought out of that madness by rational and logical and respectful discussion with someone on the other side.
However, there will still be people who will blindly refuse to accept the alternative despite mountains of evidence. They will always find something to make an excuse out of. The moment where the Mark guy is asked about 'what if it was revealed that you're wrong?' or had to leave the 'flat earth community' and he said he couldn't because he's essentially 'in too deep' was also very telling. Once you're that deep in bullshit it's hard to row back.
The moment where the 'scientific' flat earthers talk about their failures to prove the earth isn't spinning on a 15 degree tilt was astonishing, too. Not only because they'd spent twenty-feckin-grand on that laser thingy, but that every attempt to use it to disprove the earth is a globe failed and they still kept believing in a flat earth. Likewise with the laser light test - 'I can't see the light' (no shit) ... 'raise it above your head' (proving the earth is curved and therefore a globe) and boom, there's the light. Then they make up this bullshit excuse that it was "leaves" getting in the way. Riiiight, and the leaves just magically disappeared immediately after you said "raise it above your head" and the guy on the other end raised the light above his head. 
The most horrifying moment was the international conference - specifically the 12 year old kid, and the letters about 'third generation flat earthers' (grandparents got their kids into it who in-turn got their kids into it!!!), and how a school science lesson illustrated the corrosive, virus-like effect of flat earth anti-intellectualism as 'a third' of the class denied what their science teacher was telling them about the globe. The danger of having such people in positions of power becomes very real - and then we return to what that scientist was saying about the duty to win people over through fact, logic, proof, and respect.
I sat through the doc with my jaw on the floor ... it's astonishing, truly shocking, that that many people would believe the earth is flat. And this is all without even mentioning the 'factions' within the 'movement'. Another extremely telling moment came when Patricia was dismissing claims made against her because they had no basis in fact, and the logic of which was patently absurd, yet she'll apply the same method of thinking to the earth 'being flat'.
This whole thing kinda reminded me of that scene in Interstellar where the educators are teaching that the moon landing was faked ... "mis-education" etc, that's the sorta shit that really scares me.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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Originally Posted by Neil
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