I can’t human rn and didn’t make plans with friends, so my first thing for solarpunk action week is, I pollinated my tomato plant by hand bc no bees : [
■ The so-called “blood explosion” which punctuates the conclusion of Akira Kurosawa’s 1962 movie Sanjuro remains one of the most memorable and influential special effects in film history. Production designer Yoshiro Muraki would later recall this scene was filmed in a single take. No such effect had ever been attempted before, as movies of the time rarely showed violence with graphic detail. Filled with uncertainty, Muraki worried the blood spray he’d rigged up wouldn’t impress Kurosawa, so he added an extra 30 pounds of pressure to the fluid pump. At the moment the pump was activated, the additional pressure caused the compressor hose attached to actor Tatsuya Nakadai to blow a coupling which created a slight, unintentional delay before the fake blood began to spray, and caused a much larger gush of fluid than planned. It sprayed so powerfully Nakadai claimed it almost lifted him off the ground. His heart sinking, as he believed the delay and over-pressure had ruined the effect, Muraki nervously glanced at director Akira Kurosawa, but Kurosawa only nodded in approval.
“oh god i fucked this up”
“yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOO”
And to think this is so iconic that “two dudes clash, there’s a beat, then one dies incredibly violently” is just a must-have for action in anime
Its crazy to think that this iconic visual that has been so ubiquitous in pop culture for so long despite that the source material barely being known by people all came from actors staying in character thru an FX malfunction.
On this day, 2 December 1980 (content note: sexual violence), three Catholic nuns and one lay worker from the US were kidnapped, raped and murdered by government backed and US-trained right-wing death squads during the El Salvadorian civil war. Those killed were Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford and Dorothy Kazel. The war raged on for around 20 years and involved brutal violence against workers’ and peasants’ organisations as well as left-wing religious groups.
Read Noam Chomsky’s short account of the conflict here: https://libcom.org/history/1970-1990-the-war-of-counter-insurgency-in-el-salvadorhttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1598192967032514/?type=3
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