The triple crown of the American Pharaoh

• Yes, I know the name of the history-making racehorse is spelled differently, but I can’t help but think that “The Triple Crown of the American Pharaoh” sounds like a sermon by Walter Wink. Or, at least, a blog post at Empire Remixed. Gotta be the most theologically suggestive name for a thoroughbred since Charismatic won the Kentucky Derby in 1999.

• The text for our sermon on the American Pharaoh, of course, is Revelation 13. The guy on the left would appreciate that. The guy on the right would be thoroughly confused:

That’s Stephen King, trying to figure out how he wound up standing next to Jerry B. Jenkins. The photo is from this sponsored content item advertising Jenkins’ latest writing classes: “Secrets of Storytelling: How to Write Compelling Stories.” Oy. Grifters gotta grift, but at this point he really shouldn’t need the money.

• Charles Kuffner is right about the proposed Big Trouble in Little China remake with Dwayne Johnson, when he says “the only way this ends well is if it doesn’t happen.” Not sure I trust the remake to understand what was so much fun about the original — that Kurt Russell played the sidekick, but poor Jack Burton was too dim to realize he was the sidekick.

Sean O’Connell has a better idea: If the Rock wants to remake a John Carpenter classic, try They Live instead.

• Here’s one of those online countdown pages showing how much time, precisely, remains in the presidency of Barack Obama. That’s bound to be a popular page for American Republicans who dislike the president (at least, it will be until the second Tuesday in next November), but it also raises a rather awkward point for anti-Obama right-wing nutjobs like Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association. LaPierre is still pretending to be afraid that President Obama has a secret plan to outlaw all guns and/or ammunition before the end of his term in office. That claim was outrageous and ridiculous six years ago, but it gets even less credible every day. That countdown linked above, in other words, is a record of the 590-ish days remaining before Suspected-Buffoon Wayne LaPierre is undeniably proven to be Confirmed-Buffoon And Liar Wayne LaPierre.

• As always, I am shocked — shocked! — to learn that good Christian people are spreading lies about Planned Parenthood.

• Orson Welles’ long tracking shot at the beginning of Touch of Evil is impressive. So was the opening tracking shot of Robert Altman’s The Player, and that intense drug raid scene in True Detective featuring a six-minute single-take tracking shot by Cary Fukunaga.

But all those directors had the advantage of knowing what was going to happen next. Here (via Naum at AZspot) is a single-camera, single-take tracking shot that had to be improvised in real time. A power outage during the live broadcast of a Brewers-Red Sox game in 1982 left director Harry Coyle with only one working camera. Coyle and his lone cameraman — identified here only as “Mario” — broadcast the bottom of the ninth in one shot and one take, and they turned it into a work of art.

You’ll see seven future hall-of-famers on the field in this video, but it’s Coyle and Mario who turn in a hall-of-fame performance here.