Take a stroll through fantasyland, courtesy of Hollywood and Cinemaps! The new book Cinemaps: An Atlas of 35 Great Movies features 35 beautiful full-color maps of your favorite fictional movie worlds that will help you relive stories from 1933's King Kong through modern classics like Mad Max: Fury Road and Guardians of the Galaxy. Artist Andrew DeGraff illustrates the geography, the path of the plot, and the mood of each adventure, accompanied by A. D. Jameson's essay's on each film. Neatorama is pleased to give you a close look at some of these maps, with exclusive commentary by the artist.

Jayne, the proprietor of the Etsy shop likekittysville sells cat accessories like beds you can hang on a wall. She also was kind enough to post the instructions for making the marvelous climbable Christmas tree she designed a few years ago that will bring your cats joy for many holidays to come. Jayne talked about how the idea came about:

“For years I’ve missed using my vintage aluminum Christmas tree, but don’t miss the kitty havoc that was decimating the tree and its vintage ornaments. I wanted a tree that’s not just cat-proof but cat-inviting. This tree has a Jetsons space-age look but is quite practical. It can be climbed but not knocked over. It can hold gifts, which saves floor space. The ornaments are cheap and easily replaced.”

It's six feet tall, and folds flat for storage until next Christmas. -via a comment at Fark

The Micalet refers to a 51-meter tall octagonal tower in Valencia, Spain, with 207 steps to the top. Is it worth the walk? The view from up there is spectacular, and there are bells.

Time your trip to coincide with the top of the hour. The name “Micalet” actually refers not to the tower itself, but to the giant bell suspended atop it. When Little Michael strikes the hour, the ringing can be heard all around the old town… and should you be standing directly underneath, it’s deafening. While atop the tower, our favorite pastime is to pick out the people who clearly aren’t expecting it, and then watch them jump in terror at the sudden thunder-strike.

Better yet, try to time your visit for a holiday, when the bells peal out more elaborate tunes. Mike Powell and Jürgen Horn were there for All Saints Day and were invited to stay at the top of the tower and watch the bell ringers perform.

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Read about the Micalet and the Santa Catalina (the other bell tower in downtown Valencia), with lots of pictures at For 91 Days.

Colin J. Carlson‏ is a biologist, but he's not an expert on foxes. Still, he decided to make a list of foxes and rate them with letter grades for their "weirdness" in a Twitter thread. As you go through it, you'll see that the grades are quite arbitrary, but the description of each fox is delightful, and so are the pictures. Shown above is a Blandford's fox, which has a tail that doesn't quit. Carlson posted about all the foxes he could think of, and then people started suggesting others. He was kind enough to continue the project to include them.

tibetan sand fox (vulpes ferrilata)
• cubism is alive and well
• these eyes see into your soul
• a truly weird and unnerving fox design
• grade: A pic.twitter.com/rZMyh8zdlI

— Colin J Carlson (@ColinJCarlson) November 12, 2017

See all the weird fox species at Thread Reader or in the original Twitter thread with all the replies. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Eyal Bartov)

Doug Jones has been in around 150 movies in the past 30 years, but you wouldn't recognize him if you saw him on the street. That's because he's almost always buried under a layer of latex and prosthetics as an alien, a monster, or a ghost. Jones is 6' 3" and weighs only 140 pounds, and he's the go-to guy for inhuman roles because he knows what he's doing.  

Jones is in high demand thanks to a distinctly idiosyncratic set of skills. "A creature performer needs to be a very odd combination of marathon runner and a mime, who can express himself through layers and layers of latex and acrylic and silicon," said del Toro, who has worked with Jones on six of his feature films. "It's a very, very rare discipline … [and] there are very, very few that are actual actors, in my opinion, that go beyond being able to work in a suit or under makeup. Doug is a proper actor. When you need that level of finesse, Doug is the only one I've met that I trust with that level of commitment and craftsmanship and artistry."

In person, Jones is voluble and friendly company, but he's not all that keen on preening over his one-of-a-kind professional success. "I'm hired because I'm a tall, skinny guy — with other talents, I hope," he said. "But the creature effects guys love to start with a skinny, long palette, because they can build on it and not make it too bulky." He shrugged off any suggestion that he's cracked the code for enduring multiple hours of makeup application each day — "I sit there, basically, or I stand there" — and he chalks up maintaining his strikingly lean physique to a "very boring" exercise routine of elliptical machines and light dumbbell lifting, and "the metabolism of a 16-year-old."

Jones' latest role is that of Saru on Star Trek: Discovery. Read about Jones and his unique career at Buzzfeed. You'll be surprised to find how many times you've already enjoyed his work. 

(Image credit: Brent Humphreys for BuzzFeed News)

Really, what did you expect? We knew Star Wars was made for the merchandizing industry when they designed the Ewoks specifically for the Christmas toy market. Selling out to Disney should have been another clue. But the furor over the video game Battlefront II has the internet up in arms… well, a large portion of it, since there's a big overlap between gamers and Star Wars fans. This is the latest comic from Jeff Lovfers at Don't Hit Save. Thanks, Jeff, for the most concise explanation of the controversy I've seen yet -otherwise, thinking of how to explain it to non-gamers was giving me a headache.

Movies draw us in because they can show us what we don't see in real life, or make what we'd rather not see in real life okay to watch. Blood has been a big part of moviemaking since filmmaker found ways to chip around the Hays Code, beginning with the violence World War II.

Fittingly, it was Alfred Hitchcock—a British director who delighted in scandalizing prudish Americans—who would deal the Code its most crushing blow. In 1960, Hitchcock released Psycho, which smashed cinematic taboos by showing a man and woman in bed together, taking viewers into a bathroom, and depicting cross-dressing. There was also some serious blood. In the now-canonical shower scene, which required 78 setups, 52 cuts, and a week of filming to pull off, blood is shown swirling down the drain. Part of the reason Hitchcock chose to shoot Psycho not in color but black and white—which was, in 1960, still thought of as the more artistic and realistic medium—was because he didn’t think audiences could handle the bloodshed of the scene in color. Although Hitchcock used chocolate syrup, some audience members reportedly swore that the substance had been red—such was the power and novelty of the filmmaking, and the rarity of seeing blood actually flow on screen.

Since then, blood has been used to shock audiences in every way possible. Read about those methods, what they used for blood, and how it affected audiences at Topic. -via Digg

Photographer Hiroyuki Hisakata captures images of cats showing off their best ninja moves. They aren't even his cats, so how does he get them to model for him? Hisakata takes the time to make friends with colonies of stray cats away from threatening crowds.

Although he’s based in Kyushu, Hisakata keeps his locations top secret. He often shoots in the evening, and with his bag full of toys, plays with the cats while shooting them with his camera. The results are humorous and playful, and have been compiled into two different photobooks: one featuring adult cats and the other featuring kittens.

Get a cat (or two or a hundred) to trust you, and they'll let you have fun with them. See a collection of Hisakata's ninja cats at Spoon & Tamago, and follow him on Twitter for more.  -via Swiss Miss

A bunch of stupid things get together and do smart things. This seems impossible, but you are familiar with the phrase "the whole is more than the sum of its parts." An ant is only a bug, but a bunch of ants together build towers and colonies. Your brain is made up of cells that don't have much value alone, but together they make a brain that can think. 

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A video from Kurzgesagt looks at how many systems work this way. It's a bit mind blowing, thinking about how atoms, cells, ant colonies, and human societies all display emergence -they are complicated systems made up of simple parts. -via Kottke

This weird LEGO stop-motion video portrays the Ewoks sacrificing C-3PO in a religious ceremony. Looks like they figured out he wasn't a god after all. But it's not Return of the Jedi, it's actually that horrifying scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple Doom, with original audio. Altogether, this is pretty creepy.  

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What's the point? You'll see that this story explains one of those things that happened between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Because there is no detail in the Star Wars universe too small to be examined and made into a fan film. -via Geeks Are Sexy

People who make our their wills are often advised to leave at least a token inheritance to every relative, even if they hate them. Otherwise, an unmentioned relative may contest the will on the grounds that their named simply slipped the writer's mind. Some folks go much further, and leave behind an explanation of why the bequest is so small, in quite colorful prose, as a final and lasting insult. Check out some wills that were probated by the Canterbury court in the 18th century.

JOSEPH DALBY – Doctor of Physic of the Parish of St. Marylebone in Middlesex – 27 July 1784
“I give to my daughter, Ann Spencer, a guinea for a ring, or any other bauble she may like better, I give to the lout her husband one penny to buy him a lark-whistle, I also give to her said husband of redoubtable memory, my f—t-hole for a covering to his lark-whistle, to prevent the abrasion of his lips, and this legacy I give him as mark of my approbation of his prowess and nice honour, in drawing his sword on me at my own table, naked and unarmed as I was, and he well fortified with custard.”

PHILIP THICKNESSE – Of London and then of Boulogne, France – 24 January 1793
“I leave my right hand, to be cut off after my death, to my son, Lord Audley, and I desire it may be sent to him, in hopes that a such a sight may remind him of his duty to God, after having so long abandoned the duty he owed to a father, who affectionately loved him.”

Read a bunch more of these weird and snarky wills at Geri Walton's blog. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Flickr user Ken Mayer)

The people of New South Wales, Australia, are the latest to learn the lesson of internet naming polls. Six new ferries for Sydney Harbor were offered to the public for naming last year. Three boats were named after prominent Australians: three doctors and two Aboriginal leaders. Then there was Ferry McFerryface, announced last Tuesday.  

“Ferry McFerryface will be the harbour’s newest icon,” the state’s transport minister, Andrew Constance, said in a statement. “I hope it brings a smile to the faces of visitors and locals alike.”

So far, though, many people are not smiling. Enemies of Ferry McFerryface include the people who are supposed to work on it. A spokesman for the Maritime Union of Australia described the name as “an insult to the integrity and heritage of Sydney Ferries,” and suggested that crew members would refuse to engage with it.

“Give it a proper name and we’ll work it,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “Give it a stupid name and it can stay at the shipyard.”

Government officials, the press, some of the public, and the guy who was told the boat would be named after him are all upset. How many times does this have to happen before everyone knows what an internet naming poll will do? Read more about the controversy at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: NSW Public Transport)

American children all learn the story of the Pilgrims, who landed at Plymouth Rock in what is now Massachusetts in 1620. The colony of English immigrants faced a terrible first winter, but a bountiful harvest the next summer. The reason we are more familiar with this colony than the dozens of others who went through the same thing is that we still celebrate that bountiful harvest in our Thanksgiving holiday. But what do we know about Plymouth Rock itself? It must be a huge boulder, to have a place named after it. Or not.

In fact, the rock went unidentified for 121 years. It wasn’t until 1741, when a wharf was to be built over it, that 94-year-old Thomas Faunce, a town record keeper and the son of a pilgrim who arrived in Plymouth in 1623, reported the rock’s significance. Ever since, Plymouth Rock has been an object of reverence, as a symbol of the founding of a new nation.

So what happened to Plymouth Rock? It was used for political purposes, and was broken in pieces several times. Read the saga of that rock at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: National Museum of American History)

We don't like to speculate on someone's future death, especially someone who isn't even sick, but Queen Elizabeth II is 91 years old. The British monarchy is mostly ceremonial these days, yet Elizabeth's subjects take it very seriously -or at least the ones in the UK do. There is a set procedure in place to handle getting out the news when the time comes, to be followed by a funeral and the coronation of Prince Charles.   

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A monarch's death sets up a whole slew of changes we hadn't thought of, like reprinting all the money to reflect a new monarch's face. What? American cash, for all its drawbacks, never goes out of style because everyone on the bills is already dead. -via Mental Floss

I have a feeling this guy is a bit fuzzy on the concept of money, or else that cluelessness is covering up the beginnings of a lifetime of crime. Maybe subconsciously, he is alluding to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, because the best things in life (time with loved ones) really can't be enjoyed until you have that other stuff (food, shelter) covered. This is the latest from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro at Buttersafe.