maegul
@maegul@lemmy.ml
A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing
- Comment on Cannes crowd boos Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis 4 hours ago:
The prestige Coppola carries certainly makes reviews less reliable for this, I’d say. Industry can’t let a good marketing angle slip by.
- Comment on Cannes: ‘Furiosa’ World Premiere Greeted With 7-Minute Standing Ovation 1 day ago:
Bad CGI takes my immersion away from the actors and story and breaks my ability to enjoy the not-CGI shit, so that essay you wrote is wrong.
Well my point was that perhaps your “immersion” (and others’ or the current culture too) is excessively sensitive to the apparent “quality” of the CGI, not that your immersion was never affected. IMO, it’s a mentality and expectations thing, not a “right/wrong” “what is objectively good cinema” thing.
- Comment on Cannes: ‘Furiosa’ World Premiere Greeted With 7-Minute Standing Ovation 2 days ago:
Likely annoying hot take (and certainly a rant)
Being picky about bad CGI has run its course now and is likely a toxic urge in film culture ATM. I’m a bit of a broken record on this already (see prior posts here, here and here, all driven by the “No CGI is really just invisible CGI” series on YT. Is this actually helping us enjoy cinema or priming us to be sensitive to something that prevents us from enjoying something we easily could? All I’m going to say here is that some lessened sensitivity over the “quality” of CGI is likely warranted right now. And I know, we all prefer good CGI over bad so why not enjoy what we enjoy. Well because the industry is gaslighting us over how much CGI is actually everywhere and fundamental to modern cinema, likely in part because they enjoy pushing down the CGI industry, but also because they want to control what we think of as “spectacle” so that they control and retain effective marketing. Out of that YT series, there were two really novel things for me. One, was that the studio’s have always underplayed their reliance on effects and lied and not given VFX artists due credit almost since the beginning. Two, was that part of what’s going on right now with CGI and the excitement over “practical effects” is that the glorious epic spectacular shots that got viewers excited in the past have lost their appeal or efficacy due to over saturation over time. But spectacle puts people in seats and makes money. So the studios want to be able to tell us and control what is “good spectacle”.
Sounds conspiracy theorist, I know. But I’m not talking about thought control here, just marketing. Think about how much you or I actually know about VFX and CGI? Do we really know what is “good” or “bad” CGI? Sure somethings will stand out to us as “bad”, but I’ve seen instances now of people mistaking “practical” for “bad CGI” for the simple reason that they don’t actually know what the practical thing really looks like (the Rings of Power trailer with liquid metal is I suspect a good example … people thought it was cheap CGI, but it was apparently practical … the point being that basically no internet nerd actually knows anything about what liquid metal looks like). Add to this how things and tastes have shifted pretty quickly as CGI has gotten way better pretty quickly, and you get a weird scenario where viewers can want the latest/best CGI to the point of being hyper-critical of “bad” CGI that would have been well received 10-20 years ago … while also demanding practical effects that “look real” when there’s a good chance that they’re either being lied to about what is real and isn’t and also don’t really know. But the studios want us hyped. So they’ll keep lying or trying to feed us what they think we want right now. And then viewers’ tastes will be molded by this experience. We’ll think we know what the latest/best CGI is and what “good and real” practical effects look like … which will push the next stage of attempts to hype us with lies and catering to our particular and likely somewhat arbitrary needs. It’s what got us to hyper-CGI driven film making in the 00s-10s and has got us studios lying now about practical effects that actually involve a lot of CGI (Top Gun seems really egregious on this front). And in all of this lack of transparency is a whole industry going unrecognised and being over-worked and underpaid by studios more likely to pretend they don’t exist than actually pay them for the work they do. So … maybe try to enjoy the story, characters and the writing? Maybe don’t be so obsessive about good/bad VFX? Maybe we no longer know what we’re talking about when it comes to convincing VFX, or at least spoilt to the point of being artistically meaningless in our amateur critiques? Maybe just break the hype feedback cycle /rant - Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power - Official Teaser Trailer | Prime Video 3 days ago:
yea there were definitely some significant positives in S1 for sure. The writing was just off though.
My biggest like from S1 turned out to be the quasi-romance they created between Galadriel and Sauron. I thought it was creative and interesting without terribly violating any lore but instead kinda adding to the lore with an interesting “maybe this actually happened” that is vague enough that even the main characters (Galadriel and Sauron) can’t be sure what it was.
- Submitted 3 days ago to movies@lemm.ee | 2 comments
- Comment on Megalopolis Teaser Trailer (2024) 3 days ago:
Well, we were discussing trailers that reveal to much yesterday. That’s not happening here.
Came to say the same! And yea, I haven’t been following this closely or anything … but apart from the visual style (which I’m totally down for) I really have no idea what this is … which is awesome!
Also, perhaps as a sign of how indie this is for Coppola, he seems to have a youtube channel just for promoting this film and is posting the trailers there: www.youtube.com/@Francis_Ford_Coppola_
Maybe it’s a fake channel, I dunno if youtube do any verification.
- Comment on Are trailers revealing too much again nowadays? 4 days ago:
Oh man, I just watched the 2.5 minute trailer … that shit still works! Had me nearly wanting to watch the sequels trilogy again. The promise/potential of that trilogy was soooo high. I’d only made the connection now, but in hindsight there’s real Game of Thrones season 8 energy around the whole thing now. Like even with the Finn jedi fake out, it would have been so much more interesting if he were also a jedi of some sort rather than just “vaguely force sensitive” or whatever.
- Comment on Are trailers revealing too much again nowadays? 4 days ago:
Oh yea! The hype going into the sequel trilogy was very real and a lot of that was the trailer game. I remember seeing this for the first time! It alone probably carried me into about halfway through RoS!
- Comment on Are trailers revealing too much again nowadays? 4 days ago:
Came here to say the same about the Alien Trailer.
I think they both exhibit the same approach: a sequence of slightly moving images (ie very short snippets) that convey no plot (and are likely completely jumbled relative to their in-movie occurrence) … but instead show you the vibe, look and general subject matter of the film. Essentially an appetiser that isn’t the main course at all but is perfectly matched.
- Comment on [IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it? 4 days ago:
it is good for men to see the issue portrayed, from both sides. That’s not nothing.
Well, a counter argument would be that it’s taken a number of words for this to get pulled out in this conversation. So maybe it’s not that effective or impactful to most men?
I personally land, again, on not really worth it or at least a bit of a misfire.
- Comment on Star Wars as a silent film or a B&W Samurai Film 5 days ago:
Yea, it was bit more of a cluttered video than I would have liked too. Maybe copyright issues were on their mind? Still, I had no idea bout any of this. I can imagine a bigger deeper dive on the ideas though!
- Comment on [IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it? 5 days ago:
All good points!
Something I’d never really picked up on or forgotten was the fading value of natural female fertility in the film. Thanks! I’ll look out for that more on re-watch.
Like I said, I don’t disagree.
I’ll reply with is the part of my previous comment you didn’t quote (and rant from there I suppose):
In the end I think two things can (edit: both) be true here. 1) the film itself isn’t misogynistic and the portrayal of women in it is part of a bigger dystopian theme, and 2) the use of female characters for that kind of story just doesn’t cut it for some/enough women anymore who, without demanding “girl boss” characters, would prefer either direct stories about female oppression or portrayals the lean into more fruitful or interesting ideas and themes.
IE, I think a woman (or anyone else sensitive to such to this issue) can see all of what you point out and fairly conclude that they don’t need to like the film or feel like they’re missing anything by forgetting about it. While there’s dystopia all around, the focus and the depiction of the main characters is pretty gendered. I don’t think you’re really arguing otherwise. And I think it’s fair for someone to conclude that they don’t get anything out of that. That they already know all about the lack of agency of housewives or pleasure bots or the centrality of women’s fertility to their social value … because they live it, and are busy handling it IRL and this film isn’t really helping anything.
I think Blade Runner 2049 is a deeply, deeply feminist film. It doesn’t shy away from depictions of female objectification/ownership/subordination/violence - they are important for telling its story and getting across its themes - but it sure as hell doesn’t endorse them either.
It may very well be. Has Villeneuve or anyone else spoken about this??
But I think it’s worth asking what makes a good feminist film. Simply having the suffering of women as a gender in the film as a theme or plot point etc arguably doesn’t cut it. The general angle I’m pushing here (without having really thought about this question at all) is that today there arguably needs to be something useful for feminism today in the film, and that I’m not sure it’s there in BR-2049.
You point out the various female characters around K driving his story. I noticed that too, but in the end, for me (long time since I’ve seen it) it didn’t feel like women were playing the game. It felt like Wallace was powerful, Deckard was important and K was “us”, the protagonist we relate to and see the world through. The woman were either bosses, attack dogs, agency-less loving partners (Joi), prostitutes, or indelibly special creatures in need of protection (Rachael/Deckard’s daughter). The freedom movement and their leader is probably a notable exception but I’m not sure it really gets much screen time.
So it’s dystopian but men are still at the center and women still suffering the usual things … for what?
To compare, I’m thinking of the Earthsea series (by Le Guin … if you haven’t read it and like fantasy at all I recommend it). Its feminism famously gets on the nose toward the end (though it ends well IMO), but the second book,
Tombs of Atuanis a wonderful metaphor of womanhood told through the character of a young priestess that, IMO, does a good job at getting at how the roles people/women are forced to play traps them in labyrinths they don’t or struggle to understand and that are darker than they can realise. I personally found it subtly haunting.Also, just randomly here, Ripley in Alien & Aliens. Many would say she’s an early “girl boss” character (but done right/well), but something you forget about her time in the films is how much everyone basically flatly ignores her until shit goes bad and she has to save herself (and the cat or adopted daughter). Even if you’re oblivious to feminist issues, you feel and see it in those films … a woman who knows what she’s talking about being ignored by men who think they know better with horrible results.
The Shining (Kubrick), where Wendy is totally keeping that family together (notice how she’s the only one every doing maintenance work) and tolerating a child beater husband (in one release there’s a scene that makes it clear that Jack had previously hit the child) and his career to the point of being trapped alone in the cold wilderness with a murderous husband because that’s who he’s always been (what a metaphor for domestic abuse). Again we get a depiction of something real today but elevated with horror in a way that highlights not what women suffer (Wendy and Danny survive in the end) but what trap they’re in and how they don’t see it coming or even understand it, but, you know, really should if they want to live.
With BR-2049, I feel like it’s kinda just dystopia and the whole slaughtered women, prostitutes and hot loving-AI just have to be there to fill out the world. The video about Joi linked above was definitely interesting (like I said), but I don’t think it reverses anything I’m saying here … if anything its point was that even men are now living more like housewives than they used to (at least middle-class and lower millennial men) and so nothing really fruitful about feminism right?
All that being said … great post! I like the film! I’m not sure it’s deeply feminist though. I think it’s got feminism in there within its dystopia, but I’m not sure that’s a high bar and I think it bears the mark of being done by men (who probably think they’re feminist).
Is it a good feminist film for men to digest? Maybe?!
- Submitted 5 days ago to movies@lemm.ee | 4 comments
- Comment on Peter Jackson Working on New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Films for Warner Bros., Targeting 2026 Debut 1 week ago:
When they had the “always follow your nose” “reveal” , that was the final nail in the RoP coffin for me.
Oh yea. I loudly groaned when it happened. My partner watching with me isn’t as much of a LoTR nerd as I do I had to explain it to them I was so loud.
I’m actually still hoping that it was a bit of a fun tease and even a way to test the waters with the fan base on whether they should make it Gandalf. It’d be perfectly fine and even a little fun if it’s a “nice” wizard thing to say and think given that bodies and smells might be entirely new to maiar.
- Comment on Peter Jackson Working on New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Films for Warner Bros., Targeting 2026 Debut 1 week ago:
I was ok with the wizard, just don’t make it Gandalf for nostalgia, stick to the blue wizards as that’s actually canon and interesting and expansive to the law.
I’m pretty sure the rings of power writers thought they could easily get away with combining the blue wizards with Gandalf, but I think it’s just too confusing for regular fans and too wrong for nerds.
A new wizard though, one mentioned by Gandalf in films? That can work!
- Comment on Peter Jackson Working on New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Films for Warner Bros., Targeting 2026 Debut 1 week ago:
That’s kinda what I’d heard as a rumour elsewhere, that this is in part being pushed by Amazon doing the rings of power.
Who owns what rights though?
If Warner Bros own rights to the Silmarillion, then this gets interesting and they’ve got my attention.
Sure the hobbit was money grabbing trash, but the Silmarillion is fantasy in the end (so yay) and not something easily stretched out into garbage as it poses the opposite challenge like LotR. Could work out.
- Comment on [IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it? 1 week ago:
While I generally agree with all of that, and it is basically what I more or less said at the time, it’s still a film full of women being objectified and in some cases pretty senselessly murdered.
singling out the objectification and portrayal of women just feels a little odd to me.
If patriarchy and violence against women weren’t a problem or if the film were about those issues, then all good. But we’re in a world where male v bear is an actual debate and the above are actual issues.
So I don’t hold anything at all against a woman saying that they think there’s a problem there in the film and that they don’t like it solely for those reasons. And in end, I’m not sure the film’s dystopian or AI-humanity themes really justify or necessitate the portrayal and plot points. It feels like other options were available and, TBH, using female objectification/ownership/subordination/violence as a vehicle and marker for dystopia is perhaps lazy and trope-ish. For instance, the woman who told me they didn’t like the film for these reasons was telling me shortly before the film’s release how tired they were of the sad prostitute and destitute brothel trope for signifying dystopia in sci-fi.
First(/second) season of west world strikes me as a relevant comparison here, where the agency and subjugation and control was less gendered without hiding at all the reality of what a female AI would go through.
In the end I think two things can be true here. 1) the film itself isn’t misogynistic and the portrayal of women in it is part of a bigger dystopian theme, and 2) the use of female characters for that kind of story just doesn’t cut it for some/enough women anymore who, without demanding “girl boss” characters, would prefer either direct stories about female oppression or portrayals the lean into more fruitful or interesting ideas and themes.
For me, as much as I like the film, I don’t think it’s story and point quite get to the point of making what happens to women in it feel justified in our current era. I think it’s totally fair for women to feel alienated from the film, that it wasn’t made for them. The majority of women aren’t prostitutes or locked down house wives with zero agency (or animals to be slaughtered).
Whatever dystopia resonates with women today is likely more interesting, frankly. Perhaps a bit more like the story of the protagonist in BR 2049 (who’s of course male).
- Comment on [IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it? 1 week ago:
More than that, Blade Runner’s lack of big commercial success is why Dune was done as a stand alone film at first that ends unfinished. The studios didn’t trust that Vilkeneuve could make a profitable film. So instead of doing it lord of the rings style, they’ve waited to see the success of each film separately.
And I bet this lack of success influenced some of Villeneuve’s directorial decisions too. The differences in the general portrayal of women seems quite stark and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was somewhat conscious. I also feel like you can see Villeneuve trying not to make the Dune films too long and boring, which was a complaint of blade runner 2049.
- Comment on [IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it? 1 week ago:
Great vid, thanks!
When I saw the film I had some female friends tell me they felt uncomfortable with objectification and portrayal of women in the film. And I can’t disagree. But I always felt that there was an underlying truth to the dystopia of the film that explained that objectification, though perhaps does not justify it.
This vid does a good job at demonstrating that. I’d never thought about how much of a protagonist Joi is, but you certainly remember her and definitely feel the general energy in the film of lost and desperate agency.
Then, tying all of that back to older millennials and capitalism and how their feeling could ever be portrayed in film was great.
- Comment on [IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it? 1 week ago:
Some of the shots give a Dune vibe, nice to see this so many years before the first Dune movie.
It’s was only four years before Dune pt 1 and the film Villeneuve did just before Dune. I haven’t seen it since the release either but my memory has always been that there’s a good amount of vibe share between the films. In fact it’s probably reasonable to speculate that Dune wouldn’t what it is without Villeneuve doing Blade Runner first.
- Comment on How well can an employer be certain of a remote employee's geographical location? 2 weeks ago:
yea, that’s what I’d figure. However easy a GPS setup would be, most businesses are, I’d guess, relying entirely on network snooping/logs. Which, if true, seemed pretty fallible once I started thinking about it.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to cybersecurity@infosec.pub | 20 comments
- Comment on [Article] "How Daniel Radcliffe Outran Harry Potter" Has anyone been following his later work? 2 weeks ago:
yea and there’s something about the way the film does it … unless you know going in you could almost be fooled into thinking it’s a serious and accurate biopic (at least for much of the film) … which was really fun to watch … because then there’d be some line or event which is clearly too ridiculous and it all lands but still the mostly serious tone is almost the punch line.
- Comment on "NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI (4/4) 2 weeks ago:
Yea it’s really interesting whenever a professional with experience decides to put up a YouTube channel and just share stuff.
- Comment on [META] So the "other community"'s admins are properly toxic? 2 weeks ago:
And not just opaque, but also defensive and happily using moderation as a weapon in that. It’s just a shitty approach to moderation IMO, especially for lemmy and it’s vibe and size. It really has no place here, and I suspect mods like that have learnt to be like that from Reddit when this is a totally different place.
IIRC, Blaze (mod here) got banned under similar circumstances.
- Comment on Are people excited for Furiosa? 2 weeks ago:
I wish I was, but like many others here … being a prequel and trying to capture the vibe/magic of Fury Road … not a great mix. Watching the trailer my first thought was “so they’re just gonna go with exactly the same look?”, which is rough because we all loved Fury Road … but I wonder if the vibe and aesthetic will hit the same way? After Dune pts I and II?!
And then with the whole prequel thing … part of Fury Road’s magic was that we had no idea what was going on … here, well, it’s an origin story for a character we know well by now. So I don’t know.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to movies@lemm.ee | 3 comments
- Comment on "NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI (4/4) 2 weeks ago:
Yep!
The lack of any “we did CGI right” and the “vfx artists did an awesome job” from the studios is a massive red flag that they happier to through an industry under the bus than put up any quality control in the way they make films … where, AFAICT, hollywood does a weird thing with VFX by auctioning off jobs to the lowest bidder and so treating VFX like a construction project rather than an art work.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to movies@lemm.ee | 5 comments
- Comment on Movie lines people laughed at in theaters despite not actually being intended to be funny? 2 weeks ago:
I think James Cameron’s “The Abyss” is kinda famous for having way more funny moments than intended.
I saw it in the cinema for its recent anniversary re-release. As you might expect most of the audience were enthusiasts and tended to lean older-male and slightly “technical” or “nerdy” in interests/professions. All to say that they were taking the film seriously. But then there were some, a minority, who didn’t fall into that demographic at all. They found many moments in the film hilarious and were laughing out loud. Which rather annoyed the majority of the crowd some of whom would look around wondering where the annoying laughs were coming from. What’s interesting is that over time the majority softened and started to find the humour themselves and laugh out loud at similar moments.
This is also mentioned in the wikipedia for the film … it seems under the strain of making that movie some of the directing just got a little comical.