Tag: movies
Reading/Playing/Watching, 5/5/25
Stuff I'm Reading I'd rather read the prompt - great blog post about LLMs in a university environment. Nicely sums up a lot of my thoughts about LLM-aided writing, which is that using an LLM defeats the point! "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." Write bad essays! That's how you learn! Bizarro World - a 2007 essay on the competitive retro gaming scene, in which the author discovers his wife is the best Gameboy Tetris player in the world. Really wild to revisit a time before Twitch w
Things I Am Consuming: 4.5.2025
It's the weekend, I've got no brilliant tech tutorials in my pocket and I have no particular desire to write about societal collapse for at least a little bit. So I'm just gonna write about some stuff I enjoyed this week. I've finally burned out on videogames for a bit after spending a few weeks housing my backlog of visual novels and I'm finally getting back on my book/show/movie shit. There appears to be a throughline of lore-heavy nerd escapism which frankly I deserve. “Children are dying."
The New DVD Bargain Bin
A major studio is apparently treating YouTube as a place to drop some of its archive films that have lost their cinematic luster. My mind is admittedly blown.
███████ Alert
The history of everyone’s favorite attempt to keep the suspense going for just a little bit longer, the spoiler alert. People who spoil things are obviously evil. Obviously.
Mechanical Marine Mammals
Ever think about what it takes to make an animatronic whale? No? Well, we have, and soon, so will you.
When Movies Get Canned
In the wake of the cancellation of the nearly complete Batgirl, a list of films that are generally thought to have been complete but never saw release for some reason.
Box Office No-Go
Why the conflict over the movie industry’s embrace of video on demand reflects a century-long symbiotic relationship gone sour. AMC is just Trollin’.
Now You See It …
A brief history of invisibility on screen, one of the most effective special effects ever created in film.
You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get
An inside look at one of the strangest restaurant chains in recent history in honor of the 25th anniversary of the movie that inspired its existence.
The Lazarus Libraries
What happens when “lost” films and television shows become found once again—and what that does to the work’s cultural legacy.
Keep Your Composure
What’s it like to be a film composer, anyway? An expert on the subject pads our knowledge of film composition, what might be cinema’s most subtle art form.
The Sound and the Fury
How sound design—such as the iconic Indiana Jones whip noise—has come to define the film industry almost as much as all the on-screen effects.
The Same Name Game
It’s not every day you watch a movie in which you share the same name as the lead character. I did, and it was a supremely dissonant experience.
Tommy’s Back
A review of the first part of “Best F(r)iends” from a big fan of “The Room.” Long story short: It’s a solid addition to the Tommy Wiseau catalog.
The Lazies
Is the great icon of bad film awards missing the boat in the modern era? Some thoughts on the overly broad, overly obvious Razzie nominations.
Shelf This Elf
Why Elf Bowling, the animated holiday film, doesn’t live up to Elf Bowling, the not-a-virus computer game. The biggest problem, simply, is the animation.
When Copyright Goes Copywrong
The rigid nature of copyright law during the early years of the film industry created a surprisingly robust cottage industry around public domain films.
Get Yourself A Treat
How movie theaters nudged film-goers out of their seats with short clips designed around the hard sell.
No Comment
The audio commentary track, a staple of films on optical media, may not last into the age of streaming. Is it a victim of indifference by Netflix?
Streaming Before Netflix
In 1998, a Hong Kong telecom firm spent $1.5 billion trying to make video-on-demand happen. iTV was so ahead of its time that it beat Netflix's DVD service.
Let’s Destroy the White House … Again
The film Independence Day is known for an epic scene in which the White House is turned into small chunks of America. How did they do that?
Between the Bars
A fateful decision by the movie industry six decades ago created a long-term compatibility problem between film and television. The solution? Letterboxing.