Posts in Movies (20 found)
Unsung Yesterday

“It would’ve been much simpler to just use an animated cigar.”

In this 7-minute video , kaptainkristian talks about the fascinating process of making Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the pre-CGI hybrid animation/​live action movie from 1988: = 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/it-wouldve-been-much-simpler-to-just-use-an-animated-cigar/yt1-play.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/it-wouldve-been-much-simpler-to-just-use-an-animated-cigar/yt1-play.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> This is called “bumping the lamp” – a phrase coined by Disney during the production of Roger Rabbit to describe going above and beyond what was expected of the animators. It would’ve been perfectly feasible if Roger stayed flatly illuminated throughout this scene like a cartoon normally would, but instead the animators put in the time to shade every cell uniquely so that the practical light would bounce off from the same way it would a physical object. And they had to account for that dynamically shifting lighting with every contour in Roger’s limbs, his clothes, his face, the cast shadow he creates on the environment as well as the texture of the light, the slightest difference in color temperatures, the lamp sways… even Roger’s ears have a slight translucency, since they’re much thinner than the rest of his body. They thought of that. Audiences had no expectation for this level of realism in 1988, but all these seemingly-superfluous details help sell the effect at a subconscious level. “Bumping the lamp” can be seen on two interlocking levels: one that focuses on the quality of the output (as above), and one that focuses on process toward personal mastery of craft. On that second level, here’s an anecdote from the original Mac team, a few years earlier: One day Burrell started doing something radical. Andy came by my cube and said “You’ve got to come see what Burrell’s doing with Defender.” “How can you innovate with a video game?” I wondered. I’d seen Burrell and Andy innovate on all kinds of things, but I couldn’t image how he could somehow step outside the box of a video game - the machine controlled the flow and dictated the goals. How could you gain some control in that environment? We started up a new competition, and when Burrell’s turn came up, he did something that stunned me. He immediately shot all his humans! This was completely against the goal of the game! He didn’t even go after the aliens, and when he shot the last human, they all turned to mutants and attacked him from all sides. He glanced in my direction with a grin on his face and said “Make a mess, clean it up!” and proceeded to dodge the swarm of angry mutants noisily chasing after him. I am neither a good visual/​motion person, nor a great gamer. But I recognize this desire to once in a while walk up to a pool and throw yourself into a deep end of it, out of principle. Sometimes when I start a new project, I choose a different framework or method I haven’t used before, just so things are harder. On Aresluna and here on Unsung, I very deliberately chose “no centering” as an arbitrary principle, just to push myself to embrace the – harder, but more rewarding – asymmetry, and see where that takes me. I am sharing this just after I shared the other maxim because I believe in those more that I believe in style guides or design principles coming “from above.” I see craft blossom when it can flow from individuals, and when the organization and attendant processes recognize that. Let people bump the lamp, make a mess, feel certain way about weird things, and do other things – and then let others observe, learn from that, and share the strange rituals and arbitrary rules that make them try harder when no one’s asking for that. (Thanks to Jon Wiley for sharing the original video.) #above and beyond #craft #games #motion design #youtube

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Chris Coyier 3 days ago

Choosing Movies

Almost surely, if you totaled up the number of hours of movie watching I’ve done and the hours of TV show watching I’ve done, TV dwarves movies. It’s not a conscious choice; just how it shook out for me. Via the internet , I “know” a couple of people who are consciously movie-only. Khoi Vinh does all these movie reviews and has more or less said he’s only got time for movies. Sean Fennessey, host of The Big Picture has said he only watches movies as well. Paraphrasing from what I remember, it’s that TV’s incentives are to make the most of it , not to make the best art possible, which is more aligned with movies. I’d think the budget and talent also favor movies. So why the imbalance in the other direction for me, and maybe a lot of you? Is it the shorter format? Is it designed to hook you in with more digestible structures and cliffhangers to keep us coming back? Is TV traditionally less expensive to have access to? My defense of TV is that there is just more to sink your teeth into. I can feel more for a character I’ve seen for 20 hours than for one I’ve seen for two. Not that I want to defend it. I kinda wish I were more of a movie guy, hours-wise. I love art, and movies are closer to a form of art. I’m going to at least try to be more conscious of my choices. Two nights ago, I watched  Tell No One , a French murder mystery thriller that turned out to be a real banger, and I was quite happy with my choice. Last night I watched The Outrun , with Saoirse Ronan as a recovering alcoholic on some Scottish isle. Very beautiful. The art was oozing out of it. But truth be told, I was so tired, I could tell my dumb brain wasn’t appreciating it fully. I probably should have just watched some shitty episode of Dutton Ranch and gone to bed.

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Jeff Geerling 2 weeks ago

Quickly apply LUTs (color grading) with ffmpeg

This is a quick post, mostly for my own reference. I've avoided LUTs and 'Log' video footage for years 1 , mostly because of the extra tiny bit of workflow involved. Like RAW photos, 'Log' footage retains the video sensor's full dynamic range, so you can pull more color and luminance information out of the footage later. But unlike photography, where RAW has been a thing for decades, and many workflows 'just work' without me having to 'grade' every individual photo, in video precious few consumer apps handle Log footage gracefully. You generally end up with a muddy grey mess.

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Justin Duke 1 months ago

The Man from Earth

One interesting thing about films, relative to — say — writing within video games, is the demarcation of amateurishness. (A description I don't mean to carry any moral valence.) The indie revival in games owes much, much of itself to the fact that games are a medium where polish and craftsmanship and production value can actively work against the core gameplay loop. Books, on the other hand, have such a fundamentally small gap between what we'd call unpolished, messy prose and avant-garde experimentalism that it becomes hard to apply the lens of quality at all. One of the joys of my recent cinema excursions has been getting to understand some of these mechanics — even when the films themselves aren't particularly successful. There's Vanya on 42nd Street , a film whose lack of production is literally part of the text, and which uses that fact to brilliant effect. And there's Mindwalk , a film forgotten to history, with interesting elements of its zeitgeist, that nonetheless conjures a dreamlike quality out of the graininess of its direction layered over the beauty of its landscapes. Somewhere in the middle of these sits The Man from Earth , which is probably best introduced through the lens of its screenwriter, Jerome Bixby — a quasi-famous science-fiction writer who did a lot of work on The Twilight Zone (as one might guess from the title) and the then-successful B-movie side of Hollywood; the film's executive producer is his son, and it is hard not to think of this as more of an act of Asthi Visarjan than of genuine creative commitment. This is very much a five-act play captured on camera rather than a work built for the medium. The entire action takes place in a single remote house, and unlike the aforementioned Vanya it is filled with actors you've never heard of performing, by and large, very poorly. The music is bad; the lighting is bad. 1 And yet, for a certain type of person — i.e. myself, and perhaps you as well — this will be a movie you cannot tear yourself away from, even as it grows more and more absurd. The conceit of the exercise is very simple: the central character reveals himself to be a man who is (for the sake of this essay) immortal, then he invites his colleagues — a coterie of university professors in various disciplines — to interrogate him and to challenge the veracity of his claim. That is the film, by and large: professors quizzing an immortal man on what he should or should not know and what he should or should not remember. If you think that is interesting, it may be worth watching; if you don't, turn away. As poor as every other part of the product is, the writing (not unlike the best of Bixby's Twilight Zone episodes) is arresting not for its clarity or beauty but because it forces you, however briefly, to completely eject yourself from your frame of reference. It's a really, really fun premise, delivered earnestly and intelligently. What is the difference between someone with a sufficiently encyclopedic memory and understanding of the world and someone who has actually lived it? You might think understand that this is suddenly a more relevant question than it has been. Where it becomes more entertaining but harder to recommend is in its attempts to introduce dramatic stakes. One of the characters does not believe John, and so first tries to bring in a psychology professor to commit him — or, failing that, to disprove him. The professor, it's revealed, has recently lost his wife; he pulls a gun on John, points it, and then relents. It's all a little boggling. And then a twin pair of revelations brings the whole thing to its most absurd. One: that John is Jesus Christ. Two: in the final scenes, that John is in fact the psychiatrist's father — having abandoned him long ago, owing to his policy of moving on every ten years to shift identities — a revelation after which John's son promptly dies of a heart attack. It's hard to describe such plotting as anything but insanity. And it's the point at which you begin to suspect that perhaps it isn't just a lack of budget that has made the film feel so shoddily crafted. And yet you can't look away. And I don't mean that in a train-wreck sense. There's a real nuance and depth and earnestness to the film's discussion of religion, of history, of all these things. It is not meant to shock. This is a film that has clearly been researched and considered deeply — made less as an act of entertainment than as an act of inquiry . And I have to admire those bets, and respect them. I think it's a film that many, many more people could enjoy than have. Especially right now, when the value of intelligence and experience feels increasingly slippery.

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Justin Duke 1 months ago

Let Them All Talk

This was a film that I found, in some order, slight, confounding, sweet, clever, and — above all of these things — reaching but not yet grasping. It is interesting to me how little of a cultural footprint it has, given that it's a Soderbergh film starring, amongst other luminaries, Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, and Lucas Hedges. Soderbergh appears to have exactly two speeds: perfectly crafted and honed, and hodgepodge. This film is in the latter camp. It is tempting, as other reviewers have done, to call it lighthearted — but it's not so much lighthearted as it is lightfooted . Watching each scene bleed into the next, with confounding but naturalistic plot developments unfolding in a quasi–Dogme 95 sense, contributes above all else to the feeling that you are watching a dream. My dreams are wistful and incoherent, and I wake from them happy to be back in the real world, yet already nostalgic for a place I can no longer revisit.

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Justin Duke 1 months ago

The In-Laws

It was fifteen minutes into The In-Laws that I suspected an uncanny feeling of déjà vu, and thirty minutes in that I confirmed my suspicions with an unlocked memory of having watched it somewhere between ten and fifteen years ago, in a context I cannot recall beyond mild insobriety. With this revelation, the remainder of the plot — already formulaic and predictable — snapped into place, and I was left with wackiness and some sensible chuckle humor that I can admire without loving. This Blazing Saddles -esque style of broad comedy, which leans into action to punctuate and yet ends up deflating, is simply not for me. And I mean that sincerely. There's a lot about the film that I admire. First and foremost, the commitment to the bit that Peter Falk showcases: his dogged aloofness works in a compounding way, especially in comparison to Alan Arkin's self-serious nice — a contrast that had nonetheless grown threadbare and overdone somewhere in the film's second act. The schtick of the film feels more well-suited for a longer-runtime SNL sketch than an actual film, and the script's necessity to lampshade every single joke (the Bay of Pigs gag, to pick one) is the closest I can come to a sincere and critical critique. This and Murder by Death make two films in a row that I didn't really enjoy despite loving their usage of Peter Falk — which is perhaps a sign that I should just start watching Columbo instead.

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ava's blog 1 months ago

my experience in brussels

For the CPDP 2026, I was in Brussels this week. The inner city with all its cute little shops, fancy buildings and barely any cars was very charming. Have some pics. We spotted Super Dragon Toys on the way and had to stop there, of course. Surprisingly, they had a lot of Sanrio, and even a blind box I was trying to get months ago that was sold out everywhere on and offline before, so I grabbed one. Got Pochacco; I liked all designs you could get in the box, so that was fine with me. I wish we had a bonsai shop: Also came across a colorful shop full of stuff around penises, vaginas, and breasts? We also went to see Mandalorian and Grogu in the cinema there; very epic layout of the room. I also enjoyed the movie; I don't get the reviews at all. Typical Star Wars fan cynicism and everything-has-to-be-dark-and-gritty-like-Andor. What was surprising is how little English is written anywhere or even reliably spoken. In German tourist-y and big cities, you have an English version of almost anything printed underneath, and often even more languages, especially when close to borders. Brussels doesn't really give the same courtesy as much as I thought it would, which caught me off guard because of all the EU buildings and employees there. Many people seem as if they don't learn English in school at all and struggle with it? I booked something a few minutes from the venue that was affordable, looked good on pictures and had a good rating. I read the top description and bottom checklist and it sounded nice. What I didn't read were the actual reviews (my bad, I know). If I had done that, I wouldn't have booked. I read them 10 minutes before arrival and it turned out that this is an AirBnB type thing posing as a hotel. The reviews called out this lie, but still rated it high (enough). A guy waited for us to get us the keys and explain everything, and we shared an apartment with a stranger that had his separate bedroom. Yup. Stressed me the fuck out. It was clean enough in the bedroom and bathroom (had one to our selves directly attached to it thankfully, because we had the double). The rest was meh. Kitchen utensils were severely lacking and often dirty. It was good enough to sleep and be gone the entire day. The stranger stayed in his room all the time, but smoked in there and it stunk through the entire apartment. We couldn't even get hot water reliably, and the sink spilled everywhere. So if you are ever in the same position... Brussels City Chambers is not a hotel, or even an aparthotel like they say. The info is hidden way below, nested between lots of other info, now saying " Comfortable apartment with shared living room. Choice between private room with private bathroom and rooms with shared bathroom. " You don't even get shown that during the booking process when you choose an accommodation, otherwise I would have noticed it then. Most of the pictures supplied are not of the property at all. So while technically you can find out if you are paying a lot of attention, you are meant to be misled if you just wanna be quick about it (and I hate booking hotels, so unfortunately I rushed through it, my bad). Big city, tourists, of course it's full! To be expected. I've been in big tourist-y cities before. But my god, now I understand why Belgians in Germany drive as if they are trying to kill you. They are also trying to kill each other in their own country. Lines on the ground get completely ignored, and so are any traffic signs or lights. The speed limit doesn't matter. Everything is a mere suggestion and they are driving like it's an off-road jungle adventure. They get mad at you for taking the rules seriously. We Germans are a rule-loving folk and get mad if people cross the street during a red light, so this was a culture clash. We were frequently honked at for following the traffic rules (staying in our lane, driving the speed limit, etc.). People just endanger others by speeding through everything, cutting you, overtaking you and almost crashing into someone else, and they don't blink long enough or at all to even let you know they are gonna swerve into your lane... they all drive like reckless, annoyed Taxi drivers in an indestructible tank. It wasn't an asshole here and there, it was everywhere, all the time, every vehicle. We soon found that we are just the odd ones. You felt it even outside the car, as a pedestrian. It felt like you weren't safe anywhere because everyone is going where ever they want, so bicycle lanes and bus lanes still had speeding cars, people almost ran over pedestrians who had the green light to cross, motorcycles drove on the sidewalk... I thought I would get ran over on this trip for sure. I also do not like how the motorcyclists can just speed past you in the middle in the tunnels without any care in the world. And how Apple Maps handles the tunnels!! They don't make it clear whether you are supposed to descend into one or keep right to avoid it. And finally, the way crossings and roundabouts are designed in Brussels is completely not intuitive and insane. I can't even explain it, but you really have to guess how you're supposed to drive, which adds to the whole messy driving culture. Multiple times, I thought we were going the wrong way for sure, but it ended up being correct. The almost complete app reliance to park is also nuts. We tried the parking machines that are spread around the streets, but they are very slow, and if you set the language to German, the process is broken and doesn't let you book anything. It's also very focused on the Belgian license plate layout despite Brussels being so tourist-y and full of people from outside the country, so entering anything with a different layout is risky and seems to overwhelm the process. It was much easier to handle in an app (Indigo Neo), but they only accept credit card; I am lucky to even have one. I expected more care around the different types of people coming into the city from a city that is the capital of Europe, essentially. If there is a next time, we'll definitely take the train, even if it is more expensive and more annoying with luggage. We went to Pure Veg India, Kitsune Burgers, Verdo, and grabbed some things to go from BS40 and a bakery I forgot the name of. Big fan of all of them, except for the dry pastries from unnamed bakery. Verdo was so amazing and my highlight of it all. I don't know if I will be back next year, also has to do with some conference disappointments... I really wanted to like this city, also because I do sometimes toy with the idea of getting more involved in EU stuff, but I think I would be really unhappy living there :< Reply via email Published 23 May, 2026

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Justin Duke 1 months ago

Murder by Death

Murder by Death is a film that is easy to laugh at and easy to like. It is something like Clue meets Knives Out — a broad farce, lovingly rendered, that gathers the biggest detectives of the day (most of whom have survived and or thrived in the public consciousness all of these years) to solve the purportedly unsolvable murder of and/or by Truman Capote. I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't like it as much as I should have, or why it felt oddly slow considering its 94-minute runtime. Perhaps because it is so explicitly facile . It is not a madcap romp like Clue , nor does it wish to be a serious mystery like Knives Out , nor does it really have fun with metafiction like any of the other films in this genre. It is fun to see these actors clearly have a blast with each other — but it is a spoof, and spoofs make for entertaining evenings and poor cinema. My favorite individual performance was Peter Falk playing a Sam Spade slash Humphrey Bogart composite. Less for his imitation's efficacy and more because you can see the seeds of Columbo in his affectations. Would I recommend this movie? If you're bored and have nothing else to watch, and are comfortable keeping your expectations low.

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Justin Duke 1 months ago

Network

It is perhaps embarrassing to admit that I had never seen Network , and this year — its fiftieth anniversary — felt as good a time as any, especially considering how intimately familiar I already was with the film's plot, its two capstone monologues, and its general influence on culture and, if not journalism itself, then the lens through which we view journalism. And now, having watched it and spent a few days really chewing on what I thought and what I think it means, I have arrived at an idiosyncratic answer: Institutions, even the ones we revere, will be consumed by forces greater than human understanding. And in so doing, they also consume anyone who has devoted themself fully to those institutions. The film opens with Howard Beale becoming a childless widower whose sole identity is suddenly that of his news broadcast. Max Schumacher's fall from grace coincides with an off-screen decision not to go with his wife to Seattle to visit his pregnant daughter — instead staying behind in New York to work the news. Paddy Chayefsky himself, for all his great work, was a tyrant with an anger management problem: an absent husband and an absent father. There is only one character in this film who conducts herself with anything approaching grace and dignity: Beatrice Straight, playing Max's wife, who won her Oscar for a five-minute monologue and then is never seen from again. It is easy and natural to declare Beale and Jensen's rants as prophetic — they are great bits of writing performed radically well — but they are performances by madmen, meant to persuade and to dazzle. Straight is the one whose message is worth keeping close to our heart: Then get out, go to a hotel, go anywhere you want, go live with her, but don't come back! Because after twenty-five years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain we've inflicted on each other, I'll be damned if I'll just stand here and let you tell me you love somebody else! [...] Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the great winter passion, and I get the dotage? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling till you slink back like a penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it! If you can't work up a winter passion for me, then the least I require is respect and allegiance! I'm hurt! Don't you understand that? I'm hurt badly! And the most fascinating choice made by the film is the decision not to end with Max's renunciation of Diana — to treat him slinking back sheepishly to his wife and family like the resolution of a B-plot rather than a salvation. As great as the final two scenes of the film are, they reveal that the rot Chayefsky depicts in his film's universe has spread to him as well. Because as soon as a character leaves the newsroom, they are nobody at all to him.

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iDiallo 2 months ago

In the Empire's Defense

I didn't watch Star Wars when it was released. I wasn't even born. By the time we popped the cassette tape in the VCR, it was at least 15 years old. But I liked the movie all the same. It was not my favorite film by any means, but it was memorable. The first time you see Darth Vader appear on screen, you know this villain is not going to be easy to defeat. "Villain" because no one needs to tell you who the good guys and bad guys are in this movie. The visuals, the voices, the music, everything tells you that Darth Vader and the Empire are up to no good. Now I get to watch the movie with my kids. I quickly pointed out to my sons that this is the bad guy. Stating the obvious. One of them asked, "Why is he the bad guy?" I had to pause for a second to come up with an explanation. I didn't have an answer. Instead I said, "Because he is mean as hell!" They fell asleep before the movie ended. I think they enjoyed it. But I really couldn't tell you exactly why Darth Vader was the bad guy. This is just a thought experiment, don't go telling the world that I am pro-Galactic Empire, OK? I'm not digging into the lore of Star Wars. I did that already with the Galactic Timezones piece and it was exhausting. What I want to do is draw some parallels with real life. First, I think if a real-world government behaved like the Galactic Empire, they would clearly be the bad guys. But in real life, we don't have good guys or bad guys. I want to focus on just one aspect. The Empire's goal is to maintain order, or at least to try to. And the rebels are clearly creating chaos, with their freedom and what not (bear with me). Imagine what it takes to develop a system that keeps several star systems all in sync. The political process to elect senators, not just from different races, but different species. And then some religious zealots want you to throw everything you've built aside and just "feel" the force. You want to expel them as far from the system as possible. “Can one ever be too aggressive in preserving order?” — Syril Karn The rebels sabotage missions, attack army bases, and create chaos. On the surface, these rebels are clearly disruptive. I can already hear politicians calling them names and requesting additional funding for their "ally" to eradicate the threat. If the rebel attacks were broadcast on TV, even citizens of the many worlds would agree that the rebels need to be dealt with. Writers would write poems on the supposed virtues of keeping order as Kipling did in " The White Man's Burden ". All they are doing is bringing railways, law, and civilization to chaotic planets. Just think about rebels carelessly destroying a base on a remote planet whose only purpose was to track and sync time across a multi-star time zone system. Madness! But then I watched Andor. If you watch Star Wars as an adult and don't suspend your disbelief for a second (contrasting it with real life) then yes, the rebels are the bad guys. Which is exactly why Andor was a fantastic addition to the Star Wars universe. A more grounded show that I watched without my kids, and thoroughly enjoyed for how it depicted the inner workings of the Empire. Rather than focusing on the Empire as a whole, Andor zooms in on a small faction, the ISB, and shows how ordinary people end up joining the rebellion. The rebels are no longer just David fighting Goliath. Instead, you see the individual faces of people suffering at the hands of the Empire. You see the surveillance, the strong-arming, the unfair treatment, the killings. You see innocent people caught in the crossfire, labeled terrorists at the first sign of dissent. One man's rebel is another man's freedom fighter, and the Empire controls the broadcast. And the rebellion is not a single organization with a single leader. Anyone oppressed and frustrated with the Empire is a rebel in their own way. It's not good guys versus bad guys anymore. It is power exerting a crushing weight on its subjects. To hell with keeping time in sync, fight back! To hell with keeping order when all it means is blind obedience or else. Bring back those Jedis, the so-called religious zealots. But alas, it's just fiction. Real life is not the same. In our world, the Empire wins every time. Ask the Indians. Ask the so-called independent nations of West Africa. My sons, when I try to speak French with them, tell me that they are not French and neither am I. They are right, because the Empire won.

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Justin Duke 2 months ago

Sweet Smell of Success

At its core, Sweet Smell of Success is about two men. At the beginning of the film, you think — while similar — one is decent, just desperate, and the other is beyond saving. By the end, you understand that both men are evil; the only thing separating them is the amount of power they wield. These two performances by Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis are flatly terrific. There is little to say, because I've concerned myself much more with the 60s and 70s than the 50s, and so I can't say much about how these roles are in conversation with their prior oeuvre. But it is plainly clear that the screen bursts alive whenever either of them is talking. The rest of the film is a push-pull: a fairly standard and at times cartoonish melodrama — filled with an evil that feels more cartoonish than banal as each act progresses — rescued by the best window dressing in the world, and a whiplash script that finds entertainment and grace in its brief moments of joy. The director wrings a lot of tension out of how lovely every individual scene feels at the onset. Beautiful jazz soundtrack. Beautiful Manhattan nightclubs. Filmed and captured with just the right amount of realism. And then, the decrepit material disgust they're all wading through. I don't really go for morality tale movies at this point. While there's a certain world-weariness and hardscrabble wisdom to the proceedings here that might have been more winning with contemporary audiences, it's not exactly breaking news to me that owners of media corporations can be childish, petty, and controlling. Perhaps my fundamental flaw with viewing the film is that I think it hinges on a dwindling confidence that our protagonist is going to, at some point, snap out of it and do the right thing — even though it's so aggressively telegraphed that he won't. It seems odd to spend so much time criticizing a movie I thought was very good, so let me end with this: it is a smart, beautiful, honest movie that does not pull any punches.

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ava's blog 2 months ago

the devil wears prada 2 - loved it

I really like The Devil Wears Prada . I saw it in the cinema when it came out, and I've rewatched it two or three years ago with my wife, who had missed out on it and the cultural impact it had. It surprised me so much when the second movie was suddenly just... there! So I went today and I am absolutely in love. I can't wait until I can see it a couple more times, maybe right after rewatching the first again, and get to draw more connections and conclusions. The following will contain spoilers. At the start, I felt so proud of Andy. She is thriving, she is accomplished, she is getting honored for her work and she has great friends and coworkers! It feels so good to see that even 20 years later, she hasn't lost her ambition and drive, and did not cave for someone else's feelings anymore. She's standing up for herself and is much more confident, too. As you are introduced into the new situation (going back to Runway two decades later), you get to be nostalgic alongside her, which feels like such a good narrative choice; so satisfying to watch. Yes, I totally fell for the nostalgia bait, the " Look, do you remember that piece of info from the first movie? " stuff. It was fun! I was greatly entertained and half the cinema was gasping and squealing at times, recognizing things and pointing at the screen. I liked seeing that some things stayed the same while some things changed, while nothing felt forced or unrealistic. People and companies progress, and while you may see yourself as the main character that people surely will remember, your presence was likely much smaller than you realize. It felt in-character for people not to necessarily remember Andy or to be aghast that she has made it further, and it felt so human for Andy to go: Wait, that process changed? Wait, we don't do it this way anymore? It was also so, so good to see Miranda again, and what they did with her. I think they handled Miranda absolutely well, especially her first appearance. A big fanfare, thrilling, slaying in a dress. She still has her quirks, the air of superiority, the earned respect, the vibe that makes you stumble as you make it into her office - but she is also a Boomer, rather old by now, and even she has slowed down and now seems slightly out of place, overwhelmed. Things aren't like they were before, and she has issues with growing in the direction the work needs to go. Work culture and expectations have shifted, and they have not been kind to the person Miranda is. She can no longer throw her coat at people to assert her dominance, as there have been too many HR complaints; now she has to do it herself. She makes the occasional outdated, offensive Boomer joke in meetings, and while a much younger employee is allowed to reprimand her repeatedly for that, nothing happens. The young workforce has gotten used to their out-of-touch leadership making these sorts of comments (" That's just who she is ") and in turn, leadership has gotten used to feeling this sort of short-lived mild rejection of their words. No more uncritical appeasement and laughing just to laugh, the air is silent now before just moving on. Miranda used to always get her way and was able to boss people around with a sharp tongue - now her power has diminished, as she is ambushed by about eight (?) people in an environment she is not used to and cannot control. As such, she is unable to defend herself and the company against a ruthless take-over spurred by neoliberal ideals, too overwhelmed to make sense of it, and feeling left behind in a world that moves so fast. She's smart and cunning, but she can't make sense of the economic babble thrown at her, and her edges are smoothed out by the fear of jeopardizing her role and the possible renegotiation of her planned, but ultimately failed, promotion that Irv never got to announce. She has to grapple with what kind of legacy she wants to leave behind, when it is the right time to stop, what else she even has going in her life, and that her attitude has cost her dearly. As a viewer, it means a lot to see how gracefully they handled the fact that even the biggest, most fearsome Girl Boss ™ is aging out of her aura and control, and it is inevitable, but not necessarily sad. We have seen Miranda's issues with vulnerability and accepting help in the first movie, and here again, she is asked to get over herself for the greater good of everyone involved. It can be quite cringe-worthy how other pieces of media handle the modern world - way too many message pop-up sounds, texts always on screen, frequent video calls, extreme smartphone reliance for plot, and more. My wife described it as "when it is like Netflix shows", and that fits so perfectly. They really utilize this to death in their shows, together with extremely temporary memes and slang that already feel slightly too old once the release happens. I'm so glad this movie didn't fall into that trap! Yes, a main point of the movie is that times have changed - Andy no longer uses a flip phone, print numbers are rapidly falling, everything moves online, content is created for digital feeds, and your audience is not leisurely consuming a fashion magazine in a glamorous way, but seeing your short form content while on the toilet. The goal is to go viral, and there's a need for a much more direct and pressing damage control now that the public can directly fill your comments and mail boxes with their criticism. All while the industry is fighting with downsizing and consolidations. Still, modern tech doesn't get a center role in the movie in this obnoxious way, and they focus more on the core issues and workplace expectations that changed, over implementing a temporary reference or trend that will age badly. They do show some memes, but they are deliberately timeless and very focused on the movie, not trying to tie a current TikTok trend into it. What also "modernized" it in my mind is that aside from making the tyrannical girlboss less relevant in the age of work-life balance and HR complaints, they clearly brought in and parodied the Silicon Valley rich tech bro, just in the characters of Irv's son Jay, and of Benji Barnes. They clearly do not follow the rules of old money, as they dress like they're going out for a hike or the gym, act too casual, childish at times even, and seem to decide unpredictably, on a whim, in this really emotionally cold way. Money without class, without pretension, but also seemingly awkward and clumsy. Benji plans to go to the sun and has stopped drinking water because he thinks it's poisonous; there are mentions of weight loss and Ozempic. Really reminded me of Zuckerberg, Altman, Musk et al. in that way. The movie is full of celeb cameos that also aided the above modern feel; thankfully, most are really subtle, quick, and in the background. I think the ones most noticeable are Lady Gaga (loved her song) and Donatella Versace. It felt fair to me; the movie had a huge impact on the fashion world and was a tribute to it, so it makes sense that the second one would also honor their inspirations and also uplift new modeling talent. It felt fun spotting all the easter eggs, so to speak. In the first movie, Andy's boyfriend Nate was a complete dumpster fire. The older I get, the worse it ages. The narrative felt sexist, and I think the writers wanted to acknowledge that in this second movie. The New Guy ™ is a genuinely kind guy, but also kind of carries the vibe of all fictional men who are sanitized to death and would love to break out in a therapyspeak monologue about what is wrong with the other character. Still, I appreciate that over Nate, so we are good. The movie could have gone without the romance altogether. It added nothing to the core plot, and the screentime was minimal. I understand what they were trying to do, though: For once, show Andy in a normal relationship, resolving conflicts maturely, and that she doesn't need to choose between love and career like the first movie made it seem. And I can tolerate that. At least we were spared absolute hetslop . Emily is such a weird character to me. I did not think she would ever become so central, and I still think it is a weird choice, and probably the only thing in the movie I am scratching my head about. I guess retrospectively, I could see how the writers would wanna let Emily get her lick back on Andy for essentially coming in and torpedo-ing all her plans and dreams in the first movie, but it still felt... odd to me. Maybe because the way Emily and Andy compete in the first is such a subplot to me in the first, as I enjoy the rest more? I guess in light of that, making Emily mean and giving her the power to absolutely ruin Andy and Miranda makes sense, but something about it feels incomplete. At the end of the first movie, things seemed pretty resolved. But a late explanation of an unanswered phone call is what we are supposed to believe is what made Emily so cold this time? Not enough for me. I am also missing more reasons to empathize with how quickly Andy is just forgiving Emily for everything, when she hasn't only seemingly been fine with using her boyfriend for money, but also wanted to make tons of people jobless, and center herself in the magazine. Wild. Which leads me to the second point: Interesting imagery. For the entire movie until the end, Emily has red hair. The color red usually symbolizes power, evil, villains, blood, pain, and sin, and red hair is often associated with having a bit of a temper. Meanwhile, after everything comes out and she is ready to make amends and start over as her boyfriend broke up with her, her hair is platinum blonde, almost white, a color associated with innocence and new beginnings. In another part of the movie, Andy and Miranda look at the wall mural The Last Supper . Miranda muses that Jesus is depicted without a halo because it is meant to emphasize his humanity and fallibility, our shared inclination to betray one another. This is obviously foreshadowing to what is going to happen later, but it's interesting that minutes later, she is depicted at a large banquet table in front of the mural, seemingly imitating it in the place of Christ. There is also a gorgeous shot of her in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, alone, sad, literally at a crossroads, surrounded by luxury and old, influential history. Ahhh, I wish I could write more, but the longer it's been, the more I am forgetting. I wish I could let it run on my second screen as I type. Maybe one day I will update this 8) Reply via email Published 06 May, 2026

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Unsung 2 months ago

The land where time stood still

It’s hard to be in charge of continuity on a movie set. It would already be difficult under the best of circumstances: after all, you can’t freeze the sun in the sky, prevent hot drinks from going cold, cigarettes from extinguishing themselves, or entropy in general for doing all the stuff it loves doing. But on top of that, scenes are shot out of sequence, and movies are shot out of sequence. There are pick-ups if you’re lucky, and reshoots when you’re not. About the only time your job will be noticed is if you mess up: cue Super-man’s reverse CGI moustache, Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four wig situation, Commando’s damaged-then-pristine Porsche, and so on and so on. ( This 7-minute YouTube video is a great walkthrough from an expert .) = 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/the-land-where-time-stood-still/1.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/the-land-where-time-stood-still/1.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/the-land-where-time-stood-still/2.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/the-land-where-time-stood-still/2.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> Apple famously freezes time on their phones in all the promotional materials to be 9:41am. The specific moment they chose is a celebration of the first iPhone unveiling to be at around that time, but it also makes production easy – while people won’t mind that the time on the screen doesn’t match the current time, or even that it doesn’t seem to advance at a normal rate, they will definitely notice if you happened to splice two screenshots with different time side by side, just because you didn’t anticipate that splice as you were preparing them. So it’s easiest just to avoid this situation altogether. But what I didn’t realize until today as I was recording the previous post’s screengrab is that 9:41am is also enforced whenever you record your phone’s screen via QuickTime. It’s a peculiar feeling: Start recording, and the time on your phone jumps to 9:41. Yank the USB cord out, and it’s back to where it was: Oh yeah, the date changes too, for the same reason – to January 9, 2007. In a time-honored Apple tradition, I can’t decide whether I’m annoyed at it (there seems to be no option to turn it off), or admire it.

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Justin Duke 2 months ago

April, 2026

I had hoped and expected that the chaos which had marked the start of the year — floors, termites, sickness, fires, ACL surgery — was largely behind us, and that I would be freed to find some sort of rhythm or backbeat with which to tether a new normalcy. And of course, this has not been the case, though for more pleasant reasons than previously: three semi-impromptu trips (all good); lots of corgi rehab (all successful); lots of sleep regression (some in the rear-view). But I was still able to do a handful of important things, like start this year's spring garden and write an overdue post on having spent four years working full-time on Buttondown. That post was titled, somewhat against my better judgment, in writing . Four years is a long time for any one thing to remain interesting, and I find myself surprised, again and again, that this one continues to be — partially due to boredom and partially due to the mechanics of RSU vesting around this time at Amazon and Stripe, and I do not think it is spoilers to say that such an occurrence will not be happening a third time. Most recently, I find myself grateful for the agency it offers me, which materializes less as the week-long excursions to foreign countries and more like the afternoon trips with Lucy to the art museum. I wrote less this month than I have in some time, and watched (and read, and played) more than I have in some time, which feels like a fair trade. Slay the Spire 2 was, against my will, eating the equivalent of a small part-time job — I have uninstalled it as of the writing of this post, and I make only empty promises about whether it will stay uninstalled. The films were, almost without exception, excellent. Vanya on 42nd Street in particular was the kind of discovery — surfaced, embarrassingly, by Claude — that make me grateful to have spent so much time recently with films. I hope you are doing well and I hope the sunlight hits your basil saplings for exactly the right amount of time.

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Justin Duke 2 months ago

What's Up, Doc?

What's Up, Doc? is, I guess, just a perfect film. I can remember exactly one other movie of its ilk that I watched with sheer glee — amazed by how contemporaneously funny it was, by how awful it was, and by how obviously, in retrospect, it influenced so much of the genre: the-thin-man . But even more so than that film, What's Up, Doc? is all gas, no brakes. The commitment to screwball never wavers, not even for a single second, ramping up and up and up in abject silliness until — as Babs says in a memorable closing line — you simply surrender to its tidal wave. Here's a confession I'll offer in lieu of anything interesting to say about this terrific, hilarious film that I recommend wholeheartedly: I don't think I've actually ever seen anything with Barbra Streisand in it before. In one of those self-reflexive memes, I know her more for the Streisand effect — literally the name — than any specific work of art. Until now. And she is so completely winning in this, in a way that I don't think I've actually seen from any other lead actress. It is rare for Hollywood to let a lead actress be funny, horny, and charming all at once. The industry, if it deigns to let women be sexual and possessed of a sense of humor, usually consigns them to the realm of the character role, or tries to diffuse things with some other means — i.e. fat jokes. But Babs here, who is in many ways the original manic pixie dream girl (albeit perhaps more of a nightmare), is an absolute tornado. I'm not sure I would find her as charming as her male retinue does, diegetically, but she commands every scene she's in and demands your attention, never letting pesky things like pathos or logic get in the way of her Looney Tunes sensibilities. Just an absolute delight.

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ava's blog 3 months ago

how i enjoy movies

I'm not much of a movie watcher. I somehow prefer watching multiple episodes of a TV show over a few hours over investing 2 hours into a movie. I get antsy in the second half of the movie and episodic stuff can more easily be paused for a break. My wife has gotten me into more movies the past few years though, especially the recent months. Catching up on classics like all the Star Wars movies, Lord of the Rings 1-3, American Psycho, Fight Club, some popular Studio Ghibli movies, some old genre-defining horror movies, and more. What makes movies a lot more bearable to me is talking about them while watching them, even pausing the movie while discussing. I know many people hate this and just want to watch something in peace, not tear it apart during or even be interrupted. Understandably, they don't want the fantasy and make-believe to be destroyed during. But my wife and I are on the same wavelength about this. She is my favorite person to watch movies with because of this. It would bore me to death to sit through 2+ hours in silence, just staring, and then both of us moving on from it and just saying "Yeah it was good.". I need to have some breaks to readjust my position, get something from the kitchen, drink some water, and have minutes in-between just psychoanalyzing characters, giving our interpretations of things that are still unclear, or saying what we would do if we were the characters. Also discussing the broader context, production, if something was real or CGI... I love it. It keeps me engaged, and it makes the movie more memorable for me. I also learn so much more about it and plot details I would have otherwise missed get revealed to me. I especially love watching something with my wife when it's something she is really interested in or has seen multiple times. Last night, we watched an Indiana Jones movie ( Raiders of the Lost Ark ), and I got so much info from her during it. "Harrison Ford improvised this scene because he was tired of reshooting it all the time." "In this scene you can spot C3PO and R2-D2 in the background. And you can see the Ark in the background of a Clone Wars episode." "I think this shot is actually a matte painting on glass." I'm more of a Lara Croft person, and so we also talked about the similarities and differences between the two, especially with Lara's reboot content and her grappling with the fact that her work tends to cause more harm than good, something Indiana doesn't seem to have to face that much. We also discussed some silly stuff; like how the snakes would realistically survive in that pit, and whether a bunch of snakes are flammable or not. All while watching it and occasionally pausing. Technically, we also do this for TV shows. Severance and Pluribus especially, but even X-Files . It's just so good! I just need to engage with someone about what I'm seeing and pick their brain about an aspect of it. Acknowledging something was produced, these were all actors, this didn't really happen, this was CGI, this is a plot inconsistency etc. doesn't ruin the entertainment for us at all :) Reply via email Published 11 Apr, 2026

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Justin Duke 3 months ago

Eyes Wide Shut

If you men only knew. At this point, Eyes Wide Shut has so thoroughly permeated the zeitgeist that it's hard to disentangle my reaction to the film from my reaction to the world the film has spawned. It's rife with metatext — and that's not even getting into the Rothschild mansion stuff, as interesting as all of that is. It perhaps speaks poorly of me, but I had to be reminded that during filming, Kidman and Cruise were married, and that a year after its release they were divorced; I had to be reminded that this is technically an adaptation, too, and as is always the case with Kubrick what seems like masterful creation is more like masterful selection. My vague perception of the film going in was that it was viewed as somewhat Lynchian — or at least operating in the same realm of symbology as 2001: A Space Odyssey : deep interpretations, emphasis on vibes. Some of tghat is true, but I actually feel as though very little of the film is genuinely ambiguous, and the things that are ambiguous are unimportant. Here would be my layman's read of the plot: The film opens with Kidman nude; it ends with her clothed but telling Cruise, quite literally, that they should fuck. I think the discrepancy between these two images is more than anything else what Kubrick is trying to say, about the relationship between intimacy and nudity (or, if you'd like, between transparency and understanding.) Beyond that, the secret society sequences felt kind of pat in a way I can't really hold against the film. The imagery was gorgeous — almost all of Kubrick's successors have failed to match it — but I knew what they were going to be, and besides on a visual level (the confrontation scene!) they no longer hold a shock or awe that I'm sure they did in the 1999 dreamscape. More than anything else, I'm happy to have watched a film I found strange and flawed, a little overlong, but worth seeing on its own merits — and not just as a reference text. Cruise and Kidman are conventionally successful, happy people, albeit somewhat repressed in the same way many 1999 film protagonists are. Cruise's sense of identity is inadvertently shattered when he grapples with the fact that Kidman is not a wife whom he has objectified but a living, breathing human with impulses and dreams — even if she'd never want those impulses and dreams to be tangible. What follows is a dark night of the soul, and he discovers that the world he thought mapped and well-known contains to it secrets and evil which he had conveniently 1 His treatment of Mandy is a bit of a lodestar. overlooked. The morning comes, and after failed attempts to re-enter the night he returns to his wife, and is for the first time earnest and honest with her. This does not solve the problems of the world, but it leaves them changed — and better for it.

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Justin Duke 3 months ago

Columbus

What he's offering is a critique of a critique. But in its place, he identifies a different kind of crisis. Not the crisis of attention, but the crisis of interest. See, to talk about attention is its own kind of distraction. Kids pay attention to things that interest them. The real question is what interests them? Or us? Are we losing interest in things that matter? Words on a page, for instance. Yeah, see, maybe that's not so important. What about everyday life? Are we losing interest in everyday life? Columbus reminded me more than anything of The Garden of Words 1 Highly recommended, btw. and Shinkai's other short films before he transitioned to massive and somewhat loud mainstream fare like Your Name. This is a painterly, deliberate film — and at times it feels as if it's tipping its hand too much, showing you just how well-considered every single frame and shot is. I didn't really mind that, though, because it is well-considered, and pleasantly so. Kogonada's strength here is more in aesthetics and visuals than script, sometimes to poor effect. The chemistry between John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson — the latter of whom I'd probably only ever seen in The White Lotus , and both of whom I found terrific in their roles overall — is easy and pleasant, albeit mannered, not unlike a Sofia Coppola production. But the inciting meet-cute feels just a touch too incredulous; I don't really sense that either of these people, so insular in their own ways, would readily strike up this kind of conversation, nor that their relationship would progress so quickly. The contrivance of the core plot feels at odds with everything else in the film. Compare this with Paterson , where the time we spend in Paterson's world finds him already completely established. Casey, by contrast, is a creature of transition — very sweet and smart but unconvincingly so, since we spend a lot of time hearing it from other characters rather than witnessing it ourselves. Her character is that of a dream-like abstraction, idealized and faintly abstract and slightly transparent. Still, these are reasons I didn't love this film, not reasons I didn't think it was very good. I'd recommend it to anyone, even if the central melodrama feels faintly contrived.

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Justin Duke 3 months ago

Vanya on 42nd Street

This is, as far as I can tell, the first movie I've ever watched on the strength of an algorithmic recommendation — and the fact that it is now one of my favorite films speaks to something about how good these tools are getting. 1 Certainly not taste , but correlation . It is both correct and insufficient to describe this film as "a taping of André Gregory's adaptation of Mamet's translation of Uncle Vanya." Malle is diegetically mischievous: quick asides from the director, establishing shots of the actors as they file into a dilapidated downtown playhouse, the mundane rituals of preparation. And then the setup becomes the rehearsal (like a very gentle jump scare), and then the rehearsal becomes the play itself. I wrote last week about Stop Making Sense : What Demme captures here is that same indelible feel of the best live music, where you feel in the same breath and beat both completely alone and completely surrounded by the only people who matter: building, building, higher, higher. Something similar could be said here. Both films understand that the most powerful thing you can do with a camera pointed at a performance is to make the audience forget the camera exists. And, indeed, much of this enchanting two hours is in forgetting — the lack of set, the lack of wardrobe, the lack of framing device — until, at last, Brooke Smith delivers the final monologue and Gregory emerges from the shadows, and the beautiful spell is over. (As good as that monologue was, and as great as Smith's performance is, it somehow ranks second to Drive My Car in terms of best I've seen.) I'm sure Malle is using the staging — the crumbling New Amsterdam Theatre, street clothes instead of costumes, coffee cups on card tables — to say interesting things about the New York art scene, about the precarity and stubborn vitality of downtown theatre. Perhaps I will try hard to pay attention to that on a second viewing, in much the same way I always try hard to, upon waking from a dream, remember the next one.

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Justin Duke 3 months ago

L.A. Confidential

I'm not sure why, but this movie was not at all what I thought it was going to be. I don't just mean in terms of quality — though it certainly was better than I was assuming — but in terms of kind . In my head, this film was fairly generic crime fodder of the sort typical in the late nineties (perhaps it's the generic name that threw me off base). Instead, it was — and I truly don't mean this as damning with faint praise — an incredibly competent, efficient, and propulsive movie that does not reinvent or transcend its genre but at its best is an exemplar of it. The three leads are all very good. I learned that this was Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe's sort of coming-out performance stateside, the one that launched their respective careers. And they both felt, in my viewing, a little too well-calibrated to the tastes of nineties cinema: Crowe a little too ridiculous as the hothead, Pearce's character a little too pat and stone-faced. But both were really fun. And it made me appreciate Crowe's performance in The Nice Guys more retrospectively, as it's very much in conversation with his earlier work here. That being said! Spacey absolutely dog-walks the two of them. Everything that Spacey is well known for as an actor is on full display — his entire performance is a mask. And his send-off is just as compelling as what brought him there. If there's one complaint I'd level purely from a plotting-and-structure perspective, it's that the film undoubtedly loses something with his departure. This is an adaptation of James Ellroy's once-famous novel, and it's interesting to think about what gets lost in the adaptation. The book is an epic less concerned with gangsterdom and corruption per se than with power — the structures that build it, the people who wield it, the compromises it demands. The film necessarily compresses all of that into something tighter and more conventional, and what you gain in propulsion you lose in scope. But what a propulsive thing it is.

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