Barbie
I was not sure if I wanted to see Barbie. I certainly didn't want to see it together with Oppenheimer. But the funny thing is, I still didn't review Oppenheimer, while here I am reviewing Barbie. I think I have the same reason here as with Nope as of why I avoided it. You know Nope was directed by a black man. And it was one of its main selling points. Barbie is directed by a woman. And everybody is talking about it. And it feels forced to watch a movie for that kind of reason. So I avoided Barbie until now. But since I had a Ryan Gosling marathon, I though that I might as well get into this film. And oh my god. I have thoughts!
Paying With Freedom
"Your honor..." - said the lawyer, standing in a court, which was being broadcast on a screen in the living-room of Mr. Hambleton's house - "...there is no denying that my client is guilty in the murders of all of those people that were mentioned in the case so far. The evidence provided by the police are undeniable. The jury would also agree that the fact that my client did commit all those murders are beyond reasonable doubt. And my client doesn't try to conceal this fact either. Right?" - the lawyer looked at the cage standing in the corner of the court room. There was sitting a man. He had chains all over him. Two policemen were guarding the cage itself. The man looked up, exchanged a stare of understanding with the lawyer and said - "I did commit those murders, sir."
Manipulation
Some software employ Dark Patterns and Manipulation to gain something from users.
Back Door
Back Door is a form of malicious feature in which the program is configured to respond to commands sent to it from the developer. A Universal Back Door is an ability of the developer to remotely change the program to do anything the developer desires it to do. Sometimes Universal Back Doors are called "Auto-Update".
The Ultimate Paradox Of Freedom
Is it freedom to be rebellious? Or is it just an uncontrollable reaction? There is this concept called Reverse Psychology which suggests that sometimes to obtain a wanted result from somebody it's better to push that somebody in the opposite direction. But reverse psychology doesn't work always. Only when the person feels like his or her freedom is at stake. For example when a parent doesn't allow a teenager to engage in a particular activity. The parent might not be an inherently evil person. He might not desire to exercise any kind of power. He maybe just really wants to protect the teenager. But the teenager feels like his or her freedom is being betrayed and taken away. So they rebel. Is it freedom to be rebellious, though? Or is it just an uncontrollable reaction? Is there freedom at all? Or is it just a big paradox?
Super 8
People accuse me of many bad things for making a movie where kids go against their parents into dangerous situations. Apparently they never seen Super 8. One criticism I hear often about Super 8 is that the kids in this film are way too brave! No wonder Steven Spielberg is attached to this project. He made and produced a fair share of anti-ageism films in his career.
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
During the making of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Steven Spielberg was already kind of a big man in Hollywood. But from the other side he was still young. Technically speaking this was his third theatrical film. He did work for television from the late 60s. At that time he already directed a number of feature length TV movies. One of them was the famous Duel. And then he did only 2 theatrical pictures: the 1972's The Sugarland Express and the 1974's Jaws. And now there is this movie.
RRR
A movie titled simply "RRR" is perhaps the greatest achievement in the entire Indian cinema landscape. You are probably familiar with the term "Bollywood". There is a misunderstanding in the world that Bollywood simply means Indian cinema. It's not necessarily true. Bollywood is Indian cinema from the center of India. And Bollywood movies all shot in the Hindi language. India has a dozen or so states and a dozen or so languages. Each state and even each little region of those states have different languages and dialects. RRR was made in the state called Andra Pradesh ( Telugu: ఆంధ్రప్రదేశ్ ) where people speak Telugu ( Telugu: తెలుగు ). And the movie is a part of Tollywood, not Bollywood. Though quite frankly, even that is not true, since the director of the film Koduri Srisaila Sri Rajamouli ( Telugu: కోడూరి శ్రీశైల శ్రీ రాజమౌళి ) known as simply S. S. Rajamouli ( Telugu: ఎస్. ఎస్. రాజమౌళి ) treated this film as an all Indian movie, using actors from different states of India, and dubbing the film into multiple Indian languages. Making the film Indian in general, not simply Tollywood.
A Haunting In Venice
Sir Kenneth Branagh! That's the end of the review. Just kidding. A Haunting In Venice is the new picture directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Kenneth Branagh which is a kind of a sub-genre of films of it's own. Branagh started his directorial career by directing a movie where he played the main role. And continued directing movies where he played the main roles ever since. Of course sometimes he might make a movie where he plays not the main character, like the 1992's Peter's Friends where Peter is played by Stephen Fry. And Branagh just has a very big role in it. And sometimes he plays in movies where he is not the director. Like in Dunkirk, Tenet and Oppenheimer all directed by Christopher Nolan. Of course lately he got himself directing jobs where he didn't cast himself what so ever. Like in Marvel's Thor ( where the actor was cast by Marvel ) or Disney's Cinderella where for obvious reasons a middle aged man cannot play the main character. But most of the time he plays the main character in the films he directs. It kind of became a meme at this point that if Branagh directs a film, most likely he plays the main character.
Drive
It is very strange to me that this is the first time I review anything by Nicolas Winding Refn here. I love this director and his style a lot. The movie Drive is perhaps the best introduction to him that you could ever get. It is his fastest paced movie ( apart from maybe Bronson ). He likes to be very slow. Drive is paced more or less like a normal film. That is why, if you want to start getting yourself into Nicolas Winging Refn I would recommend starting from Drive.
The Nightmare Of Paying Online
Cryptocurrency should have been the savior of the world from over-reaching control of governments and banks. But while on paper it could have worked. The reality is way worse. There was a store next to where I live that until a few years ago advertised that they can be paid with Bitcoin. The notice is now removed, probably due to the bursting of the crypto bubble, which lead to a rapid decrease of value of many cryptocurrencies.
I'm Not Even Human Soundtrack
I'm Not Even Human ( a film that I made in 2018 ) has an original score written by me. This original score is also the first time I used MIDI to compose music instead of playing it on the electric piano. The first song "Explosion" was originally composed and recorded using the piano, but the sound quality of the piano was nowhere near where I wanted it to be for the movie. So for the first time I touched MIDI and redone the song in MIDI, which sounded great. So I made all of the original score for the movie in MIDI apart from 3 songs. The Bill's Into was recorded with live guitar. Abstraktation was improvised on the piano. And the final Bonus Track was recorded the same way as my album The Pentas.
The 8 Yr Olds
The 8 Year Olds - is a horror / mystery / detective movie project. The story is about a police case of a serial killer who kills only 8 year olds. And the movie is about finding who he is and stopping him.
3 Things Keeping Us From True Freedom
Freedom is something we all fight for. Some succeed more than others. But there is no fully Free society yet in the world. By fully Free I don't mean a total anarchy. This would not be fully Free since it would be possible for people to have power over other people. Which is not freedom already. It's a different form of control. But fully Free means that every person would have the most freedom that person can have without it becoming power. This is very far from the situation right now.
Tethering
Some software is being developed in such a way that they are always Tethered to a server on the internet in order to function. If the server stops working, the program becomes obsolete. Unless the server's software is published in such a way that anybody can host it, this kind of Tethering is malicious.
The Peach Scene
It was one of those days when Mr. Humbert invited Sheiny and Chloe to watch a random movie in his dirty cinema. They avoided films shot in 16:9 aspect ratio since, well, Mr. Humbert's screen was an ultra-wide, curved CinemaScope. 16:9 films looked rather strange on this screen. But it seems like, this time, they were bored of the ultra-wide movies.
Forcing Cashless
This article will be strangely related to something I had experienced just recently. And quite frankly somewhat related to the Moria's Race project. I will talk about means, or in this particular case, a mean, that governments sometimes use to push people into doing what the governments like people to do.
Digital Restrictions Management
Digital Restrictions Management or DRM is any software functionality that is designed to prevent you from using the files on your computer the way you want to use those files. This is obviously a malicious feature. And is defective by design.
Why Morias Race Flopped So Fucking Hard
As you maybe already know ( but actually how would you, nobody reads my articles anyway ) Moria's Race, the movie I've been making for 3 and half years is a worthless piece of shit that nobody wants to see. I could blame people for not wanting to see it. And would be a worthless piece of shit myself doing so, but instead I think I should unleash my deepest fears onto this god forgotten page, so if there is a poor sole actually reading my ramblings, this poor sole could learn how terrible the situation truly is. But to be frank, I am writing it as a form of psychological coping mechanism.
School Shootings: More Or Less Guns
It seems like United States of America has a unique problem related to guns. I certainly don't remember being taught at school in Israel or earlier in Ukraine about how to survive a potential gun shooting by a rouge student or other kind of terrible person. Here in Israel they do point us to the direction of a bomb shelter. So we would know where to run when a siren is heard. But that's about it.