How Much Money Am I Losing
When people see my film, or how versed I am in computers, they are often confused. I work a minimum wage job as a cashier. And before that I worked a number of jobs all of which were minimum wage, or slightly above minimum wage. Those jobs aren't particularly challenging, unless they are physical. So I don't have very much to complain. As a cashier I actually enjoy working. I get to talk to various people. And get to sit in front of a computer all day long. So what is there to complain about? Yet, whenever people find out that I know programming or that I can do movies, they often assume that I should not "waste my time" at a job like this, and instead work something a bit more prestigious.
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.
Leon The Professional
There are a couple of movies that are so dear to me that I keep watching the end credits all the way through. Often crying through them. And Leon: The Professional is one of those movies.
Eyes Wide Shut
Fuck! What a great ending of a great director's filmography. Eyes Wide Shut 1999 was the last film directed by Stanley Kubrick, who died towards the end of post-production of this movie. There are rumors that Stanley Kubrick's death is related to the content of this film. And that somebody wasn't very happy with what he did. At that time Stanley Kubrick had the final cut rights at Warner Bros. Meaning that he would be the person that approves the movie that will be shown to the audience. There was a story of somebody overhearing yells at Stanley Kubrick that he can't show that stuff from one of the executives on the movie. And 6 days later Kubrick was dead. Perhaps just a conspiracy theory. But considering what the movie is about, there might be something to those theories.
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.
Is BeamNG Drive a Free Software Game
Once upon the time, I remember feeling utterly unpleasant toward playing racing games where cars did not break. I thought that GTA games, for example, were far more realistic because making mistakes and crashing into something is going to break the car and therefor you have to drive more carefully. Yes I was a strange kid. But I did enjoy games such as Flat Out where the objective is to crash your car as much as possible. I think I liked games that simulate reality, rather then those that are just made for fun. You could imagine how excited I was when I saw videos of this new racing game that came out at about 2013 called BeamNG Drive. A game where cars don't just swap body shapes with pre-modeled deformations. But a game that simulates the destruction fully. Using soft body physics. I didn't play it. At first my computer was way too slow and there was no GNU / Linux support. Then the game became paid. Then I changed from being a mere "Linux user" to being a "GNU / Linux user", which meant that this game is not good for my freedom. But is it though?
Miami Vice
Good film directors tend to take upon themselves projects that risk being misunderstood sometimes. An artist can't just draw the same drawing over and over. He wants to experiment. Director Michael Mann is famous with his films about crime. And the realistic depiction of what crime and police work actually looks like. But if you are doing this over and over, you tend to become interested in something else. Which is terrible for a director who has fans with certain expectations.
Annoyingware
Chloe just entered the room where Sheiny was sitting all alone and typing away at her laptop. Sheiny was too occupied with her movie-script to notice the presence of Chloe in the room. Chloe was scratching her head. She just didn't know how to explain why certain programs are bad for Ivan even if they are not strictly malware. He understood why being careful is important. After that day when the vigilante almost murdered him, he never ever questioned the importance of being safe. Privacy was at most important for him. But Free Software? That is far beyond what's needed for just privacy.
CGI vs AI
I showed my movie Moria's Race in a gas station once. A woman came by, saw it and asked me "Is it AI?". I obviously cringed. Because it wasn't AI, it was CGI. And there is a difference. Well technically there was one AI tool that was used. The open-image-denoise denoiser that comes preinstalled with Blender. But it's not really AI. Or is it?
Plausible Deniability
"I think you may like it" - said Mendel to Sheiny one day as he was looking at his TV screen. He was just browsing the web in search of some interesting things to look about and found an old interview with Jacque Fresco who was talking about an idea for a language of the future. He claimed that the languages of today are to vague and allow for multiple interpretations of the same idea, which allows for things like religion to be so successful and for people like lawyers to have successful jobs. And that in the future people would develop a concrete scientific language which will not allow for misunderstandings. Which will make all people understand each other perfectly. And which will put an end to such things like Plausible Deniability.
Bootstrapping Publicity
Whether you are reading this article from my personal website or anywhere else it doesn't matter much, since I was able to post it in such a way that allowed you to find it and read it. But what if I couldn't do that? Imagine a very simple situation: An editor of a magazine writes an article that the owner of that magazine doesn't like. So he doesn't publish it. Of course that's not the end of the world. The article could be published elsewhere. But what if nobody wants this to be published?
The Vast Of Night
It's so weird to be watching The Vast Of Night almost right after No One Will Save You. One movie has no dialogue, while the other is just dialogue. To be honest, it might seem very strange to make a film so dialogue heavy, if we didn't have people like Quentin Tarantino who shows time and time again that movies with a lot of dialogue can work fantastically.
I'm Still Alive
As I said previously in another article I am in a very bad position financially. To the point that back when I wrote it I believed that I might actually be dead. Later I wrote an update that didn't work much as an update, because it was more a philosophical piece about how I want to get out my problems ( as in how do I justify trying to get out of my problems ). So I hope I will not diviate this time around from actually writing an update.
Is The DeVault Report a Spiteful Metajoke
Oh god, I'm trembling right now in anticipation of hate coming my way for this article. If you want to attack me, you should look no further than at the article I wrote about the subject matter a few articles ago. Or look no further at my stance on the whole matter which many times I had brought up in various things I do. The plots of my films Moria's Race and I'm Not Even Human directly or indirectly deal with the subject matter at hand.
Rebel Moon
If you saw 300 or the Snyder's cut of Justice League you know what to expect from Zachary Edward Snyder. A lot of cool ass slow-mo shots. A lot of detailed frames with a lot of particles and stuff. A lot of mood shots that are there probably only for beauty. And a lot of violent violence. Rebel Moon is not an exception. It is very much a Zack Snyder movie.
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.
The Pentas
Pentas are 5 gong-style round drum-things which are used to play simple melodies. Each one of those is one note in a scale called the Pentatonic scale. If you take the modern western scale with it's 7 notes (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si). The pentatonic scale is the best sounding 5 of those (Do, Re, Mi, Sol, La). The easiest way of achieving the pentatonic scale on a piano would be to play only the black keys. Also the pentatonic scale is quite popular with beginner guitarists. It's rather simple on a fret-board and gives a nice sounding solo when improvising. The Pentas - being my second album, was still recorded during my time learning the guitar. So I used a lot of the pentatotic scale in it. Thought quite frankly, knowing about the other two notes (Fa and Si) I added them quite often still.
Kids Should Be Told More Complex Stories
People are flawed. All of us are. Each has something stupid about. And the funny thing is, it's impossible to avoid people either. We had tried! Lock-downs didn't work. People want to be with other people. And it's preferable that people would be with other people often. Communication is often a key to good psychological state. If we don't want all people to turn to murder maniacs we should never allow lock-downs to happen.
Paternalistic Laws Make Very Little Sense
There are 3 types of laws: Freedom laws; Power laws and Paternalism laws. Freedom laws are those laws we actually like. Free Speech and things like that are all freedom laws. Some freedom laws are less obvious than others. But if the law makes your freedom stronger, it is a freedom law. Power laws are similar. Some people confuse power laws with freedom laws. Power laws are those that give people power. Most obvious examples are laws about censorship. Or laws that state that you can't criticize the government, some countries have that. Those give power to the government over the people. Power laws are any laws that give anybody power. Taking away somebodies else freedom in the process. But then there are paternalism laws.
