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.
The Case for Libre JS
There is a problem which requires a problem to solve. There is a freedom to obtain by loosing some freedom. And yet while it's counter-intuitive to some people, what you loose really is not really that which is freedom. Rather it is convenience that which you have to loose. And instead you will get other forms of convenience.
Julian Assange vs Josiah Mizukami
Imagine being locked up in prison for something that's legal. And not even merely legal. For something that is a human right. There is this very small human right, I don't know if you know about it, it's called the Freedom Of Speech. An ability to express your opinion without being persecuted for it. And it's more than essential. It's the cornerstone of things like Freedom in general. Sometimes though bad people that are trying to persecute you for this anyway - are smart. And they will look for any other way of shutting you up if this one is not available for them. Good example is Julian Assange. Not so good example could potentially be Josiah Mizukami.
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.
Are You Sure That You Remember
Unfinished book about future where freedom is established much better than today. If we look few hundred years into the past, people had less freedom than people have now. So optimistically in future people will even more freedom. Thought, it doesn't mean that the characters will live a care-free problem-free life. Quite the contrary. With freedom comes responsibility. With freedom comes a huge amount of strange situations. And of course, there is the obvious question. How the hell people sell things in the future?
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.
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.
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.
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!
Crazy Stupid Love
I decided to give myself somewhat of a Ryan Gosling marathon, after re-watching Drive the other day. I gave myself a challenge though. I didn't want to watch the stuff I already like. I didn't want "Only God Forgives" ( which I will review soon ). I didn't want "Blade Runner 2049". I wanted something else. Something that I personally would not select normally. And therefor I put Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Breaking The Waves
Lars Von Trier is an interesting filmmaker. He directs mostly very depressing movies that are very hard to watch. Breaking The Waves is an interesting case study in his filmography because on some weird level this is one of the rare examples of a Lars Von Trier film with a happy ending. Even though you could perhaps argue that the ending is nowhere near happy at all.
Quarantine
It was the beginning of 2020. The model of Neonspeedster for Moria's Race was already done. I was sitting at home on the Quarantine. It was the beginning of the corona-virus mayhem. Everybody was locked at home. I was bored. And so I made a MIDI album.
Planned Obsolescence
A lot of electrical devices today have a switch of some kind to deactivate the device after a certain period of time. Sometimes the device just gets annoyingly slow. In any case, it is implemented in software on that device. And the reason for that is Planned Obsolescence. Forcing the user to throw away this device and buy a new one.
Overworked And Underpaid
We all heard by now that the situation in Hollywood is not very good at the moment. A lot of Visual Effects artists are overworked and underpaid resulting in some atrocious CGI like in The Flash 2023. Studios even considering replacing those overworked and underpaid VFX artists with AI technology. Because it can make better images and complain less about its conditions at work.
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?
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.
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.