Baby Driver
If you expect Baby Driver to be anything like Hot Fuzz. Don't! If you expect Baby Driver to be anything like Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. Don't! If you expect Baby Driver to be anything like Last Night In Soho. Don't! The director of Baby Driver, Edgar Wright set for himself a challenge to make every next movie he does in a different genre. Therefor you get absolutely different effects from his movies. Even though there are obvious Edgar Wright tropes in every one of his movies.
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?
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."
Riddle Of Fire
There is a sub genre of film which includes my movie Moria's Race and things like Spy Kids. Those are movies where child characters are opposing adults. And winning them. But there is a kind of spectrum in this sub genre. Spy Kids franchise, for example, is very clean and sterile. Trying as hard as possible to get a good age rating. While others might get a bit riskier. Riddle Of Fire is one such film.
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.
Software Trustworthyness Scale
If you leave, suspended in air, an object of any kind, it will accelerate toward the center of the earth at about 9.8 meters per second per second. This is how we measure gravity. On the moon the gravity is only 16.5% of earth's since objects on it's surface accelerate towards it's center at roughly 1.6 meters per second per second. Knowing both values we can see how much more gravity there is on earth than on the moon. And we can decide a bunch of things based on these observations.
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.
Is Tolerance The Right Word
I do not know how to put it into words, therefor I'm trying to write this article, but it seems like the question of tolerance / intolerance is the wrong kind of question. And it seems like this poor choice of a word to describe a correct concept lead us into the divide that we are experiencing today.
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.
Vampire's Kiss
Francis Ford Coppola, a director behind things like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now did not direct Vampire's Kiss. It was directed by Robert Bierman. A director who did mostly work for TV. And who's directing style is not necessarily bad. I don't think he is bad. The movies do not feel terribly directed. It's just it seems that as a director he is not necessarily exciting.
Spy Kids Armageddon
I did not expect Spy Kids Armageddon to be any good. It is written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. A guy who doesn't care about quality that much. His view on film-making was shaped by his first filming experience in 1992 when he made El Mariachi. A movie so cheap that it was weird to a lot of people that it was an action film. Rodriguez has this idea that he can cheat his way into making anything at all. Using as he says "creativity instead of money". So most of his movies tend to look like the Star Wars prequels. A lot of pretty noticeable green screen. Tons of CGI where most other people would use practical props. And strange camera work which is probably more dictated by the limitations of his methods, and not by actual directorial decisions.
Lars and the Real Girl
It was very nice to have a marathon of Ryan Gosling movies, because I stumbled upon this unique masterpiece. Lars and the Real Girl is a story about a sad relationship. About a man named Lars and his girl named Bianca who is sick and getting worse and worse with every passing day. The twist is, Bianca is actually a live sized sex doll.
What Lies Beneath
Have you ever wondered what would Alfred Hitchcock do in the age of CGI and VFX? What kind of strange insane shorts he would come up with? Well Robert Zemeckis set out for himself a challenge to find out. He is notorious for using visual effects creatively. A lot of people might be familiar with the mirror shot he did in the film Contact. So something like trying to make a Hitchcockian thriller of the 21st century was just about the right kind of thing for Zemeckis.
Addons For SuperTuxKart
There is this game called SuperTuxKart that I didn't develop. But which is among the best Free Software games out there. And they have a way to make and publish addons. This is a list of addons that I made for SuperTuxKart.
Dumb Phones
"You know they are listening to us this very moment?" - said Jake to Tom on a party one night. "What are you talking about?" - Tom was obviously confused. So Jake had to continue - "You know the Facebook app and the Google app on your phone is constantly recording what we have to say to each other, forming an opinions on us. They claim it's for advertising. But they can use it for anything they want. You know?". Tom looked at Jake with a slight smile. He knew he had a very good comeback. After a short pause Tom said - "I use a dumb phone." - and went into the party. But Jake didn't stop feeling bad. Jake didn't use no phone at all.
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 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?
Call Me By Your Name
Being a fan of mostly action cinema, and plot heavy thrillers makes it feel as if Call Me By Your Name has no plot what so ever. But it is a mistake. Luca Guadagnino is a kind of director that tends to film very subtle movies. But if you are paying attention and you are invested in the characters themselves, those movies tend to have very strong effects. This is why I love Call Me By Your Name so much. It is as if I went on a vacation to Italy myself and spent my time with the characters of this movie. As if I had become their friend. And as if I myself got invested in their day to day little struggles.
Little Naomi
In 2020 I had a lot of spare time and not a lot of what to do. This is when I started the Moria's Race project. And this is when I wrote Little Naomi. An album that should be listened in whole in the right order, since each song is a scene in a tragic love story.