Film

Labyrinthine and awkward

October 25

But my very first memory was the Jim Henson film, Labyrinth. This has to be, without doubt, the creepiest Muppet film ever. I reacted strongly to the film as a child: frustration, intrigue, terror, revulsion, surprise, delight, and an awkward boyhood crush on Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, the heroine. It was a powerful film, not least because of David Bowie as Jareth. Evil and allure, Bowie is my archetypal Goblin King.

~ Brenton Dickieson, from https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2016/01/11/echoes-in-the-labyrinth/

I agree with this entire post. As in: OMGYESPLEASE jumping up flipping my desk. It’s now been 8 years since Bowie died… and I very nearly rewatched Labyrinth just because of this post. “Evil and allure” in every direction, indeed. Muppets and kidnapped children. Beauty and horror.

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My mind is an emulation

October 20

My mind is [apparently] a poor emulation of every movie ever created.

I mean, can you reliably tell whether you are an actual human in base reality or an upload/simulation?

Or to extend this even further:

Is there any text conversation that somebody could have with you that would convince you that you are actually a machine?

What a weapon that would be. What a cursed SMS that would be to receive.

IF YOU’RE READING THIS, YOU’VE BEEN IN A COMA FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS NOW. WE’RE TRYING A NEW TECHNIQUE. WE DON’T KNOW WHERE THIS MESSAGE WILL END UP IN YOUR DREAM, BUT WE HOPE WE’RE GETTING THROUGH.

~ Matt Webb, from Turing test variations

First off, there are three different things I wanted to quote and three different directions. Go read the thing. I wish I had written it. Hello? Could the programmers running my brain in the simulation please drop the upgrade soon?! I digress.

As I read the above (the bit I quoted) I had a few thoughts…

One — There’s an idea—I recall it being called a “scissors” or a “shears”—which breaks a mind (human, but the discussion was also about an AI’s mind) once you have the idea. I mean: There’s a discussion of whether or not there can exist such a scissors. I’m sure I’ve read about this; I would have swore I blogged about it. But I can’t even find the discussion on the Internet. What I have found is discussion about the discussion with references to the discussion being deleted and moderator-blocked for a few years. Apparently, because if such a scissors actually exists . . . *bonk* Therefore, my first thought after reading the quoted bit above is that I think that “scissors” once broke my brain, and caused an emulator crash. And the information was mostly erased before I was restarted.

Two — Have you seen the film, The Thirteenth Floor? No spoiler! Go watch.

Three — Making this connection, as I read, made the hair stand up on my arms. Have you see the film, Prince of Darkness? No Spoiler! Go watch.

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Filed and lost

August 12

Taking notes on the books I read was a great start, but it wasn’t enough. It did me no good to leave those notes sitting in a software program like a musty filing cabinet in the basement, never to see the light of day again.

I realized if I wanted to benefit from my reading, I needed to engage with the books I read on a much deeper level. I needed to make something out of them. Otherwise, I would continue to passively consume information with no lasting memory of what I learned.

~ Tiago Forte, from The Ultimate Guide to Summarizing Books

Has anyone noticed that’s what I’m attempting to do with all my blogging and writing? Shirley, that’s obvious. (It’s not obvious, and don’t call me Shirley.)

I’ve always deeply loved movies. I was raised (on hose water and neglect) in the era when going to a movie was special. Remember when you had to use the phone (with a rotary dial, mounted on the wall) to call the theatre and listen to a looooong recording detailing what was playing and when? I could tell you so so so many stories about going to the movies. In more recent issues of 7 for Sunday, I’m feeling less inclined to stomp down the inside-joke movie references. If you find them even half as enjoyable to read, as I do to write them, then we’re both better off. I’m pretty sure that my recalling and retelling of all those stories about and around movies makes the entire movie experience more fun; yes the experience during the movie, but also all the stuff around it too.

No, I’ve not lost my own plot. Forte’s point about how to benefit from what one reads is the same thing. If you want to hold on to whatever it was that you’ve gotten from a book… you have to integrate it with the rest of your ongoing, lived experience. You have to go around telling the story of who gave you the book, what the book means to you in the context of your entire life, and what you think your interlocutor might get from it (like this, this, this, this, this, this or… you get my point.)

And as soon as you realize that’s fun for movies, and great for books, you should wonder if it could be a super-power for self-improvement if you could share the contents of your mind, with yourself, in that same fashion. Two suggestions: Start journaling immediately after reading this issue of 7 for Sunday, so you can then begin in a year, to regularly review your journals.

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A way of seeing

July 31

As a filmmaker, you have a way of seeing things that is inherent in any telling of a story. You read a book, and images form in your mind, and as a director, you explain those images to the crew members. That’s what directing is, that’s what they mean when they say explaining your vision. So for me, it’s really not about any conscious desire to imprint a style. It’s simply: here’s how I see it. This is my understanding of the material. This is what affected me, here’s when I cried, we need to make sure that this moment is real, we need to make sure that your your heart is broken like I felt when I read the script. It’s about communicating exactly what you feel. And that’s the art of directing.

~ Sam Rami, from https://the-talks.com/interview/sam-raimi

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I find I’m often confused by having too many options. I can get far into the weeds exploring all the possible way to do something. Instead, I truly believe that after enough time practicing some creative endeavor, it’s more important to simply follow your own feeling. Follow your own inspiration. “This is what I feel I want to do,” becomes the correct compass to follow. It’s simply: Here’s how I see it.

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Will it last?

July 18

[How do you know if something will last or not?] Well, you don’t! That’s a form of arrogance! I think that if you can somehow tell some kind of truth or at least get to some sense of truth… Then it will last. Because then you’ve reached some kind of primal understanding of something that will transport you over time. But I don’t sit here and say, “Is this going to be great and last?” I don’t think so. I just try to make it something that has a sense of something that matters, you know, that makes it of value.

~ Eric Roth, from Eric Roth

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Eric Roth wrote the screenplay for Forrest Gump, an adaptation of the book.

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Hidden gems

April 14

Suppose you wanted to be surprised and delighted (and possibly intrigued and befuddled) in some field. You could start with the Top 10. Today, I’m talking about movies, so find some list of the 10 Greatest Films. This sort of listing is ubiquitous: 10 Greatest Dramas, 100 Films preserved by the U.S. Library of Congress, The British Film Institute’s (BFI) 100 Greatest Films, and on and on.

The following list from BFI is not that sort of list. Not at all.

Each of these films is one of the greatest according to just one voter in our recent Greatest Films of All Time poll; they are some of the hidden gems among the more than 4,300 films voted for by more than 2,000 participants. (For the pedantic reader, the films that got one vote each – more than we can fit in here – are all technically joint 1,956th greatest film of all time, combining the tallies of our critics’ and directors’ polls.)

~ from https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/lists/101-hidden-gems-greatest-films-youve-never-seen

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Effectively, that’s a list of 101 movies which all tied for last place, in list of the top 2,000-or-so movies. Above, the BFI is showing an entirely different way to be surprised and delighted (and possibly intrigued and befuddled): Find one person who is into the thing way more than you, and ask them for a list of the greatest. On their list, it is likely there will be one which they recommend, that no one else would recommend. What is up with that one recommendation?

Any big list is created by many people collaborating and, in the end, averaging out their individual tastes. But if you ask that one really-into-it person, you’ll get a very surprising and delightful (and probably intriguing and befuddling) opinion.

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There’s no “Fin!”

November 6, 2023

In the last 20 years I’ve made three false–starts at sketching. They parallel my personal growth. The first false–start involved me buying books and materials, and spending a lot of time setting things up to create what I thought was the perfect environment. No sketching happened. The second false–start involved my removing what I thought was a barrier; I switched to journaling in pencil (a multi-year side quest I eventually returned from loving ink more deeply) because I thought having the sketching tools before me more often would lead to sketching. The third false-start now happens once every few weeks: I find myself paused, looking at something, really seeing, and I notice an urge to sketch.

I came late to his work: I remember seeing him on TV when I was a kid, but I only really started reading him post-cancer, around 2010 or so, when he was in the middle of his great blogging explosion caused by losing his voice due to his health complications.

~ Austin Kleon from, https://austinkleon.com/2023/04/04/10-years-without-roger-ebert/

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The connection is that Roger Ebert did a lot of sketching in addition to a lot of writing.

This time of year, every year, I’m thinking about seasons of life at large, and cycles in our work. I find that it’s fulfilling when I finish some large thing— when the last piece of a large project clicks into place like the final jigsaw piece. What doesn’t work is when I imagine that feeling of fulfillment too soon. I do try to imagine what done looks like before I begin small things—few-hours sized things, days sized things. But for large things, it’s often better if I think of a few possible ways it could eventually be “done” and then simply get to work. It’s best if I remember there’s no tidy “Fin!” like at the end of a movie; There’s only the doing.

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Kino Lorber

December 28, 2022

Go to this YouTube channel: Kino Lorber, click Playlists and then view the Free Documentaries (80 feature-length films) or the Free Movies on Demand playlist (145 films.) Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company; I thought it was a person when I first heard mention of this.

Now try this experiment: Pick a documentary (try Filmworker if you know who Stanley Kubrick is, M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity if you have eyes, or Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil if painting is more your thing.) Watch the movie. Then reflect on the experience of watching a feature–length documentary, versus say, modern “serial” shows. I’ve relearned just how bad modern entertainment can be, when I reminded myself just how good film can be. (Surprise bonus-round: Watch The Atomic Café and be gobsmacked, horrified, and… some-other-feeling-I-can’t-quite-find-the-right-word-for in repeated cycles.)

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Please be kind: Rewind

December 2, 2022

[We] didn’t discover his work in the theater, much less at Cannes. Rather, we found it at the video store, ideally one that devoted a section specifically to his work—or at least to his signature genre of “body horror,” which his films would in any case have dominated.

~ Colin Marshall from, https://www.openculture.com/2022/05/david-cronenberg-visits-a-video-store-talks-about-his-favorite-movies.html

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Do you remember video stores? …I mean the individual stores, from before Blockbuster came along? Sections. You had to walk to the section in the store. New releases. Maybe there was a staple employee who knew every movie. Maybe you—like me—wondered if working there meant watching each movie before putting it out… what a job that would be!! Maybe there was a hand-written sign whose perennial message stands atop this missive. Maybe family movie nights? The lottery that was the occassional “doesn’t play” tape. “Tracking”—and then the magic of “Auto Tracking”. And all of that from two words: video store.

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Vignettes

May 22, 2022

I was chatting with my old friend Arthur over a continental breakfast at the Hotel Palomar.

~ Dave Pell from, https://nextdraft.com/2017/04/02/the-cell-phone-time-machine/

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I’m deeply in lust for vignettes. I’ve quoted the opening of the short piece and I’m saying nothing further about it. Although, I’ll happily arrange a few more bytes about vignettes.

You see, I’m a sucker for cuts; Cuts in the sense where one visual transitions to another exactly in the way that the real world doesn’t. (With a hat tip to Douglas Adams if that last turn of phrase feels familiar.) Movies like Up, or Bicentennial Man—which I love, but most people seem to pan—or check out the “Epilogue” in the movie, Cherry, (on AppleTV. Get AppleTV for a month just to watch this movie.) I’m a sucker for Vignettes that give you just enough information for you to navigate… and leave to your own devices to pull up your own memories, and to yank on your own heart strings.

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The real fake-it-til-you-make-it

August 11, 2021

The improvements in Eliza’s speech alone do not confer the opportunities. But being able to speak like a duchess puts her in the company of people from whom she can learn the sentiments and sensibilities of the upper class. When she begins to speak like them, they treat her differently, giving her an opening to expand her capabilities.

~ Shane Parrish from, https://fs.blog/2021/05/the-pygmalion-effect/

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I’ve always been unhappy with the phrase, “fake it ’til you make it.” It’s always seemed that there was something missing. (Yes, sure, it’s meant to be short and simple, not long and accurate.) But this bit from Parrish hits it on the head.

By acting as if I already were the thing I want to be, I’m practicing being the thing. That’s obvious. What’s not obvious is that doing so creates a positive feedback loop as other people then treat me as if I really were the thing. I make a change, and then as if by magic, other people offer me new opportunities. I use the work magic because what I might change—for example, how I speak, as in Eliza’s case—should have no bearing on what opportunities I am offered. But it does.

Why? Other. People.

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Zoomed way, way out

August 4, 2021

It’s true that such adaptations are now anachronistic; they have lost their relevance. But the trees have been slow to catch on; a natural consequence of the pace of evolution. For a tree that lives, say, 250 years, 13,000 years represents only 52 generations. In an evolutionary sense, the trees don’t yet realize that the megafauna are gone.

~ Whit Bronaugh from, https://blog.longnow.org/02014/06/24/ecological-anachronisms/

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There’s an effect in film making which you’ve seen but may not have realized exactly what you were seeing: The dolly zoom shot. “The dolly zoom is a famous technique invented by Alfred Hitchcock for his 1958 film Vertigo. The shot is achieved by simultaneously tracking backwards or forwards while zooming in or out.”

The narrator is too breathless for my tastes, but still, take a few minutes to watch this explanation of the dolly-zoom. You can thank me later: https://nofilmschool.com/2017/05/watch-what-dolly-zoom-can-do-you

Ahem. Now, back to my top-quote and what I wanted to say in the first place…

Text-based, disorienting dolly-zoom!

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Meridian

April 26, 2021

So meta even this movie?!

Yes, I really should never be watching visual entertainment. But sometimes the day goes so insanely well, that I have to choose what to do with the last hour or so of my day: Start something else, or choose some entertainment. Why I sometimes choose entertainment is left for another day. I digress.

I watched this 10 minute long film called Meridian the other day. Film Noir. Clearly a new movie, but set in 1947 Los Angeles. Hard boiled detective and a green partner. Mysterious woman. Missing people. The ocean, freak storms. It was almost surreal—parts of it definitely were. It has a story, but no resolution. Sometimes you just have to Wikipedia…

oh! Now I get it. It is literally a digital codec test piece. Really, go read the short Wikipedia article on, Meridian (film).

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Villians and a new word

April 23, 2021

If you do not know the cinema-history relevance of the movie, Rashomon—no, not Rushmore—please check out the Wikipedia article. I’m not suggesting you watch the movie; You will not like it. (If you are the sort of person who would enjoy the movie, then you have already seen it!)

The villain in Rashomon is humanity’s craven need to present itself in a positive light, even if it must perjure itself shamelessly to achieve this.

~ Steven Pressfield from, https://stevenpressfield.com/2019/01/kurosawa-on-villains/

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That is the greatest one sentence summary of Rashomon I have ever seen.

Unrelated, that piece by Pressfield talks about how villains may have evolved in the past to become who they are, but that they certainly are no longer changing.

Question: Does that make me a villain if I am no longer changing?

Also, new word [to me], “helpmeet”— No, there is not a missing space there.

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Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss…

December 12, 2020

A year passed. Winter changed into Spring. Spring changed into Summer. Summer changed back into Winter. And Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss and went straight on into Autumn. Until one day…

~ Monty Python from, The Holy Grail

Some things just stick with you. If you know me well, you know I’m particularly fond of linguistic turns where the sarcasm comes back ’round to flip the original. “This is actually pretty good. [said of anything or anyone] It really grows on you.” Me, “yeah, like fungus.” Etc.. Anyway, that line from Monty Python has always stuck in my mind—something to do with the cutesie animation that goes with it, something about the rapid-fire delivery, and probably just mostly how it stomps all over our deep seated human love of the “seasons” metaphor.

“And now for something completely different.”

I was watching a movie about Ip Man last night. (Grandmaster on Netflix; Chinese-language film, it’s a kung fu film. Anyway.) Ip is narrating in various parts as the movie tells his story. At one point he says, “If life has seasons, the first 40 years of my life [where he was happily married with 3 kids] was Spring…” and all of the above popped into my head at, “…and the Japanese invaded in 1930 and things jumped straight to Winter.”

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Make hay

August 12, 2020

“Make hay while the sun shines,” is an old proverb; We’re still using it today, 500 years after it’s first written mention. It contains deep wisdom which counsels taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. It’s taken me a loong time to get used to the fact that what I see as an opportunity, and what I see as a chore, (or work—however you care to phrase that,) are quite fluid. There’s an ebb and flow to what I want to engage in. Some things which most [sane] people would consider a complete suffer-festival—”omg why would you want to do that?!”—are the things I skip happily towards when the proverbial sun is shining. A day or two later, the things I was skipping away from become the things I’m marching back towards to whistle while I work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83bmsluWHZc

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Slight surprise with a dash of interest

March 9, 2020

There are, I think, several reasons Hollywood movies often don’t get as much science input as they should. The first is that movie-makers usually just aren’t sensitive to the “science texture” of their movies. They can tell if things are out of whack at a human level, but they typically can’t tell if something is scientifically off. Sometimes they’ll get as far as calling a local university for help, but too often they’re sent to a hyper-specialized academic who’ll not-very-usefully tell them their whole story is wrong. Of course, to be fair, science content usually doesn’t make or break movies. But I think having good science content—like, say, good set design—can help elevate a good movie to greatness.

~ Stephen Wolfram from, https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-the-alien-spacecraft-work/

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But first, how exactly does one represent in written from, that sound one makes upon encountering something both slightly surprising and interesting? “Huh,” seems more like the sound one makes upon hearing something about which one is incredulous. For example: “Your Goldfish is escaping on foot!” “Huh?” Instead, I feel I need a word with a little touch of an ‘n’ in it to downplay the puzzlement by making the word less punchy; “That spaceship hangs in the air much in the way bricks don’t.” “Hunh.” That reads better, yes? Obviously, this is easily resolved via inflection when spoken, but there’s no clear written convention. So, okay, I’ll go with “hunh” to express slight surprise with a dash of interest.

hunh. I stumbled over the movie Arrival in Netflix back in 2018, and sort of enjoyed it.

Say what you will about Stephen Wolfram. I’m not referring to the fact that he was directly involved as being a point for, or against, the movie. Rather, I’m interested in his point—which I’m loosely reshaping here—that people who have a good feel for people make good movies about people. Given that the vast majority of people are bad at science, then most people who make movies would make bad movies about science.

Ironically, I’d argue that Arrival is a good science fiction movie, but not a good movie about people.

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