David Bowie!
David Bowie!
Marketing can be such an immoral, insidious process.
And it takes thousands of people pushing this shit mindlessly, because hey… “It’s just a job, right? Nine to five”.
Physics/nuclear literacy in the general public around the world is lower than bad, even many scientists from other fields seem to be genuinely uninformed or misinformed, then posting wrong and often alarming interpretations in social media, which laymen give weight to because “it’s coming from a scientist”, never mind that their expertise may be in areas of biology or astronomy, nothing to do with the subject they are posting about. And they themselves might have gotten their bad info/interpretation from other figures in academia.
Second layer of enshittification: content creators actively enshittifying their own content, to throttle a perceived weakness in the enshittification system itself - the almighty algorithm.
The philosopher of choice for mediocre self-entitled pricks with delusions of grandeur everywhere.
Ooh… capsaicin-powered hot take!
Back when Australia was still remote and exotic, before Crocodile Dundee even, a lot of people back in the day thought he sang:
“He just smiled and gave me a bit of my sandwich”,
which would have also made for a fantastic lyric in a very silly way.
Don’t forget millions upon millions of low-information, low-empathy voters and non-voters who let it happen, many who still lazily believe that corporations are our friends, that “what’s good for walmart and Exxon is good for 'Murica”, that they are still the client and not the product, and the far-reaching implications of this.
My recommendations to you are as follows:
My favorite Altman film overall probably might have to be The Long Goodbye. Check out how the camera is always moving, if even slightly; there are no static shots. Midway through the movie, the great Sterling Hayden steals the show. And keep an eye out for a very, very young Ahnold Schwarzenegger in a bit role as literal and figurative muscle for the batshit insane bad guy.
Brewster McCloud is a bonkers twisted fantasy that caught me by surprise by how much I enjoyed it, it’s about a kid who:
Also, there are people being killed all over town, and it might have something to do with all this.
Altman came in throwing punches with the noisy background and chaotic dialogue wafting every which way, right from the outset, on MASH and McCabe & Mrs Miller, which is why it’s a good idea to watch his films with English subtitles turned on.
I don’t remember the cacophony being as intense in some of his other early works, like Brewster McCloud, California Split and The Long Goodbye.
But in Nashville, it’s most certainly there, front and center and in your face.
a multi-character parallel storytelling style that is only ever celebrated amongst industry snobs
I’m going to agree with caveats here, because some directors who are actual artists do it for the sake of the film and the challenge of it, as opposed to what I’ll refer to as “industry types”, who do it for the prizes. And some crazy bastards manage to pull it off. Three names come to mind - Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh.
I’ve never seen “Crash” and never wanted to, from what I’ve read, the bland yet heavy-handed results onscreen, plus the lazy reflexive accolades, made me view the whole thing with a cynical eye, like you.
In fact, Robert Altman had a thing or two to say about those “industry types”, in his triumphant early-90s comeback film “The Player”.
Also, do yourself a favor and watch Altman’s “Short Cuts”, to see parallel storytelling at its’ best.
The entire instance seems to be engaged in an opinion shaping campaign
That’s too subtle a statement. It is a willful, bad-faith, full-on attack on objective reality via the rewriting of historical facts, redaction of massive volumes of information and constant aggressive, knee-jerk silencing of voices.
As such, it can also be described as a malicious assault on the mental health of individuals and society as a whole. Their actions a clear example of the type of repressive, miserable society they would have us live in, if given the chance by hook or by crook.
I’ve seen Shadows, Faces and The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie.
The man nearly single-handedly invented independent highbrow cinema in the United States, a gritty and bare urban realism that is as artistically important as the French Nouvelle Vague.
To put it in an oversimplified way, without Cassavettes there is no Scorsese as we know him.
Does this sound like the prototypical clickbait headline title, or what do you say?
I’m gonna go off the beaten path a little here and go with Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild”, chances are the guests haven’t seen it and that film is one helluva ride, it’s got a little bit of something for everyone - comedy, romance, thriller, you name it.
I read the original Foundation trilogy, then all the ones in the Robot, Empire and Foundation series in order of publication, followed by the Benford/Bryn/Bear trilogy.
Then I went back and re-read the original Foundation trilogy, and it still stands out as my favorite thing Asimov ever did.
I gotcha, I was just thinking how Patreon has been vital for nurturing a vast digital ecosystem of content creators who are in it as a labor of love.
EDIT: typo
The same goes for a lot of YouTube channels.
In fact, I opened a Patreon account just to show a little monthly support for an excellent, criminally underrated creator of videos on astronomy and its’ history, ParallaxNick.
Among other topics, the guy recently finished a four-part series on Galileo, a two-parter on Kepler before that, a single on Copernicus before that. By my calculations, I’m guessing a six-part masterpiece on Newton is right around the corner.
Oh, I have a doozy for ya. I’ve got a beauty!
THELMA & LOUISE
in theaters in Mexico, back in the early 90s
was
(wait for it…)
UN FINAL INESPERADO (AN UNEXPECTED ENDING)
Seriously… how dumb do you think your audiences are if you feel the need to hold their hand and spoon-feed them like this? This is taken to a level that doesn’t make sense anymore, the so-called “solution” is so much worse than the perceived “problem”.