Sometimes you can’t think of anything good to write, and that’s a perfectly normal thing a lot of writers struggle with. It just means you committed a great sin and displeased The Lord. It means He has punished you by cutting you off from The Source

This happened years ago with the death of Jeff Lockhart, and it should have led to the dismantling of this juggernaut of reckless corporate greed

You don't really want this. So much of TV is changed and discovered in the process. No master plan survives 13 eps of production. Your actors' abilities and chemistry opens up story paths you never imagined. Other ideas sink like a lead balloon.

Master plans are overrated.

This isn’t some kind of anti parent remark, by the way. It’s just interesting that everyone who has a kid essentially becomes a charity dedicated to one person, such that broader ideas of social goods are easier to dismiss and personal fortunes can be more easily justified

A good editor is the perfect combination of ruthless and kind. Professionalism is the ability to recognize that writer and editor are on the same team, and that means honesty.

it's very frustrating to see everyone hopping on the "national debt" discourse in complete sincerity. buddy we are still "paying off" debt from the civil war. national economies are not your household budget PLEASE stop falling for bush era propaganda that wasn't even that convincing in 2004

public services don't need to turn a profit because they're owned by the entity that invents the money. same goes for medicare/medicaid, and should go for all healthcare, higher education, housing and transit. we do not need to attach profit-seeking a parasite to every exchange of human resources!!!

I wrote an article about why I think the Top Gun franchise functions as propaganda for American imperialism.

#politics #movies #america #film

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ and the Nature of Colonial Violence James Cameron abandons all nuance for revolutionary fervour

"Colonialism, and by extension imperialism, function in the same way as fascism — a successor to the former. That is, they rely on the destruction of the other’s will and consent."

#Oscars #Avatar #GiftArticle

medium.com/theuglymonst...

‘Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood’ and the Nature of Coming of Age Richard Linklater shows us that we are not alone when we grow up

"Richard Linklater’s semi-rotoscoped animated film about a ten-and-a-half-year-old going to space captures the essence of coming-of-age..."

#movies #Medium

medium.com/theuglymonst...

‘Adiós Cuba’: Why Do Cubans Leave Cuba? ‘Adiós Cuba’ sheds some light on history’s most misunderstood migration

"According to some calculations the embargo has cost Cuba around $130 billion since its inception."

#movies

medium.com/theuglymonst...

‘One Battle After Another’, ‘Eddington’ and the Neo-Silent Cinema of the 2020s Silence can be both loud and inspire revolution, or quiet and inspire complicity

"It is no mystery that capitalism frequently subsumes revolution; the reasons, processes, and nature of it are well understood."

#Oscars #movies

medium.com/theuglymonst...

The Thin Red Line — “Every film about war ends up being pro-war” Terrence Malick #3

"The Thin Red Line is an epic in a traditional Hollywood sense. It is a War Epic in a more precise sense. Neither of these labels do the film justice."

#movies #GiftArticle

medium.com/theuglymonst...

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ and the Nature of Colonial Violence James Cameron abandons all nuance for revolutionary fervour

"The ‘Avatar’ saga has never been well known for its originality, but I think it is here...that Cameron transcends his clichés, tropes, and shortcomings to make a valiant statement."

#scifi #movies

medium.com/theuglymonst...

‘Nickel Boys’ Unearths the Ugliness Buried Within America This film is not just about one particularly abusive correctional school

"The legacy of the land of freedom and dreams is built on and steeped in the suffering of the subaltern. In the case of ‘Nickel Boys’ it is Black Americans."

medium.com/theuglymonst...

Yasujirō Ozu, Japanese Film, and the Nature of Tradition The “most Japanese director” challenged the tradition-modernity dialectic

"[Yasujirō] Ozu has frequently been labelled a traditional conservative, or at least sympathetic to traditional Japanese values."

#film #Japan #Medium

medium.com/theuglymonst...

Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate US-made thermal weapons burning at 3,500C caused 2,842 people to "evaporate" in Gaza, Al Jazeera investigation finds.

“Four of my children just evaporated,” Badran said, holding back tears. “I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?”

There are no words to adequately describe the evil here.

💯👇

'Avatar: Fire and Ash' wasn't as well received as the rest but I thought it had the nuance that many want from this sci-fi saga.

#movies #philosophy #politics #avatar

‘Nickel Boys’ Unearths the Ugliness Buried Within America This film is not just about one particularly abusive correctional school

"‘Nickel Boys’ opens with one of the most universal human senses: touch. The film is demanding that we relate to its story. It wants us not just to see but to perceive."

#film

medium.com/theuglymonst...

A 2 panel sketch disgram of a 1 meter tall pod. in the second panel, an oval section pops off and a demonic little face with short tentacles flies out, crudely drawn.

My favorite artifact in the "you don't need AI to do art" discourse is, of course, screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's sketch of the facehugger to explain it to Giger.

Iron Man meme, edited, Obadiah Stane yelling, "Your ancestors made timeless art in a cave! With berries and ash!"

"I need AI to make art, human art is only for the rich and privileged-"

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

we are maybe a few years away from the rise of revenue-sharing newsletter collectives. it'll be a controversy-ridden disaster until someone gets it right and suddenly it becomes a dominant model, and then a year or two later we'll look around and realize we just reinvented newspapers

in any case I hope this is an eye opener for any folks who think having a lot of followers on social media (of any platform) must have it made. about 0.28% of my followers have bought and read my latest comic haha. sm is not NOTHING but it's also not that meaningful in the grand scheme of things

saying "they have their flaws" of the Matrix Sequels is like saying Van Gogh's later work is good despite the ways it flaunts the rules of classical art. the art is in the friction of choice. highbrow or lowbrow, love it or hate it, good art is a series of choices no one else would/could have made

screenshot of the first two paragraphs of a tumblr ask response. the last line is cut off in the middle, meant to entice readers to click through and read the rest. hint hint. Anonymous asked: How do you feel about AI upscaling? hms-no-fun responded: bad. i haven't done much in the way of research on the current meta of "AI" upscaling technology so maybe there's some magical new trick that's suddenly made it work good, but i doubt it. what i can speak to is practical use cases i've found in the wild. on the amateur/consumer end, upscaling gets used to transform low resolution media into high resolution media. you see this a lot with documentary footage from the turn of the 20th century, where horsedrawn carriages are romping down the dirt roads of new york city in 4k60fps and colorized from black and white. like most things "AI"-related, this has a window of genuinely impressive novelty that lasts for about twenty seconds, maybe up to a minute if the result is decent. wow, it's like i'm looking through a window into the past! pretty quickly though you start noticing the smear frames, the interpolated faces, the hallucinated artifacts. watching these upscales for any real length of time, for me at least, rapidly approaches nausea-inducing. most information present in these videos is artificial, which is basically

just posted a little essay about "AI" upscaling and why i'm not a fan.

www.tumblr.com/hms-no-fun/8...

Almost every reason people have for defunding or abolishing ICE is also a reason to defund or abolish the police, yet many people who are rightly calling for action against ICE would never come close to doing to the same for police. But this fight goes beyond just ICE. ICE represents a larger issue.

‘Christine’: The Violence of Possession Possession makes you paranoic, and paranoia makes you violent

"Cars are an extension of colonial rhetoric, except in reverse. Where colonial subjects are dehumanized and de-personalized, cars are humanized, personified and anthropomorphized."

#horror #movies

medium.com/theuglymonst...