Hallo-ReWatch: M3GAN (2022)

Watched:  10/11/2024

Format: Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director: Gerard Johnstone

So, this is my second viewing.  I picked it because I thought K would like it (The Dug's better half), and I believe that was a slam dunk.

It was fun to see with people, especially two folks who work at high-end IT companies losing their minds about the badly portrayed technology development process of the film.  Which, of course, would have ruined the film if anyone did their job correctly, so we can't have that.  Also - I hate to tell people working for real companies how things work everywhere else.*

Anyway, the idea for this viewing was:  a fun horror movie with folks who do not want to watch a current Rated-R horror movie because everyone needs to be able to sleep.  And M3GAN is PG-13 and fun, but I don't think anyone is going to get freaked out - one to watch with your middle-school-aged kids.

I still like Allison Williams in this.  Horror seems to be able to have main characters, or characters in general, that are not all sunshine and roses.  It's a subconscious tell that maybe our lead *could* get killed by movie's end, but, here, I think it gives her a viable arc from workaholic to seeing what she will need to do to be close to Cady (her niece) , but, also...  she's not unlikeable.  Do I find a person who mostly worries about their niche interest and doesn't want kids touching their stuff to be relatable?  MAYBE.  But... She just seems like someone who is way into their work, not a bad person. But...  (goofy voice) a woman? Who likes work over babies????

We wouldn't think twice about a male engineer being solely focused on their technology job in a movie - we'd expect it.  Here, it clashes with expectations of women to automagically be maternal, which is both a movie trope and something society sure thinks is real.  And Williams' character does not naturally have those tendencies, and, boy howdy, is there some low key judging of her by certain characters.  Not that she doesn't suddenly need those tendencies when life throws her a child to raise, but - as a childless cat-lady, I am deeply sympathetic to Williams' desire to outsource the child-rearing to a lifeless droid so I can do my thing.  Also, Williams' character has an objectively cool toy collection.

If you *did* watch this movie with your kids, I think some of this is worth unpacking.  Why is the social-worker in the movie such a B to Williams?  Why is Cady going so nuts at the 2/3rd mark?  Do you need a mishap with a killer android to figure out the power of family?

Maybe! 

But I also really appreciated the stuff in the film, like M3GAN singing to calm Cady, sort of weird, saccharine songs.  The goofy, horrifying fake, annoying-as-hell Furbies, and all the ways kids toys actually do work in someone's household - and the things people seem to want to do with them.  

Toys these days absolutely have the capacity to learn from as well as manipulate our kids.  The tots want screentime more than sugar, to disappear into oddball worlds of skibidi toilets and crafting of mines, and we're shocked they can't sit through a 90 minute movie.

As the toys are getting smarter, whose to say they won't "know" our kids as well or better than ourselves as parents.  When they can freestyle a convincing song about their particular trauma?  While also not understanding how kids grow and change thanks to non-comforting stimuli?

As Ian Malcolm would say:

and this is in real life, not the movie.

Dug rightly pointed out the movie raises a host of questions about AI and then leaves them all on the table.  And, there's a very interesting, grown up version of M3GAN (where James Wan is not allowed anywhere near it) and we get a chance to explore the ideas around AI in our lives, and our lives in AI's lives, and we should have that movie.  

Recently, I've been monkeying with CharacterAI and NotebookLM, and - we aren't ready for what we're making out there.  We're at the "peasants diving under tables because they're watching a film of a train coming" stage with this technology, and it's not just coming - it's here.  Right now humanoid robots are being made, while we're also improving AI on a minute-by-minute basis.  Someone is going to realize they can bluetooth their OmniBot to a thousand turks and we're all going to have a weirdo friend we didn't expect to have.  Let's see that film.

Anyway - M3GAN is not a great movie, but it does have things I like in it, and is a dire warning about ignoring your QA process. 

Sequel comes out next year.  We'll see what we get.

*they mostly get by on a wing and a prayer

Let's See How a 13-year Old Post (On Netflix Streaming) Aged, Shall We?

For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, this 2011 post that featured me shrugging off the modest rise in cost of Netflix's streaming service has been getting views on this here internet website.  I have no idea why, but I suspect I'm probably getting canceled somewhere by teens with unicorn anime icons.  So everyone buckle up for that to hit.

In the post, I marvel at the possibilities of streaming, and how *cheap* this really is, when you consider the value in comparison/ contrast to rentals, going to the movies, etc...  

The first thing of note is that I didn't bat an eye at using a Louis CK clip.  Hoo-boy.  Time marches on.  And, I kind of forgot, CK was actually really funny until, uh, things came to light...  I think his point in the clip holds fine if you forget his relationship to shrubbery.   

A quick recap:  what I was excited about was that, in 2011, Netflix had worked out deals with the studios to get a lot of their back library.  And for someone interested in movies from all eras, this was a gold mine.  To me, then and now, the *obvious* thing to do was/is put the entire catalog of studios onto a service.  

80's Watch: Electric Dreams (1984)

Watched:  07/12/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Steve Barron

I have a memory of watching this movie during a family road trip.  I watched it in a shitty motel room with my dad after my mom and brother fell asleep.  Primarily, my memory was "it wasn't very good, and it didn't feel like a comedy, and it seemed like it was supposed to be a comedy but also wanted to be taken seriously, but was dumb."*

That was probably 1986 or so, and here in 2024, my thought is:  it wasn't very good, and it seemed like it was supposed to be a comedy but also wanted to be taken seriously, but was dumb.  But, in 2024, I also think the movie is oddly prescient - predicting some things that would have seemed ridiculous just 3-4 years ago, but now seem like they've entered the conversation.

Electric Dreams (1984) is a Futureshock movie, taking place what, I'd guess, is supposed to be a few years after its release, 1984.  That's just about the time computers started making their way into suburban homes.  The parents buying these infernal machines were hoping their nascent Gen-X'ers would be able to understand computers, but didn't know what the hell they were spending their beer money on.  In this era, computers were full of mystery and magic as far as the news and movies were concerned.  We're coming off WarGames - that posited a teen almost destroying the world by hacking into the US missile systems.  Tron was a neat analog of computer stuff, but people thought it meant computers were full of elves.  Superman III, thought computers would control the weather.  

Geology Watch: Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

Watched:  05/08/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Eric Brevig

So, this movie feels like an experiment, and given the year of release, 2008, Journey to the Center of the Earth might well have been Hollywood floating all the latest toys and the concept of "movie as amusement park ride" more than they were trying to make an actual movie.  But they also still wanted to be Hollywood, so, while it does feel almost like a Cliff's Notes version of a movie, it does have a legit star in Brendan Fraser.   

First - it's clearly intended to be seen in 3D.  And like other 3D features - from Creature to the Black Lagoon or Friday the 13th 3D, there are clear set-pieces intended for the experience that just look weird on my regular ol' flat TV.  Things are basically hurled at the viewer from time to time.  You get it.

Second - I checked, the movie was also an early entry for use in 4DX or whatever they call it.  This was when some theaters decided to add fancy-assed chairs that rumbled and maybe moved, and sprayed water in your face (no thanks).  And there are multiple places that the movie feels like it should be part of a ride at Universal Studios or something.

I'll editorialize and say:  I think this is a perfectly fine avenue for Hollywood to pursue.  It would be weird for many-a-movie, but I think there's a market for thrilling movies that are a bit of an interactive experience.  I would come up with a new name for the experience to differentiate it, but I would strap in for a Star Wars movie about X-Wing pilots zipping about.  Or car chase movies.  Or running around Tokyo whilst Godzilla strolls around.  But I don't think they'll work like a normal movie, and we just don't know what that would be, yet.

Me in AI

I put just my name into the AI Image Generator on Pixlr, and these are the four images I got back.  I'm as confused as anyone about the results, but here we are.

uh....

Y'okay

flattering!

well, this one may be accurate

Animation Watch: The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021)

Watched:  05/01/2021

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe 

I'm not going to bother writing this up.  Another terrific Lord & Miller produced animation with a terrific voice cast.  Hysterical, moving, gorgeously animated...  very glad this is out there.  

But I figure everyone with a Netflix account will have seen it, so just go nuts on your own on this one.

I don't have kids, and I got this one.  I imagine a lot of you parents were choking back some feelings watching this one.

Doc Watch: The Inventor - Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019)

Watched:  03/24/2019
Format:  HBO Go
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2010's

A few years back I recall reading about Theranos, the "disruptive" tech company getting into the ultra-sexy field of phlebotomy.  The articles were fawning, talking about a young genius inventor out in Silicon Valley who had dropped out of school to start a tech company that was going to change... something.  The article was a little vague on how smaller blood draws were the biggest thing since sliced bread, but it insisted - no, really,  this is it, and we all need to get excited about the company, Theranos, and - really - the head of the company, Elizabeth Holmes - a prodigy who apes the fashion sense of Steve Jobs and who dropped out of Stanford as an undergrad to pursue her vision.

I wanted to check my biases on age and gender, shrug a bit at someone cosplaying Steve Jobs, and admit I don't really know much about phlebotoy other than watching a whole lotta blood draws when Jamie has been in the hospital.  Which is: a lot.

At the same time...

Falcon Heavy Launch - Holy Cats, Y'all

Man.  I... am just in awe at this feat of vision, ingenuity and engineering.

First Amazon Order

Seems this is a thing we're all doing, so here goes.

I very much remember placing this order (or these orders).  Half of my friends were totally excited about this new Amazon thing, and half of them were convinced Amazon would just take my credit card and drain me of money.  Both were right, as it turns out.

Doc Watch: Beware the Slenderman (2016)

I spend some amount of time (read: all of my time) online, and thus was aware, somehow, of the fictional boogeyman, The Slenderman.  It was one of those things that I said "what is that?", Googled it, saw it was a meme sort of thing the kids were into, and went about my business.

The Slenderman was created in the world of online fictional storytelling, and as these things sometimes do, it took off and became an idea that flooded outside of the scary-stories site where The Slenderman first appeared.  A quick Google search will turn up thousands of hits.  He's an otherworldly figure who haunts children once they become aware of him, and will either murder them or befriend the most pitiable (I think).

In 2014 a new story broke out of Waukesha, Wisconsin that two 12 year-old girls had lured their friend into the woods and then attempted to stab her to death in order to impress/ appease "The Slenderman", which... to an adult sounds a bit like committing attempted murder to appease a movie or television character like The Cryptkeeper or something.  I don't want to belittle any of this, because two little girls really did have some sort of break and a third was gravely injured and will no doubt suffer longterm effects, but as someone well beyond the age of the girls who made this decision and with a "I existed before the internet" point of view, it's very hard to imagine the world that created this tragedy.

The HBO Documentary Beware the Slenderman (2016) dissects the scenario that led to the incident, looking into the world of the girls, what's online and how they related to it.  Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a doc that had this sort of access to the parents of perpetrators of an act like this who were clearly involved and participating in the film within a couple of months of the girls' incarceration and into the trial.

90's Techno Watch: The Net (1995)

I remember seeing the commercials for the 1995 thriller, The Net, rolling my eyes, and making a firm decision that I would not see this movie.  Over the years, it's surprised me how many people have seen it, declared it terrible, and then expressed surprise that I hadn't seen it and never wanted to see it.

The kids will never understand what it was like in 1995, but we were on the teetering edge of a revolution in computing entering the lives of everyone on the planet.  Up to that point, computers had been, in the eyes of the public, a weird mix of science-fiction, radio-kit-bashers-gone-mad, a point of ridicule if people spend too much time with them outside of work, and seen as the key to god-like power as evidenced in everything from Weird Science to War Games to Ferris Bueller.  And, my God, such an overwhelmingly male-oriented hobby or interest.

My first introduction to what we'd wind up calling "the internet" was via the hand-waving plot explanations of War Games, but in real like, I only ever knew one kid, our own Groboclown, who had a modem in his house.  Aside from that, they were kind of a mystery.  By middle-school, I was aware of the "cyberpunk" literary movement, but mostly picked up the terms and ideas of "netrunners" second hand from my brother, who actually read the stuff.  But even at that - I got my head around the potential for use, for abuse, for second lives online (that would overtake meatspace).

When I got my first computer (a refurbished Pack-Bell 486 with Windows 3.1.  Like a @#$%ing BOSS, y'all!) and headed off to college, that was kind of an act of faith on the part of my parents.  They saw it as an over-powered Smith-Corona word processor, which was all we'd had in the house since I was 14 (the early Vic 20 and Apple IIe experiments had not made us computer whizzes).  And there was an assumption I'd do things with it, but no one could say what those things would be.

Fortunately at UT, I managed to move in down the hall from some guys who were already deeply computer savvy and who had actual modems and whatnot.  And, they weren't the kind of guys who sat in the dark and played Doom and didn't converse.  Instead, we were soon running wires down the hallway for networked play, and by Spring semester, with a used and battered 2400 baud modem installed in my computer and an account from UT, I was online.  Not that there was much to do online in 1994, but I was there!

But 1995's film, The Net, was less reflective of the techo-utopianism a lot of us were buying into thanks to pop publications like Wired.  The marketing and concept spoke a whole lot more to our parents' newspaper-headline driven concern over "this crazy, out of control technology", a future-shock echo that was rippling through the world that was just beginning to understand what it meant to suddenly start seeing monitors on every desk at every job and what was happening as we were having to give all those people our names, phone numbers, etc...

Those weren't just stand-alone ugly data-systems anymore, they were now on the Information Superhighway!*



My point is - the context of 1995 when The Net made it to cinemas everywhere with America's newest darling of the Star System-era of Hollywood, Sandra Bullock, was one of an already buzzing fear or discomfort.  Everything about the trailer reeked of the paranoia I could feel from my professors, from the general public and folks who were doing just fine in life without needing an email address, let alone a magic phone in their pocket that was a portal to all of human knowledge and able to access monumental computer systems to provide predictions and prescriptive behavior.*

Anyway, if The Net (1995) has one fatal flaw, it is not the absolutely terrible depiction of computing and the internet that boils away any goodwill the pretty-well researched first act sets up.  It is not a bad performance by Sandra Bullock, who is really very good in what limited amount of action she's given to take as a witness to her own life falling apart around her and a clunker of a script.

The movie is incredibly boring.

90's Watch: Hackers (1995)

In February of 1919, some of the greats of the silent era - Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith - came together to found their own studio: United Artists.  The studio was formed in reaction to studio and artist friction over salaries and creative control.  One could say that the idea of an artist's ability to produce an independent vision is baked into the DNA of UA, and, over the years, that spirit has brought us new perspectives to the silver screen, bold proclamations of artists unhampered by the small minds of businessmen, free from the the penny-pinching dream killers of accounting.

So, it should come as no surprise that, some 76 years later, UA would bring us a truly unique dream of the 90's, a clarion call to a generation, a mirror held up to reality showing us truths about ourselves in only the way we can truly get from a masterpiece like Hackers (1995).

This is maybe one of the worst movies I've seen in the last ten years.

Sci-Fi Sunday: Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey

It's Sci-Fi movie day on Turner Classic Movies, and I'm doing some encoding of home videos and watching of movies on cable.

I first saw Forbidden Planet during the Paramount Summer Film Series, probably around 97' or 98'.  With my buddy Matt, come to think of it.

None of this ever really happens in the movie, but, whatevs...

They tell me the movie is a sci-fi version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, but I have no idea.  I've never seen or read it.  But I have seen Forbidden Planet about seven or eight times, and every time, I like it better.  Sure, it stars Leslie Nielsen of Naked Gun fame in a dramatic role, which is weird, but it's such a great bit of its time and a snapshot of exploration sci-fi that is a now-kind-of-dead genre (and if you can't see the direct impact on Star Trek, you aren't paying attention).

The visual and audio FX in this movie make it an amazing experience, with the debut of Robbie the Robot, Krell architecture, amazing sets, spaceships, matte backgrounds that are truly massive and alien.  And even the hand-drawn animation of the Id Monster holds up amazingly well, in its way.

SW Watches: The Imitation Game (2014)

Like a lot of historical drama, a quick Google search of the lead characters in the film will more or less fill you in on the details that might comprise the story.  And, of course, it's likely you've heard of The Turing Test and Turing Machines.  I dunno.  Maybe if you work in needlepoint or dog grooming it doesn't come up as often, but it's at least a bit in the zeitgeist where I work.

The movie stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing and includes Keira Knghtley, Mark Strong and Charles Dance (among many others).  Alex Lawther plays a young Turing, and should get some sort of junior award for one of the best performances I've seen from a young actor in a decade.

Coming Back From Outer Space

Hey, y'all.

Hope everyone is doing as okay as can be.

So, as some of you know, while I ceased formal blogging at this URL, I never really left the internet.  I kind of decamped to tumblr, twitter, facebook and whatnot.  But, I'll be honest with you.  It ain't never really been all that much fun.

And then, in 2013, DC Comics discovered hypertext fiction

If there's any doubt that DC Comics has moved to a number crunching behemoth of creative despair, today form Randy I received a link pointing me to a story about DC's latest effort, Multiverse Comics.  Basically, digital choose your own adventure comics.

At this point in the tenure of Diane Nelson, any hope for a creative renaissance at the company should be replaced with more of a visual of someone selling t-shirts outside the Louvre with a picture of Mona Lisa in a bikini top with a knife gripped in her teeth.*

There's a lot of reasons to sort of want to put your head down on the table about this one.

In 1991 or so the first hypertext fiction appeared, which promised branching narratives and the ability to dig further into a narrative - all in standard prose.  If you were going to raves and enjoying smart drinks in 1994, it all sounded like a nifty part of our bright future of this series of tubes called "the interwebs".  Just get yourself a 1600 baud modem and go nuts.

"But, hey The League," you might say.  "It's 2013!  Where can I purchase some of this hypertext fiction that's clearly the wave of the future?"

Tragically, it went the way of the Dippin' Dots and may not have been the ice cream/ preferred narrative construct of the future.

The Internet Archive and What I Do For a Living

Pal JuanD sent me this video. I'm sharing it because it's a really, really good glimpse into the problems I work on every day at work.  Sort of.  Half the time I think I'm just looking for receipts or figuring out how many stuffed mushrooms we can afford on our conference's cheap-o budget.

Man, I wish I could just focus on the technical problems.


Internet Archive from Deepspeed media on Vimeo.

Our office actually has two missions. We're providing tools to enable researchers to publish born-digital content in both traditional ways (but using new technologies for peer review journals, etc..) and providing options for new media options such as blogs or other modes of scholarly writing. And we're doing this whole preservation bit of both scanned materials and born-digital materials.

What we're doing that's somewhat different from the video is that we're attempting to capture all of the scholarly output from universities and bring it up and online - not scan kid's books that we think someone else will likely handle.

Of course, a lot of people I work with are cogs who don't necessarily get the bigger picture, or work for people who can't pull it all together to get the big picture and so a lot of mistakes are made. A lot of preservable items are lost. The common consensus is that in 200 years, this early digital era will be a dark ages in many ways as we still aren't smart about keeping anything digital. We still think of print copies as the final edition.

As we also commonly say, it's going to take a lot of people retiring or dying before we have a generation promoted to decision making positions who will work with the technology to make sure the digital copies aren't seen as something to rot on a 3.5" floppy in a drawer.

Anyway, great video.

Canadian Astronaut aboard ISS covers Bowie's "Space Oddity"

Commander Chris Hadfield, Canadian Astronaut, is aboard the ISS and covered some Bowie - mixing it up a bit to reflect his experience. Really, after this cover, not sure there's any point in anyone else every trying their hand at this tune again.



We've all seen Earth from space a hundred times before, privileged as we are to live in an era when people travel into space. But, man...

Here's to Commander Hadfield and all aboard the ISS.

Thanks to Slicing Up Eyeballs for the link.

Let's hope Commander Hadfield gets to cover "Life on Mars".

SXSW is here again - and, no, I am not going, again

I've never paid for a SXSW badge.  The only SXSW badges I ever got were through work for (a) the relatively new SXSW Interactive around 2000 and (b) about three years ago I returned to Interactive.  I've never paid for film or for music.

I've never been to a SXSW screening of a movie, and the few times I saw music at SXSW, it was near accidental and incidental.  It's probably safe to say that I'm not particularly interested in the scene, and the idea of dealing with the crowds, the lines, and sheer volume of people at all of these events has been off-putting enough that whatever appeal there might be to seeing bands or movies is significantly reduced when I weigh the cost factor of dealing with the scene around SXSW.

For those of us in town, SXSW is an annual period where we sort of just avoid downtown between certain blocks and as locals who feel the presence of the tide, we know to brace ourselves for:

• The bizarre take on Austin that journalists mistake for Austin but which is really just the bubble of SXSW (East Sixth is not "no-man's land".  It's a few hundred feet from regular Sixth.  By the way, no one really goes to Sixth anymore but tourists)
• The number of people who, based on the drunken revelry to be had during SXSW, associate those good times with a need to move here - and they do
• The handwaving that SXSW isn't, basically, spring break for three industries and that this is somehow work 
• People who are the True Believers in SXSW seeming shocked and indignant (and often demanding answers) when you say you don't want to spend the money or time

The 2012 Not-a-List Rundown

author's note:  2012 is a year I have been looking to put behind me for quite a while for any number of reasons.  Obviously the events in my personal life marked a very sad end to the year for us at our house.  Perhaps we should declare 2012 Annus Horribilis and move on.

With recent events weighing so heavily on me right now (and with this post started a long, long time ago), I'm going to stick to pop culture and the original, intended tone of the post - and this blog - and take a look back instead at...  yeah, I guess comics and whatnot.

here we go.

The 2012 Not-a-List Rundown

My Totem for Everything About my Pop Culture Hobbies in 2012

My relationship fundamentally changed with my hobbies and past-times, and superhero comics have begun to dip below the horizon to the same place Star Wars went circa 2002.  Because of travelling and the fact I was sick a lot this year, I also didn't really make it out to the movies very often.