Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse review

Hands down the most radical, unrestrained, gobsmacking, visually creative animated film I’ve ever seen.

Well. 

Other than the first one.

Watching Across is like main-lining pure creativity. It’s a kinetic, visual cacophony of cinema marvels. 

On the downside, it’s exhausting. Innovative approaches are jam packed into every frame. It’s so radically different, it overwhelms.

All kinds of sweet gee-jaws, evoking printed comics, saturate the film: half-tone dots shade character faces, colours are shown with slight off-register, scenes morph from 3-D backgrounds to beautiful pastel paintings. Characters change colour based on mood. People from other dimensions may be made of paper, scratchy scribbles, or LEGO. Frames are dropped from character movement, creating a staccato jerkiness that gets across the idea of watching moving pictures. Trips between universes are accompanied by kaleidoscope FX rainbows. Visual representations of emotion, and sound effects, punctuate important moments. 

The direction is as kinetic and super-powered as the heroes, spiralling around and through them (in the case of the villain), then pulling back for serene scene setting long shots. 

Across relentlessly pushes the boundaries of animation, taking the medium to infinity and beyond.

Pixar films are beautiful, but they’re not radical. This? This is radical artiste experimentalism in pop-culture packaging. 

Unfortunately, you can have too much goodness. The movie is over two hours long; shorter, discrete episodes might be more enjoyable for my limited attention span. I wanted to freeze frame and have captions (the dialogue can be hard to catch at time, it’s so rapid fire). 

Story wise, Across doesn’t hold back; it pummels the audience with The Multiverse’s kitchen sink. 

Thankfully, Verse movies are grounded in authentic character moments. Without them, it might just be a gorgeous way to induce an epileptic seizure. Miles is an endearing lead, and the Morales’ family dynamic equally so. Even the villain has his charms. And Spider-Gwen is well matched with Miles. The other bajillion Spider-men (including an Indian one) are icing on the Spider-cake. 

The film relentlessly barrels towards its no-holds-barred… To Be Continued. 

Which is fine by me, I don’t think I could have taken any more in one sitting. 

The story isn’t tight, but the characters and the visual spectacle are so incredibly enthralling it doesn’t matter.

In the theatre, it's an overwhelming visual feast; I look forward to watching it again at home, in smaller (both screen scale and time) doses. 

There’s nothing else like it. 

Radical, energetic, barely controlled creative chaos the likes of which I've rarely seen, it's audacity and innovative ferocity is breathtaking to behold.

It's genius in motion.

Highly, highly recommended… albeit not for everyone. 

High versus low art in film: Lynch vs Spielberg smackdown!

Yin vs Yang

David Lynch is an exemplary film maker, but his work is not for everyone. Lynch's foray into blockbuster territory (Dune) was a bomb (I still love it's weirdness). He has difficulty raising large amounts of cash for his (personal) projects. 

Steven Spielberg is the opposite: the Main Man has his finger on the pulse of the people. His films are colossal blockbusters that have redefined cinema and summer movie going. Studios salivate to fund his films, and spend more, much more, knowing Spielberg is at the helm. 

A Spielberg flick is one of the surest bets you can make in Hollywood. And obviosuly he, too, is an exemplary filmmaker.

So... which is better? 

That depends on your point of view, and what you value. 

From a certain point of view, this article is true.

I’ve been lectured by professional writers that the best films are the ones that make the biggest box office. Studio execs no doubt largely agree: the Hollywood machine is a business, it has a bottom line, and they need to make oodles of greenbacks to fund their lavish lifestyles… and fund bigger and more spectacular films. 

And yet, it isn’t that simple. 

Award season exists, prestige films still get funded, despite studios knowing full well that, unlike Barbie, Women Talking isn’t going to be a global summer blockbuster. But so what?

Populist and elitist streams exist in cinema and they rarely meet. One leans  thoughtful and introspective, the other towards thrill rides and escapist fun. One is in danger of being pretentious, the other of pandering.

But every now and then, the streams cross and you get an instant all-audience classic.

Do what you shouldn't do?

Sometimes this is immediately obvious, as the film generates both box office and critical conversation over pie. Populist films are sometimes re-evaluated in the years, and decades, after release. The initial critical disdain for tropes, archetypes and action gives way to a realization that the film was superbly executed and speaks to the human experience on a level that wasn’t obvious on first viewing. 

Filmmakers like Lynch struggle to find broader recognition. While vetted at prestige film festivals, their sensibility doesn’t resonate with the mass audience. Sometimes, they find their place in genre cinema and successfully dwell on the edges of the industry. Others are ‘artsy’ or intellectual enough to be hailed by critics for eschewing the typical and titillating the elitist palate. 

And I get it. Professional critics prefer the different, because they’re drowning in mass produced typical. They become bug eyed, gollum-like creatures, gaunt and pallid from watching movies all day, every day. Like I did during COVID lockdown.

On top of that, I’m old enough to have seen multiple reboots of blockbusters past, I’m tired of it. Honestly, if you’ve seen ten superhero movies, you’ve seen them all. Same for some long running TV shows that are caught in an infinite franchise premise loop, endlessly recycling a mushy scene and premise puree.  

These are film flavours for the masses, visual equivalents to chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. And they’re great. But after awhile, people crave something… different. Rocky Road or Heavenly Hash.

You’re less likely to be truly surprised by a typical blockbuster than the most artfully crafted of art cinema (but there are notable exceptions that become event cinema, such as we've recently seen). Going off the beaten path will interest those tired of treading the same old same old, but that will annoy the majority who are looking for the well trodden path. We don't always want the unexpected.

Franchises have risen to dominate film and television during my lifetime. What’s a franchise? Take it as a simple outline of what happens… every time. A plucky gang of kids investigates paranormal mysteries and exposes them as frauds, for example. Familiarity is the appeal, so characters tend not to change. We’re not going to see Sherlock Holmes pivot to politics or become a tax auditor. People want him to be a detective, and so a detective he remains. Forever caught in amber, repeating the same loops. Westworld was as much a commentary on robots as it was on franchises and entertainment itself.

There’s a saying: people watch TV for character, and film for plot. I don’t remember a lot of plots from Star Trek, Fringe, Seinfeld (okay it was a kind of anti-plot show), or WKRP in Cincinnati. But the characters? Loved them. 

But.. what if you have a film franchise? 

How much did Indiana Jones change? Dominic Toretto? 

Is Ethan Hunt really any different now? 

They’re essentially huge budget TV episodes on gigantic screens. 

Elitist disdain for populist films compelled Spielberg to stretch into more niche, high brow works, in an effort to get that sweet, sweet elitist recognition. To be recognized by the chi-chi cognoscenti. 

On the one hand, I don’t think he should have felt such a pivot was necessary. Populist art ties into our common humanity, and to do that well requires every bit as much artistry and talent as the so-called high art. On the other, I’m glad he did, because he’s an interesting filmmaker, whatever he does.

The niche and the populist have their place and purpose, and entertainment would be lesser without both.

In this argument, there is no spoon. 

It's CGI, man!

Girls gone wild: Yellowjackets review

What goes up...

WARNING: SPOILERS

Season one of Yellowjackets was different and fun. The show's basically Lord of the Flies with girls, and it switches from their ordeal in the wilderness to the characters some 30 years later. 

The young ladies in question are members of a ruthlessly competitive girls soccer team, who are heading off to the world championships, when their chartered plane goes down in the Canadian wilderness. God knows we have enough wilderness to go around, enough for a thousand such shows. 

You'd think there'd be moose. Or beavers. Or at least horse flies. Nope.

Things get nasty quick. One nerdy little girl, the outcast of the bunch, takes immediate charge and cuts off the injured coaches mangled leg, which is caught under a piece of the aircraft. She's taken all the first aid courses there were on offer, and knows her stuff. 

Unfortunately, she quickly becomes addicted to her new valued status. 

Things get worse from there. Much, much worse.

Exactly what is left to our imaginations, at first. But it is heavily implied that as little as four or five people survive.

The very opening scenes show the girls hunting one of their own members, wearing masks, and performing what look like cannibalistic rituals. 

But we don't get to that state again in season one. It's a teaser to hook viewers in with the promise of the premise which they seem to mostly forget about.

Instead we cut to the girls later in life, when they've settled down into dull, domestic not-so-bliss. At first, there are only three. It seems the wilderness was a bloodbath that few returned from... until they introduce another survivor. 

And another. 

And another. 

And so on. 

It's like a shampoo ad, and the longer it goes on, the lower the dramatic stakes become. 

The show dives deep into the characters to the point of disinterest. The navel gazing is extensive and probing, and not recommended for carbon fibre hulls. But the actors are fabulous, and they do well with what they are given. It's an abundance of riches, which will suit some tastes more than others.

The scenes with the kids in the wilderness were even more compelling, with higher stakes. Whenever a 'now' scene rolls by, the urge to fast forward soon strikes, especially later in the season. 

Yet the wilderness family cannibal adventure is well worth watching, and I recommended the show to friends. I liked the heavy hints of the supernatural, that there were otherworldly forces dwelling in that forest, and had confidence the showrunners wouldn't drop the ball.

Then season two landed. 

The ball wasn't just dropped, it was lost entirely.

The scenes in the present became meandering and self-indulgent. 

Back in the wilderness, the vague supernatural forces hinted at earlier are... hinted at again and again. There's enough vague hinting to constitute trolling.

One character sits with her best dead frozen friend for three months, doing her hair and makeup before casually eating her ear. Because of course she did. Her friends find out about her freezer zombie ear parties, and decide enough is enough, they'll burn the corpse. 

You'd think that'd be the end of that. But wait! Vague maybe-sort-of-kinda supernatural forces drop a pile of snow on the funeral pyre, and voila, the corpse comes out like a braised butterball turkey. The girls then crowd around and chow down.

That got a guffaw. Not the response the show runners were hoping for, I suspect. Maybe they were going for horror or revulsion or something. All I could see was mouth watering Butterball.

The famine angle is mentioned, but not consistently, and the girls didn't behave or look starved. Obviously, they can't starve aspiring actresses. I mean, this isn't a Stanley Kubrick show. 

A few skipped episodes later was the finale, because that's all I could stand to watch. It was silly and pat. The central mom continued her death spiral into awfulness, hoping to one day to join the esteemed ranks of Dexter, Walter White and Tony Soprano. Or maybe not.  

Few shows so intriguing became so awful so quickly. Yellowjackets, like Icarus, soared high and then plummeted straight down and pancaked into pavement. Well. Icarus went into the sea, but you get the idea. 

Of course, I am not the target audience, so your mileage may be much better. For your sake, I sure hope so.

Yellowjackets would be an interesting subject for a screen writing class.

War of the Roses and Medieval Genealogy ChatGPTrees

They begat and begat and begat until one day God said, "Stop fucking around!"

So I was looking into how Henry VI of Lancaster was related to the York leader Richard Plantagenet, for reasons that will soon become clear. I decided to pose the question to ChatGPT, because I’m lazy and genealogy gives me a headache:

Edward III was the grandfather of Henry VI. The lineage connecting them is as follows:

Edward III (1312-1377): Edward III was the King of England from 1327 until his death in 1377. He was married to Philippa of Hainault, with whom he had several children.

John of Gaunt (1340-1399): John of Gaunt was the third surviving son of Edward III. He married three times and had numerous children, including an illegitimate line of Beaufort descendants.

John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset (1373-1410): John Beaufort was the eldest son of John of Gaunt from his relationship with Katherine Swynford. He was later legitimized by King Richard II. John Beaufort's descendants were known as the House of Beaufort.

John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset (1404-1444): John Beaufort, the great-grandson of John of Gaunt, was elevated to the title of Duke of Somerset. He married Margaret Beauchamp, and their son was Henry Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset.

Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset (1406-1455): Edmund Beaufort was the brother of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset. He succeeded his brother as the 2nd Duke of Somerset. Edmund Beaufort's son was Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset.

Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset (1436-1464): Henry Beaufort, the son of Edmund Beaufort, was the 3rd Duke of Somerset. He was a prominent Lancastrian during the Wars of the Roses and a key figure in the reign of Henry VI.

Henry VI (1421-1471): Henry VI was the son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois. He became the King of England in 1422 as an infant and his reign was marked by political instability and the Wars of the Roses. He was a Lancastrian monarch.

Thus, Edward III was the grandfather of Henry VI through his son John of Gaunt and subsequent generations of the Beaufort family.

And this is why I hate the Middle Ages.

Extraction 1.0 and 2.0 review

Was it live or AI?

What a great video game walkthrough! 

Or was it a movie? 

The lead sure looked like Chris Hemsworth, but he wasn't jokey/goofy. So hard to tell. Could have been AI. Like Salma Hayek in Black Mirror.

Extraction is eerily like watching someone play a video game: long action sequences that morph into car chases, then foot chases, train chases and then more action scenes. 

Every now and then there is a cut scene where the actors emote and cry. 

Then it's right back into astonishingly long single shot action scenes. 

The action here is incredibly intense and visceral. You can almost feel the pain of the blows; it's not clean or antiseptic. That was quite well done, although most people (all people?) would be dead long before the characters in the film after taking that much punishment.

So fabulously well done action flick from a technical point of view. Very bare bones, plot and character wise. If you're good with that, you'll love Extraction. It's incredibly well done for what it is. 

If you want a more involved story, and aren't keen on 90 minutes of stabbing, shooting, pummelling, kicking, eviscerating, hacking, exploding and decapitating(?), then maybe this movie isn't for you. 

I have just one question: can Salma Hayek star in the next one?

Commute Density Graph for Toronto

Basically, the best time to drive is 5 AM Mon-Friday:

Somehow I don't see myself rearranging my schedule. 

On the flip side, there's a black hole Thursday afternoon around 2:30 PM that sucks cars into a super density black hole from which they'll never reappear, and which will ultimately destroy the entire planet.

Savage review of Mandalorian Season 3

The Pitch Meeting series I've really enjoyed watching over COVID lockdowns. It's one guy who plays both the screenwriter and the studio exec in an imagined pitch meeting for the film. He's usually got some sharp, or at least funny, insights.

This one? Savage. Absolutely savage:

Battle of Kursk: deja vu in Ukraine?

The Kursk Pimple

During the early months of 1943, the Nazis were rolled back hundreds of miles from Stalingrad, until they finally stabilized their defensive lines in Ukraine. The line was relatively straight, except for a large bulge into the German side, centred around the city of Kursk. 

The Germans decided to squeeze this obvious like a ginormous pimple.

But the Soviets could read a map, too, so they new exactly where the Nazis were going to attack (also thanks to intel from the British Ultra program and the Red Orchestra).

Hitler hemmed and hawed, waiting until more of his Wonder Weapons were ready before attacking. The Soviets used that extra time to pack the pimple with troops, tanks and artillery, wrapped them in pillboxes, trenches, and mines, and tied a great big kill zone bow on top.

One of Porche's Not-So-Wonder-Weapons: The Ferdinand Dud

When the Nazis finally did attack, they made slow and costly progress against fierce and entrenched Soviet resistance. The new Nazi tanks proved unreliable: they hadn't been tested long enough to work out all the mechanical problems, and many broke down and were abandoned before they even encountered the enemy.

Once the Nazis had spent their offensive power, the Soviets launched a massive counter attack, overwhelming the exhausted Germans and paving the way to Berlin. 

A painting of the carnage at Kursk

Sound disturbingly familiar?

The Ukrainian offensive is trying to cut off Russian supply lines to Crimea. The Russians know exactly what the Ukrainians want to do, and where they are likely to attack. 

And while the Ukrainians have been waiting for Western tanks and equipment (and better weather), the Russians have been creating multiple defensive bands, with pillboxes, trenches, mines, kill zones, etcetera. 

A zoomed out view of multiple Russian defensive lines in Ukraine

The Russians are really good at this, and they don't need especially skilled soldiers to pull it off.

Speaking of which, the Russkies just moved some 300,000 more men into the area.  

Heck, take a look at the Reuters page on the Russian defenses, they describe it better than I ever could.

Pundits set unrealistic expectations for the Ukrainian counter offensive during the spring (and no thanks to the spectacular Ukrainian success last year around Kharkov), and as such people are now looking in askance at seemingly lacklustre Ukrainian progress. Ukraine is reportedly going slow to preserve the lives of their troops and inflict Russian casualties. Fair enough!

Yet the longer the war goes on, the more damage to Ukraine, its people, and its economy. 

US General Ben Hodges was suggesting that Russia might be thrown out this summer, leading to an armistice. While that might still happen (Ukraine is cutting of Russian supply bridges to Crimea using missiles), it seems increasingly unlikely. 

But hope doth spring eternal!

The superficial view shows Ukraine bogged down in attritional fighting. Which is bad. Very bad.

What happens if Ukraine falls? Some pundits say that's as far as Putin and Co. will go. Which would be bad, especially for Ukraine, but not catastrophic. 

Others claim he's going to keep going, and will hit Moldova next, then the Baltic states. Which are in NATO. Which means potentially catastrophic escalation.

Which is bad for everybody.

It's in Russia's interests to sow fear and division in the West, to amp up escalation worries, and in so doing deprive Ukraine of needed assistance, so maybe that's all these fears are.

I think I'll go watch some TV.

Slo mo life drawing

 Dragged my lazy old bones out for some more life drawing. The poses were for the same duration as always, but I felt like I was in slow motion. I usually can get in some shading, or even colour on the longer poses. 

Not this time. 

This was the longest pose. Can you tell?

Collision 2023 whizzed by with plenty on AI

Godfather of AI: Geoffrey Hinton... he's the tiny figure in the centre. Squint and you can see him.

I dropped in on Collision 2023 during the week. It's billed as the biggest tech industry event in Canada. 

Think of your usual office meeting. Now set it in the middle of a Madonna concert: that's Collision. 

I don't think I'm as used to so much cacophony since COVID.

The day's top billing was with the Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton. The rest was filled with big sounding talks like The Future of Quantum Computing, but which really were just company sales pitches. I bet investors get the same deal. Rather than higher level or theoretical discussion, it was the limited perspective and plans of a single company. 

If I made a social media app and then billed a talk as 'The Future of Social Media', that'd be disingenuous. 

The talk itself was fine for what it was; I just felt the title advertised something the talk was not. 

Another presenter was still with Google. Now Google is in so many ways awesome, putting out products we are hopelessly addicted to. However, this mouthpiece was so peppy, positive and reassuring about everything AI it verged on soporific. 

And honestly, I've listened to car salesmen I'd trust more. I don't buy the corporate line there will be no job loss thanks to AI. 

Creative Destruction has been bringing diminishing job creation returns, while productivity boosts drive money to the owners, not the workers. GM, Ford, etcetera employed millions back in the day. The new drivers of the stock market (Meta, Google, etc) employ a small fraction. 

Corporate Mouthpiece?

The Google Mouthpiece claimed AI cannot think, it can only thunk, which while cute was directly contradicted by the Godfather of AI, who's left Google and can now say whatever the heck he likes. He's run tests with large language models and says they show reasoning abilities. Generative AI is a lot more than just advanced autocomplete. 

I'm more inclined to believe him than the happy happy corporate shill. Funny enough, it was the journalists earlier who were noting that Generative AI doesn't do well with nuance. Neither do some agendas. 

Hinton expressed concern about autonomous AI battlebots, wealth polarization, mass disinformation and other points of concern that I really should have written down because now I can't remember. Old age sucks, man.

99% of researchers are working on making AI better, and only 1% is working on making it safe and ethical. 

I don't doubt that avaricious, insatiable, manipulative and machiavellian AI being built for the stock markets and don't have the faintest clue what an ethic is, or if you can buy it. 

Hinton's talk only lasted 20 minutes or so, which is a selling point for the event; the talks are short enough there's no time to get bored. Here though, it was much too short. Honestly, I could have listened to Hinton all day. 

A lot of money was poured into the super slick Collision glitz fest, and I'm sure many a useful connection was made; hopefully productive deals, too, especially for all the startups and smaller companies. One can hope.

For me, though, the talks were disappointing, especially the corporate ones. I wanted more candor, less pablum. The most interesting talks were by gadflies who'd quit their prestigious positions to warn the world about AI, and the nuanced take of the journalists, who will one day be writing about 'our new robot overlords.'

And I for one just hope to be a part of it.

It Blew Up Good, REAL GOOD: Nordstream

Did the US, with help from Norway, blow up the Nordstream pipeline? Seymour Hersh seems to think so, thanks to one anonymous source. 

This has received a lot of coverage in Europe, but less so here in Canada or the USA. 

From the article:

"If Russia invades – that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine – there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2," Biden said during joint a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "We will bring an end to it... I promise you, we'll be able to do it."

Hersh has vehemently defended his reporting:

"I've been doing stories for fifty years and I worked at The New York Times for seven or eight years. I won an awful lot of prizes there for a lot of stories. And I doubt if maybe 5% of my stories had a source named. Most of them were without sources because you can't do this kind of reporting without it."

It makes a certain kind of sense: it hits Russia in the pocket book and peels Germany away from its Russian fossil fuel addiction. 

On the other hand, it economically damages Germany, a US ally, and I can't see the Germans being happy about that. It's uncharacteristically reckless for Biden to pull such a stunt; he's been consistently cautious about escalating tensions with Russia.

But who knows? Power politics is a damn dirty business.

Things like this make me side eye the media narrative, and consider Mearsheimer's assertion that the USA orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014. I don't doubt the US helped give advice to dissidents, and even funds to liberal political movements, but a full fledged coup? It's a serious claim that requires serious evidence.

The CIA has pulled stuff like this before. 

Then again, it may have been these guys:

As with pursuing the Arc of the Covenant, poking the Russian Bear in its den is not something to be undertaken lightly... 

Hot and tasty: Prigozhin's Cup-a-Not-a-Coup

Prigozhin's Chicken Noodle flavoured Instant Cup-A-Coup!

Is Putin done?

I doubt it. 

Then again, I was not expecting Putin's caterer to occupy Rostov and send an army of convicted murderers and rapists on a "March for Justice" to Moscow. 

Putin fled in his private jet as a few Russian army units joined in the march. Prigozhin took control of a TV station to broadcast that the war was being fought under false pretenses (deja vu, America!) and that Ukraine had actually never persecuted Russians and wasn't run by Jewish Nazis. 

I couldn't make this stuff up, it's so bonkers.

And then, after shooting down some Russian attack helicopters, the caterer suddenly dropped everything and set off for exile in Minsk, thanks to a deal worked out by Lame-duck-Lukashenko of Belarus. 

As OMC and Navalny might say, how bizarre!

'Priggy' has always been a loose cannon, but to bite the hand that fed him so directly was a major surprise. 

Why'd he do it?

Serious miscalculation.

Last week, Putin made clear he was going to roll Wagner into the MoD org. This would strip Prigozhin of all his power, and possibly expose him to existential danger at the hands of Shoigu, who hates his guts. So Priggy Prigozhin preempted them all, caught the FSB flat footed, and the road to Moscow open. Wagner troops willingly followed their hard nosed boss: they weren't keen on being integrated with the regular Russian army, which (naturally) has worse food (Prigozhin was a former chef and caterer, after all). 

Everyone else rallied around President Putin, and Prigozhin's 'March for Justice' stunt was denounced as full fledged treason. That seems to be when when Warlord Prigozhin started to look for an off ramp. Too little, too late.

So now what? The private army is going to be split up among regular Russian army units so they can never again act against Warlord-President Putin.

That removes the biggest threat to his regime. At least that I am aware of. Shoigu and Gerasimov may be disliked by the rank and file, but they are Putin loyalists. No threat there.

Putin does come out of this bizarre affair with egg on his face. His reputation as a machiavellian plotter who is always ahead of his opponents is tarnished, and it will take time for him to reestablish his cold blooded utter ruthlessness cred. 

I think he'll succeed in doing so, and I wouldn't want to be in Prigozhin's shoes right now. I'd hire someone taste test his afternoon tea, if you know what I mean. Stay away from Russian windows.

Overall, I think we all got off easy. 

Priggy would be the worse option to have in control of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Both of these warlords are dangerous men, but Priggy's more volatile and unpredictable. 

I'd rather see a stable, democratic liberal regime in Moscow, but that's not gonna happen. Russia is still an empire, which means that if the security forces let up, several regions will try and secede. 

Stay tuned for the next episode of Russian Political Roulette...