incredible video and also PSA: art competition for anyone interested

^^^ direct link for artists!!!

starting a collection

I scrolled past this without second thought. Paused. Thought, wait, I've never seen a crane on the road. Scrolled back up. No answers. Typed this response, then noticed the book's author. What a whirlwind

... the worst bit is I know several people this could be, especially given the 'in Australia' clarification

If you know them then there's a chance I might know some of them and that thought will keep me up at night.

This wasn’t the guy who we all know who used to spray his jeans with Mortein and then light himself on fire, was it?

He used to sit at the back of the bus, cup his hand, spray deodorant into it, then open it and light it on fire with a lighter in one fell swoop to try and impress girls.

He had to stop because the bus company begged our school to tell him to stop bc of legal liability. His hands never actually got damaged after doing it for about a year.

I reached out to my old friend in question here, because I've been thinking about him all day.

I do not know what "the amulet" is. I have no idea what "the amulet" is referring to.

I instantly remembered when he said that.

While we were all at the local park doing legal things that teenagers would do back in the late 2000s, my friend here found a rock at our old smoke spot that was unusually smooth and flat. He liked it so much that he took it to the woodwork classrooms at school, drilled a hole in it, and hung it on a necklace.

When we asked why he weanwearing this dinky-ass pebble on his neck, he claimed it prevented him from ever getting food-related illnesses: wouldn't get food poisoning, couldn't over-eat, was able to ingest anything (prior to him finding The Amulet, a few of us used to play a game called "Devil's Piss" where we would take turns shoving random food bits into a bottle of coke, and the first person to take a sip would get two dollars from the other players).

When we all asked him for the proof that this rock is magical—because nobody believed him, obviously—he said to meet him behind the History block at lunch, where he said he would drink two litres (or half a gallon) of milk in one go and not puke.

We met him there, and about ten of us all watched him down a whole bottle of strawberry milk in two or three breaths.

He didn't puke.

He jumped up and down and punched his stomach to prove it.

He still didn't puke.

I'm so glad I'm alive.

quora is one of the most terrifying social networks on earth which i think is why all the most powerful posters can be found there

bless this woman Bonnie Wingate. this little piece of short nonfiction brings tears to my eyes every time i stop to read it through

Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:

my corner store guy is a 50 year old man who's my best friend in the world and recently he was like "you're too pretty to be single I have some nephews you should meet. very handsome!" and I was like "a niece might be more up my alley" and he just got more excited and said "ah even better! I was overselling my nephews but my nieces are very beautiful"

OP the tags!!

My cats wanted to fight again and I wasn't letting them but the passion in their eye contact suggests they started fighting telepathically

I can't be the first to make this connection

y'all slept on the first chart but I will make the world see my vision

Shout out to the phrase “I’m going to become the joker” for capturing a very specific and real emotion

Old is good. New is bad. The winning formula for a viral video essay.

I am noticing a lot of these videos popping up in my feed. I guess my complaints about those hard light videos made the algorithm decide I should be inundated with "modern movies suck" content.

They follow the same basic formula of "old = good" and "new = bad."

And if you watch them with only a surface level understanding of filmmaking and photography and how to author visuals, you will probably go, "Wow, what an amazing video!"

I get why people like these essays. And I understand there are genuine frustrations with how many modern movies are made.

And the video does have some interesting philosophical filmmaking explanations. I really enjoyed those aspects.

But there is something in the very thumbnail of this video that completely invalidates the overall premise.

The Premise: Old movies look more "real" than new movies.

The Evidence: Comparing one of the greatest movies of all time (Jaws), by one of the greatest directors of all time (Spielberg), to a franchise soft reboot cash grab.

Why not compare to Sinners? Why not compare to Weapons? Or Dune? Or The Brutalist?

Also, is realism always the goal?

What about Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters? Does their unreality make them lesser?

This is how they bait you with these videos. They want you to buy into their nostalgic cherry picking. They don't elevate any modern films that look amazing. They pick their favorite movies from years ago and then compare them to the worst examples in the recent past.

But the thing I dislike the most is that problems are often blamed on artists. If artists were more competent and went back to the old school ways, movies would look better and more real.

Use hard lighting. Use practical effects. Use deep focus. Show and don't tell.

Individual quick fixes are never going to solve a systemic problem.

I assure you that directors and all of the artists involved in making movies would love to use every tool in the toolbox. They haven't forgotten these techniques. But most of the time these tools are not compatible with hyper-efficient filmmaking processes.

I liked his explanation of haptic visuals. To create artistic, textural scenes to help the world of the movie feel more lived in and real. That's a cool concept. But adding a few haptic scenes into Jurassic World isn't going to fix the story. It isn't going to improve the weak script. Hard lighting and deep focus aren't going to fix the systems that produce these risk-averse reboots of profitable IPs. It isn't going to fix the rushed, fix-it-in-post mentality that doesn't give CG artists enough time and resources to produce more realistic imagery.

But also, has he seen a Vince Gilligan show?

Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and now Pluribus have some amazing haptic visuals. It seems like he is ignoring more modern examples to sell the story that things were "better" in the distant past.

This hurts the filmmakers who are creating legitimately beautiful work. And it also ignores the fact that bad, ugly movies have always existed.

Jaws was released in 1975.

Of the 216 movies released that year, I have seen a total of 5.

Only 5 movies from that year stood the test of time. 211 movies are completely ignored when assessing how real and aesthetically pleasing movies used to look.

That is textbook survivorship bias.

Have you seen the classic 1975 cinematic masterpiece... The Happy Hooker?

Let's compare the visuals of The Happy Hooker to Sinners.

It's not a fair fight.

But when you compare Jaws to Sinners...

You can see the quality is not dependent on when the movies are made. It is dependent on a director with a strong vision and a large team of artists who are passionate about their craft.

If you have to resort to this level of nostalgic cherry picking to prove your point, I don't think your argument is very strong.

My health hasn't been great and this post took me about 4 weeks to finish. I hadn't rewatched the video essay in a few weeks and I guess my brain fog misremembered where the image in the thumbnail was from.

I saw 70s sweaty Roy Scheider and thought "Jaws."

When it is actually 70s sweaty Roy Scheider in "Sorcerer."

I don't think this diminished the point I was making. Sorcerer was directed by William Friedkin. He was one of the biggest directors of that era. He did The French Connection and The Exorcist and won Best Director Oscars for both.

But if you want to ding my argument a few points for that mistake, I understand.

@ruffboi-mags

I think you fundamentally misunderstood the argument I was trying to make.

5 films stood the test of time for me personally. I could have clarified that was "for me" but you still completely ignored that there were 216 movies released that year. And roughly the same number for years afterward. Remembering 5, 10, or even 20 films still supports the same idea… we remember a small, curated slice of the past and forget a large volume of mediocre or failed work.

If you look at the list, they were mostly bad stories and they were ugly. "Feeling more real" is a low standard for visuals. Many of them used efficient filmmaking techniques which hurt their quality. This is not a new problem. It has just taken a new form in modern movies.

This is also why I don’t think Jurassic Park and Jurassic World are a useful comparison in the way you’re framing it. The original is widely regarded as a masterpiece because of its writing, direction, pacing, and overall visual authorship. It was created by an auteur director with very few creative constraints. The newer film is a risk-averse franchise product created only to make more money.

I never denied there wasn't an issue with modern movies. My premise was that the proposed prescriptions stated in the video essay, deep focus, haptic visuals, film indexicality, etc, if implemented in all mediocre modern movies, would do little to improve them. Maybe they would feel more "real" but they would still have crappy stories and bland visuals.

You can make deep focus ugly.

You can make haptic visuals ugly.

More sweat and film grain doesn’t turn Jurassic World into Jurassic Park.

All of his suggestions were seasoning, not the steak. Strong visual authorship is created by human beings, not depth of field and more hard light.

I was trying to address the bigger structural causes for failed aesthetics. Risk-averse, efficiency-driven franchise filmmaking plus weaker writing and visual authorship.

And I'm trying to show that there are plenty of "real" and visually beautiful films being made right now. Some of them are mainstream (Sinners). Some of them are blockbusters (Avatar). But many just aren't marketed well and don't receive the attention they should (Roofman). And by using this "old vs new" essay formula, those modern beautiful films are not elevated and people get the impression that *everything* is ugly now and *everything* was beautiful in the past.

If we want more movies to look better and feel better and have better stories, we need to support the change we wish to see. We can't just keep pointing to a cherry picked past and lionize nostalgia in the hopes new movies will add a bit more seasoning. Many studios have already marketed "MORE PRACTICAL EFFECTS" while still churning out risk-averse remakes of reboots.

I am not a film critic. And I am not a film theorist. I am a visual author trying to explain how capitalist systems restrict and commodify artistic works and how that affects aesthetics and storytelling much more than visual seasoning.

seeing this image get used every now and then is like a flashbang every time i see it because i made it years ago when i was trying to figure out how mineimator works and people still throw it around to this day

In a different universe...

The best thing about new zealand english is we get to pick and choose what we like from american english and british english.

The bad thing is that sometimes we choose wrong.

Like. Americans have fries and chips vs brits have chips and crisps. Both valid.

Here? We have chips and chips.

Youd think it'd be fine and that you can figure out which one a person is talking about from context but trust me a good percentage of the time you cannot. And often the person will try to differentiate them by clarifying they meant "Potato chips" only for them to realise a second later that both chips are made from potatoes

I shouldn't make fun but that last part is DEEPLY hilarious to me

………… love u siken

oh, siken is out here spitting FACTS.

the best colors ever actually

for those gradient enjoyers

now, pecker means penis. and wood means boner. so of course you would make assumptions about the term woodpecker. but no. the bird

I LOVE hearing that other languages have so many beautifully unique ways to construct dick jokes