Weekend Reads (Jun 25): “Arcane,” Krzysztof Kieślowski, Hip Hop, “Spaceballs,” Deepfakes
Recommended weekend reading for June 25, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material. Unfortunately, I was under the weather this week, so today’s edition is a bit shorter than usual.
Arcane: League of Legends has been a critically acclaimed hit for Netflix. But how did the series’ producers go about translating the hit video game into an animated series?
“There were a lot of things that we needed to figure out at the front end of the show,” Yee says, “Like, How do we find the right degree of groundedness to make a prolonged narrative show you could watch, without getting fatigued by the really over-the-top elements from the video game? It was a bit of a push and a pull finding that exact balance.” Adds Linke: “It was important to us not to just create another ‘fight porn.’ We wanted something that goes much deeper than that, into what the characters feel, what their challenges are, what their concerns are. Really, we just wanted to tell a great story.”
I really enjoyed everything about Arcane, from the steampunk aesthetic and rich world-building to the superbly stylized animation and thrilling action.
The first ten minutes of Pixar’s Up is one of the most moving and emotional movie sequences in recent history. But it took director Pete Docter and his crew a long time to figure out how to make it work as well as it does.
Originally, the montage had dialogue. But according to Docter, storyboard artist Ronnie del Carmen suggested that they should let composer Michael Giacchino’s piece, “Married Life,” do the talking. “Being [a] fan of silent films, I kept pushing to see how much we could take out, and discovered that it seemed like the less we had the more emotional it felt,” Docter says. “No dialogue, no sound effects — just music and visuals. It’s pretty tight. Every shot is a setup for elements we use later in the film.”
Via 1440.
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy is one of the most significant accomplishments in cinema history. A 4K restoration will begin playing in theaters around the country later this summer.
All of Kieślowski’s movies centered on the metaphysical, the unknown; the ideas of our doppelgänger our other secret lives, with heavy doses of fate, chance, destiny, and morality. The breathtakingly humanist “Three Colors” trilogy wasn’t much different starring Juliette Binoche as a grieving widow in “Blue,” Julie Delpy as a woman trying to divorce her husband in “White,” and the late, great Jean‑Louis Trintignant and Irene Jacob in a story about a retired judge spying on his neighbors and the ethical and moral questions posed when he is caught.
Here are my reviews of Kieślowski’s trilogy. It’s probably been close to a decade since I’ve watched any of the “Three Colors” films; I’d like to fix that some time soon.
Terry Nguyen discusses the melancholy tone of Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express and Tsai Ming-Liang’s Rebels of the Neon God.
[The two films] both chronicle the lives of wayward urban youths coming of age during an economically prosperous yet politically uncertain time. Set respectively in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the films, released within a few years of one another, hint at the looming forces of globalization and the new political hierarchies ushered in at the turn of the century. These films also tackle themes that resonate with a pandemic-afflicted audience: alienation, nostalgia, longing, unfulfilled romance, and a sense of ennui toward current events. And despite predating social media, Tsai and Wong both manage to presciently capture the loneliness in modern relationships.
When you think of hip hop samples, chances are, you probably think of classic soul and R&B bits like the “Amen break.” But hip hop samples are quite a bit more diverse and surprising — Scooby-Doo? Black Flag? Scott Walker? — than that.
Regardless of the method, it’s incredibly fascinating to hear a hip-hop song and trace all of the layers back to their original sources. Sometimes, you can immediately tell where a sample comes from. In other cases, you may be surprised to discover how anybody turned a melody or rhythm into the hip-hop track you know and love. To further explore this phenomenon, Discogs has surfaced 20 surprising songs that became hip-hop sample gold.
When Frozen was released in 2013, it was praised for its rejection of the romantic tropes usually found in Disney movies. But Lilo & Stitch did that all the way back in 2002.
Directed by Sanders and Dean DeBlois, “Lilo & Stitch” centers on the friendship between a young Hawaiian girl and a blue extraterrestrial koala-like creature. The biggest relationship between two human characters belongs to Lilo and her older sister Nani, who raises her after the death of their parents in a car crash. There’s no romantic love to be found in “Lilo & Stitch,” just the bond that develops between two new friends and the love that exists between sisters. The film earned $271 million worldwide and launched a franchise that included three direct-to-video sequels and three television series.
Mel Brooks’ classic sci-fi spoof Spaceballs turned 35(!) this week.
In the years that followed, I’d rewatch the film often, always laughing at the same parts, and most importantly discovering new parts. Case in point, for as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with meta-narratives. Films that reference themselves, dissect the nature of their existence, etc. And now I realize I must have fallen in love with that thanks to Spaceballs. Growing up in the 1980s, watching the general blockbusters of the day, I hadn’t been exposed to the kind of fourth-wall breaks Mel Brooks was so famous for. So, scenes like the instant cassette moment where Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and Colonel Sanders (George Wyner) find a VHS of the movie as they’re filming it and watch the movie back in the movie they’re watching blew my mind. It still does today. Plus, in the 1980s, the idea of having a VHS cassette of a new movie was almost overwhelmingly exciting. You honestly couldn’t have imagined anything better than owning a VHS of a new movie and the scene gave you that joy. It’s probably my favorite scene, for a few minutes at least.
The first time I watched Spaceballs was a pivotal childhood moment. I had no idea what it was, it just happened to be playing on TV when I changed the channel, but the long, opening spaceship crawl culminating in the “We Brake For Nobody” bumper sticker melded with my middle school brain’s synapses in a way that I’d never experienced before. Lines like “Ludicrous speed!,” “There’s only one man who would dare give me the raspberry,” and “I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate” only further sealed the deal.
I introduced my kids to Spaceballs earlier this year and their reaction was considerably less enthusiastic than mine had been — further proof that there’s precious little hope for the younger generation.
This isn’t creepy at all: Amazon’s Alexa technology now has the ability to mimic the voices of your dead relatives.
Although this specific application is already controversial, with users on social media calling the feature “creepy” and a “monstrosity,” such AI voice mimicry has become increasingly common in recent years. These imitations are often known as “audio deepfakes” and are already regularly used in industries like podcasting, film and TV, and video games.
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