Weekend Reads (Feb 3): Christopher Nolan, TikTok, “Starfield,” Garth Marenghi
Recommended weekend reading for February 3, 2024.
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Christopher Nolan has directed some of the biggest and most successful movies in recent years, with 2023’s Oppenheimer poised to dominate this year’s Oscars. The director recently talked with Time’s Jeffrey Kluger about that film’s production, his approach to capturing audience sympathy for hard-to-like characters, and his feelings concerning blockbusters.
Nolan has a taste for cinematic small-ball too. Asked to cite his favorite recent films, he doesn’t hesitate to name Past Lives and Aftersun. The latter is a tender coming-of-age drama, the former a gentle relationship tale that plays out over 24 years. Aftersun, he says, “was just a beautiful film.” Past Lives was “subtle in a beautiful sort of way.”
So would he do subtle? Probably not. “I’m drawn to working at a large scale because I know how fragile the opportunity to marshal those resources is,” Nolan says. “I know that there are so many filmmakers out there in the world who would give their eye teeth to have the resources I put together, and I feel I have the responsibility to use them in the most productive and interesting way.”
Via The Playlist.
Related: Nolan’s Tenet — which might be my favorite films of his (my review) — is returning to theaters later this month, including IMAX screenings. The screenings will also include exclusive footage from Dune: Part Two, which comes out on March 1.
It’s going to harder to hear major pop stars like Taylor Swift, Drake, and Olivia Rodrigo on TikTok: Universal Music has begun pulling their songs from the social media platform over a contract dispute.
On Tuesday, UMG accused the video platform of attempting to bully it into accepting a “bad deal” that didn’t soothe the record labels' concerns regarding adequate compensation for artists and songwriters, protections against AI-generated music, and online safety on the platform to protect artists from “hate speech, bigotry, bullying and harassment.” TikTok responded saying that it was “disappointing” that UMG had “chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users,” and accused the label of putting its “own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
The contract dispute was over several factors including — surprise, surprise — AI-related concerns. In their response, TikTok called Universal’s decision “sad and disappointing” and accused the publisher of “[putting] their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
Bethesda Game Studios’ highly anticipated Starfield was one of 2023’s biggest video games, and among other things, it explores the concept of faith in a far-flung galaxy.
These beliefs are challenged as Constellation members make new discoveries, which shatter common understandings of the galaxy and who controls it. (Spoilers ahead.) As you journey through the main story you find ancient artifacts of a previous civilization and meet the creators. These “aliens” cause everyone, even the most devout, to question everything. Consequently, certain members must now write a new chapter in their religious views. As we journey into the unknown, we must balance our faith with new developments. This is where the heart of Starfield lies. How do you explain the unexplainable when it counters what you’ve previously believed?
One of the more interesting technology challenges is getting the classic first-person shooter Doom to run on even the most bizarre and obscure devices. Innovative developers have been able to play Doom on everything from printers and ultrasound scanners to ATMs. But this one might top them all: a grad student has theorized a method for playing Doom via bacteria.
After shrinking each game frame down to a 32×48 black-and-white bitmap, Ramlan describes a system whereby a display controller uses a well-known chemical repressor-operator pair to induce each individual cell in the grid to either express a fluorescent protein or not. The resulting grid of glowing bacteria (which is only simulated in Ramlan's project) can technically be considered a display of Doom gameplay, though the lack of even grayscale shading makes the resulting image pretty indecipherable, to be honest.
The technical challenges of actually getting this to work might be insurmountable and the resulting game would be unplayable, but as a proof-of-concept, it’s impressively nerdy.
I’ve written about the AI George Carlin special a couple of times already. Justin Ling offers a deep dive into Dudesy, the YouTube channel and AI tool that created the special.
The writing is more earnest than the Tom Brody trollfest. It is, essentially, George Carlin karaoke. Whoever wrote the special is clearly a fan of the late comedian, and whoever did the voice work — more likely a Carlin impersonator than a text-to-speech model, given the fact that not a single word anywhere is mispronounced — is pretty good.
The fact that major media outlets everywhere, and Carlin’s daughter herself, were so credulous at the possibility of it being top-to-bottom AI-generated that they were outraged just elevates the satire to the next level.
Via Pixel Envy.
Thanks to its mix of horror, comedy, and intentionally awful production values, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace has developed quite a cult following in the two decades since it debuted on British TV. Simon Bland tries to make sense of the series’ phenomenon with creator Matthew Holness.
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace may have only run for a single, six-episode season but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming one of the most enduring cult comedies of the past two decades. Airing on U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 in 2004, its highly quotable line deliveries and schlocky horror-parody plots quickly garnered a dedicated fan base, if not much commercial success. While it was too meta to land with the mainstream, the comedy fans who fell for Darkplace still hype it up at every chance — even big-name stars like Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm have called themselves Darkplace die-hards.
Watching the show years later, it’s easy to see why: This is one of the all-time great, weird, idiosyncratic comedies of our time.
I watched Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace earlier this week and it is great, weird, and idiosyncratic indeed; read my review.
Related: Although a ratings failure back in 2004, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace definitely made a cultural impact, particularly in horror circles.
Netflix has announced their slate of movies and TV shows for 2024, and it’s packed with returning favorites and intriguing new titles. Some highlights include 3 Body Problem in March; new seasons of Arcane, The Night Agent, and Squid Game, and a Terminator anime series.
Related: Every month, I pick my recommended streaming titles on all of the major streaming platforms.
Finally, Carl Weathers, known for his performances in the Rocky movies, Predator, Happy Gilmore, and The Mandalorian, died earlier this week at the age of 76.
Born Jan. 14, 1948, in New Orleans, Weathers played a variety of sports including boxing, football, soccer, wrestling and gymnastics. He played football in college at San Diego State University and helped the Aztecs win the 1969 Pasadena Bowl. While at SDSU, Weathers also pursued a degree in theatre arts, but in 1970 he signed with the Oakland Raiders as a free agent, and he played in eight games in the NFL as a linebacker across two seasons.
After his stint in professional football, Weathers pivoted more seriously to acting, landing small roles in Arthur Marks’ blaxploitation movies Bucktown and Friday Foster, as well as TV series including Good Times, Kung Fu, Cannon and Starsky and Hutch.
In addition to all of the many, many iconic roles in Weathers’ career, he appeared in what is arguably the funniest Star Wars scene of all time.
Various celebrities, including Giancarlo Esposito, Pedro Pascal, and Adam Sandler, have paid tribute to Weathers. And over on Instagram, Arnold Schwarzenegger — he and Weathers shared the greatest handshake in cinema history — called Weathers “the type of friend who pushes you to be your best just to keep up with him.”
From the Blog
I don’t blog about politics as much as I once did, but I had to get some things off my chest concerning the bizarre conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift, Joe Biden, and the Super Bowl that certain right-wing and MAGA folks are spouting on social media.
Yes, you read that correctly: If the 49ers fail to defeat the Chiefs then Biden could get re-elected, potentially leading to World War III and the deaths of millions. The fate of the free world now rests, not on the U.S. and our allies, but rather, on the shoulders of Brock Purdy, George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey, Nick Bosa, and their teammates.
It’s one thing to be tired of celebrity romances, or perhaps more accurately, the incessant coverage of celebrity romances. (Personally, I hope all celebrities get to experience some nice, meaningful romance.) It’s something else entirely, however, to claim that a celebrity romance will bring about the End. Of. Civilization. As. We. Know. It.
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