Weekend Reads (May 4): “Shōgun,” Godzilla, The Cure, AI and the Church, Video Game History
Recommended weekend reading for May 4, 2024.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
In order to ensure that Shōgun’s action sequences were as intense and believable as possible, the series’ stunt coordinator took a “no bullshit” approach to the action sequences.
[T]he goal was to keep the action grounded in reality and aimed toward aiding in the building out of the epic story at the heart of the show. That was a change of pace for a lot of the crew, who Chartrand-DelValle said were coming from shows with “a lot of filler” and 40-beat fight scenes that, while entertaining, lack the intensity and finality of fights in Shōgun. “I had to emphasize all the time: Go for the target. If you’re cutting, you’re cutting for the neck, take his head off, you know — especially with armor, you’re trying to get under the armpit, you’re trying to get the back of the leg. It’s got to be real, it’s got to be the target, and if you’re not doing that I call bullshit and we’re just going to start over again.”
Related: I reviewed Shōgun last month: “It’s a rare privilege to watch a TV series that’s made with so much confidence, style, and gravitas that you trust it implicitly… Shōgun is one such series.”
Also related: If you’ve finished Shōgun and are wanting to watch even more samurai drama, then check out some of these titles.
Jake New delves into the weighty themes that have given the Godzilla movies so much staying power over the decades.
While Godzilla — at his nuclear core — persists as a lumbering metaphor for the consequences of war whose every thunderous footstep pounds the point home for audiences, the stories around him will always adapt to reflect the fears of the time. The thrill moviegoers get from seeing giant monsters level cities has certainly contributed to Godzilla’s success. The spectacle of mass destruction, what Susan Sontag described as the “peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, making a mess,” is central to the character’s appeal. But the potent yet malleable meaning behind the destruction transformed what could have easily been remembered as a particularly well-crafted piece of 1950s sci-fi into a legacy that has endured over 38 films and seven decades.
The Blu-ray release of Godzilla Minus One is now available in Japan; here’s hoping that a North American release arrives sooner rather than later. (Read my review of Godzilla Minus One from last December.)
Tim Grierson highlights movies that underwent dramatic changes after they premiered at film festivals, including Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Wong Kar-wai’s 2046.
Although hardly exhaustive, I decided to spotlight some of the most memorable instances of movies that went through radical changes in the wake of their debut. To be clear, I’m not including any instances in which a studio or producer demanded cuts — these alterations were all (at least as far as we know) initiated by the director. You’ll notice some commonalities in these stories: For one thing, filmmakers frequently blamed the changes on not being properly finished with their movie before the high-profile premiere. Another is that they found the festival screening to be incredibly enlightening in terms of what wasn’t working with their film. Sometimes, the changes helped — other times, it didn’t make a difference. But for those who saw these pictures at a festival and then caught them at the multiplex, it felt, in some ways, like a brand-new film.
Stereogum’s Lesa Hannah talks to some of the leading ladies in the shoegaze scene about their musical careers and the realities of getting older while playing in a band.
Touring around the world in [Rachel Goswell’s] early fifties is a vastly different experience than in her twenties. “When I was younger, touring meant everything to me,” she says. “And it was just all-encompassing. And coming home, adjusting was very difficult.” After being on such a high, she’d hit a low and feel depressed. “The difference for me now is that I’m settled and happy in my home life. So when I come home, I’m really happy to come home to my son and my cats.” There’s also just the peace and quiet she finds when she goes out her front door; she’s met by verdant English fields, not a bustling metropolitan city with fans waiting to get her signature.
One of my favorite music blogs, Space Echo, recently concluded a series of posts on the Japanese shoegaze/dreampop scene, highlighting artists like Blurred City Lights, For Tracy Hyde, and Hitsujibungaku.
The Cure’s magnum opus, 1989’s Disintegration, turned 35 years old this week. John Freeman reflects on hearing the album as “a callow nineteen year-old.”
In 1989, Pixies gave us Doolittle and The Stone Roses unleashed their debut album. Like most doting indie kids, I loved both records with a fanatical passion. I also was infatuated by De La Soul’s groundbreaking Three Feet High & Rising, NWA’s incendiary Straight Outta Compton and the cool vibes of Soul II Soul’s Club Classics Volume 1, while also finding time to swoon over Hunkpapa by Throwing Muses, Technique by New Order, Spaceman 3’s Playing With Fire and Neneh Cherry’s indefatigable Raw Like Sushi. Genuinely marvellous albums by Lou Reed (New York), Kate Bush (The Sensual World) and The Beastie Boys (Paul's Boutique) would barely get a look in.
However, even set against these rivals, one album would rule them all. In May 1989, The Cure would release their eighth studio album, Disintegration, which was described at the time by tQ’s Chris Roberts in his Melody Maker review as being “as much fun as losing a limb”. But for me, who had only ever previously flirted with The Cure’s musical output, it sounded like one of the greatest albums I’d ever heard. The fact that much of Disintegration was a funereal dirge, with lyrics reeking of self-absorbed self-flagellation, mattered not a jot. In a year of mighty albums, Disintegration was The Daddy.
Related: Last June, my wife and I finally saw The Cure in concert. They played several songs from Disintegration, including “Lovesong,” “Pictures of You,” “Prayers for Rain,” and a searing performance of the title track.
Manuel Moreale explains why the web isn’t dying.
The current AI chaos is prompting people to write all sorts of posts and articles about the imminent death of the web. The current debacle surrounding the TikTok ban (forced sale?) in the US is making journalists believe that the internet as a global town square where people can interact is over if governments start banning these huge platforms.
I don’t believe the web is dying. Not for one second. Maybe this specific version of the web is dying, that might be true. Let’s imagine we ban TikTok. And Facebook. And Instagram. And Threads. And all the other huge platforms. There would still be one global town square left. It’s called the web. The web itself IS the global town square.
Via Manton Reece.
The truth about TikTok, Facebook, et al., is that they do make it incredibly easy to share your thoughts online. (Whether or not that’s a good thing is another question entirely.) But they have their own liabilities, starting with the fact that your content, as well as the content you see, is ultimately beholden to their secret algorithms. They’re the ones in control. But the beauty of the web has always been that it levels the playing field, diminishing the power of algorithms.
Last week, I shared an article about “Father Justin,” an AI-powered chatbot produced by a Catholic apologetics organization. Leah Libresco Sargeant considers why such AI-related efforts are a bad idea.
When people approach the Church with questions, they deserve to hear the truth spoken in love. A chatbot cannot be reliably trained to speak the truth. More importantly, a chatbot demeans the seeker by feigning a personal connection. Someone approaching the Church is always asking a double question — what does the Church say about this topic and does Jesus love me? The second question is usually asked and answered implicitly. It can’t be built into a prompt — it requires the personal witness and presence of another human being.
A small publisher of speculative fiction and RPGs is shutting down due to an influx of “soulless” AI-generated content.
“The AI problem is a time problem. If I was not dealing with a host of other issues, I’d fight through the AI either until the phase passes or the AI Bros gave up on bothering me. But with everything else, I just don't have the time,” Dawson told me. “The number of submissions have just flooded the inbox. And I don’t have hours a day to deal with it. As an example, I haven’t checked my business email in the last week. My submission inbox... despite the fact that we are no longer accepting submissions... has 30 emails in it.”
[…]
“The problem with AI is the people who use AI. They don’t respect the written word,” Dawson told me. “These are people who think their ‘ideas’ are more important than the actual craft of writing, so they churn out all these ‘ideas’ and enter their idea prompts and think the output is a story. But they never bothered to learn the craft of writing. Most of them don’t even read recreationally. They are more enamored with the idea of being a writer than the process of being a writer. They think in terms of quantity and not quality.”
Efforts to preserve old video games and make them available for research and study face significant challenges from the video game industry.
For years now, video game preservationists, librarians, and historians have been arguing for a DMCA exemption that would allow them to legally share emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers remotely over the Internet. But those preservationists continue to face pushback from industry trade groups, which worry that an exemption would open a legal loophole for “online arcades” that could give members of the public free, legal, and widespread access to copyrighted classic games.
The plight of a small-town Nebraska newspaper highlights the problems faced by local and community newspapers around the country.
Last year, an average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week, according to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. More than 211 counties across the country — about 7% of all counties — now have no newspapers, creating “news deserts,” and another 228 are at risk of losing their paper.
In Nebraska, 10 weekly and daily newspapers have closed during the past three years, leaving the state with 146 newspapers. Nine counties, including suburban Cass County just outside Omaha and Lincoln, have no newspapers. Some daily newspapers have cut staff and stopped publishing every day of the week.
Gone are longtime papers like the Greeley Citizen, the Ralston Recorder, the Papillion Times, the Plattsmouth Journal and the Spaulding Enterprise. These were papers that chronicled the history of prairie towns, the tornadoes and floods, reports on who got a ticket from the sheriff last week, who got married and who died, and whether the local sports teams won or lost.
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