winther's recent activity
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
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Comment on Why movies just don't feel "real" anymore in ~movies
winther Link ParentI was about to post the same video with a similar remark, as it does indeed do a good job of finding a concrete vocabulary for the usual rather vague thing to say that movies "don't feel" right...I was about to post the same video with a similar remark, as it does indeed do a good job of finding a concrete vocabulary for the usual rather vague thing to say that movies "don't feel" right anymore. The video doesn't go into much details about the reasons behind this switch, but there is a short mention in the middle about how the filmmakers are basically responding to the producers constant need for change in post-production. Since they aren't able to fully commit to a unique look, a creative lighting or camera angle, they have to play it safe - so shots are just done in the most neutral bland way, as that is the best foundation to change this later in post-production. And that really shows as many things just feel samey and uninspired.
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
winther LinkIt is not often my opinion of a film changes so drastically throughout, but that happened with Weapons. I was really into it from the start, with its creepy unsettling premise of kids running away...It is not often my opinion of a film changes so drastically throughout, but that happened with Weapons. I was really into it from the start, with its creepy unsettling premise of kids running away with no apparent reason in the middle of the night. It seemed somewhat grounded in reality with a believable depiction of the immediate aftermath, with the parents unjustifiable yet understandable urge to find a scapegoat. That whole thing tapped into the underlying fear most parents have when they leave their kids in someone else's care.
Everything was nicely setup for an intriguing mystery. Then the film started to go on a tangent with switching viewpoint showing events from a previous hidden angle, to basically fill in the blanks. But in that process the creepy mystery falls apart with explaining too much and goes straight to madness ending on a completely different note than where it started. In its own right, how it ends is completely bonkers and funny for what it is worth. I was just disappointed that it ruined what it started. While they do try to explain it, I was not convinced that a months of police couldn't have done what a single parent could do with a map and a ruler.
I can see it is possible to see all kinds of themes and commentaries in this, especially as it clearly is about weaponising children, I am just not seeing much interesting here. Many seem to point to school shootings, but that is only surface level if at all. If I were to stretch it, I would say that maybe there could be something about the concept of "think of the children" is being misused, but I am really not seeing anything deep or thought provoking with how this film ultimately unfolded.
I have a hard time rating is, as I probably started at 4 and ended and 2. Being both entertained, impressed, annoyed and disappointed.
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
winther Link ParentI watched Singin' in the Rain after being somewhat disappointed with both Babylon and The Artist, that also dealt with Hollywood's transition to talkies, and I liked this original classic way...I watched Singin' in the Rain after being somewhat disappointed with both Babylon and The Artist, that also dealt with Hollywood's transition to talkies, and I liked this original classic way better. Yes, it is too long, definitely the last sing and dance segment just goes on for ever, but the general screwball comedy throughout worked for me.
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Comment on Part of me wishes it wasn't true but: AI coding is legit in ~tech
winther Link ParentIf that is the case that they are trying to mask problems, it has the exact opposite effect on me at least, as this behaviour makes the tools less useful in my opinion. I adopted the use of LSP in...If that is the case that they are trying to mask problems, it has the exact opposite effect on me at least, as this behaviour makes the tools less useful in my opinion. I adopted the use of LSP in my editor because they provided a reliable and most of all deterministic help when writing code. Meaning I could count on its suggestions being correct, shortcuts working all the time. It is incredibly weird to me that we are as developers are somehow supposed to accept the unreliability of these tools and apparently have to find odd workarounds or jailbreaks in the hope that it will sometimes work. That is not a productivity booster, that is just adding frustrations into every day workflow.
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Comment on Part of me wishes it wasn't true but: AI coding is legit in ~tech
winther Link ParentIt often seems like that. Usually the models first take on a problem is quite decent, but more times than not, once I start asking for tweaks, improvements or fixes, things start to break down....I have a little armchair-psychologist theory that using language models tickles the same pathways that addictive activities such as gambling or video games do. There's anticipation of the models next response, the novelty of the response, near-misses as the model gets it so close but not quite right, and variable reinforcement that all of that brings together
It often seems like that. Usually the models first take on a problem is quite decent, but more times than not, once I start asking for tweaks, improvements or fixes, things start to break down. The code gets overly convoluted, stuff that worked starts to break and I can spend lot of time trying to work around that - only to get back to mostly the first version. I had to remind myself to just stop at its starting point and take over from there.
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
winther Link ParentAlong with Taste of Cherry, that is definitely his best movie. He made two followups to Where Is the Friend's House? with Life, and Nothing More… and Through the Olive Trees, which are both more...Along with Taste of Cherry, that is definitely his best movie. He made two followups to Where Is the Friend's House? with Life, and Nothing More… and Through the Olive Trees, which are both more experimental and very meta commentary on the first film.
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Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech
winther Link ParentIt is perfectly usable without any sort of social interactions or "friends". Its recommendation for similar artists or even "bands you haven't listened to in a while" is pretty great on its own....It is perfectly usable without any sort of social interactions or "friends". Its recommendation for similar artists or even "bands you haven't listened to in a while" is pretty great on its own. Your profile is public though, but you don't have to mention any identifiable information.
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Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech
winther LinkThe article mentions Last.fm and says it became somewhat obsolete by recommendation builtin into streaming services. I never stopped using it, exactly because it works separately from how you...The article mentions Last.fm and says it became somewhat obsolete by recommendation builtin into streaming services. I never stopped using it, exactly because it works separately from how you consume your music. It doesn't vendorlock you into a specific service. And I have always found its recommendations to be way better than most of what the various streaming services threw at me. The only thing I found streaming services' recommendation useful for, was when they highlight a new release by an artist I have listened to a lot. However that is also increasingly becoming broken as it frequently features AI slop music that piggybacks on an existing artist name.
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Comment on Danish government has reached an agreement to implement a minimum age requirement of fifteen years old on certain social media platforms in ~tech
winther LinkWhile I think this is the right direction in principle, as in my opinion with how social media algorithms work as psychological manipulation they should be considered and regulated like gambling....While I think this is the right direction in principle, as in my opinion with how social media algorithms work as psychological manipulation they should be considered and regulated like gambling. I am however worried what this will lead to when it comes to privacy online. As this could be used as a gateway for ID regulation. Especially because we have Danish politicians that for decades has been hellbent on mass surveillance, with an approach of saying more surveillance means more freedom and any criticism is labeled as a defense for criminals.
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
winther (edited )LinkHad a bit of a spree with WW2 movies, with many interesting ones that doesn't deal directly with the war but with the fringes of it and the consequences afterwards. Lore from 2012 and Phoenix from...Had a bit of a spree with WW2 movies, with many interesting ones that doesn't deal directly with the war but with the fringes of it and the consequences afterwards.
Lore from 2012 and Phoenix from 2014 both deal with the time right after the war ended in Germany, and both symbolically and directly dealing with the guilt and reflective process the country was going through. In Lore we follow five children on a long arduous journey across the country as their high ranking Nazi-parents have left them. A quite bleak and brutal film, but told with very slow poetic film language. I wasn't entirely convinced by some of the characterization but I am a sucker for that 16mm look. Phoneix has an almost absurd premise, with a Jewish-German concentration camp survivor returning home to find her husband, but he can't recognize, because she had some facial surgery. Instead he sees the resemblance and wants to collaborate with her to claim her inheritance as he presumes her dead. All of this works as a artistic metaphor for German's needing to redefine identity at the time. I also tend to really like films that deal with loss of identity in some form, so I quite liked this.
I also watched two newer Italian films where the ending of the war is something that mostly happens in the background, but of course influences events. Vermiglio from 2024 is set in a beautiful snowy Italian mountain village where the arrival of two deserting soldiers set some events in motion. It is a slow moving bleak narrative dealing with child death, broken marriages, and unhealthy family dynamics giving it a very melancholic mood. However, I was more or less waiting the entire film for it to show what it wanted to do with that. It didn't really work for me. There’s Still Tomorrow from 2023 is black and white and tells the story of a working class woman with kids and a violent husband, who fights against rampant misogyny in Rome just after the war has ended. It took me some time to properly "tune in" to the film language of this. It is interesting combination of something very modern and something that more than draws inspiration from Italian neo-realism of the 50s. It looks stunning in the same way Roma did, and it does share thematic similarities with its depiction of woman in a historic context set in a country undergoing political turmoil. This however leans more into a poetic experimentation and downplayed humor. I am conflicted about its very heavy handed thematic handling of fight for woman's rights, with almost every man in the film being an asshole and characters having blunt conversations that removes all subtext. This style leaves less room for doubt and self reflection as everything is told by the film itself and its clear as day symbolism. On the other hand, I need to acknowledge how well it is done here. How great everyone plays their part, and most importantly how it servers as a great showcase of a strong woman demanding her rights as an equal citizen, despite every man around her opposing and obstructing her.
I knew that seeing Son of Saul from 2015 was going to be tough, as it set directly inside the gas chambers and crematories of Auschwitz, and while I won't really recommend doing this as it will be quite a tough evening, but this film serves well as a double feature with The Zone of Interest. Going from planning meetings where the layout of a "factory" of genocide with humans as input and ashes at output, to this film where we see what that means in practice.
Somewhat more uplifting was the Danish film The Good Traitor from 2020. Yet another lovely looking 16mm film. It looks absolutely amazing. Tells the real story of Henrik Kauffmann, the Danish ambassador in the US at the time when Denmark was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany. I wasn't familiar with this part of Danish history during the Nazi occupation, which was really fascinating. We have plenty of Danish films covering the resistance groups, but not that many that ventures into our collaborative government and the dilemmas faced. This focuses on the American ambassador and how he basically went rogue, so we don't get much from the Copenhagen side of things. I think some nuance is lost in that decision, as he is portrayed mostly one-sided as a hero. I can't judge how historically accurate that is though. Suffice to say, it is by all measures a very engaging narrative and Ulrich Thomsen plays his part very convincingly.
I was very intrigued when I realized that Verhoeven had made a WW2 resistance film, Black Book from 2006. How would the director of Robocop, Starship Troopers and Showgirls handle that subject matter? It was everything I hoped it would be, which means it was still full of surprises despite being filled with his trademarks of sleaze, melodrama, nudity and extreme violence. Only Verhoeven could have pulled this style off, where it does take its subject matter seriously - it isn't a parody or anything. It depicts the brutality of the Nazi occupation without making light out it. Yet it still manages to be funny, sleazy, entertaining with one crazy turn of events after another. Other WW2 films are usually more dreary, serious, heavy and tragic. Verhoeven manages to not do that, without compromising the respect for the subject. So many odd scenes that doesn't feel like they belong in a WW2 movie, yet he makes it work perfectly. It feels right for all the wrong reasons, or wrong for all the right reasons.
Well, I think I am taking a break from WW2 for the foreseeable future though.
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'Blossoms Shanghai' trailer: Wong Kar-Wai’s thirty-episode series finally gets a North American release
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Comment on 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' movie review by Roger Ebert & Gene Siskel (1982) in ~movies
winther Link ParentMust say it is great to see a Star Trek fan that has opinions that goes against the usual favorites. I also have a bit of a conflicted relationship with the movies, as there aren't many of them I...Must say it is great to see a Star Trek fan that has opinions that goes against the usual favorites. I also have a bit of a conflicted relationship with the movies, as there aren't many of them I find truly Trek. I understand that First Contact is among the favorites of many as it is the most Hollywood cinematic, but it is low on my list. I usually put The Undiscovered Country, The Motion Picture or Insurrection at the top. Especially the last two feels most like double episodes, which is a good thing in my book. But I can totally get behind III and V for being among the best "hang out" films with the original crew. They have some of the best character moments at least.
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Comment on Blogging in ~comp
winther Link ParentI have a selfhosted blog using Jekyll and a simple script that generates the site as HTML and copy everything to a VPS with rsync over SSH. It works, but my personal blog I use Bear Blog as it has...I have a selfhosted blog using Jekyll and a simple script that generates the site as HTML and copy everything to a VPS with rsync over SSH. It works, but my personal blog I use Bear Blog as it has a good balance of allowing technical customization and make it simpler to just write and publish. Which make me write on that blog more. I admit that tinkering with various static site generators is half the fun, but I tend to lose interest in actual writing once I got everything working.
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
winther LinkWatched Alien: Romulus as I had heard decent things about this as it should be a sort of return to form for the franchise. Maybe I am just incapable of appreciating mainstream blockbusters now,...Watched Alien: Romulus as I had heard decent things about this as it should be a sort of return to form for the franchise. Maybe I am just incapable of appreciating mainstream blockbusters now, but I was mostly disappointed. With some notable good parts.
First of, the intro tries to mimic 2001 in style and sound. Bold, but it doesn't work when you can't live up to even a small percentage of that reference. Secondly, the whole premise with escaping the mining planet wasn't very convincing. I am not buying this group of random people just have access to a spaceship they unhindered can take off with and the whole setup becomes completely irrelevant after 15 minutes. Of course the plot needs some reason for them to enter that station not knowing what is there, but it could have been handled better I think.
There is a varied cast of characters, but I practically don't care about any of them and we barely get any character development or background either. So I am not emotionally invested at all once they get killed off one by one.
The only one with an interesting story is the synthetic Andy. He actually has an interesting character progression throughout the film, that opens the always interesting dilemmas of artificial life and how it should be weighed against biological life. Rain is fine, but being so much a copy of Ripley makes her uninteresting. It tries to sits somewhere in between Alien and Aliens but lacks the anxiety of the first one, and the spectacle isn't nearly as exciting as the second one. The nostalgia references was terribly handled too.
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Aggressive bots ruined my weekend
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Comment on Millennials: How do you feel about nostalgia pandering? in ~talk
winther Link ParentNot sure with "over the moon", but I actually think Clerks III hit some right notes in terms of both being nostalgic for the original, while doing something different with the Dante and Randal....Absolutely with you about going back to the originals, though I'm curious: is there a nostalgia example you can think of where the creators hit all the right notes and you were over the moon about it?
Not sure with "over the moon", but I actually think Clerks III hit some right notes in terms of both being nostalgic for the original, while doing something different with the Dante and Randal. Fitting as they are both stuck in time, but can't deny they have gotten 30 years older. The movie itself is hit and miss, and the first half is misplaced nostalgia bait, but the end still won me over.
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Comment on Millennials: How do you feel about nostalgia pandering? in ~talk
winther (edited )LinkIt really depends on how it is being used. For the most part it does feel very calculated, basically nostalgia bait for commercial purposes. I think it really started to feel "wrong" for me was...It really depends on how it is being used. For the most part it does feel very calculated, basically nostalgia bait for commercial purposes. I think it really started to feel "wrong" for me was with Stranger Things. As these goes, not in any way the worst defender of this as it is generally very well done, but it was the first time I felt the producers trying to manipulate a certain target demographics with applying all the "right" nostalgic elements from the 80s. Like a machine learning output had given the script writers a list of elements to integrate into their story for maximum effect for a nostalgic hungry target demographic. That is how most of these things feel to me. If I am feeling nostalgic, I rather go back to the originals rather than new stuff drenched in references.
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Comment on The goon squad. Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation. in ~life
winther Link ParentI think we are pretty aligned. It all comes down to proper sex education of teenagers, porn or no porn. They could also have used some of that in the 60s, and every decade later. Remember my own...I think we are pretty aligned. It all comes down to proper sex education of teenagers, porn or no porn. They could also have used some of that in the 60s, and every decade later. Remember my own sex education in late 90s was still mostly about STD and pregnancy. Today of course it needs to involve a non-judgemental healthy critical view of porn and how it differs from the kind of sex most teenagers will have. I can personally attest to having some concern on the increased violence in mainstream porn, combined with reports of many saying they have been choked during sex without consent definitely sounds alarming. Though it all comes back to forming a proper culture around sex education, and from what I can gather just from reading interviews in my newspaper, it does seem like gen z is forming a way better consent based approach to sex these years. Where talking about boundaries and asking before acting is seen as attractive, which is all kinds of amazing. Just looking back at my own teenage years, the mainstream media depiction of sex was extremely problematic. Like with how big magazines ran massive articles on which underage girls they were "willing to wait for" with countdowns to them turning 18. There is still ways to go, but we have really come a long way with criticizing the whole woman as just objects in the last couple of decades and just talking about consent means a whole lot.
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Comment on The goon squad. Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation. in ~life
winther Link ParentThe newspaper I subscribe to have been running a series lately where they have people from the boomer generation and some from gen z talk together about sex. Of course it is all anecdotal in...is some serious negative effect on people who have grown up watching porn from a fairly young age?
Or is this something we just say because we, as a society, have traditionally thought that sex is something that we need to hide away, because it's "bad," especially from children?
The newspaper I subscribe to have been running a series lately where they have people from the boomer generation and some from gen z talk together about sex. Of course it is all anecdotal in nature, so not proper research as such, but it has been really interesting. Suffice to say, the culture around sex was also pretty damn problematic in the 60s to say the least. One older guy told that they knew absolutely nothing about sex at all, so their approach wasn't exactly built around consent or mutual respect. He told that they once held a girl down in the schoolyard to force her skirt down so they could finally see what was underneath. Those sort of things was mostly shrugged as "boys will be boys". Compared to the gen z young man, acknowledging that porn addiction can become problematic at a young age, it also removes some of the mystery of it all and it does seem like young people have created a much safer consent based culture around sex. It was also eyeopening to read several encounters from elder woman who have been straight up raped in their youth, and only in recent years have actually realized what they have been the victim of.
This is not to downplay potential issues with porn influences these days, but lets not think it was much better a generation or three ago.
Haven’t seen any other Zach Cregger films. Is Barbarian similar or completely different?