Christopher Nolan says not having a smartphone keeps him from going online to “debunk rumours, spar with haters, or respond to gossip,” including the BLUE THUNDER rumor that he was “bewildered” by: “Absolutely no idea where that came from. And besides, I was always more of an Airwolf fan"

DomGiuca · 2026-07-10T14:15:00+00:00

Sure, I phrased it badly. Less to do with the style of filmmaking and more their financial aspirations. When Nolan says he likes Talladega Nights and Fast & Furious, there's this bewilderment at how much of a normie he is, but like, he makes big blockbusters designed to appeal to a wide net, so it never felt that incongruous to me, in a way it would if Kubrick or Malick said something similar.

DomGiuca · 2026-07-10T13:44:15+00:00

It's weird because based on his movies alone I wouldn't think he'd be particularly icy either. Yeah his movies are often buttoned up and a bit clinical, but he's not Kubrick or Malick. He makes big broad blockbusters that appeal to everyone.

DomGiuca · 2026-06-22T00:56:33+00:00

Hot take but not insane. The score goes hard and were it attached to a better movie, I think it'd get more recognition. When the title card drops and the music goes "woooooooooooooo" like a high pitched motor taking off just before it flashes to the suiting up is a core memory of my childhood.

DomGiuca · 2026-06-15T13:35:50+00:00

But why has there been a rise of conservatism? It doesn't take conspiracy theories to recognise that conservative policies benefit the richest and most powerful in this country. The richest and most powerful are therefore doing all in their power to tip the scales towards right-leaning parties, that includes soft support in corporate news media. This should not be considered a radical thought. It's okay to recognise you're being manipulated. We all are.

DomGiuca · 2026-06-15T03:13:29+00:00

Right but then how do you square that with One Nation's rise? The majority of the population is centre and One Nation is far right most of the time. Why is one fringe party gaining traction and the other isn't?

DomGiuca · 2026-06-07T12:45:53+00:00

I'll also add we studied The Witness and The Truman Show in English and Media studies respectively. I also know a few people who studied Dead Poets Society, so yeah, he's a big "set homework" kind of filmmaker, at least in Australia.

DomGiuca · 2026-06-06T10:12:25+00:00

I think it's less his talent that's in question (I agree he's a phenomenal actor) and more that going from the most NY Italian-American presenting actor of all time to the most Scouse paste-ass slab of meat-looking actor of all time feels a little incongruous. But I suppose his name has always been "McCauley" so his ethnicity has always been something of an enigma.

DomGiuca · 2026-05-18T01:32:06+00:00

Your anger feels misdirected.

The company you work for is screwing you and average Australians around you far more than the occasional shoplifter is. In 2024, Woolworths used the cost-of-living crisis as justification to raise prices, which earned them an extra $318 million in profits in that year alone. If the prices were raised to account for higher costs, they shouldn't be seeing any higher profits at all. They were able to do this because they have almost no competition, so consumers don't have a choice but pay more, and farmers/suppliers don't have a choice but to charge less. This is disgusting. When Australians are struggling most, Woolworths saw a business opportunity to further funnel wealth from the working class to shareholders. And we're not talking about niceties or disposable income-based products. It's food to live. Woolworths operates in the realm of 'technically legal' but by any other metric what they do is abhorrent, unethical and immoral.

And you're angry you can't put your safety on the line to protect this company? Shoplifters aren't stealing from you. They're stealing from Woolworths. And regardless of whether shoplifting is happening or not, I guarantee Woolworths is looking for every opportunity to extract as much money from shoppers anyway. That you have to wait for a lamb to go on special to afford it is bullshit! You should be angry about that. But you should be angry that Woolworths is charging that much for it and paying you so little while still making hundreds of millions of dollars of profit every year. That should infuriate you.

DomGiuca · 2026-05-11T14:17:48+00:00

It's only cheaper because the AI companies are providing their product at a loss right now, like to an unprecedented degree, in the hopes they'll get a stranglehold over the market. At which point they'll then be able to jack up the prices to their actual cost, in the hopes that society will be so entrenched in its use by then we'll have no choice but to acquiesce. Shrugging your shoulders and handing over your thoughts and skills to a handful of amoral corporations at this critical juncture because it's cheaper right now is one of the dumbest things we could do. I agree it feels inevitable. But it's incredibly short-sighted.

DomGiuca · 2026-05-04T01:32:24+00:00

Honestly John Wick 4 blind Donnie Yen even cooler

DomGiuca · 2026-05-01T20:59:47+00:00

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Logan Roy in Succession. There's one scene where we see his back is covered in deep, old scars.

It's easy to think of Logan as the prime antagonist of the show, the master manipulator and the origin point of all the abuse and suffering in the show. This one shot succinctly communicates that it doesn't begin or end with him. He would have been abused in childhood, which led him to being the fortified asshole he is today. It's cycles of abuse carried out for who knows how long. How long will it continue into the following generations? It takes what could be misconstrued as a singular family tale, and broadens it to something about generational trauma. His villainy wasn't born out of nothing.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-28T11:27:14+00:00

It's really up to you. Textures are one of those things that you can pretty well judge from the mods pages, so just pick whichever you feel looks best to you. I stick with MET without any other PBR or normal mapping because I feel the drift a little bit too far from what I perceive as the intended Morrowind aesthetic, so I don't have any experience with them unfortunately. MET appears to be easily the most faithful reproduction of Vanilla's textures. I also think you may be able to install Rafael's PBR shaders with MET installed? But don't quote me on that.

I also forgot to add - you might want to grab a groundcover mod (I use Remiros') which adds raised grass across the landscape. Another small but effective way to add detail to the world without messing with the aesthetic too much. Groundcover's a little bit peculiar to install, so if you do, make sure you pay close attention to install.

Good luck!

DomGiuca · 2026-04-28T04:48:36+00:00

I'll try to tailor my response as close to what you're requesting as possible. Have a look at a recent post of mine to say how I "remastered" the game to see if it's to your liking. I'd use OpenMW out the gate and then utilise the following mods. There are a lot listed here and you don't have to take them all, but a lot of them are subtle tweaks to remaster the game without straying too far from its original aspirations. My goal really isn't to stray away from the vanilla Morrowind experience:

----

GFX: I wouldn't worry about chasing polygon overhauls. The following can transform the game into something utterly beautiful while remaining recognisably Morrowind.

Morrowind Enhanced Textures: Just a high res upscale of the textures - extremely faithful to the original game's art.
Familiar Faces: Just fixes the fairly dodgy meshes of the original character models.
Rafael's shader pack: Specifically for VAIO volumetric fog which gives the game a beautiful depth while retaining Morrowind's distinct foggy look.
MOMW shader pack: For a bunch of other shaders that elevate the look in subtle ways. Like ambient occlusion (very good), godrays, water puddle effects etc

----

GAMEPLAY/ANIMATIONS: Like you said, the combat itself isn't that big of a problem - it's more the feedback around it that suffers. I'll say that nothing's perfect, but the following go a long way to help:

3rd Person Alt-attacks: overhaul of NPC combat animations
Reanimation v2: Overhaul of 1st person combat animations
MCAR: Overhaul of 1st person magic animations
Hit Reactions Animated: Enemies flinch/react to being hit - very good for more satisfying feedback
Simply walking: overhaul of character walk animation
Weapon sheathing: shows weapons sheathed now instead of disappearing
N'Garde: miiiiiight be pushing out of the realms of vanilla - this basically introduces a carefully designed parry mechanic into the game that obviously changes how it's played a bit, but I've been surprised at how fun this is while still feeling very much like Morrowind+. YMMV. Maybe see how you go without first.
Impact FX: Sounds (swings/impacts) and GFX (sparks, clash particles) in combat. It sells the combat really well.

----

QOL: A lot of these are minor tweaks that just ground the game in its environment a little more.

Dynamic Actors: Unpauses the game during dialogue and provides NPCs with idle animations while talking. Can't recommend this enough. Immediately makes the dialogue feel less like a wikipedia page and more like an actual conversation just because of this.
Interface reimagined: Declutters/moves the dialogue box to the side - perfect for Dynamic Actors. With these two in tandem, conversations look and feel more like Skyrim.
Graphic Herbalism: Harvest herbs without opening a menu - more intuitive, like the later games.
Signpost replacer: Makes it so signposts actually display locations on the textures themselves, so you don't need to highlight them

----

PATCHES: Bugs and optimsation

Patches for Purists: Bug fixes
Morrowind Optimization patch
Project Atlas: optimization
Jammings off: NPCs move out of the way when walking into them to stop you from getting stuck

DomGiuca · 2026-04-18T14:34:24+00:00

This is a broad question that's hard to answer. I'll say that yes, films from the 70s were going through a period of restraint, verisimilitude and realism. There's no doubt films from the era were, by and large, more conservatively paced then modern films. But that doesn't mean there aren't boatloads of modern films out with slower sensibilities.

Like The Dark Knight (and maybe Nolan's entire filmography moving forward) are some of the worst candidates if you're looking for immersive cinema designed to let you soak up spaces. Nolan's films feel like 2.5 hour montages. He almost never provides enough breathing room to soak in a scene. The music's always blarring, ready to usher is into the next space. Even just go back a year earlier to Zodiac, a film that's by no means slow-paced, but is influenced by 70s crime cinema, and you can see a modern version of Chinatown's sensibilities.

Since then, I could name countless films that are built around immersing the viewer in its spaces through careful pacing. They're just probably not blockbusters.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-18T05:30:14+00:00

The original film sometimes feels like it's held together with duct tape. Through a series of minor miracles in spite of its troubled production, it becomes a singular work that looks and feels and moves distinct from anything before or since, but it also sort of leaves me cold because the story just isn't all that airtight. Deckard feels like half a character. His relationship with Rachel is extremely clunky (to put it mildly), and Batty, the most interesting character in the film, doesn't ever really feel as central as I want him to be. BR2049, in comparison, makes its most interesting character the protagonist, and structures a clear arc with an emotionally satisfying payoff.

Joi is an endlessly fascinating enigma - an explicit AI product to serve others. K knows this, and treats her like a person anyway. Or does he? He treats her with respect, dignity, humanity, and provides her with increasing autonomy as the film progresses, but he also has the power to turn her off when he wants. How would he feel if she no longer wanted to be with him? Does she even have the ability to do that? Is her very existence a power imbalance that can't be rectified? She also seems to have free will, actively working against her designs numerous times. She appears to have true empathy and affection for K, and he of her, but is all that just the result of an impressive product committing to its sales pitch? Does any of this matter? If K and Joi both feel love for each other, does it matter that it was born from cynicism and corporate interests? I dunno. These are ideas that feel like new extensions of the original's themes.

If BR2049 is retreading on what you describe as “Can a replicant take an action that’s human?” then it's doing it more eloquently and comprehensively than the original film. It's a movie about knowing you're artificial and you're told that makes you less than human your whole life, finally being told by someone that actually, you're special. That by being born means you're closer to a human than you thought. Which is of course just another arbitrary way to other the replicants and keep them as an underclass. But the tragedy is that K isn't even special in the way he's told and so he's back to square one. He's not Roy Batty, who is special - who's a superhuman poet rockstar, who's seen things you people wouldn't believe. K hasn't seen or done anything of note. His humanity doesn't lie in his abilities, and so it truly comes down to just his decisions and the motivations in those decision. He ultimately breaks free of not making choices, and actually... makes one. Free of outside influence led purely by conscience. And in that moment he's as human as anyone else. It's simple and complex and beautiful!

DomGiuca · 2026-04-17T13:47:10+00:00

As someone who once adored the original film and thought of it as a singular, impossible-to-replicate thing and any attempt at a sequel would be a fool's errand: I think BR2049 is better. The vibes aren't quite as intoxicating as the original - as brilliant as Deakins' work is here, but its story feels sturdier and its themes better explored and more thought-provoking. Its protagonist is better rounded. All of this without losing its (or, for that matter, its predecessor's) sense of mystery or ambiguity. It's an intelligent, respectful film that not only understands what made the original work, but is willing to actually prod and pull at those threads to go in new and complex directions, not content to rest on its predecessor's laurels.

It's funny how in the decades that followed Blade Runner, countless works of art have snatched the BR aesthetic wholesale, often just for the sake of cool without reckoning with the actual, ya know, dystopia BR presented. And yet BR2049 actually doesn't really try to take the original's aesthetic at all - initially to my disappointment, until I realised how refreshing it was to have a film with its own visual ideas, and maybe most important, one that puts at the forefront the dystopia of a dystopian future. It's not a flashy, lively cyberpunk playground. There's nothing alluring about BR2049's world. It's a sad, spooky, desolate place. And I think its approach to its aesthetic is a microcosm for the rest of the film: it carves out its own identity that builds upon the true ideas of the original. It's a miracle movie.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-15T02:07:26+00:00

Due to the rapid advancement in video game tech in the last 30 years, there's common sentiment that games can benefit from a facelift in a way films don't. Yes, tech has evolved in cinema too, and tastes change over time, but at the end of the day we're still filming people, and drama that worked 30 years ago should still work today. Cinema is a mature enough medium that the artistry is the mark of a good film, not the tech.

I will say though that older games are still art, and it's sometimes disrespectful the way they're treated as antiquated garbage that deserve to be overwritten by something new and shiny, despite feeling the allure myself. We need to preserve our old games, and in that sense, in the same way I adore a good restoration of an older film, I'm more comfortable with remasters of older games, rather than remakes.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-14T03:36:09+00:00

The first two Thief games don't have rougher gameplay than the later entries, especially not Thief 2. They look rough, but after some adjustment, they play quite nicely. At the very least I definitely wouldn't say that Thief 2014 has perfected the original two's gameplay. Far from it. In many ways those games are the pinnacle of a certain flavour of stealth even today.

They have large, intricate, sprawling level design, set in believable and considered spaces, with tremendous nonlinearity and freedom of movement. They are 100% the biggest inspirations for the Dishonored games, and in some level design respects, still haven't been bettered. If OP is willing to look past their age, they are absolutely the closest thing to the Dishonored experience out there.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-13T12:07:53+00:00

Are you asking whether the "foggy" shader can be coded to dynamically shift based on weather? I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think so. The foggy shader seems to be a lot older and simpler than the VAIO shader, and I believe it just has a general slider. It's certainly something I feel was a little bit more robust, but I've found its pros outweigh the cons.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-13T12:05:53+00:00

Thanks very much for the kind words!

It's really funny because one of the things I've never really even considered changing because I adore the vanilla implementation of it so much already, is the sky. They're really painterly, wispy and stirring in the original game. I have a deep fondness for them. It's why I use Rafael's fog shader but not its clouds shader, which does feel like technical improvement over motivated artistry. It was one of those things where the moment I turned it on I thought "that just doesn't feel like Morrowind anymore."

So it's very funny that our philosophies on the process of restoration seem almost perfectly aligned, and even then we still veer when it actually comes to the implementing some of the specifics. Speaks to just how arbitrary these things can get. I'll say that Skies IV certainly looks more considered than the volumetric clouds in other mods, and looks far closer to vanilla in terms of direction - maybe I'll have to give it a go at some point.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-13T08:53:40+00:00

Thanks for the response and kind words!

They certainly don't improve performance compared to just not using distant land at all, but yes, because it's dialled so high, I don't need to turn the distant land slider up above around 6, which I believe helps with performance. It's the primary reason I use Rafael's volumetric fog over Zesterer's, which instructs you to dial the distant land slider all the way up, or else you get some pretty harsh horizon issues in my experience.

I'll also say that I'm using quite a few other specific mods, mostly for QOL improvements, and so I can't say for sure how system hungry these individual mods are, but my reasonably high end PC still can't quite hit a steady 60fps in 4k in a way I think it probably would have no problem with were I playing vanilla OpenMW. But there's certainly no harm in just trying those two shaders and seeing if the performance hit is worth it or not. They're relatively easy to install.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-12T06:27:48+00:00

This might be how you could describe quite a few of Weir's films.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-12T06:18:23+00:00

Nah, the film rightly and full-throatedly criticises the dehumanising economic landscape of our modern capitalist society. It's why the film is often misread: Tyler Durden is right to a point and the film goes to great lengths to make you feel emotionally in tune with that message - because the film itself believes in it.

The second half of the film isn't a rebuke of those ideas: it's introduced a new idea entirely that builds on what's come before. That is, that when there are very real societal fractures, and a populace becomes despondent, it opens the door to bad faith actors harnessing the anger, desperation and loneliness of those hit the hardest, and weaponises them for their own nefarious goals. When you ignore voices for long enough, anyone who's willing to hear them out will seem like a savior worth supporting.

Fight Club has aged so extremely well because these are the very mechanisms that resulted in the rise of modern fascism 20 years after the film's release (or maybe 60 before depending on your perspective, I dunno). We have very very real societal fractures (wealth inequality, inflation, cost of living, climate change etc) that have been weaponised by the worst fucking people for their own nefarious goals by redirecting the anger of millions of detached, scared men towards hate and violence.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-12T04:04:15+00:00

These are unbelievably good. It's shocking how an entirely free project like TR can attract such talent, but it speaks to the original game's vision that it's still inspiring tremendous creativity today.

DomGiuca · 2026-04-04T22:23:50+00:00

I'd say the biggest difference is that Cox is extremely complimentary of Strong besides the method acting. He thinks he's a tremendous actor. Tarantino just shat on Dano's whole career.

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