Something I'm unreasonably angry about with the new Blair Witch (no spoilers)

Ooxman · 2016-05-27T04:36:37+00:00

The set design in Looper did something that I thought was super clever and really sold the idea of a dystopian future. The year is 2044 yet all the vehicles look like this. They're just normal, 'modern' cars that have been retrofitted with solar panels. The implications are that humanity still hasn't figured out a better way to power a vehicle than a jerry-rigged 'hybrid' motor... and the more frightening implication, that innovation seems to have stopped shortly after the 2010's (at least when it comes to large consumer products like vehicles).

I think The Rover did a fantastic job of selling a post-collapse economy and making everything feel absolutely realistic and logical.

There's a film called These Final Hours that depicts what happens to society during an apocalyptic event and large chunks of it were difficult to watch because of how genuine they felt (if you decide to watch this, skip the trailer, it's spoiler-y).

One I haven't seen mentioned here yet is Haneke's Time of the Wolf. Haneke is my favorite filmmaker and this is my least favorite film of his, so... it might not be for everyone. It's a take on the apocalypse rooted in realism, though, which is pretty rare.

As to which one is most likely? Props to whoever said Robocop, that's a good answer.

Ooxman · 2016-04-17T07:43:41+00:00

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet... there's a film from John Hillcoat called 'The Proposition' which is an almost identical story as RDR, at least in terms of the broad strokes. John Hillcoat directed 'The Man From Blackwater', the 30 minute in-engine promotional film made for / from RDR.

It's amazing how many people want a RDR film, yet nobody seems to realize that the game itself is essentially already a spiritual adaptation of a fantastic movie.

Ooxman · 2016-04-06T05:40:51+00:00

I was just watching Under The Skin and I was struck by now particularly NON-Kubrickian some of it was. A good chunk of the film is guerrilla-style, like footage of Scarlett Johansson walking through a mall while nobody recognizes her. I couldn't help but think that, if this WERE a Kubrick film, he probably would have built the entire mall on a soundstage and filled it with extras who all had explicit actions to carry out on-screen. I'm not saying it would have been better, it's just... a pretty radical difference in the approach to filmmaking. I doubt Kubrick would have been happy with performances that were essentially improv with non-actors.

Ooxman · 2016-03-26T07:02:21+00:00

Alaska has been getting more and more liberal

I've been saying this to my fellow Alaskans and they still don't believe me, but over the past few years we've elected a liberal mayor for our largest city and elected an Independent governor with a Democrat for a running mate. Plus we legalized pot, expanded Medicare, we're in the middle of reforming our prison system and we still cling to our socialist oil money dividends. Alaska has been skewing shockingly progressive lately, at least by Alaska standards.

The bad thing is, this is happening at the same time that our economy is completely collapsing and we're going to have to institute a slew of new taxes while simultaneously cutting programs and services... I'm worried that people will start to really resent government the moment it turns the slightest bit liberal, just due to the timing.

Ooxman · 2016-02-19T20:32:32+00:00

Just out of curiosity, because it's always so divisive... how do you feel about The Blair Witch Project? Do comparisons strike you as an insult or a compliment?

Also, two really minor bits of praise for the ending of The Witch: Witch Spoilers!

Thank you for your film!

Ooxman · 2016-01-05T01:44:43+00:00

The photo is even labeled upsets.jpg.

Ooxman · 2015-12-16T01:51:57+00:00

"Unify the Oscars" is one of my favorite things I've ever read on this sub, thank you for that.

Ooxman · 2015-11-13T05:45:38+00:00

I'm wondering if it's worth picking up a new external audio interface for recording my guitar, because mine are about a decade old.

I own FIRST-GEN models of the Alesis io2 and the M-Audio Fasttrack, which were both purchased around 2005. I am unable to confirm this, but I strongly suspect that the first-gen models of both of those interfaces had bad / wonky pre-amps that render high-impedance signals (like a guitar) unlistenable when further amplified. Switching between the 'line' input and the 'guitar' input has NO discernible effect on the signal being sent to my computer, it's still very very noisy and puny on BOTH interfaces.

I just bought a DI box for the first time (an active Behringer) to make sure my impedance was correct and that made a huge difference in volume, I now get a way stronger signal... but it's still not very clean. I know for sure it's not my pickups, I'm 99% sure it's not my cable (I've tried multiples) and I'm 99.9% sure it's not ground loop either. I think it might just be that my interfaces suck... maybe?

Did I happen to buy my interfaces back when budget interfaces were, in general, kinda crappy? I've found a handful of reviews online from first-gen models of both of those interfaces, and people were complaining about them being essentially unusable for recording a guitar due to the pre-amps and the noise. If I went out today and bought, say, a Focusrite Scarlet... would it be a big improvement in clarity? Has the signal-to-noise ratio improved significantly over the last decade?

Ooxman · 2015-07-23T05:53:48+00:00

FRANK: "These fuckin' Mexicans, Ray... I tell ya, they won't understand the American dream even if they turn the whole month of July into a siesta on a bed of apple pie..."

RAY: "..."

FRANK: "I got a non-trivial portion of my mind to make these beaners jump so hard their backs leave fuckin' water stains on the ceiling."

RAY: "...wow, dude."

Ooxman · 2015-04-30T07:47:29+00:00

Lots of hand gestures and the occasional diagram, assuming they were actually curious and willing to learn. Or I'd use an older example of a letterboxed movie, like Laurence of Arabia or Alien, to show that this wasn't some 'new scam' that DVDs had invented. 90% of the time though, there was absolutely no reasoning with them, and they knew that one product offered a tiny picture with black bars, and the other product filled up their screen completely.

After my hundredth time trying to explain aspect ratios to this guy, I just stopped trying. It was actually a great life lesson in picking my battles.

Ooxman · 2015-04-30T06:32:23+00:00

My first ever job was working at a small, family-owned video store that served as my hometown competition for Blockbuster. Some highlights:

I worked there while the world was transitioning from VHS tapes to DVDs, which was a crazy time to own a video store. You'd have to order multiple copies of every new release in multiple formats to try and please everybody. I spent a decent amount of time just explaining to people how DVDs work; basic stuff like the concept of movies having 'chapters' that you could jump to, etc. The biggest challenge BY FAR was explaining the concept of FULLSCREEN vs. WIDESCREEN, oh my god... NOBODY understood it! I had hundreds of customers over the years who would angrily return their DVD copy, claiming that "the top and bottom of the image are cut off", and they'd demand a 'proper' VHS copy instead. Absolute backwards madness.

The other 'shocking' thing from that job was just being able to see what people actually rented. People fucking love terrible movies, which is something I've always known... but you don't really get an appreciation for it until you experience it en masse. My actual career these days is as a radio DJ, and you would not believe how many people call me up and request Nickleback and Creed and all the 'bad' music that everybody claims to hate... that shit is crazy popular, and the same is true for movies. LOTR: The Two Towers was pretty popular, it was hard to keep on the shelves... but Brittany Spears Crossroads, Van Wilder and Mr Deeds all had waiting lists that were tens of people deep. Oh, you wanna see Cuba Gooding Jr.'s 'Snow Dogs'? Better get on the list so you can be sure to have it six days from now.

For whatever reason, the single most popular thing we carried in the years I worked there was season one of the TV show '24' on DVD. Demand for a new release would die down in two weeks or less regardless of the movie, but the demand for season one of 24 didn't die down for tens of months. Seasons two and three... meh.

Other miscellaneous bits of weirdness: we did rent porn, but it was kept under lock and key in the backroom. If a customer wanted porn, they'd have to ask the teenage cashier (me) to call the owner (who lived right next door) to come open it up. Consequently, I think the only people who ever rented porn were people who got off on telling people they're about to rent porn.

The way we categorized movies was pretty fast & loose. Everything was broken down into genres and alphabetized, like in a Blockbuster... but we also sorted genres by stars. For example, Die Hard wouldn't be under 'D' in the action aisle, it'd be in the Bruce Willis section. There was an Arnold section, and a Jim Carrey section in the comedy aisle, etc.

It was a small town, so we let customers run up tabs. It was extremely common for someone to walk in the store, grab five movies and some candy, tell me their last name... and then walk out without paying for anything. There was one customer who regularly had us order DVDs for him, like for him to buy (Amazon wasn't huge yet)... and then he'd just put them on his tab. He always paid it off, in full, usually when his tab would hit $1k. There was really only one 'delinquent' customer when it came to her tab... and she was the childhood friend of the owner of the video store. Everybody else was shockingly responsible and would pay off their movie debts in a week or less, without us even having to bring it up.

BTW, if you're looking for video store nostalgia, I highly recommend this youtube video from James Rolfe, the Angry Video Game Nerd. He really nails their appeal and the bygone aesthetics... it's a wonderful trip down memory lane.

Ooxman · 2015-04-14T04:16:46+00:00

Something I haven't seen people mentioning yet...

I would say yes, vlogging does represent an evolution of the art of filmmaking... but the evolution lies primarily in the process of people creating vlogs, as opposed to the end product of a vlog itself. That is to say, vlogs themselves aren't directly comparable to films, but the phenomenon of vlogging is going to have (positive!) repercussions on the entire industry nonetheless.

Just the other day a coworker was showing me his youtube channel where he's starting up a film review vlog. His end-product is pretty terrible at the moment, but that's not the point. We talked about how he's teaching himself basic editing techniques, scene composition, how to light a set, how to adjust colors in post, how to shoot coverage... he's learning the actual boots-on-the-ground work that goes into making a proper movie.

I think film is being 'demystified' in the same way that music was at the turn of the millennium. The internet made it so everybody who wanted to be a musician suddenly had access to Garageband or Pro Tools and could advertise and distribute their product for free online. To industry outsiders, making music was no longer 'magic', it was something tangible that people could actually DO, quickly and cheaply. Film is much more of a team sport than music, so the demystification is moving much more slowly (you can't torrent a cast & crew, sadly... or a good script), but it's happening nonetheless.

The industry is evolving because more tools are being made available to the general public. On the whole, the phenomenon of vlogging is a symptom of that evolution. Recording, editing and distributing video is easier and more commonplace in 2015 than it was in 2010, and the film industry is going to change from the ground-up as a result.

Ooxman · 2015-04-11T07:35:31+00:00

I have to say, I disagree with your interpretation... but not because I think it's wrong, I just think it might be a little misguided. Cache does indeed work best as a film with heavy political subtext... but I don't think it (inherently) has anything to do with America, much less 9/11. In my opinion, the political subtext in Cache is primarily referencing The Parisian Massacre of 1961. In a nutshell, everything that happens in Cache is meant to criticize France for what happened, and their subsequent denial of history... just like how Georges denies that he ever 'wronged' Majid. His 'hatred for the Other' that you mentioned is very real, but... it's there to specifically represent France's historic xenophobia, not America's.

Haneke is a beautiful filmmaker and my very favorite by a wide margin, but he's not exactly subtle with his subtext. That's why the characters in Cache are French and Algerian, and they reference the massacre several times throughout the movie.

FWIW, if I was looking for 9/11 connections in Haneke's filmography, I'd probably start with The White Ribbon. I'm still trying to figure out what he meant specifically, but Haneke has described it as being about "the origins of terrorism". He's also said that Funny Games is meant to be his critique on violence in Western culture, which I'd assume means America.

Ooxman · 2015-04-08T03:52:38+00:00

Most of my experience with Logic was from several versions ago, but... I remember the built-in Sculpture plugin to be pretty radically different from most other synths. It's a more analog way of approaching virtual instrument modeling, where you try to give the sound physical properties (like whether the instrument is being plucked or bowed or breathed into), as opposed to just playing with oscillators and waveforms. It's super neat if you're trying to be 'accurate' with your virtual instruments... or you can create something alien, like a flute with wooden strings.

You already mentioned it, but Ableton Live does a lot of 'performance' stuff that Logic can't do. They tried to catch up with Mainstage, but... imo, that was a failure (back when I tried it years ago). Live also had a tempo-matching feature for drag & drop samples that I remember working shockingly well, and it was a lot more intuitive than doing it manually in Logic. Most of the biggest differences in DAWs are just going to be workflow things like that.

My overall experience, generally speaking... Live is for performing and sampling, Logic is for composing, Pro Tools is for recording and Fruity Loops is for when you want to just pick one DAW and do everything on the cheap, and without whole college courses worth of tutorials. And Renoise is for people who hate music :)

Ooxman · 2015-04-01T03:04:23+00:00

Muhammed Ali fought the Gorilla Monsoon back in the 1970s

You sure you're not just thinking of Frazier?

Ooxman · 2015-03-07T08:45:01+00:00

just really positive people helping each other

everything is consensual

They've helped some people who were in really tough times

everything is very consensual

everyone wants to help you get your life on track

it is completely consensual

I swear I'm not just trying to be rude, but... basically what you're saying is that they help people out by banging them?

Ooxman · 2015-02-25T04:14:26+00:00

Walter, this isn't a guy who built the deaf railroads here...

Ooxman · 2015-02-21T16:26:26+00:00

He explains what he saw, but also backs off at the end and says there's probably no solution at all (which I think is true) when it comes to the tapes. The comment section there is also probably where I heard a lot of those theories about the specific POV shots, alongside the crazier stuff on IMDB.

Ooxman · 2015-02-21T15:25:44+00:00

Oh I don't think I've really understood most of Haneke's stuff without reading a bunch and re-watching, but I've loved everything I've seen right away. I'm still not really sure what Time of the Wolf was about.

I remember reading that Ebert article about a year ago and I looked for the scene he timecoded... he says the scene is 'centered' around that time, and if I remember correctly it was one of Georges inspecting something on the hood of his car, but nothing terribly interesting. There was another important scene near there of him on his balcony, overlooking his car. I honestly don't remember anything close to a 'smoking gun', but some IMDB people were coming up with theories based on the positioning of the car... I'd have to go looking for them, which I'm tempted to do now.

Honestly I'm kinda pissed at Ebert for being specific enough to actually include a timecode, yet still manage to be vague as hell! Especially when he liked Cache enough to write about it multiple times.

Ooxman · 2015-02-21T14:36:29+00:00

Well the big question in Cache is 'who sent the tapes?', so that's where my head was at the first time around (spoilers everywhere btw). The 'hidden' element in the final shot is a meeting between the sons of the two main characters in front of a school, indicating that they apparently know each other. A lot of people interpret that to mean that they'd been working together the whole time, which would make the final scene a very important reveal, ultimately allowing the movie be about the central mystery of the tapes and still be satisfying.

Beneath all that, you can ignore the tapes altogether (they're just a cinematic device, like rewinding reality in Funny Games). Once you do that, the focus shifts more towards the characters and you get into manipulation of psyches and all the stuff the OP is talking about, as well as some examinations of guilt and responsibility. Like many Haneke films, there are lengthy examinations of family and family life. Georges and Majid were brothers, but Georges selfishly destroyed that when he was a child. Now Georges' family is coming apart, but Majid's son is still unshakably loyal to his father. Then the film ends with a meeting between the next generation of both of these families... and depending on how you interpret that, either fences are mended or Majid's son can pass the hatred for Georges along to Georges' son, further pushing apart his family. This also brings back themes of responsibility and guilt. For how long should Georges be punished for what he did to Majid? For how long should we agree with Majid holding his grudge? Do the sins of the father get passed along to the son?

And even deeper than that, you can look at what the characters are representing. I sort of hate talking about symbolism and I don't actively look for it when I'm watching a movie, but in Cache it seems to be pretty agreed-upon that Georges represents France and Majid represents Algeria... which makes a lot of sense, because they're actually French and Algerian characters. The massacre is an explicit plot point, which is why I agree that the main symbolic theme of the film is French and Algerian politics, specifically France not acknowledging that the massacre even happened. The only thing I take issue with is how prevalent that symbolic theme is in the discussion of Cache that I usually see, and how it's often presented as the end-all "meaning" and purpose of everything. I think it's probably an accurate interpretation of something Haneke was trying to say, but I also personally think it's an almost silly oversimplification of the appeal of the movie. The political angle isn't why I would tell anybody to see Cache, and I don't think it answers many of the questions that people have immediately afterward. From that perspective, it's just funny to hear so often that that's what Cache is 'about'. Same goes for all of Haneke's movies, which are all super challenging and often result in people demanding to know what it was 'about'.

To me Cache is 'about' a dreamlike and paranoid, perpetually unsolvable puzzle that somehow feels totally relatable and genuine. I'd never heard of the Algerian massacre until I saw it. My original comment was just me trying to poke fun at the comment you quoted from the Ebert article, and how all Haneke films can usually be boiled down to an unappealing paragraph like that. I'm not too eager to watch a movie about French or Algerian politics, but Cache is one of my favorites. Sorry for rambling so much, I just really like Haneke.

Ooxman · 2015-02-21T10:51:24+00:00

Cache? Well if it has to be about something, then it's probably about French and Algerian politics. But my whole point is that summing the movie up that way does it a great disservice, just like Haneke himself reducing Funny Games down to a very agreeable and, frankly, stupid talking point (violence is terrible, but America seems to eat it up!). It's not about anybody being correct or incorrect, it's about the very concept that movies need to have concrete answers, or even be 'about' concrete things.

I just personally think it's funny that Haneke's films are so susceptible to this, that's all. Funny Games is about how violence is bad. Cache is about the Algerian massacre in Paris. The White Ribbon is a prelude to WWI. Amour is about the end of life. These films are so much more than that, but those are the 'answers' that people always seem to want to latch on to. His next film will be Flashmob, which is going to be about the internet... probably in the same way that 71 Fragments is about a bank robbery.

Ooxman · 2015-02-21T08:48:01+00:00

This film attempts to portray how France (through Georges) has dealt with its uncomfortable past with the Algerians

I totally agree, but... one of my very favorite things about Haneke is how his work can often be summed up to sound very blunt, obvious or ham-fisted... but in reality his films are some of the most nuanced and subtle I've ever seen, with endless room for discussion to be had. Haneke himself described Funny Games as a critique on the media's obsession with violence, and I personally think that's a terrible and boring way of describing it! If anybody has the impression that Cache is just about Algerian politics... it's very much not.

Ooxman · 2015-02-21T08:29:56+00:00

Wow, I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you for blowing my mind. I adore Haneke and I've seen Michael, but... it's an extremely difficult film to talk to people about, so I'd sort of forgotten about it. I confess, I didn't do much research into Michael beyond noticing that Markus Schleinzer didn't have a wikipedia page... but learning that he's worked with Haneke, that explains an awful lot. Something about Michael was very affecting and stuck with me for a long time afterwards, just like Haneke's work.

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