● In verband met de staking van acteurs waarin AI één van de struikelpunten is; “The studios proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity, in any project they want with no consent and with no compensation.”
Als dat effectief klopt begrijp ik zeker dat ze staken. Je gaat die evolutie vrees ik sowieso niet kunnen tegenhouden want ze kunnen evengoed wat goed ogende randos van de straat plukken die voor 5 dollar wel in random films willen opduiken zonder er verdere moeite voor te doen. Maar als acteur zou je wel goed gek zijn om daar vandaag een krabbel onder te zetten en al doende de hele toekomst van je eigen job op het spel te zetten.
Black Mirror was hen weer maar juist voor met "Joan is Awful" ;p Maar ik moet direct terugdenken aan een fenomenale film uit 2013 die hoe langer hoe meer on point aan het worden is en volgende decades enkel relevanter zal worden.
● Nog even on theme blijven met de nieuwe cover van total film; AI armageddon from Rogue One's architect.
Veel grote franchises falen deze zomer, ik hoop dat deze potten breekt zodat hollywood misschien terug meer gaat inzetten op origineler sci-fi werk.
● The Pod Generation scoort jammer genoeg niet al te best onder critics dus deze door Clarke en Ejiofor gedragen prent is prolly geen hoogvlieger maar de trailer is precies nog wel iet of wat ok? "In the not-so-distant future, amid a society madly in love with technology, tech giant Pegazus offers couples the opportunity to share their pregnancies via detachable artificial wombs or pods. So begins Rachel and Alvy's wild ride to parenthood in this brave new world." Will report back.
● FlyLo is blijkbaar bezig aan een Sci-Fi langspeler! Gigantische fan van zijn muzikaal werk (1, 2, 3) en zijn eerste film Kuso was op z'n minst "speciaal" te noemen. The images spotlight Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver) as a woman who wakes up on a distant planet to find the rest of the crew of her space station viciously murdered. She has to decide whether to trust the man (Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul)) sent to rescue her. During their investigation into the killings, however, he begins to wonder if she is as innocent as she pretends to be. "The way his brain works is quite special," Gonzalez says of her director in an interview with EW. "He reminds me a lot of David Fincher, who also started in music videos, as someone who is quite interested in pushing boundaries and not being scared of diving into something. But this movie also required someone who had a really authentic and unique artistic take. We couldn't have been more lucky, because his visual imagery and the way that he spoke to us about the movie really translated to the making of the film. It's a movie that causes the audience to stay engaged consistently. I love movies that require you to keep thinking and trying to figure out what is actually happening."
Based on an original screenplay by Jonni Remmler, Ash also stars Iko Uwais (The Raid), Beulah Koale (Hawaii Five-0), and Kate Elliott (Wentworth). District 9 director Neill Blomkamp is on board as an executive producer.
● In een artikel over de verkoop van zijn LA villa dropte James Cameron casually dit; "On Avatar, I’m working in Wellington and Los Angeles," Cameron said. "And on the new Alita: Battle Angel films, I’ll be working in Austin, so it just didn’t make sense for us anymore."
Eventjes wat Battle Angel Alita sequels aankondigen tussen de soep en patatten.
● Jean Pierre Jeunet's nieuwste is al even op netflix te zien. It looks proper JP Jeunet weird. "A group of bickering suburbanites find themselves stuck together when an android uprising causes their well intentioned household robots to lock them in for their own safety."
Scoort jammer genoeg ook niet al te goed maar ben normaal wel te vinden voor zijn brand van off the wall comedy dus ga ook deze wel eens proberen.
●Nieuwe Toho godzilla in aantocht voor eind dit jaar.
Godzilla appears in a post WW2 Japan left reeling in the aftermath of nuclear devestation. "After Japan's surrender, the country is driven to a zero state -- Godzilla emerging drops the country to a negative (minus) state. Godzilla Minus One | Original title: Gojira -1.0
Als dat effectief klopt begrijp ik zeker dat ze staken. Je gaat die evolutie vrees ik sowieso niet kunnen tegenhouden want ze kunnen evengoed wat goed ogende randos van de straat plukken die voor 5 dollar wel in random films willen opduiken zonder er verdere moeite voor te doen. Maar als acteur zou je wel goed gek zijn om daar vandaag een krabbel onder te zetten en al doende de hele toekomst van je eigen job op het spel te zetten.
Black Mirror was hen weer maar juist voor met "Joan is Awful" ;p Maar ik moet direct terugdenken aan een fenomenale film uit 2013 die hoe langer hoe meer on point aan het worden is en volgende decades enkel relevanter zal worden.
● The Congress is voor mij de beste film van 2013 en afgaande op de eindejaarslijstjes thread ben ik daarin niet alleen. In het beoordelingsforum schreef ik al een spoilervrije review;
Wow! Words can not describe, they should have sent a poet. De laatste keer dat ik me nog zo goed heb geamuseerd in de cinema, dat moet al van The Tree of Life geleden zijn. Deze mix van live actie en prachtige animatie werd in elkaar geknutseld door de maker van "Waltz With Bashir" en is heel losjes gebaseerd op een verhaal van Stanislaw Lem (Solaris). Harvey Keitel en Paul Giamatti voegen weer heel wat klasse toe maar in deze "documentaire" volgen we vooral Robin Wright. Zij speelt zichzelf, de actrice die je misschien kent als The Princess Bride of als Jenny uit Forrest Gump. Ze is nu al meer dan 40 en haar carriere loopt ten einde. Ze krijgt een laatste, nogal bijzonder, contract aangeboden van "MiraMount" en de wereld zal nooit meer hetzelfde zijn. Droom, verschillende werkelijkheden en de waarheid zijn dingen waar je mee kan spelen. Je zal na afloop waarschijnlijk wel met vragen blijven zitten en heel wat plot holes kunnen aanwijzen maar het moet niet altijd op iets slagen of volledig samenhangend zijn. Zowiezo niet voor iedereen maar voor mij kwam deze at the right place, on the right time en was het een fantastische ervaring. Misschien wel één van de beste films die ik ooit gezien heb maar om dat met zekerheid te kunnen zeggen wil ik hem eerst nog wat laten bezinken en nog eens gaan bekijken. Ik ga het hier bij laten want hoe minder je weet, hoe beter, maar wees gerust dat het niet "zomaar" een drama is, het is een trip.
Sci-Fi van de bovenste plank. 9/10 - Gaat dat zien, gaat dat zien!
Er valt echter nog heel wat meer over te zeggen en een tijdje geleden heb ik dat ook gedaan, jammer genoeg in het Engels. Ik zou vooral graag eens lezen wat anderen die hem hebben gezien er hebben uitgehaald. Bij deze al vast mijn gedacht;
I love films that introduce a ton of dots and then leave it up to you which ones you want to connect and what their relationship should be. The Congress contains a stunning amount of layers and can be interpreted in many different ways. The open and at times almost lucid dream like approach to everything from narrative to visuals and sound sure makes it hard to put into words what you think you saw. There are single scenes that contain so much meaningful background porn that I could fill a page on them. Although the animation might not be for everyone, I think it looks great. There's also Max Richter's hauntingly beautiful score which adds another few gigatons of emotion and all this truly adds up to an enormous explosion out of leftfield. Amazingly it didn't make much noise upon arrival but I am pretty sure that, as we go forward, it will be cherished by its ever growing audience.
Now for some more meaty thoughts; This review will be as disjointed as the film so I am just going to throw out a bunch of random thoughts, make of them what you will.
One of my favorite characters was Jeff, the head of MiraMount. Originally, during the live action part, most of the stuff that comes out of his mind is prophetic, as we move into the animated zone he becomes more of a prophet of doom and ultimately an instigator of said doom. The way he says "this is not science fiction, it's a documentary" about Triple R (Robyn's SF film) which also pointed back to the live action (today) really drives home that the first half hour of the Congress is reality today. The next half hour we move into the near future with Ms. Wright's scan becoming the focal point through which we ultimately get to see the birth of a new world.
Each time she meets Jeff, the Miramax head, he shakes up the world. The embodiment of blind, profit driven disruption, the kind that places dollar signs above life and creativity? The first time they meet he tells her that actors of flesh and blood are a thing of the past, the second time they meet, he's moved a level up, now it's no longer just the actors that get scanned but also the environments which means most people are let go because they no longer need a set crew, make up artists, lighting experts, designers, prop makers, ... Their next meeting takes place in the animated zone. The consequences of his disruptive actions are becoming far more severe. MiraMount has spread its tentacles to other industries and thanks to the development of a new drug the magic of cinema has left the big screen and entered the real world. This new drug seems to take over the interface between sensory input and experience and allows the traversing signals to be modulated. It conjures up vivid and realistic hallucinations which allow consistent and even shared alternate realties. First the drug was rigidly defined and its effects limited in time but as research progressed the drug became more potent, ultimately allowing users to take control over their hallucinations which sets them free but disasterously also closes the feedback loop between want and get with enormous consequences. The last time Wright meets Jeff, he has basically fired everyone that had anything to do with movies. He's still in entertainment but now only sells drugs or "experiences". Things take a turn for the worse when MiraMount starts losing control over its product and global unrest sparks violence.
Ultimately we end up in what I would describe as something similar to a post singularity environment. When the world goes almost completely animated and everyone can be whoever they want to be and do whatever they want to do. What you think is what you get. That in The Congress this is achieved through controllable hallucinogenics doesn't matter much as the result is pretty much indistinguishable from digital reality substitution, programmable matter or a virtual life. The parallels you can draw between these approaches can be quite surprising. In all these worlds the lag time between imagination and instantiation is basically zero.
Some more thoughts;
The Wright family, thanks to Aaron's disease was the first one that really learned to fly? I have the feeling that there is more to the wright/flyers/Wright brothers connection but I'll prolly have to see it again to unravel that further.
The animated zone as a liberal offshore island.
Can you be yourself as someone else? If you relive someone else's entire life, how much of the original you would be left?
Do you take the red pill or the blue pill? Here the pill is chemical instead of digital in nature but here too you could very much hold the opinion that life inside beats the Zion outside.
Does her animator know more about herself than she does?
Should the human race die happy or should we toil in misery? It almost looks like mankind has collectively decided to euthanize itself in the most painless way possible.
Alternatively, are we simply machines that got tricked and manipulated by chemicals to willingly and happily engineer our own demise?
I also really liked how they introduced Aaron and his "illness". Giamatti doesn't yet know how right he is when he says of him that he was born before his time. His condition could be seen as an evolutionary step up because in many ways his mind functions similarly to those who later on end up taking the drug. Before the "singularity" he heard what he wanted to hear and was wrong, after the "singularity" he really hears what he wants to hear and becomes "wright"?
It's not explicitly stated but I can imagine that Aaron would be much better adapted to living a life in a world you shape yourself compared to living a life in the world forced upon him in which he grew up. After taking the drug his condition is likely to work in symbiosis with the drug, boosting his ability to perceive creatively, to play with what is real, to new heights.
It's especially interesting to connect his "illness" with a statement from Jeff who at one point says we make movies so we don't have to read books. The less information you get, the more blanks you fill in yourself which is what makes a story more personal. In this sense a movie is a pre-chewed book, largely the same for everyone who lays eyes upon it. Aaron has the ability to always spin his surroundings and experience into something uniquely personal so for him every movie and life itself will likely be about airplanes or something he cares about. In many ways it's a biological analogue for the digital filter bubble. It comes with both pros and cons.
I could talk about this flick for hours and hours. There are many other dots I haven't pointed at yet, like the meaning of identity in a world where it can be copied and replicated to someone else, but likely you've connected your dots a bit or completely differently so first I want to hear your side.
● Nog even on theme blijven met de nieuwe cover van total film; AI armageddon from Rogue One's architect.
Veel grote franchises falen deze zomer, ik hoop dat deze potten breekt zodat hollywood misschien terug meer gaat inzetten op origineler sci-fi werk.
● The Pod Generation scoort jammer genoeg niet al te best onder critics dus deze door Clarke en Ejiofor gedragen prent is prolly geen hoogvlieger maar de trailer is precies nog wel iet of wat ok? "In the not-so-distant future, amid a society madly in love with technology, tech giant Pegazus offers couples the opportunity to share their pregnancies via detachable artificial wombs or pods. So begins Rachel and Alvy's wild ride to parenthood in this brave new world." Will report back.
● FlyLo is blijkbaar bezig aan een Sci-Fi langspeler! Gigantische fan van zijn muzikaal werk (1, 2, 3) en zijn eerste film Kuso was op z'n minst "speciaal" te noemen. The images spotlight Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver) as a woman who wakes up on a distant planet to find the rest of the crew of her space station viciously murdered. She has to decide whether to trust the man (Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul)) sent to rescue her. During their investigation into the killings, however, he begins to wonder if she is as innocent as she pretends to be. "The way his brain works is quite special," Gonzalez says of her director in an interview with EW. "He reminds me a lot of David Fincher, who also started in music videos, as someone who is quite interested in pushing boundaries and not being scared of diving into something. But this movie also required someone who had a really authentic and unique artistic take. We couldn't have been more lucky, because his visual imagery and the way that he spoke to us about the movie really translated to the making of the film. It's a movie that causes the audience to stay engaged consistently. I love movies that require you to keep thinking and trying to figure out what is actually happening."
Based on an original screenplay by Jonni Remmler, Ash also stars Iko Uwais (The Raid), Beulah Koale (Hawaii Five-0), and Kate Elliott (Wentworth). District 9 director Neill Blomkamp is on board as an executive producer.
● In een artikel over de verkoop van zijn LA villa dropte James Cameron casually dit; "On Avatar, I’m working in Wellington and Los Angeles," Cameron said. "And on the new Alita: Battle Angel films, I’ll be working in Austin, so it just didn’t make sense for us anymore."
Eventjes wat Battle Angel Alita sequels aankondigen tussen de soep en patatten.
● Jean Pierre Jeunet's nieuwste is al even op netflix te zien. It looks proper JP Jeunet weird. "A group of bickering suburbanites find themselves stuck together when an android uprising causes their well intentioned household robots to lock them in for their own safety."
●Nieuwe Toho godzilla in aantocht voor eind dit jaar.
Godzilla appears in a post WW2 Japan left reeling in the aftermath of nuclear devestation. "After Japan's surrender, the country is driven to a zero state -- Godzilla emerging drops the country to a negative (minus) state. Godzilla Minus One | Original title: Gojira -1.0
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