maegul

Please suggest a film for July's "Fedi Film Club"!

Anything that either you'd like to watch or would recommend to the community.

Please make sure it's more than a year or two old so that it will (hopefully) be available somewhere.

And if possible, provide a quick description for why you'd like to watch or why you suggest it.

• See the introduction post for "Fedi Film Club".
• We'll take a vote on the suggestions in about a week's time after this. Then we can watch and discuss.

I watched them roughly once every night or two. And I'd previously seen them all.

And I was rather surprised at how I felt about the films afterwards. It seemed really clear that the quality of the films went continuously down after Casino Royal.

I thought Skyfall would stand out as the best followed by Casino Royal. But, in sequence, nah. Despite having clearly positive qualities, it seemed bloated and empty by comparison.

I also thought Quantum of Solace would rank pretty low as I recall thinking little of it at the time it came out. Instead, I thought it paired really well with Casino as a great follow up.

In fact, it felt like the Craig-era was basically Casino + Quantum and "other things". And yea, the "post-Skyfall" films just didn't feel like they were worth the effort. I thought they'd be more passable than they were, but after Casino + Quantum, which, for me, had a real punch and through-line, Spectre + No-Time-to-Die just felt like they were going through the motions and taking up space. At times, they really seemed to be badly flawed. And that's where my impression of Skyfall really hit ... it seemed that was the "what do we do now with this character?" moment and that Skyfall belonged with Spectre etc not the other way round.

Is this common among Bond fans or am I off base here?

About 10 mins. Focuses on some of the shooting and camera choices in Alien.

Specifically how "dirty shots" were used ("dirty" meaning some unfocused object "dirties" up the shot) and how the 2 camera setup were used.

I think the video was trying to make a point about how Alien was kinda "modern" in this regard. I don't know cinema theory well enough to know ... definitely interesting though!

Either way ... it's some Alien appreciation and this little snippets are definitely good reminders of how awesome the film is.

The Idea

• Watch and discuss movies together (kinda like a book club)
• "Crowd source" recommendations for not-entirely-new films (IE, older than a year or so, let's say)
• Aim for generally bettering or curating our film "diet"

How it will work (at least at first)

• 1 film a month
• First, a post to take nominations/suggestions
  • Post any film you want to watch, or have heard good things about, or recommend to everyone else
• Second, a post to take votes on the nominations
• And then we watch and discuss the winner

First round will start next month (July)

Please share any thoughts/feedback, though we'll likely run this at least once first before making any changes, just to feel it out

Not the prettiest graph, but a neat way of putting all this information into one image.

Wiki Commons page: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Generation_timeline.svg#mw-jump-to-license

Wikipedia page on Generations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation

Edit: Here's the exact same clip on the standard YouTube Watch page.

courtesy of zagorath

Brandon Sanderson the fantasy author

For those uninterested in watching a youtube short (sorry), the theory is pretty simple:

COVID and the death of theatres broke the film industry's controlled, simple and effective marketing pipeline (watch movie in theatres -> watch trailer before hand -> watch that tailer's movie in theatres ...) and so now films have the same problems books have always had which is that of finding a way to break through in a saturated market, grab people's attention and find an audience. Not being experienced with this, the film industry is floundering.

In just this clip he doesn't mention streaming and TV (perhaps he does in the full podcast), but that basically contributes to the same dynamic of saturation and noise.

Do note that Sanderson openly admits its a mostly unfounded theory.

For me personally, I'm not sure how effective the theatrical trailers have been in governing my movie watching choices for a long time. Certainly there was a time that they did. But since trailers went online (anyone remember Apple Trailers!?) it's been through YouTube and online spaces like this.

Perhaps that's relatively uncommon? Or perhaps COVID was just the straw that broke the camel's back? Or maybe there's a generational factor where now, compared to 10 years ago, the post X-Gen and "more online" demographic is relatively decisive of TV/Film sales?

I only discovered the River Songs audio piece for the last few nights (it played just after sunset around the Yarra every day, bouncing sounds and singing around all the buildings around the Yarra) ... and I honestly really loved it, easily one of my favourite urban art pieces ever.

Otherwise, I felt like this round was somewhat underwhelming and underfunded from what I saw, which feels like a trend with these White Night / Rising things ... seems like they have a ~3 year lifetime before they just dwindle to being underwhelming? But I didn't really dig into this one or see much of it. I'd guess the works along the river put a constraint on this year? But still ...

Any thoughts? Is it something only central/inner dwellers tend to notice?

Sounds like I'm trying to be controversial, but I'm really not. Nor a Luka hater (I'm a fan). I'm just thinking out loud here ...

It's just that watching the first two games of the finals, I can't shake the feeling that the Celtics make him look small. Not physically, but in terms of the power he has over the game, even though he's probably the best or top 2 of the players on the court.

It just feels like being 1 way and ball heavy is too often just too much of a weakness, especially while watching Brown, Jrue and Porzingis (and even Tatum managing his slump) be impactful all over the court in ways that connect together as a team.

Meanwhile Luka is too often getting frustrated with his shot not going down or not getting the call he wanted and clearly wanting to wait for the next offensive possession to have another go at his favourite moves (though being frustrated with his team makes sense, but TBF he's had some frustrating turn overs too).

Like, it feels like this finals could be the beginning of a story about Luka being this mercurial and prodigious offensive player that never wanted to (or could) take care of his weaknesses enough to get a ring.

I'm not calling it or anything ... it's just what I'm coming away from the first two games with ... in part because while the Celtics (especially with Porzingis in) are the better team I don't think they've played well and have still made it look clearly one-sided while it doesn't feel like Luka is a miraculous hero who just needs some help.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16562180

I'd certainly seen this exoplanet somewhere in my mainstream news world somewhere ... so nice to see a breakdown here from "Dr Becky" about how the science isn't so clear cut.

Anyone else able to provide insight on what the possible outcomes of the newly acquired data will be?

EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Genuinely confused ... is there some rule/culture against youtube videos or something?

I'd certainly seen this exoplanet somewhere in my mainstream news world somewhere ... so nice to see a breakdown here from "Dr Becky" about how the science isn't so clear cut.

Anyone else able to provide insight on what the possible outcomes of the newly acquired data will be?