I’m using this post to argue (through a canon of recent music videos) that the mid-2020s has developed a definite aesthetic sensibility. There are several elements that force it into 2020s specificity, and several tangential influences - Y2K-era J-horror, Norbert Schoerner, David LaChapelle. But everything in it is underpinned by an existing visual schema, the same one that dominated the Italian film industry from the late 1960s to late 1970s. The results of that sensibility are most readable in Italian gialli - a subgenre of surreal, stylish and bloody crime films.
Extremely well-researched and well-argued. As a consummate #hater of current trends I found this a great read on the contemporary slop aesthetics.
Free film archive of solidarity and struggle!
Audiences today are allergic to directness - they prefer stories to be about unfolding secrets, and they want convoluted Plots which involve them in a process of discovery. [...] Audiences have been trained by the last 20 years of high-budget television to analyze plot, but not to analyze theme. This stuff frequently makes me feel completely insane.
I think I'm warmer on The Odyssey than Laura is overall, but I agree wholeheartedly with this bit. What I like about Nolan is his bluntness, even when it's often the worst part of his movies. That worked for me in The Odyssey. But the way people are talking about it is, like Laura, also driving me insane.
Sinon’s story, to me, feels like a warning. Abandoning the trans community has a price. We aren’t a shame that can be buried forever. The pendulum will swing, and we have long memories.
Love this reading, even if I'm not sure I agree that it was an intentional move by Nolan. I think the beauty of any creative work is that some meanings come only through the act of creation.
Really fun technical breakdown of all the computers in Jurassic Park (1993). I love this stuff.
Michael is a bad movie. Let’s just get that out of the way now. It is a movie designed less to tell a story than to recreate moments, ones you are probably already familiar with. It is a movie designed to give you a karaoke experience in a theater setting with other like-minded Michael Jackson…