OT: Movies/TV Shows

[Montana]

True, but a clip of a martian masturbating on Venus has no place in a movie about father-son relationships on Earth, even if I might be curious as to why the martian didn't just do his thing on Mars.

The creation of the universe, and evolution life, including the dinosaur scenes all had a purpose.

It’s 100000% okay that you didn’t interpret anything from those scenes, but it’s just bizarre that people claim these things are “weird for weird’s sake” (they aren’t), or that it doesn’t belong in a movie at all, or have any meaning when it very much does.

Again, nothing wrong with not wanting to read the subtext of a film, (although I don’t even think it’s subtextual in Tree of Life) but acting like subtext doesn’t exist or have value? I don’t get that.

 

[LeafOfFaith]

The creation of the universe, and evolution life, including the dinosaur scenes all had a purpose.

It’s 100000% okay that you didn’t interpret anything from those scenes, but it’s just bizarre that people claim these things are “weird for weird’s sake” (they aren’t), or that it doesn’t belong in a movie at all, or have any meaning when it very much does.

Again, nothing wrong with not wanting to read the subtext of a film, (although I don’t even think it’s subtextual in Tree of Life) but acting like subtext doesn’t exist or have value? I don’t get that.

There's subtext and then there's subtext. I get what he was trying to do, make some parallel between creation and life and these familial relationships, but I really don't enjoy that stuff. I don't want to see some PBS nature show spliced between a family drama. It made a long movie (2 hours 18 minutes) that was already tough to watch, that much longer and tougher. That was one of the hardest movies I've ever had to sit through.

 

[oscarheyman]

Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet...damn.
View attachment 17477

Apparently Hopper had to convince Lynch not to go with the idea of him inhaling some helium for the following scene:

(NSFW)



Kind of disturbing & creepy that revised/edited version.

 

[MindzEye]

I get what you're saying, but I think it's grayer than you're making it. Scraping from other people's work, any different than countless artists who are inspired by other people's work and then emulate them and create similar works of art, using aspects of their work, sometimes total hacks and other times less subtle facsimiles?

But then who owns the copyright? The prompter? The AI? The AI developer?

For me to be inspired by copywritten works, I have to access them and use them within the allowed usage terms of the property (buy a book, view it in a gallery, etc). For AI to scrape them, they have to upload/scrape the data and use the property outside the terms of allowed usage. They have to violate the artists copyright just to teach the AI how to emulate the artist later. There is a fundamental difference in how a human is inspired by art to create new art and how an AI ingests art to create new art.

Like that Secret Invasion opening - it drew on a zillion things it found from scouring online

Nah, it actually didn't. It was created by a firm and used only concept art specifically commissioned for the purpose of using an AI engine to generate the (terrible) intro sequence for the series. It's only input was taking properly commissioned and licensed work and AI'ing it into what it was.

And how is that different from any other situation where someone creates something original?

Long story short, but how a human creates and how a generative AI creates are very, very different processes:

This class of technology is known as generative AI, and it works through a process known as diffusion. Essentially, huge datasets are scraped together to train the AI, and through a technical process the AI is able to devise new content that resembles the training data but isn’t identical. Once it has seen millions of pictures of dogs tagged with the word “dog”, it is able to lay down pixels in the shape of an entirely novel pup that resembles the dataset closely enough that we would have no issue labelling it a dog.

If you can't even begin to prove any infringement because it's drawing on some microscopic aspect of your work along with an almost infinite number of others, then why can't what you created with AI be copyrightable?

Well to answer the first bit....there is electronic record of that AI infringing on your work. There is record of the data sets they're fed. So even if the data set of "borrowed" work is in the millions, that kind of smells like class action law suit territory, no?

The second bit though...is copyrightable for who?

 

[Montana]

I get what he was trying to do, make some parallel between creation and life and these familial relationships, but I really don't enjoy that stuff.

…see and I took away the near opposite, haha…. to juxtapose the cold indifferent nature of the universe Vs the potential grace found in life/humanity.

Just as the the father (nature) and the mother, the embodiment of grace….exemplify that contrast.

~~~~~~~~~

Malick wants you to participate, and not just intellectually but emotionally. What does this mean? How does this make me feel? What does this make me think of in my own life? The new era of Malick sees cinema as more of a sermon than a passive experience.

~~~~~~~~~

“The Tree of Life” understands visual language as well as any movie of the last decade. And it uses those striking images to ask the truly big questions. How do we grieve? How do we remember? How do we live? And what role does God play in all of this?

I don't want to see some PBS nature show spliced between a family drama. It made a long movie (2 hours 18 minutes) that was already tough to watch, that much longer and tougher. That was one of the hardest movies I've ever had to sit through.

The 4K Blu-Ray, has an extended version Mallick made for the criterion release….it added another 50 minutes to the film. (and I loved it all, obviously)

 

[Montana]

Just finished this....real quality flick.

 

[Montana]

 

[UWHabs]

But then who owns the copyright? The prompter? The AI? The AI developer?

For me to be inspired by copywritten works, I have to access them and use them within the allowed usage terms of the property (buy a book, view it in a gallery, etc). For AI to scrape them, they have to upload/scrape the data and use the property outside the terms of allowed usage. They have to violate the artists copyright just to teach the AI how to emulate the artist later. There is a fundamental difference in how a human is inspired by art to create new art and how an AI ingests art to create new art.


Nah, it actually didn't. It was created by a firm and used only concept art specifically commissioned for the purpose of using an AI engine to generate the (terrible) intro sequence for the series. It's only input was taking properly commissioned and licensed work and AI'ing it into what it was.



Long story short, but how a human creates and how a generative AI creates are very, very different processes:






Well to answer the first bit....there is electronic record of that AI infringing on your work. There is record of the data sets they're fed. So even if the data set of "borrowed" work is in the millions, that kind of smells like class action law suit territory, no?

The second bit though...is copyrightable for who?

There's a lot of interesting and weird edge cases, which is where the problems lie.

Like, if you take ChatGPT, and ask it to "write the setting for a science fiction thriller with a dog stuck in space", that's generic enough that I'd be fine ignore any sort of copyright claims, and I'd have no problem with you "owning" the output from that.

Now, if you ask for "write the setting for a science fiction thriller with a dog stuck in space, set in the Star Trek Universe with the style of The Next Generation", that's a different story. Because that would presumably be drawing in a lot more related to the original source material. Now, granted, maybe that would still fall under the same rules that like Fan Fiction would fall under.

But it still is a good question - if I ask ChatGPT to write a story, why should I gain the copyright to that story? Shouldn't whoever coded and trained the engine own it? I know I've seen it with MidJourney where I think technically everything it produces is in a Creative Commons license. So they let you use it, but they still "own" the original and essentially put everything it creates into the public domain. But how close does it have to get to copying something for that to be called copying vs simply being inspired by what's out there? All good questions.

 

[JackBurton]

Tree of Life is unwatchable nonsense.
I went to film school, and when I was younger, I would suck the balls of director's who made weird shit that didn't make sense. Terence Malick films are so bad. I get he made 2 great films in the 70's, but when he came back, results were ugly.
Even Thin Red Line, it came out in 98' (Same year as SPR) and the sophisticated assholes tried to say Malick did a better job than Spielberg. Jesus. Soldiers DO NOT think/talk like the dialogue in TTRL. The first 10 minutes of Saving Private Ryan alone is better than anything Malick has done post 1970's.
Oppenheimer is far from bad, but people really feel they should love it cause it makes them look smart.

A great film in 2023 is "Plane" starring Gerard Butler. Yeah, you heard me....

 

[Montana]

Tree of Life is unwatchable nonsense.
I went to film school, and when I was younger, I would suck the balls of director's who made weird shit that didn't make sense.

So, despite going to film school, you faked liking weird movies, that you didn’t even understand?

Kudos to you for admitting to it?

A great film in 2023 is "Plane" starring Gerard Butler. Yeah, you heard me....

I’ve heard a quite a few people echo this….is it streaming anywhere yet, or still only to rent/buy?

 

[Montana]

Ironically, I think the most damning review I ever read for Tree of Life, argued that it was too heavy handed, and on the nose with its messaging.

I’ll see if I can’t track it down….it was just some dude’s essay on his website, but it was pretty well written ans memory serves and made some valid points.

…but yeah, it’s funny contrasting that with the idea it’s impenetrable nonsense, being weird just for the sake of it.

 

[Montana]

View attachment 17464

Tossed this on last night when crashing, and while it has plenty of faults (it may be the worst movie I ever post about on here)….its worth checking out for the first 20 minutes or so, to see what you think. It mainly suffers from the fact Shailene Woodley is in way over her head, and doesn’t have the chops necessary to play this role (someone like Elizabeth Moss would have fucking crushed it, and made it ten times better.)

It’s also a good 30 minutes too long, wobbles in the third act, suffers from some bad dialogue at times…and could have used a better editor, that has a defter touch when it comes to pacing.

edit: (apparently Director himself did the editing, which seems to have been a mistake….a studio should force him to hire a skilled editor, next go around)

…all that said it has some really incredible shots, and gorgeous visuals at times….director is clearly a big fan of Fincher and lifts from him here and there….but he also did a handful of original things that surprised me & kept me engaged throughout. (Plus, while it’s not his best performance by a large margin, Ben Mendelsohn is always an entertaining watch)

Biggest takeaway tho is that Argentinian director Damián Szifron, who is making his North American/English debut with this film, shows enough talent and potential here that I feel pretty confident predicting he makes something great in the future. Or at the very least earning himself a shot at a Bond/Marvel/DC movie.

edit: just learned while checking how old he was on wiki, that he wrote the most popular TV series in Argentinian history (Los Simuladores) as well as the most successful film in its history. (Wild Tales)….and he’s scheduled to do a film adaptation of Los Simuladores, in English for Paramount….so I suspect he ends up crushing that.


Anyways, it’s a 6.5/10 on IMDb, 56% on tomatoes, and not that great…..but is good enough when it’s good, to be more worthy of checking out than those scores would suggest. You do gotta wade through some really poorly done scenes tho.

….but yeah, I’d recommend checking out the first twenty minutes for some of the visuals at least. It’s on Netflix.

….quoting this, cause I’d love to hear @JackBurton & @LeafOfFaith ’s take on at least the first couple scenes.

Or anyone else that gives it a whirl.

 

[CH1]

I hated Tree of Life....overwrought to the max, just like the title warns. Thin Red Line also no bueno.

Days of Heaven and Badlands are obviously good. Badlands is an interesting pre-cursor to Natural Born Killer (in terms of narrative beats)

 

[JackBurton]

So, despite going to film school, you faked liking weird movies, that you didn’t even understand?

Kudos to you for admitting to it?



I’ve heard a quite a few people echo this….is it streaming anywhere yet, or still only to rent/buy?

Yes and many people do it and don't admit it.


Plane is streaming now. I don't think it's only any official streamers, but you can rent/or ermm download.

 

[JackBurton]

….quoting this, cause I’d love to hear @JackBurton & @LeafOfFaith ’s take on at least the first couple scenes.

Or anyone else that gives it a whirl.

That's the film I knocked because "Baltimore" was obviously a city in Canada. Baltimore does not get that much snow.
Yes, Woodley is quite bad. Not believable, and can't carry the film. I'm a huge fan of Ben Mendolsohn. He's strong and just blows Woodley away in scenes they are in. It exposes her bad acting even more.
This is a pretty generic thriller after the rather strong start. As generic as it's title.

 

[Montana]

That's the film I knocked because "Baltimore" was obviously a city in Canada. Baltimore does not get that much snow.

Lol…totally didn’t catch that was the flick you had been talking about. (Prob cause as you said, it’s so generic a title)

Yes, Woodley is quite bad. Not believable, and can't carry the film. I'm a huge fan of Ben Mendolsohn. He's strong and just blows Woodley away in scenes they are in. It exposes her bad acting even more.

Agreed, and that’s despite the fact I didn’t even think Mendelsohn was at his best in it.

This is a pretty generic thriller after the rather strong start. As generic as it's title.

Agreed….but I did have a sense through the first 2/3’s of the film, that it was on the cusp of being a way way better film with just a few tweaks (or maybe even just replacing Woodley).

…and I did think the antagonists first two major acts of violence were pretty inventive ideas I hadn’t seen before. (and done better than many set pieces like them in much much bigger films).

That one big scene where Woodley returns to her apartment and has a breakdown was laugh out loud funny tho….it’s pretty rare to witness an actor go for something that far outside their capabilities, and flounder so badly.

 

[zeke]

Thin Red Line is pretty great. It's clearly trying to be more surreal than real like Saving Private Ryan, but even then its war scenes are pretty great and real anyways. As for what soldiers are like i'm sure there were plenty of philosophical soldiers, especially in the wars that kids were drafted into...not that it matters, as the philosophical issues at play were very real regardless of whether soldiers would actually talk about them.

Much much better than Days of Heaven, though Days is also gorgeous to look at.

And no offense Jacko but you've overreacted to your experiences with film school dorks and really embraced some pretty schlocky stuff just for the sake of not liking any hint of non-narrative structure.

 

[JackBurton]

That's a fair take.
I do think there's a fear to really compliment a film like Plane, which succeeds so well for what it is trying to accomplish.
I also think the Academy's act is getting very tiresome of not nominating anything in Horror or comedy and anything "Serious" is deemed as great art. A lot of the Oscar nominated dramas past few years have been juts brutal.

 

[zeke]

Didn't Avatar and Top Gun get best pic nods this year?

 

[Montana]

Yes and many people do it and don't admit it.

this is certainly true in some instances….but it does strike me as peculiar that this is so universally the take of people who didn’t get something.

Can’t it just be okay to not get it, recognize others did….but it didn’t connect enough for you to warrant any further attempts to engage with it?

I’ll also say I don’t think “getting it” is at all necessary to enjoy a film….Tree of Life, Astroid City, 2001 A Space Odyssey, No Country for Old Men, The Shinning, There Will Be Blood, 8 1/2, Mulholland Drive, etc etc etc, can he enjoyed by folks who don’t care one iota about the underlying themes or subtext the director was going for.

There’s also lots of people capable of enjoying a film purely on an visceral emotional level, just based on the emotions the director was able to illicit in them through the language of film….David Lynch would for sure be way more interested in those peoples experiences, than the people who make hours long breakdowns of what everything meant.