No school uniforms, not even basic colour guidelines.

Yeah, I used to use “LOL” more as a teenager on MSN, etc. At some point it became more exaggerated; people began using it to show genuine laughter or to mock others, and “lol” became a more relaxed acknowledgement of general humour.

Another interesting change is “lmao”. That also used to be capitalised and used to indicate a level of laughter greater than “LOL”, but at some point it became lowercase and very passive aggressive. I almost exclusively see it being used to taunt/mock others, often by Gen Z.

It’s not, but if you’re seeing Boomers using it too it’s because their children are often Millennials.

What is the point of skipping the writing phase if you’re still going to take 3 years?

Not gone Peter, it lives on in my living room. :)

That’s a pretty brutal mistake.

Cinemas here went into damage control and allocated specific sessions for popcorn throwing, shouting, running around, etc. They’ll probably do the same pre-emptively for this film, whenever it releases.

RIP cinema staff.

I’ve been on a bit of a 90s thriller binge lately including a couple of Michael Douglas films, Basic Instinct and Disclosure, as well as Copycat with Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter. Basic Instinct was really good, the two leads had great chemistry and it was very well made, although the conclusion was predictable. Disclosure and Copycat weren’t as enjoyable. Both suffered from bloated stories with too many things going on and underdeveloped antagonists, although I loved the 90s internet stuff which was very nostalgic.

I also watched Flowers of War, which is this strange Chinese film with Christian Bale in it. He feels very randomly cast at first - the first third is very typical Chinese drama with overacting, including from Bale, and Chinese war hero/nationalism stuff (it is set during the Rape of Nanjing). I was losing interest, but then it took a right turn and became a smaller scale personal drama that really started to develop its characters. It ended up being an enjoyable watch and a well made film, despite the slow start.

Finally, I watched The Mastermind (on MUBI, which I’ve recently started using). It’s an amateur heist/comedy of errors type film with an indie feel. It’s a bit slow but I think that’s sort of the point, it really labours on the weight of the main character’s poor decisions and the ending is very fitting.

Sounds like it’s not too baaaaaaad.

Battle Royale. It was okay, I feel like it’s overrated purely because it was first and is Japanese, but I suppose its hard to appreciate it fully today, given its influence.

There’s not many comparatively, but yes - I prefer Australians to act in their native accent.

I would rather have Americans acting in their own accent that butchering someone else’s. Even if they do an okay job, sometimes it can feel like they’re concentrating so hard on maintaining the accent that their performance loses its depth and starts sounding like line rehearsal.

Americans be like

There’s a very detailed American politics podcast here in Australia called PEP that covered the conspiracy theories in their most recent episode. I thought you might be interested in watching. The main section starts from here (I’ve timestamped the link for you), but there’s also some earlier discussion about conspiracy theories as well as just the incident in general that also might be of interest/useful context.

Jackson had a pretty eventful life so I could forgive the filmmakers if they had chosen to avoid that stuff to focus on a specific period of it. The problem is that they had it all ready to go and then cut it due to legal difficulties. That’s inevitably going to lead to a misleading characterisation, which is extremely problematic considering the severity of the allegations against Jackson.

It’s interesting you bring that up, because it’s the example that really put this on the radar for me. He gave a generic action guy kinda performance and people reacted like he was the worst actor of his generation and had single-handedly killed the show.

I’m not sure as I don’t follow Marvel films, but I did always wonder if racism played a part in his criticism for Altered Carbon. Joel Kinnaman is basically the stereotypical Aryan alpha male actor (in appearance only, of course), so for him to be replaced by shorter black guy is exactly the type of casting choice that would trigger racists. And the second season wasn’t as good as the first, but the hate for Mackie was so bizarrely out of line with the okay performance he gave.

Why do people hate this guy so much? It seems like a very large portion of the internet absolutely loves it when projects he is in are review bombed or perform poorly at the box office. Even the phrasing of the title here makes it sound as if it’s his film, like he’s the producer and wholly responsible for its failure. Isn’t he just starring in it?

I watched Columbus last night. Pretty interesting film, it was a debut for the writer/director but you wouldn’t know it based on how good it looks. The choice of locations is superb, and it is shot in such a creative and beautiful way that literally every single scene is a joy to watch. The ambitious cinematography is paired with a very minimalist story, a choice reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu’s work.

Just generally, I’d say Columbus takes a very Japanese approach to this type of subject matter with long ASL (average shot length), static camera-work and significant use of short, static transition shots of everyday settings and phenomena that stitch together the longer scenes and create some contemplative breathing space between them. It’s very subtle, meticulous film-making that is deeply satisfying and also oddly exciting to watch as someone who loves this type of stuff.

I think it does struggle a little bit on the story side, though. John Cho’s character feels secondary and his acting comes across a little wooden in some scenes. The relationship between his character and that of Haley Lu Richardson, who is very good, also feels a little lacking, though that is often the case with this type of film. Not every relationship is long, rich and full of deep meaning. People come into and go from each other’s lives and there can often be a sort of transactional feel to relationships outside of our core circle of family and friends, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this context.