Based on the sharp decline of the G rating, apparently not. Let’s look at the oddities of the broadest film rating.

A windowless telecommunications hub, 33 Thomas Street in New York City embodies an architecture of surveillance and paranoia. That has made it an ideal set for conspiracy thrillers.

When it was completed in Lower Manhattan in 1974, 33 Thomas Street, formerly known as the AT&T Long Lines Building, was intended as the world’s largest facility for connecting long-distance telephone calls. 1 Standing 532 feet — roughly equivalent to a 45-story building — it’s a mugshot for Brutalism, windowless and nearly featureless. Its only apertures are a series of ventilation hoods meant to hide microwave-satellite arrays, which communicate with ground-based relay stations and satellites in space. One of several long lines buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke for the New York Telephone Company, a subsidiary of AT&T, 33 Thomas Street is perhaps the most visually striking project in the architect’s long and influential career. Embodying postwar American economic and military hegemony, the tower broadcasts inscrutability and imperviousness. It was conceived, according to the architect, to be a “skyscraper inhabited by machines.”

source: HN

Presenting the list I mentioned earlier in which I highlight a number of worthwhile science-fiction films (also some TV productions) that aren’t the usual Hollywood fare. I’ve spent the past few years watching many of these while searching for more. This isn’t a definitive collection, and it isn’t filled with favourites; I’ve deliberately omitted a number of popular films that would count as such. It’s more a map of my generic tastes, and an answer to a question that isn’t always spoken aloud in discussions I’ve had about SF films but which remains implicit: “Okay, if you dislike all this stuff then what do you like?” I tend to like marginal things, hybrids, edge cases, the tangential, the unusual and the experimental.

Just the stills make for interesting browsing.

source: Dfly

I was recently shown some frames from a film that I had never heard of: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1976 version of “Tron.” The sets were incredible. The actors, unfamiliar to me, looked fantastic in their roles. The costumes and lighting worked together perfectly. The images glowed with an extravagant and psychedelic sensibility that felt distinctly Jodorowskian.

The truth is that these weren’t stills from a long-lost movie. They weren’t photos at all. These evocative, well-composed and tonally immaculate images were generated in seconds with the magic of artificial intelligence.

The “interactive” elements are annoying, but some pretty pictures here.

source: DF

But on 10 June, one box office-topping movie was watched by just two people, in one cinema. Unsubscribe, a 29-minute horror movie shot entirely on video-conferencing app Zoom, generated $25,488 (£20,510) in ticket sales on that day. Nationwide, the movie hit the top of the charts, according to reputable revenue tacker Box Office Mojo. The budget of the movie: a flat $0. How was that possible?

source: HN

Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.

Besides a bit of old fashioned hand wringing here and there, a fairly level take, although I’m not sure how much I can bring myself to care.

source: HN

Movie plots, visualized.

source: K

But 10 years ago, some critics couldn’t see its greatness.

Yet a decade later — as Variety reports that “The Dark Knight” will get a limited Imax 10th-anniversary rerelease next month — it’s worth reflecting on just how much critical prejudice the film faced at the time and how some of the most notable national movie critics then couldn’t appreciate what Nolan had delivered.

Remember the terrifying, tumultuous, insert-scary-adjective-here year leading up to the new millennium? Did the uncertainty of the what the future held keep you up at night? Do you feel a sense of nostalgia for NBC’s Y2K: the Movie? Did you how about the music inspired by the millennium bug? Today’s Tedium seeks to transport you back to a time when the public imagination ran wild and pop culture fed the anxiety of the masses at the dawn of the new millennium.

A video essay exploring how Star Wars’ editors recut and rearranged Star Wars: A New Hope to create the cinematic classic it became.

Reordering a few scenes to great effect.

source: K

Thoughts and lessons on producing a web series.

I didn’t know about Every Frame a Painting before, but I liked the videos I went back and watched.

source: K

Careful camera tracking.

source: K

Throughout evolutionary history, we never saw anything like a montage. So why do we hardly notice the cuts in movies?

source: K

The animation work of Japan’s Studio Ghibli was combined with the actual background.

Making of: https://vimeo.com/189964745

source: K

For a short film about another world, the landscape designer Bas Smets created a dark, scientifically accurate terrain.

A short list of black plants.

In a short film shot in 1957, Walt Disney described the multiplane camera, one of the many inventions and innovations his company had developed in order to produce more realistic and affecting animations.

source: K

Happy Winter! I watch Quintet every winter, because hey, things could be worse.

In most post-apocalyptic movies, there is some opportunity for characters to escape, locate a sanctuary, or carve out at least some slice of small happiness. But without apology or explanation, Quintet asks audiences to countenance a future world in which there is no escape route, and each new day is just one cycle closer to inevitable extinction.

No one knew who we were or what we were doing. These days, try to shoot a movie in Philadelphia with Sylvester Stallone.

Using Blender to recreate and combine scenes from some animated classics.

I usually like movies where stuff blows up real good, but I could settle for an accurate portrayal of a linguist at work.