Art Is Choices Not Prompts

Leave a reply

.

With generative A.I. getting more and more capable in nearly all areas but particularly in creating video imagery there have been a number of voices, not industry voices mind you, proclaiming the death of Hollywood with some short video piece that they crafted.

The videos are impressive for what they are, a machine mimicking the data that has been fed into it, but there is so much more to a film, a novel, a painting or any other art than how it appears in its final form. Art is about the choices the artist made along the path of creation and not just the final product that was created.

Some artists are very intellectual, plotting out every detail of their art, knowing with deliberate decision why everything is the way it is, why that color was employed and not some other hue, why the character has that particular name. Other artists work more from hunches and intuition, making decisions on the fly, exploring the piece as they create it. Why that color? It just seemed right. Both types, and every type in between, are making choices, and those choices in aggregate create what is the style and voice of the artist. It is the sum of the choices that let us look at a movie and tell the difference from one directed by James Cameron and one directed by Steven Spielberg, why a song by Taylor Swift doesn’t sound like one from Danny Elfman, why a novel from Kazuo Ishiguro hits different than one from Gail Carriger.

That voice that is generated by the thousands and thousands of choices made by the artist is a product of the artist, the events of their lives, and the way they see and interpret the world around them. It is why only they could have produced that one piece of art, because it is a reflection of everything that they are, had been, and how they are interacting with the world at that exact moment of creation.

Generative A.I. does not make choices, it uses probability on what the next word, or pixel is going to be, probability that is derived from the blending of all the similar data that it has been fed. Mind you, that is still a vast powerful tool. An A.I. powered grammar review will nearly all the time catch when you have typed “tub” when you meant “tube” making it a powerful assist in catching those nasty little errors, but it has no voice. Generative A.I. has no opinions on the world, it has never suffered heartbreak of love not returned nor the heights of joyous love that is returned. It’s an impressive parrot regurgitating with stunning ability what it has been fed, but by that very nature what it creates is bland, without the strong point of view that makes art last.

Share

Life, Uninterrupted

Leave a reply

.

Not a lot going on at the moment in my life, just the usual day to day action, reactions, and observations that is the slow steady passing of time from today to tomorrow. Certainly, there is a tremendous amount going on in the world but I am far from inclined to write even short posts about the terrible state of the United States. Those inclined to see it my way already do and those who are not so inclined are for all effective purposes immune to any arguments I might make. This is the reason why I am so terrible at Twitter. I see a stupid post from some random person I scroll right on by.  There’s nothing to gain from arguing with strangers on the internet. When I do respond to a post it is nearly always because I personally know that person. Even then I merely note and move on from most of their posts without interaction.

I have started a new novel but it’s very vague at this time and I am just sort of feeling my way through the opening chapters to see if I can uncover the voice for this book before committing myself to its creation.

My Sweetie-Wife and I watched Predators: Badlands a film I suspect will slip quietly and quickly from my memory. It is not bad; it is very competently crafted but I never crossed the gulf of empathy between myself and the characters. Taking us into the Yautja culture robbed them of most of their power as a force and the character came off as pretty one-note.

In anticipation of the next season, I have begun a  rewatch of Dune: Prophecy  the HBO series about the founding of the Bene Gesserit, and it’s just as wonderful on the second watch as it was on the first and like The Godfather, a rewatching actually helps me with the tangled and dense plotting.

Last night I watched the trailer for the Netflix series How to get to Heaven from Belfast and had the most enjoyable reaction to a trailer that I have experienced in a very long time. This quickly shot up the list for something for us to watch in our household.

You know when the manufacturer suggests a part should be replaced annually, that’s something to listen to, I was shaving Monday morning and felt a strange sensation against my cheek and something pinged off the countertop. A part of the electric shaver head had abandoned its post and one of the two metal foils that cover the cutting surface had sprung up. I wasn’t cut in any way and a replaced head showed up quickly via Amazon. My order history showed that it had been two years to the month since I had replaced the head that should be replaced annually.

And that, my friends is my life, mostly dull, somewhat creative, and at least a little entertaining.

Share

Spider Noir

Leave a reply

.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse introduced to the silver screen a number of Spider-Man variants with its central protagonist being the young Miles Morales but one of the favorites to emerge from the strange, animated team up was Spider-Man Noir, a 40s styled, film noir, detective enhanced with spider-like abilities, and voiced with manic perfection by internet favorite Nicolas Cage.

Last night I stumbled across the trailer for a new television series premiering on Amazon Prime in May 2026, Spider Noir, a live action continuation of the adventures of Spider-Man Noir, starring Nicolas Cage.

Much as my love of Warner Brothers’ gangsters movies and classic Universal monsters is making it impossible for me to sidestep The Bride! this mash-up of film noir tropes with the over-the-top manic style of Cage makes Spider Noir equally irresistible.

Just as the trailer was reaching its end, I thought to myself, it is a bloody shame that the series is not in glorious black-and-white. One of the more amusing aspects of the Spider-Man Noir character in the animated film was his puzzlement over things with color as he continued to be rendered in a stark greyscale. Then the trailer’s image suddenly shifted to black-and-white accompanied by text indicating the program could be watched in either format.

Man, I hope they pull that off well.

A few films in the last decade have released black-and-white versions to home video going for that vintage film noir aesthetic, three notable ones were Logan, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Nightmare Alley. I have seen all of these movies, which are each exceptional examples of the cinematic arts, but honestly only one of them really worked in Black-And-White.

Both Logan and Mad Max: Fury Road looked simply like the film’s color data had been deleted, the greyscale nature of the image had none of the life or vibrancy of a shot composed and production designed for Black-and-White cinematography. del Toro’s remake of the film noir classic Nightmare Alley on the other hand, looked better in its Black-and-White version than it did in the full color rendering. I do not know this for a fact, but I would bet dollars to donuts that del Toro guided every aspect of production design and photography with a monochrome sensibility in mind, but, aware that the studio would balk at releasing it solely in that format. Nightmare Alley, though dragged down by a bit of casting, in both color and in Black-and-White looks fantastic, just better in the monochrome that evokes both the pre-war period of the story and the associations with classic cinema.

Monochrome cinematography is not just shooting with B&W film, or digitally removing the color data, it is understanding that color itself registers differently when photographed in Black-and-White. It is knowing that blood looks too pale and something dark brown is more ‘realistic’ than photographing a crimson liquid or knowing that colors that may garishly clash when seen in their full hues can be very complimentary in greyscale. There lies the real challenge of making a production for both color and Black-and-White, resolving those conflicts between the different requirements.

Did the production team of Spider Noir design from the ground up for both color images and Black-and-White? I do not know but man, oh, man I really hope that they did.

.

youtube placeholder image

Share

The ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’ Project

Leave a reply

.

When I went to the theater with my friend Ray in 1982 to see Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, it was not because I was a deep fan of detective movies or film noir. Steve Martin and Carl Reiner were enough of a selling point to motivate me to see this comedy, and it’s something I never regretted.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is both a satire and a salute to the detective and film noir films of the 1940s and 1950s, with Steve Martin as Rigby Reardon hired by Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the mysterious death of her father, a famous scientist. Rigby’s investigation brings him into contact with numerous shady and dangerous characters before leading him to a cadre of Nazis in South America bent on continuing the war with America.

What makes this film special is that it’s a collage project with most of the shady and dangerous characters that Martin interacts with as Rigby carefully edited scenes from classic movies of the period. By careful use of over-the-shoulder shots, sets and costumes crafted to duplicate those seen in the archival footage, and sometimes the use of doubles photographed without their faces visible, the illusion that Martin is actually in these scenes is delivered with a degree of sophistication that’s impressive.

A few years after seeing and thoroughly enjoying this movie in my Introduction to Cinematography course I was exposed to some of the more important films that Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid used in its collages and my fascination with film noir began.

Last month I got the idea it might be fun to make it a challenge to watch every one of the 19 classic movies that this film borrowed clips from. By my own count, I’ve seen eight, leaving eleven yet to be experienced. I made a list, organized it by IMDB ratings, and decided to start from the lowest rated and work my way to the highest, skipping none—making this a mix of films new to me and old favorites.

  1. Double Indemnity (1944) – 8.3
    2. White Heat (1949) – 8.1
    3. Suspicion (1941) – 8.1
    4. The Killers (1946) – 8.0
    5. The Lost Weekend (1945) – 8.0
    6. In a Lonely Place (1950) – 8.0
    7. Notorious (1946) – 7.9
    8. The Big Sleep (1946) – 7.8
    9. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) – 7.7
    10. Dark Passage (1947) – 7.6
    11. The Glass Key (1942) – 7.6
    12. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) – 7.6
    13. I Walk Alone (1947) – 7.4
    14. This Gun for Hire (1942) – 7.3
    15. Humoresque (1946) – 7.3
    16. Deception (1946) – 7.2
    17. Johnny Eager (1941) – 7.1
    18. Keeper of the Flame (1942) – 6.9
    19. The Bribe (1949) – 6.8

My project ran into immediate trouble.

The Bribe, which fascinated me most from the clips utilized by Reiner and Martin, was not streaming anywhere, nor was it available even as a video-on-demand (VOD) rental. There had been a single release on DVD 16 years ago in 2010 and long out of print.

I didn’t want to abandon this project—it seemed fun to me—but I also hated the idea of skipping some of the films that violated the very essence of the endeavor. Surrender seemed to be the only option until I remembered one tiny little fact: the San Diego Library System has DVDs.

A quick search of the catalog revealed that they had two copies of The Bribe on disc, and so soon, my friends, I will begin the climb up that list as my 2026 cinematic venture.

Share

Not Well but Not Terribly Sick Either

Leave a reply

.

So, Tuesday to Wednesday were not my salad days.

By later afternoon Tuesday I began suffering G.I. distress, and by that I do not mean my World War II veterans were having a bad day but that my lower colon had decided that it had lots of material it no longer required and that it would be expediting removal.

 The last few hours at my day job witnessed frequent and prolonged visits to what the brits call ‘the water closet’ with my tummy giving rumbling accompaniment.  I finished my shift, came home to a light supper and a pleasant evening, if not comfortably, with my Sweete-Wife. The evening was slightly marred by the Late Show with Stephen Cobert going on vacation for the week. (Dude, you’re going forever in May, stop taking vacation days.)

By later evening I began to feel flush, my ears burned and my head started throbbing. I texted my manager to let her know I was feeling unwell and may miss work the next day.

Yup.

I awoke Wednesday morning to a migraine, possibly intensified by the rainy weather that had moved in, and a lower G.I. tract that insisted I move not very far from any available restroom. I called in sick, which I hate doing, and slept for a total of 9 1/2 hours. The prolonged sleep dried my eyes out and even with drops my eyesight remained less than optimal the entire day.

By the end of the afternoon the digestive issues seemed to have passed, mostly. whichever bug caused them seems to have moved on to browner pastures, and the migraine responded to medication, which relieved the pain but left me lightheaded.

Wednesday saw no day job work performed, no writing work completed, and no joy in the horizon-to-horizon grey rainy clouds which now cover San Diego like a shroud.

Share

It Should Not Be Titanic versus L. A. Confidential

Leave a reply

.

As we approach the Academy Awards once again, the discussion turns to snubs and the films that should have won Best Picture, with lively debate centered on 1997’s Best Picture winner, Titanic, and the beloved loser that year, the neo-noir L.A. Confidential.

L.A. Confidential is a complex story with intertwined story arcs of passion, corruption, ambition, and organized crime in post-War Los Angeles as it attempts to build a ‘modern’ police force. Adapted from James Ellroy’s doorstop of a novel with a bewildering number of characters and a pace that demands the audience keeps up as the twisty plot is slowly revealed, the script is a miracle of adaptation.

Titanic is an epic of motion picture wizardry, a tale of star-crossed lovers from opposite ends of society who meet and discover themselves aboard the famed and doomed ocean liner as it makes its fateful transatlantic crossing. Ridiculed both within and without the industry for its massive production and its legendary cost overruns, many believed before its release that it would signal the end of James Cameron’s ‘Golden Boy’ image as he finally suffered a disastrous box office bomb. Though the script suffers from cardboard villains and trite, clichéd dialogue, the movie became the most successful motion picture in history, losing that crown to another James Cameron film, Avatar.

The problem with the award is that it’s a singular honor when in fact there should be two awards at the top honoring outstanding achievement in motion pictures.

There should be Best Film, which in 1997, I would award to L.A. Confidential. This would be an award which judges the picture based on its themes, its writing, its story, and how those elements synthesize. It would be an award to recognize the artistry that explores the nature of humanity and the human soul. This award should go to the producers, the people responsible for finding and developing the story from concept, through however many writers and directors are involved, to final form.

The companion award should be Best Production. This would recognize outstanding achievement in the production of a motion picture, the mastery of coordinating hundreds of skilled artists and craftsmen. The nearly impossible task of maintaining such an army and keeping it focused on an artistic vision and realizing that artistic vision. Titanic is a near perfect example of a film that shows a real mastery of production along with all three of The Lord of the Rings installments. This is a director’s award, the person tasked with guiding the day to day work of that vast army.

Sadly, that is not the world we inhabit.

Share

My Good Weekend

Leave a reply

.

This weekend was the Super Bowl and as I care not at all for football or any sport the only impact that had on my life was how populated various places might be and where to eat on Sunday to avoid the loud and excited crowds.

Friday night was a quiet evening at home watching the next episode of season two of The Night Manager. Season two isn’t as tight and as compelling as season one but far from trash television. Also, my Sweetie-Wife decided that she was interested in seeing the newest adaptation of Dracula, even though we are going in with very low expectation. Frankly Caleb Landry Jones looks to be the worst casting for the icon vampire since Lon Chaney Jr. got stuck with the role in Son of Dracula.

Saturday morning was a nice long walk with my Sweetie-Wife along Riverside Park that is near our home, then spending at least some of the evening Tabletop Role Playing over Zoom in the evening. During my preparation for helping players generate new characters for this Space Opera game I discovered that I could feed pages of the dense and badly written rule book into Claude and have that A.I. create spreadsheets for some of the more formula driven aspects of the game. The session went very well and those A.I.-created spreadsheets for the most part worked very well.

Robert Evans

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday my spouse and I took our customary trip to the San Diego Zoo. Given that this was Super Bowl Sunday I expected less than usual attendance and that is what we found. It was not deserted but with the exception of the pandas, we encountered few areas of congestion. It was a pleasant walk. I even got this very nice photo of one of the tigers. We lunched at a spot where we were nearly alone and then came home to relax the rest of the day away ending it with a game of Star Trek: The Original Series deck-building game and the next episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

I had a very nice weekend.

Share

Helen of Troy Wasn’t Real

Leave a reply

.

Later this year we’ll get Christopher Nolan’s next epic and chronologically scrambled film, his adaptation of The Odyssey. I’m a fan of Nolan’s work, in general, Interstellar mistakes cynicism for wisdom — a fault that often appears when he works with his brother Jonathan — so I expect to put my butt in the theater when this is released.

Rumors have slipped out and I do not believe that they have been verified that Nolan has cast actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, the mythical reason for the war and destruction of Troy. As Ms. Nyong’o is far from the Aryan ideal of feminine beauty, the usual quarters of the internet have released their hateful monkeys, pretending to be aghast at this ‘historical inaccuracy.’

Daniel Benavides – Creative Commons License

First off, Helen of Troy is a fictional character.  There is no ‘historical accuracy’ in any casting of her. She probably doesn’t look like how Homer or anyone of his time would have pictured the subject of the epics, but that hardly matters. Beauty and what is considered beautiful is such a slippery concept, shifting so quickly from culture to culture and, hell, from year to year within the same culture. No, the intense ‘debate’ has little to do with history and much more to do with weak and scared people needing something, particularly culture, to reassure them that they are the best in the universe and that their pale skin is evidence of that fact. ( I am pretty damned pale myself, but all that really means is that I consider the sun an evil force.)

This is not the first time we have been subjected to this vile nastiness cosplaying as ‘accuracy.’

When Marvel released Thor in 2011, there were the same cries and thumping of sunken chests over the casting of Idris Elba as Heimdall. Again, we were assaulted with the argument it wasn’t ‘accurate’ as though Heimdall existed in reality and not simply the product of mead-induced story-telling.

1989’s Batman saw the same thing erupt, though with far less notoriety due to that being the pre-internet age, with the casting of Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent. Again, a fictional character though this time one with a history of being depicted visually.

Lupita Nyong’o is not only a fantastically attractive person, she is a highly skilled and proficient actor, someone who has mastered her craft. If she is playing Helen of Troy, I will be perfectly fine with that and will find it far, far easier to suspend my disbelief than when I was assailed with Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist.

Share

I Get a New Desk

Leave a reply

.

Hopefully life will get a little less painful after today.

At my day job where I work in a cubicle, the desks are adjustable for height. There’s a neat little button off the left edge with which you can raise the desk all the way up to a standing desk or lower it enough for a wheelchair user. For most of the time, this has been a godsend. During working hours, I had the desk at the height that was right for the dual monitors I needed to perform my processing. Then on lunch I raised the desk so that it was ergonomically better for spending an hour working on my laptop.

Then the desk broke.

At first when I lowered it, sometimes it wouldn’t stop and just lower all the way, forcing me to scramble out of its path lest my leg get squished. I could then raise it where I needed it, but eventually the motor lost its function and would only lower it, always to the bottom setting. I had to force it up and disconnect the controller. The desk is now at a height that’s right for neither work and is particularly bad for my laptop work, inducing terrible neck pain.

That’s right, it’s literally a pain in the neck.

It has been like this for months, first because the people who maintain the desks couldn’t get the parts they needed, and then because they couldn’t get what they needed to simply replace the desk. Well, today I should be in a much better situation; I am moving to a new cube.

I got to pick out the cube I wanted, making sure I am not next to any of our large windows in the office where intense sunlight could induce a migraine and still positioned well enough away from most of the rest of the floor so it will be quieter for the most part.

With me about to embark on a new novel, this comes at a perfect time.

Share

Movie Review: Three Strangers (1946)

Leave a reply

.

Counted among Warner Brothers’ film noir catalog, Three Strangers shares a thematic aspect with The Night Has a Thousand Eyes in that it is a noir with a strong atmosphere of the supernatural about it.

Warner Brothers Studios

A mysterious woman wordlessly lures a man to her apartment in London. Once inside another man, obviously intoxicated, rises from the sofa. The woman explains that she also invited this gentleman, again without knowing anything about him, even his name. She speedily explains that at least for the moment, they must not reveal their names or anything about themselves to each other. In her apartment she has a statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin and at midnight as the new year begins, it is said that the goddess will open her eyes and grant a wish to three strangers, provided that they wish for the same thing. They agree to wish for money via a lottery ticket for the national horse race. They sign the ticket, making it a contract amongst themselves, using a blotter to obscure their names as they sign so no one sees another’s name.

They wait for midnight, gazing at the candle-lit statuette. The hour is struck, and a wind extinguishes the flame, plunging the room into darkness. By the time the candle is relit, the hour has passed. Then Crystal Shackleford (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who can now safely reveal her name, insists that she saw the statuette’s eyes open, as the myth insisted. The first man, Jerome Arbutny (Sydney Greenstreet) insists he saw no such thing, with the third person, Johnny West (Peter Lorre) taking no serious part in the debate if the eye opened or not. The three go their separate ways, Arbutny cynical that anything serious has transpired, West willing to believe but more interested in more drink to fuel his alcoholism, and Shackleford devout in her faith that this idol will bring about fortune for them all.

The rest of the film follows the three through their troubled lives. Arbutny has embezzled funds from a trust he manages for an eccentric widowed peer, the discovery of which will ruin him financially and reputationally. West, in a drunken stupor, was shanghaied into being a lookout for a burglary that went badly and ended with the murder of a police officer. Shackleford instigated the entire affair in hope of winning back her husband who, after unspecified marital difficulties, has taken an extended business trip to Canada. Each person’s life spirals more and more out of control. Arbutny finds no source of funds to cover his theft and his client is now suspicious. West ends up taking the fall for the murder one of his compatriots committed, and Shackleford’s husband returns, demanding a divorce so he may marry his new love. When the lottery ticket turns out to have drawn not only the name of a horse in the race but one favored to win, the film turns to its final act without ever addressing if it had been mere chance or supernatural forces at work as the characters suffer the consequences of their choices.

Three Strangers is an fascionating sort of film noir. Produced in 1946, it is early in that genre’s formation, so the dipping into the supernatural is not an attempt to revitalize a form but one that rose organically when John Huston conceived the story. It is a film I have heard of for quite some time and this week finally got around to watching. In terms of film noir, there are better movies that I will revisit much more often than this one, but it is also interesting enough to warrant watching and with a collection of characters that are entertaining with all their faults; Icy the woman who loves West despite his drinking, Gabby their accomplice in the robbery who is a brute but one with a code and the clerks working in Arbunty’s office all give the film charm and depth. . I really like how the supernatural—not only Kwan Yin but the spirits of the dead visiting their loved ones—is handled so deftly that it can be mere coincidence or actual evidence that there is much more to the world than what we can see, hear, and touch. Three Strangers is a gritty crime noir that suggests perhaps the world is not as material as it appears.

Share