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Stew Smith

@stewbiedoo.bsky.social

Sittin' on the corner of Dude and Catastrophe.

4414 Posts313 Follower 382 Folgt

daryl "bury me with my golden arm" b 🏳️‍⚧️@hypercubexl.bsky.social · 15h ago

GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...

reddit comment:

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply:

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.

Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…

Bo Bolander @bbolander.bsky.social · 19h ago

(steepling fingers, gazing deep into my scrying disco ball) yesssss, white boy, yesss. play that funky music. play it ... until you DIE

huck mason @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 19h ago

Good thoughts on how to survive the end of the world from *checks notes* Andrew Garfield.

And how do we change, you know? I mean, how does a systemic change happen? . . . I was talking to a much smarter person than me about it, and he was saying that the world currently doesn’t have a center. The center is falling apart. The world and the structures are just being dismantled, dissipating, and dissolving. The world is dying, but not in an ultimate way. It’s a death before a rebirth. And this is what’s happened over and over and over again. It’s not like the Renaissance was just a bunch of guys getting together [and saying], “Should we do a Renaissance?” It was a bunch of individuals feeling a lack of center in the world, and finding a center in themselves, and creating a whole new way of perceiving and living, and bringing that very personal center to the center of the culture, while a bunch of other people were doing the same thing.

I find hope in the idea that each of us as individuals can find that change within ourselves—can find that true core of humanity and soul, and style, and deep self, to bring to the center of the culture. And if enough of us do that, then enough seeds will be planted to grow a world that maybe is a bit better than the last one.

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · yesterday

It is the Fourth Age. Enlightenment has long since been achieved. What we once understood to be humanity is no more. We have evolved beyond. We are beings of pure energy now. We are still getting No Man's Sky updates for free.

Wario64@wario64.bsky.social · yesterday

No Man's Sky COSMOS Update Trailer www.youtube.com/watch?v=inZf... Deep Dive www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQN9... Patch notes www.nomanssky.com/cosmos-update

William Bibbiani @williambibbiani.bsky.social · 6d ago

The most enduring image from the STAR WARS trilogy isn’t Leia in a gold bikini, it’s Leia strangling the sexist, capitalist monster who put her in a bikini in the first place, until that piece of shit fucking dies. Kudos for immortalizing it in a museum (and to everyone kissing in front of it).

Amanda Wong@amandawtwong.bsky.social · 6d ago

Babe, do you want to kiss in front of the Leia Choking Jabba The Hutt statue at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art 😳👉👈

Bronze Age Babies @bronzeagebabies.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Jerry Ordway and Nolan Woodward provided some fun throwback covers for Marvel, 2023.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunters, featuring Boba Fett

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, featuring Luke Skywalker and R2D2

Star Wars, featuring Lando, Leia, and Chewbacca

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 3d ago

Sorry, but this is spot on. The White House believes Donald Trump has a magic ring that turns his thoughts into reality. They demand public praise for things he imagines. And they need a computer program to generate fake imagery to sell it. The (accidentally) most accurate and honest they’ve been.

Savchenko Volodymyr@savchenkoua.bsky.social · 3d ago

👀 The White House also posted an AI-generated video of President Trump as Green Lantern.

Mike X. Nichols @mikexnichols.bsky.social · last yr.

Happy Labor Day

Thief (1981). James Caan as Frank. Medium close-up. He’s pointing his finger and talking to someone offscreen. The caption reads, “I can see my money is still in your pocket, which is from the yield of my labor.”

Minilla Jovovich 🍉 read Merynthia's Master ⚔️🪱🐦@minillajovovich.bsky.social · 3d ago

This is why this man made a good TV show and not a new wookieepedia section

Phil Szostak@philszostak.bsky.social · 4d ago

“Tony [Gilroy] finally turned to me, and he said, ‘Hey, you just got to stop pitching plot. Plot is bullshit. Plot is what happens when you get the behavior right. Pitch me a line of dialogue, pitch me atmosphere, pitch me something visual. Stop pitching stuff that happens.’” 1/2

Catsuka @catsuka.bsky.social · 4d ago

Akira linetests. Always a treat.

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · 4d ago

My 9 year old has started doing Darth Vader impressions...but he insists on doing it with a Dick Van Dyke level cockney accent

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 5d ago

This “game” on the White House website, a version of Snake where you play as a white man in a suit and you run around picking up identifiably black, Asian, and Latino men and putting them in orange jumpsuits, might be the most openly white supremacist thing I’ve ever seen the US government produce

@bilgeebiri.bsky.social · 5d ago

Robert Pattinson is astonishing in PRIMETIME: www.vulture.com/article/prim...

No One But Robert Pattinson Could Have Done Primetime

The actor’s unhinged performance as Chris Hansen, host of the mid-2000s reality hit To Catch a Predator, is a stunning demonstration of his range.

vulture.com

Carl Garcia @carlinspace.bsky.social · last wk.

Just saw William Friedkin say he went to Casablanca because of the movie and he called it: "The dumbest city I've ever seen. It was like Long Beach."

christa lee @ohpoorpup.bsky.social · last wk.

This shot from MGS2’s ending, the line against this totem of American capitalism, really tremendous stuff

Robert Brian Taylor @robertbtaylor.bsky.social · last wk.

Here's a fun one! I guested on Pittsburgh's own @cinemapsychospod.bsky.social this week to talk about one of my favorite horror sequels of all time — Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Host Brian Cottington and I do a deep dive on Kirsty, Julia, the Cenobites, and the ending the movie SHOULD have had.

We Re-watched Hellbound: Hellraiser II...It's a PERFECT Horror Sequel! | Ft. Robert Brian Taylor

YouTube video by Cinema Psychos Podcast

youtube.com

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · last wk.

I feel like there isn't enough appreciation for just how wonderful Jerry Goldsmith's main theme is for Star Trek: TMP. Soaring, grandiose. Makes you feel like there's so much still left to discover. Optimistic in a way sci-fi themes rarely feel. Goldsmith really had it, man.

Jerry Goldsmith - Main Title - (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979)

YouTube video by Soundtrack Gems

youtube.com

(VFP) Strategic Gravitas Reserve @braak.bsky.social · last wk.

"maybe Scrooge was right" Scrooge wasn't real! He was invented specifically for the purpose of being wrong!

Abigail Larson@abigaillarson.com · last wk.

"Maybe Scrooge was right-" he was not. He was a miserly asshole facing the same demise as his former business partners if he didn't make some serious changes with how he treats the people around him. That's the point.

Bo Bolander @bbolander.bsky.social · last wk.

it's kind of fucking wild that every single story is like this

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · last wk.

El-Sayed: JD Vance couch joke Vance : How dare you talk about my wife

El-Sayed: Why would you invite JD Vance? We don't have more couches here than they do in Ohio.
C-SPAN!

JD Vance: "Keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth, Abdul, because she's way out of your league"

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · last wk.

The thing about it is, my wife is just the best y'all

huck mason @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · last wk.

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · last wk.

Why is Trump being interviewed by Judge Doom?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w ago

these are two odd looking guys

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · 2w ago

Post your getaway vehicle

Todd Vaziri@tvaziri.com · 2w ago

Post your getaway vehicle(s)

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · last wk.

Star Video in Baton Rouge, LA. First video store I ever remember going to and where over the years I saw so many VHS covers that were immediately burned into my brain. Stuff like Krull, The Fly, Deep Star Six, Innerspace. It was a hole in the wall joint but it seemed massive to me when I was 7 or 8.

Chloe N. Clark@pintsncupcakes.bsky.social · 2w ago

Tell me about the video store of your past please

Mike X. Nichols @mikexnichols.bsky.social · 3mo ago

lmao

The trolley car problem with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. The trolley car defies the laws of physics and slams into Wile E. Coyote.

Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · last wk.

Chloe N. Clark@pintsncupcakes.bsky.social · 2w ago

Tell me about the video store of your past please

The Spaceshipper 🚀@thespaceshipper.com · 2w ago

The Fifth Element (1997): Flight attendant uniforms, costume design by Jean-Paul Gaultier

Fashion illustration of two women wearing futuristic flight attendant uniforms by Jean Paul Gaultier for The Fifth Element, featuring dark navy and bright blue mini-dresses with winged pillbox hats and silver high-heeled boots.

Fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier poses with four models wearing matching blonde wigs and blue futuristic flight attendant costumes from the movie The Fifth Element.

SPOOKYTime, M.D.🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈@saigontimemd.bsky.social · 2w ago

CHAPPELL ROAN IN FIFTH ELEMENT STEWARDESS MODE AT DAISY CHAIN FIELDS OH MY GOD

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 2w ago

wow these Twitch streamers are really off the chain

Nathan Tankus@nathantankus.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ben Gvir posted this video on twitter today which shows fat and happy Palestinians on a conveyer built going through the Israeli "prison" (torture camp) system and coming out emaciated and maudlin. This is textbook genocidal content.

Ify Nwadiwe @ifycomedy.com · 2w ago

Wrong. Goku would simply be disinterested in Road Runner because he displays cunning not strength. Vegeta on the other hand, would spend 5 episodes of B story getting his shit rocked.

sam !@sam.robotsfightingdinosaurs.com · 2w ago

anyone who disagrees doesn't know either character. goku isn't known for speed and is canonically a dumbass. wile e coyote is a genius. goku's plan would be to try to outrun it and you can't outrun the roadrunner