lauraphenomenon.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Love this interview with Denise Gough and Kyle Soller about #Andor. Gough and Soller are a teensy bit jet-lagged and go a teensy bit offscript! Syril Karn calls Dedra Meero "mother" in the bedroom confirmed!!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-R4...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Can you believe that David Cronenberg is 82 years old & still making movies? I envy the man's stamina! This interview with Cronenberg about his latest film 'The Shrouds' is excellent! My favourite part is when he describes Coralie Fargeat & Julia Ducournau as his "cinematic daughters." #FilmSky

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Can confirm this is true - and it's hilarious! I have invented these phrases and my #AI assistant has assured me that I am 100% correct in my intuition that 'the frog is never the man' (Korean origins), 'a herd of giraffes never goes backwards,' and 'when the bird is in the oven, the cats play.'

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

We have entered the age of the "AI Cyrano de Bergerac." Generative #AI wants to be your wingman (for a price!), so you can gaslight your date more effectively. And if your date catches on, AI will help convince them to give you a second chance. There's just one glitch: it doesn't acutally work.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

I love it how generative #AI continues to have the personality of a charming but lazy high school student who is intent upon bullshitting their way through life by stealing, lying, making stuff up & sucking up to just about everyone. But, hey, you know what they say. You can't like a badger twice.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Best interview with Peter Weller about Buckaroo Banzai ever! "Did the production woes, the screw-ups, the lay-offs, the box office, sour the memory of it all for Weller? He lights a cigar and mulls over the question." Of course he lights a cigar and mulls over the question. Of course. #FilmSky

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

The best video essays about movies give viewers a new lens through which to watch, understand and appreciate films. I love the Wachowskis but I've never liked Speed Racer. But this video essay is so articulate, impassioned and perspicacious that I'm considering giving it another shot. #FilmSky

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Pope Francis was a massive movie buff! He loved the films of some of the greatest directors of all time including Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Akira Kurosawa and Andrei Tarkovsky. But was he a condesending film snob about it? No. Because he was the Pope. #FilmSky

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

When a generative #AI is subtly sycophantic, users unconsciously prefer its flattering responses. But when a generative #AI becomes relentlessly sycophantic, users want that fake, untrustworthy, slimy suck up burned to the ground!

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I always enjoy Be Kind Rewind's videos, but this one is especially good. BKR observes that Hollywood tends to make movies about male actors' lives when they died tragically or experienced addiction. But they make movies about actresses when their life story is simply becoming middle-aged. #FilmSky

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

This is an astoundingly excellent piece about why politics & the world at large feels completely batshit insane. It touches on disinformation, conspiracy theories and the nature of the "screaming, ephemeral electronic blob called the internet." Truly phenomenal writing from @tinanguyen.bsky.social

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Fascinating article about cash-strapped actors selling their likeness for use in #AI avatars, only to find themselves "depicted as a con artist selling a dystopian future." But ultimately, you need money to live, so for some actors, participating in propaganda is "decent money for little work."

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

I love it how all the studio executives are screaming, "THIS IS AN EXTINCTION-LEVEL THREAT! RYAN COOGLER'S DEAL SETS A PRECENDENT THAT WILL DESTROY THE ENTIRE STUDIO SYSTEM!" and not, like, reflecting on all the ways studios have been financially screwing over artists for years. #FilmSky

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Today I learned that Pride and Prejudice (2005) was inspired by Lawrence of Arabia! Joe Wright liked David Lean's "big cuts" from extreme close-ups to landscape shots. He wanted the same effect for P&P, "this shocking cut between the close-up of her eyes, and then suddenly the orchestra." #FilmSky

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Everyone is talking about that sensational barn burner scene in Sinners, and this wonderful piece by Siddhant Adlakha describes it in all its magestic detail! It's truly the best cinematic moment of the year. It's a magical experience that shows movies can do things no other art form can. #FilmSky

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

Pakistan's first hand-drawn animated feature, The Glassworker, is a bit of a conundrum. Its visual style draws heaviliy from Studio Ghibli's films which makes it comfortingly accessible. But at the same time, it means you can't help but compare it to Hayao Miyazaki's much superior work. #FilmSky

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

So theft of creative work is for the greater good now? "If #AI companies get the right to use the life’s work of the world’s creators for free, they’ll do so by stoking governments’ fears of losing the AI race... they are buying the lie that the route there is legalizing the theft of creative work."

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

It's happening! It's really happening! The fucked up fascist romance that is Karn/Meero is no longer just the stuff of fanfic, it's CANON!

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

I'm interested to find out what ideas this upcoming podcast about the use of #AI in creative writing explores. Apparently, the gen AI output stuns Contagion writer Scott Z Burns "as a seemingly original idea" and he "wrestles with possibility of an AI-generated character having an original thought."

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Yes, yes, YES!!!

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

I successfully turned motion smoothing off on my Mum's new TV and I really, really hope Tom Cruise is proud of me.

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

This is a fascinating interview with David Cronenberg. He points out that corporation means make into a body. So "a techno-corporation is, in a way, a strange person. It’s not an alien. Very human, created by humans for humans." This idea would mean many tech films are actually body horror? #FilmSky

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

What a fantastic piece about the unexpected consequences of using generative #AI to write Wikipedia articles in under-represented languages. Gen AI is fabulous at achieving quantity, but it takes human labour to ensure quality. There are lots of nuances and complexities to this story.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

This is a goregeous article looking back at Picnic At Hanging Rock, 50 years on. Russell Boyd’s "photography wrung a liquid lusciousness out of Australian light that has secured Picnic’s hallowed place in the annals of Tumblr and Instagram film fandom." #FilmSky www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ap...

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Is the problem our values, not #AI? "Tech tends to reinforce the values of the system into which it is introduced. If those values are cost reduction & higher productivity, AI will be deployed to automate tasks and consolidate work, not to create breathing room." theconversation.com/ai-is-automa...

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Love this interview with Ryan Coogler! Coogler shares some beautiful family memories & explains his motivation for making Sinners. Coogler says he has felt guilt about wanting to pursue filmmaking, even though it has sometimes separated him from his family. #FilmSky deadline.com/2025/04/ryan...

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

This article argues we should fear people not #AI tools: "it is humans who are creating these technologies & directing their use. Whether to promote their political aims or simply to enrich themselves at humanity’s expense, there will always be those ready to profit from conflict & human suffering."

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

This is a beautiful essay that analyses both 'Clue' and 'In The Mood For Love' and finds unexpected parallels between them. Although 'In The Mood For Love' is more lyrical, it uses many of the same techniques as murder mysteries like play acting scenarios to test leads. #FilmSky

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

Last year, Trent Reznor depaired that "Music [now] feels largely relegated to something that happens in the background." It's an astute comment because many other creative works like streaming shows are trending that way too. Does life itself happen in the background now? www.nme.com/news/music/n...

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Cinematographer Darius Khondji makes such an interesting point here - filmmakers shooting on film are using cameras that are decades old. If new models aren't manufactured, eventually the supply will dwindle and the skills & parts to maintain them will be lost. #FilmSky deadline.com/2025/04/dari...

submitted 28 days ago • 1 comment

It just occurred to me how bizarre it is that Deep Throat was a mainstream hit in the 1970s. Found this extremely awesome esssay from a couple of years back that analyses its place in history. My fav bit: when it compares the porn industry to the MCU. #FilmSky www.pastemagazine.com/movies/porn/...

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Nice article on the manipulations and meaninglessness of counting "views" anywhere on the internet. In conclusion: "just about all the metrics are bad. They’ve turned the internet into a game to be won, a system to be gamed, a race to the biggest numbers even when the numbers don’t mean anything."

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Interesting study on dystopian fiction's appeal: "our everyday existence consists of fairly mundane encounters & repetitive experiences. As an antidote to this safe ordinariness, we are drawn to extreme versions of life & harbour repressed fantasies & desires of destruction & catastrophe." #FilmSky

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

This is a fascinating article about the 1982 "anti-porn cult classic" film Café Flesh. It was rejected by its financiers & audiences alike, "It’s like you took a perfect pair of breasts and wrapped them in a barbed wire bra." #FilmSky @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ma...

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

not with a bang but with a chatbot-written economic plan

submitted 31 days ago • 8 comments

What an epic and thought-provoking collections of films! Art has an impact: "What you hope for is that it will be a kind of a slow-motion timebomb in the psyche of the audience, where they begin to reckon with essential human values." #FilmSky @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ma...

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment

This article pinpoints the unique appeal of Val Kilmer: "He gave a muscular performance that still had a soulful melancholy at its heart, which can be seen in a lot of his roles. He plays action figures who are tough and macho on the outside, but have a melancholy just below the surface." #FilmSky

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

I've recently been doing a deep dive into split diopter shots in films & I have found the most amazing, comprehensive analysis of split diopter shots in American movies covering almost 50 years of movies! It's like a split diopter bible! Brilliant! #FilmSky tadleckman.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/c...

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

This is a horrifying article that reveals how easy it is for generative #AI tools to be used for illegal and abusive purposes. Legislators, tech platforms, web hosting companies & payment providers are "knowingly or otherwise—mostly unknowingly—are facilitating and enabling this to happen."

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

This is an incredibly thought-provoking article that ponders how #AI will transform society and human knowledge. By using AI to search, we filter and homogenise many different sources of knowledge through 1 system: "is generative AI inadvertently reducing the voices of many to the banality of one?"

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

What a fantastic article about the swift rise & fall of studio Carolco which made action movies Rambo, Terminator 2 & Total Recall. Carolco "paved the way" for many other "unapologetically big movies that defined the 80s and early 90s." #FilmSky @thr.com www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

This is an amazingly terrifying deep dive into the development of #AI at Anthropic. The people who are developing a powerful tool seemingly aren't sure whether it's dangerous or benevolent - or whether its intelligence level is more like "a potato or a monkey." But they're trying to figure that out.

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

I've been thinking a bit about second unit directors, particularly how they often follow a totally different career path. Found the awesome old interview with Darrin Prescott that covers his time as a stunt performer, stunt coordinator & second unit director. #FilmSky www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMy5...

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

This awesome 2014 article raves about the visual style of Michael Mann's 1981 film Thief, which created the MTV aesthetic & influenced thrillers for decades. It argues Thief is the turning point between gritty 1970s films & stylish 1980s films. #FilmSky @vulture.com www.vulture.com/article/mich...

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

This article is a good reminder that the #AI Studio Ghibli trend has been carefully engineered by ChatGPT to make generative AI look cute & harmless to garner public support & acceptance. Meanwhile, the company OpenAI is "accelerating a reckless AI arms race and propping up US military interests."

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

I've been thinking about directing duos lately - how does that sort of collaboration work? Do duos tend to have similar or contrasting skills? I found a wonderful piece of this very subject from 2014. It highlights the emotional benefits of a pairing. #FilmSky filmmakermagazine.com/88005-filmma...

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

Another interesting take on the changing way younger viewers consume media. This article points out that creator-driven content on social media engages viewers in ways traditional media cannot by using interactivity & algorithmic recommendations. #FIlmSky @variety.com variety.com/2025/digital...

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments