#greg rambles

[erlann]

please those two guys kissing as soon as the camera panned on them during the habemus papam celebration...

[gregxb]

Joe Russo and the Death of the Artist in Blockbuster Cinema

I have spent years ripping apart the work of George Lucas, Zack Snyder, Michael Bay, and J. J. Abrams. None of this is new. I have been very consistent about what frustrates me about their films. I think George Lucas fundamentally reshaped blockbuster storytelling in ways I deeply dislike. I think Zack Snyder often mistakes iconography for substance. I think Michael Bay turns spectacle into sensory punishment. I think J. J. Abrams built an empire on nostalgia, mystery boxes, and convincing audiences that momentum is the same thing as storytelling.

And yet I have never denied that they are artists.

This distinction matters because artists can make art I despise. They can misunderstand characters I love. They can create films that leave me wondering how anyone signed off on the final product. But I can still identify a point of view. I can still see authorship. I can still recognize that there is a person behind the camera making specific creative choices, however much I may hate those choices.

You always know when you are watching a George Lucas film. His work is full of recurring obsessions with mythology, technological innovation, political rise and decline, and an almost legendary inability to write natural sounding human dialogue. It drives me insane, but it is unquestionably his voice.

The same applies to Zack Snyder, whose films are obsessed with gods, power, and visual grandeur while often forgetting the humanity of the characters involved. I cannot stand what he did with Superman and Batman, but his fingerprints are obvious.

Michael Bay is pure excess. Explosions, hyperactive editing, juvenile humor, fetishized military imagery, and a complete refusal to embrace restraint. Again, I hate it, but I know exactly who made it.

J. J. Abrams has his own creative DNA as well. He thrives on familiar iconography, rapid pacing, emotional shortcuts, and packaging nostalgia as innovation. I loathe what he did to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but it is undeniably an Abrams film.

Then there is Joe Russo, and this feels fundamentally different.

I liked Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I had fun with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame despite their flaws. I am not rewriting history to make this argument cleaner. But every time Joe Russo speaks publicly about filmmaking, he sounds less like someone discussing art and more like someone pitching efficiencies to a boardroom.

This is a man who promotes AI as though replacing artists should be celebrated. This is a man who has shown little visible interest in mentoring younger filmmakers. This is a man who mocked Martin Scorsese for criticizing franchise filmmaking. This is a man who invoked Harvey Weinstein while complaining about why blockbusters do not win awards, which remains one of the most tone deaf comments I have heard from anyone in Hollywood. This is a man who repeatedly talks about box office performance as though commercial dominance is the highest form of artistic validation.

That is what bothers me so deeply. With the directors I dislike, I can still engage with their films as art. I can critique their worldview. I can analyze their themes. I can argue against their storytelling choices because there is still an artistic identity present, even when I think that identity produces terrible work.

With Joe Russo, I increasingly struggle to find that identity at all beyond corporate loyalty.

He often feels like the ideal modern studio figure. Deliver the product on time. Protect the intellectual property. Defend AI. Chase algorithms. Celebrate box office numbers. Smile for the shareholders. Collect the paycheck. Repeat the cycle.

What makes this even more frustrating is watching certain MCU fans suddenly become very quiet whenever he starts talking about AI. These are often the same people who loudly claim to care about protecting writers, actors, artists, and animators from corporate exploitation. But when one of the architects of their favorite franchise openly embraces technology that threatens creative labor, many of them suddenly become experts at looking the other way.

Bad art frustrates me. It always will. But the idea of a future where filmmaking is increasingly handed over to people who seem indifferent to art itself feels far worse.

At least the directors I dislike seem driven by passion, even when that passion creates work I cannot stand.

Joe Russo increasingly feels like the embodiment of a version of Hollywood where passion is optional and content production is everything. That possibility is far more depressing to me than any bad movie ever could be.

[itosher]

german 101

[angelenentrenamiento]

I told myself I would steer away from the whole tucute vs transmedicalism debate but here’s your fave angry brown queer giving away some free education since I’m tired of white trans people always trying to talk over BIPOC trans issues:

Transmedicalism comes from a very RACIST, COLONIALIST AND PATHOLOGIZING BACKGROUND. Transmedicalism talks about how the only way to be trans is to feel dysphoria and that is extremely invalidating. If you think about the world before Euro and Seppocentrism became a thing, DIFFERENT GENDER IDENTITIES EXISTED BEFORE *gasp* WHITE PEOPLE FOUND OUT ABOUT IT?? 😨😨😨

Lets give some good FUCKING examples:

Hijras, machis, tongans, fakaleitis, two spirit, muxes, etc

When Amerigo Vespucci (el mismismo fucker that changed Abya Yala’s name to AMERICA) alongside his little whyt crackeritos coming along to invade and colonize our culture, we were punished to have this gender non conformity. We were FORCED to learn their Eurocentric rhetoric that there were only two genders - Man and Woman. When in reality, there’s more and white trans truSCUM seem to fucking FORGET that being trans is a worldwide experience. Your definition of being TRANSGENDER is white supremacy at it’s finest.

Transgender Black, Indigenous, people of color are always in the shadows when it comes to talk about OUR trans issues. You always hear about white trans issues and THEM describing their life in a very transmedicalist way and erasing cultures that are not white that had always accepted breaking gender roles.

GIVE TBIPOC A PLATFORM TO SPEAK ABOUT OUR EXPERIENCES.

[erlann]

I find it really cool how crime and punishment by dostoevskij has been translated in Italian because if you ask an Italian to translate "crime and punishment" on the spot theyre gonna say crimine e pena if they're keeping it in the legal vocabulary, or crimine e punizione. which I mean it works just fine and crimine/crime and punizione/punishment are also cognates respectively so it's all good. but the ACTUAL translation is delitto e castigo which sounds infinitely more powerful and solemn. castigo is a cognate of chastise(ment) so you can already see where that's going. and delitto has basically the same meaning as crimine but it implies that it's not just a legal crime. delitto is like. a moral crime. not just killing but killing someone who trusted in you, someone that loved you, etc. there is actually a phrase where delitto is used which is "delitto passionale" (passion-driven crime, where crime is usually always a euphemism/synecdoche for homicide) and crimine passionale doesn't sound nearly as correct.

[erlann]

can't sleep because of the heat.

what drives me nuts the most is knowing there is AT LEAST a 10°C/18°F difference between the room and outside at night.

but if I open windows + roller shutters I get the constant noise of the highway + blinding sun already from like 5 AM.

and I can't open the doors to the other room to create air current because I have a plant in the other room and my roommates cat may munch on it while I'm asleep.

I have no AC. I have one fan and I already wake up with my spine aching every single day and pointing a fan at my body while I sleep makes that EXPONENTIALLY worse so I need to, quite literally, save my "fan" nights for the summer and use it as little as possible.

I was doomscrolling weather news about last year's summer for a bit and my mind was spiraling about finding places to be that have AC. because a colleague mentioned the AC is not very strong in our office. and I am basically slowly progressing toward panicking because I can't take this heat anymore already and it's not even June.

and I really don't see a future sleeping with the roller shutters open because I need silence and total darkness to even THINK about falling asleep within an hour of laying down on the bed... and this of course gets me spiraling even more. because tossing and turning makes me heat up. and then I go to work tired from having slept like 4 hours and my productivity decreases and I get fired or something (pun not intended)

and then a friend told me not to stay too much time in the car without driving because that uses up the car battery especially if I have the AC on and I'm like. girl this is not helping. I am actually gonna have an episode. this is not quirky and fun.

are we going to pull through this? yes we are. we shouldn't get more than 35°C in this part of Germany this year so if I survive tomorrow I should be able to survive the rest of the year.

but I am really starting to consider looking for a new apartment that has AC like RIGHT NOW, like literally tomorrow, because I am so frustrated by this situation. and like!! it wouldn't even make sense. because I need to give the current landlord 3 months notice so I would end up with AC in September.

this is how I know it's just the panic talking and not logic tbh. ive survived worse -> I'll survive. can't get AC -> no point in stressing out about the idea of looking for an apartment. I'm doing fine at work and my boss is already planning stuff for months in advance -> I'm not gonna get fired so easily.

gonna try going to sleep with the roller shutters open... I mean worst case scenario I wake up at 5:30, get ready, go to work and then I can get home much earlier than usual. unclear what I'll do once I get home early but we'll figure something out. like hey I have a car, what's stopping me from driving to some sort of nearby park or forest and reading a book there? it's probably chiller there than in the city...

[erlann]

not Tumblr updating the UI and straight up removing the quick queue button even if it's turned on in the settings........ UGHHHHH......

side effect: you will now receive all of my posts as intermittent bursts

[erlann]