#16:9 the aspect ratio of the day

[gregdotorg]

It was one clip of many, but Sturtevant loved using this HD 16:9 horned owl closeup she ganked from iStockvideo in her artworks about the cybernetic media networks we're encased in.

[images: simulacra, 2010, 16:9 single channel piece installed at matthew marks gallery, oct. 2022; inverted flatscreen pyramid of rock & roll simulacra, act 3, 2013, installed at the serpentine galleries in london, 2013; and owl wallpaper in moma's double trouble, sturtevant retrospective in 2014-15]

[nikst3rr]

Kaoru and the cat

[myreia]

Bound fast unto our fate One path, one burden great Yet ever do our aching souls point Heavensward

[lullaby-and-co]

first stimboard post here kinda nervous (-｡-;

stuck w the 9:16 aspect ratio bc this was made for tiktok :3

hope y'all like it!!! scared of losing all our stimboards we posted on tiktok so migrating them all here so expect one a day until i run out :3 we've made stimboards from everything from fnaf to pixie hollow fairies! and we do requests!!

our jinx fictive made this for herself so there's that too :D

-🧶

[julie-sufan]

The In-Depth Look at Julie-Su Part 6: Knuckles #16-23

Issue #16 is a one shot. Here Knuckles is upset after finding out that his mom plans to marry her new boyfriend. He runs off not wanting to talk to anyone at the moment.

First (But definitely not the last) time that Julie kisses Knuckles. Then they share a nice quiet moment together.

Issue #17 & 18 features yet another past echidna guardian with a ton of backstory. He meets Julie-Su who is riding an absurdly evil looking horse type of creature.

Love that she's giving him attitude even when in the thrones of death.

In issue #18 she stops by Lara-Le's house (Knuckles's Mom) for some tea and cookies and to hear about of Tobor's (The echidna with the unique eyes) backstory.

Another moment I like. Here we see Julie-Su going from being in complete denial about wanting a relationship with Knuckles to hugging him on the exact same page. Kind of reminds me of Michiru from Fruit of Grisaia who would also fail at trying to be a tsundere type.

Second kiss scene.

Issues 19-21 barely has Julie in it and centers around the Royal Acorn Family. It really feels like a plot that should have been in the main Sonic comic series but for some reason ended up here.

Issue 20 features the first full appearance of Elias who would later show up in the Sonic comic.

After this point Julie gets knocked out for pretty much the rest of the arc.

Next arc 22-24 is going to be a bit tricky to talk about without getting political because it features politics. Please keep in mind that this arc was written way back in 1999.

It features a importance first appearance of Julie-Su's half sister Lien-Da working with the Dark Legion to smash stuff up. No matter what you're views are I like to think that people would come together against the anti-flat screen party.

Did some quick research and found this from howstuffworks. Flat screen tvs used to be called HDTVs when they were first released around 1998.

"Those sets came from manufacturers like Panasonic and Sony, and had a different appearance -- they were wider than standard televisions. That's because the new HDTV standard also included a new aspect ratio. The standard aspect ratio was 4:3, the new ratio was 16:9. They also came with a hefty price tag -- the first sets on the American market cost $7,000 or more."

Lien-Da has never looked more sinister. You can really tell that the artist (Jim Valentino) enjoyed drawing the Dark Legion and it's various members.

Nice Chaotix group shot. This upcoming full page scene I'm going to let speak for itself and that's all I'll say on it.

Hope you enjoy seeing Julie hang upside down because that's what she spends the most of issue 24 doing.

Next up: More hanging around and the Dating arc.

[onthegreatsea]

realised the hdmi version on my XP machine is new enough that it can actually support 1440p so, after some finangling, i managed to get it working :) and games run great! i built a 1440p machine without realising but the GPU i have in the machine is the one i had back in the day so i finally rememember why my PC back them was so overpowered; i was playing games across three screens lol. three 1680x1050 monitors. thats closer to 4K than 1080p i totally forgot about AMD's Eyefinity (somehow). it was the coolest shit, i love ultrawide aspect ratios, super immersive. kinda sad that TVs have stuck with 16:9 tbh but i much prefer the TV experience over sitting at a desk

[animatedjen]

hello animatedjen!! I hope your day has been beautiful 🧡 I've recently moved into an apartment and have decided to get a gaming monitor for my PS5, so I can game at my desk and save some space while still enjoying photo mode sessions. if I remember correctly you play Jedi on PC, so maybe my question for you isn't relevant, but is there a monitor you use & like or would recommend for this purpose? I know these things are expensive and you seemed like a good person to ask about getting my investment right the first time around! especially since I would also use it for professional photo & video editing on occasion, and I know that's relevant to your career field as well. any advice you have on making a flexible set up would be so appreciated! thank you in advance!! I hope this question isn't too bothersome! P.S. I want you to know that you're a micro celebrity amongst my coworker friends because they see your photo mode shots rotate as my desktop wallpapers all day every day haha 😅

Congrats on the apartment!! And I'm very honored to be your work desktop wallpaper 💛 Respawn should be giving you a referral bonus!

Right now I'm using a Gigabyte QHD 34" ultrawide gaming monitor I got secondhand. Good specs for the price, but it's not super color accurate when compared to my Macbook retina screen - it could be calibrated more via software or a physical tool, but for now I use the monitor for gaming, general life stuff, and pre-color editing. I have a DP cable for the PC and HDMI for the Macbook or PS5, so it's easy to switch between devices.

The ultrawide aspect ratio also means I crop my photomode shots to 16:9 to post on socials, since 21:9 photos are very skinny (see above) and people often scroll Tumblr on their small, vertically-oriented phone screens. On the plus side, it's great for video editing since I can see more of the timeline at once. And no black bars during Jedi Survivor cutscenes!

You'll have to decide your budget and what specs are most important to you for photo/video work - I'd recommend a screen somewhere between 24" and 34", with QHD (2K) or UHD (4K) resolution. A higher refresh rate (at least 60hz, if not 120/144/240hz) helps for gaming and video with higher framerates. Color accuracy is tricky, but if you're not creating high-end photo prints or color grading for Netflix, something good (but not perfect) will be just fine. Some monitors will be better for gaming, and some better for photo/video editing, so decide which one to prioritize.

I've seen ASUS ProArt, Dell UltraSharp, and BenQ monitors recommended when I've shopped around before, but I skew towards non-gamer, Mac-friendly tech since more of my client work is on that system and the Jedi stuff is (sadly) not my paid job (yet). But if any other gamer/creative professionals want to drop recs in the comments, y'all probably know more than I do! 🙌

Thanks for the ask and sorry I can't be more helpful. Look forward to seeing the photomode shots from your new monitor :)

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Ive played so much Horizon Zero Dawn. Thankfully the game isn't that grindy? Maybe if I was trying to 100% it (the save file, not the achievements), it would take a while, but it wouldn't take that long.

Anyway I've played enough that I'm retreating to Ace Attorney. I have had issues with the game for a few days where Ace Attorney will only launch in horizontally squished 4:3 on my steamdeck. This issue was even occuring on my TV!

I've worked around it on my TV by setting aspect resolution to "Native". Previously it was fine on "default" or "4k" but now those both get squished.

This is weird because Ace Attorney doesn't even have native 4:3 support, it is being forced into that aspect ratio. If played on a 4:3 tv, it still displayed 16:9 with black top and bottom borders.

I can work around it on the deck by playing on Desktop mode. I will try a variety of forced resolutions, including Native, and see if I can fix it.

[netscapenavigator-official]

As much as I hate the idea of having to torrent 700+ GB and store 200+ GB, the difference in 480p and 1080p for this TV show I'm watching is absolutely necessary.

480p was practically unwatchable. Maybe the torrent creator used an intense amount of bitrate compression, but it doesn't matter. I felt like I was watching a podcast with a colorful screensaver. 720p and 1080p are so much better. Not to mention the 16:9 aspect ratio looks so much better.

However, this is another case of AV1 saving the day. 200+ GB is a lot, but 700+ GB would've been a deal breaker. As a result, I am once again asking torrent makers to use modern, fucking, video codecs. That 700+ GB is with H.265 (HEIC). I can't imagine what it would be with H.264. AV1 & Opus are really coming in clutch with this show.

[thelanor-s-astame]

Episode 3, Finding some footing!

So this is where I started to find where I stood in the series. The last couple of posts was just me going scene by scene describing things, this one I want to focus in on two things. Starting a Lore Bible, and Action Scenes.

So between ep 2 and 3 I took a trip to my grandmas which is always good to get the creative juices flowing. And I knew the Mantis Lords were coming up, and I thought "Mantises are kinda tied in to a lot of places, what with the Trator Lord, the breakup between the tribes, and the pale mourner quest. It seems like there's a lot of fertile ground for lore expansion there!" So I started expanding The Mantis stuff. Then I kept going. I'd established that Fighting History, was going to be a simplified version off Film History I'd already name dropped Zells and Hilltop, during the hornet fight. How much farther can I go with that? And maybe I should give the exposition to Sly.

The Concept I had for Quirrel was based on a Blade Runner 2049 reference I used him to make in the old series... but what if I Kept Expanding Outward.

And eventually, it was time to make this episode. Here is where I had an idea of where to go after this. I'd been playing it by ear up until this point, with a few exceptions. I knew how I was going to do some story beats, like Myla and The Ending. But now I knew what direction I was taking everything else. Hollow Knights lore is veeery open to interpretation. And If I was going to make a narrative series out of it. I needed to interpret. So I decided to go hard on that. I'd say I threw off my shackles and made my own cannon, but Hollow Knight's cannon is a tapestry filled with bits torn out on purpose. So I just filled them in. And while filling them in I realized how wide the canvas was. So I just kept going. And I'm still going!

And ultimately, going that direction I think is the best way to go. Everyone watching the series probably know how the story goes. And it's going to go mostly the same way. But it sure feels a lot different when you've got a lot more going on. And I still got a lot of surprises up my sleeve!

Now let's talk about the fight scenes. So something I didn't talk about during the Episode 2 behind the scenes is that I stopped rendering these videos in 60fps. The reason I did that is because, with the dynamic cutting, the Hornet Fight Scene just looked *way worse* in 60FPS. That framerate is really good when you have to watch out for Hornet's attacks, and therefor are focusing on a mostly static screen where the movement is done by the character and not the camera.

But when every action gets it's own cut, And the camera AND the characters are moving 60FPS can get visually overwhelming. You don't need to actively interact with A Youtube Video. The editing and camera movement does that for you! And if you just have a static screen of the characters moving it looses a majority of the 'oomph' quick cuts, zooms, and framing can give you. It's incredibly boring!

So I render these in 30FPS exclusively now.

But the reason I bring that up is that I noticed something else in the Hornet Fight It's very vertical, and Academy Ratio Widescreen looks much better than 16:9.

So i played around in the hornet fight a little, and eventually decided against going with that. Because hornet did do a lot of jumping in the air and having the full 16:9 rectangle gave me a lot more vertical room.

But I didn't need that with the Moss guards.

So the day before it needed to be released, I looked at it, and it felt like half an episode. There wasn't really a conclusion to it. 'cus at that point it just had the moss guard fight on the bridge and "Still Counts!" was all the training out lil guy did the whole episode.

So I thought "Why don't I just put, like, another fight scene in there where he learns something?"

So I did that. Then I went back to my Widescreen idea.

And I thought to myself "Okay, pretentious much? You're just gonna change the aspect ratio purely for the fight scene on your Hollow Knight Youtube Video?" Everything Everywhere All At Once hadn't come out yet, you see.

So I thought "Well okay, If I'm gonna do that. I think I need another reason for it to be there other than It Looks Better This Way" Which was wrong, of course, that's always a good enough reason. but I thought "If he's training, maybe those are the margins the character writes his notes in. He can put boss attack strategies in there!"

And, while it's been a pain in the ass and a helova lot of work. It's honestly one of the best ideas I had for the series! And I made it 3 hours before my final render lol. Sometimes you give yourself needless barriers, but sometimes a clever solution to something that isn't a problem, turns it into a new cool thing. Not always. Probably not usually. But sometimes!

[icarusthelunarguard]

This Week’s Horrible-Scopes

It’s time for this week’s Horrible-Scopes! So for those of you that know your Astrological Signs, cool! If not, just pick one, roll a D12, or just make it up as you go along. It really doesn’t matter. Better yet! Check out “Heart of the Game, Fredonia” and see if they can sell you those D12’s with the symbols on them. Tell them “Shujin Tribble” sentcha. And “Hail, Hail, Fredonia!” Home of the Blue Devil!

Sooooo…. Theme, right? (*Sigh*) Ok, ok. So once again a theme has been suggested, and I seriously considered how to twist this one around on the requester. So you know what? Santa’s already done his thing and I’m SAFE! That’s exactly what I’m about to do. So with no further ado, here are New Year’s Resolutions no one wants to do.

Aries 

You get to set the stage presence here with something known as “Film Academy 2×”. It’s a format specifying an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 that was laid out in the 1930’s because no one could agree on a motion picture technical spec. These days it’s a digital resolution of 1828 × 1332, which is better than any monitor you’ve got right now. So This Week… watch some old Buster Keeton films… and remember, he was the ORIGINAL Jackie Chan for performing stunts!

Taurus 

Swinging over the pond and into true weirdness for Television Broadcasting we get to your resolution system: “Undecoded PALplus”. It was a re-do of the PAL broadcast system that brought 16:9 Widescreen broadcasts, but still supported traditional PAL receivers. So This Week… Learn how to add onto your existing knowledge base without breaking what you had already… meaning just read a damned book for a change, would you? 

Gemini  

A true digital system for once, you’re getting “SVCD” aka the “Super Video CD”. It was a digital movie file, encoded in MPEG-2, and came in one of two varieties: 480i (or 480 pixels square), or 576i (or 480 x 576 pixels). The system came out in 1998 and honestly it’s best use was in early shoot-em-up CD games with video cutscenes to them. So This Week… find your collection of old games and play some again. We’re pretty sure Cookie from You Don’t Know Jack misses you.

Cancer Moon-Child 

Another Disk, another digital format. This time it’s the most prolific media adoption in history: the DVD. Bet most of you didn’t know “DVD” stands for “Digital Versatile Disk”. With a MINIMUM storage capacity of over 4 and-a-half Gigs of data, you could backup most computers completely to one of those puppies. But as a movie disk you’re relegated to the venerable standards of NTSC at 480 lines tall, or PAL’s at 576. The system came out in 1996, and these days it’s impossible to find a movie or TV show NOT on this format. So This Week… Just admit that “DVD 3D” is a Dead Format. You bought all that super expensive stuff and now it’s just not worth it. Get over yourself.

Leo 

Look at you, Leo! Scammin’ off the pack! More laser disk goodness, but this time you get the “CVD”. That’s not a typo; CVD stands for “China Video Disk” and that’s exactly what it sounds like. It was a way of making video disks without needing to go through the whole SVCD standard. It was close, but lacking in resolution. So This Week… Your ability to run under the Patent Lawyers' radars is impressive. Keep up the good work, but don’t get caught.

Virgo 

We know you think you’re superior to everyone else, but that doesn’t mean you’ll succeed in all areas. Your format is “Betacam”, which we’re guessing some of you already kinda know what’s coming. Yes it was as-good or better than VHS for the home market, but for the professionals, it was GREAT! Get a short-play cassette at home, but the Long Play version in the studio, and it was basically The Same Cassette! Sad it got shanked in the end, but sometimes that happens. So This Week… Take some pride in knowing your format may have come out in 1982, but it’s STILL got Technical Support through this past year! 40 Years of Active Duty for a supposedly Failed Format’s pretty damned good in our book! 

Libra

Just when we thought the Analogue Film Industry was an anachronism and lost its relevance… just like Michael Corleone they’re pulling us back in again. This time it’s the “Film 8K” format. We’re not dealing with 1.85:1 any more, but with a resolution of 7992 × 4320… and really, WHY?!?! The only reason this is important is if you’re watching this on a freekin’ MASSIVE projection screen! So, good luck with all that on a computer: VLC will CHOKE to death if you’re running a 1440 monitor and a GTX-1660 Super! So This Week… LOSE SOME WEIGHT!

Scorpio 

We’re just gunna call it right now. You! ARE! BASIC! White-Bread Toast, generic as hell NTSC. The format that swept North America because 60Hz power signals are just a wonderful way to make sure everyone’s receiver works right. Your format supports both Black and White and Colour receivers without breaking anyone’s machine. So you've got that going for you. So This Week… Try replacing your mayonnaise with Caesar Salad Dressing for a new kick.

Sagittarius 

Your format cannot be overstated in how great it was! And, sadly, yes.. “Was”. You need to look up what “Laserdisk” looks like, because, holy HELL, that’s a gorgeous disk. And the output was better than standard NTSC and PAL or SECAM and testing proves this. So This Week… check out Linus Tech Tips on YouTube and see the side-by-side comparison between VHS and Laserdisk, and weep at what we were denied.

Capricorn 

You’ve just GOT to be the Odd One Out, huh? Your format is literally called “405-line”. And the fun part about this is it ISN’T 405 scan-lines in format! Nope! It’s KINDA 503 × 377, give or take a little smearing. It’s a monochrome television broadcasting system introduced with the BBC Television Service in 1936, so it’s done well for itself for a while. BUT! In the United States, the FCC had briefly approved a 405-line color television standard in October 1950, which was developed by CBS… only to find out that it was incompatible with existing black-and-white receivers. So This Week… Don’t think of it as “Conforming to the Norm” so much as “Making sure you don’t destroy everyone with your awesomeness.”

Aquarius 

Going fully to the WebCam, or PervCam, systems, you’re getting the Video Conference System “CIF”, aka the “Common Interchange Format”. Developed for company teleconferencing it was a low-rez 352 × 288 pixel image, and if you want to know what that looked like, you’ll have to watch a fair adaptation of a great book. So This Week… watch the movie “Contact”. The teleconference windows are JUST what it used to look like.

Pisces  

You just HAD to be the personification of annoying A-Hole Cat, huh? Take your pick: VHS, Betamax, or Video8. They all had just CRAP picture quality. About 320 × 486 scans in NTSC, or kinda 310 × 576 in PAL or SECAM, they were all just a cluster of sub-optimal tech sold as just this GREAT stuff, and it really wasn’t. So This Week… Learn what the Sunk Cost Fallacy is and stop falling for all the Wiz-Bang-Shiny-New sales pitches. 

And THOSE are your Horrible-Scopes for this week! Remember if you liked what you got, we’re obviously not working hard enough at these. BUT! If you want a better or nastier one for your own sign or someone else’s, all you need to do to bribe me is just Let Me Know - or check out the Ko-Fi page ( https://ko-fi.com/icarusthelunarguard )! These will be posted online at the end of each week via Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Discord and BLUESKY.

[adultswim2021]

Titan Maximum #1: "Pilot" | September 27, 2009 - 11:30PM | S01E01

Ah, thank goodness I’m done with Robot Chicken. Now I can finally move onto greener pastures to… oh, eat shit.

TItan Maximum was created by one or some of the Robot Chicken people and animated by Shadow Machine, who animated Robot Chicken and Moral Orel and oh! So much more.  It’s fairly Robot Chicken-eseque in it’s look and humor. It’s a fairly straight-forward sitcom, parodying Voltron and shows like it. It’s more grounded than Robot Chicken; there’s no fourth-wall breaking gags and the violence isn’t as gratuitous. There’s an attempt at making the action have legitimate stakes, like you’re supposed to care about the stuff happening and root for the good guys. 

The main problem is the characters and the writing. Most of the show’s dialogue involves characters just being mean to each other. Everyone is snippy at each other, and the show mainly consists of characters being petty and combative. You almost get the sense that this is actually a show about a dystopian future where being friends is illegal.

I get that there’s a time-honored tradition of comedies that star unlikable protagonists. Make no mistake, I’m not saying all of these characters are complete dickheads. Some are bigger dicks than others, obviously. I just mean I can’t come up with a single example of two characters who seem like they have a nice, life-affirming relationship with one another. Everyone is dismissive and contentious of one another. It just feels so meaningless.

This pilot episode was a half hour and for some reason wouldn’t play properly on the Roku adult swim app, which is a terrible, terrible app. Like, literally, for some weird reason you can’t stream a lot of shit through it, and if you go to the browser version you get way more stuff. I don’t know why. The Roku app also puts an autoplay overlay over the closing credits and obscures what’s on screen, even when it’s technically still part of the episode.

That’s maybe the only thing the show has going for it, by the way: the closing credits song, which is (I assume) in Japanese and is very typical of your average poppy anime closing theme.  

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Adult Swim Shows Transition to High Definition (September 27, 2009)

In case you’re wondering, yes, I do feel bad that sometimes these little spotlights into Adult Swim’s non-episodic Miscellanea are dashed off by me, just joylessly marking the date something happened. I just sat down to type this paragraph and thought “this would’ve actually been a good thing to do research for.” I do recall this happening, though. The network had already begun future-proofing certain shows by producing them in HD. Metalocalypse, Squidbillies, Aqua Teen, and The Venture Bros. to name a few.

Also, I remember being very curious as to how 4:3 material would be handled on the network. Disappointingly, it was stretched to fill the screen. I remember people reporting that it was stretched in a manner so that the center of the screen was less warped than the edges, but I’m not sure if that was true. At the very least, I couldn’t discern such a thing. In fact, I would record certain shows on Adult Swim that were stretched on my DVD recorder, which hadn’t been calibrated to to record native 16:9 content. This meant that 16:9 stuff would wind up squished, which was an easier fix on my TV than the other way around. So it would effectively unstretch the 4:3 stuff and it looked very normal to me.

I’m not sure if they started producing the “bumps” in 16:9 before the switch. There’s definitely a noticeable difference in text size of the bumps in the early days compared to later, and I don’t know if that’s specifically attributed to the aspect ratio change or what. Also, I’m not sure why I’m wondering stuff like this out loud. Sorta makes me sound like a huge fucking loser???? (!)

[allsignspointtosunnydale]

Why was Buffy given such a terrible HD remaster?

I will not stand for this, I do get the sneaking suspicion that the HD remaster is used on Disney+. It was chock full of missing special effects, the lighting is all off and also due to the aspect ratio being all stretched out to hell, (or rather 16:9, where the original is in a 4:3 aspect ratio for televisions of that time).

It's way too distracting when I'm watching a scene that's quite obviously filmed in the day but has a night filter over it to make it look as if it is in the nighttime. Making the scenes where Buffy should be sleeping look less like she's taking a nap in the afternoon. Oh, also, shouldn't Angel be a pile of dust if a beam of sun hits his face?

You can't buy the remaster anymore, but nothing is stopping streaming services from using the abomination of a remaster.

There's a fantastic video by @thepassionofthenerd that goes into detail about what made the remaster so bad. If Star Trek: TOS/TNG can get a brilliant remaster, then why doesn't Buffy?

Watch if you want!

[walmaker-artist]

Decided to remaster Bernard’s room from Maniac Mansion Mania. It was actually inspired by Sonic Mania, Monkey Island and the VGA versions of old LucasArts games. I tried to fix as many mistakes as possible (including the really infuriating end of the bed that doesn’t make sense).

I even made a redesign of Bernard, which is a mix between his MM design, the thimbleweed park character designs and his Day of the Tentacle counterpart.

I even added a 16:9 aspect ratio and a new verb bar style.

To @ramorama

[carterreviewsmovies]

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007) Review

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Directed by John Erick Dowdle

Year Released: 2007

Duration: 81 Minutes

Video: Colour

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

“…they were going to put out a thing in the paper the next day, and then 9/11 happened.”

The Poughkeepsie Tapes has built somewhat of a reputation for itself as one of the most gruesome/disturbing found footage films; I just didn’t expect it to be so boring. The film poses as a documentary, analyzing the recently recovered tapes from the house of a serial killer, known as the “Water Street Butcher,” in Poughkeepsie, New York. The contents of the hundreds of tapes are revealed to be decades of killings and sexually deviant tendencies recorded by the killer. The focus falls on Cheryl Dempsy (Stacy Chbosky), a survivor of the Butcher’s torment.

The theme of the film is torture and murder but has nothing to say on the subject. What could have been a film that tried to step inside the mind of a killer, to understand motives and the overall psychology, unfortunately, comes off more as empty torture porn. There’s no allusion to the killer’s identity throughout the film, no clues as to why he’s doing what he’s doing, just sadism for sixty minutes intercut with poorly acted interviews with atrocious framing and a breakneck twenty-minute conclusion including a fake interview with Ted Bundy (Todd Cahoon). The last act revolves around the killer inexplicably framing Hank Foley (Chip Godwin), a police officer, for the crimes, resulting in his execution. After this, during an interview with Hank’s son James Foley (William Bookston), the message of the film gets even more muddled. James weirdly uses the moment to criticize the media for focusing on 9/11 instead of his father’s posthumously found innocence.

The film presents scenarios that are certainly disturbing e.g., rape, pedophilia, bodily mutilation, and strangely a balloon-popping fetish, but seems far more concerned with convincing the viewer what they’re watching is real rather than making a compelling story. We are subject to a variety of kidnappings, torture, and killings on camera with very little reason as to why. The film intercuts the “found footage” of the killer and fictionalized interviews with supposed experts on the case. Firstly, the found footage is hard to watch, and that’s not to say because of the disturbing content, but because it is presented as degraded VHS footage. Ignoring the fact that VHS cameras shot 16:9 (not 1.85:1) and tape doesn’t decompose as shown, the “analogue damage” effects make half of the footage nearly incomprehensible and unpleasant to watch. Secondly, the VFX applied to the news broadcasts is akin to the “Breaking News” iMovie template, removing any sense of believability.

The film just gets more senseless as it goes on, jumping from kidnapping, fetishes of the balloon-popping and doll-suit-wearing variety, killers dressed as plague doctors, and the impossible theft and planting of a cop’s semen at the crime scenes. If you want to watch a film that depicts gratuitous, senseless violence against women and children while simultaneously causing a migraine with its poor VFX then The Poughkeepsie Tapes is for you. If you want to watch a disturbing film with even an ounce of something more to offer, something like Cannibal Holocaust or even A Serbian Film has more to offer.  

-- Carter

[jeidai]

Laptop is freezing every so often, prolly have to try reinstalling Windows.

Tumblr doesn't work on my iPad. Still. (It was working for a couple weeks until a few days ago. Rinse and repeat. With added mysterious "420" code on Firefox, no thank you, I don't partake.)

Stuck with Tumblr on either my phone D: (I keep fat thumbing the screen, and just a lot of stuff is meh on a tiny screen) or my desktop :( (too easily sidetracked and I end up spending three hours on different things before I even pull up Tumblr. And also, somehow, 16:9 aspect ratio just isn't a nice experience even tho I accept it on my laptop. Maybe I should get a comfortable desk chair.)