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mariacallous · 1 year

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From September 1, Russian college students will be required to take a state-approved ideological course, “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood.” Course creators have made films to serve as a guide — intended as an easy way to prepare students for seminars and tests on the material. In the new videos, students are told about “Russia in the World and in the Modern World System” “The Backbone of the Nation: The Russian Constitution,” and “Self-Sacrifice for the People.”

A ‘reliable partner’ against Western domination

The “World System” film begins by reminding the audience that Russia “unites Europe and Asia, facilitates the interaction of various cultures, and tries to preserve a multipolar and just world.”

Students learn that after World War II, the international order became “based on a new balance of power,” dominated by the USSR and the United States, which “in terms of the totality of their military, political, and ideological capabilities, as well as their potential for cultural influence, rapidly surpassed other countries.” The “cultural influence” of the U.S. is illustrated on the screen by shots of sex shops — that of the USSR by footage of Soviet ballet.

The film does admit that the Cold War order “was not ideal,” but emphasizes that it “allowed peace to be preserved and the use of nuclear weapons to be avoided” (naturally, there is no mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war).

Following the lead of Vladimir Putin, the video proclaims the collapse of the USSR “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe,” not only for the people of the country itself but also for the entire world, which lost its “balance and collapsed.” “Russia is still the largest country in the world, but its geopolitical influence has significantly decreased. The West interpreted the collapse of the USSR as a victory in the Cold War. This allowed the U.S. to return to the idea of world domination.”

The film also lays out “rules” by which the U.S. is allegedly trying to “build the world”:

The access-to-technology rule: "By allowing or not allowing a particular technology to be sold to a country, the U.S. determines who will be an unskilled worker and who will be a banker."

The dollar rule: "Wherever you live, you have to exchange your national currency for dollars to buy goods around the world. Every time, you pay a commission."

The Hollywood rule: "Movies shape behavior, slip in values, and create certain images, archetypes, and frameworks."

The international-media rule: "The international media determines which places are good and which are evil."

The U.S. Navy rule: "If the international media declares you a villain, the U.S. Navy machine will be used against you."

Shortly after that, the screen shows footage of protests in the former Soviet Union with a large inscription in capital letters: “U.S. INTERVENTION IS ALWAYS NEGATIVE.”

However, the film immediately reassures viewers that Russia has “destroyed U.S. plans to create a unipolar world” and prevented the States from “turning into a world dictator.” This, apparently, is thanks to “the strengthening of Russia’s position in the international arena and the growth of its military-political and economic potential.” How exactly Russia “destroyed the plans” of the United States and how much Russia’s “potential has grown” remain unspecified.

The video “study guide” also makes mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calling it “measures to protect [Russia’s] vital interests with regards to Ukraine,” which Western countries then supposedly used as a “pretext for escalating longstanding anti-Russian policy” and “unleashing hybrid warfare against Russia.”

Freshmen will be told that these “measures to protect vital interests” are part of Russia's “mission” to “preserve stability in the world.” The country has already won a “number of geopolitical victories,” related to this, the film emphasizes — particularly, by engaging in open military conflict with Georgia and occupying Ukrainian territories, the annexation of which is referred to as “the return of territories lost during the collapse of the USSR.”

“Countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America perceive Russia as a reliable partner and a natural ally in the fight against Western neocolonialism. A growing number of countries seek cooperation with Russia,” asserts the video’s narrator.

A 'progressive' constitution

The Russian Constitution gets a whole “guide” to itself, where viewers are immediately informed that it guarantees “the absence of chaos and the preservation of unity,” and that every update to the Constitution (such as amendments) only makes it “more socially oriented” and “progressive.”

Stalin’s 1936 Constitution gave the USSR, among other things, “universally fair, direct, and secret-ballot elections” and “free religion.” The video makes no mention of Stalin’s Great Purge (including against clergy and believers).

The terms of Russia’s 1993 Constitution, however, are referred to as “colonial.” To footage of the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s speech saying the constitution provides “solid foundations for the construction of a democratic state,” the voiceover categorically states that “in fact, the firm foundations turned out to be a reflection of Western elites’ expectations toward Russia," adding that in the early 1990s, the country “had to give up some sovereignty in exchange” for funding reforms. “Now this situation has been overcome,” the voice reassures the viewer.

Heroism as Russia’s 'historical code'

The video devoted to “self-sacrifice,” supposedly one of the key Russian traits, will tell students about WWII soldiers who stopped enemy troops at the cost of their own lives, as well as about medical staff who worked in hospital red zones during the Covid pandemic. Denis Protsenko, a head physician who was one of the top five United Russia candidates in the 2021 Russian State Duma election yet turned down a position, gets special recognition.

The film offers no detailed accounts of Russians’ actions in the war against Ukraine. There is, however, a main conclusion, summarized as such: “Heroism, fearlessness before the last battle for the future of the country, lives in each of us. This is our nation’s historical code. And we will not allow anyone to erase or break it.”

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pricklypear1997 · 2 years

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Second post about AUs:

Is it just me or did the author of Shadow and Bone, just pick a completely random real world location to adapt her story from? It’s supposed to take place in some alternate version of Russia, but there’s hardly anything Russian about it other than the ethnic descriptions for the characters, but only in the books… there’s some vague political and cultural parallels but it’s so bad that the author didn’t even bother to research something so simple such as Slavic naming conventions… it should be Alina Starkova NOT Starkov. Barely any of the show characters are even Eastern European. I know there’s a Bulgarian actor, but literally everyone else is British, American, and just incredibly racially diverse for no reason at all. I don’t even remember if this school or military training program that Alina and co are in is an international school/organization or whatever, but it literally makes no sense that there’s barely any real Russian or Slavic representation at all, and that it looks more like an urban American population than that of any Eastern European nation. I get the six of crow aren’t tied to any one specific country, so I’m not talking about that. Just the fact that it’s really sad and makes me angry that east euros get really bad and inaccurate representation or we’re just seen as criminals and mafia, nothing more. We should do more to represent ourselves in media and not rely on some ignorant American media company to “represent” us, but regardless, it still pisses me off. Like why even pick countries like ours if the majority of westerners do not even give a rat’s ass about us or deliberately hate us and spread anti Slavic nonsense.

People like what they like, but it just makes me sad that Hollywood has all this money and shit, but they don’t even bother to do proper research about a culture, and on top of that make pointless diversity hires and call it representation while also completely misrepresenting the people that this series is supposed to show in the first place. Hollywood isn’t the only thing at fault here too. Ignorant people like the author who just don’t do any research. I’m so so tired of it. We’re not asking you to try to represent us, literally not a soul is asking the west to represent us but if you do it, have the decency to do it in a respectful manner…

At least with ASOIAF, Martin stayed grounded to what he understands of history. Yes, I genuinely believe the north could be seen as Eastern European, combined with some Celtic ( Scottish) inspirations, but Martin leaves it generally open for the viewer to understand that Westeros is based off of Europe in a more generic but still incredibly relatable way without offending any ethnic group from Europe. Dorne could be seen as Spanish specifically during the Arab invasions, but it’s honestly its own thing, the characters don’t even have Spanish or Arab names. Their clothes aren’t really even described as typical to Spanish or North African cultures. They just have vague surface level similarities, unlike the world of shadow and bone which seems to rely too much on the REAL Russia as a inspiration while at the same time just being incredibly inaccurate which sounds ridiculous and ironic but it’s true. Shadow and bone is nothing but a failed attempt of an alternate reality.

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warningsine · 1 year

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Officially, the Barbie movie isn't showing in Russia.

But unofficially…

I'm in a Moscow shopping centre. A giant pink house has been erected next to the food court. Inside: pink furniture, pink popcorn and life-size cardboard cut-outs of Barbie and Ken who are beaming from ear to ear.

No wonder they're smiling: the Barbie film is pulling in the crowds at the multiplex opposite, despite Western sanctions. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a string of Hollywood studios stopped releasing their movies in Russia. But unauthorised copies are getting through and being dubbed into Russian.

Over at the cinema it's a bit cloak and dagger. When I ask one visitor which movie he's come to watch he names an obscure 15-minute Russian film and smiles.

To avoid licensing issues, some cinemas in Russia have been selling tickets to Russian-made shorts and showing the Barbie feature film as the preview.

Russia's culture ministry is not amused. Last month it concluded that the Barbie movie was "not in line with the aims and goals laid out by our president for preserving and strengthening traditional Russian moral and spiritual values."

Mind you, the cinemagoers I speak to are tickled pink that Barbie's hit the big screen here.

"People should have the right to choose what they want to watch," Karina says. "I think it's good that Russian cinemas are able to show these films for us."

"It's about being open-minded about other people's cultures," says Alyona. "Even if you don't agree with other people's standards, it's still great if you can watch it."

But Russian MP Maria Butina believes there's nothing great about Barbie: the doll or the film.

"I have issues with Barbie as a female form," she tells me. "Some girls - especially in their teens - try to be like a Barbie girl, and they exhaust their bodies."

Ms Butina adds that the film has not been licensed to appear in Russian cinemas.

"Do not break the law. Is this a question for our movie theatres? Absolutely. I filed several requests to cinemas asking on what basis they are showing the film," she says.

"You talk about the importance of following the law," I say, "but Russia invaded Ukraine. The United Nations says that was a complete violation of international law."

"Russia is saving Ukraine," she replies, "and saving the Donbas."

You hear this often from those in power in Russia. They paint Moscow as peacemaker, not warmonger. They argue that it is America, Nato, the West, that are using Ukraine to wage war on Russia. It is an alternative reality designed to rally Russians around the flag.

Amid growing confrontation with Europe and America, the Russian authorities seem determined to turn Russians against the West.

From morning till night state TV here tells viewers that Western leaders are out to destroy Russia. The brand-new modern history textbook for Russian high-school students (obligatory for use) claims that the aim of the West is "to dismember Russia and take control of her natural resources."

It asserts that "in the 1990s, in place of our traditional cultural values such as good, justice, collectivism, charity and self-sacrifice, under the influence of Western propaganda a sense of individualism was forced on Russia, along with the idea that people bear no responsibility for society."

The text book encourages Russian 11th graders to "multiply the glory and strength of the Motherland."

In other words, Your Motherland (not Barbie Land) needs you!

At the Moscow multiplex I'd found many people still open to experiencing Western culture and ideas. But what's the situation away from the Russian capital?

I drive to the town of Shchekino, 140 miles from Moscow. There's a concert on at the local culture centre. Up on stage four Russian soldiers in military fatigues are playing electric guitars and singing their hearts out about patriotism and Russian invincibility.

One of the songs is about Russia's war in Ukraine.

"We will serve the Motherland and crush the enemy!" they croon.

The audience (it's almost a full house) is a mixture of young and old, including school children, military cadets, and senior citizens. For the up-tempo numbers they're waving Russian tricolours that have been handed to them.

As the paratrooper pop stars sing their patriotic repertoire, film is being projected onto the screen behind them. No Barbie or Ken here. There are images of Russian tanks, soldiers marching and shooting and, at one point, of President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

Patriotic messaging is effective. Barbie mania isn't a thing on the streets of Shchekino.

"Right now it's important to make patriotic Russian films to raise morale," Andrei tells me. "And we need to cut out Western habits from our lives. How can we do that? Through film. Cinema can influence the masses."

"In Western films they talk a lot about sexual orientation. We don't support that," Ekaterina tells me. "Russian cinema is about family values, love and friendship."

But Diana is reluctant to divide cinema into Russian films and foreign movies.

"Art is for everyone. It doesn't matter where you're from," Diana tells me. "And we shouldn't restrict ourselves to art from one nation. To become a more cultured, sociable and a more interesting person, you need to watch films and read books from other countries, too."

#barbie #russia

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jedivoodoochile · 2 years

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🦇Maila Nurmi 🦇

(December 11, 1922 - RIP January 10, 2008)

The original glamour ghoul herself, "Vampira", of late night 1950s television, was actually born Maila Syrjäniemi (later changed to the easier surname Nurmi) on December 11, 1922 in Petsamo, Finland. Her uncle was the multiple Olympic medal runner Paavo Nurmi. Maila arrived in the United States with her family as a baby and lived a rather nomadic existence at first as her father was a writer who lectured on temperance.

It was director Howard Hawks, of all people, who discovered Maila while she was performing in Mike Todd's Grand Guignol midnight show "Spook Scandals". Hawks escorted the lovely blonde beauty to Hollywood with the hopes of grooming her into the next Lauren Bacall. Cast in the film version of the Russian novel "Dreadful Hollow", the project was put on hold so many times that Maila walked out of her contract in frustration. She became a cheesecake model and an Earl Carroll dancer for several years in his revues, sharing a chorus line at one time with future burlesque stripper Lili St. Cyr.

Married at the time to child actor-turned-screenwriter Dean Riesner, she came up with the idea of "Vampira" at a masquerade contest where she based her costume on Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. Heavily painted up with long fingernails, a mane of raven-colored hair, and slim-waisted black attire, the Morticia gimmick won the best costume award that night... and more. She caught the attention of local television and was placed under contract to Channel 7 in Hollywood to see if she could encourage late night viewers to stay up and watch its regular programming of cheapjack horror schlock. The macabre madam was a genuine hit (for one season, at least, in 1954-55), adding a sexy nuance and silly double entendres to her campy horror set.

She earned an Emmy Award nomination in 1954 for "Most Outstanding Female Personality". Fan clubs sprouted up all over the world. She appeared in "Life", "TV Guide" and "Newsweek" magazine articles, and could be seen around and about town and in Las Vegas judging contests and making variety special appearances. Songs were written about the "Queen of Horror". She even appeared with arms outstretched and ghoulishly attired in the worst cinematic failure of all time, Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), as Bela Lugosi's zombie-like mate, for which she is infamously associated. Lugosi actually was a huge fan of hers and had always wanted to work with her. Wood shot some footage of her years later as a tribute to Lugosi (he died in 1956 during filming) and added it before the film's release.

By the late 1950s, Maila's extended "15 minutes" of fame was over. With her career at stake (pun intended), she stretched things out with haphazard appearances in abysmal movies [The Beat Generation (1959); Sex Kittens Go to College (1960)] before closing the lid permanently on "Vampira". In later years, Maila divorced her writer/husband and became passionately involved in animal protection rights. A painter on the sly, she created some "Vampira" portraits that became a collector's item. Living very modestly in Southern California, she appeared in a small gag cameo in the film I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998). Malia Nurmi died at age 85 of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, California on January 10, 2008.

#maila nurmi #vampira

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back-and-totheleft · 1 year

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Oliver Stone Wants To Atone For Hollywood’s Sins Against Nuclear Energy

When Oliver Stone’s 1986 Vietnam War movie “Platoon” showed the gore and mental toll of combat, veterans accused the director of portraying soldiers in an ugly light. When 1991’s “The Doors” depicted Jim Morrison’s battle with addiction, the rock star’s bandmate said Stone had “assassinated” the singer’s reputation. When Stone interviewed Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Russian President Vladimir Putin for documentaries meant to provoke Americans with starkly different perspectives on U.S. foreign policy, critics panned the Oscar winner as a stooge for strongmen and an “unrepentant contrarian,” aging gracelessly into a “loony conspiracy”-peddling septuagenarian.

Nuclear energy, the subject of his latest film, is no less of a lightning rod. Perhaps that’s why “Nuclear Now” feels like watching a Gonzo “60 Minutes” special. Stone admits that he, like many people, once registered atomic power as indistinguishable from images of menacing mushrooms clouds and hazmat horrors. To Stone, a clear-eyed review of the facts alone in an age of climate chaos seemed provoking enough on its own.

Over the next hour and 45 minutes, Stone goes on a journey familiar to many who have wondered whether atomic energy and radioactive waste pose a more urgent threat than global warming. “Nuclear Now” answers the question with a clear no, offers a compelling explanation for how atomic energy went into decline and makes a well-researched case for why the world needs a reactor-building renaissance.

Stone takes us through the history of fission from the European scientists who discovered radiation to the United States’ attempt to sell the world on nuclear energy less than a decade after dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In his telling, cribbing an eyebrow-raising discovery from the nuclear engineer and consultant (and interviewee in the film) Rod Adams, powerful monied interests had it out for nuclear energy from the start. Just months after President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his famous “atoms for peace” speech, vowing to unite humanity with abundant nuclear energy, the Rockefeller Foundation asked the National Academy of Sciences to study the health effects of radiation.

The government research body, whose president served on the oil tycoon family foundation’s board, put out a dire and later discredited report on the risks of radiation a few years later. The New York Times, whose publisher also served on the Rockefeller Foundation’s board, reported the findings on its front page under the headline: “Scientists Term Radiation A Peril To Future Of Man.” Environmentalists, in Stone’s view, became eager pawns as left-wing activists merged the fight against atomic weapons with that against nuclear power.

The narration is aided by abundant visual charts that help viewers understand why few experts believe solar panels and wind turbines can replace fossil fuels alone, illustrating how much less land nuclear uses and how much more often reactors generate power.

In the movie’s second half, Stone digs into the intricacies of different nuclear technologies, walking the audience through the differences between today’s giant water-cooled reactors and the sodium-cooled “microreactors” startups are attempting to commercialize. He also highlights efforts by the Asian, African and Latin American countries whose energy sources will determine the planet’s future temperature to build their first nuclear reactors, even as Germany and the U.S. decommission perfectly good atomic power stations.

The movie doesn’t shy away from the fact that Russia is the primary vendor for nuclear technology, constructing most of the world’s new reactors outside of China. But Stone grapples only in passing with the reality that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year supercharged the growing interest in nuclear energy and continues to animate efforts in the U.S. and Europe to reverse atomic decline. It’s a glaring omission from an auteur whose cozy relationship with the Russian leader has made many question Stone’s judgment and credibility.

Even so, “Nuclear Now” is a comprehensive and credible corrective to decades of atomic mythmaking — less timely than badly overdue. But then again, I’m a reporter who writes about nuclear energy, so don’t take it from me.

The New York Times’ one complaint was that the film’s wonky dive into new reactor technologies “veers somewhat into the weeds.” While The Wrap’s review found the 105-minute movie “dull,” the writer couldn’t help but applaud the “undeniably informative” film as “commendable.” Variety flat-out called it a “vital and grounded movie that demands to be seen.”

Last week, a few hours before seeing “Nuclear Now” at a premiere screening in Manhattan’s East Village, I spoke to Stone and his collaborator Joshua Goldstein, whose book with Swedish nuclear scientist Staffan Qvist, “A Bright Future,” inspired the movie.

We discussed a range of issues, from how radiation works to why Hollywood is responsible for a widespread misunderstanding of the risks associated with nuclear power.

Stone called out actor Jane Fonda for opposing nuclear energy after her 1979 film “The China Syndrome,” depicting a disaster cover-up at a nuclear power plant, came out coincidentally just days before the Three Mile Island accident. He said Ralph Nader’s effort to close nuclear stations was such a historic mistake it may end up overshadowing the consumer-advocate-turned-presidential-candidate’s other accomplishments in future history books. We spoke over Zoom for about 35 minutes.

Why make a film on nuclear energy?

Oliver Stone: I’ve done 20 feature films and 10 documentaries. To me, this is the most important subject I could address. There’s nothing that looms over us as much as climate change. I’ve been very aware of it since the Al Gore film. In 2019, I ran across Josh Goldstein’s book, “A Bright Future.” It’s a nice title. But I think “Nuclear Now” is more urgent. The book is very well laid out, thoughtful, reasoned, makes sense and elemental in the sense that it doesn’t get stuck on the stuff that was confusing to me, which is all the negatives about nuclear. I’ve learned a lot since then.

It seems to me as an outsider that we lost our mind with fear in the 1970s. If you look at my films, you know there were a lot of lies. And over time it turned into this massive lie about nuclear energy that is really evident if you think it through.

Josh gives a very reasonable explanation of radiation. That it’s there. It’s part of our lives. We live with low-level radiation. Yet somehow, with the Rockefeller Foundation’s influence, we were derailed from a very hopeful start in the 1960s and ’70s. Dwight Eisenhower had the right idea. John Kennedy had the right idea. We should have kept going with nuclear. We’d have had a nuclearized society by the 2000s. In my opinion, we wouldn’t even be talking about this climate change bullshit because the world would have followed. Instead, we completely diverted.

So, in your view, why did nuclear go into decline in the U.S.?

Stone: The worst accident was Chernobyl. We discuss that in the film. We go to Russia. We talk to scientists who were involved and we show what Chernobyl was really about, what happened to the 15 front-line rescue workers who died of radiation poisoning that they were not equipped to deal with. It was badly done through the whole thing, from the top down. The containment structure [for the reactor, which all modern nuclear plants have] was not there. Radiation leaked. And the World Health Organization and the United Nations estimated that 4,000 people died from the impact over time. But that’s nothing compared to what you keep hearing about being this huge disaster.

We live with the consequences of radiation. The Earth is filled with radiation. That’s what people don’t understand. They’re frightened because of the concept that it’s contamination and that any amount can hurt you. That’s not true if you look at the DNA studies that were done on the body’s ability to replicate itself. We have to go by science, not faith.

Three Mile Island was a complete joke. It was a big disruption of work. Nobody died. Yet it was made into this massive hysteria by the film “The China Syndrome.”

You referred to the Rockefeller Foundation’s money. What powerful forces do you see behind the anti-nuclear movement?

Stone: You’re going to take me into conspiracy. But you could also say it’s a business competition.

The oil companies were obviously never excited about nuclear. At the origin point of going that way, when Eisenhower declared his atoms for peace program, the Rockefeller Foundation tipped the scales on a report — it was their scientists — and they said on the front page of the New York Times that any amount, any amount, of radiation is dangerous to the body. Which is bullshit! And we know it now. It has to be called out. That kind of thinking permeated and gave birth to this idea that radiation is a complete horror.

Also, look at the horror films of the 1950s. My business, the film business, did no favors to nuclear at all. You saw monsters everywhere. People get these crazy ideas. This is what fear does to a society. It ruins progress. As a result, now we’re in a hole. Still, people won’t face the truth. We need nuclear in a massive way in order to solve this climate change problem. Will we go there? It’s still very doubtful because people are resistant to the idea. Older people are. The younger generation I find is very open to it. Our movie is part of that thrust.

What are the limits you see to renewables on one side and carbon capture technology on the other?

Stone: They’re overrated. Tell him.

Joshua Goldstein: We like all attempts to decarbonize, be it with sun, wind, hydropower, carbon capture and sequestration, batteries. All that’s good. The trouble is that when you run your whole grid on that, it gets very expensive and very difficult to do. The grid has to handle the heaviest demand date of the year, when everybody wants air conditioning to turn on at once. You don’t want the grid to go down. So if it happens to not be a sunny day or a windy day, you have a huge hole to fill.

Right now, that’s being done with natural gas, which is a fossil fuel and puts carbon into the atmosphere. Natural gas is methane, which leaks out along the way and is a very potent natural gas, much worse than carbon dioxide, although much shorter lived. But for the next few decades, it’s adding a lot to the problem. So this idea of wind and solar backed up with natural gas is not really getting us to a solution.

Hydroelectricity is great from a climate change point of view because you can let the water out of the dam when you need electricity and actually produce it when you need it. The trouble is that, if you’re an environmentalist, hydroelectricity is damming up valleys and ecosystems.

A large array of solar panels photographed one hour north of Los Angeles in Kern County on Nov. 15, 2022, near Mojave, California. Due to demand, there are now dozens of solar power photovoltaic farms in the Mojave Desert, supplying power to California's electricity grid. Well, plus it’s sensitive to droughts.

Goldstein: Yes, it’s sensitive to drought. But before you even get to drought, you have the Mekong River watershed just being devastated by all the hydro being built upstream in Southeast Asia. If there is a way to get the electricity when you need it cleanly and without carbon emissions, that’s better. And that’s nuclear energy.

All the countries that have managed to decarbonize and get rid of fossil fuels have done it either with nuclear alone, like France, or nuclear with hydroelectricity, like Sweden. Or a few lucky countries like New Zealand, Norway and Brazil have a lot of hydro. But if you’re Germany, you can’t do a lot of hydro. So then you have to try to do it with a combination of batteries, which are still way too expensive, and natural gas. Except in Germany’s case, it’s coal that’s backing up the renewables.

Then you have things like biomass in Finland and the United Kingdom.

Goldstein: Biomass is very bad for the atmosphere. It’s as bad as coal. And they’re cutting down mature forests to burn the trees, then calling it “green” because it’s so-called renewable because someday the trees will grow back. Nuclear, because it’s so concentrated, that’s what makes it environmentally friendly. You can do it with such a small plant. The mining and transportation is so much smaller and the waste is so much easier to handle than, say, coal waste that goes out in the atmosphere, kills people with particulate matter, and leaves behind coal tailings.

Oliver, you’ve obviously been to Russia many times. You’ve interviewed President Putin. And you’ve been asked plenty of times about your views on the war in Ukraine. I’d like to come at this another way.

Russia has steadily been expanding its fleet of nuclear reactors. It’s been exporting its technologies across Asia and Africa ― I’ve heard stories from analysts about how Moscow’s state-owned nuclear company Rosatom wines and dines energy officials from developing countries, in stark contrast to the U.S. To boot, Russia has a monopoly on certain types of nuclear fuel like HALEU and offers services that the U.S. doesn’t, like recycling. What has the Kremlin understood about nuclear energy that we haven’t, and what does it mean for the U.S. going forward?

Stone: I look at it as positive. What Russia does to help the world, providing these reactors and fuels, is good. That’s a good thing! We have to expand the whole network. I wish there was more of it. The Chinese are also very advanced. Of course, they have their own problems at home with coal. They have to get rid of coal. But they are designing very promising new reactors.

I’m sure most Americans at this stage see the enmity between these two countries. I don’t. There’s no place in this climate race for survival for war. There’s no place for this competition, hatred and ideology.

Goldstein: You mentioned Russian fuel. That started with a good thing. The United States took a lot of Soviet nuclear weapons and downgraded them into what could be used for reactor fuel. Every light switch you turned on in the United States for 15 years was powered 10% by Soviet nuclear weapons dismantled after the Cold War. That was great. When that ran out, we got out of the habit of producing nuclear fuel.

We started buying from Russia because it was cheaper. We don’t need to get HALEU — which is high-assay low-enriched uranium, and is more potent than what we get for our plants — from Russia. There’s plenty of uranium in Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. You name it. The Russians, because they were doing this cheaply, we got into the habit of buying from them, sort of like how the Germans got into the habit of buying natural gas from Russia. What could go wrong? Now we’re in a fix to try to source this fuel, but that will be worked out in a couple of years.

How do you see the war in Ukraine affecting the politics of nuclear energy now? Part of the initial pitch for atomic power was that it provided a degree of energy sovereignty that oil and gas supply chains don’t, as the rush to get off Russian gas has reminded us.

Goldstein: It opened up a lot of support for nuclear in Europe. Maybe not in Germany, per se. But elsewhere, especially in Eastern Europe. This is the same thing that happened in France in the 1970s when the oil supply was cut off [during the OPEC oil embargo]. They were dependent on it and realized some foreign country could bring their economy to its knees. France developed nuclear energy to control its own destiny.

Stone: Unfortunately, Germany is so stupid that their economy is now really in jeopardy. The EU is not going to be what it once was. Germany is taking this whole anti-nuclear position that really threatens its economy.

Are you similarly concerned about Taiwan’s nuclear phaseout?

Stone: No, not particularly. America is concerned and makes big noise about Taiwan. A lot of my friends come back from Taiwan and say that the Taiwanese people don’t feel the same way as our newspapers.

The chances of a Chinese invasion are certainly debatable, but energy blockades are not, and Taiwan is shutting down its last nuclear reactors by 2025.

Goldstein: They may yet come to their senses. South Korea had a very good nuclear program. They just finished building these reactors in the United Arab Emirates on time and on budget. But there was a film called “Pandora” five or six years ago that scared everyone. It helped get an anti-nuclear government elected. Now there’s a pro-nuclear government. The same thing happened in Sweden, where there was an anti-nuclear government replaced by a nuclear-friendly administration.

If you go anti-nuclear and it’s a threat to a country’s stability, economy, jobs and having the lights turn on when you flip the switch, then people will vote in a new government. I’m not saying anything about the politics of Taiwan and which government should be in. But as lots of people reconsider phasing out nuclear, maybe Taiwan will as well.

One place that seems to exemplify the promise of nuclear energy is Finland, where I was around this time last year. I not only saw the world’s first permanent repository for nuclear waste, I saw Western Europe’s first new reactor in 15 years ― 25, if you don’t count Czechia as part of that region.

After visiting the site, I spent a few hours walking around the nearby town of Rauma, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Every single person I talked to on the street supported nuclear power and had total faith in the engineers at the plant to keep everyone safe. Now, this is a highly educated, ethnically and religiously homogeneous country with comparatively low levels of inequality. It’s hard to imagine that kind of civic trust in the U.S., where plummeting faith in institutions has correlated with the rise of conspiracy theories.

Can we have a nuclear renaissance in a country with as little public trust as we have here?

Goldstein: We’re trying to build two new reactors in Georgia and they’re just coming online. They’ll be the first reactors ever built under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC has been around almost 50 years, and it’s clearly been very efficient at stopping us from building new reactors.

Stone: It’s not about safety. The FDA is supposed to be about safety. It’s about restriction.

Goldstein: When the FDA regulates a new medicine, they’re weighing the benefits and risk and deciding what’s the benefit to society. But the NRC is only concerned about the risks. Safety is their mandate. And when they stop us from building nuclear plants and we build coal and gas plants instead, that’s not their problem. It’s like I had a doctor once tell me, ‘My job is to make sure you die of someone else’s disease.’

In a place like Finland, there is more trust in the government. Those places, like Finland and Sweden, have been better for nuclear energy. But also, the places that understand nuclear better like it more. If you do the polling, people who live close to a nuclear plant versus people who live far from it, or people who understand it well [versus] those who say they couldn’t tell you much about it. Those who understand support it more. Finland, they’ve been living on nuclear energy for quite a while. They’re building a repository for spent fuel quite successfully. People understand it and they’re not afraid of it, which is one of the big themes of the film.

But what can be done to build more public trust? Let me put this in real terms.

Just last night, I was at the decommissioning board hearing for the Indian Point nuclear plant in Cortlandt, New York. I listened to people express a lot of fear over the release of tritium-laced cooling water from the plant into the Hudson River. They perhaps didn’t fully understand that such releases have been happening for decades, and that it’s occurring at levels far below the natural amounts of this radioactive isotope already found naturally in the environment. But they’re learning about a radioactive waste product being pumped into their river as something new. And they see a company with a profit motive to release the tritiated water because it’s the cheaper option than storing it for the decades it’d take to decay.

These people hear that the levels of tritium released are far below the drinking water limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency. But then they see that, well, just a few years ago, the EPA revised its drinking water limits for PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals used in Teflon, from more than 400% higher than what the agency now says is safe.

Goldstein: Antinuclear people are very afraid, and they look for things to justify their fears. This tritium thing has come up in Japan at Fukushima, in Indian Point, and in Massachusetts where I live at the decommissioned Pilgrim plant. You hear about how they’re going to put quote-unquote “radioactive water” into the Hudson River, Cape Cod Bay or the Pacific Ocean. And there’s no sense of scale about it.

The amount of radioactivity in tritium is very tiny, short-lived, and not biologically accumulating. It’s about the most harmless thing you can think of. And the quantities of it are just tiny. There’s tritium in exit signs. I’m looking at one right out the window here. I think the total amount of tritium they want to release from Indian Point is the same as one exit sign if you dumped the exit sign in the Hudson River.

It gets absurd at this point. We live with background radiation that’s much higher than that. This whole idea that any level of radiation is going to have a bad health effect, it’s all based on a study from 70, 80 years ago when some scientists said DNA can’t repair itself. Well, we just had a Nobel Prize for DNA repair. We know we can repair it. And of course we can, because we live on a planet filled with radiation. The idea that we’re so vulnerable to that tiny amount of tritium, of all things, that its little weak electrons are going to mess us up for life, is kind of crazy. But as long as people are afraid, that’s what you’re going to get.

The power of a film like this is to get people at a more emotional level than a book can do or a newspaper can do and try to get at that fear at a more visceral level where people say, oh, now I understand and I’m less afraid.

Was there a moment like that for you, Oliver, where the magnitude of what this technology could do really sank in?

Stone: There was this moment with Rod Adams [a nuclear engineer interviewed in the film] was holding up his pinky. And he said in this tiny pinky’s worth of uranium would be equivalent to one ton of coal. It would cost less than a buck, and the coal would cost $100.

You think about Marie Curie and Albert Einstein. They’re not dumb. They saw this potential. Obviously, World War II fucked up the timing of it, right? It came along, and people got it into making bombs. But people still conflate making bombs with nuclear energy, and it’s a huge problem. We have to get back to the origins of making this movie, which is to answer the basics: What is it? What is nuclear energy?

It takes time. But we have to clear up the details of the past. We have this chance. Historically, it will be noted that [retreating from nuclear] was a disastrous decision. Ralph Nader is not going to come out well in history. I believe in his car seatbelt thing, and Jane Fonda was great on Vietnam. But sometimes, you’re wrong. The guy who founded Greenpeace said himself that we did a lot of good things with Greenpeace, but we got one thing wrong: nuclear energy.

Broadly speaking, one of the bright spots for nuclear power is that both parties in the U.S. support it. But then you have Democrats who haven’t really taken responsibility for kiboshing the permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain or changing the law to make it so the government can explore an option beyond that site in Nevada. And Republicans are trying to repeal a bunch of clean energy subsidies that nuclear reactors could benefit from. How big are the hurdles in our current politics to doing new nuclear, and which party remains the bigger obstacle?

Goldstein: There is bipartisan support. You have [Sens.] Cory Booker and Sheldon Whitehouse on the left wing of the Democratic Party as big supporters of nuclear energy, and on the right wing of the Republican Party, [former Sen.] Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma for instance, there are very strong supporters of nuclear. They’ve gotten bills going through Congress. The NRC has been slow to respond to those. The Biden administration is pro-nuclear but could be stronger. The Trump administration was pro-nuclear. So it’s not a partisan divide. But the left wing of the Democratic Party needs to rally around Cory Booker a little more and a little less around the Elizabeth Warren types who are still anti-nuclear. In an age of divisiveness and gridlock, if you have something like nuclear, that’s a place to push for some progress.

Stone: When push comes to shove, necessity is the mother of invention. Where are we going to go? It’s going to get worse. It hasn’t gotten better. There’s more carbon. It gets worse and worse and worse. Someday, we’ll have to say, ‘Oh, let’s build some nuclear.’ And it’ll be late. But better late than never. You have these environmentalists waking up. They’re dreaming. They have this idealism in their head about renewables, that the only answer is more and more solar panels and more and more wind turbines. It’s just bizarre. It’s a strange death wish. There’s always a death wish in the world. It’s always been there, but it’s been growing.

Hopefully, if we get lucky, this film will help change the current and it’ll solve itself because people don’t want to kill themselves.

Two more quick questions. First, nuclear fusion — viable commercial breakthrough in our lifetimes or a distraction from deploying more fission?

Goldstein: I’m all for it. It could be the power source of the second half of the century. There are companies that think they can do it faster, and more power to them. I’m all for trying, but I don’t want to bet my grandchild’s future on breakthroughs. The beauty of fission is it’s a proven source. We know from France and Sweden it can be done quickly. The world can follow that example. In the 1970s when all the anti-nuclear stuff got started, it was a new energy source, so who knew if it was going to be safe? After 70 years, we know it works. I’m all for fusion unless people say we don’t need fission because of fusion.

Stone: I totally agree. I can’t see it breaking through. If it does, great.

I apologize for this final one, Oliver. My editor said I had to ask you this. RFK Jr. running for president. What do you think?

Stone: I’m for it! All for it. I think he’s a hero. He’s really in the spirit of the Kennedys and spirit of reform. Out with the old, in with the new.

Would he be a champion of nuclear?

Stone: He will be when I talk to him.

Goldstein: We, uh, don’t necessarily agree on presidential politics, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.

Stone [laughing]: Josh is the old Democratic Party.

-Alexander C. Kaufman, The Huffington Post, May 7 2023 [x]

#oliver stone #huffington post #joshua goldstein #nuclear now #climate change #nuclear energy #rfk jr.

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wrldcinema1 · 1 day

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I Am Cuba (1964)

review by Kwesi Hargrove

Directed by Mikhali Kalatozov, I Am Cuba is the telling of four stories set in and around Havana at the beginning of the Cuban revolution. The first is of a young woman, who is struggling to make ends meet and leading a double life working in Casinos as a prostitute for the American elite. The next is of an old farmer who is trying to provide for his children whilst struggling to maintain and profit from his crop. The third is of a student who is on the verge of using political violence as a form of resistance against the corrupt government. The last chapter is of a peasant family who is thrown into the war as the Cuban revolution finally breaks.

Kalatozov used very creative storytelling methods in the making of this film. The use of handheld cameras adds to the realism of the film, but is juxtaposed with an infrared filter and magnified lenses that gives a level of surrealism. The film flows through the stories accompanied by a poem, seemingly narrated by the island herself, about her and her people's plights with capitalism.

This film is a poem. A love letter from communist Russia to the socialist country of Cuba released during the cold war. But was it received by Cuban audiences ? Franziska Yost writes “Unfortunately, the love letter was returned to sender. Cuban audiences hated the film so much that in some cities riots broke out after screenings. Ordinary Cuban audiences rejected what they saw as a stereotyped exoticised version of themselves and their struggles.”. This sentiment can be sympathized with if the viewer were to focus on the film's depiction of the Cuban people. Long shots of poor disgruntled peasants in rickety shanty towns, with the subtext that communism is the only thing that can save them. Similar to how Hollywood has portrayed Africans in African countries in many films.

Regardless of that fact the movie was of course received well by russian critics, and even inspired filmmakers such as Martin Scorcese. The dreamlike infrared shots are beautifully uncommon and memorable. Black waves, dark skies and white flames will be burnt into any viewer's memory. The poem adds to the ethereal tone of the film, and gives space for more beautifully captured shots of the cities and landscape of Cuba.

#world cinema #60s #film #cold war

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vasco-portable-translators · 2 months

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Languages of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon — High Valyrian, Dothraki and more

To say that Game of Thrones was a popular TV series is to say nothing about it. It was adapted from the bestselling "Ice & Fire" saga by American author, George R.R. Martin, and aired on HBO in 2010-2019 through 8 seasons. The show's presence in the media was a worldwide phenomenon, influencing almost all sectors of the current pop culture. At its peak, the show was broadcasted in 207 countries and averaged almost 44 million viewers for its final season (Forbes, 2019 & Hollywood Reporter, 2022). Even though the ending of the show left most fans disappointed, the prequel show House of the Dragon has attracted the audience of 20 million for its first aired episode on August 23rd, 2022. Needless to say, it bodes well for the franchise's future. As dive deep in the plot lines of Westeros, we once again encounter its fictional languages, like High Valyrian. Hearing it might sound weirdly familiar for some - and not just because it was already present in Game of Thrones. FAQ: Did Game of Thrones make up languages? Yes, Game of Thrones features a number of fictional languages. They are, for instance, High Valyrian, Low Valyrian, and Dothraki. Which language is commonly spoken in Game of Thrones? The majority of characters in Westeros use the Common Tongue, which is represented by the English language. Is High Valyrian a real language? High Valyrian is a fictional language crafted by the Game of Thrones show linguist, David J. Peterson. Is Daenerys speaking a real language? Daenerys uses the Valyrian language, which is a fictional tongue constructed by David J. Peterson, the GoT show's linguist. How many languages does Arya Stark speak? Arya Stark speaks the Common Tongue fluently, in addition to knowing the basics of High Valyrian, Braavosi, Pentoshi, and Lyseni. What language is Valyrian similar to? The Valyrian language is based on the Latin and Greek languages. What language is Dothraki based on? David J. Peterson explained that the grammar of Dothraki is similar to Russian, but the vocabulary is based on the Genghis-Khan Mongolian language to reflect their nomadic lifestyle similarity. So, this begs a few questions. Is Valyrian a real language? If it's invented, does it take after existing languages? What is the difference between High Valyrian, low Valyrian, and old Valyrian language? Is High Valyrian somehow related to Dothraki language? Let's find the answers to all these questions! What languages are spoken in Game of Thrones? To answer that question, we could dive deep into the lore, but let's just focus on the languages we actually hear in the show and that were developed for its sake. Speak More Languages Now The most prominent languages of Westeros & Essos are: - Common tongue of the Andals. Both in the books and the shows, this language is represented simply by English, and interestingly enough, it has a similar origin. - High Valyrian. In the Game of Thrones, Daenerys is the last known speaker of this old language, which may imply it dies with her. Though it's not completely true, as this language is preserved by the written sources. High Valyrian gets much more screen time in House of the Dragon, as it's used by the whole Targaryen family. - Low Valyrian / Bastard Valyrian. These are the dialects that evolved out of Valyrian after it fell out of use. - Dothraki. It is spoken by the nomadic horse-mounted warriors in the lands of Essos. - Skroth. The language used by the White Walkers. Even though there was a whole Skroth language created, the producers decided to use literal ice creaking as White Walker's tongue. Now that we know what languages are there in the Seven Kingdoms, let's find out more about them. Is Valyrian a real language? No. Valyrian a fictional language developed for the TV series Game of Thrones by saga's author Geroge R.R. Martin and a language creator David J. Peterson. Still, Valyrian in Game of Thrones is meant to work as a regular language. It has eight cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, comitative and vocative) with six declensions. It also has four grammatical genders of sorts (lunar, solar, terrestrial and aquatic), but they are not connected to biological sex but rather their type. It also has four numbers (singular-paucal-collective-plural). Valyrian writing system is the same as Latin, as creators didn't need to incorporate a unique alphabet in the show. What language is Valyrian similar to? It's no coincidence that Valyrian sounds like a language that could exist in our world. You may wonder, is Valyrian a romance language? You wouldn't be far from the truth. The Valyrian language is fictitious, but it is based on the Latin and Greek languages. What's more, David J. Peterson explained that in order to make Valyrian seem like a living language, he implied the existence of many dialects of it. The most prominent is the Low Valyrian dialect used by common people in Slaver's Bay. So, all of it should answer the question of what language is Valyrian similar to. What's the difference between High Valyrian language and Low Valyrian dialects? High Valyrian is the ancient language spoken in the past by the Valyrians of Essos. Nobles of the house Targaryen come from Valyria and therefore, they learn High Valyrian as a sign of their status. For the same reason, they have Valyrian names, e.g. Aegon, Daenerys, Rhaenyra etc. However, outside of elite's circles, High Valyrian fell out of use. It has evolved into the new dialects in the Free Cities and Ghis, resulting into so-called Low Valyrian or Bastard Valyrian languages. Considering that there are nine cities, we can expect that there are nine dialects of Valyrian in Game of Thrones with unique grammar and structure. Is High Valyrian an ancient language? Technically, yes. High Valyrian is the term of a dead language used in the old Valyria. In the House of the Dragon, only the high-born (mostly Targaryens) can speak and read in it. All the other Valyrian languages that change overtime are considered to be Low Valyrian dialects. Where are Valyrian languages used in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon? Throughout the Game of Thrones, Low Valyrian is spoken in the Free City of Braavos, on the Iron Islands, and in Slaver's Bay. High Valyrian is only known by Daenerys. In the House of the Dragon, the High Valyrian is used by the whole Targaryen family and probably the closest court nobles, though we don't see them speak it on-screen. Instead, most often we see Rhaenyra and Daemon using it. High Valyrian phrases Source Meaning Literal meaning Valyrio muño ēngos ñuhys issa Valyrian is my mother tongue - Ñuhor līr gūrēnn I will take what is mine. - Vīlībāzmosa iderennī emilun I would like a trial by combat - Ao ynoma dīnilūks? Will you marry me? - Sōnar mastan Winter is here - Skoriot rāenābion ilza? Where's the bathroom? - Vēzos qēlossās ñuho My beloved (relating to a man) My sun and stars Ñuho glaeso hūrus My beloved (relating to a woman) Moon of my life Skorkydoso glaesā? How are you? - Sesīr kipi! An now, we ride! - Se ribazma iksis se ossēnagon hen zūgagon Fear is the mind killer - Nerni ōrēs Hold the door - Bantis zōbrie issa se ossȳngnoti lēdys The night is dark and full of terrors - What is Dothraki language similar to? The language of Dothraki was the first language created by David J. Peterson for the Game of Thrones. He explained, that its grammar is mostly similar to Russian, but the vocabulary is heavily inspired by Genghis-Khan Mongolian language to reflect their nomadic lifestyle similarity. Apart from that, the creator of Dothraki language described that its speech is designed to sound similar to Arabic languages, borrowing the characteristic growl and breathy sounds. The Dothraki language is, no surprise, used by the Dothraki tribes and Daenerys once she learns it while being Khal Drogo's wife. Dothraki phrases Source Meaning Literal meaning Anha dothrak chek asshekh I feel well today I ride well today Hajas! Goodbye! Be strong! Shekh ma shieraki anni My beloved (relating to a man) My sun and stars Jalan atthirari anni My beloved (relating to a woman) Moon of my life Shor tawakof Armor Steel dress Ase shafki athdrivar Your wish is my command Your words are death Sek, k’athjilari Yes, certainly Yes, by rightness Vos. Vosecchi! No. No way! - Me nem nesa It is known - Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh? How are you? Do you ride well today? Hash me laz adakha jin zhoris? Are those hearts edible? - Me zisosh disse It's just a flesh wound - Anha vazhak yeraan thirat I will let you live - Hash yer asti k’athijilari? Are you speaking truthfully? - What are the other popular fictional languages? Even though the languages of Westeros & Essos are getting so popular now, this is not the first time that a fictional language is created for a book or a TV show. These are the most popular ones: - Quenya Tolkien created many languages for his fictional world of Middle Earth (and beyond), but Quenya is the most widely spoken language among elves, and, interestingly enough, the fans. Quenya grammar is simple and regular, with a syntax that's similar to Finnish; the alphabet has thirty-two letters without any distinction between uppercase or lowercase letters. - Klingon Klingon is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the 'Star Trek' universe. It was developed by Marc Okrand from 1984 onwards, improving the previously functioning gibberish. - Na'vi The Na'vi language was created by the film's director, James Cameron, and is spoken mainly by the inhabitants of Pandora in the 'Avatar' universe. The intent was to create a language that could express all the nuances and emotional content of English, but which would be completely unique in sound and structure. - Minion language Although it was created more as a joke than anything else, the Minion language became a phenomenon ever since it appeared in the Despicable Me movie in 2010. Its vocabulary contains words that are similar to those in several languages, however it doesn't seem to have any consistent grammar or syntax rules. Why are languages like High Valyrian invented? There are many reasons why authors and creators invent fictional languages. Let's take a look at some of the most prominent reasons. Unique world-building Some might want to create a new culture with its own language to build a unique world. They might want to give their characters an identity that is separate from their own, to create a more exotic experience for the audience. Passion for linguistics Authors might also want to make recipients more immersed in their creation, or they may simply be trying to add some linguistic interest into their work. E.g. J. R. R. Tolkien was known for his linguist passion and education, which reflected vividly in his works. Immersion In the end, when fans are dedicated to a certain fictional universe, they prefer to feel that it's almost as real as their own world. For this reason, the invented languages help the fictional world to become more believable and tangible. The most dedicated fans spend a lot of their time to learn the language of their favorite books or TV shows. This makes this language a living thing, just as any other language on Earth. This is what happens now with High Valyrian, as it's just been incorporated as one of the Duolingo's language courses. Almost 600k of its users decided to learn Valyrian! This is more than the current number of people who learn Hungarian (over 400k) and much more than the other popular fictional language: Klingon (over 300k as of now). High Valyrian language: Summary As we are awaiting the House of the Dragon final episodes, we can expect the High Valyrian to become even more popular among the fans. This is an interesting case, because it shows that the passion for languages might come not only for the real-world existing ones. We're sure that in the future, there might be even more invented languages that fans will be eager to learn, just as High Valyrian now. If you're interested in learning more about fictional languages, be sure to check our future articles. We have a whole series about them in mind! And if you have a passion for learning languages, but not necessarily time and motivation, be sure to check our store. With our newest standalone device, Vasco Translator V4, you have 108 languages in your pocket! Maybe some day even Valyrian and Dothraki too... In a nutshell: To say that Game of Thrones was a popular TV series is to say nothing about it. It was adapted from the bestselling “Ice & Fire” saga by American author, George R.R. Martin, and aired on HBO in 2010-2019 through 8 seasons. At its peak, the show was broadcasted in 207 countries and averaged almost 44 million viewers for its final season (Forbes, 2019 & Hollywood Reporter, 2022). The show's created many fictional languages, with the most prominent being Valyrian. Valyrian is based on Latin and Greek languages, with High Valyrian being the ancient language spoken in the past by the Valyrians of Essos. Low Valy rian is the term for the dialects that have evolved out of Valyrian. Dothraki is spoken by the nomadic horse-mounted warriors in the lands of Essos and is based on Russian with vocabulary from Genghis-Khan Mongolian. Skroth is the language used by the White Walkers, with White Walker speech being literal ice creaking. Read the full article

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findinginga · 7 months

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"I remember every detail…

...the Germans wore gray, you wore blue." - Rick Blaine (Casablanca 1942)

In what many consider to be one of the greatest Hollywood films, a flashback montage is used to inform the viewer of Ilsa and Rick in pre-WWII Paris. We learn that a love affair developed between the two and with the impending occupation of Paris, Rick and Ilse plan to leave Paris for Marseilles. But Ilsa harbors secrets which she withholds from Rick. With German advance troops entering Paris, a panic to escape is evident and we find Sam and Rick standing on a chaotic Parisian railway platform waiting in the rain for Ilsa. Instead, a letter is delivered containing devastating content. Sam and Rick leave Paris, with the falling rain smearing the ink which formed Ilsa's words. The rain, a metaphor for tears of desperation, lost hope, and lost love.

Rick successfully escapes France to Casablanca where he establishes a popular club but Rick has become aloof and embittered. With the unexpected arrival of Ilsa, the secrets forcing their separation are revealed.

23 February 2022...

With the obvious changes in the behavior of Inga manifested over November and December, along with the still fresh emotional wounds acquired on my visit to St. Petersburg, and information shared by the private investigators, there was little left for me to do but withdraw. In the period between mid-January and mid-February of 2022, Inga and I exchange few words with only polite pleasantries shared.

Over the intervening weeks prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I intently monitored the news reporting the build up of Russian troops along the borders dividing Belarus and Russia from Ukraine. It was obvious these actions were, at least, an attempt to intimidate if not the actual precursor to occupation.

On the evening of 23 February 2022, I viewed, as did millions of others, the escalation of hostilities in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. While many considered the fall of Kiev to be a fait accompli, strategic errors and miscalculations on the part of the Russian military allowed stiff Ukrainian resistance to change the calculus. The initial timid Western response to the escalating hostilities gave way to unified support for Ukraine. This, along with severe financial sanctions and near isolation of Russia, resulted in the expected nuclear saber-rattling heard from the Kremlin.

Even though I lived through the Cold War and was accustomed to reading and hearing the hyperbole generated by Soviet state media, the rhetoric coming from Putin and his sycophants was now more bothersome for me. In the 60's, 70's and 80's, I had no personal connection to Russia. However, now I felt more involved from having visited and interacted with people. That personal connection changed my perspective. Although I remained hopeful that Ukraine could push back the Russian military, I thought about Inga, Eva and Mikhail and what all of this might mean for their lives.

I was not worried that a nuclear exchange was imminent, but I was concerned that further mistakes or miscalculations by the Russian military could lead to the invocation of Article V of the NATO treaty. From a military perspective, should NATO become involved, I had little doubt NATO would take the initiative to gain air superiority over the Russo-Ukraine border. Inga and Eva live in Pskov, which is so close to the borders of Estonia and Latvia that one could hike the distance. Outside of Pskov is a sizable military base with missile and air defense capability. This would be among the likely first targets of NATO.

My concern became reengagement when Inga reached out to share her fears.

#relationship #pskov #dating scam #narcissistic sociopath #ingeborga #scam #npd #reshetnikov #jewellerysiren #lopatyuk #ingaborgia #passive aggressive

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dailyrugbytoday · 3 years

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Home 3

New Post has been published on https://thedailyrugby.com/home-3/

The Daily Rugby

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mica-dmss · 11 months

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Blog Post - 02

The Evolution of Narrative

During my undergraduate years in animation, I was taught to not only develop a good skill in art, but also the skill of storytelling. Since then, I have been pondering on this very question; what makes a good narrative? To begin this critical investigation, I would like to firstly introduce the definition and origin of the term 'narrative'.

An enigma that many theorists had investigated in the past, narrative can be defined as "a chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space". (Bordwell, Thompson, 1993, pg. 73) It is a unique concept that only humans can perform, and so has become a common practice of how we "make sense of the world". (Bordwell, Thompson, 1993, pg. 72) We have been telling such stories way back in the Paleolithic period, along with examples shown in drawings by cavemen roughly 17,000 years ago in sightings like Lascaux and Chavaux caves in France. (Figure 1)

This term of narrative is derived from our ability of 'storytelling', which established its foundation of being explored in a chronological order (ibid, pg. 75), thus explaining its structure to present a "beginning, middle, and end". (National Geographic Society, 2023)

Figure 1

This type of formation defines a 'classical narrative', which is the most popular and recurrent structure of narrative. Most current products in today's media, especially of Hollywood release, present their narrative events in 'chronological' order (Bordwell, and Thompson, 2016, p. 75). Theorist David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson elaborated on why this structure has become the normalised way of telling stories within products, by stating how chronological patterns of "change and stability, cause and effect, and time and space" enables spectators to perceive texts simpler than other narrative structures, as such stories will easily guide us from start to finish (Ibid. p. 73). Thus, we are more likely to engage with the texts provided in such structure, as we can understand them (Ibid. p. 73). Moreover, another aspect besides chronology is also the ability of classical narrative in presenting a "basic structure of enigma and resolution"; where problems within the events unfolding in a story could be identified and solved, so its dilemmas would be answered and so order "restored to the world of fiction" (Cook, 1985, p. 40).

This form of narrative has been applied to the evolution of human inventions: from folklore, cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, epic poems and religious texts. One prominent figure of narrative analyses based his theories from Russian national epics; Folklorist Vladimir Propp investigated and deconstructed the complexities of narrative. Propp explained that the form of narrative is made up of 31 functions, called the "Dramatis Personae". (Propp, 1968, pg. 26-64) These functions are shared among many national epics he examined, with famous functions such as "IX. The hero is approached with a request or command", (ibid, pg. 36) "XVII. The hero is branded", (ibid, pg. 52) and "XXVII. The hero is recognised". (ibid, pg. 62) Along with these functions found in epics, Propp also presented the idea of 8 character types in narrative; hero, villain, princess, dispatcher, donor, helper and false hero.

Through Propp's work, we can explain the simple reason behind the popularity of narratives and why it is generally embraced by societies. In regards to characters of narratives, Propp recognised the significance that heroes play in their tales, as well as the impact they make on the story's audience. According to Propp's findings, the most important feature of epic poetry is the heroic character of its content, based on their 'deeds' within the narrative, thus encouraging viewers to prioritise studying the inner content of heroism within epic poetry. (Propp, 1984, p. 149) This explains the phenomenon of intrigue behind narratives and why many modern films are based on the functions and character-centred structure that Propp describes.

While story texts progressed, copied texts popularised them, further reiterating text into civilisation. Narrative changed the way humans vocalise to each other, and it further proves in making an impact to society. Shakespearian plays shaped the language of the modern English we now know, which he had introduced "around 1,700 original words" into the once unstable language through his many narratives; "changing nouns into verbs, connecting words that have never been used together before or adding prefixes like un- or -in to some pre-existing words" (Celtic English Academy, 2018). Moreover, change within society would not have been possible without Shakespeare's intriguing sophistication of his stories and characters.

As reformation of media arises within recent centuries, investigation within narratology has become relevant in identifying how texts are currently presented; Professor Emerita Pam Cook (1985) investigated the formation of common narrative using philosopher Tzvetan Todorov's theory (1971) on narratology. According to Todorov's analysis, a narrative will present an event that 'disrupts' an existing equilibrium established prior storytelling, consequently affecting the fictional world within. (Ibid. p. 40) With this, the purpose of the narrative is to resolve the disequilibrium by developing a new equilibrium. (Ibid. 1985) The reason for this formation found in Todorov's theory is in relation to our human nature; it corresponds to our method of telling stories orally, thus the foundations of his equilibrium theory reflects our 'conditioning' of language (Wikipedia, 2023).

Many films and TV products that are character-centric adopt traits which Todorov identified within his theory; Highly-focused binary character coded texts like Disney films have all demonstrated narratives depicting a conflict, climax then resolution. Within this century, storytellers of media have even branched out further in inventing new ways of presenting narrative structure. Bordwell and Thompson (2016) highlighted media's recent demonstration of an extended narrative structure, labelled as parallelism. Both theorist explains that parallelism adds 'complexity' to narratives consisting of only one protagonist, which then the story may be presented "in different ways, rendered as different plots", in regards to other characters aside from the previously explored one (Bordwell, and Thompson, 2016, p. 74-75).

An example that resonates with parallelism is a long-running sitcom The Simpsons (1989), which features the everyday life of main characters Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. (Figure 2) The TV series explores unique events of each main character, including their personality and relationships - leading to the eventual development of side and minor characters within their fictional town of Springfield. (Figure 3) Overall, the level of parallelism within The Simpsons demonstrates the freedom storytelling possesses, as well as the fact that worlds of possibilities within narrative is practically endless.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Theorists have made attempts of speculation as to why narrative itself was able to not only become the driving force behind many multi-media successes profiting off story-telling, but a necessary tool to our benefit that has only been more relevant overtime. As humans, we harbour an "endless appetite for stories", which can be even as simple as recounting events that happened to us today - "We recount our lives to anyone who'll listen" (Bordwell, and Thompson, 2016, p. 72).

In conclusion, we humans are social creatures who desire solidarity with another and have the innate tendency to engage with each other in communication, debates, and so on. The prospect of narrative is contagious, allowing even a single piece of storytelling to spread far out to other people from many different places, furthermore uniting like-minded individual into a community. Thus, the significance of storytelling and narratology formed along side it will likely continue to strengthen as many more of us will interact together overtime.

Sources:

Bordwell, D., Thompson, K. and Smith, J. (2016) Film art: an introduction. Eleventh; McGraw-Hill international; Place of publication not identified: McGraw-Hill Education.

Celtic English Academy (2018) How the English language changed thanks to Shakespeare?. Available at: https://www.celticenglish.co.uk/blog/how-the-english-language-changed-thanks-to-shakespeare/ (Accessed: 7 January 2024).

National Geographic (2023) Storytelling. Available at: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/storytelling-x/ (Accessed: 7 January 2024).

Propp, V., Martin, A.Y., Martin, R.P. and Corporation, E. (1984) Theory and History of Folklore. N - New; 1; Edited by A. Liberman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Propp, V., Scott, L. and Wagner, L.A. (1968) Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edn. Austin: University of Texas Press.

The Simpsons (1989) Fox Broadcasting Company, 17 December, 20:00.

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mightyflamethrower · 1 year

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Two sets of laws now operate in an increasingly unrecognizable America.

Consider the matter of unlawfully removing and storing classified papers.

Donald Trump may go to prison for removing contested White House files to his home.

So far Joe Biden seems exempt from just such legal jeopardy.

But as a senator and Vice President with no right, as does a president, to declassify files, Biden removed and, as a private citizen kept for years classified files in unsecure locations.

Biden’s team strangely revealed the unlawful removals after years of silence.

It did so because the Biden administration found itself in the untenable position of prosecuting the former president for “crimes” that the current president committed as well—albeit far earlier and longer.

Impeachable phone calls?

Donald Trump was impeached by a Democratic House for delaying foreign aid until the Ukrainian government guaranteed that Hunter Biden and his family were no longer engaged in corrupt influence peddling in Kyiv.

In addition, the Left charged that Trump was targeting Joe Biden, his possible 2020 rival.

Yet Biden, with impunity, bragged that he had fired a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into his own son’s schemes by promising to cancel outright American foreign aid.

And the Biden administration’s Justice Department is now targeting Trump, currently the frontrunning challenger to Biden in 2024.

Election denialism?

Trump was indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith, in part for supposedly conspiratorially “unlawfully discounting legitimate votes.”

Will Smith then also indict Stacey Abrams? For years Abrams falsely claimed that she was the real governor of Georgia. She toured the country in hopes of “discounting” the state vote count.

Or maybe Smith was referring to the conspiracist and former president Jimmy Carter.

He alleged that Trump in 2016 “lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

Will Smith charge Hillary Clinton?

She serially libeled Trump as an “illegitimate” president.

Clinton hatched the Russian collusion hoax, and bragged she joined the “Resistance” to continue her attacks on an elected president.

Or maybe Smith meant the Hollywood crowd.

Lots of actors cut commercials after the 2016 election—begging viewers to pressure the electors to ignore their constitutional duties to honor their states’ popular vote and instead swing their ballots to Hillary Clinton?

Was not that “insurrectionary?”

Or was Smith thinking of January 2005?

Then 32 Democratic House members and Sen. Barbara Boxer tried to nullify the legally certified vote in Ohio—to thereby elect the loser John Kerry.

How about destroying evidence?

Trump was also indicted for allegedly attempting to erase video material from his own cameras in his own house.

Yet Hillary Clinton with impunity eliminated subpoenaed communication devices and thousands of emails.

Violations of security? Trump was indicted for supposedly loosely talking about classified material to visitors at his home.

So will prosecutor Smith’s indictments also extend to Hillary Clinton? She sent classified documents illegally over her unsecure private server.

FBI Director James Comey memorialized a confidential president conversation.

Then he deliberately leaked what properly was a classified document to the media. It was all part of Comey’s Machiavellian gambit to prompt the appointment of a favorable special prosecutor.

What about subversion of the electoral process?

Donald Trump was indicted for supposedly undermining the election of 2020 by questioning the integrity of the balloting.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign illegally hired two foreign nationals Christopher Steele and Igor Danchenko to compile falsehoods about her opponent Trump.

Clinton hid her payments behind three paywalls.

Her team, along with the FBI, helped leak the counterfeit dossier to the media and high officials to undermine her opponent—and thus subvert the election itself.

Lying and perjury?

Two Trump aides and Trump himself are indicted for supposedly stonewalling federal investigators by claiming either amnesia or ignorance.

That tact is exactly what James Comey did 245 times while under oath before Congress.

What do former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Director of the CIA John Brennan, and former interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe all have in common?

All three admitted they flagrantly lied either under oath to Congress or to federal investigators.

The three were never indicted for their false and perjurious testimonies.

We have now serially devolved from the 2016 election “Russian collusion” hoax, to the 2020 election “Russian disinformation” laptop hoax, and down to the 2024 election weaponized indictments.

Out of pathological hatred or fear of Donald Trump, the Left has crafted one set of laws for themselves, and another for all other Americans.

They smugly believe their own moral superiority grants them such a right to apply laws unequally—or to ignore them altogether.

To retain power at all cost, and to destroy a political rival, leftwing Democrats are systematically dismantling the constitutional foundations of the United States as we once knew them.

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alightinthelantern · 1 year

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Fate of a Man is a 1959 war drama film directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. It is an adaptation of a short story by Mikhail Sholokhov.

Synopsis: The film is told in flashback as the main character, Andrei Sokolov, recounts his life story to an old man in the spring of 1946. Born in 1900 in a village in Voronezh, he flees elsewhere to survive the Russian Famine of 1921-2, then returns to find his whole family dead. While working as a carpenter he meets and falls in love with a young woman, and they begin a family together. For 17 years they live happily, until Germany invades the Soviet Union in 1941, starting the Great Patriotic War. Andrei enlists and his wife tearfully prophesies “We shall never meet again in this world” as they are saying their last goodbyes, and Andrei angrily pushes her away. Andrei is captured along with his unit and housed in a ruined church for time, then forced to march to a prison camp. After a remark he makes angers the commanding officer of the camp the officer calls him in and tells him he will shoot him, but offers him a final drink of vodka first. Andrei drinks the whole glass in one go and refuses a chaser, so the officer gives him a second glass, which Andrei drinks in one go. A third glass he drinks without chaser also, and the officer is so impressed he spares Andrei’s life. After Germany’s invasion of Stalingrad fails the Russian POWs are no longer seen as disposable and are treated marginally better. Andrei is assigned chauffeur to another German officer and does his work diligently for a time, then kidnaps his officer and drives into Russian territory, where he turns over the German officer’s briefcase to the commanding Russian officer. Malnourished, Andrei is rewarded for his bravery by being sent home to Voronezh to recover, only to find his entire street bombed into nothing, along with his wife and daughters. Only his son survived, who was working in a factory, and he later enlisted in the army. Heartbroken over the loss of his wife and daughters, Andrei pins his remaining hopes on marrying off his son after the war and caring for his grandchildren, but his son, who becomes a decorated hero, is killed just before the end of WWII. Devastated, Andrei takes up work as a truck driver in faraway parts of Russia, working in Uryupinsk, where he gets to know an orphaned young boy, whose father died in action and whose mother died in a bombing raid. Andrei decides to tell the boy that he is his father and adopts the boy, thereby giving new hope to the both of them. But, he tells the old man, he’s started having heart trouble, and he’s not sure if he’ll see the boy reach adulthood.

Review: The film is good, although old-fashioned. It feels a lot like American WWII films made in the postwar period in terms of subject matter, and the scriptwriting and directing have a very Golden Age Hollywood feel to them, nothing like the newly-emergent modern cinema of the day. The main character suffers much hardship but escapes from several dire situations through sheer strength, heroicness, and gumption, which is typical of old films but may leave modern viewers rolling their eyes. The story is touching, admittedly. Overall whether I’d recommend this film depends on whether you like old movies and their conventions and clichés or not. If you like classic cinema then this film will be right up your alley, and you can watch it on YouTube here.

#films #movies #film #cinema #classic cinema #golden age cinema #classic films #Fate of a Man #film reviews #movie reviews #Sergei Bondarchuk

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xtruss · 2 years

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The Oscars and the Pitfalls of Feel-Good Representation

Why have we become so fixated on the award prospects of the most successful members of a minority group?

— By Inkoo Kang | March 12, 2023

The Academy Awards have come to serve as a primary yardstick of representational gains in the industry.Photograph by Christopher Polk/Getty

The tropes that undergird modern Oscar campaigns—those laborious, profligate, months-long efforts to take home a statuette, often by creating meta-narratives around the nominated films or artists themselves—have become as predictable as any Hollywood screenplay. But, occasionally, a novel spin or flawless execution can revitalize a tale we’ve all heard a thousand times before. So it is with Ke Huy Quan’s maneuver toward the Best Supporting Actor trophy for his (genuinely fantastic) performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” in which he plays several versions of Waymond, the doting, tenderhearted, sometimes debonair husband of Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn across the multiverse. Quan, who became a familiar face to American audiences after starring as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies,” gave up his acting career for a period, when he found scant opportunities as an Asian American performer, eventually landing behind the camera. He’s not the only nominee with a comeback story: the awards push for lead actor Brendan Fraser, who enjoys a much anticipated return to the spotlight in “The Whale,” also asks the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, to complete his arc by furnishing a happy ending. But a triumph for Quan would also lend some of its glow onto the entertainment industry at large: it would suggest that Hollywood, with its ugly concentration of power among the usual suspects, is capable of reform, and that a talented artist who once saw no path forward by dint of his race could, a generation later, be fêted for his contributions to a film that makes the crises within an Asian American family a matter of cosmic urgency.

Actors are the most visible beneficiaries of the ongoing calls for increased diversity in Hollywood, which come from the viewers, who wish to see more faces and realities reflective of their own, as well as from figures within the industry, many of whom view greater inclusion as a source of fresh ideas, cultural relevance, even moral legitimacy. (This year’s Oscars cause célèbre is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will likely bestow the Best Documentary prize to “Navalny,” about the Russian political dissident Alexey Navalny.) And yet those of us invested in a more capacious and curious popular culture have yet to fully grapple with how progress in the industry should be appraised. By default, then, events like the Oscars have come to serve as a primary yardstick of representational gains. Hence our joyless new annual award-season tradition: the scrutiny of the nominees and the eventual winners for their diversity, mostly in the acting races, despite their representing a vanishingly small fraction of the hundreds of films released in just this country each year.

Quan, who has already won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his turn in “Everything Everywhere,” heads into Oscar night as the virtual shoo-in for his category. Given his decades of one-sided adoration for the film business, it’s difficult to begrudge him a moment of joy; at last, it seems, Hollywood might love him back. But his hyper-visible (and seemingly wholly earnest) publicity strategy, which has included speeches that have made the rounds on social media, exemplifies not only how inordinately fixated we are on the award prospects of the most successful members of a minority group but how conversations about diversity more broadly coalesce around emotional appeals to viewers—the tugging of heartstrings.

That our preferred mode of measuring Hollywood diversity is affective—based on how it makes us feel—is undeniable. There are outliers. A handful of scholars and nonprofit organizations have meticulously tallied the screen presence of women and various minority groups, publishing the results in annual report cards. These tabulators include Stacy L. Smith at the University of Southern California and Darnell Hunt at the University of California, Los Angeles, who focus on race and gender; and glaad, whose exhaustive studies quantify “studio responsibility” in film and assess “where we are” on television. Less precisely, though perhaps more influentially, social media erupts in outrage every few years about the racial or gender makeup of major award-show categories; the #OscarsSoWhite movement began this way, and this year’s baftas prompted a continuation of the discussion after not a single person of color won a film prize that night. But the representation discourse happens all year, and some participants seem to care more about the optics than the films or performances themselves. The question asked most frequently boils down to whether we “feel seen,” a phrase whose recent but widespread popularity can partially be attributed to its vagueness.

There’s nothing wrong with entertainment feeling good. (I’m including, under that term, marketing apparatuses like the Oscars, which inform consumers what milestones a project hits—and thus how “important” they are.) But who needs the notches of advancement when a movie just works? In recent years, there’s been a boom in Asian American films that have depicted and unearthed facets of myself that I hadn’t imagined would ever be explored onscreen. I’ll always have a fondness for “Crazy Rich Asians,” a fish-out-of-water romantic comedy that helped me let go of a shame I didn’t realize I’d been holding on to, of feeling “not Asian enough” on a continent that I’m from but that’s never felt like home. I felt gratitude toward “The Farewell,” an autobiographical drama about living an ocean away from beloved family members, for acknowledging on such a mainstream scale and with such lovingly idiosyncratic portraiture the emotional trade-offs of immigration. I’m not a gay man, but I savored “Fire Island,” last year’s queer rom-com from an Asian American perspective, in part for poignantly observing the crushing unavoidability of racialized beauty standards in a cutthroat sexual marketplace.

Representational pleasures are real and, yes, important. The films above, which run the gamut from the personal to the glossily corporate, pay tribute to antecedents (Michelle Yeoh, Margaret Cho) while carving out space for emerging talent. They approach the experiences of Asian Americans as significant, acute, and relatable, and however fleetingly they provide a sense of community, of not-aloneness. I hope everyone who cares about culture finds at least a handful of films and TV shows—or books or music or whatever else—that makes them feel that way.

But feel-good representation alone isn’t the solution to Hollywood’s diversity problem. Greater inclusion can’t advance without a more equitable entertainment industry that offers opportunities to artists of disparate backgrounds, who in turn have to be empowered to tell the kinds of stories they wish to tell. Our craving for representation should also encompass material that doesn’t always deliver immediate satisfaction—challenging, divisive, or self-critical narratives that may not affirm viewers, but can reveal truths or offer new insights.

Feelings are fickle, and seldom shared across a group. One member’s representation is another’s alienation. Discussing “Crazy Rich Asians” with me, a Korean American friend balked at the film’s reception as a landmark that was meant to speak to and for her; she thought it too Sinocentric and too wealth-obsessed to stand in for Asian America. I don’t share her objection, but it’s certainly a valid one. The expectation that representation will always come with a dopamine spike risks an undue emphasis on the most anodyne, least objectionable stories, the content packaged for maximum virality or as aspirational perfection. And eternal pessimism about Hollywood, especially when it’s only with an eye toward the industry’s uppermost tiers, can obscure genuine headway in the less glamorous middle and lower layers, where newcomers of all crafts gain experience, connections, and, when they’re lucky, the kind of critical acclaim that can launch careers to the next level. Reduced market pressures in the independent space, too, can create room for more experimentation, such as more niche themes, less conventional forms, and a relaxed demand for “universal” resonance.

Perhaps we’re already getting closer. The still-surprising front-runner status of “Everything Everywhere”—it’s currently predicted by the Oscar probability sites as the winner for top prizes like Best Picture and Best Director, in addition to Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor—has meant an embrace of a rather messy, exhausting, cheerfully vulgar sci-fi film, attributes seldom embraced by Academy voters in the past. Its talking rocks and nihilism bagels may not personally spark you. But it might still be progress. ♦

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