A cinephile’s perspective (with additional reflections on The Wizard, The Environment, and the false hope of terraforming Mars)

D’accord.

Yes, in general, I’m finding collaboration with the artificial intelligences to be a useful thing.

When we’re talking about words and ideas and text-based media, which I am used to heavily editing and rewriting anyway.

I have yet to find a sliver of the Technologies that will let me make a (good) movie.

In between text and film, there are still-images, and working with sound (like the two songs “I made”). Here the technoslivers do exist, but the jury is still out on whether the creation of (good) images or sonic compositions is potentially possible, or worth the effort. I’ve prompt-engineered a few thousand pics, but I’ve only kept a handful of them, and even then, some of the chosen visuals Have six fingers per hand, or are ‘uncanny’ as artists and critics would say.

For tightly related reasons …

I can’t remember ever having a truly great time in Las Vegas. It’s just too ersatz, and fundamentally capitalistic, for my taste.

There are smaller places on the outskirts that are worth the gas money to get there, and sometimes even worth the price of a modern inflationary motel room (assuming you have no lodging alternatives–I have slept in a van just the other side of Boulder Dam a few times).

But the city itself, as with most cities, is an eco-cidal abomination*.

Just like experiencing a cut-down version of a classic film at the Sphere.

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* (And in general a moral one too. When the fam was set to eat dinner at an “Italian American Social Club” a couple miles from the Strip, I inquired about whether the place was still mobbed up.

I didn’t get a straight answer, but I was told that mentioning any such thing while hanging out there was probably a Very Bad Idea.)

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Bonus Content

The Wizard of Oz at Sphere Is Nightmare Fuel

A culturally similar appraisal of WOZ @Sphere which focuses much more on the minutiae of the tech involved.