We recently discussed the incredible acting talent of women like Denise Richards in Wild Things. I do not know what it is, but there is a strange inverse correlation with the age of women and their acting talent. The younger and more attractive they are, the better their performance on screen is. It is a… Continue reading The Disappearance of Peak Beauty in Hollywood
Tomb Raider was arguably the biggest Western video game franchise in the late 1990s, and its main protagonist Lara Croft was undoubtedly the biggest Western gaming icon at that time. In 1999, Tomb Raider III made more money than FIFA soccer and was the best-selling game in Europe. Yet, in the 2000s, Tomb Raider sales… Continue reading The Devolution of Lara Croft
In my article on why wokeism limits creativity, leading to crappy movies, I quipped that the same people who want to tell you that Gal Gadot is attractive also tell you that Gigi Hadid is a supermodel. In a comment, the name Zendaya was brought up as well. All these women are promoted as sex… Continue reading What Do Zendaya, Gal Gadot, and Gigi Hadid have in Common?
That wokeism does not boost creativity should not be of any surprise. However, it is nonetheless interesting to look at a few concrete examples of its effect on movies. One of my current projects is to watch mainstream movies of the last two decades, not so much to numb myself but to analyze how the… Continue reading How Wokeism Limits Creativity
When I rewatched some of the classic Scorsese movies a while ago, I noticed that there is a very obvious division of labor among the sexes: The men do the important work, and the women spend the money. Men make big, consequential decisions and women are either just there or they make dumb, small decisions… Continue reading Would Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino have been Possible in the 2000s?
I recently watched the Scorsese movie The Color of Money (1986), which is about a billiard hustler. My verdict is that this is an excellent movie, very well worth watching. Paul Newman’s acting, as the older hustler mentoring a young billiard player into becoming a better hustler, is great. There are a few scenes where… Continue reading What Happened to Rugged Male Lead Actors?
This year I have spent a bit of time on watching movies, but not just as a means to passing my time. Instead, I consider them lenses through which to view the Western zeitgeist. Indeed, if you think a bit about the action on screen it is often quite fascinating how crude the metaphors are.… Continue reading Man of Steel (2013) is Pro-Immigration Propaganda
I recently rewatched Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), a biographical movie on the life of the boxer Jake LaMotta. He became a boxing champion, even though many people tried to prevent it, and then he lost it all, ending up as a washed up club owner, before somewhat turning his life around. The first time I… Continue reading Tragic Rise-and-Fall Stories are Shallow
As I am a bit of a gamer, I am somewhat familiar with the collector’s market. No, I am not a collector myself but I know that some classic video games go for pretty inflated prices. There are plenty of people on YouTube who show off their game rooms, sometimes with thousands of games. You… Continue reading The Limited Time Horizon of Nostalgia
This year has seen a lot of high-profile commercial disasters in the movie and vidya industries. It is all-too-easy to make fun of game or movie studios that burn a solid nine figures in order to push an agenda. More interesting, though, is looking at the mechanisms in place behind it. I felt motivated to… Continue reading The Woke-Industrial Complex
I recently watched the movie The Color of Money (1986). It is the sequel to the 1960s movie The Hustler, which I only learned about afterwards. I have yet to watch that movie. The Color of Money is great. I really enjoyed watching it. It takes its time to develop characters, which have remarkable depth.… Continue reading Nostalgia is the Death Spell for Creativity
I live my life in symbiosis with PCs and laptops for work. In my spare time, I sometimes watch movies, and occasionally I play games. When I am not on holidays, which is most of the time, I sometimes say to myself that once I have a few days off, I am going to watch… Continue reading Office Work and Video/Vidya Consumption
In my recent article on the Fast and Furious franchise, I pointed out that one of the main female characters, played by Michelle Rodriguez, aged a lot worse than the male lead, played by Vin Diesel. The same is obviously true for all female characters in this franchise, and all male characters. There are, however,… Continue reading Movie Franchises Cannot be Built Around Female Characters
Recently, I watched all movies in the entire Fast and Furious franchise, a staggering eleven movies. The latter movies were about as braindead as I had imagined but the first three were pretty good, and I liked where this franchise seemed to be going, i.e. stories centered around the street racing theme, with changing main… Continue reading The Fast and The Furious Franchise and Differential Aging of Men and Women
Earlier this year, I started making more of an effort of going through my backlog, with a particular focus on games and movies, but there are also other achievements I wanted to tackle, such as improving my headstand — it is is better than it ever was, after weeks of practice, and it is now… Continue reading Why Modern Games and Movies are Not Memorable
I have been trying to find good action movies made after the turn of the millennium but I am not having a lot of success. It is true that there are still some pretty entertaining and somewhat recently made movies out there. However, they are all quite one-dimensional. I will contrast some pre- and post-2000s… Continue reading Action Movies Got a Lot Dumber in the 2000s
My favorite Jewish director is probably Michael Mann. I think I can safely put him in my top 5 movie directors of all-time list. He has not directed a lot of movies, but his work is of a generally very high quality. Heat (1995) is arguably his best movie. Apart from the cinematography, I like… Continue reading Male Pragmatism vs Female Day-Dreaming
I recently watched the movie Uncut Gems (2019). Supposedly, it showcases Adam Sandler’s best acting. I completely accidentally came across it, and I watched it for two reasons. One, it was mentioned in one of the disreputable corners of the Internet I like to frequent and, two, it is made by A24, a studio I… Continue reading Uncut Gems (2019): A Movie on Jews, Blacks, and Women
I recently rewatched Silicon Valley, a TV series that ran for six seasons from 2014 to 2019. There is a lot that is wrong with it, but the first three seasons have some pretty decent humor. My favorite character is Erlich Bachman, whose actor unfortunately got tired of this role and left. Rewatching it was… Continue reading Silicon Valley (2014 – 2019) and Cultural Homogenization
I made a comment about in a recent Open Thread about companies being cynical by putting a hot chick in a video game, in the hope of increasing sales this way. The context was the game Stellar Blade, which supposedly has pretty average gameplay, but this seems to not be an issue considering that it… Continue reading Is it Cynical to Put Hot Women in Games and Movies?
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to watch a cinema screening of the now classic 1997 Hollywood movie “Titanic” with an audience which consisted mainly of teenagers. Those teens of course knew about the tragic sinking of Titanic in general terms, and I also guess they certainly knew that there exists a “really… Continue reading A Rendezvous With Hell: The Titanic Abyss of Romantic Love in James Cameron’s 1997 Movie “Titanic” (Guest Post By Lucretius Carus)
I recently watched the movie Logan’s Run (1976). This is a cult sci-fi movie that is set in a dystopia in which humans live in fully regulated lives and have been freed from the burden of labor. The only catch is that they have to die at the age of 30. The concept is not… Continue reading Logan’s Run and the Problem of Postulated Utopias
We have talked before about Hollywood being a gigantic psy-ops incubator that produces movies with the goal of pushing beliefs the elites like. This is not at all controversial. While it is true that Hollywood went completely overboard in roughly the last decade, the rot set in way before. When rewatching some classic movies from… Continue reading Your Favorite Classic Movies are More Pozzed Than You Think
There are a few big franchises out there that make a lot of money. Call of Duty or FIFA soccer bring in big vidya bucks, and regarding Hollywood, Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies used to be big earners, albeit not so much recently. I once thought that people who consume this kind of material are… Continue reading Encounter with a Mainstream Gamer
One of the less well-regarded Schwarzenegger movies is Running Man (1987). It plays in the late 2010s and predicts a cruel, authoritarian dystopia in which there is total surveillance and human life is worth very little. People who get rightly or wrongly accused of a crime may have to fight for their survival in the… Continue reading Sexual Mores Declined Much Faster than Predicted in 1980s Running Man
When it comes to contemporary mainstream gaming, I am pretty jaded. Basically everything released by the big Western studios is crap. The big Western gaming studios have been infiltrated by leftists activists, studio heads are lining up to fellate Larry Fink for some of that ESG money, and a well-funded but increasingly ineffective media hype-machine… Continue reading Grand Theft Auto VI: Upcoming Dumpster Fire With A Neon Paint Job
The Terminator (1984) is one of my favorite movies, and quite possibly the movie I watched the most often. Furthermore, I like it better and better the more often I watch it, albeit I also notice the occasional minor issues, like Schwarzenegger’s character walking with a noticeable spring in one scene, which is out of… Continue reading The Openings of The Terminator (1984) vs. Terminator 2 (1991): 1980s Masculinity vs 1990s Faggotry
The other day I watched the Netflix documentary “Sly”, which is about Sylvester Stallone’s life. This guy surely does not need any introduction as he was the #2 action star in the 1980s behind Arnold Schwarzenegger. Considering that the Netflix documentary on Schwarzenegger was quite well made, I had high expectations, but let me preface… Continue reading Sly (2023)
Hollywood is a mere shadow of itself. Long gone are the days when leftist propaganda was carefully hidden in plain sight, but not shoved right in your face. Arguably, the majority of the output of Hollywood has always been garbage, but a few directors managed to rise above the rest and produce more than just… Continue reading Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) is Abject Anti-White Propaganda
I recently watched Cruel Intentions, a teen romance that might have some elements of titillation, but as I was watching it with the eye of a completely disinterested observer, I cannot say whether I found Sarah Michelle Gellar in it hot. This is not a particularly deep movie. In short, it is about a bunch… Continue reading Cruel Intentions (1999)
Sometimes, there is just a deluge of bad news: there is global boiling, Putin still refuses to unconditionally surrender, and the premier outlet for feminist criticism of videogames, the esteemed format Feminist Frequency, spearheaded by luminary Anita Sarkeesian, is about to cease production. According to a recent video, which I did not watch as I… Continue reading Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency is Shutting Down
I just finished reading Schwarzeneggers’s autobiography Total Recall. Overall, this book appears quite dishonest. Basically, you read about him winning for four to five decades straight. He talks about a second place at some international bodybuilding competition being a setback at a time when he was undergoing his rapid rise to the top. In the… Continue reading Schizo Thinking and the Schwarzenegger-Kennedy Connection
Imagine you binge watch Schwarzenegger’s 1980s movies, and walk away thinking that those movies were even better than you remember them — only to come to the completely opposite conclusion when watching his 1990s movies. Originally, I had planned to watch all movies in which this guy was the lead actor, but this is not… Continue reading Wokeism in Early-1990s Schwarzenegger Movies
When you look at action-movie stars, there is probably nobody who had a better decade than Schwarzenegger had in the 1980s. I recently watched all of his 1980s movies, but not just for the sake of entertainment. Instead, I was also curious if there were obvious signs of Hollywood being up to its usual shenanigans… Continue reading Wokeism in 1980s Schwarzenegger Movies
Netflix recently released a three-part mini-series on Arnold Schwarzenegger, which, I assume, all of you are familiar with. This mini-series has three parts, covering distinct phases in Schwarzenegger’s life: body builder, movie icon, and politician. Looking for a catchy alliteration, these parts are called athlete, actor, and American, which perhaps rolls off the tongue more… Continue reading Arnold (2023)
I rarely watch TV shows, and even rarer is it that I stick to one until the very end. The only TV show I have been following for years has now drawn to a close, Succession, which is available on HBO but somehow also found its way into GTA. According to the intellekshual analysis on… Continue reading Looking Back on Succession (2018 – 2023)
