This deepfake stuff is going beyond the nonsensical and getting out of control. I’ve just seen one in which Tom Cruise replaces American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman for the infamous Sussudio homemade porno.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/deepfaked-tom-cruise-american-psycho-sex
It’s creepy as fuck, not helped by the fact there appears to be a lot of Cruise in Bateman, and that in the novel both the sofa-jumping Scientologist and the Whitney Houston-loving serial killer share the same building and even meet in a lift (rather the hilarious scene).
There’s another one doing the rounds, Jim Carrey’s The Shining (1980) shtick. Appropriating images for YouTube vids, ruining the sacredness of classics. It’s pointless and crude, bedroom technology piggybacking off artistry.
And then we get into politics and porn, a rabbit hole of ethical discourse. The world would be better off with deepfake. Still, Tom Cruise as Patrick Bateman is inspired. Sorry.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.creativebloq.com/features/deepfake-examples
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a28691128/deepfake-technology/
This video (gone viral) nails the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Whoever made it, kudos.
Personally, I’ve always despised the thing. It’s merely an invitation for dumb-as-a-stump tourists to clog up the streets and gaze at the castle with this eternally perplexed idiotic expression as if it were an alien spacecraft. The drinks prices go up, the shows are a shower of shit, and there’s a 400% influx in the number of scruffy art student wankers congregating on street corners like pseudo-bohemian jackals, sharing their very limited ideas (like taking a dump on a canvas) with anyone who will and won’t listen.
We don’t need them. I am not aware of anyone who lives here who actually enjoys this pish. We just tolerate the circus because apparently it brings the money in. I doubt that.
Wee bit of humanity in this one. Splendid.
Sadly, I’ve seen this movie more times than I have Barry Lyndon (1975), and this impressive calamity (accidental oxymoron) is what is universally posited as the reason Kubrick never made his Napoleon biopic.
It’s a hell of a logistical achievement, grand scale Abel Gance-like cinema utilising an entire Soviet infantry division; the sheer fact it got made is stupefying. At the same time it’s utterly dreadful, the director wielding his camera with carefree abandon, going from one style to the next like an ADHD child with a Tyco Xmas pressie. And the performances are dire, Rod Steiger’s Napoleon especially. He is constantly bulging his eyeballs, histrionics reaching Nicolas Cage levels. Even more fingernails-down-the-blackboard cringe are his inner monologues, the wee Corsican revealing his every banal thought to the audience.
Yet it was always on TV, strangely on Sunday afternoons. It remains ‘just one of those things’. I’ll probably see it again (I voluntarily watched it the other day), my own guilty pleasure. As Pauline Kael said, ‘You talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.’
Full horror show here:
This is the first digital image ever made or seen. The bloke Kirsch, a computer scientist, converted a photo of his child into binary form with some kind of scanner.
It’s a terrifying image. The whole affair reminds me of that baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Further reading:
https://petapixel.com/2010/11/04/first-digital-photograph-ever-made/
One day you need a Thunder Buddy, the next you’re in the throes of a heatwave. Welcome to Edinburgh, the bipolar, chav-strewn Athens of the North.
It was so scorching in Abbeyhill this afternoon that the newsagents were for once selling more bottles of water than fags. A day to remember.
This came out of nowhere, YouTube losing the plot every so briefly. And it looks crack-a-lacking. Val Kilmer is so far incognito, but Wikipedia informs he does indeed feature. As nostalgia goes, this trailer is dynamite. High-concept 1986 all comes flooding back: Tom Cruise in his macho infancy, Kenny Loggins in his jammies, blokes wearing Aviator shades indoors, motorbikes, ‘inverted’ chat, and … blokes playing volleyball to … Kenny Loggins. Incredible scenes.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/top-gun-maverick-plot-cast-release-date-tom-cruise-sequel/
Visions of A Clockwork Orange (1971) every time I run the Balgreen gauntlet for the tram to York Place, Alex DeLarge and his droogies bashing in a poor drunken hobo for kicks. Such ultra-violence has probably happened half a dozen times in this foreboding underpass, but without the costumes and long eyelashes.
This Orwellian building on Gorgie Road was an eyesore by day. Home to Edinburgh Council ministries, it was a depressing affair trudging past here every morning, the gruesome monument ruining my Fleetwood Mac U.S. Route 66 fantasies.
At night, though, it was gleaming, almost cosy and welcoming. Weird.
And it’s now being converted to yet more apartments. As is the rest of Edinburgh in its present ‘gentrification’ frenzy. Nostalgia will no doubt kick in one day and I’ll start to mourn the metamorphosis of Chesser House.
At this moment in time, though, I’m not bothered. I’ll give it a decade.
Further reading:
https://regencyresidential.co.uk/news/penthouse-plans-for-superflats-in-edinburgh/
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 