I’ve never seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street but I stumbled on it while channel surfing last night, in the middle of Leonardo DiCaprio’s big speech. I watched a minute or so, just long enough to decide it could not hold a candle to some of the other great “greed” scenes.
Alec Baldwin’s Glengarry Glen Ross Speech; Michael Douglas’ “greed is good” scene; and Ben Affleck’s famous scene from The Boiler Room.
You bring the popcorn, I’ll bring the cyanide. Watch on YouTube
(Gemini) MovieLens.org is a non-commercial movie recommendation engine and research platform operated by the GroupLens Research lab at the University of Minnesota. Since its launch in 1997, it has served a dual purpose: providing users with high-accuracy personalized film suggestions and serving as a critical “living laboratory” for the study of collaborative filtering and human-computer interaction.
Unlike commercial alternatives like IMDb or Letterboxd, MovieLens is entirely free of advertisements and corporate sponsorship. Its primary output is academic insight. The site is famous for pioneering early collaborative filtering algorithms which predict how you will rate a film based on your historical behavior and the behavior of similar users.
Last year I spent a few hours on MovieLens.org rating 435 movies I had watched. I think my criteria was “would I watch this movie again?” I uploaded those those movies and my ratings and asked Gemini for an analysis.
Based on your 435 ratings, I’ve performed a skeptical audit of your cinematic preferences. I’ve bypassed the “predictive recommendations” fluff to look at where your taste actually diverges from the consensus.
1. The “Lebowski” Anomaly (Contrarian Profile) -You are significantly more critical than the average MovieLens user. While the site average is ~3.72, your mean rating is 3.41. You are most “contrarian” when it comes to established cult classics and high-concept stylistic films.
Analysis: You appear to have a low tolerance for “quirk” or indulgent stylistic flourishes that others label as “genius.”
2. The “Maverick” Picks (Guilty Pleasures or Hidden Gems?) – Conversely, you value certain films far higher than the general public. Your “Maverick” score is highest for:
Analysis: You seem to favor competence and high-stakes procedural/action narratives (Mosul, Bourne, Sicario) over “vibe-based” cinema.
3. Historical Bias (Decade Analysis) – Despite your skeptical leanings, you have a soft spot for the mid-century.
4. Interest Alignment: Radio & Mechanics – Given your interest in radio history and mechanical vehicles:
You are a Pragmatic Realist. You reward movies that execute a specific function well (thrillers, procedurals, mid-century classics) and punitively down-rate movies that rely on irony, surrealism, or “cult” status to earn their keep.
Hmm. Not sure I agree but I guess the data doesn’t lie.
The remote for our big LG TV died so I watched an episode of Mayor of Easttown on my iPhone last night. I do that from time to time and once again I found this a very satisfying experience. At no time did I have a sense of “this is such a tiny little screen.”
I asked Perplexity about typical movie/TV viewing distance on mobil phones:
“Studies that look at smartphone viewing distances for video and general “digital device” use show that phones are commonly viewed at around about 12–14 inches, similar to reading distance. Experimental work that tested video viewing at 20 cm vs. 40 cm used those as realistic “near” and “far” smartphone distances, supporting the idea that typical use falls somewhere between them, with averages in the low 30‑cm range.”
That’s pretty much me. Had the phone propped against a pillow on my stomach. This works for me (and others?) because the relative screen size is about the same, as I attempted to show in this 10 second video. Continue reading
I rarely recommend a movie because no one ever really knows what someone else is going to like, no matter how well you know that person. Having said that…
Last night we paid $20 to rent One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film ran 2 hours and 45 minutes but the pacing was so fast –from the opening scene– it seemed much shorter.
Sean Penn gave an amazing performance as Col. Steve Lockjaw, the film’s bad guy and if you watch closely you’ll see a few scenes with Wood Harris (Avon Barksdale from The Wire). Some of the humor and the soundtrack reminded me of Quentin Tarantino but I’m not sure Mr. Tarantino could have come up with the Christmas Adventurers Club.
One Battle has earned more than $200 million and most reviews have been glowing (“A near-perfect blend of action, humor and political urgency.”)
ChatGPT: Let’s spin this out as if we were pitching a serious film treatment. Not propaganda, not rah-rah, but something in the lineage of Apocalypse Now, Platoon, The Hurt Locker — war films that tried to wrestle with the essence of their conflict. Working Title: “The Sky Above” Continue reading
ChatGPT: Since we’re narrowing it to wars in which the U.S. was directly involved, I’ll pull across a mix of classics, modern interpretations, and films that capture both the brutality and psychology of war. Not necessarily the definitive top 10, but ten that stand up well as “best ever.” (in no particular order) Continue reading
I can’t remember ever having seen a scene in a TV or a movie where one of the characters is drinking from a coffee cup that it isn’t completely obvious that that cup is empty wondering why the producers directors the people making this series or movie wouldn’t wanna have something in the cup Once again, ChatGPT has the answer.
ChatGPT: That’s one of those little things that, once you notice it, you can’t unsee it — the infamous empty coffee cup acting. There are a few reasons it happens, even though it definitely breaks the illusion: Continue reading