MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Tag: Film

  • Minecraft

    I went to see Minecraft and couldn’t help noticing a pattern in recent blockbusters—from Mario Bros. and Everything Everywhere to Spider-Man, Ghostbusters, and The Batman: every character is hustling, struggling, or just scraping by. It signals how economic precarity has been normalized in American storytelling—and not just in dramas or indie films, where you’d expect…

  • Tulsa King

    Scene: A smoky, dimly lit Oklahoma bar. Sylvester Stallone and Taylor Sheridan, cowboy hat and all, sit across from each other, kicking around ideas for Tulsa King Stallone: Alright, picture this: I’m a retired mobster, right? Everyone’s scared. I walk into a bar, bam, punches start flyin’. Next thing you know, I’m running the joint.…

  • Making Movies

    Making your own movie is a bit like algebra—a creative endeavor with straightforward steps you can learn and apply, like plugging numbers into equations. It’s all very comforting, if not a tad boring. You follow the rules, and voilà! You’ve got a film. But distribution? Ah, that’s where it gets murky—like calculus. Suddenly, you’re grappling…

  • IP Bloat and ZIRP

    IP bloat and zero interest rates, my friends, are the twin nightmares of our modern entertainment and economic systems. The former, a grotesque carnival of stale franchises and soulless sequels, floods the market with an avalanche of derivative dreck, hoping to drown out the creaky echoes of its own mediocrity. The latter, zero interest rates,…

  • The Cheaper The Mortgage

    The cheaper the mortgage, the more vibrant the cultural scene—it’s almost an economic law. When people aren’t crushed under the weight of exorbitant housing costs, they have room to breathe, to create, to take risks. In neighborhoods where the rent isn’t devouring their every dollar, artists, writers, and musicians can afford to be bold, to…

  • Film Executive Priorities

    In the high-stakes world of Hollywood, film executives emerge as tragicomic figures, navigating a landscape where profit, status, and survival dominate every decision. Their priorities are not mere tasks to be checked off but are deeply embedded in the very fabric of the industry. It’s a brutal game where the sharpest minds, the quickest thinkers,…

  • Expanded Universes and Auteur Theory

    Sharp, you dig. Extended Universes are like psychic Skinner boxes, man. These sprawling narratives, with their intricate lore and endless franchises, pump out rewards – character arcs, epic battles, fan theories that bloom like digital peyote. We get hooked, wired right into the pleasure circuits. Deeper we delve, the more enmeshed we become in their…

  • The Illusion of Funding: How Hollywood Forgot How to Dream

    The primary challenge for Hollywood now is to abandon the idea of creating various schemes around box office numbers, realizing that they could essentially “print money” using alternative financial methods, relying on box office and streaming figures to uphold the belief that these streams primarily funded projects. What it funded was an artistic vision of…

  • Amelie