s t a r s t r i n g e r

Anne Sexton, from a letter featured in Anne Sexton; A Self-Portrait In Letters

youll be able to find books and movies and music that change your life until the day you die. that's pretty good

- Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you

"how did you get into writing" girl i've been tormented by the visions since i was eight years old

I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know

I think...you might be right

what the fuck

riding the trolley out of omelas because i'm a little too shaken to walk rn and i just heard this weird thump from the tracks. probably nothing

#they arrested the trolley driver and the guy in charge of track switching #and i hear they're both being offered some kind of plea deal if they agree to testify against the other person

awarding this the first good riff on this post award. thank you tumblr user anyagobsin. this is the first good riff anyone's had on this post.

have you guys done that “what kind of reader are you” quiz and if so what did you get

here’s mine

ah here’s the link guys

my soft and comfortable mama

Nostalgic memory loss and cherry picking annoy me to the core.

2006 features other CGI-laden flims such as...

Son of the Mask

And Ultraviolet

While 2024 featured...

Dune 2

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

This shot was literally impossible to create in 2006.

Good CGI is made by good artists who have the proper funding, time, and resources. The year doesn't matter.

There has always been bad CGI. There has always been good CGI.

Current CGI is much more advanced and allows for much bigger stories to be told. Most of it is so good, people do not even realize they are looking at CGI. Yes, Top Gun 2 shot a lot of amazing practical footage. But they still had 2400 VFX shots.

And no one could tell the difference.

But also, movies with 2000+ CG shots usually have a quality delta. They run short on time and budget and they have to prioritize which shots get the most love. If there is one valid complaint about modern CGI, it is the lack of consistency.

You might have a weird looking floating head in one scene...

And that is very easy to cherry pick and say "look at how bad CGI is these days!"

But then later in the movie you have the shadow realm moon.

A gorgeous scene that used a groundbreaking lighting effect. Using a strobe technique and a high speed camera, every frame in the scene had six different angles of lighting.

They were able to show a fast revolving sun circling around the characters without having to rig up some crazy light that flies around the room.

Again, not possible in 2006.

When artists have proper resources they will blow your mind.

CGI isn't worse. It is better than ever. It's just that the artists making Davy Jones were amazing. They had the time and money to realize their vision. They had 1400 fewer shots to make than Top Gun Maverick. (Jurassic Park only had 63.)

They also understood their limitations and didn't try to force the CG to do something it wasn't ready for yet.

Reminder that this rhetoric is causing real harm to VFX artists.

They are struggling to unionize and studio marketing is trying to hide their contributions. They turn BTS footage of green screens to gray screens. They boast "all practical" movies that have 2000 VFX shots. They keep many artists out of the credits.

The anti-CGI hate gives real artists a weak hand to bargain with.

Criticize the system and the working conditions, not the art.

People get so upset about AI taking artists' jobs but then they complain that 2 shots in a Marvel movie aren't photorealistic and ignore the 1000 that were and devalue the work of those same artists.

I love practical effects too. And I think the best VFX I've seen have been when practical and CG team up. But there are so many stories I love that could not have been created without the amazing work of VFX artists. I mean, I watch Dune and forget CGI even exists. I feel like I'm just watching real shit the entire movie even though it has giant worms and whatnot.

Change the conversation.

Instead of "Ugh, this CGI sucks."

Why not try, "Ugh, why didn't Disney give their artists enough time to make this look cool?"

Crystals study

i'm so tired

imagine you’re in a room with a group of nine other people & a poem is projected on the wall, you’re all given one minute to read it before the projector is shut off & you discuss; the poem gets at something inside you that you’ve never felt anything get at before & then the projector shuts off - the other nine people all smile at each other with the most insidious look of mutual knowing you’ve ever seen & all simultaneously begin relating around a very consistently shared general interpretation of the poem, just as probing as your own but disconnected from it in practically every way

this what im going thru rn. if anyone gaf

do ppl forget that the whole point is like. to have fun?

Over on Hunger Games TikTok and I’m learning a lot (more) about the story’s lore especially regarding The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes which has been very fun. One interesting thing is learning that while this (unfortunately) isn’t shown in the movies, in the books Dr. Gaul tells Coriolanus that there will be no replays of game 10 which makes him happy because it erases Lucy Gray from the narrative thus removing her from the minds of capitol citizens. But I also thought about how it does another thing which wouldn’t necessarily matter in Coriolanus’ perspective (at least not at the time), it also erases the moment Reaper “buried” the other tributes.

The Hunger Games works to fuel division amongst the district because of course watching kids from other districts kill the kids from yours ignites anger and hatred, even when you all know that the Capitol is the reason behind this violence the division is there and has been for years. So, if that game was replayed and people from other district were to watch a young boy from an outside district handle their fallen children with such care as Reaper did it would be such an unexpected act of compassion that something would bound to ignite…which later did when District 11 watched the care Katniss gave Rue and how she laid her to rest even though they were “enemies” and that district was amongst the first to rally behind Katniss. So if something like this was witnessed earlier; that unity, compassion, and care (no matter how late) could be shown between the tributes in the middle of a forced death game who knows what would’ve happened.

Anyways media censorship is a bitch