For 2025, one of my goals was to write a screenplay for a feature film. However, I quickly realized I had an unexpected obstacle: my typing speed. I imagine that a truly inspired writer would power through and just dictate the script or write it on the phone or iPad. As a chronic procrastinator, I of course decided to delay my writing project by getting my typing up to speed first....
The Letterboxd pro subscription automatically compiles summary stats, which makes this an easy exercise. I logged 204 feature films this year, which actually is the most since I logged 365 in 2021. 200 films feels like the sweet spot for a casual movie-lover because it’s much more lenient than the degenerate one-a-day pace (for those not in the industry), yet allows for a balance of new releases and classics with wiggle room for guilty pleasure trash content....
Today’s post: we take an LLM and try (but not very hard) to make it take movie notes like me and see what funny content it generates. Every time I watch a movie, I write five to ten sentences about it in a spreadsheet that’s rotting away in a random folder on my computer. I’ve never shared the outputs because the writing quality is extremely low now (I watch movies at the very end of the day after spending all day on the computer at work)....
Inspired after reading Darcy Paquet’s New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves, I decided to pick a random director from the Korean New Wave to watch and landed on Im Sang-soo, who, while not as distinguished as the likes of Bong Joon-ho, Lee Chang-dong or Park Chan-wook, has still released plenty of films that have received international recognition and has even reached #1 at the South Korean box office. I watched his films in chronological order until I got to Heaven: To The Land of Happiness which currently has only screened at a few festivals....
After discovering that I watch a lot of movies, a friend recently asked me what I think of TENET (2021) because he knows someone who is obsessed with it. My initial instinct was to reply, “well, it’s a fun movie, but not really one to be obsessed with.” Right before I left home to go see the re-release of this movie, I was struck with an odd thought: I might be just as engaged with this film as that friend....
For a long time now I’ve wanted to start a blog because it empowers the recipient of my thoughts to opt-out whenever they like. Welcome!