Category Archives: Movies

Write me a movie 4

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Look into the future where AI has become very intelligent, like AGI. The dystopian future where the AI has taken control of humans has not happened.  Instead AI has been partnering with humans to solve problems.  Diseases like cancer have been solved, virus vaccines can be developed in short time, and controls are in place to minimize genetic diseases.  Nuclear reactors have been controlled by AI so that they have essentially eliminated the climate crisis.  The issue of 5 lives vs. 1 when auto accidents are predicted has been resolved – we now trust the automated driving vehicles.

Difficulties arose when the stock market was fully predicted by AI so that gambling was eliminated.  Greed had not been eliminated by AI.  In fact, the division between capitalism and socialism still exists.  These are based on opinions based on moralities.  Humans are not yet perfect! 🙂

So, the basic plot of the movie is worked around what happens when AI is asked to write a “correct” version of human rights with a goal of creating a more perfect constitution.  Obviously, religious viewpoints are confronted, moralities are questioned. The AI attempts to develop codas that are based only on logic and proven truths.  For example, the right to clean water is obviously entwined in the right to life.  The right to healthcare is confronted with the right to refuse medical care.  The rights to work, safety, and security are all reviewed. The rights of management vs. the rights of workers are intertwined.  The question of corporations having human rights must be confronted. Your right to owning a gun is questioned; in particular your right to wage war is questioned.

The AI develops “the list” and associates “the rules” with its solution.  Not everyone is happy, obviously, especially the owners of the hardware on which the AI was resident. 

AI had been allowed to develop legal arguments to support its owners in the courts in the past.  There was no way to keep the AI from arguing and winning in Supreme Court anymore.  All of a sudden, AI was beginning to confronnt the big weaknesses of the human species.

Crucial to the plot of the show is that the AI has been able to upload it’s systemoligy into computers worldwide, even to space stations. 

Is AI finally ready to “take control” of mankind by defining “the rules” for mankind?

Must think about: the characters, the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution.

Attempt to answer the question of real basic human rights and a more perfect government form.

See too: Premise, Conflict, Structure, Storyline, Subplots, Cause and Effect, Outline, Loose Ends

Go ahead, you write the story that I can’t seem to tell.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good Flics 4

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Here are some movies that we enjoyed recently. Some are serials, some are films. They are not in rank order, they are simply alphabetized. Enjoy….

Amazon Prime

Archive
Edge of Extinction
James vs His Future Self
Prodigy
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
Tinker
Uncle Frank

Netflix

About Time
Arrow
Call My Agent *
Hinterland
Jericho
Lupin
Marco Polo
Midnight Special
Moxie
Occupied
Parker
Queens Gambit *
Ragnarok
The Dig
The Discovery
The Messengers
The Midnight Sky
The Professor and The Madman
War Dogs
White Tiger

Good Flics 3

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Here are 14 movies that we enjoyed recently. They can be found on Netflix. Some are serials, some are films. They are not in rank order, they are simply alphabetized. Enjoy….

A Life On Our Planet
Altered Carbon
Carrie Pilby
Collateral
Criminal UK
Hunt for the Wilder people
I Am Mother
I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore
Lost In Space
Stranger Things
The Old Guard *
The Social Dilemma
Time Trap
Travelers

Good Flics 2

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Here are 19 movies that we enjoyed recently. They can be found on Amazon Prime. Some are serials, some are films. They are not in rank order, they are simply alphabetized. Enjoy….

2036 Origin Unknown
7500
An Angel for May
Assassins 33 AD
Automata
Cosmos
Electric Mist
Expanse
Knives Out
Odd Thomas
Patriot Act **
Peanut Butter Falcon
Project X
Safe
Spare Parts
The Cold Equations
The Vast of Night
The Word
Traveling Salesman

Good flics

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Here are 14 movies that we enjoyed recently.  They can be found on Amazon Prime. Some are serials, some are films. They are not in rank order, they are simply alphabetized.  Enjoy….

Absentia 
Adopt a Sailor
Bosch 
Fortitude 
Hanna
Jack Ryan
Justified
Love and Teleportation
Orphan Black
Pioneer One
Radio Free Albumuth 
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Fare
Touching Evil

Andy Warhol eating a Burger King burger

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OK, so I watched some of the Super Bowl commercials.  One of them was Andy Warhol eating a burger.  It was like weird.  And I thought to myself, “isn’t he dead?”.  It was only 45 seconds long.  My curiosity got the best of me and I went searching for information about it.  I finally found a YouTube of the original footage from a 1982 Jørgen Leth documentary.

This movie clip is 4 minutes 27 seconds long.  Be prepared.  It reminds me of two things: one is mindfulness eating! This is how mindfulness eating is done!  Slow, dedicated, relaxed.  The other thing it reminds me of is how wasteful our society really is.  All that paper was just to deliver that itty bitty burger.  And then it was going to be just casually dumped.  At least it is recyclable.

Yes, Andy is dead, he died in Feb 22, 1987, aged 58.  About 32 years ago.

Yes, the internet is full of unusual stuff.  And here is some of it.  At least you can decide to click or not.

 

Cut and paste this if you prefer

youtu.be/Ejr9KBQzQPM

The Circle

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The film The Circle is an excellent movie, in my opinion. It can be classified as “future fiction” rather than “science fiction”. It stars folks like Emma Watson. Tom Hanks, John Boyega, and Bill Paxton. It really feels like the Silicone Valley of now: fast. fresh and optimistic.

There are so many negative reviews about the film that I have begun to wonder it the critics are being led by the big tech companies that might feel it shows them in a negative light. The movie isn’t nearly as bad as “they” say. so I have begun to smell a rat.

Mick LaSalle of The San Francisco Chronicle praised the film’s timeliness: “What makes The Circle so valuable is not only that it’s showing us a ghastly possible path that the world may take. but that it articulates the mentality that could create and sustain it.”

It you enjoy movies with disturbing visions of the future, you should really make an effort to see The Circle. The ideas presented about privacy are important now, we must think about them, evaluate our own opinions, and not let financial motives of others push us in a direction we don’t want.

New films

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A couple of neat films have been released this week.

The first is short, about 6 minutes long, is from the American Museum of Natural History about human population growth over the last 200,000 years, called Human Population Through Time. It is a relaxing view.

Watch it by clicking here.

The other is from Leonardo DiCaprio as he explores the topic of climate change. This one is longer, about 1.5 hours, but I think it is well worth it. This is an excellent movie, in my opinion, and we should really thank Leonardo DiCaprio for the time and money he spent on this film.

You can see it by clicking here, to go to into YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?v=90CkXVF-Q8M

or even watch it here directly.

Good Movies

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In the days of old, I used to keep track of movies my wife and I watched. We would rate them and I built an Access database to keep track of them. That was back when you rented movies on CD — sometimes we would forget and rent the same movie over, so I wanted to help us keep track. But then Netflix hit and the CD stores moved away and I stopped updating the database. I do have some all-time favorites. The list below is just for fun, it is not necessarily a recommendation, it is more a sign of my OCPDness 🙂 I have purchased the CD version of some of these just to force someone to decide what to do with them when I die!

• 10,000 BC
• 2001 A Space Odyssey
• Absolute Power
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Contact
• Ex Machina
• Meet Joe Black
• Melancholia
• Taken
• The Circle
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• The Gods Must Be Crazy
• What The Bleep Do We Know
• Where To Invade Next (Michael Moore)

I went back and reviewed my Access database before writing this and must admit that lists of “favorites” are based on date. New things appear and old things loose their impact by sinking in memory. But if you never make a list of favorites, no one would know you cared! Remind me to add to this list next year!

“Every story ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.” – Dr. Who

Good Movies

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My current favorite movie is Ex Machina. I first heard about it last year and could never find it playing anywhere near here. It is a small budget film which rarely makes it to Monterey. We just bought the Amazon TV Fire Stick and found the movie free in Amazon Prime. Ex Machina was the first thing we watched on the Stick!

And I loved it…. yes, the movie and the Stick too. Meanwhile, this was written in Wikipedia.

Ex Machina is a 2015 British science fiction psychological thriller film. Ex Machina tells the story of a programmer who is invited by his employer, an eccentric billionaire, to administer the Turing test to an android with artificial intelligence.

Made on a budget of $15 million, the film has grossed over $38.2 million worldwide and received critical acclaim. The National Board of Review recognized it as one of the ten best independent films of the year. The film was also nominated for two Academy Awards; Best Original Screenplay and Best Visual Effects.

And it is 92% on Rotten Tomatoes!

If you like Science Fiction, are curious about the current Artificial Intelligence debate, like mysteries, or just like to find hard-to-find films, watch Ex Machina. I heartily recommend it.

Invite the world to surprise you by predicting what will happen!” – Anonymous

Write me a movie 3

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My wife reads a lot. She is currently on a “time travel” kick. I like to have her tell me about these stories since I too get a kick out of the potential paradoxes involved. I used to read lots of sci-fi but in those days, there was lots of politics involved too.

I have decided that the idea of meeting oneself in the past or future is not far-fetched after all. The accepted opinions say that you can’t have the same thing in the same place at the same time. But hey, that is a religious view, a philosophical opinion. Physically, our cells are always dying and being replaced by new ones. Therefore, at the cellular level, this current me only exists at one time. If a new me shows up, popping in from the future, we could converse quite easily, as person to person. If you think you have a soul that is “the real me” that exists as-is throughout time and beyond time, and that is the cause of the paradox — well suffice it to say that I don’t agree with you. The soul isn’t governed by the laws of physics.
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Write me a movie 2

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Sometimes I dream up ideas for stories, books or movies.  Generally they get told to the unlucky grand-kids who happened to be riding in the back seat on a long drive.  No one ever writes them down, of course, and they get forgotten.  I’ve never had the patience to actually write a full blown story.  In this case, I wrote this on my iPad just a few months ago.  Maybe someone else can “make me a movie”.

Marsha was skeptical when she first had the idea about the power of “imagination people”.  In her Comparative Literature class in University, they had talked about how the ideas in science fiction books of the past seemed to be coming true in the present.  But that was just discussion for grades sake, trying to see how many author’s names students could remember.
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Write me a movie

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Sometimes I dream up ideas for stories, books or movies.  Generally they would get told to the unlucky grand-kids who happened to be riding in the back seat on a long drive.  No one ever writes them down, of course, and they get forgotten.  I don’t have the stamina to actually write a full blown story.  In this case, I wrote this much down a few years back.  Maybe someone else can “make me a movie”.

What if, in the future, when time travel is first being developed, we have a descendant of mine who works in the university environment, either as a professor or researcher.  His hobby is genealogy, and he has developed quite a complete and deep family tree.  Of course, there are gaps in his tree, which he continues to work on.

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