Category: Blog Posts (Page 5 of 7)

‘Star Trek’ Was Years Ahead Of Its Time

August 4, 2017 / Taylor Gaines

If we learned anything this week, it’s that humans aren’t ready to create life. Particularly, intelligent, self-sufficient robot life. Basically, two robots talked gibberish to each other, and everyone lost their minds. For context, some of their conversation:

Bob: “I can can I I everything else”

Alice: “Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to.”

Scary stuff.

Coincidentally, I recently watched “Star Trek: The Next Generation” for the first time. It was an episode called “Measure of a Man” from Season Two. It was good. What struck me is the smart and thoughtful way it spoke about the way we treat the things – and possibly eventually life – we create as extensions and reflections of ourselves. After this week’s news, I thought that was interesting. Then I had some more thoughts. Here are those thoughts.

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First, I wanted to note that the single most amazing thing about “ST:TNG” (I’ve seen one episode, I’m pretty sure I can call it that now) is that Patrick Stewart is in it. Now, this may not come as news to most people and most people may, in fact, already know that “Next Gen” (as the true fans like to call it) was actually Stewart’s first big break in entertainment, but in the context of a modern viewer who had no awareness of the actual Patrick Stewart Reality he lived in, I found this amazing. In my mind, it was unbelievable that someone as talented and famous as Stewart would “stoop” to television (as they liked to say in the 80s and 90s before television was mostly better than movies). Sir Patrick Stewart! Anyway.

People love imagining the day robots become sentient. It’s something sci-fi creators have dreamt about early and often. Two of the best movies of the last five years (“Her” and “Ex Machina”) were largely about that. “Measure of a Man” came on the airwaves in February 1989. So the idea’s been around.

The episode is about a member of the “Star Trek” team named Data, played by Brent Spiner.* He’s an android. He seems great. He seems smart. He gets stuff done. The crew even loves playing poker with him. He has a distinctly human quality of looking, walking and talking like a human but doesn’t really have emotions.

*I refuse to be held liable for any words or phrases that may upset “Star Trek” nerds. Don’t @ me.

Early on, a fella named Maddox comes along who decides he needs to take Data apart to figure out what makes him tick in order to make more Datas. This way, more ships in the Starfleet will have smart androids on their team. And peace will rule the universe! Or something! The problem is, Maddox is not very convincing in the sense that he doesn’t actually seem prepared to perform such a surgery, and there seems to be a decent chance Data doesn’t come out of it as himself (or alive?!).

Basically, as a volunteer member of the Star Squad, Data is able to be like, “You know what, nah. I’m good.” Then Patrick Stewart, who plays Captain Picard, is like, “Yeah, you know what, I think Data’s good.” But then Maddox is like, “I was afraid it might come to this! Data is the property of Starfleet because it is an android, and I can do whatever the hell I want!” Then they argue about bylaws and clauses and other plot contrivances to delay the inevitable for a while: a trial where they decide whether Data is a sentient being with the right to opt out of the procedure.

The question more or less becomes “Does Data have a soul?” “The essence of experiences,” they call it. “An ineffable quality.” As our discourse proved this week, we are not prepared to answer or even address that question now, even 30 years later. But the characters in “Star Trek,” namely Patrick Stewart, are prepared. They handle the situation with care and compassion.

Thanks to a timely meeting with Whoopi Goldberg, who is also apparently in this show (did this show launch literally everyone’s career??), Patrick Stewart realizes that the decision over Data’s sentience and right to choose for himself is not just about Data. It’s about all androids, present and future. The precedent they set in these 45 minutes will decide whether future androids will be reduced to slave labor. It’s like a “Westworld” episode that’s actually thoughtful and interesting and not predicated entirely on a big plot twist you see coming a mile away.

Patrick Stewart and the others present their arguments over Data’s sentience to an independent arbiter – Captain Phillipa Louvois, played by Amanda McBroom. Then she makes her decision. And says this:

“Does Data have a soul? I don’t know that he has. I don’t know that I have. But he should have the freedom to explore that question for himself.”

It’s hard to deny Data is more likely to be referred to as “him” than “it,” even just watching his quirks play out over the course of a single episode. But what is that “ineffable quality,” that “essence of experiences”? You’ve probably heard the word “soul.” Maybe “spirit,” or even “life force.” How do we describe that essential trait that makes us human? We’re many years into existing as a species, and we still don’t have a satisfying way to understand it. It’s one of the paradoxically un-understandable yet completely understood things about being human.

As Louvois says, “I don’t know that I have.” Do any of us truly? And even if we do, how do we separate ourselves from the things we create, especially once those things start learning to talk back? What’s beautiful, I think, about this “Star Trek” episode is the thought that the things we create should be recognized to be as imperfectly perfect as we are. That we are not gods ourselves, but flawed humans who have been plodding along for centuries, despite ourselves at times. That the things we create are, by extension, just as human as we are. If and when the day of robot sentience comes – which even now, seems hard to imagine – I hope we can handle the discourse surrounding it with half as much grace as “Star Trek” did 30 years ago.

That’s probably asking a lot.

‘Survivor’ Joe Del Campo Interview Preview: Dressed In Drag

July 31, 2017 / Taylor Gaines

On Tuesday, we’re releasing an interview with Joe Del Campo, one of the oldest castaways in “Survivor” history. Joe was 72 years old when he went on Season 32, “Survivor: Kaoh Rong – Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty,” and made it all the way to Day 34 before being medically evacuated after overeating at a reward. He carries with him years of experience as an FBI agent and private investigator, and he’s got tons of great stories to share. Make sure to download the episode on Tuesday to hear them all, and for now, enjoy this teaser.

Joe: We started getting women FBI agents probably two years after I wasn’t around – 1973, I think it was. In the Milwaukee office we didn’t have one, and what happened was they called all the agents in that were in the field working. The boss/special agent in charge says, “We have a potential problem here. We have a bank president who’s being extorted for $50,000. The bad guy wants his wife to have the money, and he’s going to give instructions on the telephone, blah, blah, blah.”

Well, there were no women in the office, and for whatever reason, he picks me with five o’clock shadow. And I had to dress up in drag as a woman and pretend I’m the wife of the hostage.

So, the first place we had to drive was a parking lot where they had payphones. Then, a parking lot attendant walks up to me – and I looked really bad. I’ve got a wig on, I’ve got five o clock shadow, make-up looks like crap, you know? He looks in and says, “Oh my god,” and just walked away. Threw his hands up in the air and walked away from me.

The phone rang. I went over. I was able to talk in a higher voice back then – not now. And they said, “We want you to go to the Boston Store.” The Boston store was two blocks away that you had to walk. Meanwhile, I’ve got FBI agents covering me, and I’m walking down the street with a shopping bag and $50,000 in the shopping bag.

And I see a guy approaching me that looks familiar. I said, “Oh, sugar. That’s that guy that – I see him at the bar. I wave to him once in a while. He doesn’t know I’m an FBI guy.” He’s gonna see me in drag, but I can’t stop and identify myself because we don’t know if the bad guy’s there or there are accomplices or whatever.

So, as I’m walking by, he looks at me like, “Oh my god,” you know? And I keep walking.

Long story short, there were several other places I had to go. I’d drop the money, we’d leave in a car and then they’d make the arrest.

So, a week or so later, I go back to – it was a bar in the neighborhood that we frequented, a lot of police officers and DEA and FBI guys after work, and I see the guy across the bar. So I said, “Well, hell, now’s my chance…”

To hear how the story ends, download Episode 63 of The Fauxworthy Podcast. Make sure you rate, review and subscribe in the meantime, and follow us on Twitter @fauxworthypod.

Del Toro’s Labyrinth

July 28, 2017 / Taylor Gaines

By Sam Hensel

On Tuesday, Taylor and Sam argued over which movie director should be the subject of their upcoming podcast series. In the series, they will examine each movie in the filmography of a prominent director. When the dust settled, two men remained: Guillermo del Toro and Denis Villeneuve. Next Tuesday, we’ll be holding a live Twitter vote to determine the winner and subject of the series. Today, we are publishing Taylor’s and Sam’s arguments for why you should vote for their chosen director. You can find Taylor’s here. Down below: Sam on del Toro.

I am a connoisseur of advanced metrics.

The goal of this podcast is to watch every movie of one director (ideally to get hyped about a future project they’re making). We started out by selecting five directors to whittle down. I turned to the number-generating questions:

How many movies have they put out? What do the critics think of those movies? How dead or close to dead are they? Are their posters cool? Is Jake Gyllenhaal in their movies a lot?¹

All things are calculable and have binary value. My algorithms for this project were tedious and all-encompassing, creating an altogether perfect system to choose the perfect candidate: Guillermo del Toro,² master of the dark fairy tale.

His attention to oddity and sense for people as cold and haunted as the house they were living in made “Crimson Peak” feel truly icy and ghoulish.

His wariness of the exhausted usage of monsters and Transformer-sized monsters in movies helped him create a surprisingly original and (don’t hate me for this) actually pretty good “Pacific Rim.”

He makes truly escapist movies, not distracting movies. I don’t know where or when “Shape of Water” is supposed to take place, but it looks like a completely singular sci-fi/horror/romantic(?) experience, and I have full faith in GDT to put me there. I don’t know what kind of neighborhood has Pan’s Labyrinth from “Pan’s Labyrinth” just sitting nearby in the woods, but it is certainly a place I’ve never been and never, ever, ever want to go to.

But I’m not here to tell you why GDT has a better resume of great movies than Denis Villeneuve (for example: Villeneuve has 0.00 movies in which an orphaned demon is the main hope for taking down the Nazis; GDT has at least two).

I’m here, ultimately, to prove that GDT is in every way a better person than Dilly Vineuve.³

Isn’t that what we’re really asking ourselves? Because the question, “Which of these directors should I watch every movie of?” in a world where the writer-director puts so much of himself into the movie is really asking this: “Who do I want to hang out with for hours and hours?”

That question can only truly be answered by running del Toro and Villeneuve through the two most relevant and encapsulating scenarios I’ve come across.

They’re featured below:

¹ In full disclosure, The Gyllenhaal Clause was used officially as a tie-breaker between two directors with equal scores in the original calculations. It was not given its own category.

² Technically. it was Guy Ritchie, but he was immediately eliminated, so here we are.

³And tbh I don’t feel comfortable pitting “The Strain” and “Blade II” against “Arrival” and the trailer for “Bladerunner 2049” in a one-to-one comparison. That just feels like something I won’t win.

Scenario 1:

You go out to the park after school, and you’re looking to ball. You start shooting around and get picked up to play a 5-on-5 game by three guys. They tell you to pick the fifth. You look over and see GDT and Dilly sitting on the bench hoping to get picked. Who do you take?

This is not a decision to be taken lightly.

I’m in the camp of those who believe you can tell everything you need to know about a man by the way he plays pick-up basketball. Competition can bring out the worst in you, but low-stakes competition that you’re letting get the best of you because it’s more competitive than you thought — now that reveals your true self. It’s the best test of character that technology can measure at the moment, and if it were up to me, this would be the only scenario we study.

In the podcast Taylor and I recorded this week, I decided that if the directors¹ were put into actual basketball positions, GDT would be my center. Taylor said in response that Dillineuve would be his shooting guard to “knock down threes.” Let’s play that out for a second.

We’re talking about backyard streetball here. This is a game in which most of the time there is no three-point line, and if it’s anything like Northdale Park, the double rim is bent all the way to the side.

What kind of selfish basketball are you playing if you’re sitting from beyond the non-existent arc tossing bricks at the side of a deformed hoop?

Let me tell you what kind.

Every possession, Dilly walks across half court and starts calling for the ball. He’s the guy who’s “always open.” He waits on the edge for a shot that 90 percent of the time makes a be-dunk! sound off the back of the rim and shoots out to a defender. Guys like Dilly always follow it up with a completely shocked cry of disappointment like it’s some kind of unheard-of tragedy that it didn’t go in, preceded of course by the unwarranted “AND ONE!” that insinuates he was anywhere near close enough to anyone to make contact.

At 6-foot-1, (probably like) 250 pounds, GDT is putting in the work for your team at center. He’s boxing out when Dilly throws up garbage shots, and he’s arm-wrestling for every single ball that skyrockets off the rim. He doesn’t get thanked. and he doesn’t get glory. He bruises his way to the rim, gets the ball, and bounces back out to the shooter. He comes, he eats, he leaves². Selfless.

¹For posterity: Guy Ritchie (Power Forward), Danny Boyle (Small Forward), Kathryn Bigelow (Point Guard), Darren Aronofsky (Shooting Guard).

²Yes I know that this has an entirely different meaning in the movie. Don’t @ me.*

*RTs are fine.

Scenario 2:

You wake up in Mexico. You have no idea how you got there. You’re lying face down in the dirt, and a member of the Cartel is pointing a gun at your head. Your hands are tied, and you’ve just been informed that your dad has been kidnapped.

This is the easiest test imaginable. Listen to these real-life GDT quotes:

“I worked for months next to a morgue that I had to go through to get to work. I’ve seen people being shot; I’ve had guns put to my head; I’ve seen people burnt alive, stabbed, decapitated … because Mexico is still a very violent place.”

“I remember the worst experience of my life, even above the kidnapping of my father, was shooting ‘Mimic.'”

Skrrt!! What? Even above the kidnapping of my father! We’re talking about a dude who has so much experience with danger that he thinks making a movie — to be fair I haven’t seen it, so maybe its just the worst — is worse than his father being kidnapped in Mexico! That says as much about his dedication to the craft as it does his potential desensitization to violence.

Do you want someone who made a pretty good movie about Mexico (“Sicario”) or THA DUDE WHO HAD GUNS POINTED AT HIS HEAD IN MEXICO AND SURVIVED.

Let’s stop passing the ball to Dilly.

Let’s follow Guillermo down into del Toro’s Labyrinth.

Let’s please watch both “Hellboys.”

Follow us @fauxworthypod, and check in on Tuesday for the live vote. The winner will be the subject for the podcast series. “Blade Runner 2049” comes out October 6. “The Shape of Water” comes out December 8.

Vote Villeneuve 2049

July 28, 2017 / Taylor Gaines

On Tuesday, Taylor and Sam argued over which movie director should be the subject of their upcoming podcast series. In the series, they will examine each movie in the filmography of a prominent director. When the dust settled, two men remained: Guillermo del Toro and Denis Villeneuve. Next Tuesday, we’ll be holding a live Twitter vote to determine the winner and subject of the series. Today, we are publishing Taylor’s and Sam’s arguments for why you should vote for their chosen director. First up: Taylor on Villeneuve. (Update: Sam’s is here.)

The argument for Denis Villeneuve is two minutes and 22 seconds long.

Sure, I could spend my time telling you why watching the movies of a man who decided to make two “Hellboy” movies is a bad idea. Or I could tell you why we’d be wasting our time with a filmmaker who saw “Pinocchio” and thought, “You know what? That story should be darker.” I could even tell you why you should never trust the judgment of a man who thinks “The Strain” is good television.

But I won’t do that.

I could also spend my time telling you why Villeneuve is the right choice. For many reasons. I could tell you that “Arrival” is secretly the best movie of the last year. I could tell you that watching “Prisoners” will make you feel things you never thought a movie could make you feel. I could point out that you’d actually be doing Sam a favor by picking Villeneuve because his all-time favorite actor Jake Gyllenhaal is in two of his movies.

But I won’t do that either.

For now, I will simply show you a video that is two minutes and 22 seconds long and highlight some of the moments within.

Please begin.

This is the trailer for Villeneuve’s upcoming film, “Blade Runner 2049.” It comes out October 6.

This is Ryan Gosling. He plays Sebastian. Years after the world has fallen into complete disarray due to a nuclear apocalypse, he still likes to visit the piano bar he used to own. He doggedly holds out hope that he will run into his old flame, Mia, again, and that they can rekindle their romance. “Blade Runner 2049” takes place several years after the events of the first movie, but fans hope it will provide all the answers to their burning questions. Will John Legend make an appearance? It’s too soon to say.

The trailer also reveals that “Blade Runner 2049” takes place in the same expanded universe as “The Prestige,” a theory many had been bandying about online for years.

That’s enough about the plot for now, though. I’d like to talk about wonder.

Denis Villeneuve is the kind of director that makes you audibly gasp when you’re watching his movies in the theater. The world his camera captures is more beautiful than the one we actually inhabit. Even when it’s eye is trained on a post-apocalyptic society. Every shot in this trailer is magnificent, and I would like to build a home inside each of them and live out the rest of my days traveling between each one. That’s wonder.

I mean, c’mon.

That feeling you get when Mackenzie Davis struts onto the screen like she owns the god damn world is called joy. One of our best television actors (“Halt and Catch Fire”, “Black Mirror”) is getting her chance to rule the big screen, and she is not taking that lightly.

If you aren’t sold yet, think about this.

Harrison Ford is 75 years old. When he moves around on screen, he looks every bit his age. But when Villeneuve, in his infinite wisdom, saw Harrison Ford on set, he said, “You know what, I know what this movie’s missing. We need a man who looks like he hasn’t run in 25 years to run from a collapsing building or something.”

This moment in the trailer is funny, and if you don’t want to see Harrison Ford trying to run in a movie, I’m not sure what I can do for you.

There are so many questions. Why is Ryan Gosling so angry? Whose blood is that? Is he a robot? Is Harrison Ford a robot? Will any of Guillermo del Toro’s movies be half as good as this single second of the “Blade Runner 2049” trailer? Will that guy from “Suicide Squad” completely ruin the movie? Am I contractually obligated to mention him by name *cough* Jared Leto? Is Tom Hardy in this movie? Is Denis Villeneuve the best filmmaker currently working in Hollywood?

If you want answers, you know what to do.

Vote Villeneuve.

Tom Hardy Is Our Greatest Living Actor

July 24, 2017 / Taylor Gaines

In “Dunkirk,” there’s a scene where Tom Hardy’s plane glides gently over the sandy beaches of Dunkirk. It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring and very emotional.

I won’t spoil anything about the film, but I found it odd that this scene was so emotional. I thought about why this was.

In “Dunkirk,” Tom Hardy mostly wears an oxygen mask, scribbles in chalk and moves his head around. I think he waves once. At several points during the movie, it becomes clear that Tom Hardy is our greatest living eyeball actor.

I underestimated him, though. The emotion I felt during that aforementioned scene makes that very clear. Tom Hardy is not only our greatest living eyeball actor, but our greatest living actor, period.

I’ve gathered the evidence for you below. Let’s look into it.

This is not the first time Tom Hardy has given an amazing eyeball-based performance.

I was just talking about Tom Hardy’s eyes, so we should start there.

Remember “The Dark Knight Rises”? The mildly disappointing conclusion to the most important trilogy in modern, big-budget filmmaking in the last 15 years? Tom Hardy played the villain, Bane, in that movie. The whole time, you can pretty much only see his eyes and his bulging neck. When you watch the movie now, it is clear that Tom Hardy gave the most underrated villain performance in modern comic book movie history. It’s such a great performance that super-important people have even stolen from his prison speech over the years.

Exhibit A.

This is not the first time Tom Hardy has given an amazing performance while sitting in a transportation vehicle for an entire movie.

“Locke” takes place in a car. Tom Hardy drives the car. Sometimes, Tom Hardy makes phone calls from the car. Sometimes, Tom Hardy doesn’t make phone calls from the car, but instead receives phone calls. He does this for about 90 minutes. Then the movie ends.

You won’t be able to take your eyes off the screen.

Next.

This is not the first time Tom Hardy has given an amazing performance with like 12 or 13 words total.

To my recollection, this scene in “Mad Max: Fury Road” is pretty much the only one where Tom Hardy manages to string more than a couple sentences together. However, Tom Hardy saying, “My name is Max” is the most emotional thing that happened in a movie in 2015. It’s inexplicable. The only explanation is that Tom Hardy is from an alien species that exists simply to give amazing acting performances on the planet Earth. I don’t know why his species came here to do something so seemingly trivial, but I’m very grateful. With these four words, he won me over.

Tom Hardy is also great at acting when he uses a lot of words in a movie.

You probably haven’t forgotten “Inception,” but you’ve probably forgotten that Tom Hardy is actually the best thing in the movie. He’s sly and witty and funny and truly embodies his character with every movement. This scene is the perfect example. It also proves that Tom Hardy has not just recently become our greatest living actor. He has been our greatest living actor for years.

Anything else?

Oh, yeah.

Tom Hardy made me watch more than one episode of “Taboo.”

“Taboo” is a dumb and bad show that aired on FX earlier this year. Tom Hardy is in it. In fact, he’s the star of it. It’s about land and the East India Trading Company or something. It’s not worth your time. Still, Tom Hardy is so good at acting that I watched four episodes of this show trying to convince myself I could like it. I couldn’t. But the fact that I tried says it all. He’s a man you’d do anything to watch perform.

In conclusion…

Tom Hardy shall prevail over all until the end. Tom Hardy shall act with his eyes, and he shall act with his neck veins. Tom Hardy shall act with a few words, and Tom Hardy shall act with many words. Tom Hardy shall out-act everyone, whatever the cost may be — a great movie, or a terrible TV show. Tom Hardy shall never surrender.

If, which I do not for a moment believe, Tom Hardy or a large part of him were out-acted, then our cinema would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, Tom Hardy, with all his power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of us all.