So we’re far from done with delving the deep well of nostalgia so here is another live-action remake of a Disney classic. This one was heavily derided on its initial announcement for the casting of Will Smith as the Genie with his skin a ludicrous shade of blue. But I like how the casting now proper reflects, more or less, the appropriate ethnicities of the characters and I love how director Guy Ritchie completely commits to this as a musical. This is probably my favorite of the Disney remakes so far.
Like most people I bought this prequel entirely because of how much I liked the main game. This one is actually made by a different studio and being a prequel has no Max Caulfield and her time powers in it. Instead here you are put in control of Chloe Price and the story is all about how she gets to know Rachel Amber and become best friends. There’s a new mechanic called Backtalk which is supposed to represent Chloe’s ability to convince others to do things her way by insulting them but in practice, it’s another conversation option.
This film received some decent press last year and it was directed by Steve McQueen who shot to fame following 12 Years a Slave. Given that its three leads are all women and their leader is a black woman, it’s obvious that there’s a female and minority empowerment theme going on in here as well. Yet this is a heist film, not a serious drama, and one expects the requisite excitement and entertainment value from it. This unfortunately is not forthcoming.
This one is an Indian documentary that is a little obscure so I’m rather happy that I managed to find it at all. It was the director Rahul Jain debut film and it has no narration and indeed very little dialogue at all. There are a few very succinct interviews and that’s it. Jain for the most part allows the images to speak for themselves in a manner that is very similar to Tie Xi Qu.
Partway while working through this batch of renders, Blender 2.81 actually dropped but the most important improvements are in sculpting which I don’t really do anyway. I spent a lot of time over the past couple of months working on this one scene, rendered in Eevee here. Nothing really new here in terms of technique but it stands out simply because of the sheer amount of detail present and that involved modelling each and every one of the small objects present in the scene. I think it represents my best work so far but it really did take a long time to do.
So we watched the first season of this a while back and only now made time for the second season. There’s a third and final season already out but I think we’re done with it. As Marvel Comics fans will know, Legion refers to David Haller, the super powerful son of Charles Xavier and who appears most often as a villain. I’m amazed that so esoteric a show was allowed to be made. I’m even more amazed that it amounts to an exercise on how to present psychosis in a visually interesting way.
This marks the last of Stanley Kubrick’s films that I have yet to watch. I was reminded of its existence only due to Filmworker as Leon Vitali got his start with the grandmaster director here with a supporting role. As always I am astounded by Kubrick’s ability to make masterpieces of completely different genres and this is indeed a beautiful film on multiple levels. Still though it proceeds at a sedate pace, this should be considered one of his more conventional and approachable films.
