Category: Film
China fact of the day
Chinese actors and online influencers have a new rival: cost-effective advanced AI video generation programmes that are threatening millions of jobs in a once-vibrant area of China’s gig economy.
The release of powerful new AI-powered video software, such as tech group ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 model, has allowed digital actors to replace humans, enabling the production of higher-quality original videos more quickly.
The digital takeover intensified after this year’s release of Seedance 2.0, said Greg Wollner, a short-drama actor and producer in Beijing. Before its release, he was shooting three different productions a week. “And after that, everything just went.”
Many of Wollner’s friends “had to quit doing what they love and change to something else”, he said. In May, 89 of the top 100 animated dramas on Douyin, ByteDance’s domestic Chinese version of TikTok, were AI productions according to DataEye, a marketing analytics company.
Here is more from Joe Leahy and Isaac Castella-McDonald in the FT.
What should I ask Yiyang Zhuge (诸葛一杨), also known as Zhong Shu (仲树)?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her. She is best known to Western audiences for her interview with Christopher Nolan, but she has numerous other achievements:
Yiyang Zhuge is a political theorist, political columnist, and a translator of German and Greek philosophical texts. She is an instructor at Brandeis University, and a PhD Candidate at Boston College.
Yiyang is a major translator of Hannah Arendt into Chinese. She has translated The Human Condition, Life of the Mind, Men in Dark Times, collected poetry, Die verborgene Tradition, and Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess. She has given numerous lectures and published numerous public-facing articles on Arendt.
Yiyang published the first Greek-to-Chinese translation of Plutarch’s Moralia, a best-selling philosophy book in 2025.
She runs Princeton University Press’s Political Philosophy Book Club, where she interviews important Western academics for the Chinese audience.
Yiyang is a public intellectual in China. She reports on American higher ed monthly at print magazine Caixin Weekly. She is a political commenter on Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV (here and here). She hosts great books programs on vistopia and has contributed essays on Machiavelli, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Arendt at vistopia. She hosts the most popular Mandarin political philosophy podcast “Monologues of a Committed Observer” with 1m+ subscribers.
So what should I ask her?
Indian documentary covers EV winners
A new short documentary (22 mins) film called The 22nd Century Indian by Shaurya Sinha offers an optimistic take on India, and also covers five (!) Emergent Ventures winners. Congratulations to them, and to Shruti too.
EV India winners featured: Naman Pushp https://x.com/therealnamzoo?s=11
Khushi Mittal: https://khushimittal.com
Shreeporna Rao: https://x.com/shreepoorna365?s=11
Samay Sanghvi: https://www.thealmanac.ai/article/samaysanghvii
Angad Daryani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angaddaryani?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios
Impedimenta Developerum!
NME: Harry Potter fans have succeeded in moving a construction project that would have originally gone through the “grave” of the character Dobby.
The 125-mile Greenlink power connector, which costs £430million, is intended to link power between the UK’s National Grid and Ireland, running between County Wexford and Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.
However, the latter site is known to Potter fans as the site of house elf Dobby’s grave in the film Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, and contains a pile of stones with the words “here lies Dobby” that many flock to…
All I can say is that Voldemort would never have put up with this shit.
The Odyssey
Worth seeing, and I enjoyed it — but a few observations I haven’t seen elsewhere.
For all the praise of IMAX and 70mm’s supposed clarity, several scenes are out of focus on the actor. Pulling focus is harder with a large-format negative. The problem is compounded by Nolan’s fondness for darkness: too many scenes are dark enough to squander much of what the format offers. The sound was earth-shaking in the way we have come to expect from Nolan but there is no song.
The “woke casting” controversy is a non-issue — barely noticeable in practice. The film is obviously conservative in temperament. Helen gets some of the best lines, and Nolan’s slight disfigurement of her traditional arc is exactly right. The Circe scene is the best in the film.
Tyler is entirely wrong about Calypso. Odysseus’s seven years with her were among his most enjoyable. I have no doubt about this.
The deeper flaws are structural. Nolan loves to play with time, and the resulting flashbacks and memories ironically shortchange the odyssey itself — making the journey feel shorter and less arduous than it should. This is very much in the mode of Interstellar: a sequence of set-piece locations strung together. One planet/one monster/one scene–on to the next. But Odysseus as a character on an odyssey never quite coheres.
We are told repeatedly that Odysseus is smart but we shouldn’t need to be reminded. Odysseus is both beloved and resented by gods, a man whose men will follow him to the ends of the earth and then betray him but Mat Damon just doesn’t bring it. Things happen to him; he responds stoically. What we needed was the equivalent of Kirk defeating the Kobayashi Maru — a moment that makes the audience understand, viscerally, that this man bends the rules and contends with the gods by the sheer force of his wit and will. Of courses the Trojan horse is this but Nolan treats this as something of which Odysseus is ashamed and the other clever bits are downplayed. Damon never gets his Kobayashi Meru. The odyssey is a slog, rather than an adventure. Could have used a bit more Sinbad, a bit less Dark Knight. The dialogue, as Tyler noted, is lame.
Not Nolan’s best film but still better than most films and for scale, ambition, and grand themes well worth the 3-hour investment.
Whit Stillman’s *Metropolitan* (that was then, this is now)
It is fun to watch/rewatch this 1990 movie circa 2026. It is about New York City debutantes (CT and the Hamptons too), and how they interact with each other. The movie is set a bit earlier in time, perhaps in the mid-1980s, though some scenes hearken back to the 1970s. Of course there is no social media and no cell phones. So the characters do look at each other, and talk to each other, the whole time. People dress up, and social smoking is “a thing.” There is no hook-up culture, as even casual sex has some sort of social implication. Women are seen as vulnerable, and the men occasionally punch each other. People drink. Throughout various scenes, characters debate Jane Austen, Lionel Trilling, and Buñuel (it was not yet recognized that Mansfield Park is an excellent novel). But do they read actual novels, or just the literary criticism? Women can be branded as “sluts.” Nerds had not yet taken over the world, and there is no Jane Street, though toward the end there is one odd scene where the neon lights rather obviously spell out “ELON” in the upper right side of the screen. Coincidence rather than time travel, I am sure. There are no Asians in the group, it seems no Jews, and if anyone is gay he or she remains in the closet. People of modest income had big apartments, and the so-called wealthy were not very rich at all, though they could afford black tie and white tie attire.
Was everyone happier and better off back then? Did they have deeper understandings of the world? Did they treat each other like heartless beasts? Would you eschew one of their parties and stay at home and scroll Twitter? You can watch this film and ponder those questions to your heart’s content. Alternatively, you could go to a debutante ball, which it turns out still exists. Which of those has been your choice?
Markets in everything?
Peter Brook‘s five-hour-plus film adaptation of “The Mahabharata” is set for a BFI Blu-ray release on Aug. 10, presented in high definition from a new 4K restoration of the 1989 production.
The release centres on the triptych version of the film, running 332 minutes, which sits between Brook’s three-hour cinema cut and the six-hour television version he shot concurrently. Based on the ancient Hindu epic, the film was originally produced by Brook with screenwriters Jean-Claude Carrière and Marie-Hélène Estienne, and features an international cast drawn from 16 nationalities.
Here is the Variety article, but will there be a version suitable for U.S. players? The work is highly recommended, real genius. For the pointer I thank Sam Mendelsohn.
Cross-ethnic casting
I complained about the casting of The Odyssey per se (the blind beggar was best), but in general I do not mind cross-ethnic casting. I am glad Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, Dev Patel played David Copperfield, Denzel Washington played Macbeth, black and Latino actors play white parts in Hamilton, and that Morgan Freeman can play God well (God himself would not be “white,” but God as black is nonetheless a conscious choice), and there was Jessye Norman (among others) singing and playing many traditionally white roles on the opera stage.
Recently in a private conversation I suggested that Nabeel Qureshi be cast as the next James Bond. He has a British accent, was born in (northern!) England, is tall and is good-looking. He does not remind anyone of Roger Moore. He is old enough where you could believe he has some experience as a spy, and at the baccarat table, but young enough where he could do those stunts without it seeming ridiculous.
I recall the talk of a black Bond, a notion which likely would end up dull and cliched. But a Bond of Pakistani ethnic origin? Now that would occasion some debate.
I am not saying it always works. I likely would object to a remake of Zulu with an all-Chinese cast. Or there can be major cultural mistakes which are not cross-ethnic, such as casting a Liverpudlian in the role of a London elite. Everyone in The Sopranos should at least be pretending to fit their roles, and indeed Tony himself grew up in New Jersey. I would have done fine in a cameo role.
*The Odyssey*, the movie (no real spoilers)
I can’t say I loved it. The Circe scene was excellent, Cyclops was good, and the battles in Troy were well done. But most of the roles were miscast. I like Matt Damon, but he is too “Good Will Hunting” to play Odysseus. The character did not cohere. (Compare to Ralph Fiennes in the superior The Return.) Zendaya’s role was superfluous. Worst of all was Calypso, who reminded me of the kind of chick you might meet at a Tupperware party in the Hamptons. At least half of the dialogue was lame and contrary to the spirit of the Mycenaean world. Some of the sea and boat footage was good. I strongly disliked the changes made to the ending.
There is enough energy, effort, and money put into the thing to make it eminently watchable on the big screen. And if this were a new director, you would think he had great promise. But relative to both the reviews and where most expectations were placed, this has to count as a disappointment.
Redux of my Homer’s Odyssey essay
On EconLib, you will find all three parts here, in reverse order.
What to Watch and Not
Spider Noir (Prime): I’ve had enough of the Marvel multiverse so I was worried about Spider-Noir. The writers, however, have written an excellent noir in the style of Raymond Chandler with Nicholas Cage channeling Humphrey Bogart. The Spiderman stuff is all there but it is appropriately embedded. There are some excellent lines. Most notably an inversion of the Spiderman motto that I won’t give here but you will know it when you hear it. Also many sharp one-liners:
- Reilly: I don’t like surprises.
- Cat: I’ll remember that when your birthday rolls around.
Nicholas Cage does some Nicholas Cagey spidery things which I enjoyed. Watch it in black and white.
Project Hail Mary (Prime): I waited until this was streaming and I’m glad I did because it was disappointing.
The core problem is Ryan Gosling. He plays Ryland Grace, the genius scientist-hero but genius is something we are told, never shown. Indeed, the character with the best ideas in the film is Carl, Grace’s bodyguard/minder (played by Lionel Boyce)—they should have sent him to save the planet. Gosling has no intensity, and every choice he makes is to lighten and humorize. It’s a small thing, but it annoyed me to watch a scientist toss his instruments disdainfully. Andy Weir is a master at showing smart people grinding through hard problems—in the novel, Grace spends months learning to communicate with an alien. In the movie, Gosling dances.
This isn’t just miscasting. The whole adaptation is built to soften the book. The film cuts the desperation of the world, undercuts the ruthlessness of Stratt and instead adds a karaoke number and a trip to Home Depot (ha, ha, duct tape can solve everything!) Every change is away from high stakes intensity and toward charm and humor, a Disneyfied version of Weir. I have nothing against Gosling but we have lots of charming movies and I would like some competence porn.
The main virtue of PHM, in the end, is that it shows what a miracle The Martian was. Matt Damon knows how to play smart and intense, and he brought both to what I called the most Ayn Rand film in decades. There’s an old story—probably apocryphal—that Chuck Yeager was once asked what he’d do if his engine flamed out and he had sixty seconds before hitting the ground. He replied, “I’d spend the first fifty-nine seconds working on the engine.” Chuck Yeager had the right stuff. Matt Damon in The Martian has the right stuff. Ryan Gosling does not have the right stuff.
The Sheep Detectives (Prime): A delightful surprise! A flock of sheep solve a murder-mystery in a quaint English town; featuring Hugh Jackman and voices from Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Patrick Stewart and others. Babe meets Knives Out. A family film but, as the best family films are, with some deep themes.
Jackson Dahl podcasts with me and Nabeel on aesthetics
Filmed at home, this ran about two hours, and yes that is Nabeel Qureshi, with a cameo from Spinoza toward the very end. From Jackson:
From the episode summary:
Tyler and Nabeel are good friends, and given how prolific Tyler is, I decided to use Nabeel as an entry point and interview them together. We discuss sacred commitments, AI acceleration, mentorship, friendship, and more, but I focused the majority of the conversation on art and aesthetics. Tyler and Nabeel are unlikely aesthetes given their day jobs, but in fact take art deeply seriously. They have a shared love for and similar tastes in art, music, and film, in particular. We discuss strange and beautiful art, aesthetic stagnation, and a wide range of favorites: The Beatles, Mozart, Mondrian, Springsteen, Lana Del Rey, Kanye West, Cassavetes, The Sopranos, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=wC78q_BeD27XDnLN&v=qPHV-BezoIc&feature=youtu.be
Excerpt:
Tyler: (18:31) I think I’m very mundane in many ways. When Marc Andreessen had that famous tweet about not being too introspective, I know he got slammed for that, but I sympathize with that in many ways. I have my work. I focus on it. I want to go see places I haven’t seen before. That really drives me. I feel pretty well motivated. I do think all kinds of deep thoughts, but to me those deep thoughts feel more superficial than my so-called superficial urges to go around doing things. And I’m fine with that.
…Jackson: (23:25) Do you experience art primarily by thinking or by feeling?
Tyler: (23:29) I don’t even know what those words mean. I experience it by looking at it. I don’t think I have very deep emotional responses. I think it’s pleasure and I feel I learn a lot from it. When I go out and look at other works of art or just the world, I see a lot more than people who don’t live with art. I don’t think I feel that much. I’ve never cried in front of a painting. When I read these accounts of someone seeing a Madonna and weeping, it makes no sense to me. It’s like people who do sports gambling. Why do you do that? There are positive-sum gambles for you. Here are a few.
There is much more of interest, self-recommending!
My Conversation with Joanne Paul
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Joanne Paul is a historian at the University of Sussex, author, and a go-to Tudor expert on YouTube. She tells Tyler she’s drawn to the 16th century because it sits between the medieval and the modern, and because its paths not taken are a way of asking whether our own world had to turn out this way. Her biography Thomas More: A Life takes its subject in that spirit, refusing to reduce More to either martyr or monster.
Tyler and Joanne discuss how More influenced Erasmus, what to make of Utopia, why fear drove More’s persecution of heretics, how Holbein’s portraits of More and Cromwell differ, what movie depictions get wrong about More, how his execution was viewed at the time, how the Tudor period paved the way for Shakespeare and the scientific revolution, the surprising social mobility of the period, how the City of London governed itself and where that clashed with the Crown, Joanne’s upbringing in Canada and what drew her to English history, what she thinks sits beneath a lot of Britain’s current stagnation, the subject of her next book, and much more.
Excerpt:
COWEN: As you point out in the book, and you’re well aware, he oversaw the persecution of heretics. He oversaw torture. He was misogynistic when he wrote about women. Was he just a bad guy? Is that the correct picture of More, or am I supposed to admire him? He took a stand on principle, and he died, but what was the principle, really? To defend Catholicism, which then was also an instrument of torture?
PAUL: As a historian, I take one of my principles as to not try to put people into a box of good or evil.
COWEN: I’m not a historian. Should I just dislike him?
PAUL: No, I think you should be interested in these contradictions. I think you should be interested in the complexity that is the human experience. I think we should ask questions about why someone who is clearly very educated, clearly very intelligent, clearly very worldly in many ways, has also these beliefs that we rightly and should condemn. With Thomas More, I think he comes to these beliefs out of a place of fear. I think that’s something that we should take note of. He was afraid of what he would consider the Lutheran heresy. He was afraid of how it would lead to the breakdown of his society, and he was convinced by those people who held that to be the case.
I think that there are important lessons in that for us today, the way that we can become convinced that a group will lead to the breakdown of our society, that fear can lead to that hatred and indeed that violence. I think that’s an important lesson. If we just reject, oh, he was bad, then I don’t think we understand the way in which someone like Thomas More can become convinced that way. In terms of his role in opposing heresy, yes, he advocated for the persecution of heretics. He thought it was right and just that they were burned at the stake. I think that at times his role in that has been overstated, and I think we just need to understand what it was in historical reality.
He imprisoned heretics. He interrogated them. We don’t know if he tortured them. That was something he was accused of at the time. He said he didn’t. I don’t know that we’ll ever find evidence either way on that. There were three cases that he oversaw as Lord Chancellor of those who were burned at the stake. I only say that because I see on social media and the like and people presenting me with the suggestion that hundreds were put to the flames by Thomas More personally. I just think we have to understand what it is that we are actually talking about.
And:
COWEN: What precursors of the scientific revolution do you see, other than education? That’s coming in the 17th century. Is there more emphasis on calculation or measurement or accounting? What are the roots in the Tudor period?
PAUL: A lot of that comes from the Renaissance, as indeed humanism does. There’s this reintroduction of a lot of classical texts, an advocacy for reading these classical texts, particularly Greek texts and learning Greek. A lot of it is coming from an engagement with Greek mathematics and science. The other thing, and this is something I really emphasize when I’m teaching the scientific revolution with my students, is that we have to remember that the scientific revolution isn’t this grand triumph of science over religion or mysticism or what have you, that these two things very much go hand in hand through the 16th and into the 17th century.
The scientific method, for instance, comes from alchemy, which we might think of as an occult science. The methodology for scientific experimentation comes out of this desire to find the philosopher’s stone. Someone like John Dee is this polymath, as well as this occultist, Francis Bacon, has his interests in these sort of mystical elements as well. The growth and interest in what we might think of as mystical texts, a lot of them having to do with Judaism, as well as these Greek texts, comes together to form, I think, something that looks like the foundations of the scientific revolution.
A good episode with many points of interest. And I enjoyed Joanne’s recent book Thomas More: A Life.
*Disclosure Day* (doubt if there are net spoilers in this post)
Perhaps rewatching The Omen is better prep for this movie than thinking about UFOs? In this regard Disclosure Day is somewhat more interesting than I had been expecting.
Peter Thiel, Ross Douthat, telephone!
And yet I have plenty of quibbles. It was a little too long. The acting is entirely serviceable, but none of the characters are excellent or memorable. The portraits of America are below the level of charm and insight we have come to expect from Spielberg. And any time a character makes “a speech” it is pretty mediocre.
Cinematic influences are numerous, starting with E.T. and Close Encounters of course. Not to mention Sugarland Express. I was surprised to see the references to The Magic Flute, including the Bergman cinematic version. Perhaps Spielberg had Jacob’s Ladder in mind as well?
The Freudian interpretation of the film I will not articulate, but it surfaces near the end and never quite goes away.
But who here was the Antichrist anyway? That is up for grabs.
I had no problem sitting through the movie and enjoying it, but the problem of excess hodgepodge worsens as the exposition continues. So I will grade this one as misunderstood, but nonetheless no better than an interesting failure.
*The Pressure* (no spoilers)
A truly excellent movie, one of the best of the year. Specifically, it concerns the meteorological forecasts (!) leading up to the D-Day invasion. Thematically, it is about the differences between Americans and Brits, how bureaucracy operates, the nature of leadership, and the proper role of science in government. It is like an old-style Hollywood movie. Most of the action takes place in only a few rooms, and with superb dialogue and performances. Although you all know how D-Day turns out, the movie still generates suspense on some of the major plot points. Definitely recommended, here is the movie’s trailer.