A film director who shows such utter contempt for the craft of acting is...
A bad film director. A bad writer. A bad artist.
The whole point of art is to embrace humanity - not dispense with it.
AI actors are getting scary good..
spent 2 day making this short film.. if you still think actors are safe, ihave nothing to say.. this is so over
check my prompts and workflow on buzzy now:
Watch the trailer for THE WAY from Emilio Estevez, returning to cinemas for its 15th Anniversary!
Martin Sheen stars as Tom, a grieving father who embarks on the historical Camino de Santiago to better understand his son who died walking the pilgrimage.
See it at the Spanish Film Festival in Australia this June & July and in New Zealand cinemas from June 11.
One of the greatest scenes in a Spielberg movie... and you never even see what actually happens.
It's all descriptions and suggestions as to what is happening.
I was lucky enough to be present to hear @imluciekon speak today. She has an Oscar, an Emmy, a BAFTA and on top of all that, a heart of pure gold and moral clarity. Take a moment to listen..
What happened to the NATO principle that an attack on one is an attack on all?
Time for NATO to start bombing Russia directly.
Otherwise - like a school bully - they will continue to push, push, push and see what they can get away with.
"... since October 7 took the lid off the polite antisemitism and it went rabid.
We as a country have to get better at facing down bullies. Otherwise, I fear, we will normalise this silencing."
https://t.co/HlTlZrqAsF
This matters.
An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters.
How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age?
Well, it is a little more than that which is why it is both disturbing and important. And it matters because at its least it is a threat to history in Britain’s - but also the world’s - greatest temple of History @britishmuseum - and its scholarly integrity.
The BM and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals but I am sure the BM realizes it is essential to announce a new event fast lest it give the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it hold events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum.
British cultural life is the right and exercise of civic and cultural freedom – a privilege of our liberal democracy - that does not require the permission of gangs of ideological activists nor can it cancelled or postponed nor endured at their beck and sufferance nor permitted with a bend of the knee to their permissions or veto. But that is what this appears to be.
Across the cultural world in the West, though the bewildered middleaged managers of our institutions that are confronting and often submitting to a wave of self-righteous blackmail and mob threat, there is an increasingly thin – indeed ever more fragile and sometimes nigh invisible – line between ‘security concerns’ – and institutional pusillanimity.
Then there is the history itself.
This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BCin the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70ADetc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds.
These small kingdoms and the subsequent Temple priestly mini-state (restored by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius 539BC) and then the larger Judean kingdoms of the Hasmoneans and Herodians – between 167BC and 135AD chronicle the long indigenous history of Jews in the region – which the protesters are keen to erase. This is a political project of ideological erasure and malicious incitement of course concerned with the complex, brutal Israel-Palestine conflict that has now gone on for a hundred years and is unlikely to be solved in a small lecture theatre in the British Museum. But it also attempts to deny or erase Jewish history itself – and by implication the heritage of British Jews who live here in Britain, a small community that is now under cultural and sometimes physical threat.
Incidentally - but it is worth saying, this history does not deny anyone else’s history, nor the many other small realms in this region through ancient times nor the many names of the region and its entities and the historical origins of those names (Canaan, or Philistia or Peleset, Phoenicia, Aram Damascus or Moab or later Nabatea and the provinces of Palaestina Prime, Seconda and Tertia and the Ghassanid kingdoms and so on etc etc). The history of one can not be used to erase the history of the other and does not need to do so. The pursuit of knowledge which is one of the delights of human life and is the mission of the BM and indeed anyone who writes, reads or enjoys history, can celebrate and recognize all of these.
Yet this protest and the many like it deployed across Britain nowadays is the opposite of that - an attack on history using the methods of intimidation and vandalism. Much of this involves distorting or dismantling actual history or often lying to replace it with a fabricated ideological structure that nourishes no one and helps no one but degrades our culture and civic life not to speak of history itself. By the way, the frequent claims that these histories or names are ‘denied’ or ‘noone knows them’ is nonsense: anyone and everyone who is interested knows this history. (Much of it appears for example in my book Jerusalem a history of the Holy Land.)
And this is relevant not just to those of us who write study or enjoy the history of the region but also to those who believe that cultural life and civic society is a right that must not be submitted to the aggressions and plots of loud well-organized much-indulged ideologues who take advantage of the freedoms of our society to undermine its principles and the very freedoms they are designed to guard.
Just as vital is a rule of history itself that concerrns the rise and fall of civilizations: the society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail.
Respect to Daisy Buchanan for talking powerfully about school bullying.
I experienced mild bullying at school - and from a single person at my University (may he rot in hell).
No one should suffer bullying - whether as a child or an adult.
https://t.co/E5BxIPX4dR
I had the privilege of visiting the Nova Exhibition in London with Elkana Bohbot, one of the music festival’s organisers, who was abducted and held hostage by Hamas for 738 days.
It was a deeply emotional experience, not least because it was Elkana’s first visit. The exhibition displays original artefacts recovered from the Nova site after the October 7 massacre, burnt cars, bullet-riddled objects, and bloodstained personal belongings left behind by the partygoers.
During the visit, Elkana became overwhelmed. I suggested we stop, but he said the purpose of the visit mattered more than his own difficulty.
I asked what he meant. “People in Britain are saying terrible things about us,” he said. “They accuse us of horrific crimes without knowing what happened to us and what was done to us.”
The venue is under heavy security, as police are concerned about protests and potential incidents. I urge everyone, especially those who plan to protest , to go inside first. I’m sure you’d learn a lot.
I'm a middle eastern historian. My own family were made refugees. And this is my honest view of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) - the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs during the 1947–49 war surrounding the creation of Israel.
A thread. 🧵
So I enjoyed "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die." Generally love Sam in everything he does (amazing in Lawn Dogs).
But I felt structure was a bit problematic with lots of flashbacks spoiling dramatic momentum. Also the underlying theme was klunky/cliched/overwrought.
"This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause
And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful."
What's becoming inescapab;y apparent is that violence against Jews generates not sympathy - but the opposite an even more furiously excited hatred - even greater violence; the multiplication of swastika signs; Kristallnacht vandalism and destruction - the targets chosen to give greatest pain - synagogues; schools especially
This morning the Islamic Republic announced the execution of three more protesters: #Mehdi_Rasouli#MohammadReza_Miri and #Ebrahim_Dolatabadi who were arrested during December protests in Mashhad and sentenced to death after sham trials.
If the international community does not respond to this grave injustice soon there’s a serious risk of hundreds of executions in the coming weeks as the regime expedites the killings of their own people as a deterrent to another (imminent) uprising.
I was in Golders Green yesterday. I arrived just as the police presence was building. My heart goes out to the two Jewish victims and to their loved ones. We need to make our Jewish community know we support them. Even before I knew what had happened I was in tears because you could feel panic in the air. These are just regular people getting with their lives. London has always been a great multicultural city. Our Jewish community brings us so much. They are an integral part of the fabric of this city.
https://t.co/3Fh9cZS9y9