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A vengeful genie. A self-regulated psychopath who refuses to use her wishes. A love story, kind of? A surprisingly responsible and moving exploration of regulating psychopathy? A powerhouse... slapstick performance? Evil real-estate angel? I...what is even going on?

A Psychopath and Her Genie — “Genie, Make a Wish”

A genie has been trapped in his lamp for nearly 1,000 years. See, he made a bet with God that he could prove humans were always corruptible, but then came across a dying girl whose wishes helped ot…

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 10d

Fights, chases, sure, but the climax is her convincing the A.I. of its evil nature so that it deletes itself and all copies of its work Star Trek TOS style the day before the dev releases a $90 game only to find what he sold is empty, files all gone.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 10d

Nah, gimme a Tron movie where its data was scraped by a dev via shoddy A.I. to make their own game, and Olivia Wilde has to go back in to dimension hop between increasingly decaying, badly adapted grids to unlink them and save the original.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 10d

Oh, and Joachim Ronning is an uninspired choice as director. He did Pirates 5 and Maleficent 2. He's become the guy you bring in to pump out an OK franchise sequel that looks and acts like the rest of the franchise but fails to evoke the sense of a world that extends beyond the screen.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 10d

It's also ill-advised that they moved the setting to the real world. The appeal is how unique its visuals and architecture are, how gameplay loops inform the (lite) world-building, the logic of programs interacting as characters.

The most interesting stuff is gone the second it happens in reality.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 10d

It's one of my favorite franchises, but I'm specifically not going to see it because of Leto. I imagine its fans are a cross-section of film buffs, Millennial-and-up genre fans, niche game fans from crossovers...and that's a lot of groups who tend to dislike Leto.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 12d

New A24 weirdness. A Korean romance sees a psychopath who's trained to keep herself in check find a trickster genie. We're continuing to see a few more women directors in anime. And more.

New Shows + Movies by Women — “Genie, Make a Wish”, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”

There’s a ton of work this week, and it comes from around the world. There’s a big new Korean romantic drama, I’m glad to see Summer’s upswing in women directing continue in…

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 15d

Japan's 2 for 2 in shows about women drummers knocking sh*t over this year. And like the last, this is absolutely phenomenal.

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty — “Glass Heart”

Don’t worry about the subtitles here, the show’s got them. Akane stands in a stranger’s yard, delivery in hand. There’s a note on the front door to go in and drop it off. Sh…

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 19d

Never seen a new rookie starter ignored so completely. And these same people will act incensed in a few weeks that no one knows who Dillon Gabriel is.

How could we?

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 19d

I really wanted to hear about Dillon Gabriel: what are his strengths and flaws, the different offensive scheme, his comparables, how the college tape transfers, how the Vikings match up.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 22d

We can sustain a manufacturing trade war at a certain level.

We are a service economy. We cannot sustain a service trade war.

And no, they have no idea how they'd enforce this kind of tariff. But just like all the other tariffs they've pushed through, that's a feature they'll exploit, not a bug.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 22d

"We already have a unique position as a services leader with a sizable trade surplus in those services.

We already lead the world in this. Our access...creates an enormous amount of U.S. jobs. Ban our access...and those productions will employ other industries in other countries instead of ours."

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 22d

"Why coordinate for other businesses between countries when the U.S. legal team you consult already works with an accounting business, travel coordinator, translators, security, safety, and medical specialists and can package them together so you don’t have to?"

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 22d

"There are other places you can go for whatever it is you need. But there are very few places that specialize in each and every one of these things. It’s efficient for international productions to get one service here because it naturally ties into others without producers having to middle man."

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 22d

This would be devastating to film-adjacent U.S. industries including travel, shipping, scouting, advance production, site coordinators, scheduling, traveling security, safety and medical crew, tech oversight, camera and sound crews, translating, and voice acting, among many others.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 22d

Since this is getting floated again:

"A “Passion of the Christ 5” filmed in Italy with 10% American crew would get an exemption. Something filmed in the U.S. with 90% American crew but with VFX work done in India might face a massive tariff...it’ll be based on pay-offs and political views."

A 100% Tariff on Art is a Ban, and Would Cost U.S. Jobs

The other day, Trump announced that he would seek to place tariffs of 100% on films made outside the U.S. We see a lot of concepts floated by this administration. Not all of them come to pass, but …

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 24d

The list goes on. None of those are better or worse than the other, but we do need to understand and interpret storytelling priorities intact and not just adapt plot and format between mediums.

It's a much more stubborn layer than superhero adaptations have had to face.

Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 24d

To us, meditative quiet is Malickian, not ordinary. Interstitial spaces are giallo-slasher anxious, not peaceful. Struggling with identity-and-role is individualist, not about group effectiveness. Action is about catharsis, not development. Privacy is lonesome, not reflective.

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 24d

We're getting at that with Speed Racer, One Piece in terms of playing absurdist humor straight-up, but bc that's the one thing we're understanding, we apply it to things we shouldn't (see: Cowboy Bebop).

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Gabriel Valdez @gabrieldv.bsky.social · 24d

We can hammer through on superheroes and games bc it's a process of fusing two formats we understand.

To adapt something from another culture, you've got to take their storytelling priorities and translate how/why those priorities exist via our own. It's localization of how another culture thinks.

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