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Dune and FriendlyJordies
Dec. 3rd, 2021 10:54 pmWent to see Dune last night with Charmaine and Andrew D. at Pentridge. It's pretty good and comparison with Blade Runner 2049 will be inevitable with the direction by Denis Villeneuve and the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, and it certainly comes with the same epic sense of scope, great visuals, and sound. The ABC has provided a fairly accurate spoiler-free summary of the movie, although any suggestion of it having a "slow pace and for being difficult to follow" is incomprehensible to me. Whilst long, the pace is pretty steady and quite heavily action-orientated, and the plot is quite straightforward. Being true to the novel also means that there is a bit of a cringey "white-man saviour" aspect to the film (in metaphor, a Scottish lad is the messiah of the Arabs to save them from imperial predators). Overall, well worth the time, and I forsee in several years' time The Astor hosting sessions of the two parts. I hope the kangaroo rats play a larger role in the next one, but I suspect not.
It was my second major outing for the week, going out to see Jordan Shanks-Markovina (FriendlyJordies) at the Comic Lounge on Tuesday courtesy of an invitation from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lei_loo; at the young age of 32 this oft-scathing critic first, the comic second has amassed an impressive 600,00 subscribers to his YouTube channel which is particularly impressive given that he is not a media creation, but rather one who has played the media game very well, and plays politicians equally well, and deftly dealt with defamation suits by powerful clowns such as Clive Palmer and John Barilaro, who have only managed to make him more popular. All this said, his lecture was more of a study of the history of propaganda packaged as public relations and the role of the media in contemporary society in setting the agenda of discussion.
Apart from this, I've been keeping my head down over the past few days and trying to work on a few projects that I wanted to complete by the end of the year. It has been in many ways a horrible and disruptive year, probably one of the worst in my life (and I've had my share), and whilst I have come through the worse crises scarred but mostly intact so much of what was planned has fallen on the way-side. I do have my MHEd thesis to finish this month and I'm now on to the final chapter; that, at least, will be a year early. I have also been working on updating various course content for Mathematical Applications and Programming for HPC with a workshop in a fortnight. Both of these projects will probably take up much of my time in the next several days.
It was my second major outing for the week, going out to see Jordan Shanks-Markovina (FriendlyJordies) at the Comic Lounge on Tuesday courtesy of an invitation from
lei_loo; at the young age of 32 this oft-scathing critic first, the comic second has amassed an impressive 600,00 subscribers to his YouTube channel which is particularly impressive given that he is not a media creation, but rather one who has played the media game very well, and plays politicians equally well, and deftly dealt with defamation suits by powerful clowns such as Clive Palmer and John Barilaro, who have only managed to make him more popular. All this said, his lecture was more of a study of the history of propaganda packaged as public relations and the role of the media in contemporary society in setting the agenda of discussion. Apart from this, I've been keeping my head down over the past few days and trying to work on a few projects that I wanted to complete by the end of the year. It has been in many ways a horrible and disruptive year, probably one of the worst in my life (and I've had my share), and whilst I have come through the worse crises scarred but mostly intact so much of what was planned has fallen on the way-side. I do have my MHEd thesis to finish this month and I'm now on to the final chapter; that, at least, will be a year early. I have also been working on updating various course content for Mathematical Applications and Programming for HPC with a workshop in a fortnight. Both of these projects will probably take up much of my time in the next several days.
