It looks like one of Netflix’s most interesting interactive experiences, Bandersnatch, has been removed from Netflix. However, someone has decided to extract and put it up online at playbandersnatch.com. Go give it a playthrough before it’s likely removed.
“I’m in my 40’s now. When I was a kid, I used to have tons of my favorite books that I wanted to see made into movies. Now, in 2025, I hope the exact opposite for any story I love.”
I saw this quote on a movie buff forum and couldn’t agree more. Classic stories are butchered, re-imagined by people who don’t even know the source material, or reframed for ‘modern’ sensibilities.
We do have examples of amazing Lord of the Rings from Peter Jackson – and then abominations like the follow-up series on Amazon that shows the show runners don’t understand the basics of the source material nor the intent of the author that wrote it.
Terry English made the original armor for the Aliens movie. He still makes them today. The Prop Store recently sold one of those handmade replica Hudson (Bill Paxton) Colonial Marine Armor pieces. Final sale price was £6,300 ($7,950 USD)
The very controversial and firebrand issues/actors behind the Snow White remake has turned into a box office disaster and resulted in an apocalyptical round of firing at Disney (and rightly so).
It should tell you something when a decades old IP powerhouse like Disney and all their marketing efforts could only generate 18M views in 4 months on it’s official trailer, and an AI generated parody done by a likely single person YouTube channel gets 1.4M views in 12 days. And the AI content is honestly better.
Personally, I think Wicked AI‘s live version of the Little Mermaid with Danny DeVito is even funnier
This nearly dialog-free short film from OTOY and director Carlos Baena uses de-aging tech to bid a farewell to the Captain Kirk – and Spock. The film was created with help from William Shatner and the Nimoy estate for the Roddenberry Archive
“I can’t believe my job is to make you feel good about yourself”
-Lawrence’s boss Alana
I Like Movies is a film about an naive, overly optimistic kid named Lawrence who is absorbed in the world of movies and his own ‘creative’ viewpoints. Unfortunately, he’s socially abrasive, clueless as to how the world/life works, and goes on about creative visions when he hasn’t even held a simple job or seems to make anything anyone wants to see. He shares too much to the point of embarrassing himself and his friends.
I think the movie hits a couple of important themes that are relevant today. First, that when we’re young we often embarrassingly think our thoughts and ideas are unique and amazing – only later to realize how cringe we really were.
Secondly, I think the quote from the boss nails what being a manager is like today – especially for those that grew up in the isolation of covid. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they’re struggling at a much higher rate than other generations – even when rated by their own peers. So the question is, how does one help those that are struggling like Lawrence along?
Did you know that Harlan Ellison sued and won both an out of court settlement and now appears in the credits of later prints of the 1984 Schwarzenegger movie The Terminator?
The 1964 Outer Limits episode ‘Soldier’ was written by Harlan Ellison and was loosely adapted from his 1957 short story ‘Soldier from Tomorrow‘. The similarities were so close that a settlement was reached despite James Cameron who disagreed with the ruling.
Give the original a watch and see just how close (and far) they were.
I loved the Twilight Zone as a kid. Every year one of the local stations would put on a Twilight Zone marathon and play episodes back to back, 24×7, for the entire memorial day weekend. I used to try staying up all night to watch every episode. I usually made it about 18-20 hours before finally drifting off on the couch.
The Outer Limits was also known for tales of the strange and unusual, but I found they weren’t nearly as compelling (If I’m honest, half of the Twilight Zone episodes weren’t really compelling either). But recently I ran across this episode titled ‘It Crawled Out Of The Woodwork‘ and I have to say that it’s incredible. The story could easily be made into a full-length movie and be pretty terrifying. The antagonist was frightening – and even for it’s era.
The story is based on a great question – likely based on the strange and frightening discoveries occurring during the nuclear age. Namely, while delving into the secret depths of the universe, we may find or unleash terrifying things. Even more, those things might just ‘crawl out of the woodwork’ of our experiments in unexpected and uncontrollable ways.
Definitely worth a watch.
I loved the Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace series. It’s one of the best comedy/mock-u-series shows to come out in the last few years.
But now there is a theory that Garth Marenghi was based on Shaun Hutson. What do you think?
Curious Refuge is holding their 2nd annual AI Horror Film Competition. Using the Infinity V2 model, make a movie and submit it by Oct 21st to win up to $3000.
You can check out the entries here.
Here was one of last year’s winners. It’s probably not going to replace real moviemakers yet, but it’s absolutely a great creative tool to try out ideas and visualize scenes.