The routes are better filled out of course but other it’s worse than Amtrak in my experience.

That being said, it’s very much not in my nature to dislike Ohtani. I’m not made of stone.

The Steel still looks lovely. I think it’s maybe my favorite hardware they made, but I love the Time’s timeline software and animations too much.

Kind of reminded me of Herzog’s Nosferatu in the depiction of vampirism as a sad curse of loneliness, replacing the plague infested rats with the half mindless groupthink drones of the facade of paradisiacal harmony. My favorite flavor of vampire.

Came to mind wrt Jack O’Connell’s great work as the villain. Himself a victim of colonialism and religious oppression, distorted in his own view of post racial paradise and following the natural inclination of the vampire, trading the snake’s rattle for the banjo while the fangs remain unscathed.

Art is dead, long live Content™️.

I think having teams paying them by circumventing FIA in any way is weird and has potential to get messy. Cleanest way is just for the FIA to raise entry fees by a tiny amount and pay stewards directly with it.

Having the teams be the ones paying into the pot for the steward pay is what he says is unpopular. Surely the FIA’s bullshit financial penalties in practice sessions can cover the bill.

Yesss, the UI and recommendations on StoryGraph are so much nicer.

Biopic/doc style large scale "epic" backdrop in the first half, a more personal and subjective source of torture in the second. The epilogue kind of occupies a third take, a finished work actually released out into the world and mythologized, a monument that drowns out the creator in interpretation.

I think there's truth in it (the high ceilings bit for example) but his structure outlives both his control. I think in a way each "act" treats the building as a different thing.

Invented by his niece, or perpetuated by her as invented and interpreted by the public is how I saw it, a projection of her own experiences and those of the wider perceptions of the Jewish refugee experience onto the work.

Adding: I do ultimately think the film agrees with the notion of “it’s the destination, not the journey” but Laszlo ultimately doesn’t actually get a say in the destination in the end wrt his work, its destination is decided for him.

In either case, it’s a dictating of his legacy that is removed from him. His viewpoint of “Nothing is of its own explanation” comes back to ultimately haunt him as he loses control of his own narrative. 2/2

I’ve oscillated a bit between it being purely invented (the fact that there’s an entire wing of the building that was cut for budget and that it wasn’t originally connected underground are unaddressed in her speech) or just an (intentionally on the film’s part) overly reductive politicizing. 1/2

I saw it sort of as a fulfillment of Laszlo’s wish to be the root of political upheaval that outlives him, but as a sort of devil’s bargain where he is robbed of his own voice in dictating his legacy. (2/2)

A great write-up that I disagree quite a bit with. I liked the ending and thought it rescued the otherwise didactic and blunt second half. (1/2)