One thing that has bothered fans of the Gremlins movies (especially the ones that overthink things like me): what exactly defines midnight? It’s not a natural phenomenon. Do gremlins trigger this by reading clocks? What’s the deal? How do you know for sure when they think “midnight” is?

Yes, I know I’m talking about a franchise of movies about malicious green puppets. No, I don’t care.

I realized this past week that I have a solution that circumvents the conundrum entirely. The true solution to the midnight conundrum is that it’s all bullshit–just an old wives’ tale that nobody ever had a chance to disprove. 99% of all Mogwai undergo the metamorphosis into the gremlin life stage. Gizmo isn’t prudent and wise and a picky eater or whatever. He’s just the mogwai equivalent of a caterpillar that refuses to molt and just gets really huge. He’s a genetic freak and he deserves our pity. He will never know the joy of shanking some housewife and cackling like he’s on laughing gas. So sad!

If I weren’t retired as a writer, I’d write a semi-serious take on a world in which Gremlins were a real thing. If Peter Watts can do it for The Thing, I don’t see why I can’t for Amblin movies.

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We saw Avatar: The Way of Water today. I don’t think I want to say too much about the movie itself. I think you already know if you are the kind of person who will enjoy a movie like this. Judging from the box office success, most people at least were willing to go sit through it. Personally, I liked it okay, and thought it was an improvement on the first. Sarah called it Toxic Masculity: The Movie and she has a fair point. Teenage boys and their testosterone is apparently a cross-species thing.

The main thing I’ve been thinking about is how seamlessly the special effects work was, and how quickly I forgot I was watching a movie that was almost entirely rendered on computers. As a child of the 80s, I’m used to being able to immediately spot most SFX shots because for the longest time, true verisimilitude was beyond our technical reach. To do CG water in a way that is indistinguishable from reality, I would have thought impossible even just a couple of years ago. Clearly fucking not. The water in this movie absolutely astonished me.

There were still a few seams here and there. Probably some rushed shots. Shots that weren’t able to use motion capture in particular jarred me a bit in places, but it’s a testament to the tech and the craft of the people working on these films that I was able to forget I was looking at CG for 90% of the run time (conservative estimate).

So we’re what, maybe a couple of years out from special effects artists being able to perfectly emulate anything they want, anything the directors and creative team can imagine. We’ve been getting there for a while, but I really wonder what the future of visual arts looks like when this is possible. Is it a good thing? If you had asked me in my animation obsessed twenties, I would have said absolutely. That’s before I learned how soul-crushingly awful it can be to work in that special effects industry.

I can’t help but think about what the human cost is of films like this. It’s not like James Cameron is known for being a great guy to work for. Still – what sights we saw today. How amazing was it that I believed it so thoroughly. An alien world has never felt so real. The sight of the pristine wilderness of it and what the “sky people” brought me to the brink of tears.

I’m grateful for getting to see it. I hope my enjoyment didn’t come at too high of a cost for the workers.

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The new TV show Poker Face on Peacock by Rian Johnson starring Natasha Lyonne, I mean. Not, like, the song by Lady Gaga or whatever.

We’ve watched the first four episodes, and they’re mostly stellar TV. The premise is that Charlie is a cocktail waitress who has a nigh-supernatural ability to tell when someone it telling a lie. You might think that would see her gaining fame and riches, and in some genres, she would. But this is noir, so Charlie’s ability just gets her repeatedly entangled in crime.

These are not whodunnits, even that we watch Charlie prove murders every episode. This is because we see the murder at the start of every episode and we actually are waiting for Charlie to catch up. The emphasis here isn’t on justice, either. Again, this isn’t a detective show. These aren’t whodunnits. This is much more in the tradition or crime or noir.

The writing so far has been far above average for this kind of show and the cast is all-star. Rian Johnson continues to impress the hell out of me. I’m so excited that we get a total of 10 episodes in the season!

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