Matthew Dessem

@matthewdessem.bsky.social

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I’m the enchanting wizard of rhythm. I came here to tell you about the rhythms of the universe.

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Matthew Dessem

Horrifying accompanying marionette optional youtu.be/rxLCYK1KohY?...

Musicians don’t have good gimmicks anymore. Who would you rather see in concert, Taylor Swift or Taylor Swift and Her Talking Steel Guitar?

St. Louis Blues - Alvino Rey's talking steel guitar sequence from Jam Session (1944)youtu.be This number from the 1944 Ann Miller musical "Jam Session" features a puppet voiced with a "talking" steel guitar, producing an early analog "vocoder" effect...

Musicians don’t have good gimmicks anymore. Who would you rather see in concert, Taylor Swift or Taylor Swift and Her Talking Steel Guitar?

Trump is in nearly as bad shape as Biden and evil to boot, but “Should I vote for Biden or Trump?” and “Can Joe Biden still responsibly wield the power to end all life on the planet at a moment’s notice?” are not the same question and we owe the rest of the world a straight answer to the latter one.

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I'm not the Step Dad, I'm the Dad from the Steppe—and my Scythian Brethren and I Will Teach this Child the Way of the Horse

My dad just watched The Wild Bunch and called me to talk about the stuff Red Dead Redemption lifted from it. I thought this was supposed to work the other way around!

Also liked Lily James doing a passable Mädchen Amick in Twin Peaks impression.

The story-level stuff in Baby Driver was never much good and is worse on a rewatch, but the choreographed car chases? Still golden. Just some fellas doing car pranks!

Last night I finally finished the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV. Has anything interesting happened in gaming since 2008?

If there were ever a time for malicious compliance, this is it.

There are a lot of things Biden could do now to keep Trump out of office and encourage conservative justices to retire without risking prosecution, and I hope he will take the initiative and use his new powers for as many official acts as possible until those powers are removed.

I should be the last person to still get caught out thinking “they’d never go that far” but on presidential immunity I really didn’t think they’d go that far.

It is kind of amazing that yesterday the court paraphrased Anatole France’s thing about the majestic equality of the law as though it were a good thing, and then today decided that actually, the president can sleep under bridges if he wants to, because of who he is.

Wow, what a sickening decision to wake up to.

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Misinformation

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A random frame from that random frames from Homestar Runner Twitter account that has a perfect joke.

Last night we watched “The Specialist” and although it is a terrible movie, it’s another example of bog-standard ‘90s cinematography playing as a visual feast simply because nobody really uses these colors anymore.

The answer is probably that the 4.0 was the original hero mix and the 5.1 mix came from that, but what’s the stereo one? A theatrical Dolby Stereo mix or a mixdown or what?

Non-Criterion disc labels (and the Criterion Channel) should be clearer about their audio sources. In theaters, Rollerball had 4 track mag on some 35mm prints, 6 track mag on 70mm, probably mono or Dolby Stereo optical tracks on the rest. The disc has a 5.1 and 2.0 mix—where did they come from?

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“Does this person understand Lolita” remains one of the most reliable rules of thumb we’ve got.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

As far as I can tell, Sony is cutting the division that does recordable Blu-ray discs, the kind you use with disc burners, not pre-burned home video. I’m not optimistic about physical media but I don’t think the apocalypse is here yet.

Followed it up with Rollerball, for an accidental Houston Sucks double feature. A great looking movie, which not incidentally looks like it was composed for movie screens.

Saw Reality Bites for the first time last night, and that era where cinematographers ruthlessly protected the image for pan & scan home video is hilarious in widescreen. All these carefully composed 1.33:1 frames with an ocean of blank space on the side. That said, it played on TV forever, so…

The best (and maybe only) path forward for Biden is to announce from the convention stage that if the American people trust him with a second term, war will no longer exist. But there will be ROLLERBALL.

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this newspaper headline is the 1930 version of encountering an incomprehensible trending story about some Twitch streamer with 4 million followers

If this is really the strategy, Biden should promise Swartzwelder they’ll legalize smoking in restaurants again if he joins the campaign as a speechwriter. We could have this whole thing wrapped up by August!

You know, Joe Biden throwing random phrases of old-timey slang into his speeches is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel: no one knows how he got it, and danged if he knows how to use it!

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Overwhelming late-Soviet vibes lately, but Swan Lake wouldn’t play as well here, so what do you guys think CSPAN would loop during a collapse? I’d say “It’s a Wonderful Life” but I bet they’d choose something in color.

If you’re directing a horror movie where the bad guy wins and you need a creepy old song for the credits, let me introduce you to “Daddy’s Home,” by Shep & the Limelights.

Daddy's Home (Single Version) by Shep & The Limelites on Apple Musicmusic.apple.com Song · 2000 · Duration 2:47