September has ended, and we must all be awoken?
Listen to this week here:
Today this lands as a video post.
You can still have a listen of course, for everything else, but be kind and do have a look at my video.
‘The Shining’ from Stanley Kubrick was based on a Stephen King story. The chiller from 1980 is one the classics in cold, unsettling horror. In doing today’s little video piece, I was taken back to how Shelley Duvall’s absolutely manic, soul-chewing screams contributed to the raw edge of the movie.
But my story is not about her (she passed just over a year ago). It looks at how some incredibly persistent detective work from fans ‘solved’ an enduring question mark from the film. No, not what the ending means, but in fact, the original photograph that made the ending so boggling in the first place.
Have a look, its a short short story.
Accompanied by these bursts of pop culture & colour ahead:
Here’s Johnny (video above): A decades old unknown from uncovered.
A mountain worth climbing?: The Gorillaz x Anoushka Shankar
Here comes the bride: A theatrical release of ‘The Whole Bloody Affair’.
AI is oh so human: A look at how AI models want so badly for us to feel their humanity
With: Hacking democracy with culture, community, and connectivity ;a phonophile’s dream near Lake Como ; a wonderful speech at the UN ; and a surprising nugget about the icnonic Star Wars theme.
1. A mountain worth climbing?
I don’t, admittedly, know the music group Gorillaz all that well. They are a long running music ‘experiment’, (if somehow they must still be referred to thus) from English musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett. A virtual band, I suppose they must be called- made up of four fictional members: 2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs drawn by Hewlett.
They manifest in animated music videos, interviews, comic strips and short cartoons. While Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor and primary songwriter, Gorillaz regularly collaborates with a pretty eclectic range of musicians and featured artists.
They plonk into the radar because of their recently announced next album. Due out in March 2026, ‘The Mountain’ is awash with Indian connections. Anoushka Shankar announced, “I’m buzzing to say that I’m playing all over it!“. It also features sarod stars Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, with contributions from Indian legend Asha Bhonsle.
The album, recorded across India including Mumbai, Delhi, Rajasthan and Varanasi is also called ‘Parvat’ (the Hindi word for ’mountain’) in the album artwork.
Plus points for these comments from Albarn & Hewlett! Both have described it as a cohesive and conceptual work, exploring ideas of death and the afterlife through the band’s fictional characters. Hewlett said people listening to the album are “supposed to listen to it from beginning to end,” saying that they were “trying to bring back that idea of taking time to invest in something, instead of this culture of scrolling.”
I’m down for that.
If this excites you, a single has already dropped. The Happy Dictator aka ‘Khushdil Tanashah’, here:
2. Here Comes The Bride
Talking of releases, there’s The Whole Bloody Affair from Tarantino. That’s the name for the single Kill Bill film. Eventually released in two parts, he had always visualised it as one epic story. A four hour runtime meant that would never happen, and we got Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2.
But never say never! Lionsgate and Tarantino have announced a nationwide theatrical (US) release of The Whole Bloody Affair this December, which will also include a never-before-seen 7 1/2-minute animated sequence.
Tarantino has, over the years, screened some version of the single film. Most notably in 2011 in (his own) LA cinema. That’s when this stupendous poster from Tyler Stout came out.
I doubt if this will make its way towards Asia, but one can hope.
3. AI is oh so human.
ChatGPT is doubtless the reigning AI ‘tool’. Claude from Anthropic has been around for some time as well. As it happens, both have launched brand spots and campaigns. They are pleasing enough from an advertising/creative/craft perspective, but I was also struck by the common space they both want to occupy (yet, differently positioned).
Keep Thinking.
Anthropic’s spot for ‘Claude’ pitches it as something built “for problem solvers”. I had these quick thoughts as soon as I saw it:
They’ve gone for a very tactile vibe. Overly tech /cyber/ machine imagery or tones? No, thank you. Humans, many humans. 4:3 aspect ratio, ah, that retro-warmth. Music that feels hand made. An old school feel to the voice- a radio read, a newscaster maybe.
Look at all the humans, they are people who do, who touch and make and craft and build, and swim and drive and play; they are not keyboard Generals conjuring a new world from their ergonomic chairs.
With ‘Keep Thinking’ as the campaign line, it is trying to make us feel like AI is not about cognitive offloading, not a short cut. It is not here to make us lazy or dumb, in fact, that Claude will drive us to think. In doing so, it also tries to dilute the ‘AI is a threat’ feel, and bring it back to being viewed as an enabler, a collaborator.
With AI backlash becoming a real thing, such an approach is hardly unexpected, comms to ‘humanise’ the space. Remember “If you’re human and you know it” which I shared recently from World. org?
Creative: Mother · Director: Daniel Wolfe ·
DOP: André Chemetoff · Editor: Dominic Leung · Production · Love Song ·
Now, on to Chat Ji PT.
ChatGPT, please make me an ad?
“Turning everyday prompts into little movies’ is the stated ambition. From a creative perspective, it is nicely achieved. Watch three spots back to back, where Chat warmly shapes parts of our daily life with date recipes, fitness aims and road trips:
“…we’re in this true technological revolution, and we don’t all have the same vision for how this will go,” says their CMO Kate Rouch.
Isle of Any · SMUGGLER · Director: Miles Jay ·
My Take. One can’t help but compare the two efforts. Both look to humanise the role of AI in our lives, take away the cold, tech-dominance feel and make it more personable (and, in Chat’s case, personal).
The difference? Claude wants a larger, more meaningful place in humanity’s endeavours ; these ChatGPT missives reveal a preference to stay inserted into daily life. Maybe Chat’s spots work in pitching the service not as some techy solution or productivity hack, but our partner in stumbling from one week to the next.
Not a small amount of the AI backlash is precisely because AI is viewed as taking away agency from us, insidiously pretending to add value to every little facet of our life. To that crowd, ChatGPT’s message might be a bit of a miss.
What say you?
This bit is largely knicked from this week’s dispatch of The Colour Bar, my (other) newsletter on media, entertainment, brands and AI. If it was at all to your taste, I recommend checking it out.
I’ve pulled together stories that show us how weird & wide the spectrum of AI in our lives has already become. It is impacting, affecting, cajoling and squeezing expression, understanding, music, creativity, work, the very internet as we have known it, and shaping trust.
“AI: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” has parts which might make you nod knowingly, others have you shake your head. Other bits will make you smile, sigh or scream.
Masala Peanuts
”Aesthetic as argument, humour as survival, memes as shorthand policy.” Adrija Bose at Decode has an excellent look at how youth culture blended with defiance brought on the recent political upheaval in Nepal. The youth’s language and currency of memes, pop culture, communities and yes- aura farming- toppled a government (and installed the next). “Nepal’s youth have shown us that democracy can be hacked — not with code, but with culture, community, and connectivity.“
On the eastern shore of Italy’s famous Lake Como is Il Sereno. It is a 40-suite hotel, built around views of the Italian Alps and shimmering water. Now, its new “Listening Suite is what phonophiles’ dreams are made of”.
“Information integrity is the mother of all battles. Win this and we can win the rest. Lose this and we lose everything. Please choose courage over comfort. Facts over fiction.” I find Maria Ressa wonderful. Nobel laureate, award-winning journalist and the embodiment of courage through arrests and authoritarian challenges in Phillipines a few years ago, she spoke to the the UN at its 80th anniversary meeting. It was, as often with her, a speech of passion, hope and gentle courage.
Random discovery: John Williams iconic “Main Title” for Star Wars was directly ‘inspired’ by the main title theme from the 1942 film ‘Kings Row’, composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Williams wrote the Star Wars theme with a similar heroic quality to the Kings Row theme. He also intentionally matched the key of the Star Wars theme to the 20th Century Fox fanfare B major, I am told), so it would seamlessly flow from the fanfare for a smooth transition into the film. Have a listen:
I would watch dragger-ants carry off whole lemon rinds upon their backs like a trail of palanquin bearers. It would occur to me that I ought to be doing something more responsible with myself and my time, but I couldn’t see what.
We weren’t like the ants. They had collective insight and collective force.
Man was doomed to be subservient to his personality.
_Rahul Bhattacharya, in The Sly Company of People Who Care
