Flasz On Film

Over the course of 2023, I have written a whole bunch. In fact, I think it may have been my most prolific year. Now, in addition to the list of 5 Articles People Clicked On the Most, here’s another compilation for your amusement. On this occasion, I curated a list of five pieces I was either particularly happy with, or ones that meant something to me personally.

5. Can ChatGPT Help You Get Better at Writing?

Although apparently the word of the year ended up being ‘rizz’ (whatever the hell it means), I think the word ‘AI’ must have come close second. With the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the world has changed. The genie is out of the bottle and there’s no coming back from this. We now live in the age of Large Language Models, Deep Learning and everything else we don’t know yet that could hide under the umbrella term of Artificial Intelligence. With that, a lot has been made of the many threats to the economy and replacing people’s jobs (about which I have also written here and here). Being an open-minded and forward-looking, I took it upon myself to see how (if at all) you could overcome whatever techno-fears you might be harbouring (especially after watching M3GAN) and adopt ChatGPT as a tool for a writer. (Full article here)

4. SOUL, The Great Resignation Wave and Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Ha! This was a piece I count as one of the most formative for me as a writer because a few years back I thought to myself it was a good idea to start pitching articles at – shall we call it – respectable outlets. So, I concocted an idea about the way Pixar’s Soul reflected the impending arrival of The Great Resignation Wave, which saw millions of workers up sticks and leave their jobs for many reasons. And I ended up quickly snapping myself out of this delusion, as I realized I didn’t necessarily want to spend countless hours writing emails and sending them into the void, begging anyone with a heartbeat to platform my thoughts. I then realized that I’d rather work on my own little platform (that almost literally nobody reads) and happily answer to myself as the editor-in-chief instead of doffing the cap and accepting feedback from people who (a) only care about clicks and (b) who would gleefully suppress my own way of expression to fit the format of their outlet. I call it personal growth. In the meantime, writing that piece became completely irrelevant, so I wrote a piece about how I never wrote that piece and called it a day. And if there’s anything I learned, it is that I’d rather write something I care about the way I want and have nobody read it, than write something I don’t believe in in a way that makes me want to paint the wall with my brain. (Full article here)

3. How to Rank a Perfect Filmography, or Happy Birthday, Quentin!

Anyone who knows me will be able to recognize that Quentin Tarantino is probably my favourite living filmmaker. Therefore, writing a piece to coincide with his birthday was something I simply had to do. This is also a pitch that nobody wanted and probably the closest I ever came to writing a listicle (a form I hold in utter contempt… never you mind the fact I am writing one now), but I was extremely happy with myself after engineering a way to rank an essentially perfect filmography (I am not fielding questions at this time, sorry), which boiled down to looking at Tarantino’s films as though they were my children, all of whom I love. But in different ways. (Full article here)

2. John Cassavetes – The Patron Saint of Indie Podcasting

Over the course of 2023, Randy and I went methodically through the cinema of John Cassavetes and documented our conversations in a 12-part marathon (available to listen on the Uncut Gems Podcast Patreon Page). And as I learned more about this maverick filmmaker, I discovered growing kinship with him as a creative. In a way, Cassavetes’ unbridled way of filmmaking gave me a permission to be the kind of podcaster (and a writer, too) that I think I am. He validated my love of the process, showed me that it’s OK to ramble and that it is not important to make whatever you work on into a product. In fact, doing so is detrimental to the value of whatever it is you’re doing. (Full article here)

1. Sam Witwicky – The Avatar of Millennial Strife

Look, if you had told me exactly one year ago that I would write not one, not two but three articles about Transformers movies (that’s in addition to my review of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts), I’d laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. And laugh some more. And if you then proceeded to tell me that one of those three articles would end up extremely personal to me – in fact, so personal that I would put it above everything else I’d write in 2023 – I’d think you’ve genuinely lost your marbles. And now, here we are… in a world where I have uncovered immense symmetry between my own life experiences (and those of my entire generation) and the story arc of one Sam Witwicky. I can only invite you to read my thoughts on the subject and to do so with the knowledge I meant every last word of it. In fact, I think I now evolved to become a de facto defender of Michael Bay’s Transformers films, despite the fact they are objectively not the best. (Full article here)