Vlada Simović

Mexico paid $20 million for eight minutes in this movie. Then those eight minutes forced them to invent an entire cultural tradition. Before Spectre, Mexico City had no Day of the Dead parade. The holiday was celebrated at home, at cemeteries, with family altars. Quiet, intimate, centuries old. Sam Mendes fabricated a massive street parade for the opening sequence, shot it with 1,500 extras in skeleton costumes across the Zócalo, and audiences worldwide assumed they were watching a real annual event. Mexico's government had negotiated hard for the placement. Leaked Sony hack emails showed officials offered up to $20 million in tax incentives for four minutes of positive portrayal. Sony was drowning in a $300 million budget. The deal included script changes: the Bond girl had to be a Mexican actress, the villain could not be Mexican, and the city's modern skyline had to appear on screen. Then the movie opened in 182 countries and tourists started booking flights to Mexico City for the parade. The parade that did not exist. Tourism authorities panicked. Visitors were arriving expecting the spectacle they saw in the film and finding nothing. So in October 2016, the government spent $500,000, hired 650 volunteers, built dozens of floats and giant skeleton marionettes, and staged the first real Día de los Muertos parade in Mexico City's history. 250,000 people showed up. They openly called it a "Spectre-style parade" in press materials. Ten years later, the parade draws millions. Anthropologists call it the "pizza effect," where a cultural element gets exported, transformed abroad, and reimported as authentic. Mexico's most famous public celebration of its most sacred holiday was invented by a British director shooting a $300 million spy movie. That tracking shot is doing more for Mexico City's economy every November than the $20 million they paid for it.

Breaking: Andover New Jersey cancels data center project and passes complete ban!! Rural NJ is fighting back against Big Tech!

Whose f*cking permission are you waiting for? Go do your thing. You're going to die.

NEW TRAILER - Mexico's first ever full length stop motion movie, I AM FRANKELDA premieres 6/12 on Netflix. Frankelda journeys into her subconscious to face monsters. Guided by a tormented prince, she must restore the balance between fiction & reality.

Bigger thoughts: TV animation is in a really bad state right now between the rise of streaming, AI, and shorter attention spans. Very, very hard to get anything greenlit right now, and I promise I understand the fear that comes with that; but… (1/2)

AI

It's pretty clear Otoy is afraid for its future. They are trying to find balance between AI hype and their customer base. Jules will be attending some conference on AI where big money from AI attracts grifters and fake influencers trying to make everything look more serious than it is. We have granny with bs posts and 2M followers 🙂, AI studios with questionable output etc. It all seems like a giant hot air balloon. They are simply pushing it at all cost. That's the reality.