However ridiculous it is as a franchise, can we all agree that it is somewhat delightful that a mincing one-off outlasted the purported and bland hero and heroine of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and that the series has now become a showcase for exceedingly talented actors to have an enormous amount of silly fun? I mean, come on, how drunk do you think Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush and Ian McShane got while making this move (I leave Penelope Cruz out only because she was pregnant for much of filming. I’m sure she can put it away with the best of them):

I also think it’s legitimately and seriously interesting how the British Empire has slowly become more and more important to the series, to the extent that Jack’s now in London. As anyone who has read the terrific Republic of Pirates knows, the buccaneers lost, so that encroachment is both fitting and historically accurate. I’d be curious to see if the series ends with a truce, or a piratical withdrawal from the scene. Such a denouement would be emotionally appropriate, I think: Jack Sparrow’s always been a little doomed, not really of this world even before he came back from the dead.

This “So You Want To Be A Journalist” video cracked me up, as a veteran of a trade magazine, as someone was once the kind of radical who staged protests at college administration buildings, and as a Theoretically Wise Person who often speaks to people who would like to be journalists when they grow up:

More importantly though, however crude this is as a medium, it’s an important step forward in giving people tools to make movies. There are a tons of these floating around specific to various industries, and it’s a fun little meme, but I’m sure there are people out there who are going to create more sophisticated narratives, and ultimately more sophisticated tools to let people make more movies with more iterations of interactions between the characters. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of stories people choose to tell when that happens, how fast the technology develops, and at what point, people just choose to make stories and share them with each other, bypassing mainstream entertainment altogether. I actually doubt that the last iteration will ever happen so completely as to put Hollywood out of business. But I’d be curious to see if such tools significantly lower the barriers to production and distribution, and if so, whether anyone else cares.