Author: cbcrenshaw

C.B. Crenshaw is a musician, artist, writer, coder, gardener, and maker in Alabama.

Everything Old is New Again

cbcrenshawLeave a comment

Here are some signs we’re back in the late ’90s and early ’00s model of the web:

  1. Search engines suck again. No link needed because you know exactly what I mean.
  2. Social media is fragmented and broken
  3. People and institutions are moving from platforms back to websites (like this one! 😀)
  4. Companies are leaving the cloud and moving back to machines they own
  5. Microsoft is bloating Windows with garbage and ads (and also, have you seen how bad Microsoft-owned sites like LinkedIn work on Firefox? Ugh!)
  6. Apple is chasing pipe dreams and developing a large and unwieldy portfolio of products

These are not strictly web-related, but I’ll throw it here as items (7) and (8).

(7). Physical media of every type remains very much alive

(8). Streaming services are cannibalizing their own content–and therefore the very reason they were attractive to users over physical media and broadcast in the first place–for short-term gains

In my own practice, I’m moving away from cloud file storage and streaming media back to owning and controlling my own data. I am canceling every subscription service I can, and I even bought an old mp3 player to control my own music again (in addition to all of the glorious physical media I could never part with in the first place).

I’ve been cooking a post on “free” computing for a little while now, but not tonight.

Why you Should Watch The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)

cbcrenshawLeave a comment

I’m not going to pretend that this is a good movie. The acting and production are about as good as you might expect from a late-fifties crime/horror/monster/science fiction/action hero film produced in Mexico City and dubbed by a crew in Coral Gables, Florida. It’s bad.

I’m not pretending this bad movie is good, but I’ll make an argument for why you should watch it anyway.

  • With all of the strikes against it, this is still just about as good as any Roger Corman feature from the era. And it was produced without access to the deep pool of Southern California talent that Corman could skim to make his schlock.
  • While the Aztec story here shares similarities with Native American fantasies in US films—the Native Princess, the Brave Warrior, forbidden love, and so on—it treats indigenous names, culture, and ideas with sensitivity you won’t see in a film produced north of the Rio Grande.
  • You won’t see a cast like this in a Hollywood film from the era. Stars Ramón Gay and Luis Aceves Castañeda were Mexican, star Rosita Arenas was born in Venezuela, Crox Alvarado was from Costa Rica.
  • You’re bound to get a few unintentional laughs. Look at the obvious toy snakes in the snake pit! Come back and here tell me you didn’t laugh when you saw the Angel jump in his little coupe and drive away in his shiny Luchador costume!

Put it all together, and you get a decent little midnight movie to hell you forget the Sunday night blues.

See you next time!