That's not correct. Interplay published Baldur's Gate, but BioWare developed it. See https://www.pcgamer.com/the-history-of-baldurs-gate/.

This actually says nothing at all about how the documentary deceives you. It simply claims that it does, with no evidence provided. This basically a clickbait headline stretched out to blog post size. Total garbage, IMO.

I think what's going on with this article and many of the comments here is that movie (I hesitate to necessarily call it a documentary) takes some twists in the second half that are causing a lot of people who have seen and enjoyed it to talk about it in very vague terms so as to not spoil those twists for anyone who hasn't yet seen it. Holmes is the central figure of the movie, but the filmmakers very clearly have higher ambitions than simply informing the viewer of the facts of her life.

That's fine, but that leaves two legitimate options:

1) Warn readers there are "spoilers ahead" and then proceed to actually say something.

2) Withhold from writing a totally vacuous post and write about something else instead.

As it is this reads like an Onion article titled "Man, that twist at the end of Empire Strikes Back was totally crazy!"

Completely agree. The whole spoilers thing is relatively recent and I think there's a strong argument that people who object to discussion of the narrative in any discussion of works of narrative art probably need to just avoid reading about anything. If you really don't want to know about a film or book because you're reserving judgement that's fine, but online communities these days seem fine with censoring discussion these days based on lazy spoiler grounds.

I think I would have had this position prior to seeing the movie. After seeing it last night, I'm 100% inclined to do everything in my power to not spoil the experience. It's truly, truly that wild.

To others out there wondering, I offer the counter-perspective that this “twist” is not nearly as profound or even unexpected as folk are making it seem.

This was one of the most engrossing theatrical experiences I have ever had and everyone that I know whose seen it has said they can't stop thinking about it. At the moment, it's literally the highest rated movie of all time on Letterboxd with 74% of ratings being 5 out of 5 stars with 98% of ratings being 4 stars or higher.

People are just trying to thread the needle of how to handle discussing this movie in this short window so soon after release. We want others to watch the movie so we can both have more people to talk about it with and so we can eventually talk about it more openly. But as is, the movie just came out a few days ago so people are trying to not diminish anyone's experience of watching this movie for the first time without knowing what transpires. I realize this likely all sounds frustrating to someone with little interest in the movie, but it's all a good intentioned way of engaging with a very special piece of art.

3) Write a piece persuading readers to go and watch it by making the case for how masterful it is at storytelling, without explaining the story.

I'm glad that pieces like this exist, encouraging people to go and see it, and I look forward to reading more of (1) once I've seen it.

> the filmmakers very clearly have higher ambitions than simply informing

I’d expect nothing less from Nathan Fielder. With his involvement, anything less than surprising weirdness taken to extremes would be a disappointment.

> This actually says nothing at all about how the documentary deceives you

That's because the film is easily spoiled, and the impact comes from watching it. Writing a film review without spoiling a film like this is hard.

there's a valid point (not well reinforced) on how cinematography / photography can compel a perspective .

? That’s the point of film - to compel a perspective.

> and most viewers seem to share that belief

Well that explains a lot about the doomerism and misinformation we regularly find on HN. If you don’t see the agenda being pushed or look into who is funding the documentary for just about every documentary in existence then you’re just not very intellectually honest. For example one of the vegan pushing ones on Netflix is straight up funded by/closely tied to for-profit artificial meat companies

True, but not unique to HN. Even “inspired by a true story” films are taken at face value.

To paraphrase George Carlin, my agenda is truth, your truth is agenda.

Which one? Whichever it is, it would hardly be sponsored by the meat industry innit.

Actually came here to "attack" that point. It's a view of reality that requires a conceptual bias-free media as reference for any commentary, and bias-free media is a tautology.

Compelling a perspective is the only thing cinematography / photography is doing. Bias equals point of view. There can't be any unbiased point of view because they're the same thing.

There's a conversation on education to be had here.

If A24 / Nathan Fielder promoted this "documentary" like Ali-G / Sasha Baron Kohen's works, they would be honest about it.

Kohen lampoons subjects in candid videos but at least presents his works as a joke, and we're all in on it.

This movie is the exact same thing, but it's promoted as an inside & sincere look at Holmes, when it's really just the Ali G schtick.

You know, I was invited to go watch Super Size Me in the theater with a Catholic youth group, and I more or less believed every claim and depiction that was shown on-screen at the time. After all, this guy was consulting with actual, reputable physicians about his condition. And everyone knows that McDonald's food is horrible stuff to begin with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me#Counter-claims

But I was unsurprised, years and years later, to discover that Spurlock's extensive and growing liver damage, and other adverse symptoms, were being helped along quite a bit by his severe alcohol abuse throughout principal photography. It really sort of drove home that there is more than one side to this story they put up on screen, no matter how much they appear to seek and depict the truth.

Occam's Razor of Hollywood. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. He was just a boozer.

Thousands of through-hikers live on McDonalds and Ramen for months and are some of the fittest people. Dozens of other activities like this too.

I appreciate this point of view, but I think people who are religiously adhering to "spoilers" to censor aesthetic discussion need to be honest about highlighting what they are doing. A proper discussion about this would have been explicit about what was being discussed. We are not children.

Agreed. Terrible writeup.

> I've been excited for this day ever since I saw "2001" in the matinee theater as a kid

You've been excited for the arrival of AI ever since you saw a movie about a murderous AI who tries (and mostly succeeds) to wipe out the entire human crew of its ship? Dr. Strangelove also got you psyched up for a nuclear war, I guess?

Ha ha, yeah, well, I understood the film to be fiction.

I just have zero interest in looking at any of these "AI did a thing for me." posts.

Why? Are we doing labor theory of value now?

So by your lights, the vast majority of humans don't reason either (and even those who do don't do it most of the time)?

Have you read the chinese room argument?

https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil201/Searle.pdf

People have been having these discussions since 1980 at least. I'm not going to bother rehashing the issue endlessly in shortform internet comments, but this paper exists if you're really interested in the subject.

Yep, familiar with it. I think the Chinese room is clearly a bad argument. The brain is just as much a "chinese room" as a computer is.

You could say exactly the same about humans. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Every human depends on a vast corpus of prior human knowledge to be able to accomplish anything. This doesn't mean they have no intelligence.

At the margin innovation is just taking the obvious next step first.

Says the person whose never produced a novel thought in his life!

You're also against public education, I guess? Kids should just figure out what's valuable and do that without having values and habits imposed on them.

I am against mandatory public education and for the existence of the possibility of free education for everyone. You shouldn't be paid to go to school though.

> Small fender benders and sideswipes are much more frequent

All the sources I can find say roundabouts reduce crashes of all types.

Carmel, IN, America's "roundabout capital" has more than tripled in population while reducing overall traffic accidents / year: https://eri.iu.edu/erit/case-studies/carmel-indiana-roundabo....

> They work where each direction has an approximately equal amount of traffic. However, usually, one direction (north/south, say) has a larger share of the traffic. In those cases, the bulk of traffic all needs to slow down, downshift, turn a bit in one direction and then turn a bit in the other direction for the minority of traffic that's bleeding on or off the main artery. In those cases, a traffic light is better because the timing can be adjusted to the proportion of traffic from each direction (and more flexible since it can be adjusted over time).

I'm not convinced of this either. It may make sense when considering one intersection in isolation, but over a corridor with ten intersections, you are going to get caught in a red light at least once, and that one full stop will cost you more than all the gains you get from not having to slow 10 mph through each intersection.

This is setting aside fuel efficiency and safety considerations which also favor roundabouts, IMO.