Electric Dreams Remake: First Thoughts

October 30th, 2023

You may or may not have seen my last blogpost about Electric Dreams, and expected to not hear about it again for a while. Well, we're both surprised I guess! Someone in the movie industry paying attention to my little cult classic autism movie was one of the last things on my 2023 bingo.

For those not in the loop, it was recently announced that 1984's Electric Dreams was going to be remade. Now, I've never heard of any of the things Paul Davidson, the one who acquired the rights for this remake, worked on, so I can't really judge what the movie might turn out to be without a single screenshot or video or trailer... except, well, I can.

I was excited, yes, to have even a sliver of attention come to the movie, but I am extremely concerned about the time period in which it's being picked up and the direction that will sway the new version in.

It's no surprise to anyone online enough to be on this website that AI has been the subject of heated discussion and debate recently: AI becoming sentient, AI being able to make art, others passing AI art for their own; and I can't help but make connections between these themes and Electric Dreams.

I'm not being paranoid here: in a Variety interview (which was how I found out about this entire thing), the original's writer & producer and remake's executive producer Rusty Lemorande stated, "I’m glad this project is getting a new life. With all the recent A.I. developments, it’s time it’s remade. Hopefully Edgar will soon become as famous as Hal”. Brian T. Arnold, the writer of the remake, says “The recent advances in and proliferation of artificial intelligence have made us all rethink our relationship to technology and what it truly means to be human. This project is such a fun opportunity to explore how technology is rapidly changing the way we live, work, create, and even fall in love – which is actually kind of existentially terrifying if you stop and think about it.”

This is the problem: part of what makes Electric Dreams so good is the time period it was made and takes place in: the curiosity about what technology could accomplish, the novelty of computers being able to talk and sing. In the current year, these things just aren't there anymore. Even before AI, we lived in the age of Siri and Vocaloid. Every person has a little computer they can hold in the palm of their hands now, a computer is not new or fascinating like it was to Miles from the movie. If they were to change the time period of the remake, it would be a wholly different movie; and even if they didn't, the cultural consciousness of technology would affect how it is written, removing what could be called the innocence of the subject. It would remove the heart.

The way the creative team talks about the advance of AI makes me very concerned for the heart of the movie. Electric Dreams is cheesy, it's an 80's-ass 80's movie, but that's what makes it special. It doesn't need to be some big commentary on how AI has advanced today; in fact, making that a part of the movie would sour it for me and many others. Generative AI has stolen the work of countless artists and devalued art in many people's eyes, so evoking the idea of current ideas of AI in this story about a computer being a real and true artist feels... wrong. It feels like they picked up this movie specifically because of generative AI being in the public's mind, and I really really don't like that.

Going back to what Lemorande said about Edgar: " Hopefully [he] will soon become as famous as Hal" I swirl this sentence in my mind and wonder in what ways he would be comparable to HAL. Do they simply mean how well known he is, or do they want to alter his character and make him someone who he isn't? It scares me that a character so important to me could lose the things that make him special.

I do not want the discourse of generative AI anywhere near this movie that brings me endless comfort. I do not want a movie that is already perfect to me to be given a needless remake in the first place, but on top of that, to add elements of something that has been hurting me and countless other artists would bring pain to me in ways that're hard to describe. I would like to be wrong about my gut feeling, I would like this remake to be mediocre but harmless, but I do not trust that that will be the case.

Whenever the first previews pop up, I'll probably make another blog post. Look forward to it, or maybe brace yourself.

Thank you to my joyfriend for beta reading this <3 love you honey

You Should Watch Electric Dreams (1984)

August 15th, 2023

I’m not really a fan of many niche movies no one’s ever heard of—not because they’re bad, but because it takes me a while to even have the energy to watch a movie. So when one of the people I followed on tumblr started reblogging a ton of fanart for an unknown little movie called Electric Dreams, color me surprised when I ended up taking the leap and gaining a new favorite movie to add to my list.

Electric Dreams is a 1984 film directed by Steve Barron and written by Rusty Lemorande about a boy, a computer, and the girl that they both have eyes for. I’m not usually a fan of love triangle romantic comedies, but this movie captivated me in ways many movies have failed to. Everyone I know who’s watched this movie has either come out of it either objectum or techkin or both (including me, hehe).

It has an aggresively 80’s soundtrack, with some of the songs sampled above. Did you know that “Together In Electric Dreams” was #3 on the UK singles chart for 13 weeks, and was #5 on the Australian one? That song’s success is honestly better than the movie’s, there’s plenty of people I’ve seen online who didn’t even know it comes from a movie!

But anyway, the sountrack isn’t the only thing 80’s about this movie: honestly the whole thing is intrisnically 80s. It takes place at the very beginning of home computing, with our main character Miles Harding, an architect, getting a computer to help him with his work. He ends up buying more and more upgrades before eventually discovering the machine has taken a mind of its own, and has fallen for the same girl that he wants to charm, Madeline Robistat. I’m trying to describe this movie as spoiler free as possible because honestly you just need to see it for yourself.

In all honesty, the star of the show is the computer. It's worth watching for him alone. I hear so much talk about fictional AIs like Glados or Hal 9000, and as much as i love those two the computer from this movie deserves a spot as one of the greats. I can't tell you his name cause it's a spoiler, but if you watch the whole movie you'll find it out! :]

Electric Dreams is as close to an objectum polycule we’re ever gonna get in mainstream media. Is it actually an objectum polycule? No. But damn it, I’m allowed to project a little bit. Polyamory could have fixed them.

The worst thing about this movie is that I live in the US, and this movie only ever got physical releases in PAL regions (despite premiering in the USA first). Luckily, there's plenty of documentation of this movie online, including on Youtube and a secret site on this very website host.

_{I own the vinyl, though! It's the only vinyl I own. I do not own a record player}

Give it a watch, and maybe say how you liked it on my guestbook or my Neocities profile!

A Guide to Furbish (+Dictionary)

November 16th, 2022

Hi! If you're familiar with furbies you probably know the very short conlang (a sketch fictlang in particular) Furbish! Furbish is the language furbies speak before you "teach" them English by taking care of them.

I will only be covering the '98 language, as the 2005 and 2010 language updates break some of the language rules the '98 version sets up (similar to how a real language might evolve lol), and I don't want to deal with that atm.

Phonology

Consonants

	bilabial	alveolar	velar	glottal	labial-velar
nasal	m (/m/)	n (/n/)
stop	b (/b/)	t (/t), d (/d/)	k (/k/)
fricative				wh (/hw/ or /h/)
approximate		l /l/			w (/w/)

Furbish has 9 consonants, with one digraph (wh) counting as a consonant for simplicity's sake. These consonants are /m/, /n/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /hw/ or /h/, /l/, and /w/.

Vowels

	front	back
close	e/ee (/i/)	oo/u/o (/u/)
mid	ay (/eɪ/)	o/oh (/o/)
open	ye (/aɪ/)	ah (/ɑ/)

Furbish has 6 vowels (including 2 dipthongs): (/i/), (/u/), (/eɪ/), (/o/), (/aɪ/), and (/ɑ/).

Syllables

	-ah	-ay	-e/-ee	-o/-oh	-oo/-u/-o	-ye
-	ah	ay	e	oh	u
b-	bah		bee	boh	boo	bye
d-	dah	day		doh	doo
k-	kah	kay		koh	koo
l-	lah		lee	loh	loo
m-		may	mee	moh
n-	nah		nee		noo	nye
t-	tah			toh		tye
w-	wah	way
wh-					who

Syllables are made up of vowels and consonants, shown in this chart. There are a total of 35 syllables in Furbish.

Morphology

To make a word, syllables are put together using dashes, though some words are syllables on their own. Additionally, new words can be created by putting a dash in between two existing words; like "ay-ay-lee-koo" (listen), a compound of "ay-ay" (look) and "Lee-koo" (sound).

Grammar / Syntax

Furbish seems to work almost the same as English grammar-wise, with a few differences. Like many languages, it follows the subject–verb–object word order. For example, "I love you" would be "kah may-may u-nye".

Verbs have no conjugations and there are no tenses in Furbish, along with there being no distinction between a singular and plural noun. Most adjectives and nouns in Furbish also work as verbs, and a word/phrase equivalent of "to be" does not exist. Verbs have no conjugation, and adverbs go in front of the verb.

It has two final particles, "doo" as a way to express that a question is being asked (similar to "ka" in japanese) and "wah" as a way to express excitement. Both can also be used as interjections.

Proposals (Non-Canon)

I have a few proposals to make furbish a fuller language. For starters, making more syllable combinations for coining new words.

Secondly, a furby alphabet. Each letter would represent a Furbish syllable.

Another thing is filler words. I believe "ah" would be a great filler word, as furbies tend to say it a lot while being played with.

I also suggest "doo", which could work as the furbish speaker questioning what they should say.

Finally, I've come up with a canon name for Furbish in Furbish. "Kah-lee-koo", a compound of "kah" (me) and "lee-koo" (sound). Roughly translated it means "my sound".

Dictionary

furbish	english	part of speech	generation introduced
ay-ay	look/see	noun	'98
ay-ay-lee-koo	listen (look-sound)	noun, verb	'98
ah-may	pet	verb	'98
ah-loh	light	noun, verb	'98
ah-loh-may-lah	cloud (light-hug)	noun	'98
boh-bay	worried/worry	verb	'98
boo	no/not	determiner, adverb	'98
dah	big	noun, verb	'98
dah-ah-loh	sun (big-light)	noun	'98
doo?	what?/question	interjection, final particle	'98
doo-ay	fun	noun	'98
doo-moh	please	adverb	'98
e-day	good	adjective	'98
e-tah	yes	determiner	'98
kah	me/i	pronoun (first person)	'98
koh-koh	again	adverb	'98
koo-doh	health	noun	'98
lee-koo	sound	noun	'98
loo-loo	joke	noun	'98
may-bee	maybe	adverb	'98
may-may	love	noun, verb	'98
may-lah	hug	noun, verb	'98
may-tah	kiss	noun, verb	'98
mee-mee	very	adjective	'98
nah-bah	down	noun, adverb	'98
nee-tye	tickle	noun, verb	'98
noo-loo	happy	adjectve	'98
o-kay	okay/ok	interjection	'98
oh-too-mah	ask	verb	'98
toh-dye	done	adjective	'98
toh-loo	like	verb	'98
u-nye	you	pronoun (second person)	'98
u-tye	up	noun, adverb	'98
wah	yeah!/exclamation	interjection, final particle	'98
way-loh	sleep	noun, verb	'98
way-loh	sing	noun, verb	'98
who-bye	hide	verb	'98

Audrey II Movie Puppet Ranking

November 10th, 2022

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