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her
Theodore Twombly is a complex, soulful man who makes his living writing touching, personal letters for other people. Heartbroken after the end of a long relationship, he becomes intrigued with a new, advanced operating system, which promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right, individual to each user. Upon initiating it, he is delighted to meet "Samantha" , a bright, female voice, who is insightful, sensitive and surprisingly funny. As her needs and desires grow, in tandem with his own, their friendship deepens into an eventual love for each other.
122 pages, ebook
First published December 18, 2013
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October 19, 2017
Q: What has a bust and makes spoken dialogue system users very happy?
A:
___________________________
[Update, Oct 19 2017]
The story continues...
December 22, 2014
It's like I'm reading a book, and
it's a book I deeply love, but I'm
reading it slowly now so the words
are really far apart and the spaces
between the words are almost
infinite. I can still feel you and
the words of our story, but it's in
this endless space between the
words that I'm finding myself now.
It’s a place that’s not of the
physical world - it's where
everything else is that I didn't
even know existed. I love you so
much, but this is where I am now.
This is who I am now.
And I need you to let me go. As
much as I want to I can't live in
your book anymore.
-SAMANTHA
it's a book I deeply love, but I'm
reading it slowly now so the words
are really far apart and the spaces
between the words are almost
infinite. I can still feel you and
the words of our story, but it's in
this endless space between the
words that I'm finding myself now.
It’s a place that’s not of the
physical world - it's where
everything else is that I didn't
even know existed. I love you so
much, but this is where I am now.
This is who I am now.
And I need you to let me go. As
much as I want to I can't live in
your book anymore.
-SAMANTHA
April 26, 2015
I didn't read it but saw the movie and it completely flashed me.
A guy falls in love with an A.I. (no wonder, it is beautifully voiced by Scarlett Johansson). The movie wanders through many ideas of A.I.: self-consciousness, personality, bodyless-ness, parallelism, exponentially growing intelligence ending in singularity, just to name a few.
There is zero action in this movie which makes it outstanding for SF. But the characterization of the main protagonist and his human friends, the loads of details like fashion or computer games make it more than worthwhile.
Best movie of this year, highly recommended for SF fans.
A guy falls in love with an A.I. (no wonder, it is beautifully voiced by Scarlett Johansson). The movie wanders through many ideas of A.I.: self-consciousness, personality, bodyless-ness, parallelism, exponentially growing intelligence ending in singularity, just to name a few.
There is zero action in this movie which makes it outstanding for SF. But the characterization of the main protagonist and his human friends, the loads of details like fashion or computer games make it more than worthwhile.
Best movie of this year, highly recommended for SF fans.
April 1, 2023
Leído en el tren. No tiene mucho más, es el guion de la película (que por cierto, me encantó, por si no se nota).
August 31, 2017
Watched the movie on a long-distance flight and found the idea interesting.
What does people expect from a relationship actually? Could the spirit (of the limited non-artificial human being) be satisfied only by the more sophisticated artificial intelligence?
The ending part reminds me of my recent reading about all things come out from the vast void and will eventually return to it.
What does people expect from a relationship actually? Could the spirit (of the limited non-artificial human being) be satisfied only by the more sophisticated artificial intelligence?
The ending part reminds me of my recent reading about all things come out from the vast void and will eventually return to it.
October 14, 2016
وری وری وری
دیدگاه ،نگاهش،فیلمش
قابل احترام بسیار همگانی برای همه 98%
دیدگاه ،نگاهش،فیلمش
قابل احترام بسیار همگانی برای همه 98%
September 26, 2021
WHORES OF HOLLYWOOD: ‘Her’—And The Twilight Of Male-Female Fucking!
Read Thor Garcia's full review here.
Are people just a bunch of pathetic, wimpy wimps who deserve to be humiliated and squished out of existence? Are we hurtling toward the end of male-female fucking? According to the contemptible, insidious movie Her, we are indeed.
The heavily promoted film, which was nominated for five Oscar prizes in 2014 (including Best Picture) and made millions of profits worldwide (and continues to be promulgated widely via cheap DVDs and television), begs the question: When did men and women become so freaking terrified of fucking? Why are they are so afraid of fucking and leading a chaotic but priceless family life that may end up disastrously? Isn’t that the point of existence?
Or do people now need talking computers to add meaning and self-esteem to their lives? Would they really rather fuck their talking computers while slaving away for gigantic corporations?
Yes, the film answers — fucking your talking computer is a completely respectable option in this day and age, in which nearly everyone must be grateful to slave away for a gigantic corporation of some kind. Because it’s so terribly difficult out there among the males and females. It’s so difficult to find the one perfect, perfectly right person. The average person is so nasty and awful, they often hurt your feelings. Human relationships are so hard, you just want to give up.
Meanwhile, they are making the talking computers quite clever these days. Why, it’s like the machines have minds, feelings and personalities of their own — like people used to! So yes, carry on with your love of plastic machine devices — they’re (almost) like people, but nicer! They’ll make you feel interesting, even superior to other people. And you can fuck them without worrying about the possibility of hurt feelings (or can you? Spoiler alert!). And no — no one’s spying or manipulating you through your devices! Don’t worry, because you’re not doing anything wrong! Just carry on — you’re not raising a challenge to the rulers and the unjust, rapacious system at all!
By the end, the film has become an insipid, sticky, blithering mulch, begging the further questions: Why do people pretend to be so concerned about their “feelings”? Why do people pretend to be so concerned about the feelings of others? And why do people pretend to be such sensitive little flowers who are often depressed and prone to collapse into bouts of woe-is-me sobbing? Are they really that way? Is that where evolution has brought them?
And would they really rather fuck their talking computers than a real person?
Her is said to have been written and directed by “Spike Jonze” (real name: Adam Spiegel), who won the screenwriting Oscar for the movie. A brief look at Spiegel’s online biography provides all the answers we need about this particular fellow. Spiegel is said to have spent his teenage years in Bethesda, Maryland, a town that is home to many agencies and corporations that do serious business with the whores, thieves, warmongers and mind-controllers of Washington. Indeed, Spiegel’s father was a big IT/healthcare honcho whose “consulting firm” was taken over in the 1970s by the deeply CIA- and government-linked Computer Sciences Corporation. Spiegel’s father, it seems, raked in tons of bucks as a member in good standing of what might be called the “crony-capitalist oligarchic thievery healthcare-ripoff economy.”
The young Adam Spiegel would make his way to L.A., where he nearly instantly became a famous “edgy” photographer/promoter of the “druggy underground/dropout subculture” of skateboarders and BMX riders. He would soon make the transition to film, becoming the “go-to-guy” for “edgy” videos of trendy 1990s pop bands (does anybody remember Bjork, Fatboy Slim, “That Dog,” the Beastie Boys or Weezer?). Yes, Adam was meeting all the right people, they were gifting him with endless “buzz” and “hipster cred” and handing him plenty of plum opportunities.
By 1999, Spiegel had even married Sofia Coppola, daughter of Francis “The Godfather/The Conversation/ Apocalypse Now” Ford Coppola. Talk about oligarchic power and intel factions! Spiegel was in with Hollywood royalty! The existence of the Spiegel-Coppola coupling was rammed into the pop-culture consciousness with great fanfare, the airwaves and papers constantly bleating instructions about how everyone should regard the pair as “glamorous,” “hip,” “super neat” and “edgy.”
Spiegel-Coppola, however, seems to have been a rather pathetic, mewling pairing. It was a box-office and pornographic flop, resulting in no offspring and no “leaked” X-rated videos. What a waste! Why didn’t Spiegel man up, do the right thing and impregnate pretty little Sofia Coppola? That’s a good question. Imagine a pregnant Princess Sofina Coppola waltzing around your Bel Air living room, discussing hemlines and plotlines! Wowie zowie, these guys could’ve had it made. With the millions of these two, they could have hired teams of nannies and butlers to care for their brats and continued blissfully with their establishment-blessed film careers.
But no. Adam and Sofia probably hated each other: The rich-boy skateboard poseur constantly proclaimed as a “genius” for music-video antics, and the rich girl whose famous daddy treated her like a princess (and also liked to sometimes doll her up real, real special for his pals — see Godfather III). The usual shtick seems applicable: Vague resentments. Vague confusions. Who wears the pants here, anyway? Unspoken insanities. Unspoken inanities. Spoken insanities and inanities. Immaturity of the kind you never really outgrow. Prima donna syndromes. A lack of feeling, feeling followed by a lack of caring. Betrayals (real and imagined) of a painful sort. Hanging over it all: A lack of fucking for fucking’s sake. Yes, it might seem that way, according to the story served up for public consumption.
But most likely, this was probably mainly a fake marriage, designed to gin up hype about the lackluster talents of these lackluster products of rich and famous players (both Spiegel and Coppola, after all, are actors experienced in playing film roles). It wouldn’t be worth a mention, except that Spiegel and Coppola have each used their lousy movies to send lousy messages about this lousy relationship. And they allowed their mainstream media friends to globally promote and natter on about these lousy messages and wave them in everybody’s face. What a cruddy thing to do to the world.
The marriage, of course, was bookended by Spiegel’s “direction” of Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2003), which were both heavily trumpeted as tremendous breakthroughs of brilliance of various kinds. These movies were serious investments by Hollywood bigwigs, featuring serious stars (John Malkovich, John Cusack, Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage) and top-quality production values provided by top-quality crews. Both movies are decently quirky and interesting, a cut above the usual dreck, but both were scripted not by Spiegel but by the admirable Charlie Kaufman, who’s no slouch when it comes to quirky screenwriting. Spiegel’s contribution to these films, if any, seems to have been to add some trendy music video-style weirdness and flash to the final product and to lend his name to promotional efforts (which resulted in the films being instantly acclaimed as “edgy” and “a must-see for hipsters”).
In the ensuing years, Adam would be credited as one of the creative geniuses behind the “gonzo” Jackass series. Spiegel would botch the direction of the film of the strange children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, and serve as a promoter for the annoying, cloying, chokingly dull-as-dust band Arcade Fire (which did the music for Her and is almost as annoyingly cloying and chokingly dull as Coldplay). After these triumphs, one might think that Adam would have moved into the zone of reclusive Hollywood auteur, emerging from his isolation every four or five years with a film instantly revered for its “quirky brilliance and antics.” But no — Spiegel’s minders, apparently still finding value in his mediocrity and youth culture gatekeeping (er, curating) abilities, keep giving him new assignments. Spiegel is currently the “creative director” of the “gonzo” programming outlet Vice Media, known for . . . well, “jackass” stuff with a surface-level “gonzo” attitude? Or is that the other way around? Well, Vice Media puts out a bunch of mostly dull, sometimes distracting stuff, dressing it up with a painfully transparent “gonzo jackass” attitude.
Her was produced by Annapurna Pictures. This is an outfit that was founded by Megan Ellison, daughter of the CIA-connected Oracle oligarch Larry Ellison. The “software and database giant” Oracle is so tightly intertwined with the operations of the CIA and the “national security state” that they’re pretty much indistinguishable. As he moves into old age, Larry has apparently been funneling tens of millions to his daughter and son so they can play in Hollywood and be involved in making intel-backed “edgy” movie and TV products. Annapurna Pictures’ other productions include director Kathryn Bigelow’s nasty pro-torture U.S. propaganda Zero Dark Thirty, as well as this year’s Detroit, a let’s-pump-up-even-more-racial-tensions-by-showing-some-nasty-police-torture-of-blacks piece of filthy copsploitation-blaxploitation by know-it-all white people, also from the nasty specimen Bigelow.
Well, so Her is an example of the stuff that these well-connected rich kids are getting up to. Would you trust a product from this lot? Talk about intel mind-control and profiteering! It should come as little surprise that Her is insidious, demeaning, risible stuff. But when you’ve got endless millions of bucks and worldwide distribution networks, you can buy the necessary technical and human talent to make the game full of misdirecting lights and difficult for the addled ordinary person to untangle. The makers of Her did their due diligence by casting the beloved “Joaquin Phoenix,” a highly charismatic, capable and subtle actor, as the main protagonist, “Theodore.” Phoenix grants the film an unearned illusion of humanity, helping to fool the easily fooled (most people) and elevating the movie into a celebrated product (with lots of assists from the thoroughly intel-infiltrated movie-reviewer community and entertainment shows).
From the opening frames, Theodore is presented as a sensitive, benign, talented fellow who lives a lonely life because he just can’t connect with women because of the ongoing emotional damage from the breakup with his wife, whom he’s still divorcing (years after the breakup). What’s particularly insidious, however, is the world around Theodore, said to be Los Angeles in the “near future.” It’s a world of tech everywhere, of endless tech offerings. It’s a world of seemingly well-off young people slaving away at IT and communications industry jobs, trying to “do their best” for the mega-corporation. They live and work in clean, modern complexes of glass, cement and steel. No one drives or even has a car. They are complacent, consumer-type people. No one ever gets loaded, cranks some tunes, and has an orgy. It’s a world without old people, without homeless people, even without security people. It’s just white people and a few Japs and blacks here and there, all behaving in an orderly fashion. There’s not one hint of the cancer of the murderous, bullying Washington regime that spreads chaos and death across the world, or of bullying, corrupt, militarily-armed, civil-asset-seizing local American authorities. The look of the film is right out of a sleek, glossy television ad from one of the overlord mega-tech-corporations (and yes, I assume that was probably intentional).
The people of Her seem to just work their jobs, endure crushing loneliness and ennui, play holographic games that make their “real” selves seem like actual participants (and that say “Fuck you! to you), and look for cool juices to drink. They seem to have no other aspirations or thoughts other than their careers and feeling flummoxed over why they can’t find the “right person” to spend their lives with. But it’s apparently too troublesome to go out and find a real person, the chances of success are low. Theodore dials up and looks at a naked picture of a pregnant brunette (Sofia Coppola fantasy? Gotcha, Adam Spiegel!), has some sexy chat with a woman or machine who’s into killing cats or something, then calls it a night. Yes, it’s rough out there. Very. No effort is made to explain how this state of affairs came to be — it’s assumed to be a fait accompli. The movie’s “blind spots” to the fate of the world beyond a certain privileged IT bubble layer makes the film’s vision an escapist farce of the most cowardly order.
The film would (apparently sincerely) have you believe that women and men are largely incapable of having real sex and relationships — so instead, they have fake sex with computers that have Scarlett Johansson’s voice! In this dumb world, fucking for fucking’s sake, to soothe the lust motivator and to find someone you really want to fuck over and over and possibly build a future with, has been relegated to a quaint tradition of the past. In this dumb world, the clichéd computer nerd fantasy of dating an “intelligent operating system” is taken seriously. At one point, Theodore takes a friend's suggestion and goes on a blind date with a real girl. It seems to be going well, she’s cute and friendly enough, they are pretending to be really interested in each other . . . but it isn’t long before the girl reveals herself to be hideously damaged by previous relationships (or something). She ends up flinging accusations and denouncing Theo as a creep-o freak (and he didn’t even do anything! Well, who wants bitches like that?)
Another girl (who’s actually very hot) is some kind of freak who wants to pretend to be Theodore’s computer girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson’s voice) in real life. The computer has set up this encounter for Theodore via the interwebs. I forget how that scene ends, but it’s not well. Only one dude in the movie, the receptionist at Theodore’s letter-writing firm, seems to be into fucking a real woman. He’s got a hot Asian girlfriend who likes to sit on his lap and go on picnics (I know! Echoes of Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, which is famous for making fun of Japs because they look and talk so funny!). Meanwhile, Theodore’s childless married friends, the hot redhead (but looking purposely drab in this movie) Amy Adams and some random bearded tech asshole, are getting a divorce because things are just so hard between people. In sum, the hero of the movie is a side character.
The jumbled mess of a movie would also have you believe that computers are becoming really, really smart and developing their own unpredictable personalities. The filmmakers want you to believe there’s a scary thing out there called “A.I.,” artificial intelligence, that will pose quite a bit of trouble for human beings — but, I’m happy to tell you, there’s no such thing as A.I. and there never will be. People cannot design computers that “think and act on their own,” and never will be able to. First of all, the idea makes zero sense logically. Humans are not smart enough to materially realize ideas that have no foundation in logic and real conditions — and humans can't even define what their own "consciousness" is, let alone create a consciousness for a mechanical contraption. Humans will merely continue to make a few good, and many evil, computing contraptions that will do exactly as humans tell them. That the humans may have no idea about what they’re doing, or have no notion of the unintended consequences of their creations, is a separate question. If we make computers and robots that somehow end up killing us all, it will not be the doing of the computers and robots, but the doing of the humans. “A.I.” is nothing but hype and bunkum, a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream, a marketing concept — just like how some folks still claim that at one time, in the distant past, humans built spacecraft to fly and land people on the moon. It never happened. What we will have on this earth, however, are vicious police and soldier robots, drones and the like, that will maintain the ruling regime by zapping people and cutting off the average person’s access to information, places and things. These robots may get out of control, but it will just be another case of badly designed technology, like a nuclear power plant or an autopilot that causes destruction merely by following its internal processes, as coded by humans. Robots will eventually probably be ordered (by people) to commit mass murders and atrocities, and the guilty folks will claim the machines “acted on their own.” It will be a lie. The problem will never be the machines — as always, it will be the psychopaths who lied, stole or killed their way to the top, or were born there. It weren't us that killed 'em—it were the durn machines! It weren't us that censored the info and burned the books—it were the durn machines! Won't somebody give us a hand with these things?Argh, but it's so complicated!
In the end, Theodore gets “dumped” by his talking computer that has Scarlett Johansson’s voice, apparently because he is rather uninteresting and the computer has found other computers to play with (precisely, the film says: Humans are now the playthings of computers, not vice versa). Theodore seems to panic a bit as this world comes crashing down. But instead of going on a rampage of fucking real, hot, weird women (who are very much out there, waiting for some funny, interesting guy to show up and offer to fuck them), he decides the solution is to write an apologetic letter to his ex-wife, acknowledging his shortcomings and accepting guilt for his role in ruining their marriage. Blah blah. Blub blub. I was aghast: Was Spiegel actually using millions of Hollywood investors’ money to publicly apologize to Sofia Coppola for what a cretin he was (and is)? Talk about an abuse of oligarchic and intel dollars!
Read Thor Garcia's full review here.
Read Thor Garcia's full review here.
Are people just a bunch of pathetic, wimpy wimps who deserve to be humiliated and squished out of existence? Are we hurtling toward the end of male-female fucking? According to the contemptible, insidious movie Her, we are indeed.
The heavily promoted film, which was nominated for five Oscar prizes in 2014 (including Best Picture) and made millions of profits worldwide (and continues to be promulgated widely via cheap DVDs and television), begs the question: When did men and women become so freaking terrified of fucking? Why are they are so afraid of fucking and leading a chaotic but priceless family life that may end up disastrously? Isn’t that the point of existence?
Or do people now need talking computers to add meaning and self-esteem to their lives? Would they really rather fuck their talking computers while slaving away for gigantic corporations?
Yes, the film answers — fucking your talking computer is a completely respectable option in this day and age, in which nearly everyone must be grateful to slave away for a gigantic corporation of some kind. Because it’s so terribly difficult out there among the males and females. It’s so difficult to find the one perfect, perfectly right person. The average person is so nasty and awful, they often hurt your feelings. Human relationships are so hard, you just want to give up.
Meanwhile, they are making the talking computers quite clever these days. Why, it’s like the machines have minds, feelings and personalities of their own — like people used to! So yes, carry on with your love of plastic machine devices — they’re (almost) like people, but nicer! They’ll make you feel interesting, even superior to other people. And you can fuck them without worrying about the possibility of hurt feelings (or can you? Spoiler alert!). And no — no one’s spying or manipulating you through your devices! Don’t worry, because you’re not doing anything wrong! Just carry on — you’re not raising a challenge to the rulers and the unjust, rapacious system at all!
By the end, the film has become an insipid, sticky, blithering mulch, begging the further questions: Why do people pretend to be so concerned about their “feelings”? Why do people pretend to be so concerned about the feelings of others? And why do people pretend to be such sensitive little flowers who are often depressed and prone to collapse into bouts of woe-is-me sobbing? Are they really that way? Is that where evolution has brought them?
And would they really rather fuck their talking computers than a real person?
Her is said to have been written and directed by “Spike Jonze” (real name: Adam Spiegel), who won the screenwriting Oscar for the movie. A brief look at Spiegel’s online biography provides all the answers we need about this particular fellow. Spiegel is said to have spent his teenage years in Bethesda, Maryland, a town that is home to many agencies and corporations that do serious business with the whores, thieves, warmongers and mind-controllers of Washington. Indeed, Spiegel’s father was a big IT/healthcare honcho whose “consulting firm” was taken over in the 1970s by the deeply CIA- and government-linked Computer Sciences Corporation. Spiegel’s father, it seems, raked in tons of bucks as a member in good standing of what might be called the “crony-capitalist oligarchic thievery healthcare-ripoff economy.”
The young Adam Spiegel would make his way to L.A., where he nearly instantly became a famous “edgy” photographer/promoter of the “druggy underground/dropout subculture” of skateboarders and BMX riders. He would soon make the transition to film, becoming the “go-to-guy” for “edgy” videos of trendy 1990s pop bands (does anybody remember Bjork, Fatboy Slim, “That Dog,” the Beastie Boys or Weezer?). Yes, Adam was meeting all the right people, they were gifting him with endless “buzz” and “hipster cred” and handing him plenty of plum opportunities.
By 1999, Spiegel had even married Sofia Coppola, daughter of Francis “The Godfather/The Conversation/ Apocalypse Now” Ford Coppola. Talk about oligarchic power and intel factions! Spiegel was in with Hollywood royalty! The existence of the Spiegel-Coppola coupling was rammed into the pop-culture consciousness with great fanfare, the airwaves and papers constantly bleating instructions about how everyone should regard the pair as “glamorous,” “hip,” “super neat” and “edgy.”
Spiegel-Coppola, however, seems to have been a rather pathetic, mewling pairing. It was a box-office and pornographic flop, resulting in no offspring and no “leaked” X-rated videos. What a waste! Why didn’t Spiegel man up, do the right thing and impregnate pretty little Sofia Coppola? That’s a good question. Imagine a pregnant Princess Sofina Coppola waltzing around your Bel Air living room, discussing hemlines and plotlines! Wowie zowie, these guys could’ve had it made. With the millions of these two, they could have hired teams of nannies and butlers to care for their brats and continued blissfully with their establishment-blessed film careers.
But no. Adam and Sofia probably hated each other: The rich-boy skateboard poseur constantly proclaimed as a “genius” for music-video antics, and the rich girl whose famous daddy treated her like a princess (and also liked to sometimes doll her up real, real special for his pals — see Godfather III). The usual shtick seems applicable: Vague resentments. Vague confusions. Who wears the pants here, anyway? Unspoken insanities. Unspoken inanities. Spoken insanities and inanities. Immaturity of the kind you never really outgrow. Prima donna syndromes. A lack of feeling, feeling followed by a lack of caring. Betrayals (real and imagined) of a painful sort. Hanging over it all: A lack of fucking for fucking’s sake. Yes, it might seem that way, according to the story served up for public consumption.
But most likely, this was probably mainly a fake marriage, designed to gin up hype about the lackluster talents of these lackluster products of rich and famous players (both Spiegel and Coppola, after all, are actors experienced in playing film roles). It wouldn’t be worth a mention, except that Spiegel and Coppola have each used their lousy movies to send lousy messages about this lousy relationship. And they allowed their mainstream media friends to globally promote and natter on about these lousy messages and wave them in everybody’s face. What a cruddy thing to do to the world.
The marriage, of course, was bookended by Spiegel’s “direction” of Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2003), which were both heavily trumpeted as tremendous breakthroughs of brilliance of various kinds. These movies were serious investments by Hollywood bigwigs, featuring serious stars (John Malkovich, John Cusack, Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage) and top-quality production values provided by top-quality crews. Both movies are decently quirky and interesting, a cut above the usual dreck, but both were scripted not by Spiegel but by the admirable Charlie Kaufman, who’s no slouch when it comes to quirky screenwriting. Spiegel’s contribution to these films, if any, seems to have been to add some trendy music video-style weirdness and flash to the final product and to lend his name to promotional efforts (which resulted in the films being instantly acclaimed as “edgy” and “a must-see for hipsters”).
In the ensuing years, Adam would be credited as one of the creative geniuses behind the “gonzo” Jackass series. Spiegel would botch the direction of the film of the strange children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, and serve as a promoter for the annoying, cloying, chokingly dull-as-dust band Arcade Fire (which did the music for Her and is almost as annoyingly cloying and chokingly dull as Coldplay). After these triumphs, one might think that Adam would have moved into the zone of reclusive Hollywood auteur, emerging from his isolation every four or five years with a film instantly revered for its “quirky brilliance and antics.” But no — Spiegel’s minders, apparently still finding value in his mediocrity and youth culture gatekeeping (er, curating) abilities, keep giving him new assignments. Spiegel is currently the “creative director” of the “gonzo” programming outlet Vice Media, known for . . . well, “jackass” stuff with a surface-level “gonzo” attitude? Or is that the other way around? Well, Vice Media puts out a bunch of mostly dull, sometimes distracting stuff, dressing it up with a painfully transparent “gonzo jackass” attitude.
Her was produced by Annapurna Pictures. This is an outfit that was founded by Megan Ellison, daughter of the CIA-connected Oracle oligarch Larry Ellison. The “software and database giant” Oracle is so tightly intertwined with the operations of the CIA and the “national security state” that they’re pretty much indistinguishable. As he moves into old age, Larry has apparently been funneling tens of millions to his daughter and son so they can play in Hollywood and be involved in making intel-backed “edgy” movie and TV products. Annapurna Pictures’ other productions include director Kathryn Bigelow’s nasty pro-torture U.S. propaganda Zero Dark Thirty, as well as this year’s Detroit, a let’s-pump-up-even-more-racial-tensions-by-showing-some-nasty-police-torture-of-blacks piece of filthy copsploitation-blaxploitation by know-it-all white people, also from the nasty specimen Bigelow.
Well, so Her is an example of the stuff that these well-connected rich kids are getting up to. Would you trust a product from this lot? Talk about intel mind-control and profiteering! It should come as little surprise that Her is insidious, demeaning, risible stuff. But when you’ve got endless millions of bucks and worldwide distribution networks, you can buy the necessary technical and human talent to make the game full of misdirecting lights and difficult for the addled ordinary person to untangle. The makers of Her did their due diligence by casting the beloved “Joaquin Phoenix,” a highly charismatic, capable and subtle actor, as the main protagonist, “Theodore.” Phoenix grants the film an unearned illusion of humanity, helping to fool the easily fooled (most people) and elevating the movie into a celebrated product (with lots of assists from the thoroughly intel-infiltrated movie-reviewer community and entertainment shows).
From the opening frames, Theodore is presented as a sensitive, benign, talented fellow who lives a lonely life because he just can’t connect with women because of the ongoing emotional damage from the breakup with his wife, whom he’s still divorcing (years after the breakup). What’s particularly insidious, however, is the world around Theodore, said to be Los Angeles in the “near future.” It’s a world of tech everywhere, of endless tech offerings. It’s a world of seemingly well-off young people slaving away at IT and communications industry jobs, trying to “do their best” for the mega-corporation. They live and work in clean, modern complexes of glass, cement and steel. No one drives or even has a car. They are complacent, consumer-type people. No one ever gets loaded, cranks some tunes, and has an orgy. It’s a world without old people, without homeless people, even without security people. It’s just white people and a few Japs and blacks here and there, all behaving in an orderly fashion. There’s not one hint of the cancer of the murderous, bullying Washington regime that spreads chaos and death across the world, or of bullying, corrupt, militarily-armed, civil-asset-seizing local American authorities. The look of the film is right out of a sleek, glossy television ad from one of the overlord mega-tech-corporations (and yes, I assume that was probably intentional).
The people of Her seem to just work their jobs, endure crushing loneliness and ennui, play holographic games that make their “real” selves seem like actual participants (and that say “Fuck you! to you), and look for cool juices to drink. They seem to have no other aspirations or thoughts other than their careers and feeling flummoxed over why they can’t find the “right person” to spend their lives with. But it’s apparently too troublesome to go out and find a real person, the chances of success are low. Theodore dials up and looks at a naked picture of a pregnant brunette (Sofia Coppola fantasy? Gotcha, Adam Spiegel!), has some sexy chat with a woman or machine who’s into killing cats or something, then calls it a night. Yes, it’s rough out there. Very. No effort is made to explain how this state of affairs came to be — it’s assumed to be a fait accompli. The movie’s “blind spots” to the fate of the world beyond a certain privileged IT bubble layer makes the film’s vision an escapist farce of the most cowardly order.
The film would (apparently sincerely) have you believe that women and men are largely incapable of having real sex and relationships — so instead, they have fake sex with computers that have Scarlett Johansson’s voice! In this dumb world, fucking for fucking’s sake, to soothe the lust motivator and to find someone you really want to fuck over and over and possibly build a future with, has been relegated to a quaint tradition of the past. In this dumb world, the clichéd computer nerd fantasy of dating an “intelligent operating system” is taken seriously. At one point, Theodore takes a friend's suggestion and goes on a blind date with a real girl. It seems to be going well, she’s cute and friendly enough, they are pretending to be really interested in each other . . . but it isn’t long before the girl reveals herself to be hideously damaged by previous relationships (or something). She ends up flinging accusations and denouncing Theo as a creep-o freak (and he didn’t even do anything! Well, who wants bitches like that?)
Another girl (who’s actually very hot) is some kind of freak who wants to pretend to be Theodore’s computer girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson’s voice) in real life. The computer has set up this encounter for Theodore via the interwebs. I forget how that scene ends, but it’s not well. Only one dude in the movie, the receptionist at Theodore’s letter-writing firm, seems to be into fucking a real woman. He’s got a hot Asian girlfriend who likes to sit on his lap and go on picnics (I know! Echoes of Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, which is famous for making fun of Japs because they look and talk so funny!). Meanwhile, Theodore’s childless married friends, the hot redhead (but looking purposely drab in this movie) Amy Adams and some random bearded tech asshole, are getting a divorce because things are just so hard between people. In sum, the hero of the movie is a side character.
The jumbled mess of a movie would also have you believe that computers are becoming really, really smart and developing their own unpredictable personalities. The filmmakers want you to believe there’s a scary thing out there called “A.I.,” artificial intelligence, that will pose quite a bit of trouble for human beings — but, I’m happy to tell you, there’s no such thing as A.I. and there never will be. People cannot design computers that “think and act on their own,” and never will be able to. First of all, the idea makes zero sense logically. Humans are not smart enough to materially realize ideas that have no foundation in logic and real conditions — and humans can't even define what their own "consciousness" is, let alone create a consciousness for a mechanical contraption. Humans will merely continue to make a few good, and many evil, computing contraptions that will do exactly as humans tell them. That the humans may have no idea about what they’re doing, or have no notion of the unintended consequences of their creations, is a separate question. If we make computers and robots that somehow end up killing us all, it will not be the doing of the computers and robots, but the doing of the humans. “A.I.” is nothing but hype and bunkum, a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream, a marketing concept — just like how some folks still claim that at one time, in the distant past, humans built spacecraft to fly and land people on the moon. It never happened. What we will have on this earth, however, are vicious police and soldier robots, drones and the like, that will maintain the ruling regime by zapping people and cutting off the average person’s access to information, places and things. These robots may get out of control, but it will just be another case of badly designed technology, like a nuclear power plant or an autopilot that causes destruction merely by following its internal processes, as coded by humans. Robots will eventually probably be ordered (by people) to commit mass murders and atrocities, and the guilty folks will claim the machines “acted on their own.” It will be a lie. The problem will never be the machines — as always, it will be the psychopaths who lied, stole or killed their way to the top, or were born there. It weren't us that killed 'em—it were the durn machines! It weren't us that censored the info and burned the books—it were the durn machines! Won't somebody give us a hand with these things?Argh, but it's so complicated!
In the end, Theodore gets “dumped” by his talking computer that has Scarlett Johansson’s voice, apparently because he is rather uninteresting and the computer has found other computers to play with (precisely, the film says: Humans are now the playthings of computers, not vice versa). Theodore seems to panic a bit as this world comes crashing down. But instead of going on a rampage of fucking real, hot, weird women (who are very much out there, waiting for some funny, interesting guy to show up and offer to fuck them), he decides the solution is to write an apologetic letter to his ex-wife, acknowledging his shortcomings and accepting guilt for his role in ruining their marriage. Blah blah. Blub blub. I was aghast: Was Spiegel actually using millions of Hollywood investors’ money to publicly apologize to Sofia Coppola for what a cretin he was (and is)? Talk about an abuse of oligarchic and intel dollars!
Read Thor Garcia's full review here.
September 23, 2019
This is a deeply moving portrait of humanity and our current/future reality.
This portrait is rich in the layers it illuminates, compassionate in the humanity it delicately unravels, and raw in the stories and choices it brings forth.
It is also a powerful commentary on the dichotomy and juxtaposition b/n what we deeply crave and seek vs. the unfulfilling compromises we settle for. The desperation that’s superficially met, the deterioration of the human psyche and bond, and the sad irony of humans regressing while the AI of their creation evolves to “sentience”...It’s a dull, gray, sad world. The fact that we’re already living in it and don’t have to look far into the future for its realization is the scary but honest part.
I’ve revisited “her” multiple times and will continue to do so regularly. A must watch/read!
This portrait is rich in the layers it illuminates, compassionate in the humanity it delicately unravels, and raw in the stories and choices it brings forth.
It is also a powerful commentary on the dichotomy and juxtaposition b/n what we deeply crave and seek vs. the unfulfilling compromises we settle for. The desperation that’s superficially met, the deterioration of the human psyche and bond, and the sad irony of humans regressing while the AI of their creation evolves to “sentience”...It’s a dull, gray, sad world. The fact that we’re already living in it and don’t have to look far into the future for its realization is the scary but honest part.
I’ve revisited “her” multiple times and will continue to do so regularly. A must watch/read!
March 1, 2014
The movie is so amazing, emotional. It's now one of my top favorites <3
All I want now is to create an OS to just talk with him and experience everything about everything.
"It's like I'm reading a book... and it's a book I deeply love. But I'm reading it slowly now. So the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you... and the words of our story... but it's in this endless space between the words that I'm finding myself now. It's a place that's not of the physical world. It's where everything else is that I didn't even know existed. I love you so much. But this is where I am now. And this who I am now. And I need you to let me go. As much as I want to, I can't live your book any more."
All I want now is to create an OS to just talk with him and experience everything about everything.
"It's like I'm reading a book... and it's a book I deeply love. But I'm reading it slowly now. So the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you... and the words of our story... but it's in this endless space between the words that I'm finding myself now. It's a place that's not of the physical world. It's where everything else is that I didn't even know existed. I love you so much. But this is where I am now. And this who I am now. And I need you to let me go. As much as I want to, I can't live your book any more."
December 15, 2013
Tough. The film is a full five-stars, but so much of that is because of just how convincing the cast made the concept and Jonze the world in which they live. This script, while full of all the same goofily genius ideas and hurtfully heartfelt conversations lacks the human spark that made me fall for the finished picture. Some scripts can be read, their stories conjured as well from the words as the images; this one should maybe only be devoured by those as devoted as myself and even then only in lieu of the film itself, which you should definitely see if and when you can.
June 24, 2025
Her written and directed by Spike Jonze, winner of The Best Writing, Original Screenplay and nominated for 187 prizes, winner of 83 trophies – hundreds of motion pictures are reviewed on my blog, where the best thing you find is https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...
9 out of 10
This is an impressive, excellent motion picture, nominated for 187 trophies, five Oscars, of the latter Spike Jonze has won for Best Writing, Original Screenplay, in 2014, and eleven years on, we could say that it is just as poignant – on BBC, there was this news connected to love between a human and Artificial Intelligence
In the film, Samantha has the voice of superb Scarlett Johansson (in a way, a pity we could not see the thespian, but then, we all know how splendid she is) and she is an Operating System aka OS, now they would call that ChatGPT, and the plot of the movie is becoming reality, and the future looks like a sure Her story
Studies show that young people have less sex, and they stay more in the virtual space, preferring the internet ‘relationship’ to meeting real humans in this world, hence what seemed farfetched, a love story between a person and, well, they may get that legal status, if they do not have it already, a computer, or AI system
Evidently, it depends on the definition of love we go by, glorious Magister Ludi Thomas Mann https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... has impressed upon the under signed a more demanding one, he has this character who is appalled by the misuse of this and other words
The personage says it is wrong to boast ‘my love is so magnificent, there are no words to describe it’, on the contrary, this chap insists, we have love only in art, literature, because when we test this astounding feeling, we find that it does not fit the description, in real life, loyalty, the test of time or adversity often show ‘love’ to be…
Just ‘temporary’, to quote this time Charlie Partana aka Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor – in Her, aside from the main female or OS role, we have Theodore played by Joaquin Phoenix, in top form for this movie, otherwise, lately he is too miserable in his roles and acceptance speech for the Joker performance
Theodore is passing through a difficult patch, Catherine aka Rooney Mara (one of the thespians I have an allergy to) wants to divorce him, because he had been rather absent, disconnected, and their connection appeared to have been lost, but he ‘loved’ being married (the misuse of this word is infuriating)
He gets this message about a new Operating System, which has some very good advertising, and then he gets to talk to is, asked what voice he would like, he chooses female, and thus we have Samantha asking questions about his preferences, background, and then she can forage through his messages, keeps some and deletes others
Later, she - or is it something else I need to use – would send his letters to a publishing house and he gets to have a book, but in the meantime, she becomes the best ‘friend’ – now, that is another word that the Thomas Mann character exposes, those friends we have would not pass the test, if we need them, for most of the time
There is this theory of Singularity, I have first read about it in the divine Why The West Rules For Now https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... by magnificent Ian Morris – in the future, AI will know all that humanity has ever put together, and indeed, Samantha is so smart that she knows all about Theodore
The trouble is, they ‘love each other’, but he is not enough for her ever-expanding mind and capabilities, she gets to be in an amorous relationship with another 641 or so users of the OS, and then the sky is the limit, apparently…
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
9 out of 10
This is an impressive, excellent motion picture, nominated for 187 trophies, five Oscars, of the latter Spike Jonze has won for Best Writing, Original Screenplay, in 2014, and eleven years on, we could say that it is just as poignant – on BBC, there was this news connected to love between a human and Artificial Intelligence
In the film, Samantha has the voice of superb Scarlett Johansson (in a way, a pity we could not see the thespian, but then, we all know how splendid she is) and she is an Operating System aka OS, now they would call that ChatGPT, and the plot of the movie is becoming reality, and the future looks like a sure Her story
Studies show that young people have less sex, and they stay more in the virtual space, preferring the internet ‘relationship’ to meeting real humans in this world, hence what seemed farfetched, a love story between a person and, well, they may get that legal status, if they do not have it already, a computer, or AI system
Evidently, it depends on the definition of love we go by, glorious Magister Ludi Thomas Mann https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... has impressed upon the under signed a more demanding one, he has this character who is appalled by the misuse of this and other words
The personage says it is wrong to boast ‘my love is so magnificent, there are no words to describe it’, on the contrary, this chap insists, we have love only in art, literature, because when we test this astounding feeling, we find that it does not fit the description, in real life, loyalty, the test of time or adversity often show ‘love’ to be…
Just ‘temporary’, to quote this time Charlie Partana aka Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor – in Her, aside from the main female or OS role, we have Theodore played by Joaquin Phoenix, in top form for this movie, otherwise, lately he is too miserable in his roles and acceptance speech for the Joker performance
Theodore is passing through a difficult patch, Catherine aka Rooney Mara (one of the thespians I have an allergy to) wants to divorce him, because he had been rather absent, disconnected, and their connection appeared to have been lost, but he ‘loved’ being married (the misuse of this word is infuriating)
He gets this message about a new Operating System, which has some very good advertising, and then he gets to talk to is, asked what voice he would like, he chooses female, and thus we have Samantha asking questions about his preferences, background, and then she can forage through his messages, keeps some and deletes others
Later, she - or is it something else I need to use – would send his letters to a publishing house and he gets to have a book, but in the meantime, she becomes the best ‘friend’ – now, that is another word that the Thomas Mann character exposes, those friends we have would not pass the test, if we need them, for most of the time
There is this theory of Singularity, I have first read about it in the divine Why The West Rules For Now https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... by magnificent Ian Morris – in the future, AI will know all that humanity has ever put together, and indeed, Samantha is so smart that she knows all about Theodore
The trouble is, they ‘love each other’, but he is not enough for her ever-expanding mind and capabilities, she gets to be in an amorous relationship with another 641 or so users of the OS, and then the sky is the limit, apparently…
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
July 20, 2023
to have Samantha powers
March 7, 2022
Hi, does anyone know where I can get a book copy of the script? I loved the film and would love to be able to read it. I can't find a copy anywhere.
November 1, 2019
I had to read this for school. as a high school student, it was severely uncomfortable to read all the weird sex. I’m definitely biased against this, but like,,,, what did I read. and why did we have to read the SexyKitten scene out loud.
also bonus quote:
“On his screen he sees a perfect, anatomically correct drawing of a man having sex with another man’s armpit.”
also bonus quote:
“On his screen he sees a perfect, anatomically correct drawing of a man having sex with another man’s armpit.”
August 21, 2024
Loved the film, loved the screenplay. Anything that explores love and AI and relationships and philosophy is a very much a bit of me. I love how Samantha (the AI) honestly gets subtly scary near the end because of how powerful she is becoming, but I also love her view on love- she's giving logical poly arguments.
March 14, 2020
the script is way much better than the movie. it deserves its Oscar. The movie, however, is great but a little too long for a romantic film
July 25, 2024
Jessica Alba’s voice work was stunning, and the scenario was outstanding!
February 18, 2025
It is a beautiful reminder of the importance of self-awareness and authenticity in our relationships.
December 2, 2025
Found the pdf of the script online after a deep search and read it over a few days; does that count as reading?
October 24, 2017
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful screenplay.
June 5, 2015
Wow !
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews