Forget about Citizen Kane, what’s your personal Slacker of video games? The one that made you realize, “What am I waiting for? I can make a game right now.”

Perhaps you've heard of the deplorable situation of Disco Elysium's fired leads, of the oust by majority shareholder and CEO, of the lawsuits and rest of the cultural association and 'old guard' still at work there, quiet and held quiet by corporate policy and perhaps embittered by the 'auteur' theory holding parasocial public.

What I am going to share with you is information that is publicly available through Estonian and United Kingdom company registers. I haven't seen any news outlet feature this information yet.

WHAT IS NEW HERE?

• Ilmar Kompus, the current CEO who was installed in 2020, had actually been a shareholder all along since Zaum Studio's founding in Estonia.

• Kaur Kender, the author in his own right and producer at Zaum, has founded a lot of game development companies in Estonia and United Kingdom, while Zaum worked, published and updated Disco Elysium. These apparently went nowhere, some of them are now defunct. All of them had Ilmar Kompus or some ZAUM subsidiary as shareholders, and some also shared correspondence addresses with ZAUM's UK subsidiaries.

• The 'game pitch' that cost Zaum 4,8 million euros and funded Kompus' acquisition of majority share from Linnamäe, the so called Pioneer One, has been previously reported by one gaming news outlet to have come via Anu Reiman's YESSIRNOSIR Limited. I have discovered that Kaur Kender held a game company in UK called Pioneer One Ltd that was active between years 2018-2022, and it had an Estonian artist Kristiina Ago as its secretary. I cannot prove that it was this entity that sold it instead, but it is a glaring coincidence nevertheless.

• Kaur Kender and later Ilmar Kompus have founded a succession of ZAUM studios (Zaum London, Zaum UK, Disco Elysium UK and now Zaum Studio Limited) which have held the main development operations in UK. Kurvits and Rostov/Taal hold minority shares in Zaum UK. The later ones are all Ilmar Kompus-held in shares. I suspect this is a method of his to sever the fired leads' means of control to the company's branches in UK.

• Both the 'main line' of Zaum's UK companies and Zaum Studio OÜ back in Estonia have loaned money to the tune of millions to Newelysium and Revachol in UK (Note, Revachol OÜ in Estonia is held by ZAUM cultural association members and is not a game studio)

So I've started doing the required viewing for the film school I'm planning on applying to and thought it would be fun to post the reviews here. I'll be watching one movie from each director on the viewing list and I've decided to only watch films I haven't seen before to make it more interesting for myself. I'll try to watch at least one movie a day. Not sure how long this thread will become but there's at least 30 movies to go through and I'll probably watch more so it should be fun.

Charlie Chaplin has a Joker moment, becomes a communist, does drugs, beats up many police officers, becomes Italian and evades the law. There's a restaurant sequence near the end that may have inspired Jacques Tati's Playtime. Not my favorite Chaplin movie but there's lots of cool gags, especially since I've seen the behind the scenes stuff.

7/10

I did not expect bro to astral project half way through the film. I like how Chaplin and Keaton are both silent film comedy directors who worked in the same time period but you can still find differences between their styles. It was only 45 minutes but it was charming and kind of funny.

6/10

"Can I have some borscht?"

"Yes, but only a spoonful."

I liked this one a lot more than the other Eisenstein movie I watched, October. Some characters are even named. However, the main character is really the collective, in this movie being the sailors. It's interesting how Buster Keaton wanted to use as little title cards as possible in his movies, but in this movie the title cards are there for scenes where it's definitely not necessary. They're almost like poetry because they describe the events on-screen in a very artistic way. This movie definitely shows of the strengths of Soviet Montage Theory.

6/10

Homeless people save the day. Very impressive movie for its time. I liked the use of sound as a method of creating tension. Some scenes felt a bit too dragged out but it doesn't hurt the movie too much. The film is left open-ended, mainly because what happens to the murderer doesn't matter. Death sentence or the asylum, neither of those things will bring those dead children back.

8/10

I'm not a fan of westers or John Ford, but I chose this movie because it's a caravan film with an ensemble cast, in the hopes that I'll enjoy it. Suffice to say, I did not. While the character dynamics are entertaining at times, the film still has the same western tropes as others from that time period. Sadly, I was simply just bored.

3/10

Classic noir film. The plot takes a bit to get interesting but the dialogue is so enjoyable and snappy that it tides you over until the interesting bits start. Godard's Breathless makes a lot more sense after watching this film. The actual mystery of the plot honestly isn't that interesting, but I definitely enjoyed this movie for its characters.

7/10

Average Balkan grandma simulator Alfred Hitchcock don't have a blonde woman fetish challenge (he failed). Very fun film. The mystery actually left me guessing for most of the movie. Great example of his famous "bomb theory".

7/10

Bro is kafkaesque. This movie was great. It perfectly captured the dreamlike vibe of Kafka’s work and had interesting and striking visuals throughout its entire 2 hour runtime. The opening story, dictated by Welles himself, was a really good way to start the film and instantly grabbed my attention. The film was also party filmed in Zagreb, the capital of my home country Croatia and that gives it bonus points because I’m biased and I don’t care. Actually enjoyed this movie more than Citizen Kane and now I’m honestly excited to watch more Welles films.

9/10

Watching this WWI movie after All Quiet on the Western Front is a bit of a jarring experience. This movie is a lot lighter, yet it still has those faint hints of tragedy that every war film needs a little of in my opinion. The characters were all memorable and the escape attempts were fun to watch. I can see why it’s a French classic.

7.5/10

I expected this movie to go a lot harder with how controversial it was in its time. Imagine disrespecting Christianity so much the Pope had to step in. Lots of interesting visuals in the movie. Must admit, I found Buñuel’s other films more interesting but this one wasn’t bad either.

6/10

What the dog doin’? Wasn’t looking forward to watching this film due to how depressing Italian neorealism tends to be. However, I was pleasantly surprised by a heartfelt and beautiful story with tons of human scenes. One sequence in particular really lingers on one of the characters and their routine and it’s so simple yet also captivating and moving. The ending was very suspenseful because I wasn’t expecting a happy ending from a neorealist film. I really liked it, although it does feel a bit shallow due to none of the main character’s problems actually being solved. Too bad I don’t actually care, FLIKE IS BEST DOG

8/10

Bit of an update that’s more for myself than anyone else. Due to certain doubts arising concerning my enthusiasm for film school in general, I’ve decided that this thread will just be a general movie review thread that will consist of all the movies I’m watching. I still plan on finishing the list of directors I originally intended, but not for the purpose of getting into film school, but for my own personal film knowledge.