In Praise of Nothing (2017) Movie Review

June 19, 2025

In Praise of Nothing (2017) (IMDB)

How do you feel about slice of life documentaries ? Where you see a short video of a small scene, typically beautiful or meaningful in some way, with narration on top of it. This particular documentary is just that with narration by Iggy Pop whose voice I did not not know I liked until now. You get lots of cool scenes of life being lived, vistas, attractions, and nature to name a few. And a little over 17 minutes in you get a first person view of someone walking through a hedge maze ! Relaxing to watch and listen to, I enjoyed this slice.

I give it a 7/10.

Additional posts and sections you may like:

The Top 12 Best Maze / Labyrinth Movies of all time

The 10 best maze movie posters

5 Absolutely terrible maze movies to never ever watch ever. really. don’t watch them

Maze of the Week Mini Redux Collection - #2, #62 and #89

June 18, 2025

I combined 3 maze updates together into 1 blog post because each of the changes were minor and I felt that they didn’t deserve their own post. None of them are worth becoming a new maze of the week either. You’ll see what I mean:

Maze#2 - Monument Valley

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Added texture. I added texture to all of the land portion of the maze to be more accurate. This ended up dampening the color a bit as a result.

2. Title changes. I changed the font type & font size of the title, while adding the location.

3. Size changed. I reduced size of the horizon (the original horizon line was too thick). I also took 1 inch off the mazes height and reduced the foreground as a result. The effect is a zoomed in look from the original maze.

Not many changes.

Here are the before and after mazes:

If you like the brighter color, the original is for you. If the color change doesn’t bother you, then option 2 is for you.

Some data: The new file is 463MB from 87MB.

Maze#62 - Windmill

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Added texture. I added texture to the grass and bushes.

That’s it. The problem is I can’t get what I see on my screen to render as a pdf or png (so I took a screenshot which came out as low quality).

Maze#89 - Hollywood Sign

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Added texture. I added texture to the grass and bushes.
Here is the before and after:

Eh.

So here is where I landed on these 3. Monument Valley Maze gets a main page update. The other 2. No. The updates did not work in some way. Those mazes will stay as is.

If you like this type of content check out all of my case studies:

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve your Mazes

Happy maze-ing !

Maze Comic Book Cover #77 - BRINE

June 17, 2025

Issue #77 in my comic book cover series is called BRINE and features the maze of a Pickle. The pickle seems to have so attitude. I’m not sure if they are a good or a bad pickle. What do you think ? And their name ? Probably not Rick.

My comic book cover mazes can be found in 2 places:

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 1 (Issues #1-53)

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 2

To receive a book of my first year of comic book book mazes (Volume 1 with mazes #1-53) you can sign up for my book alerts - any time I launch a free maze book, or paid book (on Amazon), I will send you a note about the new book launch.

Maze of the Week Re-Dux #56 - Matrimandir at Auroville Maze (MOTW #181)

June 16, 2025

I hesitated on doing this re-dux. This maze was simple in the execution my first time around, but I knew it could be improved with some additional work. My hesitation was that each disc on the main structure is at a slightly different angle, so to get the shadows right I would have to color each individual disc. Was it worth it for a location that many people do not know ? I decided to start making changes and see where it took me.

Here is my original post:

Maze of the Week #56 - Matrimandir at Auroville Maze

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Changed Size. I changed the size from tablet size 22x17 to 22x12 reducing empty space at the bottom of the maze. I had zoomed in for another version of the maze (shown below in the before) because of all the white space on the page.

2. Added Grass. I added textured grass in the foreground to stop the building from looking like it was floating on the page. I also put some shadows in the bottom 2 corners to help focus attention to the center of the page and give the grass more interest.

3. Added Background. I added trees into the background as you would see if you were at the location. I hope this makes this illustration more realistic.

4. Added the Sky.

5. Changed Pathway size. I doubled the size of the pathways between sections for easier solving of the maze.

6. Added Lighting. Added a large reflection point from the sun that you would see on just about any day you would visit the site.

7. Added Shadows. I added a shadow to the bottom of the main structure and to the bricks that surround the building to give everything a more realistic feel.

Here is the before and after: