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scrabbleknight · 7 months

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The Amazing Digital Circus Theory: Nothing is Real

I just watched (and rewatched) The Amazing Digital Circus and I absolutely love it, especially with the music. Pomni is my favourite anxiety-filled jester, Kingster is the most relatable character there is, Gangle is precious and should be protected, Jax is literally just the classic yellow-gloved Bugs Bunny, and Ragatha is the nicest person in the cast. Oh, and there's also Caine and Bubble, the beloved showman duo.

I don't really know anything about it outside of the pilot but I still want to put my two cents in the whole theory thing. A-hem! So, the theory goes:

The cast isn't trapped in this digital world; they're DIGITAL COPIES of the original persons.

In September 2015, a science fiction survival horror game was released, titled "SOMA". The game is about a man named Simon Jarrett who, after doing an experimental brain scan to help with his brain damage, was transported to a futuristic underwater lab that is completely taken over by a rouge AI known as the WAU.

Spoiler alert! This game deals with the concept of consciousness as well as the Ship of Theseus, except there's no real body. See, the big plot reveal in the game was that Simon wasn't transported to the future at all; the Simon we've been playing as was really a personality copy of the original Simon, which became the basis of AI technology. The real human Simon lived the rest of his days as usual and eventually died from his brain injury. This plot point about not being the real Simon was not only brought up once, nor twice, but THREE TIMES, each more devastating than the last.

What's happening in the Amazing Digital Circus is something like that. Pomni stated that she wore a headset and was suddenly transported here. But what if that's not true? What if Pomni is actually a digital copy of the real human Pomni (who's name we don't know)? What if that's the case for all of them, minus Caine and Bubbles who are more likely to be true AI made to help them and keep them sane?

This is why none of them can't escape. Because there's no such thing. They're not trapped in this circus purgatory; it's literally the only place they can exist. The real human selves are probably unaware at all. Real-life Pomni probably was playing a game and is now having dinner with her family, blissfully unaware that her personality had been copypasted into The Amazing Digital Circus. Turning into an Abstract is just what happens when their data becomes corrupted, which is exacerbated from insanity. Keeping sane means their data stays clean, or maybe their data becoming corrupted is what makes them insane and Abstracted. The chicken or the egg?

Calling it now; if this theory is true, then Pomni will learn that she herself is not real and this could cause other characters becoming Abstracted, maybe even herself. It could lead to them figuring out how to undo Abstracts, or at least destroy them completely, giving them a way out (through deletion).

As for why their personalities were copied and put into this place... Who knows? It could be an experiment performed by the C&A company, or it could be a glitch in the matrix that became self-aware and isn't big enough of a deal to be dealt with, like an old defunct project.

Man, I am so looking forward to Ep1 :D

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #gooseworx #tadc pomni #pomni #tadc theory #tadc jax #tadc caine #tadc kinger #tadc kaufmo #ragatha #gangle

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drsilverfish · 4 years

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Dante’s Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova and S15

It occurs to me that S15 might be having our heroes follow the journey of Dante in his medieval literary work The Divine Comedy (1308-1320).

Dante inserts a character representing himself as the protagonist of The Divine Comedy.

That rings bells in terms of SPN’s God and his Chuck Shurley persona, and also checks with Vonnegut (who also used this device) whom we know is loved by both Dean and Chuck from 4x18 The Monster at the End of This Book, and whose novel, Breakfast of Champions, is name-checked by Dean at the start of 15x06 Golden Time (and which I think might provide the road-map for SPN’s ending).

The Divine Comedy is an allegory for the soul’s journey to God. So is medieval alchemy, as I’ve discussed in various SPN, Jung and alchemy posts previously. And we can see the writers’ room is drawing on alchemical imagery (e.g. see the link to my Rowena post below).

Dante first travels through the realms of Hell, then the realms of Purgatory and finally travels through the realms of Paradise. So there are three books:

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

His guide is the poet Virgil through Inferno and Purgatorio, but he meets his beloved, Beatrice, in the final realm of Purgatory and she guides him through Paradiso.

We have seen Sam, Dean and Cas all journey to Hell, last episode 15x08 Our Father Who Aren’t in Heaven, in search of Michael, where they meet Rowena in her new Ouroboros (death and rebirth) incarnation as the Queen of Hell. I’ve written about the alchemical imagery associated with this new version of Rowna here:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/189671968369/rowenas-symbolic-and-alchemical-return-of-the

Now, Dean and Cas are about to journey to Purgatory in the upcoming 15x09 The Trap.

These are both return journeys. Dean and Sam and Cas have all been in Hell before, and Cas and Dean have been in Purgatory before. This fits with Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative structure for SPN, in which it swallows its own tail to reach its resolution.

It makes sense therefore, and following Dante, that there must be, at some point, a return to Heaven, and/ or a visit (most likely by Cas) to The Empty, in order to enlist Jack’s help against God.

Dante wrote another famous poem La Vita Nuova (1294) in which the character of Beatrice appears (she was based on a real Beatrice, whom Dante loved). That poem is a courtly love poem (medieval courtly love was both sacred and profane, but was often understood, likewise, as an allegory for the soul’s journey to God).

I’ve written before about how the tradition of courtly love has resonance for Supernatural:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/44110505167/mytharc-vs-heart-arc-dean-as-medieval

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/181231154654/the-dean-cas-spiral-narrative-s13-and-14-edition

We could think about Dean as Cas and Dante and Beatrice.

Here is Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s painting “Dante’s Dream” (1871) (and remember the pre-Raphaelites were all about a return to find inspiration in the medieval):

Beatrice dies in La Vita Nuova and the poet mourns her deeply.

I’m not saying Cas is definitely going to die in Purgatory, BUT there is a helluva lot of death imagery in that spell Michael gave to Cas:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/189656694954/the-purgatory-spell-in-15x08-love-death-and-an

As, I’ve said before, Purgatory in S8, is where Dean let himself love Castiel again without guilt - “It felt pure”, after the suffering Cas had caused to Sam and to the world as a result of his deal with Crowley and his Godstiel/ Levi!Cas arc.

This is Dante, in La Vita Nuova talking about how love entered his heart:

“Since Love took hold of me it’s been so long,

He’s made me so used to his sovereignty,

That though at first he felt all harsh in me,

Now he is in my heart as soft as dawn,

When he so drains strength that it’s nearly gone

And it seems my spirits all have turned to flee,

Then my fragile soul can only be

Infused with sweetness till my face goes wan.”

That’s how Dean greeted Cas in Purgatory in S8 - his face was filled with such joy when he found and hugged his angel by the river in 8x02 What’s Up Tiger Mommy:

And this is Dante mourning Beatrice’s death:

“My sighing leaves me anguished gasps for breath,

When in my memory a sad conceit brings back,

What made my heart feel self-estranged,

And often when I have my thoughts on death,

A longing comes to me so mild and sweet,

My face’s color is completely changed.

And once her image in me is arranged,

Such pain comes over me in every part,

I shudder suddenly awake with woe:

And I am altered so,

Shame cuts me off from people; I depart.

In mourning then, alone as my tears flow,

I call, “Beatrice, are you really dead?”

And calling out her name, I’m comforted.”

We have seen Dean mourn Cas like this in S13 - here as he burns Cas’ body in 13x01 Lost and Found:

It’s really worth listening to the music in both these scenes again:

The Purgatory reunion in 8x02 What’s Up Tiger Mommy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7RaQvZj2l4

The burning of Cas’ body in 13x01 Lost and Found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH3KeYXvlaE

because in each case it’s deeply emotive.

So, in conclusion, we can productively think about S15 as a mirror of Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in The Divine Comedy. And that naturally leads us to consider Dante’s other great work, of medieval courtly love, which also features his beloved, Beatrice; La Vita Nuova and it’s relevance to Dean and Cas.

SPN is, in one sense, the story of the soul’s journey to God, like The Divine Comedy (and out the other side to freedom, as ultimately this is more Vonnegut than Dante) and it is also (in subtext - but remember subtext IS part of narrative) a courtly love romance, like La Vita Nuova.

Tagging @postmodernmulticoloredcloak because you might enjoy the Dante!

La Vita Nuova (Digital Dante): https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/la-vita-nuova-frisardi/

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wltzing · 5 years

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“ What happened to us? “ 👀

sentence starters . accepting . @osterreiich .

he is refusing to offer his beloved a single glance . amber hues pour over the letter before him , a work in progress with slovenly penmanship across the paper . he is growing accustomed to writing with the left hand — the soviet bombing of floridsdorf had all but crippled his right . only now , in the aftermath of chaos and destruction , years following his resurrection , do the muscles of his once - dominant appendage respond to the effort of movement .

when he laid beneath rubble , he had been alone . when he arose amongst a decimated home , his city , he was just the same . in death , he was in the company of only enemies . and floating within the vast space of unknown origins , somewhere between mortal plains and fólkvangr , he was beside himself and himself alone .

❛ what do you take me for ? a fool ? you abandoned me , roderich . you abandoned your people , your land . ❜ throat is taut , evidence of the stress he is enduring . when roderich’s mouth gapes to respond , franz interrupts . ❛ i do not want to hear your excuses . what is your definition of us ? austria , or you and i ? — rhetorical , so keep your damned mouth shut and allow me to speak . ❜

there is no doubt in this cluttered , unforgiving mind of his , that he will never truly pardon johan of his crimes , precipitous egotism and betrayal . the actions of italy and japan hold fewer grievances . he loved johan as he loves roderich , bonded creatures that he was led to believe cared for him despite borderlines and political mayhem , but this was different . and while the former had lent a significant hand in this bedlam , franz cannot distract himself from the fact that roderich’s deception was of equal severity . he fled , left him to support the entirety of his city ‘pon an unstable shoulder . digits crumple the letter , knowing the words that are etched would be more easily digestible coming from his lips .

❛ i do not know what happened to austria after the war . it is stable , or else you and i would not be standing here . we are independent again , no thanks to you . or me , for that matter . i was dead during the soviet occupation of vienna . did you know that ? i cannot image how you would , because you left me . ❜

the paper is tossed onto the floor as his gaze withdraws from it . he stares into the eyes of one he once trusted , unwavering and wholeheartedly . his lower lip quivers , but there are no tears threatening to fall . his knees might be trembling , but his voice is formidable .

❛ you will never be able to imagine the sheer agony of what i endured , my love . the scars beneath my clothes bear evidence to my suffering and that of our people . william took an arm , tiphaine another . thomas took a leg , and the other went to ekaterina . ❜

his right hand , riddled with deep markings from third - degree burns , reaches to drag down the collar of a cashmere turtleneck sweater . a thick scar around his throat is sheepishly shown .

❛ . . . she took my head , too , ❜ he chokes .

only now does it occur to him that he had yet to speak of this experience . with anyone . the realization makes his blood run cold and eyes begin to glisten .

❛ the last thing i remember from that day was her smile . that , and the question of where you were . where heidi was . i could not bear the thought of you meeting the same fate . and i spent ten fucking years wandering in some colorless state of limbo , whatever purgatory our kind is sent to after death , wondering if you were safe . oh , and you were ! i am the one who had pay for the foolishness of these pitiful mortals ! ❜

hand retracts , only to hastily cling onto a nearby crystalline wine glass which is knocked from his desk . it shatters onto the floor , liquid dyeing the crushed letter a deep shade of pink . a color matching the blush of his cheeks , flush with a decade’s frustration and horrors . whatever comes from roderich’s mouth , it does not register . franz sobs freely now .

❛ i do not want an apology . i do not even want an explanation . i want you to leave , go wherever you ran to before and never come back . . . not to me . because you do not love me , lieblingsmensch , ❜ he whispers . ❛ you can save your breath . do you not think i have been tortured enough ? ❜

#not sorry for this lmao #for reader's clarification:#william is the uk #tiphaine is france #thomas is the us #and ekaterina is the ussr #johan is germany obviously #heidi is salzburg #osterreiich #answered . / franz .

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futuresandpasts · 6 years

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Futures & Pasts | MRR #421

As seen in Maximum Rocknroll #421 (June 2018): coming full circle from my very first column which also featured Melbourne’s foremost Fall freaks the Shifters, plus some crucial ‘80s post-punk reissues via Louisville + New Zealand & the new Northwest DIY crash-pop cassette wave.

I wrote about the debut cassette from Melbourne’s the SHIFTERS in the very first column that I did for MRR three years ago, which gives me all sorts of complicated and confusing feelings about the passage of time. And as evidence that sometimes it takes awhile for historical wrongs to be righted, that criminally limited tape is now finally available in its entirety as an LP on the new French label Future Folklore, following the two songs that resurfaced on the Creggan Shops 7” courtesy of It Takes Two back in 2016. The SHIFTERS’ stark, repetitive minimalism and shambolic charms always owed more than a little bit to the FALL in their early years, and revisiting the material from the cassette now just a few months after Mark E. Smith’s passing only reinforces the psychic connection between the lackadaisical post-punk twang in “Captain Hindsight” and the cracked melodies of something like the FALL’s “Your Heart Out” from the Dragnet era. “Creggan Shops” is as close to a contemporary successor to those brilliant first two MEKONS singles as I’ve come across, from the tense interplay between the melodica and a creaky violin, to the scritch-scratch guitar, to the nonchalantly harmonized dual vocals, all sounding like they’re perpetually on the verge of coming undone. There’s way more at play here than blatant UK DIY worship, though—it’s not a huge jump from the homespun, pastoral pop of ‘80s Australian DIY legends like the PARTICLES and the CANNANES to the SHIFTERS’ raggedly melodic “Colour Me In,” and “The American Attitude to the Law” sprawls into a lengthy VELVET UNDERGROUND-addled haze, if only LOU REED had written songs referencing “drinking cough syrup to fall asleep” instead of heroin. One of the best releases of 2015 when it first came out on cassette, and this vinyl version is definitely going to be tough to top in 2018. (Future Folklore, futurefolklorerecords.bandcamp.com)

YOUR FOOD were an early ‘80s quartet from Louisville, Kentucky whose off-kilter, stripped-down art-punk mirrored the similarly self-styled approach of other DIY groups from that era who existed outside of major cities. Their only proper recorded output, 1983’s self-released Poke It With A Stick LP, was just reissued by Drag City at the behest of fellow Louisvillian David Grubbs (formerly of SQUIRREL BAIT and BASTRO, among others), and it’s pretty essential stuff for anyone interested in the chapter of American weirdo post-punk that took shape just before “college rock” became the dominant underground cultural force in the mid-to-late ‘80s. “Leave” and “New Pop” both layer simple, endlessly repeated basslines, obliquely narrated vocals, and trebly stabs of guitar into spartan drones that share the jaggedly danceable sensibility of what was happening a couple of hours to the south in Athens, Georgia with bands like the METHOD ACTORS or PYLON, even though YOUR FOOD were way more likely to switch up to a frantic, thrashy punk fit at a moment’s notice (see the last thirty or so seconds of the otherwise choppy and COME ON-esque “Cool/Cowtown”). There’s a sharp-cornered, chaotic shamble to “Here” that isn’t too far removed from RED KRAYOLA’s late ‘70s post-punk incarnation, and there’s even some touches of UK DIY-style naive jangle in “Corners” before it collapses into noisy abstract guitar squall mid-song. Totally freewheeling and ramshackle bent-punk bliss! I’ve seen a few references to the fact that MRR “refused” to review the LP when it originally came out, so hopefully I’m doing some small justice to Poke It With A Stick here 35 years later. (Drag City, dragcity.com)

I’m most certainly a card-carrying member of the Flying Nun fan club, but I’m also always really happy to see some renewed attention being given to some of the darker and more obscure corners of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s New Zealand underground, beyond the Flying Nun roster and the bands typically associated with the whole storied Dunedin sound. NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS have often (and rather unfairly) been termed the Kiwi JOY DIVISION thanks to the combination of some deeply propulsive basslines and Peter Jefferies’ dramatically icy baritone vocals, but you could just as easily connect the dots between their take on bleak and razor-edged post-punk and what dozens of other UK-based bands like the SOUND or the CHAMELEONS were doing more or less concurrently. The two 12” EPs and one single that they released before splitting up in 1983 have been impossibly difficult to track down for quite a while (at non-collector scum prices, at least), and the consolation prize has been a selection of songs from those releases that made it onto a 1995 CD-only collection called Nerve Ends in Power Lines, plus a handful of roughly recorded 1981 demos that were excavated for 1998’s Worldview 7”. After all of the recent vinyl reissue campaigns focused on long out-of-print records by some of the most beloved New Zealand groups (who generally happened to be backed by Flying Nun in their day), NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS have been long overdue for a similarly comprehensive treatment, so endless appreciation is due to Dais Records for stepping up to remedy that situation with the new Complete Studio Recordings anthology, collecting every song from the three original releases on one remastered LP. Even at their darkest and most desperate, like on the sinister, industrial-decay clang of “Another Year,” NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS never slipped into the sort of over-the-top goth pretensions that were de rigueur in the age of 4AD’s ascendency, and vocal delivery aside, the slashing and anthemic “In Purgatory” honestly has more in common with MISSION OF BURMA or HÜSKER DÜ than, say, BAUHAUS. Highest possible recommendation, and an excellent counterpart to Superior Viaduct’s recent reissues of Peter and Graeme Jefferies’ more avant-garde/experimental post-NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS project THIS KIND OF PUNISHMENT. (Dais Records, nocturnalprojections.bandcamp.com)

TRASH ROMEO are a very new duo from here in Portland featuring two people who have been in most of my favorite local bands over the last couple of years, including GOLDEN HOUR, the BEDROOMS, and CONDITIONER. Everything about their debut cassette Moving in the Summer brings to mind the pre-internet, early-to-mid ‘90s romance of mail-ordering singles from paper catalogs and building up imagined realities of geographically-centered scenes that you’d only ever read about. Alex and Danny both rotate between guitar, drums, and vocals, crafting sparse crash-pop with a hint of basement punk snarl that picks up a few loose threads from the parallel riot grrrl-adjacent musical universes of Olympia and Washington D.C. The haunting opener “Cheryl Blossom” juxtaposes delicate-yet-tangled melodies with some darkly angular AUTOCLAVE/SLANT 6 flashes, and sugary sweet TIGER TRAP-style harmonies are at the center of “Night Terror,” while “Teen Vogue” recalls the raw, minimalist lo-fi punk of EXCUSE 17 or even KICKING GIANT at their most raucous. Simple, direct, and deeply personal anthems for loners and outcasts everywhere. TRASH ROMEO definitely make me feel a major nostalgia for some of the formative reference points in my young teenage musical upbringing in the 1990s, but it never seems like they’re simply reproducing specific cultural signifiers from the past in a modern context—in 2018, you could say it’s the difference between posting digital scans of pages from an 1992 issue of Sassy magazine on your blog, or choosing to make your own zine with only a typewriter, a glue stick and a photocopier at your disposal. Also worth mentioning: their first show was their tour kick-off show and they were the only band that played it, which just might be one of the most amazing and punkest moves I’ve encountered in a long time. (trashromeo.bandcamp.com)

#the shifters #your food #nocturnal projections #trash romeo #maximum rocknroll #futures & pasts

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cassandraclover · 2 years

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the other day my new girl said to me that it made sense i was a tumblr user bc “it’s always the wifey types that STILL use tumblr, like it says a lot.” & i feel like that’s relevant given today’s escapades on this beloved hell site/digital purgatory

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googlenewson · 4 years

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Whether you’re standing in the theater lobby or curled up in bed, deciding what to watch next is often the most difficult part of any pop-culture junkie’s day. And with dozens of films in theaters on any given weekend, plus virtually endless layers of streaming purgatory to sort through in search of your next binge-watch, there’s more out there—and tougher decisions to make—than ever.

Fortune’s here to help you navigate the week’s latest offerings, boiling all the entertainment out there down into three distinct recommendations: should you see it, stream it, or skip it? Find out below.

SEE IT: ‘Cats’ (In theaters)

What you have to understand about Cats is that it’s certifiably insane, from its Jellicle whiskers to the tip of its Jellice tail. I’m referring here to the beloved Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical, one of Broadway’s longest-running, as much as Tom Hooper’s gleefully demented movie adaptation. From day one, Cats has been one of the strangest megahits in any storytelling medium; it’s necessary to know this, and accept this, before reading any further.

Describing the plot of Cats makes you feel like you’re on bath salts (though not as much as does seeing it play out on screen), but the broad strokes are essentially this. Over the course of one night in an unnamed, eerily empty neighborhood, a group of cats take turns introducing one another—with names like Rum Tum Tugger and Mr. Mistoffeelees—as they debate which one of them will get to die, ascending to another plane of existence known as the Heaviside Layer, where they’ll be reborn into a new life. As a story, it’s pure fever dream, the kind of thing even Roald Dahl’s editor wouldn’t have let him get away with; but the strange non-plot of Cats functions, in a theatrical setting, as an ideal delivery system for visual splendor and powerhouse vocals.

Hooper’s tackled musicals before, notably in 2012’s Les Miserables, where he spent 158 minutes on extreme close-ups of France’s most impoverished, and he fully throws himself into the task of translating Cats, a much more experimental piece of work, to the screen. There’s a newly created audience surrogate, Victoria (newcomer Francesca Hayward), who’s tossed via burlap sack into the neighborhood of the Jellicles, a tribe of cats on the eve of making their “Jellicle choice.” Across the sung-through story, she meets a mewling menagerie of contenders for said choice, including bumbling Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), stately Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellen), and portly Bustopher Jones (James Corden), plus the aforementioned Mistoffeelees (a gawky Laurie Davidson), and Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo, who sings and simpers gamely but seems to be missing a little something). Presiding over all is Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench and, no, I don’t know who named these cats), who’ll enjoy the festivities then select the lucky (?) feline in question.

The real draw of Cats involves seeing the all-star cast, which also includes pop sovereign Taylor Swift and vocal legend Jennifer Hudson (who gets to belt out “Memory,” the production’s lone showstopper), made over with the help of CG effects, called “digital fur technology” (though it’s basically just expensive deepfakery), into cat-human hybrids. The effect is deeply upsetting; though the actors are covered in fur and sporting twitchy tails, their proportions are still human, so the actors appear discomfitingly sensual while dancing and serenading one another. They have cat ears, but also human teeth; whiskers, but also fingernails. Some wear jumpsuits, while others go for a more paw-naturel look; the movie directs attention to the strange sense of faux-nudity that results by having Idris Elba’s villainous Macavity wear a hat and fur coat (which begs questions we shouldn’t dare to ask) but later make a surprise scene entrance after disrobing, to which the other cats react with a fairly hypocritical degree of horror.

In watching this digital fur extravaganza at work, entranced by the sheer scale of its visual chaos, I found myself wondering what else Hooper and his team could have done. The tactic most employed by Disney, the imperial overlord Universal’s bravely going up against with this freaky little musical (note this week’s skip it), has been to pursue photorealism in its animated productions. Earlier this year, it turned The Lion King into an uncanny-valley catastrophe, sapping the story of all emotional and dramatic resonance in the process. People simply did not want to hear human voices coming out of the mouths of Planet Earth lions, which is very understandable. Hooper’s techniques with Cats, through which his furry creations sing and dance maniacally into their versions of heaven or hell, bring the whole affair closer to Gaspar Noe’s Climax by way of The Aristocats. While Cats is by no means going to be a guaranteed hit with the little ones, who may be terrified by it or confused by its sexuality, it’s an absolutely unhinged piece of blockbuster filmmaking, worth beholding in all its tawdry, queer, bombastic glory.

It’s the kind of risk studios just don’t take any more, perhaps much more of one than executives ever intended it to be. The film cost some $100 million to pull off, and the amount of uncertainty Cats brings with it into the multiplex—did those oh-my-god-they-actually-did-it trailers turn people off, or the opposite?—makes it the most exciting box-office curiosity left in the calendar year. Will it break records or bomb? The experience of watching Cats—howls of stunned laughter from many, with a few Swifties cheering her grand entrance and the majority of us struggling to even once pick our jaws up off the floor—is one of the most strange and mind-melting you’re likely to have in a theater when it comes to studio content of this size and scope. I’d recommend going for much for the same reason the play’s stuck around so long—whether it’s a masterpiece or one of the worst things you’ve ever seen, it’s resolutely its own thing, a deranged freak-fantasia worth falling into for a couple of hours, if just to say you did. That is to say, it’s Cats.

STREAM IT: ‘The Witcher’ (Netflix)

Netflix’s latest original-series gamble is aiming for Game of Thrones-level complexity in its sketching of a dark-fantasy realm where mythical creatures lie in wait but monarchal power struggles loom just as large.

And based on its first season, The Witcher (adapted from the beloved book series by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski) is well on its way. Comprising eight episodes, a smaller number which clearly allowed showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich to focus on thoughtfully tracing an ambitious array of story arcs, the series hangs around the impossibly broad shoulders of Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill, great at veining these strong-and-silent types with a gallows humor).

A stone-faced loner who roams the dangerous Continent in search of monsters to slay, Geralt is no hero, and he’s often perilously close to going over the edge in his bloodletting. The character’s most distinguished by his unwillingness to diverge from his own moral compass by getting involved in court politics. In this, he’s reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s tumbleweed-drifting Man with No Name or Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe, a sword in hand rather than a revolver. But Geralt’s on a path toward destiny, as protagonists in high-fantasy fare such as this often are, and he’s soon to become entwined in the fates of two distinctly powerful women. There’s Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), in training to become a powerful sorceress at a mysterious academy, and Ciri (Freya Allen), a young princess in hiding after her kingdom was ransacked and her parents slain. All three characters are afforded their own storylines, weaving their way across the Continent and finding themselves transformed in a myriad of ways by its darkest, magical elements.

Further detailing the epic, sweeping nature of The Witcher‘s story would be to deprive audiences of unexpected, rather graceful reveals that the scripts tease out in due time. What there is to say about The Witcher is that it represents one of Netflix’s most fully formed forays into genre territory yet. The fights, especially in a cinematic and sprawling pilot, are of a kinetic and impressively top-shelf variety, Cavill’s Geralt moving like a man possessed as he rends flesh from bone and engages in some surprisingly balletic bouts of swordplay. And the production design is similarly well-executed, quickly establishing the Continent as a grungy, bloody landscape for these characters to navigate. But it’s the strength of the storytelling that bodes most well for The Witcher as a new destination for those done licking their wounds after that fateful final run in Westeros.

SKIP IT: ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ (In theaters)

… even though you’ll see it

“If this mission fails, it was all for nothing,” characters tell one another throughout Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. That’s popcorn-prose concentrate, the kind of dramatic hyperbole that Star Wars has been coasting on since the very beginning. And while it’s traditionally been a fake-out—there’s always another mission, another battle to be won, even after ones that end with your hero encased in carbonite—such sentiment has never felt as profoundly hollowed out as it does by the end of Rise of Skywalker, a graceless franchise finale about nothing more than missions succeeding that itself feels like a staggering failure of vision, conceptually as well as on basic storytelling fronts.

Director J.J. Abrams’ anxiety in making Rise of Skywalker surely fell along those same all-or-nothing lines. By his own admission, he’s bad at endings, and there was tremendous pressure riding on Abrams to bring home the story of the Skywalker clan, a nine-movie saga that’s never loomed larger in the pop cultural imagination. The Rise of Skywalker may well be the last Star Wars movie to feature the heroes Abrams helped forge in his nostalgic The Force Awakens—Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Isaac)—and it’s almost certain to be the final outing for original cast members the series is now starting to outlive. Carrie Fisher died after shooting her scenes for The Last Jedi, and this entry (once intended to be Leia’s movie in the sense that The Force Awakens was Han’s and The Last Jedi was Luke’s) is to be her last screen credit. This just makes the magnitude of Abrams’s failure all the more devastating. One last adventure? Hardly. In a pivotal entry for the franchise, he chooses not to tell a story, instead drowning the developments this trilogy’s second film put forward in a soupy mess of fan service and stilted, unoriginal plotting.

When The Last Jedi hit theaters two years ago, it offered a thematic depth hitherto unseen in Star Wars movies; in the hands of writer-director Rian Johnson, it tangled head-on with questions of hero worship and inheritance that have always been intrinsic to the galaxy far, far away. But the answers it provided—that one must relinquish the past to chart a future, that our heroes will disappoint us, that the Force is not the lineage of a select but a spiritual energy belonging to all of us—were bold and unexpected. In this, it was a shocking follow-up to The Force Awakens, Abrams’ play-the-hits remake of A New Hope, and ruffled feathers with a small but loud contingent of fans, who disliked the film’s treatment of Luke and focus on supporting characters (the most hated of whom, perhaps not coincidentally given the way these Internet mobs tend to go, were women and minorities).

This is worth mentioning because The Rise of Skywalker feels, more than a film, like a feature-length capitulation to those who disliked what The Last Jedi did with the Star Wars mythos (which was, at the end of the day, to make a real movie with it). Where The Last Jedi zagged, Rise of Skywalker zigs, choppily, back inside the pre-existing template to which Disney and Lucasfilm clearly now believes these movies must adhere. It is in fact comical how frantically it rushes to undo Johnson’s progression of these characters, crowding them unnaturally into the same space to combat criticisms everyone spent too much time apart in the last film and entirely sidelining Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran, the series’ first Asian-American lead who was brutally harassed online after The Last Jedi) with so little explanation it feels just as racist and sexist as the chatroom vitriol she was subjected to. The Rise of Skywalker also works overtime to retcon The Last Jedi‘s biggest twists. One deformed bad guy with Force powers is down for the count? Let’s introduce another. The question of Rey’s parentage got answered, unexpectedly, with the revelation her family name didn’t have to matter so much? Well, let’s revisit that actually.

From the first words in its opening crawl (“The dead speak!”) to its final frame, The Rise of Skywalker spends its whole runtime chasing ghosts. As teased by the trailers, Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is back, for reasons the script scarcely attempts to rationalize, and he brings with him a fleet of Star Destroyers capable of wiping out entire planets in one blast. You thought the First Order was bad? Get ready for the “Final Order.”

That’s truly the order of business in The Rise of Skywalker. It’s a movie slavishly devoted to hitting beats from previous films without basic narrative sense, to the point where it feels less like a natural ending to this franchise and more like bad fanfiction. The only way the characters progress is through ill-advised romantic pairings. One interminable (and ultimately pointless) lightsaber battle takes place amid in the wreckage of a destroyed Death Star. The finale involves outgunned resistance fighters making one last stand to blow up a massive bad-guy space base. Beloved characters are imperiled constantly, but there are no real stakes when even the already-dead ones are back for sizable roles. Familiar desert planets pop up, along with Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), for maximum fan pandering.

There’s a real difference between a director and an artist, and nothing demonstrates this better than the massive step down The Rise of Skywalker takes both thematically and visually after The Last Jedi. There’s little by way of distinctive or striking visuals; the entire film is hued a murky blue, with an ill-advised focus on strobe lighting. Furthermore, it’s a Star Wars movie with absolutely nothing under its surface, which is a damning trait for a movie in this franchise. Abrams is a great producer, but his weaknesses as a filmmaker have never been this exposed. In attempting to give a noxious portion of the Star Wars fanbase what they asked for, his finale feels like a cheap and derivative product, the ultimate end-result of Disney’s written-by-committee modus operandi, so craven about resurrecting Star Wars that it comes off like grave-robbing. This is Star Wars broken under the weight of its own importance, eating its own tail for lack of any original voices to better nourish it. It’s nothing short of a tragedy.

More must-read stories from Fortune:

—Why these high-profile book adaptations bombed at the box office in 2019 —’Tis the season for holiday movies—and Hallmark and Lifetime aren’t afraid of Netflix —Whistleblower cinema is back in a big way —How some artists are building their careers through Spotify playlists —As 2019 draws to a close, does the movie star still have a pulse? Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.

from Fortune https://ift.tt/2M93MWy

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k9povnd · 5 months

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Blessed be the Children of Cain

Bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception

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lindsaynsmith · 6 years

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10 Horror Films In Desperate Need Of A Blu Ray

10 Horror Films In Desperate Need Of A Blu Ray https://ift.tt/2PoIlUF

A few months back I watched a film from 1953 called The Maze. It was directed by William Cameron Menzies, the same man who did Invaders from Mars (1953) and a slew of other highly regarded silent and early sound films. The Blu from Kino Lorber is pristine. I had never seen a black and white film look so good, despite having seen what I thought were perfect prints and scans.

As for the film, a quiet vaguely Lovecraftian tale of longing, loss, and familial curses, I could foresee how it had been lost throughout cinema history. A film could be amazing, yet with a shoddy old print or transfer it becomes impossible to watch. Due to carelessness, we may have lost more masterpieces than we know. And that’s where Blu Ray comes in. Eventually, we’re going to get to the point where we can’t conceivably get better quality than this, right? And if Blu Ray is it, what will happen to the films that don’t make the upgrade? Will it be the same as VHS to DVD, where a library of movies are tethered to one outmoded media and hardware? The following films are in danger of being lost, let’s try to save ‘em.

Keep reading for a look at the 10 horror movies we most want released on Blu-ray as voted on by Chris Coffel, Kieran Fisher, Brad Gullickson, Meg Shields, Rob Hunter, and myself.

10. Anguish (1987)

Films with a “meta” element can be tough to pull off, and for every slice of brilliance (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 2005) there’s a messy misfire (Last Action Hero, 1993). One of the more unappreciated examples is Bigas Luna‘s Anguish. There’s an argument to be made that its film within a film within a film structure amounts to nonsense, but what it lacks in vigorous logic it more than makes up for in style, tension, and creativity. Its various threads are captivating and suspenseful in their own way, and in today’s world the movie theater segment carries far more terrifying power than it once did. At its most basic it’s a Psycho (1960) riff about a man and his mother, but it succeeds far better as an eye-opening look at our own obsession with watching.” A new Blu-ray would sharpen the picture even further. – Rob Hunter

9. The Dentist (1996)

Going to the dentist is terrifying in and of itself. A psychotic dentist with a tendency to slaughter his patients with the very same surgical equipment we all fear is even scarier. But that was the genius concept behind Brian Yuzna’s riotous B movie that saw Corbin Bernsen as the eponymous tooth surgeon. The movie spawned a sequel that’s equally as entertaining as the first, and they both deserve all the upgrades. That’s a hint Scream Factory. – Kieran Fisher

8. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)

There was nothing quite like going to the video store. Be it Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, or your local mom and pop shop browsing the seemingly endless shelves, staring at the alluring box art, was a film school for my generation. And no box art was more attention-grabbing as Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2. Which is why it’s even more disheartening that it is still orphaned on a barebones DVD. An “in title alone” sequel to Jamie Lee Curtis’ early 80s school slasher, Mary Lou takes on a supernatural twist attempting to capitalize on that either killer of dreams Freddy Krueger. The film is an instant cult classic with its bizarre incestuous plot lines and over the top deaths, but the film deserves to be remembered (and remastered) for its striking visuals, especially one of a swirling blackboard that becomes a swirling void. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 is how you do a sequel. – Jacob Trussell

7. April Fool’s Day (1986)

The 80’s were the heyday for the slasher sub-genre. Every major franchise released multiple titles and a bunch of imitators and cheap knockoffs got in on the action. While a majority of these films followed a similar template every now and then one would come along with a fresh new take, as was the case in 1986 with the Fred Walton-directed April Fool’s Day. This is a movie that is conventional until it’s not thanks to a final act that may catch some viewer’s off guard. Whether or not the film’s conclusion is one that works is a worthy debate, however, in a sea of slashers that are largely the same this film’s ending does make it stand out. Plus it features a stellar 80’s cast that includes Deborah Foreman, Griffin O’Neal, and Thomas Wilson. This is all to say that the film’s lack of Blu-ray release is a travesty that needs rectifying. – Chris Coffel

6. The Keep (1983)

Shouldn’t every Michael Mann movie be on blu-ray? The guy is a master stylist, and even his second and possibly weakest effort oozes style and craft. Shot by Alex Thomson (the eye behind Excalibur, Legend, Labyrinth, Leviathan, Alien 3), The Keep is a rich visual feast of inky blacks and mysterious light sources. To forever live in the purgatory of bargain basement standard definition is criminal. Mann tried his best to adapt F. Paul Wilson’s World War II supernatural saga, but as the budget ballooned above him, the studio lost all confidence in recouping their money. An epic 210 minutes was savagely stripped down to a paltry 96. No wonder the final plot is barely coherent. That being said, the film that is currently available is an essential addition to every cineastes library. From The Keep comes Manhunter, Heat, and all the rest. A new Blu-ray could be akin to an exorcism for Mann. Sit him in front of a microphone, and let him unleash a torrent of frustrations over the production. That would provide solid psychotherapy for Mann and quite an education for us. – Brad Gullickson

5. The Haunting of Julia (1977)

That The Haunting of Julia has never been released on DVD is a goddamn tragedy. Almost as much of a tragedy as the cold open of the film, which sees a choking child and a tracheotomy gone wrong. Also known as Full Circle, Julia sees a frazzled Mia Farrow haunted by loss, and possibly something more sinister. A psychological horror in the vein of The Changeling and The Innocents, Julia is eerie slow burn with an effective twist (and a badass soundtrack). Extant digital copies are unlicensed and subject to the ever-horrid pan and scan technique. If The Haunting of Julia isn’t rescued via blu-ray, it is at real risk of falling into obscurity. – Meg Shields

4. Mr. Frost (1990)

Jeff Goldblum has found a late-career surge with quirky performances in blockbuster movies, and as much as we love them it’s worth remembering that he used to deliver far more varied characters in smaller films. One of the best — and least seen — is this grim psychological thriller that casts Goldblum as a confirmed serial killer who just might be something worse. The film is a twisting mind-game between Frost and those around him including a detective and a psychiatrist (Kathy Baker), and his identity and abilities are constantly in question. It’s a methodically paced thriller with supernatural undertones, and I’d love to see it reach a wider audience… perhaps with a commentary by Goldblum as Frost? – Rob Hunter

3. Ghostwatch (1992)

People love to troll found footage films, and it’s easy to see why. Ridicule is natural when something becomes as popular, and as over saturated, as the format. But what far few remember is how absolutely blood curdling that first found footage film you see can be. Is it real or is it strictly fiction? The format blurs the storytelling lines. But imagine watching something like Ghostwatch before this storytelling device was widely used. Imagine how terrifying a story can become when you earnestly think you’re watching a documentary. And that’s exactly what Ghostwatch did. Originally aired on BBC as a Halloween special with national treasure Michael Parkinson as host, Ghostwatch purports itself as being a real investigation into a haunting of a family. With CC cameras and a live crew capturing the paranormal activity, the creatives blurred the lines even deeper by insinuating that the haunting isn’t just real, but could affect you by merely watching the broadcast. It was so terrifying to UK audiences that it caused mass hysteria, ala Orson Welles War of the Worlds, and resulted in the BBC banning future airings of the special. With an uptick in popularity thanks to the streaming service Shudder, Ghostwatch deserves the Blu ray treatment and a spot in your home library. – Jacob Trussell

2. Martin (1978)

The late great George A. Romero is best remembered for giving new life to the zombie genre. But in an ironic twist, his favourite of his own films is about vampires. Or is it? That’s the ghoulish gambit of 1978’s Martin: is the awkward teen an immortal blood-sucker or just a serial killer in the vein of Richard Chase? A creepy and often tender meditation on alienation, Martin is critically beloved and criminally under-seen. The film’s downbeat tone and more somber sensibility might have something to do with this, but the rights situation (more of a fiscal standoff, really) is the main culprit. Martin is a neglected, socially-relevant masterpiece; a Blu-ray is long overdue. – Meg Shields

1. The Hitcher (1986)

When I discovered that The Hitcher had yet to receive the Blu-ray treatment, I was even more baffled than that day in 2016 where I woke up to find that an actual turd had been elected the President of the United States of America. This movie gave us one of the best horror villains of all time in the form of Rutger Hauer as a murderous hitch-hiker who makes life hell for travelers. Such a simple concept, with such perfect execution (and executions). The movie is so good that Michael Bay even saw enough dollar signs to produce a terrible remake in the 2000’s, which has its own Blu-ray release. – Kieran Fisher

Press pause on the rest of your life and spin up more entries in our 31 Days of Horror Lists!

The post 10 Horror Films In Desperate Need Of A Blu Ray appeared first on Film School Rejects.

via Film School Rejects https://ift.tt/23tjcnD October 23, 2018 at 10:06AM

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