My ★★★½ review of Interview with the Vampire on Letterboxd https://boxd.it/4HWSYf
So, it's out, folks. Just FYI, the last time I watched the movie was on HBO probably a decade ago, when I was deep in my vampire phase. Now, when I reviewed it, I tried my best to differentiate POV of a casual viewer and of someone who knows the novel's major plot. That review above is from a casual viewer's eye, but as a fan of the franchise, I'd give it only 3 star, and yes, it's mostly because of the writing.
As I said in that review, the script focusing more on fulfilling plot points did a disservice on the characters, and a lot of them is on Louis.
The script - whether it's the things it doesn't include, or the things that have been changed - makes film Louis a shadow of book Louis. You see him tortured by feeding on humans, but the movie doesn't show you why. They only gave you one short line to Lestat, something "sorry I still care about humanity" or something. It doesn't show that it's tied to his Catholic guilt or something more convincing. And you still have him as a slaver here, that definitely doesn't help people to sympathize with him. It's such that when Armand says "you're beautiful because you reflect your era" etc etc I was taken aback, because the first half doesn't depict his struggle as something beautiful. It makes him looking like a whining student, you're wondering why Lestat putting up with him. And they also took out the unhinged aspect of Louis' personality: e.g. attacking a priest, staying with Armand. When you don't know the book, it does look satisfying how Louis left Armand, but that also cut a lot of what makes Louis Louis imo. Like, a lot of things on Louis' characteristics don't make any sense due to these erasure and changes.
The script does favor Lestat and his actor's a lot. It doesn't show how controlling Lestat could be, while in the book there are moments where Louis and Claudia are really afraid of him. Cruise also got these scenes where he could show his range as an actor (really like his microexpressions when Claudia is about to kill him)
All of these make the NOLA era feels camp, but Paris era is really Gothic. You don't want tone changing like that in your movie 😭
Also I don't really enjoy the male gaze (no wonder straights never thought Loustat are gay here, the boobs misdirected them). The victims are always shot in eroticly, but they really double down when it's a woman (and most of them are women). And that naked woman on the stage scene still upsets me. Yes, I know, that's the point yes. But they could have been more focused on the horror on her face. And this scene also badly stands out because the tone change: if it felt like Gothic horror from the start, I wouldn't have been that surprised.
Anyway, there's an essay could be made on the changes Anne did here and the consequences they have on the characters compared to the changes Rolin and Co have made. But I'll leave it to anyone who's better with words than me hah!
Lastly, let me make a controversial acting ranking:
Tom Cruise - indusputable, the script literally helps him
(Not 2nd, but more like 5th, the gap is that big) Brad Pitt - the script drags him down, he's pretty good in scenes without Cruise
Kristen Dusnt - age handicap would put her above Pitt, but there are lines that I feel too "heavy" for her, and that's definitely not her fault. She has done a great job for someone in her age. Still a queen shit
Christian Slater - his character is so limited but he made it work. he has that banter chemistry with Pitt. But didn't really capture Daniel's out-of-his-mind at the end
Antonio Banderas - if I didn't know this should be The Armand, perhaps he would've been higher, but he's not my Armand, sorry. He's charming, but there's no an inch of seducer in his Armand. His whole plot makes him looking like a loser 😭
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i love when words fit right. seize was always supposed to be that word, and so was jester. tuesday isn't quite right but thursday should be thursday, that's a good word for it. daisy has the perfect shape to it, almost like you're laughing when you say it; and tulip is correct most of the time. while keynote is fun to say, it's super wrong - i think they have to change the label for that one. but fox is spot-on.
most words are just, like, good enough, even if what they are describing is lovely. the night sky is a fine term for it but it isn't perfect the way november is the correct term for that month.
it's not just in english because in spanish the phrase eso si que es is correct, it should be that. sometimes other languages are also better than the english words, like how blue is sloped too far downwards but azul is perfect and hangs in the air like glitter. while butterfly is sweet, i think probably papillion is more correct, although for some butterflies féileacán is much better. year is fine but bliain is better. sometimes multiple languages got it right though, like how jueves and Πέμπτη are also the right names for thursday. maybe we as a species are just really good at naming thursdays.
and if we were really bored and had a moment and a picnic to split we could all sit down for a moment and sort out all the words that exist and find all the perfect words in every language. i would show you that while i like the word tree (it makes you smile to say it), i think arbor is correct. you could teach me from your language what words fit the right way, and that would be very exciting (exciting is not correct, it's just fine).
i think probably this is what was happening at the tower of babel, before the languages all got shifted across the world and smudged by the hand of god. by the way, hand isn't quite right, but i do like that the word god is only 3 letters, and that it is shaped like it is reflecting into itself, and that it kind of makes your mouth move into an echoing chapel when you cluck it. but the word god could also fit really well with a coathanger, and i can't explain that. i think donut has (weirdly) the same shape as a toothbrush, but we really got bagel right and i am really grateful for that.
grateful is close, but not like thunder. hopefully one day i am going to figure out how to shape the way i love my friends into a little ceramic (ceramic is very good, almost perfect) pot and when they hold it they can feel the weight of my care for them. they can put a plant in there. maybe a daisy.
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the intimacy and soul deep love that comes with outright telling someone you’re worried about them…
buck and eddie have been individually and jointly dragged through the coals before this; but never have they explicitly said how they worry about each other or anything to that likeness
and while the whole point of tv is to read between the lines, to pick up expressions in lieu of time-restricted dialogues, there is something absolutely devastating about buck putting those words out there in the quiet of eddie’s kitchen, only to hear them echoed right back
and it’s also in the tone of his voice, something to the stubborn quiet way he sneaks past every single one of eddie’s denials to the heart of the matter that mirrors the way buck buried himself in eddie’s heart so long ago without his knowledge, and now it’s kind of like eddie’s version of confession, his safe space to repent, his safe space to find some direction in a way religion never did for him but buck does?
and there’s something about the expression on buck’s face too, the one we’ve seen so many times when he fears losing eddie, and i just think that for both of them (including eddie himself) to voice concern about eddie’s mental state essentially, something really bad is probably coming up
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the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.
people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.
"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."
the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.
the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.
at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.
"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.
this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.
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Theory that solves(?) "founding of Hyrule" timeline inconsistencies:
Origin of Hyrule no. 1: Skyward Sword. Zelda, Link, and the Skylians settle the surface world at the game's conclusion. Notably, their dress looks nothing like the Zonai era.
Origin of Hyrule no. 2: Tears of the Kingdom. Rauru and Sonia are the king and queen who founded Hyrule. Notably, Zonai mechanisms and architecture greatly resemble the pre-Skyward-Sword-era Lanayru mining tech and symbolism, though Skyward Sword's art direction is more cartoony than TotK, so that has to be taken into account.
That's where it gets cyclical. If TotK's forgotten era came first, then:
Zonai influence should be ALL OVER Skyloft
The Gerudo should not exist, because they're (implied to be) descended from Groose, a Skylian; at the very least, there should have been a whole Gerudo culture in the Sky
Where did the Secret Stones go?
We should have seen Zeldra flying around in the sky, let alone Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra
But if Skyward Sword came before all things Zonai, then:
The Lanayru Mining Facility (assuming it to be Zonai in origin) should not exist
Hyrule should have already been founded by Rauru's time
Of the two, Skyward Sword being first on the wild surface makes more sense. But if that's the case, there are even more questions:
Where did the Secret Stones come from? Are we to believe that Hylia gave them to the Zonai, since the Golden Trio have already left the Triforce and departed?
What about the Zonai themselves? They supposedly descended from the heavens. Were they just up so high that the Skylians couldn't find them? Did Hylia cleave the ground twice? Did they spontaneously appear up there like mice in grain bins?
Why is there a whole Temple of Time with bells that Rauru, one of two of the LAST of his species, woke up and went to sleep to? In fact, why is there an entire kingdom's worth of structures already built before the Sky Reckoning?
My solution:
The Zonai did exist pre-Skyward Sword, and did descend down from the sky ages ago. They built the Lanayru Mining Facility, utilizing the power of Timeshift Stones in their work. This is not Rauru and Mineru's era.
The Zonai are among the people that stay behind to fight Demise alongside Hylia, while the Skylians were sent up to Skyloft. The people of the Surface are entrusted with the Secret Stones as weapons against Demise, with the caveat that they keep them hidden. That's why they're called Secret Stones despite being well-known to Ganondorf in TotK, it was PARAMOUNT that Demise not know he could get any stronger.
The war ends. Just about every civilization is obliterated by it. The Zonai retreat as far from Demise's seal as they can to lick their wounds. They take the sages' Secret Stones with them, so as to not be caught unawares and lose them to Demise when he eventually reemerges.
Skyward Sword.
The evil is defeated, the Skylians come down to the Surface. That's the signal that it's safe to return now. Shortly after the Skylians officially start to settle, the Zonai, who know how things work, help them build a proper civilization.
Time passes. The Surface is officially a bunch of scattered clans with varying degrees of territory. People are content, though nothing is particularly efficient. The Skylians take on Zonai fashion and building styles as generations pass. The Zonai themselves dwindle.
Rauru, married to the leader of the Hylians, looks to unite the scattered clans under one banner in the name of prosperity and shared resources, idolizing the pre-Skyward era where the gods walked the land. He and Sonia officially name the place Hyrule, and any clan that signs treaty with them is considered within its borders. Mineru, meanwhile, has made her first construct models based on the Lanayru Mine Robots of old, which add to the appeal of joining Hyrule as its subkingdom territories.
Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda's first 12 memories.
Between the Master Sword going back in time and Zeldra's ascent, Zelda and Mineru get to work with as many constructs as possible to protect the Sky Isles they plan to send upwards. They need a TON of Zonaite, and recycling is a priority, leading to the gachapon machines.
Zelda knows enough about her kingdom that she knows where the land is particularly rich is where the people of her time settled, and Zonaite is shown to enrich soil greatly. This is why all the old Zonaite mines are underneath the towns in modern Hyrule, despite changing geography through other eras, and Tarrey Town's new-ness.
Zelda ascends.
The secretive Sheikah clan, having seen the Blood Moon's rise when the Demon King took power, realize that Demise isn't, in fact, all gone. They decide this means that their job serving Hylia isn't truly done, and return to help the fledgling kingdom as best they can. They bring the knowledge of the Master Sword of Skyward Sword days with them.
Ganondorf first shakes the seal he's under without form, leading to the first Calamity and the initial rise of Calamity Ganon. This is 10k years before BotW. This is also the first documented use of the Master Sword to seal the Demon King away, recorded in the tapestry.
The Sheikah are forced to abandon their technology. The Yiga/Sheikah split happens.
Literally all the rest of Hyrulean History happens after this.
Breath of the Wild.
Tears of the Kingdom.
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