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sorenblr · 10 months

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What is your opinion on the sexual cutscenes of FF16? I think a similar question was previously asked about Triangle Strategy and it seemed rather forced for the sake of pretending to be a more mature story, when FFT didn't rely on the explicitly sexual content to tell a mature story.

(This ask and the response are based on information that has been available as early as the demo and shouldn't contain any spoilers for the full game).

I don't mind a good sex scene and find the strangely puritanical reaction against sex depicted in film and television to be one of the most alien and frustrating discourses in recent years, but in this case it just seems to be the natural consequence of Yoshi P. demanding that his team watch the fucking GoT box-set:

...We wanted to create something that really resonated with a lot of people. And when we saw how Game of Thrones, and before that the Song of Ice and Fire series, has really resonated with players, we knew that this was something that we wanted to do as well. When we first started creating the game, we had our core team of about 30 members very early on buy the blu-ray boxset of Game of Thrones and required everyone to watch it, because we wanted this type of feel.

Game of Thrones made a lot of people a lot of money, and we thought to ourselves, boy, we would also like some of that money.

A larger distinction is that GoT features real actors who are, you know, people, and so it's not terribly embarrassing to see them stripped and smashing their shit together or jacking off or whatever. FFXVI, according to the aesthetic preference of an entire industry, is populated by uncanny digital homunculi only crudely approximating the appearance of real people with the animating force of God's breath filling their lungs. I don't anticipate that FFXVI will have full-bore, hog-out ramming or anything- I assume it's just a lot of post-coital sideboob, maybe a glimpse of Clive's weird little ass here and there- but in this presentational mode it would play closer to comedy if you're not catastrophically addicted to Overwatch porn.

There is a reason the camera would always cut away before Kratos starts fucking. You don't want to see that shit. You think you want to see it, but you don't want to see it. Do you expect to profit by seeing what David Jaffe in his wisdom has obscured from our eyes? This isn't In the Mood for Love. A color pencil rendering by some chronically masturbating teenage fan submitted to EGM in 2006 would be more stimulating than whatever these games are capable of showing you. You don't need to see Kratos' stroke game. You haven't even earned the right.

Beyond the unintended aesthetic effect of these things, I don't really trust this team to incorporate that influence in a meaningful or considered way, based on what I've seen of the game thus far. It extends to the 'epic medieval violence' and the prolific use of 'fuck'. I love fuck like a brother so please understand when I say that this is an incredibly remedial deployment of the term. The fuck sauce is not imitable. You simply have it or else it'll never be yours. A decade of stewarding radically PG-13 MMO quest dialogue has closed off the way to that place for Michael-Christopher Koji Fox.

And the insistent comparisons to Matsuno's oeuvre from the fanbase, often as a defensive appeal to legitimacy wherever the GoT influence is noted, are bordering on the absurd. Vaguely medieval politicking was apparently the only mark of his work that ever found purchase in people's minds, and none of the particular aesthetic, aural, or tonal distinctions that made those games living and vital. I don't expect that this game will have a meaningful resonance with those works except that people will be furious when the narrative inevitably ends with Clive facing off against some sort of ogre or deity instead of late medieval Karl Rove. But I also don't expect I'll have anything meaningful to share on the matter until I've seen for myself if it's as blandly imitative as it all seems. I mean, it's at least coming from an incredibly cynical place, as evinced in the quote above.

I don't have $650 USD burning a hole in my pocket at the moment, but I would love to be proven wrong whenever I have the chance to play it in like, late 2024. I similarly thought that FFXV looked totally insipid but then found it very affecting. Combat is an easy sell as one of the last living "character-action guys". You can use 'Stinger', that's good. There's a cooldown on the launcher? What the fuck is wrong with these people? It's probably still pretty good.

final fantasy sex thoughts postscript: they should make FFX-3 but it's about wakka and he always has one nut hanging out of his shorts and every 15 minutes he tucks it back in and says "sorry 'bout that brudda" to no one in particular but then it just immediately falls back out. also he's racist against al-bhed again

#ask #final fantasy #final fantasy xvi #ffxvi #god of war #kratos #game of thrones #posts that smell like low tide at the pier

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beardedmrbean · 5 months

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Same anon and about the Scarlett Johansson thing playing as the android. As someone who was able to get the first movie ultra 4k copy at a cheap price…yeah it made sense. The major of the first film had a European look vs her later incarnations. Also Johansson was black widow at the same time, and both characters have themes of having a facade while trying to maintain their humanity.

Sorry just like…anyone watch the og film? Not to mention in the GITS universe heavily cybernized people can get any body they want if they have the right connections and money.

Whoops sorry, been getting the blu rays of the tv series and such. So I know the lore.

Sorry autistic ranting, but black activists, people will enjoy African stuff. Just drop the fetishized version of Africa (hmm i was thinking about making a book called “The False Eden” on how black Americans was raised on Africa being a utopia before Europeans colonization ) properly researched African kingdoms and such.

I mean sure the whities my glamorized the Spartans and Romans…but at the end of the day most will acknowledge while those two don’t exist anymore.

Sorry

>Sorry autistic ranting,

That got a laugh, thank you I needed it.

I don't know enough about the comic/manga ect adaptations to know how the characters are "supposed" to look, except when it came to Ghost in the Shell and people were pulling out the comics and the previous adaptations and saying 'hey dum dum this is how she was here why are you bitching' which we all know why they were bitching (racism shhhh it's a secret)

ScarJo thing they just didn't care about source material, waiting for someone to remake James Clavell's Shogun so people can bitch about the character based on a man named William Addams

The book shifts names around but you'd have to be incredibly dense to miss Toranaga being the stand in for Tokugawa.

Miniseries they made for it in the 80's is beyond outstanding and I always recommend it to anyone learning Japanese because they don't give you subtitles and 93% of the cast is Japanese and don't use English, I picked up a little here and there watching it all the different times.

John Rhys Davies is in it too good stuff

Tangent over.

We did do that with the Greeks and Romans for sure too, oddly nearly all of the people I've ever seen point out that Jesus wouldn't have been white aren't white themselves I've only seen a few people try to argue that he was pretty even split between LDS (Mormons) and racists that hate anyone that isn't white completely missing one of the points Jesus was trying to make about love.

Just drop the fetishized version of Africa (hmm i was thinking about making a book called “The False Eden” on how black Americans was raised on Africa being a utopia before Europeans colonization ) properly researched African kingdoms and such.

If you get around to this I would love a copy, not even for the humor of it it's a interesting concept to run with.

#anonymous

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ragnarokproofing · 10 months

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i wrote a big long response to a post that made me angry. it was saying that people love to complain about not being able to find new media because they aren't willing to "do the work" to go deep and find the things that they want that don't exist in the popular sphere.

i don't think that this is a particularly fair criticism because today's media landscape is incredibly difficult to navigate if you're looking for anything except for what is Within The Zeitgeist.

like, there's this book series that i love, skybound by alex london. it's a YA gritty dark fantasy series that's actively queer. it's fantastic, highly recommend. but the thing is, it's impossible to find. I got the first book at barnes & noble a year or two after it came out. after i read it, i went looking for the second book, and couldn't find it. the series disappeared from the barnes & noble shelves at some point. i looked at a local independent bookstore, well-known for its huge LGBT section - an entire room of the store. they have a big wall that's all queer YA. well, they don't have anything by alex london at all, presumably because his books aren't advertised as queer at all; they're stealth, dark, serious, and inaccessible, not something easily marketed on social media, and shelf space in these little bookstores is at a premium, because the stores are struggling to survive. these books don't have any sort of fandom or cult status, and they were never particularly popular, so they're not likely to ever end up in used bookstores. so because i already knew about them, i was able to order copies of the rest of the series - but if i didn't, i would never have stumbled across them. how would I have?

this is especially true of movies. despite living in the golden age of remasters, with old, forgotten movies finding new life through AGFA, vinegar syndrome, alamo drafthouse, etc, there are many, many wonderful movies that are still completely under the radar. but most people don't really have access to these - 4K blu-rays are expensive, and how would anyone find out about them if they're not already involved in the space? it's not like there are many video stores around anymore - and all of these streaming services are circling the drain, their catalogues scattering to the winds. shudder is great if you want horror, but movies and franchises come and go, and while they have a lot of gems their catalog isn't that big, and anyway, that's another subscription. so how the hell are people supposed to find the offbeat movies that they want?

the answer that i would give is in-person screenings, but those sure as shit aren't accessible. they're only really a thing in cities, and unless you're a college student and your school has film clubs they're probably at boutique theaters and tickets are pretty pricey, and besides, learning about screenings at the Music Box Theater means joining their mailing list, or following them on facebook or instagram, and you can't do any of those things unless you already know that they exist. if you're already passionate about film, then you know about the resources in your city, but if you're just a rando with a passing interest, you never learn about them.

i don't like this criticism because it doesn't acknowledge how fucking hard it is to find new things. people on social media who talk about not being able to find what they want aren't stupid or lazy, they literally don't know how, because nobody ever taught them. i'm lucky enough to have been able to go to free film screenings for several years in college and now i have an extensive library of hard discs that i screen myself or lend to my friends, and i have a pretty deep knowledge of the genres that i prefer - and i still have a miserable time finding anything new that i'm interested in, because that process fucking sucks, and none of this even acknowledges that a lot of media was/is actively repressed because of its controversial nature.

so, instead of bitching about how people are lazy and aren't willing to do the work because they're not as serious about art as you are, why don't you roll up your sleeves and give them actual advice, you prick.

discovering media is a skill. the way that people learn and refine skills is not by being berated. it's by being taught.

#my posts #angry posting #i hate hate hate all of the posts that circulate around here complaining about people not doing x #without acknowledging that the reason they're not doing it is that it's really hard or miserable or that no one ever taught them how #or that they don't even know that doing x is a thing it's possible to do

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neon-green-reagent · 1 year

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Yet Another 50 Underrated Horror Films

I guess most people would want to talk about the best movies they watched in the past year, but I thought this would be a more fun way of ending 2022. Let me give you some links to other lists before I get started, in case you are into this and just cannot get enough. Well, allow me to be of service.

The First 50

The Second 50

UFO Movies

Mad Science Movies

Aquatic Movies

Found Footage Movies

Heavy Metal Movies

Werewolf Movies

Eyes of Fire : Back in old timey pioneer days, a group of people get cast out from their community because their preacher is a sex fiend. So they find their own place. That is full of evil fae magic and ghosts and stuff, and things get wonderfully weird.

Highway To Hell : It’s Orpheus but full of puns and dumb jokes and incredible special effects. My favorite bit is about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Also, Adam Storke is in this... You know, Larry from the 90s Stand miniseries. That guy. He’s great here.

Shallow Ground : Ghosts. But so so so much cooler than just that. I don’t want to say too much. This one is all about the reveal. This teenager shows up naked and covered in blood, and everyone goes what the hell happened to him? And shit gets STRANGE.

Nightflyers : Adaptation of a George R.R. Martin short story that really needs a blu-ray release, like, yesterday. Beautifully 80s SF horror film full of weird, futuristic bullshit that I can’t get enough of.

Beyond Dream's Door : What if A Nightmare On Elm Street were made on $3 and a ton of LSD? Take this trip, no pun intended.

Night Vision : A guy that literally just fell off the turnip truck decides to be a writer in in THE BIG CITY. Which supernaturally chews him up and spits him back out. A cool, low budget time.

The Murder Mansion : Giallo! Two rather attractive people meet, fall in love instantly, and then get trapped in a murder mansion. That’s all you need for a giallo masterpiece really.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell : An alien invasion that goes super hard. A plane crashes due to alien interference, and the survivors are faced with just... the scariest alien invasion of all time. This movie fucks.

Island of Terror : Lil goo monster that kills you the moment it touches you. It feels like they were trying to do a Lovecraft thing, and it’s quaint and British with Peter Cushing.

The Majorettes : One of those late 80s slashers that just keeps on giving. The first fifteen minutes were hilarious enough, and then the third act happens. There’s a siege? On a trailer park? In my slasher?

Sometimes They Come Back... Again : Alexis Arquette (RIP) gives the performance of a lifetime as an undead thug who will fuck your daughter and your dad. Watch it for her.

Sweet Home : Nothing is quite like a Japanese ghost story. This one throws some slasher tropes in there, too, with very over-the-top kills. Then it lands the dismount. Give me a blu-ray now please.

Creature : Alien rip-off! Now hear me out. I am a sucker for those, but this is probably the best one in existence. Watch The Titan Find cut, as it’s the director’s preferred version, and I think it slaps.

Candy Corn : Why isn’t this a Halloween classic? It’s like Trick r Treat meets Dark Night of the Scarecrow. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s an incredibly good thing. Also, the kills are brutal.

Auntie Lee's Meat Pies : Auntie Lee has lots of BEAUTIFUL nieces who attract dumb men that she puts into delicious meat pies. Good for her, right? Some rockers in bad wigs show up and... predictably become pies.

Skinned Deep : If Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 had no limiters on. If they were ALL off. All of them. I mean, just all of them. Warwick Davis is having the time of his life here. And Surgeon General’s mask is made out of what you ask? Boyfriend material.

Werewolves on Wheels : A biker gang stumbles across a cult having a ritual. This makes them become werewolves. And that’s awesome.

Distortions : Olivia Hussey and Piper Laurie attempt to out act one another while both going completely out of their minds. Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.

Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge : When you’re such a simp for The Phantom you’ll watch a hunky version kick ass underground in a mall. Also, it’s a good slasher. With Pauly Shore being... actually a fun character.

The Marsh : A children’s book writer moves to the country to rest and get inspired. Then ghost shit starts happening. Trust me, this movie goes around some bends I didn’t expect, and it’s really worth taking the ride. We love a good ghost mystery in this house.

Dead and Buried : The story kicks off with a photographer getting set on fire at the beach by an angry mob. And it doesn’t get less weird. Definitely more weird. It blew my mind, and I didn’t think that was possible after all I’ve seen. With Robert Englund before he was Freddy.

Clearcut : Native American horror. This one is all about Graham Greene playing Arthur, a gleefully violent fellow with a lot of secrets. I kept thinking of Severen in Near Dark. The performance is that good, yes.

Satan's Triangle : Made for TV movie about the Bermuda Triangle. But also the devil. With an ending that I’ll never stop thinking about.

Night Shadow : A werewolf movie! Where the werewolf and some lady have a psychic connection. I think. I mean, I guess. And her brother knows kung-fu, but doesn’t use it to fight the werewolf. Some bad choices were made, but ultimately it’s a good-bad time.

Tales from the QuadeaD Zone : From the maker of Black Devil Doll From Hell comes... this! A horror blaxploitation anthology that really... It really is real. Also, what’s a QuadeaD? Dunno. And that’s not a typo. That’s how it’s spelled. Watch this. You’ll thank me. Or hunt me down, not sure which.

Alien Predators : A horror comedy that is heavy on the goofball antics and low on the scares. But damn if those antics aren’t cuter because it’s Dennis Christopher partaking in them!

Too Beautiful To Die : A late 80s giallo full of fucked up shit, a crazy murder weapon, and giallo’s favorite victim: fashion models. And I need to say 80s one more time to emphasize the true magic of this film. Okay, one more time: 80s!

All-American Murder : Christopher Walken. Ahem. Oh, you needed me to say something else? Well, murders. And lots of silly, silly, silly dialogue. And Walken gets to say a lot of it, too.

The Killer Is Still Among Us : Another giallo. This one is all about the ending. I find a lack of resolution to be one of the scariest thing a horror film can do. Very effective.

Slime City : A man has to eat people to keep from melting. It’s a tale as old as time. He goes full goblin mode by the end. Good old-fashioned melt movie.

Flesheater : Directed by the guy who played the first zombie in Night of the Living Dead. The cemetery one. Not sure why that made him qualified to direct a film, and when you watch it, you’ll see that it didn’t. But that’s why it’s good. Because it’s amazingly bad. Also, directed The Majorettes from up there, if that’s any indication of what you’re getting into.

All About Evil : Directed by Peaches Christ, this is an absolute love letter to horror cinema. Right down to the very theaters the movies play in. Cassandra Peterson stares at an Elvira poster. It’s that kind of movie.

I, Madman : There need to be more movies like this. About the power of stories to come alive. One minute you’re reading a book. The next minute, the book is happening to you. Stars Jenny Wright, who deserved a better career.

Grotesque : Linda Blair versus a gang of punks. Oh, excuse me. Punkers. That was one of my favorite parts, that they insisted on calling them punkers. Home invasion that goes completely WTF by the end. WTF endings are a theme with me.

Hell High : A group of high school outcasts decide to terrorize their teacher. Not realizing a nudge will make her go postal. This movie is way better than it has any right to be, quite frankly.

The Untamed : A Mexican SF horror film that is all about sex. It’s not SEXY. It’s ABOUT sex. And the need for it, the way it wrecks relationships, addiction to it, cheating, not being able to be true to yourself about your own identity or needs. It’s a lot. I love it.

Death To Metal : I love to see heavy metal horror alive and well. An evil priest gets a toxic waste makeover and decides to take out his religious frustrations in a local dive hosting a rock concert. It’s low budget and full of love.

Tropic of Cancer : Giallo! Again! With voodoo. Not accurate voodoo, don’t ever look for that in a horror film. But with magic and antics is what I really mean. And those antics are quite wild and fun.

Final Judgment : Brad Dourif as a priest with a gun trying to catch a serial killer. Also, lots of strippers. If nothing about that makes you want to watch it, may I check your temperature?

The Mangler : One of those bottom-of-the-barrel Stephen King adaptations with so much to give. Directed (well, in part, it sounds complicated) by Tobe Hooper. Starring Ted Levine. With an absolutely gigantic, evil, designed-by-Dracula laundry press.

Deep Blood : I haven’t seen every Jaws ripoff known to man. But why do I have the feeling this is the worst? If you want to relax with friends and laugh heartily over a multitude of poor choices and production mistakes, have I got the movie for you.

Identity : How unknown is this? I mean, it has John Cusack and Ray Liotta in it. But I still feel like no one talks about it. Still needs way more love. And Then There Were None, but twists galore. And lots of great, fun performances.

Retribution : A man attempts suicide right as a murder is taking place. The soul of the victim enters him and uses his body to exact vengeance. With a fantastic performance from Dennis Lipscomb and a lot of heart.

The Devil's Men : Priest Donald Pleasence versus cult leader Peter Cushing. In a fight to the death. With a minotaur there as well. Place your bets!

The Stone Tape : Do you like Halloween III? The same guy wrote this. It has a similar blending of technology and the supernatural. And the supernatural tends to win in those scenarios...

Benny Loves You : This is a flawed movie, but one thing is for certain: Benny is perfect. Benny loves us, and you’ll love him, too. A killer toy movie that’s a cut above the rest.

It! (1967) : Of course, I had to include the year, because, no, I’m not talking about one of the most popular horror stories of all time. I’m talking about Roddy McDowall (doing a Psycho) and a golem. And murderous hijinks!

Wind Chill : I know Christmas is over at the time of writing this, but this was a fantastic, underrated Christmas horror. A guy and a girl drive home from college in the snow and get stuck. Where a lot of people have gotten stuck before. And died.

The Shuttered Room : We’re in Lovecraft country here. Yog Sothoth doesn’t show up, but a lot of other gothic trappings sure do. People locked up in attics. Getting harassed by locals who are itching to say YOU AIN’T FROM AROUND HERE, ARE YA? Covered in a layer of creepy sweat. With Oliver Reed!

The Dead Hate The Living : Gotta end on a total banger. An independent film crew gets a little too zealous in making their horror flick and unleashes zombies upon themselves. With a ton of shoutouts and horror nerding, enough even for little old me.

That does it! These are always a labor of love for me, and I hope there are those of you out there that get some mileage out of this.

#horror #horror films #horror movies #horror recommendations #horror recs

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daincrediblegg · 8 months

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Movie buff asks !! (Where I also recommend movies)

‘1. Favorite action film?’

Mine is Hardcore Henry (2015), a movie that’s very interesting in the fact that it’s entirely filmed in first person ! I found it very fun for when u want to turn your brain off and have something exciting to take up your time (also I think the full thing is available on YouTube ? Or at least last time I checked).

And

‘34. An underrated movie?’

Housebound (2014) is a movie I think is very underrated, about a woman who becomes increasingly convinced that her mothers home is haunted after strange things begin to occur, tho because she is staying there due to being put under house arrest, she cannot leave.

OOOOH good ones... hmmm...

For the first... gonna have to go with Everything Everywhere All At Once tbh. the only other times I've really seen where the fighting is also a metacommentary on one of the themes actually being portrayed by the film is The Dark Knight, or The Matrix, and honestly it's just too damn good that one. It's what more action films should strive for tbh and it will never stop exploding my mind.

34. god I have a whole pocket full of underrated movies. first one that comes to mind for me is The Fall- because literally it's so underrated they don't even make copies of it on physical media anymore- and my dad had to pay like 70 bucks to get an old blu-ray copy on ebay for me for christmas a couple years ago. seriously one of the most incredible films I've ever seen and absolutely nobody knows about it anymore (for the lee pace girlies as well- this one is a MUST). But also I feel like I should show my chops as a film major with deep cuts... so lets go with Jafar Panahi's The Mirror- seriously the most insane meta/use of cinematic form I've ever seen (trust me- not a film that can be explained. just has to be seen to be believe. you will literally not expect anything of what happens tho and that's the point). And also I have to shout out to Mike Flanagan's Gerald's Game which I think is probably his best feature-length to date (discounting Midnight Mass, the outlier- and yes Hush is also insanely good but Gerald's Game fucked me up WAY more tbh and is still one of the best horror films I've ever seen- which on that note A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is great btw). OH!!!!!! And some low-key faves of mine from my dad's old movie marathons: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (woman talks to an old sailor ghost who is haunting her house and falls in love with him. no I'm not going to project ANOTHER lady terror and francis au onto this one for sure). Also The Court Jester starring Danny Kaye, and The Petrified Forrest (one of Humphrey Bogart's first films ever- and it's GREAT)

MOVIE BUFF ASKS

#oopsie nerd alert #ask games #I can't choose just one underrated movie there are SO MANY GOOD ONES #sorry they all just spilled out of my pocket

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tea-with-eleni · 5 months

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Visiting family for Thanksgiving is hard.

Not because of politics. I'm incredibly grateful for that. My whole family, both sides, everyone that's living that we have any regular contact with, is a dedicated liberal. My great-grandparents were too, apparently.

No, it's because my grandfather on my mom's side used to be a rocket scientist. He literally worked on some of the computer systems for the Saturn V rocket back in the day. But... he has parkinson's disease. And he's had it for a while. And it's taken his memory.

It's zapped most of his short term memory and scrambled a lot of the long term memory for about the last twenty years - so far as I can tell.

My grandmother is still sharp as a tack. She has arthritis and had hip replacement surgery and is clearly annoyed that she isn't as mobile as she'd like, but she's mentally completely present. She learned how to use an iPhone three years ago, because she wanted to learn how to text. Mostly, she was totally capable of figuring it out herself, she was just very anxious because her experience with technology includes things like "My husband found that the best place to ground his HAM Radio in our apartment was the metal shower (which keeps shocking me now)". Upon learning that it's really hard to permanently damage an iPhone, she has overcome much of her anxiety and is at least as tech savvy as my mother. She likes texting.

My grandfather though. He somehow managed to mess up their television system, his desktop computer, his bedroom television, and their wifi.

Here is what was wrong:

The surge protector for the cable box, blu ray player, and apple TV was off.

The cable box was not plugged in.

His bedroom TV had been reset somehow, likely by accident. It needed to be re-synced to the cable channels.

His computer was plugged in, as were two mice. The monitor and keyboard were not plugged in.

The wifi router had an ethernet cable coming out of one ethernet port that then plugged back into the other ethernet port. That may or may not have caused the problem but it definitely didn't help.

He'd forgotten his computer password and god only knows what happened to the paper where he wrote them all down.

It's fixed now. It's all, as best I can tell, currently functional. And I got him to let me put the side of his computer box back on. It looked like it had been pried off with a crow bar. Probably the crow bar inexplicably sitting on his desk. He was about to start pulling away at the circuitry, made extra concerning by the way he had misidentified the CD-rom drive as the hard drive.

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rookie-critic · 1 year

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Rookie-Critic's Film Review Weekend Wrap-Up - Week of 3/26-4/2/2023

This was a bit of a short week. I'm really winding down from my big run of pre-Oscars binge-watching, and have been enjoying the last couple weeks of casual theater outings and video games. This was an interesting and eclectic trio of indie films, though.

Rodeo (2022, dir. Lola Quivoron)

This was a character study that showed a lot of promise. A deeply flawed protagonist that you still wanted to succeed. A very interesting niche subculture as the main subject matter of the film in the form of a group of underground motorbike and ATV riders, and a gripping handheld-camera shooting style all showed so much promise for this French drama from last year. However, I was massively disappointed in the film's ending, which seemed to throw away all of it's potential for something wildly and unnecessarily abstract. It felt like we were coming up on a climax that was going to be a great payoff for all of the film's plot threads, only for the film to fizzle out within a matter of five minutes instead. Roll credits, go home, nothing to see here. It's not as egregious as something like Smile, which not only threw away it's character development, but actively shattered a very pro-healing-from-trauma message in the process. This is relatively harmless in comparison, and the rest of the film was quite good up to that point, so I'll just say that I didn't hate it.

Score: 6/10

Currently available for pre-order on Blu-ray & DVD through Music Box Films.

The Lost King (2022, dir. Stephen Frears)

This was a harmlessly good time. Sally Hawkins, as always, is an absolute delight and commands the screen with her every movement. She is convincing and demands that you empathize with her character Philippa Langley. I am aware that this film has a fair bit of controversy wrapped around it in how it handles fact vs. fiction in this true story. The film paints a very villainous picture of the University of Leicester, and there are claims that this portrayal is wildly hyperbolic and inaccurate. Granted, everyone I've seen complaining about the portrayal is either a graduate or an employee of the University of Leicester, but on the flip side Philippa Langley is an executive producer on this film. I'm choosing to believe the way the film portrays things as accurate. It is a little on the nose, and I'm sure they weren't as cartoonishly evil as the film conveys, but I can see academia treating a woman suffering from ME as horrendously as they do in this film, and I can't see a director as seasoned as Stephen Frears (whose directed movies like Philomena and High Fidelity) making a film that's blatantly propaganda. I enjoyed The Lost King, it maybe wasn't the best, but people interested in the history of it will surely find a lot to like here.

Score: 7/10

Currently Only in theaters.

A Good Person (2023, dir. Zach Braff)

This a very mediocre film that is saved by two spectacular performances. I've never seen either of Zach Braff's other films (I consider Garden State to be a pretty big blind spot in my viewing history), but man, just based off of this, I'm not super impressed in his ability as a writer/director. The dialogue in the film is packed with filler and faux-drama, and the whole thing just seemed so unforgivably on the nose that I just couldn't get behind the characters for most of the film. The movie is obsessively concerned with you sympathizing with both of its central characters that at two separate spots in the film they each say the actual line "I'm a good person." It's would be eye-roll inducing if Morgan Freeman and Florence Pugh weren't acting their asses off, and they do act their asses off. It might honestly be the best performance I've seen out of Pugh, and I'm so bummed that she delivers it in a film that is so undeserving of it. I'm being incredibly harsh on this, so I will point out that I didn't hate it, and if the script wasn't sabotaging the film so often, it would be great, even. Braff touches on a lot of important, timely topics here, and occasionally gets you to care about what he's saying. I'll even admit to falling for some of the emotional manipulation and tearing up a couple times. Would I watch it again? Absolutely not, but I'm positive there's an audience for this out there. Maybe you're one of them.

Score: 6/10

Currently only in theaters.

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eddieredmayneargentinablog · 2 years

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"Fantastic Beasts star Eddie Redmayne makes magic on and off screen✨⤵️

INTERVIEW "Fantastic Beasts star Eddie Redmayne makes magic on and off screen" BY DEBRA WALLACE for South Jersey Magazine

"His Wizarding Ways"

"Eddle Redmayne made a big impression in 2016, when he first stepped into the role of wizard and "Magizoologist" Newt Scamander for the hugely popular Fantastic Beasts film series. His on-screen work may have been a bit too spectacular for at least one diminutive group, though.

Redmayne's two young children-6-year-old Iris and 4-year-old Luke recently asked him to show off some of his Fantastic Beasts wizardry. Instead of magical fireworks, he produced a simple trick involving a coin, prompting his son to say, "But that's not the stuff you do in the trailer."

Redmayne's acting has earned him a lot of hardware: an Academy Award, a Tony Award, a British Film Award and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Noteworthy film roles include Les Misérables, The Danish Girl and The Theory of Everything, though he may be best known for his work in Fantastic Beasts.

Redmayne's role as a father trumps that of an award-winning actor. After the most recent Fantastic Beasts film was completed, Redmayne's daughter wanted to play with Newt's wand, and of course he agreed. An hour later, she had "covered the thing with tin foil, made a little star, and turned it into a fairy wand," he says.

The latest installment of the series, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, premiered in theaters on April 15, and it is expected to be released on DVD, Blu ray, and Digital HD in July. For those who have not yet seen the film, Redmayne shared his perspective on what viewers can expect.

Q&A

How would you describe your new Fantastic Beasts movie?

"Dumbledore (played by Jude Law) sends me and a band of outsiders on a heist to save the wizarding world from Grindelwald, who's the archnemesis. It's full of wonder, magic and whimsy, and it's got a lot of humor and heart to it"

What do you appreciate about your character Newt?

"What love about Newt is that fundamentally he's an introverted guy and is most comfortable with his creatures and in his own world. But Dumbledore has seen a quality in him that has the potential for leadership, albeit in an unconventional way. ... All of us are unconventional, and the leader is unconventional, and there's a kind of wonder in that".

"I love the Newt-Dumbledore relationship because it's got that complexity of mas ter and apprentice, but it's evolved through out the movies to being something almost fraternal; a sort of older brother and younger brother. There's a moment in this film where Newt takes it upon himself to see the vulnerability in Dumbledore and tries to pass on a mode of wisdom to him, so that is clearly a progression".

Did you know the whole story before filming started?

"As far as the story of the arc of the series, it was sort of given to us each script at a time. Occasionally, we would get snippets of what might be coming up in the next films, and there would be quite a lot of whispers. "Did you hear this?" One of the amazing things about our director, David Yates, is that even though the script is there and the technical creative aspects of that script are a big tech nical feat, he would allow us as actors the freedom to improvise, to come up with new ideas, to change things or modulate things on the day of shooting.... That for me has been some of the most fun. A lot of these actors in the film are brilliant at improvising so watching them improvise and add just extra layers was wonderful".

Have you learned anything from your time playing Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts series? He seems to have grown a lot over the course of the three films.

"Oh, that's a lovely question. I adore Newt, and there are many things that I love about him. I love that he's an incredibly empathetic person. He looks for the good in people. He's also very happy in his own company, and in the company of creatures. Newt is someone that enjoys silence. I'm someone that in my anxiety tends to fill too. many words, like I'm doing now. But along with that, there are various epithets or things that he said which I now try and live by.... One is that worrying means you suffer twice, which was in the first movie. I'm a great worrier and I always tell myself that if the horrendous thing's going to happen, then there's no point worrying about it be cause it's going to happen anyway and you've just kind of doubled your pain".

Which is your favorite spell from all of the Wizarding World movies?

"I would say the Tarantallegra one. ... It is all about making people dance; something that I really can't do. It was just so random. It is kind of a metaphor. I think in life ran domly making yourself feel better by people randomly dancing is always quite fun".■

#eddie redmayne #eddieredmayne #redmayne #Eddie Redmayne #newt scamander #interview #fantastic beasts

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fromthewondersystem · 2 years

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Trauma

I’ve been through so much trauma. ‘Gotta catch ‘em all’ you might say. And while dealing with the trauma I know is incredibly difficult, it’s almost worse dealing with the trauma I don’t.

What happened to me?

I wonder, as my symptoms start to line up with things I don’t think I experienced.

What happened to me?

Maybe I’m like this because of my other childhood trauma. But this points to something more specific. Maybe I’m experiencing this because of my trauma from just last year. But I’ve experienced this most of my life.

What happened to me?

In fear and anger, Sevęra says, he did so much more than you know. Allistair hides the memories, making sure I don’t get too close.

What happened to me?

I’m having nightmares about things that never were, but they feel so real. They may not be the same, but each dream retains the same traumatic theme.

What happened to me?

I have faded memories bouncing in my head like the Blu-Ray logo on an old TV screen. They may not be fully true, but they’re based on something.

What happened to me?

Who did it? Was it him or him? Was it her or some random stranger? How far did it go? How bad did it get?

What happened to me?

I try to figure it out, but a part of me I never knew comes out. They’re terrified and traumatized. They’re smaller than anyone else we’ve known, and they keep repeating the same desperate phrase, crying. They’re in pain, and while I am them, I am so utterly disconnected from them. After hours I finally switch back. I never want to feel that way again.

What happened to me?

Memories I thought were unrelated to trauma pop up seemingly randomly but more often than should be ignored. What is this place? I learn more, though not intentionally. Things start to connect, but only by the thinnest line of thread.

What happened to me?

If something happened to me, I want to know. I want to know why this is happening to me, why I’m feeling this way, acting that way. I want to know, and yet, I don’t. I never want to feel that way again.

I want to know what happened, but it is necessary that I don’t. That’s the point.

#summersystemeducationweek #syseducationweek #hopefully this kinda makes sense or sounds alright #i didn’t wanna get too specific #SSEW #summer system education week #sys education week #ok to rb #did #osdd #system #trauma #poetry

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adamwatchesmovies · 2 years

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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

Birdman is one of the most unique pictures I’ve seen. It says so much without spelling any of it out. It’s unforgettable. Do I love it? I’m not sure if I can go that far. I do admire it as a whole and am fascinated by the elements that combine to make it, however. That's probably just as good.

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) used to be the superhero movie guy before superhero movies were what they are now. For twenty years, he’s made every effort to distance himself from the role of “Birdman” and now, he's about to unveil his production of a play based on Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. Unfortunately, things are not going well for the writer/producer and star, his mess of a daughter (Emma Stone) and the brilliant but egotistical actor he's hired to play against him (Edward Norton). The voice only Riggan can hear isn't helping. Oh, and he may or may not have superpowers.

Birdman is shot in one long, continuous take (some trickery was used, but essentially, yes). The camera becomes a character as it constantly follows the various people working on What We Talk about When We Talk About Love. It goes into dressing rooms so we can hear the actors complain about the technical difficulties and then will turn around and chase back after Riggan who is being torn asunder by Mike Shiner's latest antics - Norton plays the brilliant performer who takes everything just a little bit too far. It makes the film feel less like a film than a play, which gives it this weird metaphysical appeal. It’s actors playing actors in a movie about a play that’s shot like the behind-the-scenes of a play. Far from being a gimmick, this approach makes everything intense. As the premiere approaches, every mistake feels increasingly catastrophic. Everyone is worried that critics will blast the show. On top of that pressure, you grow frightened that an actor - I mean the real Norton, Stone or Keaton - will flub their line and ruin the entire take. You know it won’t happen. This is a movie, not a live stream, but that feeling is still there.

There’s so much to be said about what Birdman makes explicit, and what it doesn’t. There’s clearly a commentary about actors wanting to break free of their past roles and the way superheroes are the myths of the 21st century. Edward Norton played Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk, Keaton was Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Emma Stone was Gwen Stacy. Advertisements for blockbuster films like Iron Man and Man of Steel are found in "blink and you miss them" moments. There are so many things going on in this picture – the use of music, for example – that there’s no way you can catch it all in one go. Alejandro G. Iñárritu has crafted a unique masterpiece that demands to be watched more than once.

Each time I’ve seen Birdman, I’ve told myself that I like it, but don’t love it. Then, I start discussing its various elements and wind up convincing myself otherwise. It’s magnificent. (On Blu-ray, March 9, 2018)

#Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)#Birdman #movies #films #movie reviews #film reviews #Alejandro González Iñárritu #Nocolas Giacobone #Alexander Dinelaris Jr.#Armando Bo #Michael Keaton #zach galifianakis #Edward Norton #Andrea Riseborough #Amy Ryan #Emma Stone #Naomi Watts #2014 movies #2014 films

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ladyinrainbowglasses · 1 year

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Poverty with Training Wheels

Or: How I Learned to Stop Trying and Just Accept Financial Abuse The relevant facts before I start ranting: - My father was born into and grew up on the poverty line. His father was a property manager in a tenement - they got free rent for labor and my dad began working when he was 5. He is very intelligent (don’t want to deny the good that did him) and also pretty dang lucky (he survived his childhood for one, but he also got lucky in the stock market and actually had a decent lucky streak as a gambler). He currently owns 4 houses and about 60 various acres of land. His own house is a five bedroom, three bath neo-Colonial in Northern Virginia that just underwent extensive remodeling (it’s hideous, which I will rant about at some other point). - I am disabled and have been to some extent my whole life. It got much, much worse in my teens and twenties, and when I graduated with my Bachelors in 2010, I was only really semi-functional. My list of diagnosed or waiting-on-official diagnosis disabilities are: paroxysmal dyskinesia, PCOS, adenomyosis, migraines, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, multiple anaphylactic allergies, c-PTSD and original flavor, gallstones (removed), propensity to kidney stones, severe tonsillitis (removed after 8 months, causing permanent ear damage), ADHD, plantar fasciitis, tendonitis of the hands, bronchial scarring from whooping cough, IBS, sleep apnea, anxiety, depression, and obesity. When can you start calling it financial abuse? I grew up with wealthy parents who are also both stingy and poverty-informed. My mother passed when I was 5 and, from what I have gathered, she was as frugal as you’d expect an English teacher climbing towards a doctorate married to a bright young airman climbing the ranks to be. I have never been given an indication that she was “weird” about money, but I logically have no way of knowing. My father’s backstory has been given. My stepmother grew up incredibly rich (the daughter of an ambassador) and then lost everything. She survived poverty and abuse as a young adult and became deeply weird about money. I grew up in a big house on 2 acres of land in the Blue Ridge Mountains, about an hour from Washington, D.C. My dad worked for Air Force Communications and Intelligence. My sister and I attended private school, complete with uniforms. Dad always insisted we buy our uniforms second-hand, because of how expensive they were. At the same time, we had live-in nannies for most of my childhood. These were not professional caretakers of children - they were young women who applied for the position because it included room and board, so I imagine that was done on the cheap. My sister took horseback riding lessons, but I never got to, because Dad decided it was too expensive and too big a hassle a bit before he remarried. My family has never owned fewer than four cars at a time. As a kid, I did not realize we were wealthy, because my dad has gone between frugal, stingy, and spendthrift my entire life. In his frugal stages, we would do things like go dumpster-diving behind Costco, going to the dump and asking for stuff that looked useful, and stocking up on frozen goods, so that the primary meal I remember from ages 6-10 is TV dinners. In stingier cycles, Dad would tell us off for anything that “wasted” money. Like getting a hole in your uniform skirt (Don’t you know how expensive these are!? You can wear that until you outgrow it and if you don’t want it to have holes, don’t put holes in it.) My sister’s horse riding lessons. I got to play violin and flute, but during stingy cycles, Dad would call me out for not practicing enough, when he was “paying so much” to rent these instruments for me. My dad is also a hoarder, so his spendthrift cycles usually involve buying absolutely whacking amounts of movies in whatever format is popular, books, and power tools that he has no use for. My father’s DVD and Blu-Ray collection is somewhere in the range of 5,000+ and his book collection is at least 12,000 volumes. The foundations of the house were literally starting to crumble because of the weight of the books he was storing throughout the house. He threw away around 2,000 books from our basement that had become water-damaged. My dad, who is 82, has emphysema and a heart murmur post-heart attack, owns a top-of-the-line truck, two tractors that never work, a riding mower, and dozens of expensive power tools. During renovations, roughly $10,000 worth of those power tools were destroyed because of improper storage, so Dad bought replacements for a bunch of them. The renovations included the construction of a three-car garage, the installation of a backup generator, the complete remodeling of the previous garage into a library with built-in bookshelves and the installation of a new half bath with shower, the painting of every one of the 15 rooms and two hallways (all the same shade of mental hospital grey), the installation of track lighting in every room in the house, the conversion of the old, rotting screen porch to a sun room (complete with working sink and three permanent islands), the tearing down of the wooden deck and its replacement with concrete stairs and a concrete patio, the cutting of two skylights, the sealing of the old attic, and the creation of a mudroom in place of our former front porch. I currently work in windows and he said he is very, very interested in the 47% employee discount for replacing the 19 windows originally installed at the building in the 70′s. Part of the roof blew off at the townhouse that he owns that I live in. Our home insurance gave him $17k towards fixing it. I saw the original quotes, which were between $8-$9k (the original emails also included him straight up saying he was an elderly disabled veteran and asking if they had any discounts for any of that). He said with the material the HOA is demanding we use the price has gone up to $13k. As I work in windows and the windows at my house are garbage that drastically raise my energy bills, I told him I wanted to use whatever was left over in replacing windows. He instantly snapped, “I’m not MADE of money! I’ve got my own expenses, kiddo.” As if he hadn’t told me he had been making plans for replacing all of his own windows with his own money three days before. He also started insisting that I try to finagle a raise at work and told me not to tell my stepmother about my planned heritage trip to Norway, because she will then insist that I give all of the money I am saving for it to them. He already agreed to a scheme that I proposed somewhat tongue-in-cheek that now that I have a steady job, he garnish 30% of every paycheck I receive to pay back rent and loaned money back. For Christmas, he and my stepmother gave me $150. My boyfriend’s grandma, who I have only met twice, gave me $75, in contrast. Ever since I was 15, I have been living in poverty with training wheels. My parents are wealthy. They are not going to let me starve to death (though they will and do encourage me to go on SNAP whenever I am struggling, on the basis that they already paid for it through taxes). They let me live, mostly rent-free, in a decent townhouse in a nice city, though I must have at least one paying roommate. I pay all utilities. I have a Costco credit card and my dad pays for my cell phone, my car insurance, and the HOA fees. I hear a lot about it. Not every time I go home, but the majority of the time I go home, my dad or my stepmother lectures me about money. They insist that I work harder and keep my nose to the grindstone. One of them bemoans how hard they had it in their youth. They both tell me they are struggling financially. My stepmother, who was the head counter worker of Elizabeth Arden at a Macy’s near D.C., and who is now head counter worker at Lancome at the same Macy’s. My father, retired Colonel, with investment portfolios, a pension, Social Security, and three rental properties. Me, who has never made more than $20 per hour and was hired for my first full-time job ever at age 35. The most I have ever made in a year was $19k, and that was having a 15 hour a week early AM gig, a 35 hour a week online teaching aid job, proofreading, and pet-sitting. I currently make $16.50 per hour, despite having a master’s degree and having worked since I was 15. Starting when I got my first part-time job at age 15, the “This is your responsibility to pay for” has expanded, starting with, “You can buy your own clothes now”, in addition to the house chores I already did (including taking over the cooking almost entirely at age 16, because my stepmother started making food I couldn’t eat deliberately or started making too little food for me to eat). I have a fair amount of clothes from high school still, because I wasn’t going to mess up what I had worked hard to get. It really started ramping up when I went to college. I got a scholarship and applied for grants, but most of the money was supposed to come out of a college fund my parents had set up, and that Dad apparently put an inheritance from our grandma into our college funds. Dad complained throughout college that me living in an apartment instead of the dorm was so expensive and that he needed me to forgo pretty much every extraneous activity that would cost money. I was expected to keep working. This wouldn’t be too unreasonable, except I had begun having mystery seizures (later diagnosed as paroxysmal dyskinesia, apparently comorbid with tardive dyskinesia caused by my anti-depressants). I would go to work, have a dystonic episode, then go to class and have a dystonic episode. I also caught whooping cough. I ran up about $12,000 in medical debt. I successfully was able to appeal for financial aid to get rid of most of it, but I still had plenty left over. I also ate out on credit way more than I should have immediately after graduation, but I was struggling with bulimia made worse by a traumatic breakup with an abusive partner. My parents tried to insist that I move back in with them after college, so that I could cook for them, watch their dog and cats whenever needed, and do whatever else they wanted while I tried to find a job. I pointed out that my stepmother and I would do each other grievous harm. Dad agreed to let me live in the townhouse he had bought for my stepbrother and sister-in-law, since they had moved. The expectation remained that I would come up at least once a month and every holiday to cook and clean, come up whenever I was needed to animal sit (to the point that when the whole family went to Galaxy’s Edge, I, the biggest Star Wars nerd in the family, was left home to dog-sit because I couldn’t possibly afford the tickets and they didn’t want to pay someone else to come do it. Dad slipped me a hundred and told me to keep it quiet), and to do all of the holiday present shopping for every person in the family, as well as wrapping those presents, setting up the tree and doing the decorating myself. About 1/2 of the time, I am expected to do the shopping for holiday meals as well. My stepmother still requires me to pick presents for Dad’s birthday and Christmas, because she has no idea what he would like. This has been the state of affairs for the last 11 years. I have a house, which I must share. When I came to Dad in my mid-20′s, crying about how rotten my roommates were, he basically told me to suck it up as long as they paid rent. At one point, there were five adults living in a three-bedroom townhouse with a very small kitchen. One was an addict who was not ready to start working on recovery and another was a legit dealer who had started dating the roommate I had actually approved, so she moved him in and he immediately started fooling around with the addict, who was my adopted cousin’s fiance. I approved two people moving in, both brought plus-ones. When I finally got them out, my chosen brother moved in. He is a lovely man in many ways, but he is also disgusting. His depression and executive dysfunction make living with him a nightmare, because he rarely cleans and often does not clean himself. But he paid the rent, so he stayed, turning my house into garbage. Another roommate also contributed to this - neither young man contributed a fair share to the chores. I was a substitute teacher at the time, but I only made $65-$70 a day for doing that, and I was still having dystonic attacks all over the place. Dad would listen to me crying about how miserable it was living with these men who were basically fine living like animals and forcing me to clean up after them (on coming back from dog-sitting, I was greeted with mold in the sink and the catboxes). He never even suggested I look for new roommates, because these guys were paying. In 2015, I was assaulted in a hate crime. I am allergic to lavender and I was doing my student teaching in a high school. One student decided to spray me with lavender perfume on three separate occasions. I went into a prolonged hyperimmune response and had to stop working outside the house, because I kept going into anaphylactic shock in public. I started wearing filter masks in early 2016, so that I could go grocery shopping without risking anaphylaxis. I was never offered help with my mounting medical bills. I was told to go on SNAP and pressured to apply for SSDI. I was rejected from SSDI four times. Around when I was 30, my dad finally released my college fund/inheritance from Grandma to me. This was after my second third-hand car had finally died of old age, and after he withdrew $24k from this fund to buy myself a fairly new car. I was only partially consulted on this. After this stock portfolio was released to me, Dad immediately started telling me I couldn’t take money out of it, because I should defer to him in financial planning. Until I was 35, I humbly asked permission before I took any of my own money out of the fund that was set up for me. After all, Dad said it was for me in my old age. I successfully argued to him that I needed to make it to old age first, but he insisted that I only take out drips and drabbles, lest I make my taxes more complicated. He insists on doing my taxes - I know there are a bunch of documents labeled as being “portfolio” or “inheritance”, but I am not supposed to look at any of them. I suspect that he doesn’t have me involved in my taxes in part to hide how much wealth I technically own that he doesn’t think I deserve to have yet. The last time I mentioned my stock portfolio being an inheritance from Mom and that I didn’t think she would mind if I took a bit out to finance a life-changing trip and to have fun. He shot back, “Your mom and *I* put that money aside for you”, with a palpable hint that I should give him the money I am planning to spend. I am already discouraged from talking about my trip with my stepmother, because she will insist that I not go and instead give all the money to them, to pay them back for the rent and groceries that kept me above-ground until now. I don’t deny that I do owe them money. I don’t think it’s financially abusive to expect money loaned to be paid back. But I do think it is financially abusive to know for certain that your adult child is living in poverty through no fault of their own and to keep throwing just enough of a lifeline to keep them off the streets. All of the complaining about every nickel and dime is financially abusive. Garnishing your own child’s wages is financially abusive. Denying me the money that insurance paid out to fix the house that I will own when my father passes is financially abusive. Doing that a mere five days after talking excitedly about how great it will be to utilize my excellent employee discount to replace his own windows out of pocket is financially abusive and weird. The title sums up what this feels like. Every time the actual poverty I am in ever-present threat of experiencing happens, my parents give me a boost. They then lord it over me, bemoan their own impoverished state, and insist that I just work smarter in my broken body and I will have enough money to give them. In fairness to them, I probably owe them about $75k in unpaid rent, gas for my car, and groceries. In fairness to me, they are rich. I am supposed to inherit a lot. Dad seems to have become obsessed with how much money he will leave behind. Instead of trying to acclimate me to the wealth that we all know is coming, my parents have chosen to let me live the knife-edge of poverty experience, all while telling me about how close they are to cutting me off entirely. My father has access to my bank account and my investment portfolio and can look at them any time he pleases, while I certainly can’t get a look at his finances, let alone his will. I know this is long and rambly, but it needed to be got out.

#financial abuse #parental abuse #Boomer money weirdness #living on the edge #almost poverty #poverty with training wheels

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mrawkweird · 2 years

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Multiverse of Madness to me might be the most weirdest and strangest movie that’s ever been attached to the MCU and I love it for that.

First off let me start by saying that if you’re going into this film with the mindset of solely expecting to see Doctor Cameo In The Multiverse Of Fangasms you’re already setting yourself up for disappointment.

When you’re titled Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness you better be like something this universe has never seen before. Everything was just on a whole other level with the direction and soundtrack to match and they couldn’t have done any better than to reunite the dream team of Raimi and Elfman to pull that off. Also, this feels more like a Raimiverse movie than it does an MCU movie to me and that’s exactly the shit I was looking for since Day 1.

A lot of times the MCU likes to say they’re gonna do something different, something that isn’t typical MCU only to more often than not immediately proceed to give you typical MCU these days. Moon Knight came in capping incredibly hard only to turn around and give you yet another standard MCU property. So much talk of a “grittier direction”, “Egyptian representation” and “Egypt like it’s never been seen before” and yet it was business as usual with an Egypt I’ve seen many other times before. And don’t even get me started on the promise of “Netflix level violence” but even so people love what they get and still want to talk crazy about properties such as Falcon And Winter Soldier. Ethan Hawke is still rad tho.

Honestly it’s this whole McDonaldization thing where the people have grown accustomed to only having a particular flavor and then want to act different when they taste something new but that’s a story for another day.

Unlike the past hyperbolic statements, however, Multiverse of Madness was something that genuinely felt different. It felt like their most ambitious project and it had nothing to do with cast size or cameos but more so the story they wanted to tell and how they chose to tell it and I respect that. I’m going to absolutely make it my business to own this once the blu-ray drops.

Also, big time Becks SPOILERS..

The shit I couldn’t stand with WandaVision and why I didn’t fuck with it is how Wanda did all this fucked shit only for the show and the characters within the show constantly going out of their way to tell you that you shouldn’t be mad at Wanda. I appreciate that all that shit actually came to a head this time around. The movie said “If you want to act like a villain so bad then guess what? You’re the fucking villain of this story. “Grief is the villain” my ass”.

Yes; she has a reason for acting the way she does but fuck all that “Poor Wanda” bullshit her fans want to solely perpetuate. Scarlet Witch is the big bad of this film and she absolutely killed it both literally and figuratively. All I ever asked was that they own that shit and they actually did. It’s not about hating the character, it’s about hating the forced perception of said character. From the series and from the fandom. This film did what it needed to do and now I’m actually curious to see what happens with her from here.

Make no mistake, however, I’m still gonna fight her for what she did to Captain Carter.

Also, it seems like they really are fucking serious about making that 90′s animated X-Men series live action canon. My heart cried when Xavier quoted Days Of Future Past him though. Like, all Professor X universes just converging into one.

AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE FUCKING NOTE FIGHTING.

#Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness #Doctor Strange #Multiverse Of Madness #Marvel

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