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mst3kproject · 7 years

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516: Alien From LA

The first thing I did in preparing for this review was look up 'Kathy Ireland interviews' on YouTube, and I am relieved to report that no, that is not her normal voice. Apparently it is her normal smile, though.

Cowardly nerd Wanda Saknussem recieves word that her father has died in Africa. When she goes to investigate or something, she falls down a hole to the lost continent of Atlantis, which is apparently a UFO that crashed into Earth a long time ago and is inhabited by people rejected from Mad Max movies. The ruler of this improbable place thinks Wanda and her father are spies, sent to scout out Atlantis in preparation for an invasion by the world above. Before they can find their way back to the surface, they must escape both the oppressive government and the many lower-level opportunists who would love to find themselves in possession of an 'alien' from the beyond!

This is a dumb movie that never lives up to its rather modest potential, but one thing I do kinda like about it is its worldbuilding. A lot of Journey to the Centre of the Earth stories, from Jules Verne onward, have been obliged to posit some kind of supernatural energy source to fuel their ecosystems. Most often this takes the form of a miniature sun at the center of a hollow shell (as in DC comics' Skartaris), providing the inner world with a sky that seems to defeat the whole concept of a land under the ground. At the Earth's Core shows us a subterranean world that runs on lava, but both Alien from LA and The Mole People tried to do something a bit more 'realistic'.

(I guess this means I have to watch The Mole People next week. Fuck! I hate The Mole People and I hate John Agar's oily face.)

The underground world we see in Alien from LA is filthy and gritty, without plant or animal life to give it any colour. The human environments are cramped, ugly, and utilitarian, even the parts we would be tempted to consider 'outdoors'. For once there's some justification for all the pipes and tubes, since one of the top priorities for such a colony would be getting air and water to everybody. We get an impression of the impossibly futuristic technology of the original spacecraft and of the cruder, more recent layer built overtop of it. And what do people living in such a place eat? Insects, of course! There's practically nothing else down there!

We also get an idea of how the Atlanteans see their universe. The government's official position is that there is no 'surface world' and therefore that 'aliens' who come from there cannot possibly exist. This suggests that they imagine their world as a cavern inside an infinite expanse of stone. Or perhaps they are aware of the Earth as a planet, but believe that nothing can exist on the surface because it would be exposed directly to space. Either interpretation suggests that Professor Saknussem's Atlantean counterpart, the scientist who was planning a trip to the surface to see for himself, is a very brave man and probably deserved a bigger part in the movie.

Unfortunately, by trying to be ‘realistic’ the movie encourages us to think about a number of questions that probably wouldn't come up in a more fantastical setting. For starters, where are the Atlanteans getting things like rubber for their tyres and cloth for their clothing? Up here these are plant and animal products, but there are no plants or animals in Atlantis. A character says she's never seen fabric like the cotton of Wanda's dress but there's no suggestion of what they use instead. Then there's the question of what this underground city runs on. I think we're supposed to assume that the spaceship has some kind of inexhaustible power source that the Atlanteans drawn on for their electricity, which is all well and good, but you can’t eat it. If the people here eat insects, then what do the insects eat? The food chain in a cave is usually connected to the outside world somehow, most often by bat droppings (I told you bats are awesome). There are deep ocean ecosystems that run off geothermal power, but even those get gifts from above in the form of dead whales and the occasional can of spam.

Not only do we have no idea how energy comes in to this sytem, we don't see how waste gets out. All these people will produce not only bodily wastes, but carbon dioxide, heat, garbage, and whatever the waste products of their industries are. The vehicles appear to run on gasoline – we even see a filling station. What happens to the pollutants to keep them from poisoning the air? Where is the oxygen coming from if there are no plants? Presumably the spaceship itself would have systems to cope with some of this, but they'd be designed to work in a vacuum, not in a pocket of atmosphere surrounded by rock – and the city itself has clearly expanded far beyond the spaceship. How does any of this work?

So much for the world, now for the characters who populate it. The only one we ever really get to know is Wanda – others are only important in how they relate to her. Her father is just her father, her jerk ex-boyfriend is just her jerk ex-boyfriend, the Atlanteans are either allies, foes, or mere background. We don't know why Gus decides to help her (besides maybe because his girlfriend threw him out and he has nothing better to do) or what Charmin sees in her. It is entirely Wanda's movie. This is rather rare, to see an adventure movie focused on a woman's journey, and the rarity of it makes it even more annoying that Wanda herself is kind of a joke.

Wanda Saknussem starts the movie as a stock pathetic nerd, a character we're supposed to like out of sheer pity, but it's taken so far that she becomes very difficult to identify with. Her ex-boyfriend, explaining why he broke up with her, tells her “your glasses make you look stupid, your hair is ugly, you dress like a nerd, you walk like a clod, and your voice gives me a headache” – and when she demands to know why he ever went out with her in the first place, he does not have an answer for her. We're told Wanda has no sense of adventure, but we see her as somebody with no self-respect. She begs the boyfriend who insulted her to take her back, and her squeaky voice makes everything she says sound unbearably whiny.

Her character development is supposed to represent her becoming more confident and adventurous, but of course what we see is her becoming more attractive. Over the course of the movie Wanda first loses her glasses, then cleans her skin in a steam vent, and finally puts on a dress with a low neckline instead of the shapeless tent she'd been wearing in the beginning. I'm a little surprised they didn't have her lose her squeaky voice while she was at it. This trope, in which a woman's appearance is used as shorthand for her entire being, is annoying, but I've always gotten particularly mad at the bit where she has to give up wearing glasses. It suggests that whether a woman is sexy is more important than whether she can see where she's fucking going, and as a person who wears glasses I must vigorously disagree. At least in The Princess Diaries the girl got contacts. Wanda just breaks her glasses and then apparently discovers she never needed them in the first place.

I do have to admit, though, that Kathy Ireland gave the part her all. For somebody to be a model, to put themselves on display in front of the whole world often in very little clothing, must require enormous confidence, but Ireland works hard to embody Wanda's lack of confidence at the beginning of this movie. Her body language while arguing with her ex-boyfriend or reading the letter at the diner is very turned-inward, with her arms kept close to her body, the posture of somebody who's trying to be unobtrusive and not take up space. At the end, she is not only less covered but walks more freely, swinging her arms and taking bigger steps as if she no longer cares whose way she gets in. Ireland's dedication to doing the Wanda Voice is also admirable... that must have been hard on the vocal cords. I'm left with the distinct impression that she could have been a decent actress if anybody had ever thought to put her in a decent movie.

After sitting through a movie in which Wanda becomes more confident and searches for her father, one would expect the 'happily ever after' to celebrate both her newfound spirit of adventure and renewed family relationship. The ending, however, contains neither. Wanda is wearing a bikini now, but she's back on the same beach where she liked to hang out before her trip to the bowels of the Earth, and her father is not with her. Instead, the movie tries to give us emotional closure by having the guy she kissed in Atlantis show up on a motorcycle to charm her.

That doesn't make any sense! How did he get here? How'd he get the motorcycle? How'd he get the driver's license?! Where's her father? Did he run off to Africa and leave her again? Did her trip accomplish anything at all? This isn't an ending, this is a distraction!

Alien from LA comes across as a movie that had some potential, but as usual, all the best ideas just fall by the wayside and instead we get a series of cliches strung together by writers who think we'd rather see the end of a shallow love story than a resolution to what the movie was actually about. Every time I watch this episode, the movie sucks me in – but every time, the ending disappoints me.

#mst3k #reviews #alien from la #80s

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thepinkseat-askthemoonbunny · 7 years

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To JKR/Dumbledore/Weasley Haters

I was writing my profile on Fanfiction.Net, and was talking about my favorite thing, about how much I hate Dumbledore bashing. But there’s one thing I hate even more than that, JKR bashing. Why?! I figured this would be a great PSA, and would probably cover all my ranting for the month, so I took my bio from there and decided to paste it:

What’s up guys, it’s Bunny as I’m known on here. I am a Harry Potter fan to the max and so most of the stories I write will be Harry Potter centric, although there will be crossovers, other fandoms and pieces of original fic here as well (on my FF page). My favorite characters have to be in order:

Harry

Dumbledore

Hermione

Ron

All the Weasleys (even Percy)

Aberforth

McGonagall

I’m a 20 (soon to be 21) year old Black woman living in Nevada, I’m in college and am majoring in graphic design. I’m single and childless, and as such that gives me plenty of free time when school is out of the way. I love Harry Potter, if I haven’t said that already but I have a HUGE love/hate relationship with my fandom. I don’t even enjoy fanfic the way I used to (but I love writing it) because of:

1: the attacks against JKR. If you hate JKR, WHY in the world are you in her fandom!? Dumbledore and Weasley haters are especially prone to this, especially older haters. Most Dumbledore haters I’ve seen, the worst ones who think he’s the evilest thing are in their forties and fifties and I don’t get that. You’re a little too old to be attacking a fictional character so viciously don’t you think? And they normally hate Jo too, because she loves Dumbledore and says she’s a “shitty writer” because she didn’t torture him or make Harry hate him. This is why I am scared shitless of most older “fans” (although I know one, she’s awesome and I’m Tumblr friends with her). I put fans in quotes because if you hate the books and especially the CREATOR of said books so passionately, then you no longer have the right to call yourself a fan in my book. You can’t be a fan of something you clearly hate.

2: Dumbledore bashing. GAWD, Dumbledore bashing! GRRRRR. Explanation/rant as to why I hate this shit is written below. I cannot get away from it, especially since people have never heard of tagging their shit.

3. Weasley bashing. Why? WHYYYYYYY?! HOW can ANYBODY hate the Weasleys?! I never got the hatred toward them AT ALL, and especially poor Ron, Ginny and Molly! They get attacked by so many “fans”, especially the ones that claim to love Harry and Hermione, and don’t get me STARTED on Harmonians. Not people who ship Harry and Hermione cuz it’s a cool pairing, but Harmonians. There’s a HUGE difference between Harmony shippers and Harmonians. They love Harry, probably more than anyone in the whole series besides his parents and Sirius. Look, Harry would fight all of you if he could hear you talk that way about his SURROGATE FAMILY AND BEST FRIEND. Hermione would kick your ass too. I can’t read Harmony fics because all the bashing of the Weasleys and Dumbledore has ruined it for me

4. Character bashing of any kind, especially bashing of the good guys.

5. Fix-fics, nothing is broken people.

6. Dark Harry

7. Lord Potter-Black. FUCK, Lord Potter-Black! Super Harry who’s heir to everything and has twenty septillion trillion Galleons (that Dumbledore and Ron are totes stealing), is allied with the Goblins and can PWN with his super special awesomeness. AKA, Stu-Harry

Why I Hate Dumbledore Bashing With The Force Of A Thousand Suns and Why It Needs To Die A Fiery Death (and my stance on it)

There will be no Dumbledore bashing or Manipulative!Dumbledore on this page because I utterly despise it and wish that it would just jump into a pit of lava already. I acknowledge that Dumbledore is manipulative in canon and get why people don’t like him, but most manipulative Dumbledore stories have him either over the top manipulative or just stupid and incompetent so that Harry could defeat him easier. He’s also not a cackling evil villain who’s stealing Harry’s money, he’s a man with a very hard job who’s done horrible things but is trying to make them right in my opinion. And way too many people enjoy seeing the man crucified in my opinion, as well as the poor Weasleys who I don’t know why they get so much hate from everybody.

Also, I HATE so called Harry Potter “fans” that hate JKR. And they’re bitching about how she “ruined” everything by “making a mess” of the last books. And it’s mostly because he forgave Dumbledore, don’t insult the creator of the series that you claim to love in the first place just because Harry didn’t become a bitter ass and carry hatred for the rest of his life. The hatred of Dumbledore on this site disturbs the fuck out of me, and it’s so hard to find stories that don’t bash him. He gets the hammer way too hard with these people, like “he shoud’ve fixed the wizarding world!” or one of my personal favorites, we’re Islamic extremists because we agree with Dumbledore. I totally agree with him, this one guy says that anybody who thinks that sacrificing people for the Greater Good is Hitler. I’d do it, if that makes me Hitler than so be it. Dumbledore is NOT a Dark Lord, and where do all these “he sacrificed countless lives!” come from?! Where are these “countless innocent lives that he so ruthlessly sacrificed” in canon?! If you’re talking about the ORDER, a group that were willing to fight to save their world, like any other patriot or soldier would do, please reword your phrasing. I don’t see any of these “millions sacrificed for Dumbledore’s evil plans”, they exaggerate the Death Toll way too much. And y'all are assuming that the man could just make every problem go away, the biggest complaint I get is, “DUMBLEDORE IS A MONSTER FOR NOT USING HIS POWER AND INFLUENCE TO FIX THE WIZARDING WORLD AND STOP VOLDEMORT, HE’S A DARK LORD!” Did y'all not read the books?! He tried, but one man can only do so much! He clearly ain’t have that much power, considering Fudge was able to strip his titles and kick him out TWICE, or are y'all forgetting this? I can’t, Dumbledore isn’t evil. Like why do people think this?! He did it for the good of the world! And one infamous person who compared Dumbledore to an Islamic terrorist talking about “what of the greater good of those innocent lives he sacrificed?!” Well let me tell you something buddy, those “innocent lives” would be DEAD ANYWAY if Dumbledore hadn’t done what he did. Without Dumbledore’s machinations, Voldemort would still be running around and ten times more people would be dead compared to the relative few in the books, is that really better?! It’s not, and yes, in extreme cases sometimes sacrifices have to be made and people don’t get this. Dumbledore did the right thing, instead of calling him the Dark Lord, focus on the REAL Dark Lord and leave him alone.

Harry HAD to die, and there was no “magical other way of making the Horcrux disappear”, Hermione says in the last books that the vessel must be destroyed beyond magical repair. Harry WAS that vessel, and how do you destroy a human body beyond magical repair?! Oh yeah, it’s DEATH. Now I’m not gonna deny that Dumbledore fucked Harry over, but not nearly as much as Voldemort did. If it weren’t for Voldemort, Dumbledore wouldn’t have had to do what he did. And for all the people who says it’s bad that he sacrificed Harry and all of these mystery people that somehow died, that “it’s terrorism to sacrifice some for the many.” No it’s not, it’s utilitarianism. It’s simple military strategy, it’s ensured the survival of many an empire. If we have a population of people and a third of them had a highly contagious, incurable plague like terminal disease, you freakin’ quarantine or get them away from everybody else so that the entire population doesn’t get decimated. I’d rather save the most lives possible, I’d rather save SOME lives rather than have EVERYONE be dead because I didn’t wanna be the next “Dark Lord.”

But he sacrificed Harry for the…Harry is PART of the wizarding world! If Dumbledore hadn’t “set him up”, Harry still would’ve died. STILL, and he wouldn’t have been able to come back either! Not only does Harry die, so does everyone else! Which is what would happen if Harry walked away or “destroyed” Dumbledore or Dumbledore is either killed or ruined like in these so called stories. So congratulations “fix it” authors, you’ve doomed the planet. I hope you’re happy with yourselves. In most of these bash fics, Harry is NO BETTER than Dumbledore. Except he’s ruthlessly killing people off, like the Weasleys or the DEs or anybody else the author doesn’t like to “fix” the wizard world. Sound familiar? Instead of writing a “better than Dumbledore” Harry, you wrote teenage Voldemort. Congrats.

“But WHY DIDN’T DUMBLEDORE STOP THE DARK LORD SOONER?!” Good question, because the series is called Harry Potter. If you want Dumbledore to do it, write the Albus Dumbledore series. Simple as that, and a lot of people going “OH HARRY’S A CHILD!” don’t take genre into consideration. And you need to. Now, am I saying that Dumbledore is perfect and without flaws? No, I’m not saying that. But he’s not Satan either, and people need to see that.

#harry potter #hp #jk rowling #anti bashing #albus dumbledore #weasley family #dumbledore defense squad #weasley defense squad #jkr defense squad

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angelicletters-blog · 7 years

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On the State of the World

Good Felicis,

The scarcity mindset I wrote about in my last letter bears some further explanation, for you seem a little confused as to what it really means. What I meant when I said that you should get rid of his scarcity mindset is not that he should think that he will always have enough. That is, of course, a lie. What I meant is that he must grow what he has instead of hoarding it or squandering it, even when it is not enough. That is how the Most High fed the crowd of thousands with five loaves of bread and two fish.

In other news, he has fallen into depression. This is quite understandable from his point of view. The political opponent he was hoping would lose, won instead (as of course he has not yet taken to heart the lessons you have been teaching him about distractions). Life has also been hard on him lately—he was almost out of college when he discovered that he had to take another semester, which increases the weight of the debt he must bear. More importantly, the small garden in the back of his house, the one him and his sister had planted, their father had decided to bulldoze on utilitarian grounds. His sister is here with me now. She sends him her well wishes, should he be able to hear them.

It seems that his family also has a predisposition for depression on the medical side of things. I want to impress upon you that it is not your fault. Felicis, you have been doing all you can with this, so please take what I say here in the way it is meant, as a caution to you so that you may continue to do rightly by your charge.

Depression is not strictly sadness. Nor is it entirely a lack of emotion. For the child in particular, it is a lack of a feeling of purpose. Depression is insular. It pushes others away and cocoons the afflicted in a continual downward spiral of negativity toward the self, sometimes until they ask why they even bother living in the first place. This boggles the mind, I know; humans must always ask why something is happening to them. For an angel, the Most High does not tell us why something is done unless it is needed. He commands, and we go, for his wish is our purpose, and we rejoice continually lest we end like the Fallen. But a human must have a sense of purpose, not just to live, but to live righteously. Doing good is an intrinsic part of what it means to be human. The enemy strikes quickly at those with this problem. We must tackle this issue immediately.

This is the curious thing about humans. They have a connection to the eternal—doubtless you have felt a joy similar to your own in the child’s breast before—but we sometimes forget that they cannot actually see the glory that awaits them. It is easy to forget that they did not witness the victory on the battlefield, for they are still in the trenches. Their reality that they create for themselves is very different from the reality that awaits them. They only see the struggles of the life they lead on Earth—often a brutish, cruel, and short life. They cannot see that they are called to an immortal life, a life where they can rest eternally in the purposes the Most High has set out for them, but for them to reach that rest, they must first struggle, for it is only by this that they lay down the foundations for virtues they cannot even begin to imagine. This is not tangible for them.

Do not be surprised if the child rebuffs your advances. Depression is a long, drawn out process, especially since it is not entirely (sometimes not at all) the child’s fault. Remind him to be thankful. Being thankful, even just for being alive, is a first step, and sometimes it is all he needs, for there is inherent goodness in existing. He has plenty to be thankful for. Remind him of the last night he spent with his friends and the girl he’s interested in. He has people who are there for him. Lean on what is naturally at your disposal— all Creation points to the Most High. It is your natural ally, even in a world under enemy occupation.

He may be tempted to find comfort in his own feelings about the Most High, but the Truth, at least in the sense that I mean, is not forgiving. If the child goes to Truth seeking comfort, all he will find is despair, for he will look in its mirror and see all the things which damn him. That is why you must continue to turn his eyes toward what is really happening. The Most High did not promise happiness to them. He promised goodness. And most puzzling of all, He promised Himself. That is something altogether different.

Sometimes the Most High allows humans to wallow in this state. I do not know why precisely, but one of their poets, who called it “the long, dark night of the soul,” seems to think it did him some benefit. Sometimes, there is no answer to the why this happens to them that can be discerned. Even we can be tempted to provide our own answers to that question. So it is better not to ask. His agnostic ideas about God are withering in the onslaught of his own perceived worthlessness. He is worthless—that is the truth. But he need not remain that way.

The Most High is strange. His beauty comes in all things high and low. Indeed, the things which humans most desire from Him are rarely found in this life. So few have experienced freedom, so few have known peace, even in the great era of plenty they now live in and even in the nations that call themselves free. They live under the control of the Fallen.

Please use your discernment for what I am about to say next, for it is not meant blasphemously. It is almost understandable why they would blame God for this state of affairs. I think I would if I were as blind as a human. Goodness knows, even we do not know the answer for sure. It is not anything even we can hope to understand. The Fallen, whose names we never speak, rebelled because of it. This whole state of affairs is so paradoxical.

There is something different about the quality of this particular depressive episode which is quite opaque to him however. Based on my experience, the Most High is calling to him through the silence. It is the calm before conversion. Even his sister is tuned into it. She comes to me daily asking for news and sending prayers to the Most High (I will be running those up to the Throne myself as soon as I have finished here). If this depression is one of the things that the Most High is using to convert him, then by His will, it will be done. It is your job to make sure he is taught correctly about his experience, so that he knows how to deal with it when he slips into it again. There is little doubt that he will.

This is what I would whisper to him: “You are not your thoughts. You are more than your thoughts. You are what you do, and you are called to walk toward the Light. In the silent, empty spaces, in the dreary march on the sands of slow time, in the darkness between the stars, there is a golden glimmer. When you look closely, you realize the spaces you thought were dark are actually full of light. It is just not the light you were expecting. It seems dim, because you were not conditioned for it. The very stars cry out this truth. Let the darkness pass through you and beyond you.”

He probably feels very claustrophobic right now. You have backed him into a corner. He must make a decision to either change, or be torn apart by his conflicting emotions and ideas. Do not let up. Continue to draw his gaze to the Light. Whisper to him the promises of the Most High.

Wishing your best,

Curatio

#cs lewis #depression #conversion #blessings #dealing with life

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