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#definitely recommend accented cinema
ang3lik · 1 year
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me immediately reblogging and participating is so true. i love that you're a lana girl just like me <333 congrats, angel you deserve the absolute world!
❤️ please ! fandom: scream + here's my funky little description!
full name: allyson. ( it's actually my middle name ), entj, she/her, 19. my favorite colors are pink and navy blue. i'm 5'11, afro-latina, and a scorpio sun, taurus moon, and pisces rising (according to my chart i'm ruled by jupiter and the sun). i am a lana truther but some of my other favorite artists include banks, lorde, bad bunny, and coco + clair clair.
i'm bisexual, but i have a larger attraction to women than men. my relationship with my mum is a bit strained but i'm close to my dad (not in the internalized misogyny way though). i was raised in the south (to this day i don't know why my parents did this to me) but spent a lot of time up north and went through the catholic girl phase including ending up wanting to kiss girls lmao. i'm deeply spiritual but not religious and wear a lot of jewelry (gold and silver).
right now i'm in school for cosmetic chemistry to learn how to formulate makeup. i am obsessed with aesthetics. i'm very sentimental and emotional but not when you first meet me. when it comes to love i fall last but the hardest. i love to read (currently rereading beautiful creatures which is an all-time fave) and some of my favorite films are jackie, arrival, last night in soho, thoroughbreds, and the great gatsby. i can be kind to a fault but i don't care because i'd rather die than be known as mean.
according to my friends here are things that they associate with me: leaving long messages for them that connect to bluetooth in their car, coconut and vanilla scented anything, spiced coffee in the mornings bc i learned it from my mum, bamboo hoops, slowed lana songs, minimalism w art deco accents, annotations in my books to the point where the pages are cracking, long box braids, almond shaped nails, pinterest, the almond blossom painting by van gogh (this made me cry), birth charts, going to the cinema alone, upstate new york, and vacations on film.
i am so sorry if this is way too much info but i love you and i'm so proud of you!! you deserve everything you're getting and you are so sweet to top it all of! can't hug you in person but know that i'm always sending you my love, all of it.
my love !! you’re so sweet and all the best girls are lana girls i swear !!
honestly you give me such aqua, mermaidy, beachy, beautiful vibes ! i love earthy girls and with you being an earth sign i feel like your aura and vibe just ties all in so well ! you seem so pretty and peaceful i can just tell you’re a wonderful person ! 💗
but i totally ship you with… jill roberts.
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you’re both complete opposites, but opposites attract! you wear the pink shirts and jill wears the blue plaid! a pisces and a taurus are a terrific match! you’re both able to comfort each other in times of need and are a strong, stable couple! you bring a lot of love and brilliance to each other, and help each other find the happiness and delight in things!
you’re both lana lovers! you help jill bring out her emotions and express them to you, it t as yes a-lot for her to open up towards you but you’re her rock! you both share a love of reading and recommend books to each other! you’re both very much vanilla girls, you both smell very sweet, always stealing each others coconut scented body sprays and if you ever trade clothes you can smell each other on them!
you definitely do each others nails! painting them pastels with french tips or even just giving each other manicures sometimes! jill has plans to visit new york at some point and she really wants to take you with her, and explore the big apple with you! she can’t wait for all the adventures and exploring you’ll get up-to! but you both live a very simple life too! you both enjoy just relaxing and being in each others presence.
i hope you like it ! i would love to see you and jill together oml ! 💗
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shivasdarknight · 8 months
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Hi, sorry for this but you are a writer, so umm.. I was hoping you could give me some tips/advice on how to write?
tbh the way I got into writing is a bit insane, but I do have some advice that can help. gonna put it under a cut just because it got kinda long
honest to god, one of the best pieces of advice is something you're already doing because reading can genuinely help you with becoming a better writer. stepping outside of your usual genres or authors can help expand your viewpoint and introduce you to more narrative styles so you can play around and see what works for you. eg. if you mostly read first person, give second person a shot. or if you're an omniscient third person, try limited third person. or even retrospective first person, because i often see people complain about first person pov when it's married with a present tense story. if you have a first person narrator talking about events in the past as if talking to you, or a journal it often takes an entirely different angle and it's something I've played with in Homestuck fics because that fandom tends to be more open to narrative experimentation. Writing is honestly a lot of looking at stuff you like (much like art) and smooshing it all together. Personally, I've gotten a lot of my writing style from stuff like The Locked Tomb, admittedly Lovecraft was foundational (but this is a great example of why to always remain critical considering his bullshit), so was Homestuck and Rick Riordan's stuff. I'm never trying to copy them wholesale, but I am looking at aspects I like - such as Riordan's humor intertwining with the narrative and narration, or the deeply unreliable narrators that Muir writes, or even how Homestuck balances purple prose with gut wrenching conciseness when it counts. A lot of modern day fast food fiction takes out a lot of the stuff that actually builds a story - pacing, playing with narration and technical writing - so you need to be conscious of what you're looking for in things. Often more established authors get to do weirder stuff than new authors, but don't discredit new ones because that would be leaving out folks like Xiran Jay Zhao and their phenomenal prose.
Another thing that helps greatly is reading writing critique. Video essays on books or even more critical thought pieces on writing, tropes, etc. can help you learn more about why something works. Lots of different channels on YouTube dedicated to dissecting media, absolutely recommend stuff like Hello Future Me, Overly Sarcastic Productions (real world ties + mythology, great basis to build things on), Zoe Bee (writer + commentary), Nerdwriter1 (media analysis + commentary), Just Write, and Tale Foundry. For adjacent suggestions that can help build up alternate perspectives that aren't directly about writing but are about critical thinking with stories (which is frankly an important skill to have), I definitely recommend Princess Weekes, Accented Cinema, Now You See It, Dominic Noble, The Storyteller, and Pop Culture Detective. A lot of this is discussing film (save Dominic Noble, who also talks about books a Lot), but the core essence of storytelling is helpful regardless of what angle it comes in - be it video game, movie, tv, or book reviews and analyses.
Actual writing. Varies on the person on if they do outlines or not and how, but I still recommend trying to do an outline when you're first starting out. One habit to immediately knock yourself out of is writing things chronologically. If you're working on a big piece and have more energy to write something in the middle? Put that in a new doc and leave a placeholder for where you're at. Legitimately, getting words on the paper is more important than those words being good. Because you can always come back and edit things to make sense.
Always edit what you write. I hate the "no beta we die like real men" attitude because people will dunk on editing but then praise stories for having "firm and satisfying" connections which can only really be built through editing. Your first draft is your rough idea. Your second one is when you read through and have it make sense. Three is making that make sense, and maybe 4 is more just grammar and spelling errors. Edit as many times necessary to make sure you like it.
Always work in broad strokes, then move in finer like with anything. Do a general idea for a story, then your main story beats, then how you connect them together, and then the nitty gritty of each. Keep lots of notes - do not rely on your head solely for everything - and just also be willing to let things go if they change.
What I tend to do when I write is I want a good flow. I often get that from reading my writing out loud to hear how it sounds, but I'm looking for a good beat to read along. Because even if the sentence is grammatically correct and structurally sound, it may not be very interesting to read. Like you could say someone feigned a polite expression to not let the other person know that they didn't feel comfortable with a topic, or you could go the angle I went with recently of "she painted herself an interested expression to wear as dread began to gnaw at her gut." Sometimes the more colorful or out there the language is, the better it sounds when you read it. Like instead of saying "that's just how things go for them" you could say, "but Fate had a funny way of making her disdain known for (X character)". And this is where reading other peoples' work comes in real handy because you can get a lot of examples of how people write things.
I also try and reflect themes of the story into the writing itself, like this section of a draft:
Still nothing.  Seemed he wasn’t going to bother with a glass, instead just ripping the top off of some bottle of gin and tipping it back with little regard for himself. Still that chronometer ticked on; still that taught tension like another arrow had been drawn.  A million and more things flooded Ysayle’s mind, itching to loose them at Estinien, yet found herself stuck in indecision as she stared daggers into him - ever her opposite as he just seemed despondent.  The gin bottle hit the extended shelf loudly; one hand a fist around the bottle, the other balled up on the surface - knuckles as white as bone. Still, Estinien said naught. Still, the chronometer ticked on. Still, Ysayle’s heart roared in her ears - poisonous words damming up her throat.
The theme of this story is avoiding the mistakes of the past. How things often can wind up cyclical, and the goal is to break from those cycles and repeats. So naturally, several points of the narration itself repeat itself. This isn't standard writing style, but it gets that point across by repeating "Still" as the scene crawls on. I also use a lot of alliteration in my writing because I personally find it fun? So "a maddening matter made most malign", for example.
It also helps to change up how you write or what descriptors you use based on the character whose head you're in, even if it's third person. Third person can have a voice and I often use it to speak aloud a character's thoughts instead of relying on italicized dialogue-thoughts. It makes the dialogue-thoughts appearing hit more when they do instead of just having to be subjected to internal ramblings constantly. Like in this fic I just published:
“...Can we talk about it on the morn?” “What for?” You don’t know what it is you ask of me. “Tired,” Estinien said with a shrug. “We’ve morning patrol, remember?”
Compared to this fic:
“Yes, confusingly.”  Her tone was flat as she leaned once again on Surkukteni’s shoulder, thankfully on the uninjured side.  “I fear I may have been wrong, though I truly doubt it.  To deny me twice, then throw a fit?  I wonder — why didn’t you go through with it?” Not even Surkukteni had that answer.  For the umpteenth time during that conversation, she refused to look at Her Darkness.  That desire — twisted and poisoned as it was — was one that still surfaced from time to time, yet like clockwork made her ill and was banished from her thoughts.  Why was that?  She felt scorned back then, wishing the universe would correct this error in sparing him but taking Ysayle — but was she not the one who helped save him?  Who helped tear those eyes from his armor?  She easily could — and had previously — bluffed that it was to destroy the eyes and be rid of the threat, but given her hesitancy now? Why?
All of Surkukteni's thoughts are condensed into the narration so that I can separate out her thought dialogue from idle musings since she - specifically - has a connection with something that can talk telepathically. This thing comments on the literal narration of the story, so when she's directly addressing this thing it's thought-dialogue. But her actual thoughts become narration to avoid spending too much time with that, as I find it's better used sparingly.
Motivation for writing is probably the hardest thing, and best I can advise is to get really into critiquing the stuff you like because you wind up finding a lot of material in fix-it stuff, or just wanting to see more of stuff like you. It's part of what drives my xiv stuff due to how they treat female characters, and I really just wanna see more sapphic bi4bi. So considering it's something I've been stuck in for a very long time now and really like the ambient lore and wish it would do better, it's fueling my desire to write. And from there, there are so many other angles to take - like building ocs, building lore. Finding a sandbox is genuinely one of the best ways to do it. Again, like. You'd be surprised at how much is there because of spite. LOTR has Eowyn because Tolkien didn't like that the "can be killed by no man" thing in Macbeth was resolved with a character born by c-section, so he instead wrote Eowyn, the woman who killed the Witch-King of Angmar. C.S. Lewis didn't like the fact that Tolkien believed that modern technology - or slightly less modern technology - didn't believe in fantasy and he explicitly cited lampposts. And this is why there's just a random light post in the middle of nowhere in the Narnia books.
Critique is good and healthy. I'm critical with the stuff I like and my own things so I can work on them and myself. It's fine to like something that you don't wholly agree with, especially if you're using it to inform how you build on it or build your own things. Like I dunno, I looked at Dante from Devil May Cry and went "what if he was trans" and now I've got Rhombi, a character who has stepped really far away from the OG Dante mould, but you can still see hints of it as I used what I wanted to see out of DMC to build this bisexual disaster of a guy. I was disappointed by Elsword not really committing to some of their character concepts, so I kinda just took Eve (and admittedly Add) and made them into Celes and Neilos and took them to their logical conclusions. All three of them were originally fantrolls at some point, so most of the heavy lifting was done when I was back in Homestuck and all I had to do was scrub the barcodes off of them to build them up in an original verse.
Chemistry is also crucial. If characters aren't vibing, move on. Do not force it. Good chemistry can save a bad story (eg. FFXV) and bad chemistry can ruin a good story. Often it's the characters that drive a story so you need to do a lot of plotting and planning. Most writing is honestly just planning before putting the words down.
And I'm very much so rambling by now but my main points are these (+ others I'm realizing while typing):
Plot a Lot and keep lots of notes, and also organize those notes. The contents don't have to be pretty, but you'll thank yourself in advance if you at least sort them by core idea
Getting words down is more important than getting them down correctly. You can always come back and edit it when you have an idea of how to make it work
You can always place a [insert scene here] tag so you can keep your flow and don't get caught on something.
You also don't have to write chronologically - you wanna write the big confession scene before the intro? do it! just jump right into it!
also don't be afraid to delete stuff or remove it from your draft. save things for later to see if they work elsewhere, because maybe it could be a better spinoff.
dont listen to the advice of "if it really matters, you'll remember it in the morning" that advice was given by neurotypicals who don't have memory issues. make notes of EVERYTHING and then delete the ones that don't work
sometimes writing by hand vs computer can really make a difference in how you think. handwriting is slower and makes you think about stuff, so you may want to keep journals for random snippets or ideas like how doodling is good for building up your habit of drawing
Outlines can help but how you outline is up to you. Try a few styles out and go with what works best.
I cannot stress enough that having something like a marker board to write out your broad stroke story ideas is really really nice
Broad strokes first, then narrow it further and further down. Don't get wrapped up in the nitty gritty details
Chemistry is crucial and can often save a piece you're not fully feeling.
Read your stuff out loud while editing because it can help point out stuff that's not jiving! I find it helps a lot with dialogue
Read a lot. Listen to critique. Be more critical. Also don't limit your idea of stories to just books - expand the media you consume and you'll find really interesting stories that can help with yours
Don't be afraid to use tropes, but also don't super rely on them to where you're just checking off boxes instead of coming up with natural scenarios built on chemistry (eg. having the nerdy goth girl is fine, but the way the trope ends in most media ("fixing" her or just having her be a quirky cynical critic) may not fit with your story and it may be better to see how the story plays out rather than forcing it into something it's not)
Iron Widow is a good example here: the relationship between Zetian and Yizhi is pre-established and comes off as sort of "boy next door" vibes, or at least the very dedicated childhood friend. It quickly becomes apparent that he's as much a co-conspirator in her plans as Shimin is. The guy can be ruthless when given the chance, and that's how Yizhi goes beyond the initial trope and defines himself outside of it. Same with the contextualization of Shimin's seeming "aggression" as the "bad boy" and figuring out where that problem/persona actually stems from, and then the shift of viewing it as less aggression and more retaliation and self preservation.
Find something you do really want to write about, like filling a void in a piece of media you like or doing a take on media that made you mad or disappointed. Jane Eyre is technically fanfiction because the author wanted to see more of Jane and didn't get that. The Divine Comedy is self insert fanfiction of Dante Alighieri as he does worldbuilding with Christian mythos regarding heaven and hell. The Riordan verse is his interest in mythology crossed with a desire to give his son a protag that was like him (specifically ADHD and dyslexic), which then became wanting to let kids see themselves in the different halfbloods in the series.
There's a lot of ways you can get started writing, but the best way is to just write goofy stuff for yourself. Get out stuff that may look bad at first, but you go back and read it and critique it. Just getting yourself into the habit of writing helps a lot, because again: it matters less about the quality, and more getting it on the page and actually having something. You can always fine-tune writing, after all.
My first FFXIV fic isn't actually even published. It was just me writing something rambly about my Warrior of Light when I was starting to figure her character out. It looks nothing like what I'm doing now in part because that fanfiction became a launching point for me to work on others. I've got a lot of drafts that will never see the light of day because these were proto-concepts that became the stuff I wound up publishing. It's fine to have drafts that remain drafts because you can take that as practice, and practice is good. Anything that you write has value because you can use it to let your technical writing skills mature.
Also, don't be afraid to look for help. There are beta services on tumblr (or at least used to be when I was a teenager), plenty of writing guides or places set up to ask questions, plenty of youtubers that give prompts for you to work with. The hardest part is always getting started. But once you get past the awkwardness of the start, everything just falls into place and gets easier the longer you go at it.
You definitely have the desire for it because I've seen your very deep love of literature through the Bi-Library, so you can definitely become a strong writer if you put your mind to it 🫶 Find something to fix or address, and that usually is what gets the ball rolling. Worldbuilding is fun and can lead to something, but you can't have a well built world without a story to explore it.
Characters drive story, story is how you explore themes and the world itself, and the world itself is built on your experiences and interests. Embrace the fact that this is coming from your lens and experiences, because no media is truly void of the author and its other creators. Embrace that fact and use it as an extension of yourself. But really, just write. Literally anything. Just get into the habit of writing, and it'll progress from there!
#original#asks#answered#bisexual-coala#writing tips#long post#this is very rambly but getting into writing isnt the most straightforward thing#a lot of the time it really is just finding something that clicks and not caring about what goes on the page for the first draft#ive been writing fanfiction for...over a decade now? + a lot of rp (also over a decade) and now some p serious original stuff#my fanfiction has also gotten way more involved than it used to be#genuinely i got started writing by keeping a lot of journals and writing every idea i had even if im now embarrassed by it#what matters is just getting into the habit first and then looking at your stuff more critically once the habit is formed#it's hard to build a habit if you're immediately critical#but it's hard to maintain a habit or hobby if you're not - especially if you feel you can build on something#if you do feel it you oughta pursue it and see where it takes you#perfectly fine to not be critical with hobbies but being Constructively critical is how you improve and mature#constructive is key here. because being down on your own writing or being self deprecating is how you lose a hobby#like let's say you don't like your dialogue#go read scripts or books of stuff you like the dialogue from. analyze why they work in contrast to why you feel like yours doesnt work#maybe someone else has a solution for why it feels off#sometimes it's just as simple as taking a step back and looking at it as a whole or even just sleeping on it and coming back w fresh eyes#always approach something you don't like about your work with the attitude of ''how can i improve so i do like it''#like ''i need to be better at fight scenes. ill be sure to include more in my next piece to focus on it and maybe read some action books''#lotta ways to do it!! theres no one right way just a way that fits best for you!!!#just absolutely ignore the ''if it's a good idea you'll remember it in the morning'' stuff.#it doesn't account for people w memory issues and will screw you over#you do not have to wait until you're good at writing to start working on something. you need something to work on to improve#you can always come back to an idea as many times as you need as you grow as a writer#so just write until you build a habit and base style then analyze and move from there#fanfic is honestly really good for practicing style and technique - the characters and world are already ther so why not use em?
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average-guy-reviews · 2 years
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Bullet Train.
"Five assassins find themselves on a fast moving bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with only a few stops in between. They discover their missions are not unrelated to each other."
Starring a fantastic cast that includes Brad Pitt, Bad Bunny, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Sandra Bullock, Zazie Beetz and Hiroyuki Sanada, this is a violent, bloody, hilarious action comedy. It's a 15, and rightly so. It has a lot of blood, death and (limited) sex scenes.
Let's start with the look of this movie. I watched it in IMAX, which helps no doubt, but this film is stunning. The scenery, as it whizzes past the train, illustrates the beauty of Japan and is just a delight to look at. The city scenes give you the air you'd expect, neon sights in the city lights, close cramped streets and a huge amount of people in a small place, and yet it never looks bad. The neon glow of the city is glorious. The train both looks fantastic and, almost, becomes a character in itself.
Brad Pitt plays "Ladybug", an assassin/criminal, who is a man returning to his business after some time away. He has found peace and just wants a simple job, refusing to take a gun with him. He gets on the train, finds the briefcase he's been tasked to get and then shit hits the fan. He crosses paths with multiple other hit people, inc Bad Bunny in a small, but pivotal, role aa "The Wolf". I don't know much about Bad Bunny other than having seen him wrestle once or twice in the WWE, but after this I'm looking forward to seeing more of him in movies.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, playing Tangerine, along with Brian Tyree Henry, as his brother Lemon, are a pair of assassins Ladybug has crossed paths with before. Henry has a reasonably convincing English accent and the two men are a great pairing. The way they bounce off each other is brilliant and the chemistry between them is clear.
This movie is a smooth, slick, sometimes hyper violent, action film with many many laugh out loud moments all the way through. It looks fantastic and has a great soundtrack including japanese versions of classics which you'll find yourself singing along to in English, at least I did....
David Leitch has pulled an, almost, masterpiece out of the bag. He has managed to get some great performances out of a really varied cast, and his vision of the stylised violence, as well as the low level conversations between characters comes across smoothly, and with great clarity. I say almost a masterpiece because of a couple of minor continuity issues that, while not affecting the overall movie, were pretty noticeable.
It's a great movie though and I thoroughly enjoyed it. On my category system it's a 1, I'll definitely be going back to watch it in the cinema. I'm more than happy to give it an 8/10, with a full recommendation to go watch it.
Oh, before I go, the snake is an absolute star in the film, and there is a small cameo that if you blink you'll miss it, but it did make me go "Ah ha!!"
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rongzhi · 2 years
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Chinese animation recommendations
Hello! Follower and fellow heritage Mandarin-speaker here. 
This is re: the anon who asked about animation recs. Most of mine might be a bit outdated/juvenile because they're mostly things I watched growing up, but there's a few newer things in there too. The original answer already covers a lot of the classics (shoutout to my mans Pleasant Goat), so I'll try to suggest ones that haven't already been mentioned! Please also note that these will all be in Mandarin except for one of the movies.
Also, apologies in advance for the text dump. This grew from a bullet-pointed list into a monstrosity as I basically relived my childhood.
First, 2 Youtube links I'd like to recommend w/ regards to this topic:
Chinese Animation: In Search of a Style | Video Essay by Accented Cinema
This video mainly focuses on the history of animation in China, but it also is a great source of recommendations given how many titles he covers from the past to the present day.
DongHua Reviews
This is a channel that, as the name suggests, reviews donghua (or Chinese animation). He does a lot of recommendation videos, so you'll definitely be able to find a lot of good content there. 
Now, onto my own favorites:
Movies:
The Legend of Hei (2019)
Trailer
A heartwarming story about a little cat spirit in a modern fantasy world. Hands down some of the best animation on this list, it's absolutely gorgeous to look at and the character designs are really cute too! It's also the prequel to a cartoon series, The Legend of Luoxiahei (Youtube link). 
New Gods: Nezha Reborn (2021) (note: unrelated to the 2019 movie)
Trailer
Chinese mythology meets steampunk meets social commentary. This is a highly unique take on a classic story, and the animation looks awesome. Definitely recommend if you don't mind thirsting after animated characters ;) I believe a sequel is also in the works (?)
Any film/show by Shanghai Animation Film Studio
This is one of China's oldest and most famous animation studios. They produced the bulk of mainland China's classic animated works including Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, which was recced in the original answer. The video I linked from Accented Cinema does a great deep dive on their works, which are highly distinctive and incorporate many elements of traditional Chinese art. My personal favorites are Lotus Lantern (film) and Calabash Brothers (show).
No.7 Cherry Lane (2019)
Trailer
The only work in Cantonese on this list. Full disclaimer: I've never actually watched this one, but it's been on my watchlist for awhile now. The animation looks GORGEOUS. From its Wikipedia page: 
"During the rise of the materialistic comfort of life in the 1960s, there emerges an undercurrent of danger in Hong Kong.
No.7 Cherry Lane tells the tale of Ziming, a Hong Kong University undergraduate, entangled between his amorous feelings for a self-exiled mother Mrs Yu from Taiwan in the White Terror period, and her beautiful daughter Meiling. He takes them to different movies and through a series of magical moments on the big screen, forbidden passions are revealed. And the era coincides with Hong Kong's turbulent times of 1967."
Shows (my favorite part because most of these were a huge part of my childhood):
Journey West (1998)
Unsubbed ver on Youtube
I grew up watching this series. I was obsessed with this series. I legitimately used every stick-shaped object in our house to mimic the weapon of the main character, Sun Wukong. To this day, the opening and closing OSTs are bops. Alright I'm done.
This series, as you might guess, is an adaption of the famous novel Journey West. Tl;dr: a monk and his 3 disciples make a pilgrimage and fight a lot of demons along the way, with the chief disciple Sun Wukong/the Monkey King as the main character. This story has been adapted and retold countless times over literal centuries, to give you some idea of its cultural impact. This particular version is very much aimed at children, but it still holds a special place in my heart. 
The Legend of Nezha (2003)
Unsubbed ver on Youtube
Another gem from my childhood. This is another take on the classic Nezha legend (previously seen in my rec for the film Nezha Reborn), which tells the story of a young boy who fights the gods and also his dad. Again, the opening and closing OSTs are iconic, and the animation for this show has definitely held up to the test of time. If you ask anyone who grew up around this time in China, there's a good chance they've watched this show and stan its version of Nezha and/or its original character, the Dragon princess.
A Pigsy Falls from the Sky (2004)
Unsubbed ver on Youtube
Unfortunately, I can't find much English information on this show, but it's yet another relic of my days as a young whippersnapper. It essentially serves as a prequel to Journey West (unrelated to the other series I recommended) with original stories about what Pigsy, another disciple of monk Tang, was up to prior to joining the pilgrimage. It has a really playful tone, and I remember it being a lot of fun to watch.
Wanderings of Sanmao (2005)
Eng subbed ep 1 on Youtube
This is based on a famous comic series that has been around since the 1930s. Perhaps due to its notably more serious content, it's lesser-known outside of China, but I still think it's worth a watch. It tells the story of Sanmao, a boy who grows up in abject poverty, and takes place in 1930s Shanghai against the backdrop of the second Sino-Japanese war. The tone of this show is much darker than the other recs on this list, as it explores themes such as colonization, poverty, and war, all through the eyes of a young boy. (If I recall, the cartoon lightens this a bit.) I'm not sure how much of the cartoon is actually subbed, though.
I would also recommend the original comic, which is for the most part wordless and therefore is fairly accessible even to non-Chinese speakers. 
Heaven Official's Blessing (2020)
trailer
A name off my to-watch list, as several friends have recommended this to me. This is based on a novel series by the same author (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu) who wrote Mo Dao Zu Shi, which The Untamed is based on. From what I've seen, the animation features a lot of beautiful people (hehe) and the show is super popular. If you're into BL, this is definitely a must-watch.
If you've made it this far, congrats — this pretty much wraps up my recommendation list for donghua (Chinese animated works). The industry as a whole has had a pretty unique development trajectory compared to its counterparts in other countries, and I believe you'll see that reflected in the works from different eras. Chinese animation has grown a LOT in recent years especially, with domestic studios producing works of higher and higher quality; here's to hoping they produce even more! In any case, apologies again for the wall of text, and hope this helps OP!
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the-pineapple-talks · 2 years
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I went to the movie expecting to have to fist fight Lin-Manuel Miranda but it was actually amazing. The way they touched on the internal conflict and had me crying (with Sebastián Yatra of all people ._.) was amazingly well done, without making the movie about that but instead about all the beauties in Colombia.
I definitely agree there should have been more variety in the music, it was just salsa, vallenato and reggaeton, which only one is native to Colombia, they could have done carranga, Cumbia, llanera, palenquera. But it was still better that I expected.
I loved how the Madrigal family was brown, white, black, etc, because that's literally what families are like here which I've been trying to say for years and people just don't want to believe it.
Things people from the outside may not know but I'm going to point out: Colombian culture changes a lot region to region, and they did a great show of showing many of them. The houses are from the Eje Cafetero, the main producer of coffee in Colombia; the floors are from Barichara here in Santander where I live, the flower sculptures like in Medellín, the dresses were from many places, not just one. I was very happy with all of that.
Some idioms they used were a bit forced specially when they were used by people who didn't have the accent of where the idiom is used. Maluma was surprisingly the best at this because he is indeed paisa. Another that landed really well is when they said Miércoles (Wednesday) to swear, which is a thing we do here to censor the swear word Mierda (shit), which had never even occurred to me is only done in Colombia.
I watched it in Spanish obviously as I'm in Colombia, but I do hope the song Dos Oruguitas was left in Spanish in the English version, because that song plays during the story of a small rural town that becomes desplazados (displaced) because of the internal conflict, and so I think it's way more impactful if left in Spanish.
Aside from that, if you watch the movie in english or any other language, I invite you to listen to the spanish (Colombian, not Castellano) version of No se habla de Bruno (the one about not speaking about Bruno) so you can hear Camilo's singer voice in Spanish, done by a Caleño called Juanse Diez. I had never heard of him but his voice was amazing! It had us swooning in the cinema from how good, raspy and honestly attractive it was. He deserves to become really well known.
In conclusion, 4.9/5.0 highly recommend everyone should watch it
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konmari-dogs · 3 years
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what kind of youtube videos are your go-to entertainment right now? do you recommend any specific channels?
alrighty so definitely grew my list since last year, but ones i'm most keen on right now are:
Accented Cinema - video essays on foreign films! Found him through the Mulan remake and never left.
Amanda the Jedi - tells me about recent tv shows n movies so I don't actually have to watch them!
Do As I Do Dog Training - great place to see different mimicry levels and games
Game Makers Toolkit - videogame specific and mostly explaining how people make video games n decide design things. Recently did one on Dishonored 2's clockwork mansion which is hearteyes
Izzyzzz - a....online....drama ...analysis???? This is where I go to get nostalgic vibes of internet drama that I am mostly unaware of. Did a great video on what happened to the Littlest Pet Shop toys.
Jessie Gender - I probably watch her stuff the most right now! Transgender lens on society videos, very informative!
Melina Pendulum - more popculture video analysis!
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell - short educational animations about a huge variety of things from like how ur immune system works through to what a black hole is.
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ddarker-dreams · 4 years
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How would the team react to SR reader taking them to a trip back to their home? For instance, I'm from NY, so I would definitely take them or M&M world or something fun 😊.
NONNIE THIS IS SO CUTE !! SR Reader would want to take everyone to an area she thinks they’d like!! It’d be a very chaotic trip. Maybe an Everyone Lives AU type of special. Lemme go over my thoughts...
If you’re travelling with Giorno, you’re gonna be travelling in style. Man is packing the big bucks. He just tells you to bring him wherever you want. Might be a bit disappointed that the others are tagging along at first, but still has plans to get alone time with you :) he’s the least likely to want to go anywhere specific. He’s gonna be harshly judging any of the food you recommend, but doesn’t ever tell you lmao. Just flashes you a charming smile and says it’s wonderful while going on an internal Gordon Ramsey monologue over the flavors and presentation. He’d secretly like places that specialize in sweets, and should you catch onto this, would make feeble attempts at dismissing it. Despite all the fancy food he can afford, he has a soft spot for smores you made for him!! Thought it was the cutest thing ever :’)))) especially when you were blowing on the marshmallows to set the fire off. The moment was ruined by Narancia mourning his marshmallow that fell into the fire...  
Mista is going to want to visit Hollywood 100%. This man is a cinema addict and nothing can convince me otherwise. He’s going to be finding areas that appeared in his favorite movies and dragging you (and maybe a few other unlucky people, probably Fugo) along for the ride. Sex Pistols are gonna embarrass him by reenacting his favorite scenes lmao. He’d want to go to Griffith’s Observatory to reminiscence about Rebel Without a Cause and won’t shut up about the movie the entire time. Mista fits in with the lackadaisical air of LA a little too perfectly, and you keep telling him to change out of his sweater because it’s gonna be hot. But he doesn’t. Mista is gonna be so tilted when he finds out his favorite Clint Eastwood doesn’t have a star on the Walk of Fame... you didn’t have the heart to tell him at first. He’s also sad that he can’t legally drink in the states LMAOO
“[First], so let me get this straight. I can carry my pistol around openly here, but I can’t legally drink?” 
“Couldn’t have explained it better myself, Mista.” 
Narancia is another person who would be excited to visit areas in California the most. He’s more into music, so he’s going to want to tour all the big studios (and gets bored when he doesn’t spot any celebrities like he expected). Also the most likely to be disappointed with California prices. When you explain to him how much he needs to pay in USD for a meal he’s gonna gape at you like you have two heads. 
“W-what? That much for a burger and fries? This has to be a crime! Bucciarati, come talk some sense into this guy!” 
“Narancia, no, don’t beat up the Americans--” 
He’d also be interested in New York!! Specifically in areas that hold cultural significance for hip hop like the Bronx. He thinks it’s the coolest thing ever. Might stand out a little too much but it’s okay he’s having fun. Narancia would be suffering on the east coast, since a lot of people there are prickly. If anyone bumps into him in New York, you’re gonna have to deescalate lmao. He’d also want to visit places like Hershey Park, Six Flags, etc... you’re gonna have to explain to him that they’re all very far apart. Narancia wants to drag you on rollercoasters, god help your soul ... (if you refuse, he’ll settle on Mista joining him. Emphasis on settle). You might need to get him a shirt that says “If lost, return to [First]” for him, and a “I’m [First]” for yourself. 
Trish is another one from the group who is most interested in visiting New York. She fits in perfectly, unlike Narancia. She can keep up with the walking speed there too lmao. Trish is gonna drag you into countless fashion stores, and take selfies with you at Times Square. If anyone tries to cat call her... well, she’s gonna have you defending her honor. Trish is gonna want to go to Tiffany’s, and Radio City music hall to see a concert. She actually speaks English pretty well! She has a cute little accent on some words, but when you tell her that, she gives you a >:( look. Anyways you’d both be looking like models next to one another. A few people have come up to Trish, asking if they’ve seen her in magazines or something... smh... it’s your job to flirt with her so you shoo them off in English >:) 
God... Bruno would be so adorable. He wants to explore the beaches!! When you’re asking where he wants to go, he’ll mention these places. The Outer Banks, Ocean City (until you tell him he’s gonna be greatly disappointed if you go there), Honolulu, and the Santa Monica beaches. He likes sitting on the piers and feeling the ocean breeze, and trying the boardwalk food!! He thrives the most in Southern states since he likes the warmer places. 
The state I see him liking the most should he visit is Maryland. He’d be prancing around the inner harbor, enjoying all the outdoor cafes and feasting on seafood. Just be sure to teach him how to eat crabs properly :’) the gang eating crabs is a mess. The waiter brings wooden hammers, and Narancia starts SMACKING the FUCK out of that steamed crab. You have to explain to him it’s not meant to be used like that... Mista tries using it like a judge’s gavel to make you laugh. Fugo and Abbacchio are leaving the table so as not to associate with them... 
Fugo is gonna be embarrassed by everyone else’s shenangins. He fits in the frigid temperament a lot of East Coasters have. He’d be the most interested in visiting Boston for its historical importance, and touring the various colleges there. He prefers Boston over New York and LA, he’s a bit of a snob... is gonna be internally screaming over the stupidly complicated way of getting around. Why is the train system here so archaic?? Who designed this?? He wants to have a word with them. Fugo isn’t big on city life though, so he might want to visit somewhere more rural. Perhaps... Florida... ahaha... jk... unless? 
Abbacchio is going to want to visit New Orleans and nothing can convince me otherwise. I headcanon that he’s a big fan of jazz. So he’ll be hanging out in notable jazz clubs, sipping on fine wine, enjoying the music with you. He appreciates how the music transcends language. Especially since he feels weird constantly badgering you or Fugo, the best English speakers, to translate stuff for him. He might be a little bit smug that he’s able to drink alcohol unlike Mista, who is still greatly offended by not being able to drink. 
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Resolutions Are Here Again
So, with last year out of the way, it’s time to turn our collective attention to the New Year and the completely unfounded belief that it represents a clean slate and the opportunity to improve ourselves as people. With that in mind, it’s time for my contractually-obligated selection of New Year’s Resolution suggestions. Some of these are actually good advice- most of them are likely to get you killed. I’m not going to tell you which is which. Let the games begin.
1. Move Away from the Cities I spent a lot of time living in London and its surrounding environments and- as I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries- it was very wearing on the soul. London is a pathological city: a form of psychosis that has crystallised in our corporeal world as a set of spindly glass skyscrapers and stone monuments to the constipated military dead. While I sometimes miss its grandiosity, I’ve found that moving away from it to the bleak, beautiful middle of nowhere has had a beneficial effect on my mental health (well, that and my gorgeous fiance). I strongly suspect that all big cities are a bit awful- I’ve never really found one that seems to be conducive to general well-being. If you live in one but have the opportunity to leave, I can heartily recommend taking it.
2. Pirate More Films I love movies. Well, I love good movies. And some interestingly bad movies, too. Unfortunately, I fucking hate mediocre movies, which make up the majority of the film industry’s output. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to tell whether a movie will be good, interesting-bad, regular-bad or just meh based on trailers (which are carefully edited to cast the flick in the best possible light) and reviews (which are written by either idiots, shills, or me- and nobody fucking agrees with me). Luckily, there’s a solution to the problem of wasting your money on cinema tickets and DVDs only to be disappointed. It’s called Piracy and here in the upcoming space-year of 2022, you don’t even need a funny Cornish accent to do it (eyepatches are still encouraged, but not mandatory). Pirating movies is a great form of quality control and allows you to decide if something is worth your time before you spend money on it, rather than after. Of course, some spectacular cinematic experiences deserve to be seen on the big-screen first, but you can usually intuit which those are and which you can safely watch at home with your feet up first. So yeah: go piracy (NOTE: This entry is an abstract speculation and a joke and in no way counts as a confession to piracy for legal purposes- though I have committed several crimes on and in boats, which is similar).
3. Stalk a Better Class of Celebrity Miley Cyrus definitely has stalkers. So does that bloke out of One Direction- you know: the one with the hair. And fucking Beyoncé. Justin Timberlake probably has stalkers. Willem Defoe has friends he hasn’t met yet (seriously- he seems like a guy who would get on with his own stalkers). And it’s a bit depressing. Because it means there are people who actually think these people are worth wasting their lives on and risking a jail sentence over. Okay, Willem Defoe might be, but if you’re stalking someone who would happily just be your friend to alleviate the crushing loneliness of being Willem Defoe, then you’re doing something wrong. So, if you’re a stalker, I suggest taking the opportunity of the impending New Year to choose a new target- someone who’s actually worth stalking. Maybe chance your arm in an intense cat-and-mouse game with Leonardo DiCaprio, unsure of whether you’re the hunter of the hunted. Or go camping in Joanna Lumley’s back garden (if nothing else, it’ll be an education in fashion choices). Or hang around in graveyards, pestering Leonard Cohen’s restless ghost! Or, if you really want a challenge, try to track down Nicholas Cage, who is known to disappear into heavy mist and dense forests between the bizarre celluloid fever-dreams that are his career. Like a majestic Bigfoot.
4. Avoid Jumanji Merchandise Like the Fucking Plague Yeah, I know this is a suspiciously specific one, but it’s more important than you might think. My Fiancé and I recently purchased a replica of the Jumanji boardgame from, y’know, the movie of the same name, expecting an exciting game we could play with friends and family with different events and twists. What we got was a tiny plastic board with a light-up centre, no rule-sheet and no special spaces or cards with events on to liven up the game. We might as well have played fucking Ludo in silly explorer’s hats. It set us back £23, too. I mean, pretty much every major I.P. you can think of has some shite merchandise attached to it (I once saw a Rick and Morty toilet-roll holder, for fuck sake), but there’s something about Jumanji that seems to invite a whole new level of flagrant piss-taking. Be warned, ye travellers on the road of nerdy merch.
5. Eat More Exotic Cheeses I really can’t sing the praises of cheese highly enough at the moment. It’s nature’s perfect food-stuff. Just stick in on a cracker with a sliced up grape and you suddenly feel like the most sophisticated fucker in the world, even though you’ve made next to zero effort to combine a fruit, a dry thing and some seriously gone-off milk. Best of all, cheeses comes in a staggering array of enticing variants, from truffle-stuffed brie to Wensleydale with Cranberry. My personal favourite is a creamy little number with pineapple and almonds and I have no idea what the technical name for the type of cheese is, but YOU MEDICALLY HAVE TO TRY IT. Yeah. I’m going to shut up about cheese now.
6. Get into Buggery and Cannibalism Because those smug bastards in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy don’t own a fucking patent! Go out there and live your big gay cannibal dreams! (And yes, I’m aware that this joke won’t land for anyone unfamiliar with British naval stereotypes or Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but I also don’t care so it balances out).
7. ‘Discover’ a New Cryptid Cryptozoology is by far my favourite daffy, half-baked pseudo-science. Sure, astrology is a fascinating system of rules and lore, all of which are excellently silly because they presume that burning balls of plasma thousands of lightyears away give a shit whether some guy named Kenneth is entering a time of prosperity and change. But fundamentally, there’s not a lot of get-up-and-go in it. One ‘studies’ astrology by reading heavy books and trying not to laugh at terms like ‘Uranus is in Retrograde’. And sure, Homeopathy has got an actual body-count, thanks to everyone who’s embraced it instead of real medicine, which is pretty metal. But none of these things are as fundamentally cool as going into the wilderness hunting something that definitely does not exist dressed like Doctor Fucking Livingstone. There’s something harmless and whimsical about Cryptozoology, which is why I invite you all to go out into your nearest place of abject desolation, convince yourself that there’s ‘something’ out there and take a few blurry photos from which you can develop an entire made-up species for other raving loonies to chase forever after. Who knows? You might do your town’s tourist trade the world of good. Fuck knows the economy could use all the help it can get at the moment, what with all the COVID that’s been happening.
8. Google ‘I’m Sorry, Jon’ and be Afraid… Very Afraid Like most people, I hadn’t consciously thought about Garfield in years. He’s just a cat who likes lasagna- what’s to think about? Then I discovered that Weirdos on The Internet (bless their little cotton socks) have decided that Garfield is secretly a terrifying eldritch abomination with the power to bend reality itself- a being of pure malevolence that delights only in the torment of ‘Jon’, the foolish human who once believed himself his owner. And there is some fucking amazing fanart and lore devoted to this concept and I can’t stress enough how wild and out there this is. It’s like something H.P. Lovecraft would write if you injected him full of LSD and sat him in a cat cafe for three days. The most comprehensive repository is the ‘I’m Sorry, Jon’ thread on Reddit, though there’s a lot of trash to ferret through before you get to the well-drawn and truly nightmarish stuff. The art of a guy named Rojorn is also a good place to start, if you want to cut straight to the point. Anyway, it’s a fucking trip- a trip right down the gaping throat of gibbering online madness. I recommend it: it’ll blow away the cobwebs and, if nothing else, remind you that human beings are really fucking weird creatures. The perfect way to start the New Year.
9. Give up on the Device and Go the Fuck Outside. Maybe on a Date Look. I don’t want to admit and I know you don’t either, but those doomsday devices we’ve all been building just aren’t going to bring the world to its knees as effectively as COVID already has. It was a beautiful dream- the world finally crushed under the heal of the cackling mad scientists who should have been in charge all along- but it’s time to let it go. It’s really hard to source Uranium and the Souls of Dead Dragons nowadays, anyway. Fucking red tape. Put the dust-sheet back on your ‘The Device’, go outside and meet a nice lady Mad Scientist. You can do cute couple-y stuff like vivisections and unearthing the curse of Lost Atlantis. Take it from someone who’s found his partner in supervillainy: you’ll thank me for it later.
10. Murder Chris Chibnall with a Bowling Ball Look- I already told you that I no longer live in London, where the prick works, so it’s up to you, dear reader, to keep the dream alive. Resolve, here and now, gentle, brainwashed minion, to go forth and end this hack’s Who-ruining spree with a good old-fashioned bowling-ball-to-the-head!
11. Tell a Dolphin to Fuck Off Dolphins are beautiful, intelligent creatures with a sophisticated language that scientists are finally starting to decode and, apparently, an abiding love of us humans. But here’s an experiement nobody has thought to run: would dolphins still love and aid humans if they could actually understand us? Let’s try insulting them in their own language and find out. Let’s see how fucking friendly Flipper is after you’ve called him a bottle-nosed tosspot directly to his face. I’m guessing ‘not very’, but that’s what science is for: to test these little hypotheses. And no, I can’t think of how to tie this one to the New Year either, but it made me laugh so it’s going on the list.
12. Stop Making Resolutions Dude (or Dudette), if you’re still reading at this point, I think you might have an addiction to resolutions. It’s time to go cold turkey. I’m cutting off this blog… right… now.
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introvertguide · 3 years
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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); AFI #39
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The most recent movie for the group to review was the Kubrick dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove (I am not writing out the whole title each time). This film has some of the most legitimately funny lines of bewilderment, with some occasions involving an actor playing across from himself. For most film goers, this will be Peter Seller’s most famous role since he plays three main characters, all with different accents, appearances, and quirks. The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor) but did not take home any trophies. The film did win best picture at the BAFTAs. This film was definitely in the style of Kubrick, but it was in a genre that I don’t believe he delved into again. I want to review the plot before discussing further, so let me get the usual out of the way:
SPOILER ALERT!!! I AM ABOUT TO GIVE AWAY THE WHOLE PLOT OF THE FILM!!! IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE FILM ON YOUR OWN WITHOUT HAVING ANYTHING SPOILED, STOP NOW AND WATCH THE FILM!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
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At the start, we are introduced to United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) who is commander of Burpelson Air Force Base. This base houses a group of B-52 bombers armed with hydrogen bombs that are constantly in the air. The planes are constantly within two hours from their targets inside the USSR in case of nuclear war. General Ripper orders his executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the UK Royal Air Force (Peter Sellers), to put the base on alert and to issue "Wing Attack Plan R" to the patrolling bombers, one of which is commanded by Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens). All of the aircraft commence an attack flight on the USSR, and set their radios to allow communications only through their CRM 114 discriminators, which was designed to accept only communications preceded by a secret three-letter code known only to General Ripper. Mandrake discovers that no attack order has been issued by the Pentagon and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both in his office. Ripper tells Mandrake that he believes the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans. Mandrake realizes Ripper has gone insane.
In the War Room at the Pentagon, General Buck Turgidson (George C Scott) briefs President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers again) and other officers about how "Plan R" enables a senior officer to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on the Soviets if all superiors have been killed in a first strike on the United States. It would take two days to try every CRM code combination to issue the recall order, but the planes are due to reach their targets within hours. Muffley orders the U.S. Army to storm the base and arrest General Ripper. Turgidson then attempts to convince Muffley to let the attack continue, but Muffley refuses. Instead, he brings Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski (Peter Bull) into the War Room to telephone Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov on the "hotline". Muffley warns the Premier of the impending attack, and offers to reveal the positions of the bombers and their targets so that the Soviets can protect themselves.
After a heated discussion in Russian with the Premier, the ambassador informs President Muffley that the Soviet Union had created a doomsday machine as a nuclear deterrent; it consists of many buried bombs jacketed with "cobalt-thorium G", which are set to detonate automatically should any nuclear attack strike the country. Within two months after detonation, the cobalt-thorium G would encircle the planet in a radioactive shroud that would render the Earth's surface uninhabitable. The device cannot be deactivated, as it is programmed to explode if any such attempt is made. The President's wheelchair-bound scientific advisor, former Nazi German Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers one more time), points out that such a doomsday machine would only be an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it; Alexei replies that the Soviet Premier had planned to reveal its existence to the world the following week.
Meanwhile, U.S. Army troops arrive at Burpelson, and General Ripper commits suicide. Mandrake identifies Ripper's CRM code from his desk blotter and relays it to the Pentagon. Using the code, Strategic Air Command successfully recalls all of the bombers except Major Kong's, whose radio equipment has been damaged in a missile attack. The Soviets attempt to find it, but Kong has the bomber attack a closer target due to dwindling fuel. As the plane approaches the new target, a Soviet ICBM site, the crew is unable to open the damaged bomb bay doors. Kong enters the bay and repairs the broken electrical wiring while sitting on a H-bomb, whereupon the doors open and the bomb is dropped. Kong joyfully straddles the bomb as it falls and detonates over the target.
Back in the War Room, Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several hundred thousand people to live in deep underground mines where the radiation will not penetrate. He suggests a 10:1 female-to-male ratio for a breeding program to repopulate the Earth once the radiation has subsided. Worried that the Soviets will do the same, Turgidson warns about a "mineshaft gap" while Alexei secretly photographs the war room. Dr. Strangelove declares he has a plan, but then rises from his wheelchair and announces "Mein Führer, I can walk!" as the Doomsday Machine activates. The film ends with a montage of many nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn's rendition of the song "We'll Meet Again".
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This is a pretty weird film, but it has some of the funniest lines in cinema. Discussions of not letting a Russian envoy into the war room because he will “see the big board,” the president announcing there is no fighting in the war room, a crazy general constantly talking about a plot to steal American bodily fluids, and a discussion about how the high ranking officials and generals would be hidden in shelters with a 10-1 ratio of hot women to men with the expectation of constant impregnation which everybody suddenly favors: it is all absurd. But I really love it and laugh every time I watch.
The three roles of Peter Sellers is especially noteworthy, as all of his characters are so different. He plays a very British foreign exchange officer (I am not sure this exists), an absolutely whacky former Nazi scientist, and the straight man of the film in the form of the US president. Since Dr. Strangelove was an advisor to the president, there were many scenes in which Peter Sellers was acting across from a stunt shoulder or the back of a head that was supposed to be him. He did a fantastic job of making light of total world destruction during the cold war.
One very notable thing about the acting of Peter Sellers was that he had a couple of ad libs during the movie. Stanley Kubrick is not a director that particularly cares if he gets along with his actors, often times demanding dozens of takes for even the simplest of background scenes. Long dialogue scenes are repeated over and over to the point that many actors did not want to work with Kubrick. And still, the director seemed to like Sellers quite a bit and kept a couple of the takes that were ad-libbed, specifically for the character of Dr. Strangelove. Perhaps the crazy former Nazi character was so unpredictable that random whacky outbursts (like the scream for “Mein Fuhrer” at the end) seemed appropriate.
A little side note is that this was the first film appearance of James Earl Jones as one of the bombardiers on the B-52. He was known for his work in the theatre at the time, so of course he had a bit part in which he was mostly covered in a flight suit and said very little. Now that is a misuse of talent. 
A point about the movie that I was unaware but was pointed out by a follower of the group was that the promotional material for the film shows that the plane was named “Leper Colony” (thank you @themightyfoo). This implies that this group was actually a bunch of screw ups, which is part of the overall joke that this group was given access to world ending bombing capabilities. Maybe it was assumed that the order to drop the bombs would never be given and this group was just given this detail to get them out of the way.
So does this movie belong on the AFI list? Yes, but maybe not ranked so high. It has a lot of name recognition, but I think that is more due to the very distinct naming and the titular role. Maybe the notoriety is also due to the subject matter and the time it was released. It is a fine film with great acting, but I find it hard to put above Jaws, Rocky, or Taxi Driver. I guess that is more my humble opinion, but I agree the list would be lacking without this film. So would I recommend it? Absolutely. It is an interesting story about how red tape allowed one high ranking individual to literally destroy the world. And it is a joke. It is such a well told story that they had to put a disclaimer at the front. A great lesson, even today. 
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ainomica · 3 years
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Hai👋You probably already forgot but I was the anon who asked you about how Alia Bhatt is as an actress and you told me she was fine and even recommended one of her movie,Highway,to me.2 weeks ago,I watched it and I definitely didn't regret wasting my time on it.It was good❤,as good as my very first movie on her in fact(which was not Kalank thankfully)👍So do you have any other good bollywood movie rec?It doesn't have to be Alia's movie,it could be any other good or even great movies played by any other actors/actresses.I'm open to anything😊Thanks🙏
I do! So my fav list of movies that I recommend everyone watch is
1) Jab We Met- to look at ideal boyfriend material Aditya and general happy love story.
2) Devdas- any version would do but I grew up watching Sanjay Leela's and I recommend it to anyone who talks to me hahahaha. For a good reason. You can never go wrong with this pre colonial tragedy by Chattopadhyay and SLB never goes wrong with grand visuals
3) Omkara- one of my fav adaptation of Othello , period. It's adapted to our rural socio economic setting of Central Indian Plains so it's a bit jarring for anyone to listen to heavy accents but the content is good.
4) Speaking of blood and violence, if you are someone who can handle Tarantino style pulp action then Gangs of Vaseypur is a MUST. Its a multi generation conflict among the corrupt up and coming ....uh...assholes LOL.
5) Dil Se and Fanaa I almost categorise in same place. Although bittersweet ending they both have lovers in the center in which one of them falls in love with people THEY SHOULD NOT have fallen in love with. It's especially hardcore when the plot twist comes in so highly recommend.( In case anyone has seen that Indian song where the people are singing on train roof top, it's from Dil Se movie)
6) For comedy fun I recommend Mere Brother Ki Dulhan ( My Brother's Bride) because it's just kitschy fun and all the leads are being so charming.
7) Another comedy for sure Mar Gaya Osama which poles fun on the whole chicken running we had for a time period of whether Osama died or not. It's a hoot. Watch it for sure if nothing else.
8)Veer-Zaara one of the last movies Yash Chopra made which was truly very good ( better tha whatever happened in Jab tak Hai Jaan) and it's an epic love story spanning decades and prejudice between two countries.
9) My Name is Khan and New York if one wants to watch cool movies on the phenomenon of 9/11 from perspective of one of the many ethnicity and religious minorities who were kicked down during that bad time period.
10) Vicky Donor is a dramady around the topic of male sperm donation and the prejudice they face but it's not heavy. Very fun if you wanna check it out and it's one of the first of its kind movie in our Indian Cinema which mainstream explored these topics.
11) Also what kind of Bengali would I be if I do not recommend at least one Tagore adaptation huh? Chokher Bali by Rituporna Ghosh for sure. The plight and sadness of being a widow during colonial time period with a morally ambiguous lead female character played by Aishwarya.
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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years
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If you want some Quality review/analysis content, I definitely recommend Lindsay Ellis or Sarah Z!
Dear anon, 
First, please do not worry, I do not normally hurt myself by watching Cinema Sins or Honest Movie Trailer or similar channels: I was just that desperate for BOP content 😔. Only three channels so far have had something interesting to say about the movie (here, here and here, although fair warning, if you are anything like me, watching the last one will make you loathe the director of Suicide Squad). 
As much as I like to encourage people to try to read a little scholarly works, even if just to get a sense of what criticism/theory is like, I am a big fan of the format of video essays. This is my coming out: I’m super basic 😬! Also, I remember well through listening.
Lindsay Ellis is a classic. I credit her videos with helping me work through my prejudices and preconceptions about musicals and fantastical elements.
I have to admit, Sarah Z’s content is a little bit less interesting to me. I can’t say if it is her style, or her age, or her theses, but I can’t say I’m ever curious about how she will tackle a topic when one of her video comes in my recommendations. I have watched some of her videos though.
Other interesting video essays people I enjoy watching include, amongst others: Folding Ideas,  Jacob Geller, Accented Cinema and Bagels after Midnight. Lessons from the screenplay has some interesting stuff to say but I sort of hate that they always rely on the same fucking book about screenwriting as if it were some sort of a bible about good storytelling. Screened can be interesting as well. 
Also, unrelated youtubers I enjoy but make unrelated content: BJA, BDG, Caitlin Reilly, Chris Fleming, Hbomb, Lee Dawson, SilverSnow, Liziqi, Karolina the Meme Mom (my friend says I sound like her when I speak English 😍) , donoteat01 and his podcast Well there’s your problem, and Mutsu.
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thegirlwholied · 3 years
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SW anon - So I have tried to watch the whole thing before but I could never really get past the start. I watched ep IV a few years back (and in 2018 I watched it while it playing with a live orchestra which really enhanced the experience) and ofc I’ve known most of what happens bc my mom and brother have been fans of it (and ofc all the references to it in shows and it being everywhere) but the thing about the original trilogy that I found difficult to watch was very much the acting being off
Gov SW anon continued - but I think I’m gonna watch the clone wars show next as I feel like the general universe and people speak to me more than the skywalker and co. story speaks to me. But I’ll probably try and get back to the prequels afterwards (at least just to have seen them) but also bc I’ve been on tumblr for so long and I’ve encountered so much about the new movies with Finn, Poe and rey (I already know I don’t like kylo) that I’m interested to see what comes before that
Seeing Ep IV with a live orchestra sounds fantastic as the music is incredible. <3
I must admit I haven’t gotten properly into the Clone Wars show! I’ve tried, & did jump in to (and enjoy) the finale ~ and certain Mandalorian episodes strongly remind me of the show’s tone ~ but it has yet to hit me right in the place where I care. What I appreciate about it & what it’s brought into the Star Wars universe is still on a more distant level, not visceral. 
I most love that The Mandalorian is truly exploring & taking advantage of the wider Star Wars universe beyond Skywalker & co. (but boy do I also love Skywalker & co.) There is an exciting amount of potential in the newly-announced projects too I love characters outside of a universe’s main chosen-one story. In 6th grade, I was obsessed with the X-Wing book series, which were definitely really marketed toward adult guys but whoops, I had found the deep Star Wars section of the library! And the first line of that series, introducing the main character, is “You’re good, but you’re no Luke Skywalker.” And in a way, that’s the Mandalorian too, to the audience if not himself ~ good, but no Luke Skywalker. Not a Jedi, not meant to bring balance to the Force, a sidestory in the main universe’s struggle.  I (from what I’ve seen/know of) get the impression that’s how Ahsoka sees herself ~ ‘you’re good, but you’re no Anakin Skywalker’. 
Of course, for that contrast to work, first you need a Luke Skywalker.
it’s interesting you mention OT acting feeling off as I would use that exact word to describe how I feel about the acting in some episodes of The Mandalorian. In some I love it! Other times... I hesitate to say ‘like a video game’ as I mean no insult to the well-developed video game characters out there but yeah, it hits me like the actor’s aware they’re essentially in a live-action video game cut scene.
But. I truly love the acting in the original trilogy! ...but also as I type this I’m watching a movie from 1944 and acting style certainly varies by decade, & mileage varies as to personal taste... but also I will never be objective about Star Wars which I have loved since I was six... but also I studied film history in college and firmly believe Star Wars, the original trilogy is just objectively good if not quite everybody’s cup of tea (...okay maybe Return of the Jedi is not quite as objectively good, but I still love it so much and given the work it had to do wrapping up the original trilogy, hey, it did its job successfully and with Ewoks). 
I love the twinkling, wry humor & also gravitas of Alec Guinness. There’s that sense of amusement as he talks to Han, as he waves off the storm troopers, and even in the “let go, Luke”... but always the right weight in the right moments imho
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Luke & Han particularly can both be petulant in different ways, & they’re all quippy & brash & even cavalier at times in what in context ~ especially when you rewatch A New Hope right after Rogue One ~ in Very Serious Situations! and I love them for it. 
Carrie Fisher’s accent does shift in the one scene (which I have never minded and definitely went around as a kid trying to say ‘Governor Tarkin’ exactly the way she does), and young Mark Hamill’s Luke can be Dramatic & the Most Petulant but understandably (& prettily) so, and... yeah I probably could muster a criticism for Harrison Ford but also I *can’t*! There are some ridiculous Han Solo moments in Return of the Jedi especially, but also I love him/them/just about every choice these movies made. They just hit on magic.
The magic’s there for me from the music swelling as Luke looks yearningly into the twin suns (the cinematography!), but where it really hits is the up-and-running chemistry between all three of the main actors starting the “Luke, we’re gonna have company” scene, and then, boom, it’s the garbage chute, it’s the you’re-braver-than-I-thought/he-certainly-has-courage, for-luck, here-they-come of it all and the movie is flying. 
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...and I will never forgive the sequels for, avoiding spoilers as it sounds like you’re familiar but haven’t seen them, not giving us any true interaction scenes between Rey & Finn & Poe all together until the 3rd movie. While I still so appreciated finally getting that & what we got, for me it was just not just too little but too late. I love the casting & acting for all 3 of those characters, but while fandom’s taken and run with the combination, and they had plenty of chemistry... it should have been up-and-running so much sooner. 
And the prequels just... well, even seeing them in theaters at a susceptible age, the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out at the same time and that did them no favors in comparison. As someone who judges movies above all on dialogue, that... also did them no favors. (Beyond the OT I may have a Nontraditional ranking of Star Wars movies). 
The short version of my prequels & sequels take is that both missed that cinematic magic for me, outside of certain scenes, though I still enjoy them as part of The Whole Thing That Is Star Wars Which I Love. Rogue One had that magic; I know and see the criticism of the early editing & introduction-of-Jyn’s-background-and-Krennic-and-Galen scene, but, to me, that movie is perfect. Solo was solid - maybe not magic, but reliably enjoyable, and I’ve been meaning to rewatch. The prequels & sequels... the lows are very low and the highs are very high, in terms of how they hit me. 
I feel like I’d probably sum them up as Prequels: Good Star Wars, Bad Movies, and Sequels: Good Movies, Bad Star Wars, which may seem a little harsh or too kind on one side or another but gets at my take at the worldbuilding vs. just the cinema of it all. The bread scene in Force Awakens, the salt planet in Last Jedi, the dyad-duel-in-dual-locations in Rise of Skywalker? Gorgeous. Individual scenes’ acting & dialogue is sound for me. And yet. All three sequels’ choices in respect to the entire Star Wars universe and existing characters AND its new characters? ...Tonally inconsistent with each other *and* ultimately with the themes of the OT. Whereas the prequels did so much worldbuilding, and its politics, and I’ll see gifs and think ‘yes actually, is it better than I remember?’... and then I’ll catch one on TV & it’s the Padme & Anakin romance or even Anakin & Obi-Wan’s buddy scene dialogue at the beginning of Rise of Skywalker and the answer will come, clearly: “noooooooooooooooo.”
(...this got long. Which I tend to do when I care, about fiction in any form, and with the prequels/sequels: the ingredients were there to be magic. And just-misses are more frustrating than swing-and-misses. A la, you won’t find me complaining about the Star Wars Holiday Special!) 
(...OK so I haven’t seen all of the Star Wars Holiday Special, and I’m sort of aiming to watch it through this holiday season, since what other year than 2020 seems more appropriate? So I won’t promise not to complain about the Holiday Special but I mostly expect to laugh at it.)
(That said I found the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special an absolute, surprising, laugh-out-loud delight; 9/10 would recommend & yes, 1 point deduction as I will nitpick character consistency even when they are Legos.)
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disappointingyet · 3 years
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I’m Thinking Of Ending Things
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Director Charlie Kaufman Stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, David Thewlis, Toni Collette USA 2020 Language English, a tiny bit of Spanish 2hrs 14mins Colour 
It’s a Charlie Kaufman film, folks
[I’ve tried to avoid spoilers as far as possible]
The conventional wisdom about Charlie Kaufman’s career seems to be this: the films on which he was a screenwriter are weird and entertaining while those he wrote and directed are weird and depressing. In the first category are Being John Malkovich – regarded as an instant classic when it came out – and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, which seems to have had more of a long-term impact and is on lots of people’s favourite-movie-ever lists. There was also Adaptation and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, which got less love but which I enjoyed in their different ways. 
As a director, he’s made Synecdoche, New York, which I found gruelling but ultimately worth it, and Anomalisa, which was easy to admire but no fun for me.  And now there’s I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, the title of which seems to provide a warning that we’re in for a gloomy time. 
From the start, we’re in the thought-train of Lucy (Jessie Buckley), who is about to head off with her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents for the first time on their farm. But this landmark in their relationship is making her think that maybe – as the title suggests – it’s time to call it a day. It’s a thought she wrestles with during what seems like the long drive there and when they finally arrive for a very awkward meal.
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If you’ve seen any of the movies Kaufman has been involved with, you’ll know that this is unlikely to be a naturalistic drama. And during that first drive, you start picking up clues that things are off – like, can Jake read Lucy’s thoughts? Then when they reach the farm, things are getting very strange. I was thinking of Get Out at this point (stylistically not politically). 
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About a third of the way through, I was thinking of stopping watching. It was clear that it was going to be miserable, very wordy and that the tricksy narrative might make it hard to retain interest/sympathy for the characters. David Thewlis and Toni Collette as Jake’s parents are fairly broad (although, hooray, it seems that Jake’s father comes from Lancashire because Thewlis is not doing an accent). And although it’s adapted from a novel, it felt a lot like a play: very few sets, static cameras, the characters incessantly talking or interior monologuing. There, though, are some memorable shots, especially out in the snow.
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But I stuck with it. Because there are moments when it is good, when it goes from weird and wearing to strange and compelling. I’ll admit that one of these moments for me is probably the most pretentious and meta: Lucy and Jake start talking about the 1974 John Cassavetes film A Woman Under The Influence and she is seemingly possessed by the spirit of (legendary movie critic) Pauline Kael, complete with the first cigarette we’ve seen. (If you’re watching closely, you’ll have been prompted to think of Kael by an earlier scene… but only if you already knew who Kael was, of course). 
I liked about two-thirds of the ending, too. It’s definitely a movie that’s meant to have you debating with your friends afterwards (alas, not actually leaving a cinema) about what actually happened and what it was all about. 
I don’t think I’d actually recommend it, but the better bits are sticking with me more than I expected.
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things is on Netflix
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noodlekugel · 4 years
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The King Premiere in NYC - October 1, 2019
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Last week, I went to the NY Premiere of The King at the SVA Theatre. Tumblr has eaten this post at least 3 times, so I apologize for the delay. 
All pictures above are mine - please do not re-post without credit. 
Below is a summary of my experience, and a brief review of the film.
Where to begin? First off, I was fortunate enough to get tickets to The King just as Timothée crashed Gofobo. The few days leading up to the premiere, I was riddled with anxiety - I was torn between waiting at the red carpet, or waiting in line for the screening, since neither was a guarantee. The film was going to be on Netflix within the next month so I’d get a chance to see it fairly soon, but we didn’t have that much information about whether the cast would be talking at the screenings themselves. Fortunately, the venue made my mind up for me - they set up one line, and only allowed ticket holders at the barricades for the red carpet.
I arrived earlier for this than I’d care to admit (the time was PM, but not that much after noon...), and was about 20th in line, which became 40th after the folks ahead of me let their plus ones join them. We were told there was room for about 40-50 people at the red carpet, but the people running the screening promised those around me that we’d make the cut.
So, the waiting began. I made some friends in line, some people I’d met before through Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook, and some new friends. Everyone around me spent the next six hours bonding over our shared love of all things  Timothée and Call Me By Your Name (because of course that’s how we all truly discovered him, even if we’d seen him in other projects before). I also met a few people who had commented on my fics in the past, and I outed myself to them, which is still feels like a weird thing for me to do.
Around 6PM, they started letting us line up at the red carpet. Thankfully, they handed us physical tickets for the film, which included seat assignments (!!!), which relieved so much of the stress that most of us were feeling about finding seats inside once we left the red carpet. My seats had a pretty terrible view of the screen, but they were free, so beggars can’t be choosy.
We got lucky, and @all-things-all-the-time and I got space on the barricade, close to the entrance of the theater. Much to our surprise, Timothée’s parents, Nicole and Marc, stood on the red carpet directly in front of us for about an hour. This is where I will now proclaim my fandom of Marc Chalamet (more on this later). He seemed so warm and talked with us for a little while. The folks from Netflix, or whomever were hosting the screening, gave out t-shirts (see my pictures above), which was a pleasant surprise.
Lily was the first to walk the red carpet. She spent some time down on our end, and we had a conversation with her about her dress, during which she was endlessly worried about creasing it. Notice in one of my pictures above, the back is slightly creased, but... we’re all human. I’m sure everything I wear is always creased, so I am not judging her at all for worrying about that... After she finished walking the red carpet, she spent time standing with Timothée’s parents, and chatted with Marc in French until her two friends arrived. When Pauline got to the red carpet, she gave Lily a warm hug (Lily’s back was to us, so I don’t know what her reaction was), and then attacked her parents with hugs and kisses. We heard her say multiple times how handsome both her father and brother looked. Also, she was wearing an awesome scarf with skulls on it, and wore sneakers to the red carpet, a move I can 100% get behind.
Eventually, Timothée made it to the red carpet, to screams comparable only to Beatlemania. Honestly, I felt verklempt, having watched his meteoric rise over the past two years. This was his first hometown premiere since Call Me By Your Name at the New York Film Festival. We asked his parents how they felt, and Marc said it was surreal. He entered on the opposite end from where we were standing, and he was surrounded by guards, media doing interviews, and photographers, so it took at least a half hour until he got to our end, with two jaunts outside of the red carpet, one across the street and one down the block to where other crowds had gathered. 
In my many years of going to concerts and theater and events with celebrities, I’ve never seen a celebrity spend more time with fans or act more gracious and humble than Timothée did. I think this is why I’ve stuck around the fandom for so long - he just seems so genuinely happy to take the time with every fan, of which there were hundreds. Unfortunately, when he made it to our end, he was being whisked off inside of the premiere, so he could only sign things quickly and take selfies without making much conversation. I did get a selfie (I’m not going to post it here, but I’ll share my pictures privately if you message me), but wasn’t able to get my copy of Call Me By Your Name signed, which I had gotten signed by Andre Aciman earlier in the year.
He promised he’d come back, but was pulled away and never allowed back outside, which was not his fault. When March realized that Timothée hadn’t signed @all-things-all-the-time ‘s fantastic embroidery hoop, he asked her if she had a pen, and chased him down so he could sign it for her. When he came back outside a minute later, in his adorable French accent, Marc apologized that Teeeee-mo-tay had stolen her pen. She can tell her own story better, but it ended with Marc giving her a hug.
So, once the red carpet was over, we were told to go inside of the theater. David quickly introduced the movie, pointed at the cast in the audience (Timmy did a dance move that I am too old to actually know but I think is called hit the woah?), and then they started the screening. He quickly left the theater to head to the Quad Cinema screenings a bit downtown.
As for the film, I’ll try to give a spoiler-free review since it’s not out for the public to see yet. Honestly, this wasn’t my favorite movie. Each piece of the film was fine, but this kind of movie is just not my cup of tea. I don’t generally like war movies, and I don’t love historical dramas about monarchies battling for their land and their people. Timothée had a very strong and nuanced performance. He carried the emotional weight of the film on his shoulders, and ably showed Hal/Henry in all forms, from immature and defiant prince to powerful and resolute king. Lily has maybe five minutes of screen time, at the end of the movie. I really like Thomasin McKenzie, and she has a few scenes at the beginning of the film as his younger sister. 
The stunt work and the battle sequences were well-choreographed and fun to watch, but I did feel like the movie could have been a half hour shorter. I think Robert Pattinson was my favorite part of the movie besides Timothée - his accent was over-the-top and the performance was flamboyant, but it worked for me. Each scene he was in garnered the biggest reactions from my audience, aside from the applause at the end when Timmy’s name came across the screen.
Overall, I didn’t dislike the film, but it’s not my favorite of the Timmy canon. If you’re a Timothée fan or a fan of historical epics, I recommend seeing it on a big screen, but otherwise, watch it on Netflix (but... definitely see it somehow). I did, however, have a wonderful time at the premiere, and can’t wait for the next film and the next event!
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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years
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The Weekend Warrior 10/16/20: SYNCHRONIC, FRENCH EXIT, TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7, LOVE AND MONSTERS, HONEST THIEF, THE KID DETECTIVE and More!
After the last couple weeks, I really need a break, which is why I’m writing most of this in transit to Columbus, Ohio to see my mother, sister and all (or some) of the friends that I made during my sabbatical to the city seven years ago for cancer treatment.
On, and look... Variety wrote about the movie theater chains and NATO lobbying Governor Cuomo to reopen movie theaters, showing that there’s been no proof of any cases leading back to movie theaters. (And more from The Hollywood Reporter…) New York leads and the world follows? More like ED leads and the world follows. Been saying this shit for months now and putting up with all sorts of needless abuse for it.
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This week’s “Featured Flick” is actually a movie coming to theaters on October 23, but since I’m not sure I’m writing a column next week, I’m gonna review it this week! Cool?  The movie is SYNCHRONIC (Well Go USA), and it’s the follow-up to Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson’s amazing sci-fi film The Endless from a few years back. This ome stars Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan as parademics in New Orleans who have been coming across a series of bodies that have died in gruesome ways, all connected by a designer drug they were all taking.
I’ll just say right from the start that I loved almost everything about this movie from the amazing performances by Mackie and Dornan to the entire look and tone of the movie, which shows the duo taking huge steps forward as filmmakers, particularly Benson as a screenwriter. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what I can say about the movie and its plot without spoiling other’s enjoyment. I will say that it involves a designer drug and time travel and Mackie’s character has something odd about his brain that makes him better suited to figure out what is happening to the victims than others might be. Also, Dornan’s character Dennis has family issues, particularly with his daughter Brianna (Ally Ioannides), who disappears mysteriously, but it’s so nice seeing Katie Aselton as Dennis’ wife, as well as in another movie out this week.
I’ll also say that people who watch this movie will inevitably make comparisons to the work of Alex Garland and maybe even the more-versed ones might see a little of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome in the film’s trippy nature. The thing is that the movie is super-smart, and it’s obvious that Moorehead and Benson must have done a lot of research to make every aspect of it feel authentic. It’s just amazing what this duo can do with a small fraction of the money that Christopher Nolan had to make Tenet, and yet, they can create a complex and unique premise that’s actually easy to understand. Things like the camerawork, the music and sound design all add to the amazing tone and the mood that the duo have created.
I also think it’s Mackie’s best role and performance in many years, maybe even going back to The Hurt Locker, so as a long-time fan, I’m glad he connected with Moorehead/Benson to show that he’s more than capable of leading a movie like this.
Again, Synchronic will be in movie theaters and drive-ins NEXT Friday, October 23, but I want to give you an advance heads up, because Synchronic is likely to be the most original sci-fi or genre film you see this year. If you can’t get to the drive-in and don’t feel comfortable going to a movie theater, then I’m sure it will be on digital soon enough, but you definitely shouldn’t miss it!
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Next up is Aaron Sorkin’s THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN, streaming on Netflix starting Friday and the movie I was most looking forward to seeing this week. I was such a huge fan of Brett Morgen’s Chicago 10 documentary, which opened Sundance in 2007, especially with how he recreated the court trials using animation and a talented roster of voice actors including Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo and Geoffrey Wright. Sorkin has just as an impressive list of actors for his version, including Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Frank Langella, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and many more.
If you don’t know about the protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago – you see, back in those days, the Democrats were the bad guys… how times have changed!! Those protests led to a number of arrests but a few years later, the federal government charged a number of individuals with inciting the riot. The accused include Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II from Aquaman and Watchmen, Abbie Hoffman (Cohen), FBI agent Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) and two more. The six white guys are defended by Mark Rylance’s William Kunstler, who faces the tough Judge Hoffman (Langella) who is not putting up with any guff from these young revolutionaries.
All of the characters are quickly introduced with a quick-cut opening montage with actual newsreel footage, but then we’re quickly moved to a meeting to the Attorney General (Keaton) with the trial’s prosecutor (Gordon-Levitt). From there, we’re right into the trial about 16 minutes into the movie, although Sorkin frequently cuts back to the actual day of the Chicago protest to recreate what happened as testimony is given. Probably the part that will have the most impact and resonance is the way Seale was mistreated compared to the others, getting so riled up at the judge that the judge orders him chained and gagged. The trial would end up taking place for almost 7 months even though the results were eventually overturned.
This really is perfect material for Sorkin, and maybe if I hadn’t seen Chicago 10 first, I would have been a lot more fascinated by the trial sequences, though Morgen did an equally great job working from the transcripts. Basically, what happened happened. Where Sorkin’s screenplay and film excels is showing what’s going on outside the courtroom, whether it’s the recreations or just conversations taking place between the plaintiffs.  As might be expected from Sorkin, the screenplay is great with lots of fast talking, making for a movie that moves at a kinetic pace for its two hours.
If I had to pick a few of the best performances, I’d probably focus on Cohen’s Abbie Hoffman, which is more than just an accent, he and Strong’s Rubin bantering back and forth like a seasoned Vaudeville act; Rylance’s Kunstler is spot-on, and Langella is just great as the crusty judge, the film’s only true antagonist. I also appreciated John Carroll Lynch and in fact, all the performances, although I felt that with so many characters, Sorkin wasn’t able to give Bobby Seale the time his story truly needed. Still, I would be shocked if this isn’t considered a SAG Ensemble frontrunner.
Ultimately, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a fine recreation of a certain moment in history that still feels relevant and timely fifty years later, even if it’s so heavy at times you either need to focus or, like me, watch it on Netflix in two sittings. I still liked Steve McQueen’s movie Mangrove that takes place in a similar era and also culminates in a trial just a little bit better.
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Before we get to the rest of this week’s new movies, I have one last review from the New York Film Festival, and it’s the closing night film, FRENCH EXIT, from director Azazel Jacobs and writer Patrick Dewitt, who has adapted his own book. The film stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Frances Price, a Manhattan widow from wealth who discovers she has no more money, just as her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges with longer hair than usual) has decided to marry his girlfriend Susan (Imogen Poots) though he hasn’t told his mother that yet. With no other options, Francis takes her son on a ship to live in Paris for a while at the home of one Mme. Renard (Valarie Mahaffey), an elderly woman who is a genuine fan of Francis and welcomes them as her guests.
This is one of those ensemble character dramedies that I wouldn’t even be able to begin to tell you why you should see it unless you miss seeing Pfeiffer in a semi-decent performance, but one that doesn’t do much as the film itself is so boring and insufferably pretentious most of the time I’m not sure I can even recommend it for that.
Jacobs and Dewitt previous made the movie Teri maybe ten years ago, and I was never really a fan, so I’m not sure why I thought that Dewitt adapting his own book would bear better results.  Once Frances and Malcolm get to Paris, there’s just an influx of odd characters who show up, some who have more impact than others. I liked seeing Danielle Macdonald as a psychic medium the duo meet on the ship across the Atlantic who Malcolm bonks. She’s brought back when Frances wants her to conduct a séance to communicate with her late husband who she thinks is now inhabiting an omni-present cat. Like everything else, the relationship between Malcolm and Susan and how that’s affected by her meeting a new guy just never goes anywhere.
For the most part, the whole thing is just dull and uninteresting, and so pretentious it never really leads to anything even remotely memorable. I have no idea why the New York Film Festival would decide to close with this one. (Although the 58th NYFF is over, some of the movies will hit its Virtual Cinema soon, so keep an eye out! For instance, this Friday, FilmLinc begins a Pietro Marcello retrospective as well as showing his latest film Martin Eden in FilmLInc’s Virtual Cinema.)
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Liam Neeson stars in Mark Williams’ HONEST THIEF (Open Road), a crime-thriller in which he plays Tom Carter, the uncaught robber behind 12 bank robberies who decides to settle down with Kate (Grey’s Anatomy) Walsh’s Annie Wilkins, who he meets while renting a storage space to hide all the money he’s stolen. After a year of things getting serious with Annie, Tom decides to retire so he calls the FBI and says he’s ready to give back the 9 million, but two crooked FBI agents (one played by Jai Courtenay, the other by Anthony Ramos) decide they’re going to take the money instead. Their plan to steal the money Tom’s trying to return leads to a number of deaths, including putting Annie in the hospital. When that happens, Tom has had enough, and honestly, there’s no one better at getting revenge than Neeson. (Did we mention that Carter is ex-Marine? I mean, of course he is!)
Many will go into Honest Thief expecting the typical Neeson action revenge flick ala Taken or maybe one of his high-concept thrillers, but Honest Thief isn’t nearly that exciting. It starts out fairly slow and dry with no real crime or action elements, although Williams does throw them in from time to time. The whole thing is pretty dry, and it’s a good 54 minutes before we get to the revenge aspect of the story and that’s after a lot of bad decisions being made across the board. Anyone who is still wondering how Jai Courtney has a career won’t be changing that decision by his turn as the villain, and it’s a lot odd when the movie tries to make a sympathetic character out of his partner, played by Ramos.
Regardless, any elements that make Honest Thief unique from other Neeson action movies are quickly tossed aside for the same usual cliches, and the action scenes aren’t even that great. While Honest Thief may not be an awful or unwatchable movie, it’s probably not the action movie you might be expecting from Neeson – more like a bargain basement The Fugitive with one plot decision that almost kills the whole movie.
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Delayed a number of times and now dumped to PVOD (with minimal theatrical) is Paramount’s LOVE AND MONSTERS, which is written by the prolific Bryan Duffield (The Babysitter, Spontaneous), directed by Michael Matthews and produced by Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment. In the movie, Dylan O’Brien plays Joel Dawson, a young man surviving the apocalypse with a small community after the government’s plot to blast a couple asteroids heading to earth backfires. Instead, it creates giant, carnivorous monsters out of the earth’s animals who eliminate 95% of the earth’s human population. (We learn all of this through a Zombieland-like animated prequel getting us up to speed.)  Before the earth fell into disarray, Joel was in love with Jessica Henwick’s Aimee, but they were separated by the fateful events. Seven years later, they’re reconnected via radio and Joel has sworn to travel the 85 miles across the creature-covered wasteland to reunite with her. Hence, the title “Love and Monsters.” Get it?
I actually didn’t hate this movie, although it’s not really a family film or one meant for young kids, because it’s PG-13 for a reason, including mild violence i.e. people being chomped by monsters, and some sexuality. Dylan O’Brien does a decent job carrying it, but it relies just as much on the other people he meets, particularly Michael Rooker’s Clyde and his young ward Minnow, played by Ariana Greenblatt, the latter who is such a scene-stealer that it’s disappointing they’re only in the movie for a small chunk. They’re probably the funniest part of the movie.
I like giant monsters and these ones are certainly … interesting. They seem to have been toned down a bit maybe to be more kid-friendly, more like the kid-friend Godzilla than the terror we’ve seen in recent incarnations. There are also a number of great action set-pieces, and some good post-Apocalyptic ideas we haven’t seen, especially when Duffield’s dark sense of humor is able to come out and keep things fun.
Still, Love and Monsters is not a kids’ movie, and there’s something about it that might make people wish the filmmaker just went full-on R, because going further towards PG would have made even the best parts quite painful to get through. As it is, Love and Monsters is a suitably fine boy and his dog adventure – oh, did I mention the dog? – that would make a perfectly fine streaming movie.
We’ll get back to some of the other theatrical releases in a bit, but I wanted to get to two movies that were pleasant surprises, maybe because I went into them with absolutely zero expectations.
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I wasn’t really sure what to think about Cooper Raiff’s SH#!%HOUSE (IFC Films) at first, maybe because it’s title is a little off-putting and not really particularly representative of what the movie is. Raiff himself plays Alex Malmquist, a fairly new arrival at his college but already missing home and his mother (Amy Landecker) and not really adjusting to the crazy college lifestyle as exemplified by his roommate Sam (Logan Miller). After a party at a frat called “Shithouse” (hence the title), Alex meets and connects with his dorm’s R.A. Maggie (Dylan Gelula) and the two spend the night bonding and hanging out.
Obviously, someone at IFC Films loves these platonic indie two-handers about people meeting and hanging out over the course of a night, because Shithouse is the second such movie after Olympic Dreams earlier in the year. They also must know that I’m a sucker for these kinds of semi-rom-coms, because just like with that other movie, I totally ate up everything Raiff was trying to do and say with his movie. The chemistry between the two leads is undeniable, and maybe it won’t be a surprise that Gelula also appeared in Raiff’s previous movie.
As with any relationship, things do come to an end, and this one crashes and burns in a very sad way for Alex the very next day. Maggie starts to pretend she doesn’t even know him, and she ignores his incessant texts saying how much he enjoyed their night together. Boy, I have been there back in my reckless and romantic days of youth.
At first, I wasn’t that into Raiff as an actor – remember what I’ve said about filmmakers casting themselves? – but Alex definitely grew on me. Gelula is absolutely amazing, and frankly, I can see someone “discovering” her in ten years and becoming a new Parker Posey, Kate Lynn Sheil or other similar indie ingenue.
The combination of the two is what makes Shithouse such a special experience, since their situations are quite relatable and Raiff does a great job with the characterization in his writing to make this quite enjoyable to see how things will resolve themselves.
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I also wasn’t quite prepared for how much I’d enjoy Steve Byrne’s THE OPENING ACT (RLJEfilms), maybe because I was unfamiliar with Byrne, and as usual, I didn’t read the description of the movie before sitting down to watch it. If I did, I would have known that Byrne is a stand-up comic and presumably this movie is somewhat based on situations that have happened to him. It stars Jimmy O. Yang from Crazy Rich Asians (a great comic in his own right) as Willy Chu, a young comic who has always dreamed of making it in stand-up but instead, has been stuck trying to get slots at an open mic night, while holding down a day job working at an insurance company. One day, his friend (Ken Jeong) sets him up for an MC gig in Pennsylvania at the Improv where his idol Billy G (Cedric the Entertainer) will be performing, so Willy quits his job to pursue his dream.
Much of Byrne’s movie deals with Billy’s “adventure” in Pennsylvania with the club’s womanizing featured act (played by SNL’s Alex Moffatt) and trying to face the struggles of stand-up in hopes of getting to the next level. There have been better movies about the subject, like Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk with You, but Byrne’s film is a nice addition, particularly because Yang plays such a likeable, benevolent character you want to see him do well even after he crashes and bombs on a Saturday night and is at risk of losing the Improv gig.
It’s obvious that Byrne pulled in a lot of favors from friends to get such a great cast of comics – even getting Whitney Cumming to make a cameo – but the likes of Bill Burr actually take on key roles, like Willy’s boss in that case. Moffatt is particularly hilarious expanding on some of his outrageous SNL characters to play a stand-up who actually does help Willy, even as he puts him in pretty awful situations. Cedric also gives another fantastic performance as Willy’s idol who gives him the cold shoulder at first but eventually comes around and offers him the mentoring that Willy needs.
The Opening Act isn’t anything particularly revelatory, but it is thoroughly entertaining, and a nice little indie that I hope people will discover for themselves, especially those who like (or perform) stand-up.
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Edward James Olmos directs THE DEVIL HAS A NAME (Momentum Releasing) starring the great Oscar-nominated David Strathairn as almond farmer Fred Stern, who has been running his orchard for three decades with trusty second Santiago, played by Olmos himself. Things are going well until they notice that some of the trees are rotting. It turns out they’re being poisoned by the water that’s been sullied by crude oil run-off from the nearby Shore Oil rigs. Around the same time, an opportunist named Alex Gardner, played by Haley Joel Osment, offers Fred a very low-ball offer to buy the farm, though Fred suspects something is up, and sure enough, Shore Oil is responsible.
Another movie I didn’t know what to expect other than a few cursory elements is this movie “based on a true story” movie about the little farmer taking on “The Man.” In this case, Shore Oil is represented by Kate Bosworth’s Gigi Cutler, a tough exec. at the corporation who thinks their lawyers (one of them played by Katie Aselton!) can crush this local troublemaker. When Stern’s lawyer (Martin Sheen) sues the oil company for 2 billion, they need to start taking things seriously, bringing in a tough “fixer” played by Pablo Schreiber.
I’m not sure where to begin with this movie that certainly has noble intentions in telling this story but suffers from quite a few issues, mostly coming from the script. I was a little concerned once I knew the premise, because I was not a huge fan of Todd Haynes’ Dark Water from last year, although I did enjoy the Krasinski-Damon-Van Sant ecological venture, Promised Land. This one falls somewhere in between, and probably its biggest issue is that it tries to create some humor out of the erratic behavior of the characters played by Bosworth and Schreiber; both performances are so off-the-rails at times it regularly takes you out of Fred’s story. (Osment is also pretty crazy but at least he fits better into his role.) Strathairn is great and well-cast, and Olmos is equally good, and I imagine that it’s partially because many of their scenes are together, allowing Olmos to direct with his acting. Aselton and Sheen are also decent, especially in the courtroom scenes.
Oh, and did I mention that Alfred Molina plays the Big Boss, who is interrogating Cutler as a needless framing device? Yeah, there’s a lot of characters, and when you hold this up against something like The Trial of Chicago 7, it’s just obvious that the film has too many elements for any filmmaker to be able to juggle at once.
Because of this, The Devil Has A Name is an erratic real-life dramedy that’s too all over the place in terms of tone, it ends up shooting itself in the foot by trying (and failing) to be funny despite the serious subject matter.
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Next up is 2 HEARTS (Silver Lion Films/ Freestyle Releasing), another movie based on a true story from the Hool Brothers, who I really wasn’t very familiar with. I assumed this was going to be a faith-based movie, and maybe in some ways it is, but not really. It essentially tells two stories set in different time periods that you assume will somehow be connected. Ooh, boy.
First, there’s Jacob Elordi of Euphoria and The Kissing Booth – neither of which I’ve seen, mind you – who plays Chris Gregory, a college kid who connects in a meet-cute way with Tiera Skovbye’s Sam. Before we get too far into their story, we cut back to what looks like Cuba in the ‘50s and 60s, and meet Jorge Bolivar (Adan Canto), the son of an alcohol magnate, a soccer player who suffers a serious lung issue that puts him in the hospital. Years later, Jorge is travelling to Miami when he meets Radha Mitchell’s Leslie working as a flight attendant.
Both guys are pretty suave smooth-talking pick-up artists, and the movie spends almost an hour cutting between two very corny and cheesy romance stories that really don’t offer much in terms of story. Instead, it keeps following Chris and Sam’s life as they have kids, taking forever to get to the connection between the stories. I was getting pretty bored of the movie, but I felt like I had to stick it out to see what happens.
When you call a movie “2 Hearts,” you kind of expect it to be about a heart transplant of some kind, right? But no, it’s actually about a dual lung transplant that Jorge receives. Want to take a wild guess who the donor is?  I certainly don’t want to spoil what happens, but for a movie that spends a good hour setting up the relationships between the two men and their pretty blondes with ups and downs that makes it seem like a Nicholas Sparks movie, it really throws a spanner into the fairy tale with all the melodrama that’s to come. It’s such a whiplash in terms of tone it pretty much destroys any chance of one enjoying the movie for what it is. It also loses a lot without Elordi, since the actors who play his family aren’t very good at all.
I had to actually look up the story to see how much if it was true, only to learn that Jorge was based on Jorge Bacardi who actually received a double lung transplant from one Christopher Gregory, inspiring him to create the Gabriel House of Care. The problem is that the time periods get so messed up by setting one story decades in the past. Using the same actors to play the people over that time with pretty shabby make-up just makes things that much more confusing. The big problem is that it spends so much time avoiding the actual plot and point of making the movie that by the time it gets to it, you just don’t care about the characters anymore.
The whole thing is very by the books and predictable, but ultimately, it’s hard to believe any of it, despite it being based on a true story. If you go into this movie expecting love and romance and all that kind of mushy stuff from the title, you’re likely to be disappointed when the movie finally gets to its point. (In other words, it could have used some giant monsters.)
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Here’s another movie that I didn’t really know what to expect going in and that probably should have helped me enjoy it more… if it was anything resembling a good movie. Picked up at the Toronto Film Festival where it premiered last month, Evan Morgan’s THE KID DETECTIVE (Sony) stars Adam Brody as Abe Appelbaum, the “kid detective” of the titles, who as a child was one of those super-smart kids who have the deductive powers to help the people in his community, but as a 32-year-old, he just isn’t taken as seriously any more. When a high school girl named Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) comes to Abe to find out who murdered her boyfriend, Abe finally realizes that he has his first grown-up case, though he’s still obsessed with the disappearance of the mayor’s daughter (and his kid receptionist) Gracie many years earlier.
I’m sure there’s gonna be people out there who watch and appreciate The Kid Detective for what it is, a wry and slightly clever noir pastiche pseudo-comedy, but anyone who has seen Rian Johnson’s first film Brick or the underrated Mystery Team (starring Donald Glover very early in his career) might feel that this doesn’t live up to either. Besides the fact that Brody really hasn’t developed much personality as an actor, the film rolls along with a fairly flat, deadpan tone that just never gets remotely exciting. The humor is subdued and yet it feels like everyone is constantly trying too hard, particularly Morgan, while at the same time not really taking any chances. This is a movie that could have been edgier but instead, it milks its flimsy high-concept premise as long as possible before giving up.
Like Love and Monsters, Sony is releasing The Kid Detective into theaters on Friday, and hopefully parents will check that rating before assuming it’s a kid flick. Although there isn’t so much bad language or anything that wouldn’t warrant a PG… other than the fact that it’s not particularly funny or even entertaining and kids will be super-bored.
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I can’t believe there’s still more! Amazon’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” anthology series continues this week with two more movies in the series of eight, which you can now watch on Prime Video:
Easily my favorite of the four movies I’ve seen is Zu Quirke’s NOCTURNE (Amazon), which follows a pair of twins, Julie (Sidney Sweeney) and Vivian (Madison Iseman), who are both competitive concert pianists at the Lindberg Academy, although Vivian is clearly the better, as she’s heading off to Julliard while Julian is taking a gap year.
Before we meet them, we see a young violist jumping off the balcony to her death for some reason, and we learn that she was the finalist to play a concerto, so now that slot is open and both Julie and her sister desperately want it.
Nocturne is certainly more like the horror movies we expect from Blumhouse, which is both good and bad. The good is that it is indeed quite scary as Quirke’s team uses really eerie lighting effects and other things to create suspense. But there’s also an artiness to what Quirke does that elevates Nocturne above the normal high-concept horror-thriller.
Quirke, who also wrote the film, delivers all the characterization you expect from a good horror film so that you really care about the characters, and she’s put together such a fine cast, particularly Sweeney who has to run a gamut of emotions as Julie. I also like Rodney To as Julie’s tough instructor Wilkins
Again, I won’t say too much more about the actual plot, although if you can imagine a Faustian bargain and how that plays out for those around Julie, you can probably understand why a super-fan of The Omen might dig what Quirke did in this environment.
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The fourth movie in the “Welcome to the Blumouse” series is EVIL EYE (Amazon), from Indo-American filmmakers Elan and Rajeev Dassani, a relatively innocuous thriller based around the relationship between Pallavi (Sunita Mani from last week’s Save Yourselves! and GLOW) and her mother Usha, played by Sarita Choudhury.  Pallavi is in her late 20s and single and her mother keeps wanting to get her set-up with a nice man, as a good Indian mother is wont to do.  When Pallavi meets Sandeep (Omar Maskati), things are going well since he has money and her mother thinks her daughter has hit the jackpot, until she realizes that Sandeep has a dark secret.
Here’s another thriller where it’s really tough to talk about the plot, because obviously the filmmakers want the story to unfold in the specific way it was written. Apparently, this one was once an Audible story, and the first thing I noticed was how amazing Sunita Mani looks from her fairly glammed down roles in other things. I think she’s just wearing make-up and has her styled different but I’m not sure I would have known it was the same actor in Save Yourselves! Because I had to do a double take.
The problem with Evil Eye, and it’s been a problem with some of the other “Welcome to the Blumhouse” movies, is that it isn’t necessarily what I’d consider horror. It really plays a lot more like a romantic drama, other than the fact that Pallavi’s mother has visions and believes in astrology enough to send her daughter trinkets to protect her from the “evil eye.” In fact, the movie just gets weirder and weirder, as it starts introducing supernatural elements, and without giving the big plot twist away, it does expect one to believe in reincarnation.
I wish I could have liked this more, but it really seems like it would be better suited for a show like “The Outer Limits” or “The Twilight Zone,” since the premise is stretched so think for about 30 minutes longer than necessary.  I think the filmmakers did perfectly fine with what they had to work with – the two main actresses are just fab – but I think I’d need to see some of their other work to see if the issues I had were just cause the story isn’t that interesting or by their limitations in making it.
(And I promise that I do have a feature on all the filmmakers from the first four “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series coming over at Below the Line, but it’s been a pretty tough piece to write.)
I reviewed Alex Gibney’s new doc Totally Under Control (Neon/Participant), co-directed with Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, in last week’s column but it’s now available to watch On Demand and then it will be on Hulu starting next Tuesday, October 20. Obviously, everyone wanted to get this out there and make sure people see it before they get too in-deep with the election.
I also reviewed David Byrne’s American Utopia (HBO), directed by Spike Lee, a few weeks back, but it will be on HBO and presumably HBO Max on Sunday night. Not as big an event as Disney+’s Hamilton but still worth watching, especially if you’re a fan of Byrne or his band the Talking Heads, because it actually acts as a nice counterpoint bookend to the late Jonathan Demme’s fantastic Stop Making Sense, one of the best concert documentaries ever made, or at least top 5. I’m bummed I missed Byrne’s show on Broadway, and it doesn’t sound like Broadway will be coming back anytime soon so I guess this HBO documentation is the best any of us can wish for.
Of the movies I didn’t have time to watch this week, the two that I’m hoping to still get to are two docs: Inna Blockhina’s SHE IS THE OCEAN (Blue Fox Entertainment) and Rick Korn’s HARRY CHAPIN: WHEN IN DOUBT, DO SOMETHING (Greenwich). She Is the Ocean explores the lives of nine women who all have a passion for the ocean. The Harry Chapin doc may be more self-explanatory, and I wish I was a bigger fan of Chapin, the famed singer/songwriter/activist, because maybe I would have watched this movie earlier. (But seriously, look at how many movies came out this week, when I was hoping it would be “slower”!) Also, I’m a little bit interested in the K-Pop doc #BlackPinkLightUpTheSky that will air on Netflix, just because, I dunno, I like adorable, young Asian women, so sue me?
Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Justin Baldoni’s CLOUDS, starring Fin Argus as musician Zach Sobiech, who has only months to live when his cancer starts spreading, but he follows his dream to make an album and becomes a viral music phenomenon. I’m not sure if this is a true story but it certainly sounds a lot like a faith-based film called I Still Believe that hit theaters just before they all shut down due to the pandemic. Coincidence? I think not.
Also this week, the 32nd ANNUAL NEWFEST LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL begins on Friday, running through October 27 with opening night being the well-regarded Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, but it will be done as a drive-in, so I’m out. Over in Los Angeles, the AFI FEST starts on Thursday and runs through October 22, and that’s also showing a lot of cool festival/awards films that I haven’t had a chance to watch yet like The Father, I’m Your Woman and more. I missed my chance to get press accreditation, so yeah, I guess I’ll be waiting on that.
And then we get to all the movies that I didn’t have time to see or didn’t receive a screener, so here we go. This week’s unfortunate dumping ground:
Lupin III: The First (GKIDS) (This anime film is being released as a Fathom event on Oct. 18 – dubbed, and Oct. 21 – subtitled)
Belly of the Beast (I’ve actually heard good things about Erika Cohn’s doc about illegal sterilizations being conducted in a woman’s prison.)
Don’t Look Back (Gravitas Ventures)
Rom Boys: 40 Years of Rad (101 Films)
The Antidote (Cinetic/Brand New Story)
Monochrome: The Chromism (Tempest)
J.R “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius (Uncork’d)
Monster Force Zero (WildEye Releasing)
Ghabe (GVN Releasing)
The Accidental President (Intervention)
In Case of Emergency (Kino Lorber)
I’m not sure how much of a column I’m gonna write next week since I won’t have nearly as much time to watch movies or write about them in the coming week, while I’m in Colmbus. There are a couple high profile movies I hope to get to, so we’ll see what happens.
By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!
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karazetian · 4 years
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What’s happening is that Disney is not doing its job.
I ended up doing an essay lol. I obviously appreciate someone reading it but given that is really lengthy, I don’t expect anyone to do so. I’m also not Asian so, there’s that. And my English leaves a lot to be desired (I corrected the orthography but I’m prone to grammar errors). 
I do recommend checking out the sources I linked, especially 1 (youtube video made by a Chinese person), 2 and 3 (the descriptions are below).
I talk about what Disney is doing is not out of naive idleness. Idleness yes, but naivety no. 
I keep thinking, where the hell did this movie go wrong? Because yes, this is not the first time nor the last time Disney is going to deliver a less than mediocre live-action remake, but, despite all of their track record, I still had hope for this one. 
Because, while the other movies are classics, they had certain aspects that didn’t age perfectly, which it is understandable. Beauty and the Beast, although arguably the best Disney animated movie, had these “Stockholm Syndrome” connotations* (bear with me) and we also had to consider how much of Beast’s personality could stay in the remake (since he could have been read really wrong if he lashed out on Belle too much, not only because of his appearance but for the power dynamics of him being the one in calling the shots of Belle’s wellbeing, hope that made sense). 
Cinderella could have made some* audiences criticize her for her apparent submissiveness, Aladdin is a whole can of worms in the subject of orientalism (which they kept in the remake, anyway), etc., etc.
*This is not the post to discuss whether or not Belle suffered Stockholm Syndrome during her movie, nor to discuss whether or not Cinderella was actually submissive in the original. Many people have already done that, my point in bringing that up is, Disney used that as an excuse to change scenes and plot in the remakes. 
But Mulan, aside from minor problems that come from an American company writing an eastern story (and the values and trends present when the movie was made), had a very strong plot that still holds up to this day (I say that like the movie was made in the 30s lol). 
Not only it is a “feminist” movie but also, the story is very well written and made, in my opinion. There was not a lot that you needed to change. The main character had already a well-rounded personality (unlike, for example, my girl Aurora), the story was already very rich, etc. The removal of Mushu (and the whole dragon symbolism), although sad, it’s understandable how it was necessary.
However, is not just the removal of important and nostalgic characters like Mushu or grandma Fa, but the removal of the soul of the movie.
Mulan 2020 is a soulless movie. 
This is not unique to this remake, as this is not even unique to remakes, imo. But it is one of the most painful ones, because this movie meant a lot to a lot of women (and people) and the beauty of it all was that you didn’t need to be Chinese, or a woman, to appreciate it (that’s a good thing in the sense that is good when you can relate to a story, even if you don’t share some of the traits with the main character. Not that it’s good despite being the story of a Chinese woman, is that clear? Sorry if it’s not).
And it’s also painful because it could have been so easy to... not do that. Other people have already talk about this (and in a much briefer, better way) but yes, what made Mulan so great in the original was that she was your average girl, even worse because she lived in a very conservative society yet she managed to become a badass while, not only discovering who she was in the process, but also staying true to that. That was the reason she was great. She had flaws, she couldn’t adapt, she was the underdog but she, through her unwillingness to give up, her tenacity, wits and compassion, overcame that, eventually becoming a hero. 
It was not because of her qì. Again, I’m not going to do a deep dive in that because others have already talked about how they made her a Chosen One. What I want to discuss is how sad it is that they went for that route and my confusion as to why they did it. 
And I think it was more than laziness. It’s definitely a lack of motivation but, when you dwelve on it, I don’t think that laziness goes hand in hand with carelessness. But first, with the laziness, a google search would have made them see what progressive crowds now deem as feminist values. Both eastern and western crowds. 
Because yeah, sure, I doubt the Chinese government is well versed in intersectional feminism. Yet, there are movies both the Chinese government and its people have liked and appreciated. Weren’t they the ones that, upon watching Kung Fu Panda said something like “how did we not come up with that?” 
I saw this video made my Chinese youtuber Accented Cinema (links below: 1, I highly recommend watching it) and he even mentioned his school taking his class to watch the original movie in theaters. So, yeah, believe it or not, you can make a feminist movie set in a third world country (I also come from a third world country, sorry if this sounds like I’m being mean to Chinese people). 
So, why did you not do your homework, Disney? Again, I understand they couldn’t have made the most leftist movie, not only because it’s Disney, but because they wanted to appeal to both governments, however, you could have made the remake be satisfying enough for that audience and the rest of the world. But they didn’t even satisfy the Chinese audience, with a lot of them saying how the movie reinforces ideologies the Chinese themselves have already moved on from (the “devotion to family” inscription in the sword has received a lot of criticisms: 2).
This means that they failed to do even the only thing they seemed to compromise on. You could have had still appealed to the government. That is to say, I don’t expect Disney to be the wokest of them all and go full anarchist on their movies because that’s not even what Disney wants anyway.
They could have still done some things that wouldn’t have anything to do with western or eastern values. For example, they could have given Mulan’s sister a personality. Giving your character one is not a western/Americanized value, it’s part of what means to make a well written story.
Without that, her character seems completely pointless. Seriously, I keep thinking what was the point of her character, besides being a disappointing replacement of the grandma. I’d like to think that she was the movie’s way to represent how more conservative values are still valid, if the woman chooses so. Her wanting to get married and have a traditional family doesn’t diminish her value as a person. They could have made a scene with the two sisters still being able to bond with each other, even if they had very different views of the world.
But since we never find out about her motivations or desires, it is left unknown whether this is what she chose for herself or if she is just another victim of her circumstances. And I ask myself why, since it could have been so easily to do that. You could have replaced the scene where kid Mulan is combing her sister’s hair (which, for what I can remember, only serves to further stablish the sister’s fear of spiders… which they make clear in other two scenes) if the movie’s duration was a problem.
Being left with no logical answers, I can only conclude that it was out of laziness. But it doesn’t end there, does it? Because I think “ok, so they were lazy, then they could have done what every lazy student does when they don’t have any motivation left and copy-pasted the original. Didn’t they do that with the Lion King already?”
And I get that it didn’t work with that one, but that’s because you shouldn’t somber up a movie that has anthropomorphic animals, that also heavily relied on being an animated movie. Mulan doesn’t rely on that; Mulan was inspired by a legend. Live-action Mulan had already been made with good results, so what couldn’t they have just copy pasted their own original? If they didn’t have the energy to give it a proper, well-made twist (i.e., Maleficent), the least they could have done is respect its predecessor.
But they took away all the things that made Mulan great in the first place, to made her what every writer will tell you not to do. Making her being born with extraordinary skills, which then results in her not having to work for her merits, is something even I, a nobody, knows not to do. I’m not even going to address how taking agency away from her sends the wrong message to the little girls that are going to see this sad excuse of a movie.
What I’m trying to say, it may not be comparable to a lazy student copying the homework of one of the most accomplished students, but it is as if they based their work on that, just butchering all the parts that made the accomplished student’s work good. And, unlike with the lazy student whose reasons might be justifiable, Disney had no excuse to do so, because it is their job.
It is their job to deliver a well written story or, if that’s too demanding, to at least make a movie with a happy-go feeling (is that grammatically correct?) that sends a well-meaning message. Instead, the message this movie (I would say, purposefully) delivers is that you can only accomplish great things if you’re born special.
Us, regular folks, especially regular women, especially regular women born in less than ideal circumstances, are doomed. And that’s what’s sad.
 Links to sources used:
1.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZccG-wtt5FA&ab_channel=AccentedCinema
2.    https://twitter.com/tony_zy/status/1302743527240142849
Why “boycott” Mulan 2020 (not only because of what the lead actress said):
3.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/07/why-disneys-new-mulan-is-scandal/
4.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/whats-happening-in-xinjiang-is-genocide/2020/07/06/cde3f9da-bfaa-11ea-9fdd-b7ac6b051dc8_story.html
5.    What the actress did say: https://time.com/5653973/mulan-boycott-liu-yifei/
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