#the apathy of the western world never disappoints

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I think you have one of the most cultured blogs on tumblr and I respect your views (even where I disagree) because you are highly educated and experienced and not a knee jerk ranter like many here. Yet I was disappointed by your post on Islam and West with a quote by the conservative writer, Mark Steyn. Don’t you think history shows that the hate filled anti-Islamism of the Crusades taught Muslims to rightly fear and hate Western Christians and that has continued down to our present day?

There’s a lot to unpack here so thank you for your thoughtful words. Thank you for being sincerely honest and open and I hope I can reciprocate in the same way. I don’t claim a monopoly on truth and I am always open to be corrected if I know I am wrong in some way. I hope you are too.

Firstly, Mark Steyn - within the specificity of the quote alone - wasn’t attacking Islam so much as showing the slow burn decline of the West, especially Europe. He was admonishing Europeans for the state of their moral and political decay of their civilisation.

As a side note, Mark Steyn is now Canadian but originally born and raised English. As such he deploys wit and sarcasm in a British way that isn’t entirely understood by North Americans. I don’t always agree with Steyn but I like his colourful turn of phrase and stylish prose. he was a drama critic before he turned his hand to political commentating and so he knows how to provoke.

Secondly, I want to make clear that I am not anti-Islamic. I have a sincere respect and appreciation for Islamic arts and aesthetics. This comes from briefly living in those cultures such as India and Pakistan as a small child and then later backpacking across Iran and Central Asia and South East Asia, and even later serving in the British army in Afghanistan.

As a rule, I also respect people of genuine faith and what it means to them in their every day lives to be better people having learned to speak Urdu, Farsi, and Dari to a fairly conversant level. I have always been the recipient of generous hospitality and unexpected kindness, especially ordinary people I met on the buses or in the night market bazaars or remote villages when I was backpacking.

However speaking frankly, I won’t apologise for being anti-Islam when it comes to the religious Islamic hardcore - unwittingly aided by misguided leftists and PC multi-culturalists - who wish to threaten the fabric of our European heritage or where imported Islamic customs and cultural practices are incompatible with our native European traditions.

Questions of how and in what ways does Islam impact and even undermine the very fabric of European civilisation are legitimate ones provided we can leave aside the unhelpful histrionics of fear mongering and stop taking comfort in broad brush racist caricatures.

Taking easy pot shots at straw men of our created fears may serve as a release for pent up frustration in the short term but does nothing to take a serious approach to practical policies to solving these problems in the long term. We need to have an urgent, sober and clear sighted discussion about how far can western societies can allow Islamic customs and practices to continue to shape our traditional European identity. 

Thirdly, your view that Islam was peaceful until Western Christianity started the fight with the onslaught of the crusades is deeply flawed. Your view of the crusades is not unusual though. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature which is based on out of date historiography. 

The historiography of the crusades tends to focus on varying degrees on the three key medieval impulses that drove the crusades: piety, pugnacity, and greed.

In the popular imagination today the crusaders were nothing more than boorish bigots. In films like Kingdom of Heaven (2005), the best of the Christian knights are portrayed as being torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them.

Within the hallowed halls of academia the impression one gets comes down either believing the soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed - literally - task of slaughtering unbelievers. Or the Crusades were an early sort of European imperialism. Some ‘woke’ historians would go as far as to say confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.

The most famous semi-popular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose - written in the 1950s - with the judgment that the crusades were “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

Runciman was badly mistaken and his research has been surpassed as a new generation of historians have moved down fresh avenues of archival research. That’s the nature of historiography.

There will always be a sense of the complexity of each of the historical issues regarding the crusades and why historians often disagree with common popular, often unnuanced interpretations of historical events as popularised by Runciman. It is a topic that crusade historians discuss among themselves quite often, occasionally publishing articles in popular publications.

So I don’t buy in to the argument that literally all the crusaders were virtuous or had pure motives - I don’t think any serious historian does. Nor would I ever categorise all the crusaders on one side as the good guys and Islamic forces on the other as the bad guys. That’s just lazy and silly.

There is a story about Carole Hillenbrand, one of the present leading scholars on the crusades, who was invited by an interviewer in 2018 to venture an opinion on whether the Muslims who had encountered westerners in the Holy Land during the time of the crusades had seen the best of western Christendom in their midst, Hillenbrand agreed that - with notable and distinguished exceptions - they almost certainly had not. In turn what had the Western crusaders learned from their Islamic adversaries? "The most important thing that most of the crusaders who remained in the Holy Land learned ... was to use soap".

History is a two way street of complexity and contradictions. It’s also full of unexpected ironies as we shall see.

At the moment the piety argument is in the ascendancy and is often ascribed to the late great Cambridge historian Jonathan Riley Smith - arguably the most important crusades historian of modern times. As early as 1977, he argued that the crusade was a special type of holy war that was differentiated from all previous Christian holy wars by its unique institutional and penitential nature, thus it had a special religious appeal to those who participated. It was at first associated with pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the most penitential goal of all, and a place where devout Christians went to die, which may be why so many of the earliest crusaders were old men.

I find this argument more convincing because of the reams of research now been done and adds to our broader picture of the crusaders and their motivations.

So you might see the assumptions behind your question make you fall into the Runciman view of the Crusades - and that has been out of date for some time.

The historical truth is that Muslims had been attacking Christians for more than 450 years before Pope Urban declared the First Crusade. They needed no incentive to continue doing so. Islam was always in conflict with Western Christianity from the beginning.

But even here there is a more nuanced and complicated answer which I want you to consider.

Up until quite recently, Muslims remembered the crusades as an instance in which they had beaten back an insipid western Christian attack. Islamic popular belief that was prevalent in these societies that they were the winners, not the losers during the time of the crusades. Past Muslims never whined about the crusades because they saw themselves as the victors.

An illuminating vignette is found in one of Lawrence of Arabia’s letters, describing a confrontation during post-World War One negotiations between the Frenchman Stéphen Pichon and Faisal al-Hashemi (later King Faisal I of Iraq). Pichon presented a case for French interest in Syria going back to the crusades, which Faisal dismissed with a cutting remark: “But, pardon me, which of us won the crusades?”

This was generally representative of the Muslim attitude toward the crusades before about World War One - that is, when Muslims bothered to remember them at all, which was not often. Most of the Arabic-language historical writing on the crusades before the mid-19th century was produced by Arab Christians, not Muslims, and most of that was positive. There was no Arabic word for “crusades” until that period, either, and even then the coiners of the term were, again, Arab Christians. It had not seemed important to Muslims to distinguish the crusades from other conflicts between Christianity and Islam.

Nor had there been an immediate reaction to the crusades among Muslims. As the British historian, Carole Hillenbrand has noted, “The Muslim response to the coming of the Crusades was initially one of apathy, compromise and preoccupation with internal problems.”

By the 1130s, a Muslim counter-crusade did begin, under the leadership of the ferocious Zengi of Mosul. But it had taken some decades for the Muslim world to become concerned about Jerusalem, which is usually held in higher esteem by Muslims when it is not held by them than when it is.

Action against the crusaders was often subsequently pursued as a means of uniting the Muslim world behind various aspiring conquerors, until 1291, when the Christians were expelled from the Syrian mainland. And - surprisingly to Westerners - it was not Saladin who was revered by Muslims as the great anti-Christian leader - he was a Sunni Muslim of Kurdish ethnicity. That place of honour usually went to the more bloodthirsty, and more successful, Zengi and Baibars, or to the more public-spirited Nur al-Din.

The first Muslim crusade history did not appear until 1899. By that time, the Muslim world was rediscovering the crusades - but it was rediscovering them with a twist learned from Westerners. In the modern period at the end of the 19th Century, there were two main European schools of thought about the crusades.

One school, epitomised by people like Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, and Sir Walter Scott, and later echoed in the 20th Century Sir Steven Runciman, saw the crusaders as crude, greedy, aggressive barbarians who attacked civilised, peace-loving Muslims to improve their own penury state.

The other school, more romantic and epitomised by lesser-known figures such as the French writer Joseph-François Michaud, saw the crusades as a glorious episode in a long-standing struggle in which Christian chivalry had driven back Muslim hordes. In addition, Western imperialists began to view the crusaders as predecessors, adapting their activities in a secularised way that the original crusaders would not have recognised or found very congenial.

At the same time, nationalism began to take root in the Muslim world. Arab nationalists borrowed the idea of a long-standing European campaign against them from the former European school of thought - missing the fact that this was a serious mis-characterisation of the crusades - and using this distorted understanding as a way to generate support for their own agendas.

This remained the case until the mid-20th century, when, in Riley-Smith’s words, “a renewed and militant Pan-Islamism” applied the more narrow goals of the Arab nationalists to a worldwide revival of what was then called Islamic fundamentalism and is now sometimes referred to, a bit clumsily, as jihadism.

This led rather seamlessly to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, offering a view of the crusades so bizarre as to allow bin Laden to consider all Jews to be crusaders and the crusades to be a permanent and continuous feature of the West’s response to Islam.

Bin Laden’s conception of history was a feverish fantasy. He was no more accurate in his view about the crusades than he was about the supposed perfect Islamic unity which he imagined Islam enjoyed before the enduring influence of Christianity intruded. But the irony is that he, and those millions of Muslims who accept his message, received that message originally from their perceived enemies: the West.

So it was not the crusades that taught Islam to attack and hate Christians. Far from it. Those activities had preceded the crusades by a very long time, and stretch back to the inception of Islam. Rather, it was the West - based on faulty  scholarship based on misconceived principles sourced from the Age of Enlightenment - which taught Islam to hate the crusades.

The irony is rich is it not?

Thanks for the question.

#question #crusades #history #christendom #religious extremism #islamic civilisation #holy lands #historians

[briangroth27]

IT (2017) Review

IT is fantastic! I don’t remember much of the original miniseries except that Tim Curry was very good as Pennywise, but this felt like a whole other animal. I haven’t read the book, but the movie definitely made me want to. The tone was perfect, with just enough humor to get you through the ever-increasing tension created by Pennywise, Henry Bowers, and the general sense of dread from the town’s adults. There’s a palpable sense that even though the adults lived through similar events, they’re not going to be any help to the kids. One of my favorite subgenres is kids encountering the supernatural, and IT absolutely delivered!

Every single one of the kids did a spectacular job! They all felt like real, relatable kids and they’ve got incredible talent. These actors also formed an incredible sense of chemistry; like the young casts of Super 8 and Stranger Things, they felt like actual friends and I imagine shooting this was a lot of fun for them. The thing that perhaps let them down a bit was the runtime; at two hours and fifteen minutes, it’s understandable things had to be succinct, shortchanging a couple of the Losers. Stan (Wyatt Oleff) in particular didn’t get much to do, but even he had some great moments of characterization, such as when all the kids unceremoniously drop their bikes and run off, while he takes a moment to calmly use his kickstand. Since his bar mitzvah is the big moment in his life here, I think they could’ve explored what his idea of becoming a man was and how that played into dealing with Pennywise, particularly as this is a coming of age tale. Mike (Chosen Hansen) didn’t feel like he got much screentime in comparison to some of the others either, but I liked the connections to societal issues his story included; he experiences the racism in Derry the other kids don’t, pulling him a step further into the horror of the town than the other kids. I really liked Mike’s grandfather’s (Steven Williams) speech about Mike needing to decide whether he wanted to be the man killing sheep or the sheep being killed, because if he didn’t the world would decide for him. That felt especially relevant to today while playing into his arc of learning to stand up for himself (and he gets a particularly surprising climax to that arc!). Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) handled the exposition well (as did Hansen) and brought a plucky charm to his role as the new kid in town. He was easy to root for and sympathize with, and had several perfect adolescent moments like sneaking a peek at Bev’s room during a break from a rather disturbing clean-up session. Eddie’s (Jack Dylan Grazer) hypochondria provided him with a solid Achilles Heel, a great place for comedy to spring from, and a strong foundation for him to eventually stand up to his mom (Mollie Jane Atkinson). Grazer played all of those to their fullest extent! My friend pointed out that his mom’s obsessive overprotectiveness may’ve been brought on because she does know something evil is in Derry, she just doesn’t know what, and is protecting him the best way she can. That’s an interesting variation to the Derry adults’ forgetfulness/apathy about the evil in their town.

I was a little disappointed Richie (Finn Wolfhard) didn’t get a solo scare sequence outside the house on Neibolt Street like everyone else did, though if cutting it got us as much time with Ben, Mike, and Stan as we got, I’ll take it. Still, he had perhaps the most clearly-defined and strongest characterization of the kids; Wolfhard refused to let Richie be just another kid in the group. Going in, I thought he’d feel like his character on Stranger Things (probably because this is also 80s-set horror with kids encountering a monster), but Richie was totally different from Mike and Wolfhard sold it completely. Sofia Lillis was very good at achieving balance between Bev’s friendly, almost cheery outlook with her new friends and the jaded, knowing sensibility that had been forced on her by everyone else. The whole town seemed to see Beverly as a sex object or a slut, including creepy adults (like Mike, she’s deeper into the hell that is Derry than the others). Beverly knowing exactly how to work the adults to her advantage spoke not only to the fact that this is nothing new to her and she’s had to learn coping and survival skills, but to the tragedy that this was the case. Every scene with her father (Alvin Marsh) was incredibly uncomfortable given what he was, and I was rooting for her to escape the situation. Bill (Jaeden Leiberher) and Ben’s crushes on Bev worked well, though I think they could’ve played up the difference in their early meet-cutes a bit more: she’s nice to Ben and talks to him, while Bill sees her walking in near-slow-motion in dreamy sunlight. They also could’ve contrasted Stan exploring what it means to be a man (and Mike discovering what it means to be an African-American man) with her attempts to define what being a woman means outside of what everyone tells her she should be. The love triangle between Bev, Ben, and Bill was sweet, with neither of them expecting anything from her, and thankfully didn’t explode into jealousy the way I thought it would. Bill had the most personal connection to Pennywise via Georgie’s (Jackson Robert Scott) murder, and they mined it for all it was worth. I totally bought Leiberher as the kind of kid who could rally the others to go on an adventure to save the day. Bill’s stutter felt totally natural and never felt like Leiberher was playing a caricature of someone with a speech impediment. His relationship with Georgie was sweet and they felt like real brothers, so Bill’s pain over losing him felt real. Watching him literally fight through his sorrow and guilt over giving the boat to Georgie (and encouraging him to sneak out of the house) was great! Scott was perfect as Georgie too, showing just as much range in his limited scenes as the other kids got to: from scared of the basement and telling himself “I’m brave,” to carefree (and sneaky) kid playtime, to sad Bill wasn’t with him after his death, and finally horror as a manifestation of Pennywise, he was fully on par with the other young actors.

When I watched Georgie meet Tim Curry’s Pennywise as a kid, I remember being sadder about him losing his boat than encountering a killer clown in the sewer (I guess as a kid, losing a beloved toy was the more likely and pressing fear!). That was not the case here. Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise was playful enough with Georgie, but otherwise he was unsettling and a few jump scares got me. I liked how there were moments where his whole body would quiver and waver except his head, giving the impression that he was tightly coiled and ready to spring into an attack at any moment. He had an otherworldly sensibility about him—appropriate given what the deadlights are—and an overall creepy demeanor that was perfect. He didn’t echo Tim Curry’s Pennywise voice and that was a smart choice; Skarsgard was creepy in his own way. I really liked how he was able to pervert the entire town, popping in and out of murals to watch the kids, running a bizarre kid’s television show no one seemed to find strange, and possibly fueling (or feeding off of, which would be worse) the hate, apathy, and ugliness under Derry’s wholesome surface. Aside from school bullies and adults who varied from uninterested in protecting the kids to downright creepy predators, the real-world villainy mainly manifested in Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton). I imagine Henry is a bully to prove to himself that he’s not the only “paper man” who’ll crumble when confronted with fear. Even with that tenuous understanding, though, Henry is a total psychopath who was scarier than Pennywise (possibly because Pennywise needs to eat kids to survive, while Henry is just angry and violent for no reason). He was such a strong villain that they could’ve removed the supernatural altogether and it still would’ve worked as a solid coming of age movie. As it was, the supernatural was a perfect bonus to the story being told!

The move from the 50s setting to the 80s worked very well, with It’s manifestations (aside from Pennywise) reflecting the kids’ personal fears instead of classic movie monsters. I love Dracula and those monsters, but using the tragedies of Derry’s history and the personal struggles the kids are living through as Pennywise’s alternate forms works better. The one thing that stood out to me as perhaps not fitting with the ’89 setting was naming Bill’s bike Silver; would a kid in the late 80s have been a fan of the Lone Ranger? There was a failed movie in 1981 with Christopher Lloyd, but I don’t know if westerns or that character in particular were very popular by then. Maybe Bill’s dad (Geoffrey Pounsett) introduced him to the Lone Ranger and was a fan in his youth (I was born in the mid-80s and was aware of the Lone Ranger thanks to my parents). Perhaps this Silver is a reference to King’s Silver Bullet wheelchair in Cycle of the Werewolf and the Silver Bullet film instead (maybe Bill sees a connection between Marty’s paralysis and his stutter?). In any case, that was a very small thing and otherwise contemporary mentions like the AIDS epidemic (which played into Eddie’s hypochondria perfectly) made the time period feel real, while the presence of 80s movie posters, movies like Batman playing at the theater, and video games like Street Fighter made it feel like the 80s without being nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. The New Kids on the Block elements that appear in the film also served to build Ben’s character rather than just appearing as cheap jokes or because it was the late 80s.

Derry itself felt like a very real, relatable town that you might want to live in if you didn’t know what was beneath the surface. The house on Neibolt Street was a perfect haunted house that stuck out like a festering sore on the town, while also feeling like it was a natural part of this world. Cutting from animals walking though slaughterhouse stalls to kids heading through the school halls was a great, ominous bit of editing at the beginning. The pacing was excellent; while it felt like a long movie, it did so because it felt so full rather than because of dull scenes. When the kids first confronted Pennywise in 29 Neibolt street, I thought it could be the climax, but the movie keeps going to a very satisfying conclusion after that! It was smart to split the book into one movie for the kids and another for their adult counterparts; even if this weren't a huge success and sure to get the second half, it'd feel like a complete story. Whoever they cast as the adult versions of the Losers Club are going to have some impressive shoes to fill! I definitely hope they get the kids back for flashbacks in Chapter 2.

The film has a great feeling of dread (punctuated by some truly funny lines), excellent villains in Pennywise and Henry Bowers, and a young cast of fantastic actors. 2017’s IT (perfectly released 27 years after the story’s last adaptation in 1990!) is neck and neck with Kubrick’s The Shining as the best of the Stephen King adaptations. Definitely see this and get your Halloween season started off right!

  Full spoilers….

-I’m glad the sex scene in the sewer was left out. Obviously that’d be really screwed up to film/show/see, but I don’t think it would’ve fit even beyond the fact of the creepy content. Not only did these kids not need that to bond them, but I don’t think it would’ve fit with any of their characters as they were drawn here. Even boastful loudmouth Richie seems like the kind of guy who’d be intimidated by the prospect of sex if it actually presented itself. That’s to say nothing of the fact that Bev would’ve been forced into exactly the role the town wants her to take (and wants to punish her for taking), and that would’ve been a tragedy. The kids just hugging after their ordeal worked perfectly.

-I was so glad that there were no consequences to Bev killing her creepy father, even to her reputation (at least from what we saw) once word inevitably would get out about why she did it. It’s possible she was leaving town partially because of what people would say, but I’m choosing to believe she was just jumping at the chance for a fresh, happier start.

-I think the leeches I’ve heard of in the book for Patrick Hockstetter’s (Owen Teague) death would’ve been cooler than the burnt people he encountered in the sewer. That’s probably the one Pennywise manifestation that sounds better in the book than what was onscreen.

-Eddie changing the “Loser” signature on his cast to say “Lover” was a funny bit of characterization I wish we’d seen more of from him. Who is this kid—or who does he want to be—to proclaim himself that? Haha

-Eddie mistakenly calling placebos “gazebos” was perhaps the most unexpected laugh I’ve had in a theater in a long time.

-Given how little Stan got to do in this movie and what I’ve read about adult Stan’s part in the present-day portion of the book, I really hope his fate is changed in the sequel. If not, it’ll feel like he was just there to die.

-Finn Wolfhard gets maybe the best line in the movie with “…and now I’ve gotta kill this fucking clown!”

-There were a few Easter Eggs in the movie, including a picture of Tim Curry’s Pennywise!

-IT has perhaps some of my favorite stories from Twitter. One guy said someone in his screening released a single red balloon into the theater once the movie was over! Another theatergoer walked into his screening and there was a clown cosplayer sitting alone in the room, holding a single balloon. I’d have been severely unnerved. Hahaha I think it’d be great if theaters did things like this in an official capacity; it’d be a fun return to the promotional stunts of the 50s and 60s.

#it #finn wolfhard #jaeden leiberher #sofia lillis #bill skarsgard #chosen hansen #jackson robert scott #wyatt olef #Jack Dylan Grazer #Nicholas Hamilton #Jeremy Ray Taylor #pennywise #derry #bill denbrough #georgie denbrough #richie tozier #beverly marsh #ben hanscom #stanley uris #mike hanlon #henry bowers

[yesqwerty123blog]

Predator

“Climate change tells us that we have long been in the grip of a terrible hubris. A great arrogance. We have believed that we were the masters of the world — not its guardians, not its custodians, not its caretakers, and certainly not its servants. This arrogance says that the planet is a thing to be exploited, shredded, wrecked, burned down — turned into profit and power and control, essentially. We use it like monkeys — playing our little tribal games. We are a tribe of monkeys with the tools to destroy the world. We are a tribe of little monkeys who believed, amazingly, that they were gods. 

Once we worshiped things like fire and eagles. Then came revolutions — political, economic, industrial, technological, informational Now what do we worship? Money. Sex. Power. Mostly, ourselves. Maybe that’s why we’re so depressed, alienated, anxious, lonely. Maybe we’d be better off reinventing animistic cultures.  

[...]

What kind of species kills of all other life on the planet — the very life which nourishes it’s soil, it’s gardens, it’s bodies? Only a species that is something like a top predator — gone haywire.

Western thinking in particular  says that the human species is indeed one great predator. To be anything other than a predator, this line of thinking says, is to be weak, to be infirm, to be unworthy, to deserve to die, more or less. Every single aspect of our culture today tells us to be predatory, to be greedy, to be selfish, to take advantage, to put ourselves first.

Billionaires are becoming trillionaires, while middle classes around the globe collapse, which is leading countries like America, Brazil, and Poland to plunge into fascism. It says that we humans have become selfish, ignorant, and stupid things.

That is how you get an “America” — a rich country of poor people, a wealthy country of broke ones, a powerful country of powerless ones — because people will not stand beside one another, but only desire climbing over one another.

When the world is collapsing, as long as the other guy loses more, maybe I will still win. But that, my friends, is the logic of a fool. 

What else explains the strange pattern of our behaviour? Rage, followed by disappointment, followed by apathy, followed by a kind of rubber-necking, gawping, mesmerized, addiction to the very spectacle of our own ruin — smiling and laughing at our own downfall?

[...]

The opposite of the predator is the river, the tree, the mountain. It is the soil and the ocean and the stars. 

The opposite of the predator is the thing that nourishes and gives life.

The opposite of the predator is the mother, the life-giver, the healer, the guardian, the protector, the farmer, the consoler, the child. 

The opposite of a predator is a thing we don’t have a word for — because we have never bothered imagining ourselves as anything but predators, because we have never imagined the opposite of a predator as a worthwhile thing to begin with.“

by Umair Haque

[ivegotsomethingtosay]

The Dark Tower (movie review)

For a film which is kind of a western, kind of a sci-fi action flick, kind of a fantasy and kind of a horror film, I’m kind of disappointed how little there is to say about The Dark Tower. I’ve never read the books, so I can’t talk about what it does or doesn’t do right regarding the source material. There’s nothing egregiously awful for me to poke fun at, nor is there anything that stands out enough to warrant some larger discussion about the film’s place in the popular culture, or at the very least warrant a recommendation. The Dark Tower is just… fine. It’s okay. It’s a solid B-. Maybe a C+.

The titular “tower” is, in the context of the story, a giant structure which stands at the nexus of several different universes, protecting them from the evil forces that lurk outside. A sadistic wizard named Walter Padick (Matthew McConaughey) seeks to destroy the tower by harnessing the minds of children possessing a special power known as “the shine” (you know, in case you forgot that this was a Stephen King adaptation). Next up on his list is Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), a young boy living in New York city, and grieving the recent loss of his father. When Jake learns of his destiny and opens a portal to “Mid-World,” one of the tower’s many universes, he joins up with Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) the last in a line of Eastwood-eque “Gunslingers” tasked with protecting the tower, and the two set off to destroy Walter and save the universe.

The film ambles along at an amicable pace. Nothing feels too rushed, things aren’t lingered on for longer than they need, and Jake checks off the empty boxes in his “hero’s journey” Scantron like he’s been studying for this test since he was five. What the film makes no attempt to do, however, is offer any compelling reason why we should care for this universe that he and Roland are trying to save. Mid-World is a desolate landscape, empty and mostly unpopulated, and the fascinating, cross-over universe that seems to exist on the edge of frame remains unseen, unexplained, and as a result, uninteresting. For example, there’s an extended sequence at an abandoned theme park that promises some kind of interesting world building gag, and instead goes absolutely nowhere. When Jake and Roland eventually do come across Mid-World’s population, it’s a boring Western town with no distinguishing characters or characteristics.

This kind of apathy never “hurts” the film per-sea, but it makes it very difficult to leave an impression. Even the Gunslingers, with their cool code of ethics and sharp pistol skills, are relegated to forlorn discussions about how “great” they were back before Walter and his army took over, and a pathetic flash-back cut scene near the beginning of the movie. Roland finally does spring into action for the giant third-act shoot out, and while it’s certainly worth the wait, I couldn’t help but feel that it would have been more satisfying had we a bigger stake in his development as both a character, AND as a Gunslinger.

Look, I get it; the more and more content there is, the less and less room there is for fat. With hours and hours worth of things to watch, universes to explore, and franchises to build, the necessity to strip stories down to their essential components seems very real, and trust me when I say that Dark Tower is a lean piece of meat. But if you’re going to do minimalism, do it right. The cantina scene in the original Star Wars is a good example. You don’t have to go into excruciating detail about every alien spices in the Star Wars universe to make it feel like an actual universe. All you need is to make it feel real, make it feel like there’s something going on behind the scenes.

That takes a lot of talent, as a filmmaker, a storyteller, and a technician. But while director Nikolaj Arcel is no George Lucas, he’s a far cry from Josh Trank. His action scenes are thrilling, and the little bit of actual character that he does slip into the proceedings, including an extended sequence where Roland wanders confused around New York city, shows hints to a bright future as a blockbuster director. I’m interested to see what he does next, even if I’m not necessarily interested in another Dark Tower movie. I’m also interested to see what the film means for Idris Elba, who’s awesome as Roland, and makes me wonder why a bigger franchise hasn’t snatched him up yet. He succeeds where the script fails, in giving his character—and the world around him—an appropriate amount of charm and grit. Unlike McConaughey (who can’t seem to decide if he’s still in one of those Lincoln commercials or not), his performance is effortless, and his on-screen chemistry with Taylor is potent.

The Dark Tower should satisfy your sci-fi action movie cravings until the next Marvel movie comes out, but that’s about all it will do. Two months, and everyone will have forgotten this movie existed (that is, unless Elba does end up being cast as the next James Bond or something equally high profile, in which case it will go down in history as the first time we started to take him seriously as a bankable Hollywood star). Either way, your tolerance for standard, cookie-cutter popcorn flicks will be the deciding factor in whether to go out and see it. Personally, I’d rather stay here on Keystone Earth.

OVERALL RATING: 6.5 / 10 SEE IT OR SKIP IT: Skip it.

#the dark tower #Movie Reviews

[ivoryandbonerpg-blog]

                               ♔ GUINEVERE DELACROIX ♔

( the basics. )

AGE: 23 LINEAGE: Pureblood SCHOOL / ALUMNI: Beauxbatons Academy of Magic HOUSE: Férocité ALLIANCE: Death Eater (Inner Circle)

( personality. )

✓ / ✗ : intelligent, domineering, cold, haughty, sly

( biography. )

• In a prestigious manor isolated in the French countryside, just outside of roaring Paris, Guinevere Delacroix was born. Her entrance into the world was seen as a miracle--something almost divine, so to speak, from the heavens themselves. Her father, an aristocrat with deep pockets and a bloodline as old as France itself, was nearing sterility. Though he had produced another child through a prostitute some fifteen years prior, the child had been disowned and bastardized in Raphael Delacroix’s eyes. Guinevere was his hope and savor; a prayer that his respectable lineage would live on through a pure, undiluted heir. Truly, Guinevere was the product of a man desperate for a child as he neared fifty and the maternal desires of his young wife, Camille, who was once a coveted model for high end witch couture. Though Guinevere’s father had been hoping for a boy to “pass on the Delacroix legacy through firm tradition”, he was overall pleased with his daughter’s birth, nevertheless. What he didn’t know--couldn’t have known, so soon--was that his daughter would grow into a woman who could easily take on a dozen men. She was a witch to be revered and feared; it was a label Guinevere found herself growing increasingly attached to with age. As a child, watching her power-hungry, domineering father grow enraged with her mother and strike her out of anger and disappointment, Guinevere vowed to herself that she would never allow herself to be taken advantage of. She would stand unwavering; she would not fall.

• But despite the abusive relationship her parents shared, they valued one common ground: their only child. And regardless of the support--albeit as cold and detached as it appeared--of both of her vain parents, the material possessions and comfort they gifted Guinevere with was not enough to satisfy the curious young girl with eyes like midnight and features carved of porcelain. She longed for more; she wanted to touch the stars and claim them as her own; she wanted to feel the world stir and bend under her feet, ready to mold to her command. She was a sharp, gifted young witch. Quiet in childhood, cold and calculating in adolescence. After being accepted into Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and the Durmstrang Institute, both schools of magic with a desire to have the Delacroix heiress attend their equally prestigious schools, Guinevere’s parents decided on the former rather than the latter. They were longtime supporters and believers in blood purification and supremacy, and wanted to make sure their daughter received a top notch education, no matter where she attended. Though she was sorted into House Férocité with other intelligent, ambitious, like-minded individuals, Guinevere had a knack for keeping to herself. She found little desire for the companionship of others, sticking to her studies and silent observations of the way the wizarding world operated around her. She felt apathy for the trivial problems and dilemmas her peers faced; many thought her cold-hearted or standoffish, though dared not voice this to her face.

• By the time Guinevere was set to graduate and move up in the world, whispers of Lord Voldemort returning to power were already crackling throughout Western Europe. Though Guinevere had been but a young girl when the Dark Lord and his followers took reign in the world’s First Wizarding War, she had followed the Dark Lord’s theologies and timeline of power almost religiously throughout her youth. Her father, having been a distant supporter of what Lord Voldemort preached to the magical community in the United Kingdom, had collected Death Eater memorabilia and propaganda as a hobby during Guinevere’s childhood. If she wished, she could recall--even to this date--the feeling of thrill and eagerness she felt whenever she sneaked into her father’s private study, ogling the silver-plated masks and soft, black cloaks that encompassed Lord Voldemort’s followers and their regime of terror. She was enthralled by this timeless wizard’s ideas on blood purification and supremacy. She wanted to feel that power just once in her life; she wanted to become deeply, desperately acquainted with a man who was capable of holding the world in his claws and making it bend and bleed at his very will.

• Overwhelmed with determination to seek out the man who was responsible for nearly conquering the wizarding world roughly twenty years prior, Guinevere left the comfort of France shortly following her seventeenth birthday in pursuit of what remained of the Dark Lord’s followers. She found, among the known former members, those who remained steadfast and loyal, and those who had grown weak and rejected his name and ideals in the public eye. She scrutinized the indecisive everywhere she went; how could they turn their backs on the only man who had ever properly ruled them? How could they change and bend to fit the mold of society when the prize of righteousness in his eyes would be all the more fulfilling? She burned the world wherever she walked; torturing information out of people who had potential leads on where she could find the Dark Lord; slipping in and out of the cracks of Europe, leaving behind a trail of shadows and darkness in her wake. She was a woman without friends, without morals, but with the steely determination of a monster on a mission. And by the time she located Bellatrix Lestrange, freshly broken out from Azkaban and vengeful against those who had wronged her Master in his time in hiding, Guinevere submitted herself to the woman’s insane rituals and orders in an effort to draw herself closer to the Dark Lord himself. She spent her time as a low-ranking follower of the Dark Lord plotting privately against her comrades; weeding out those she felt weak and ratting them out to Rodolphus Lestange and his lunatic wife. Guinevere was a woman with only one thing on her mind: the art of conquest and conquering a race of humans she felt were biologically inferior.

• Now, at just 23, Guinevere is among the youngest of Lord Voldemort’s exclusive Inner Circle. She has proven to be an invaluable asset to the Dark Lord during war; her combination of quick thinking, steely resolve, and moral ambiguity have served Lord Voldemort well in a time of war, and Guinevere continues to desire to prove herself to her Master in every fathomable way. Though she works intimately with other members of the Dark Lord’s precious Inner Circle, Guinvere has hardened her heart against everyone. She trusts no one, loves nothing, and embraces death rather than fears it. Witnessing the abuse of her mother as a child has hardened Guinevere’s heart against creating lasting relationships with anyone; she hasn’t taken the time to even write to her parents in the last three years. And every wizard she murders, every witch she tortures, serves as a reminder that she is in command. Not just of her own life, but that of others, as well. She will not bend. She will not break. She will be victorious, and charge into battle headfirst, ready and determined to make the Dark Lord the beacon of hope for a race of disgusting, diluted magical folk.

( sexuality. )

up to player

( connections. )

⚔ Fenrir Greyback: Guinevere feels no particular kinship for any of the Dark Lord’s followers, though she must admit that Fenrir has become a favorite of hers. She views him as a pet, necessary to tame and house train, rather than as a companion she considers herself on equal footing with. She finds his deranged loyalty refreshing in a world of cowards and hopes, albeit in her own unique way, that he makes it through this war fully intact.

the role of GUINEVERE DELACROIX is currently OPEN.

#lsrp #lsrpg #literate rp #lit rp #hp rp #guinevere delacroix #char #fem #death #oc #tw: abuse mention #open

[tokupedia]

Hey Marco, I had my own Ideas when I had the free time:

Cutie Honey GRX (Generation RemiX): An imaginary anime that if it were real would be on Sundays and advertised during Superhero Time. This takes elements of Cutie Honey’s long history and blends them into a new spin (including aspects of The Live). 

Dr. Gou Kisaragi is experimenting with an unknown space isotope and nanotechnology that can make a system capable of making any form of matter materialize from surrounding air molecules. He is targeted for his research by Panther Claw and his pregnant wife Eiko is attacked by an assailant who works for them. Desperate to save his dying unborn child after his wife dies, Dr. Kisaragi uses the device to create an artificial womb and repair the cells and create nutrients to sustain the baby. 

However, an unforeseen result happens as the baby begins self replicating its cells into fetal clones with the genetic quirk of differing hair colors and become fully grown infants in a matter of weeks. Dr. Kisaragi is then blessed with four healthy newborn daughters, Honey, Seira, Miki and Yuki. 

19 years later Seira is getting married to a boy named Akira Hazuki, but their wedding is crashed by Panther Claw, who have finally found Dr. Kisaragi after going into hiding for so long. Akira is revealed to be a demon-like agent of Panther Claw and Gou tells his girls to change to fight Panther Claw off. The four becoming the shapeshifting superpowered Honey Warriors: Cutie, Misty, Hurricane and Flash. Together they fight Panther Claw led by the evil Panther Zora and try to solve the mystery of their mother’s killer!

Kamen Rider Pecos:

It is the future ...The Fire from the Stars has burned our world, In this age of fear.... a legend is told .... that the Waters of Strength and Wisdom shall cleanse the Water of Evil...and wash away the Fire from the Stars.

I envisioned a Wild-Western cyberpunk sci-fi “bad future” where the heroics of the Kamen Riders of the past get the attention of a race called the Pra’meths (Prah-Meeths, a play on Prometheus), who arrive in our galaxy long after the all the Riders have passed on or died in battle. The Pra’Meths are weapon makers and love war so much they consider it an actual religion, viewing slaughter and death as the divine work of God. Once they begin to invade, they are disappointed as no matter how many they hurt or kill, the Riders of legend will not come out. 

Due to centuries of political corruption, apathy towards their citizens needs and living in spoiled luxury from corporate bribes, the leaders of the Earth surrender immediately after their weapons and defenses are destroyed and turn over our world to the Pra’meths in an act of cowardice. The aliens then use our planet as a weapons testing ground, scorching the Earth and leaving little water on it. 

In the refugee city of Leone, The Pra’meths try to use their war devices in the hopes of bringing out humanity’s “war gods” the Kamen Riders. Only to find a ghostly figure and an actual Kamen Rider appearing before them! 

The female whip wielding Rider named Nile is the city’s protector and the “ghost” says that she has been preparing for the arrival of the Pra’meths. The ghost also envisions that the Water of Wisdom shall soon meet the Water of Strength. During a tough fight, Nile sees a stranger walking into town and tells him to back away. He does not and dons a belt of his own, becoming a wind whipping, gun toting Kamen Rider known as Pecos!

The motif is modern style/cyberpunk western cowboys and cowgirls mixed with a desert animal from myths. Nile is based on a Raven and has a final form based on a Thunderbird. Pecos is obviously based on the legend of Pecos Bill (as it involves a wind theme of riding tornadoes) and is themed on a Rattlesnake. His final form is based on a Quetzalcoatl. I wanted him to have the classic “double scarf” like V3, but stylized in a way that gives it the illusion of a duster coat when it isn’t blowing in the wind. Nile has a dark blue scarf with a sun, moon and star on it, which references an old Native American myth about how Raven made the sky. 

There is also a villain Rider the Pra’Meths “created” to try to deal with the threat after several failures, Khabur, an “Amazon gone wrong” idea of a wolf themed Rider who is mute and feral. An abducted human programmed to kill from childhood and has a psychotic animalistic nature. His final form is based on a Jackal. He is also sort of modeled in terms of personality when he isn’t all berserker on Jack Palance, the silent, black hat wearing evil cowboy seen in most old westerns. His belt can siphon the life force energy of people and animals to regenerate or simply weaken any resistance, based on data the Pra’Meths took from Kamen Rider J. (I thought of this before Genm was a thing)

The “water” thing is a metaphor, as the “ghost” (who is actually a “pure” good Pra’Meth from an alternate reality) thinks that the Riders will “wash away” the evil that burned the Earth and allow the planet to slowly heal itself. (Also, the Riders in the series are named after rivers) The “Soul Rounds” orbs they use are drawn from Earth’s remaining life force from a special spring or from ancient spirits of myth (In other words: Legend Rider toys!). 

First and foremost, I want action. The gimmicks of the real shows proper are fine, but I decided that the Soul Rounds should be of a limited supply and expendable. This would allow more martial arts and gunplay to be incorporated and tense situations where it may seem the Riders may not win or have to retreat to plan out a strategy to defeat the enemy. I liked the old days when a Rider worked at it to gain victory. The Pra’Meths being weapons manufacturers  and warmongers, would have various combat variants of footsoldier humanoid drones called Dorugs. (Infantry, Flying, stealth, human duplicates.)

Plasmids: The monsters of the week. I wanted to go back to basics by having remodeled humans who become monsters and are beyond saving. These people represent the worst in humanity: serial killers, thieves, some of the politically corrupt, racist extremists, scientists who abuse their gifts to harm others, a game hunter who hunts humans and at least one who is a child murderer. These are meant to be the Pra’meths evaluation of humans, just tools and worshippers of death. However, the Riders represent humanity’s compassion and desire for survival and preservation of life.

Each Plasmid is enhanced with powers that are unique and interesting, at least to me. A human female lieutenant of the bad guys who is a bat that can nullify light and sound in a surrounding area and fire sonic blasts. A lizardman who gets bigger and stronger whenever he is exposed to pain via an implanted gland that creates a steroid. A polar bear monster that has a “cryonic venom” that slowly freezes its victim secreted from the claws etc.

Despite going a bit apocalyptic, I wanted to show that humans are a resilient bunch and put a bit of optimism in it, showing the citizens of Leone building gardens, businesses and houses and using whatever they can find to make technology to cope with the hostile environment. 

While there are moments where they feel despair or just pure hopelessness, the sight of the Kamen Riders never giving up on them give the people the drive to keep going, thus Leone thrives and grows as their spirits are raised and more and more of the Pra’meths are defeated.

What do you think sirs?

#fanfiction #kamen rider #tokusatsu

[kileymarieart-blog]

“Filmmakers with Distinct Styles: What makes their Work so Mesmerizing?” Spring 2017 Volume 5 issue 2 of The Avenue. Full article text below:

“In films it is standard for the storyline and plot details to be portrayed through direct actions and dialogue. Looking past these obvious, surface-level aspects, however, there is so much more that goes into our perception and experience of a film. From emotional response and psychological pleasure to characterization and mood-building, directors must take into account every facet of the visual and auditory senses when creating their work. 

Components such as lighting, wardrobe, soundtrack, camera perspective and colors influence our viewing experience more than we may realize. Skilled filmmakers understand this and take care to create harmony between these components and the mood, character and plot they are trying to convey. Filmmakers who are even more skilled do not only take the complete audience experience into account; they add their own personal flare and motifs to every cinematic detail they touch. Making such personalized films goes beyond just creating cohesiveness in a single film; it establishes a specific aesthetic that exists throughout a director’s entire body of work. 

One of the most important and influential decisions filmmakers are faced with when directing a movie are the costumes their characters wear. Usually, key aspects of a character’s personality are expressed through their fashion choices, as is the case with people in real life. Fashion has always been a means of creating a first and lasting impression in people’s minds and communicating a specific identity or image.

Filmmakers Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese are some of the best in the business at adding their distinctive style to each movie they produce. Through their use of clothing, each director enriches their films with an added element of storytelling and often influences fashion trends and movements in the real world simultaneously.

Wes Anderson

Popular films: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tenenbaums.

The master of color schemes, Wes Anderson never disappoints with his carefully selected and arranged sets. Each film seems to be dipped in its own color palette: the warm tones of The Royal Tenenbaums, the soft pastel colors mixed with dashes of primary colors in The Grand Budapest Hotel and the faded primary colors of Moonrise Kingdom, to name a few. 

Anderson’s films often feature main characters who are outcasts; this aspect of their characterization is reinforced by his out-of-place wardrobe choices. Margot’s fur coat in The Royal Tenenbaums is a perfect example of this. It separates her from the rest of the characters, highlighting her identity as the adopted child. Her fur coat can also be seen as a symbol of secrecy and protection, which coincides with her enigmatic personality and the hidden feelings she harbors for her brother. At the same time, her brother Richie’s sunglasses parallel this characteristic of secrecy, as he is hiding romantic feelings for Margot as well. 

In The Darjeeling Limited, the Whitman brothers’ elegant suits provide a stark contrast against the setting of India. The suits are representative of their high status, apathy and vanity. Additionally, in Moonrise Kingdom, Suzy Bishop’s retro high socks, beret, pastel-pink collared dress and eyeshadow identifies her as a young girl dealing with more mature issues, such as sexual desires or independence. Through his careful styling, Anderson successfully communicates the major traits of each of his characters, all the while supplying the world with some iconic looks.

Quentin Tarantino

Popular movies: Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill (I and II), The Hateful Eight, Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds, Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Tarantino’s films can be described as nothing less than over-the-top, humorous, and dangerously chaotic. Ironically, though, Tarantino creates this trademark out-of-control mood through very controlled style and aesthetic choices. A large contributor is his use of a wealth of different style influences in his films—anything from Westerns to kung fu movies—as well as his unrestricted use of vulgarity and violence.

Tarantino distinguishes his characters from those in other movies through the use of simple yet iconic clothing and hairstyles. He does not shoot for subtlety in any aspect of his movies, including wardrobe; he instead focuses on exaggerated, memorable clothing that simplifies the character to a more general identity while still making a lasting impression. Some of the best examples that immediately come to mind are Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill, and the gangster team in Reservoir Dogs. Mia pulled off what has now become quite an iconic look: white blouse, black dress pants, cropped black bob and red lipstick. The sharp contrasts in this look, its lack of embellishments, and its similarity to the clothing of Jules and Vincent represent both her position of power in the film as Marcellus’s wife and her ability to exercise this power. Similarly, O-Ren Ishii’s costume is representative of her power. Ishii wears both a black kimono and a white kimono—both compliment her swords—the simplest image of a (half) Japanese past-assassin, current-mob-member. Finally, the classic black and white suits of the heist gang in Reservoir Dogs became one of the most iconic gangster looks of the ‘90s. Their attire represented their identities in its inherent irony; the gangsters are wearing a sort of costume to hide their true occupation. It is apparent that Tarantino’s costumes are not simply decorative; they are an integral part of the identity of each character. 

 All of these fashion choices combined with all of Tarantino’s other stylistic choices create a film noir body of work characterized by chaos. This chaos, in turn, helps to reinforce his common theme of revenge and creates an impactful and distinct viewer experience.

Sofia Coppola

Popular movies: The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere

Sofia Coppola is known for her nostalgic and dreamlike cinematography. On top of having her own killer fashion sense, the wardrobe styles in her films have been influential to the fashion world as well.

The most notable Coppola film in terms of wardrobe is her debut movie, The Virgin Suicides. The clothing she chose for the Lisbon sisters feels like an authentic representation of the ‘70s, including lace dresses, florals and bandeau tops. This wardrobe characterizes the Lisbons as innocent but also rebellious; by dressing in this manner, they defy their conservative parents, while also emanating an air of femininity and naiveté. The sisters spurred an off-screen fashion movement that brought back the retro styles of the ‘70s and inspired pieces by Rodarte and Marc Jacobs (e.g. Jacobs’s Daisy campaign which was made in collaboration with Coppola). In her film Lost in Translation, Coppola’s use of pink wigs and lingerie contribute to her classic dreamy aesthetic. In Marie Antoinette, Coppola included extravagant and bold 18th century dresses, which, in Marie Antoinette’s case, comes off to reveal vulnerability in the form of elegant white knee-socks with baby blue ribbons. 

 Sofia Coppola is a master of using costumes not only to express the identity of her characters, but also to establish the overall light and nostalgic aesthetic she has become famous for. 

Stanley Kubrick

Popular movies: Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove

Although the late Stanley Kubrick made films that cover a wide variety of genres, he was still a filmmaker with one of the most distinctive styles to date. Many of his films dealt with the dark side of human nature, particularly dehumanization and psychological deterioration, which can be seen in his works Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

His themes were portrayed well through his costumes, most notably through the use of strange masks and robes in Eyes Wide Shut. These peculiar ensembles (styled by past Vogue editor Marit Allen) were mirrored by the normal dresses and suits that the characters wore during the day, creating a contrast between reality and fantasy, restraint and freedom and  light and dark. Alex’s iconic costume in A Clockwork Orange consisted of a white shirt and pants, a bowler hat, a cane, military boots, suspenders, a jock strap and false lashes for one eye. This look was off-putting and ironic, and it has inspired lines by designers such as Chitose Abe and Marjan Pejoski. Additionally, the costumes of The Shining expressed the identities of the characters, from Danny’s vibrant sweaters to Jack’s more drab look. The film has inspired pieces in a collection by Stuart Vevers for Coach as well as Alexander McQueen’s entire Fall 1999 show.

Kubrick had a devotion to creating each film to be unlike anything the audience had seen before. He continually pushed the boundaries of controversial topics such as sanity and sexuality, and he meticulously planned for his costumes to be representative of these themes as well. 

Martin Scorsese

Popular movies: The Departed, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island, Mean Streets

Martin Scorsese’s own life and perspectives influenced his films and their style heavily. His own struggle with drug problems are reflected in his movies, which usually contained gangsters, drugs, fame, greed and corruption. Similar to Kubrick, Scorsese uses dark humor in his films to strengthen the theme of human nature’s dark side. Like Tarantino, Scorsese uses violence in his films. 

The filmmaker’s costume choices contribute to the gritty, almost ominous quality of many of his films, and have influenced fashion trends over the years. In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle’s edgy look of distressed jeans, a western shirt and M-65 jacket was readily adopted by fans and was slightly reminiscent of Woodstock days. The double-breasted, deep-collared suits of Goodfellas started trends in urban areas of America during the ‘90s. These suits, as well as the Armani suits worn by Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, represent the characters’ entitlement and greed for wealth and power.”

#text #editorial #writing #the avenue #magazine #spring 2017 #spring #2017 #movies #films #filmmakers #auteurs #kubrick #scorsese #wes anderson #tarantino #coppola #sofia coppola #northeastern university

[interwebsfamous]

My Review of Todd VanDerWerff’s Review of Kong: Skull Island. SPOILERS GALORE for both.

I went to see Kong: Skull Island this weekend and loved it. It was not the world’s greatest cinematic triumph. It wasn’t even the best movie I saw in the last two weeks, which was Logan. However, having sat through a significant amount of films about giant robots and/or monsters punching each other, I can say definitively, that it is at the height of the genre. So, it surprised me to read Todd VanDerWerff’s review of Kong: Skull Island this Monday.

VanDerWerff is someone whose work I have been reading since his days at the AV Club. I frequently agree with his takes and find his writing style to be clear and concise, yet almost luminous and lyrical in its artistic quality. What I mean to say is that VanDerWerff is one of the greatest journalistic writers working today. However, I had such an odd reaction to his review that it compelled me to write a review of his review.

I have recently been following Alex Jones on social media. It has given me the stereotypical insight into how the other side thinks. One of the things I’ve noticed is the number of takes Jones provides that are simply accurately describing something I would be pleased with or disappointed in and then providing the exact opposite emotional response. In that sense, and only that sense, VanDerWerff’s review struck me as oddly Alex Jonesian.

IF YOU READ FURTHER, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! GIANT, END OF THE MOVIE TWIST-TYPE SPOILERS!

I don’t know what VanDerWerff was expecting from this movie, as he accurately lists movies that I would compare it too. He notes Gareth Edward’s Godzilla, which is vastly inferior to Edward’s movies Monsters and, of course, Rogue One. He also compares it to the previous King Kong films, particularly the 2005 remake, and Apocalypse Now. I think Kong: Skull Island compares favorably to all those movies.

VanDerWerff’s primary complaint is that this particular version of King Kong is not really faithful to the original story of King Kong. I’m not really sure why VanDerWerff makes this complaint. I’m sure that there are plenty of movies VanDerWerff has seen that he thought were improved by playing loose with the source material.

I absolutely loved the 2005 movie Kong. I have admittedly not seen the original 1933 film. However, the 2005 movie felt to me like it was about something, specifically, show business. In that movie, Kong was the pitied victim of the greed and voyeurism of the show business industry. Kong was a romantic lead in that movie. However, he was churned up and spit out by the modern entertainment industry.

What I’m saying is that this story has been told. We do not need another reboot or remake rehashing the details of King Kong’s rise and fall in 1930s Manhattan. We most certainly do not need yet another version of What About Eve, Gypsy, or Showgirls walking us through the rapacious apathy of the entertainment industry towards its subjects. Also, in terms of robots and/or monsters punching each other, we’re getting a Pacific Rim 2, Transformers Infinity?, a Power Rangers reboot, and whatever the Cloverfield monster is up to next. That genre is being fully exploited.

While I agree with VanDerWerff that the character of Kong was compelling in this movie, it is precisely because he does not get much screen time. The filmmakers wisely leave us wanting more. The glimpses we get of this monster are awe-inspiring. The scene where a downed American chopper pilot watches Kong take a drink from a lagoon was to me the most amazing use of special effects and a simulacrum of the normal laws of physics to both humanize and exaggerate a monster.

The biggest problem with movies about robots and/or monsters punching each other is that, by the third act, we frequently get bored of watching them fight. The traditional solution to this problem is to create even more ridiculous fight scenes involving even yet more preposterous monsters. What Kong: Skull Island did is that it told a relatable and thematically unified story about people that occasionally has fight scenes between monsters. The fact that this movie is holding back more details about Kong for inevitable sequels merely forced it to do better story-telling. Also, by showing us the corpses of Kong’s parents, we are reminded of both his mortality and his ultimate loneliness. Additionally, the final fight scene was really cool.

VanDerWerff, in fact, identifies the thematic unity of the movie in his review.

“Thus, Skull Island deliberately takes much of its central idea from perhaps the best Vietnam movie ever made: 1979’s Apocalypse Now. Like that movie, this one is about a long trip into the jungle to find a legendary figure…

“Jackson plays a very human monster, a man who gradually comes to be obsessed with having his revenge, which makes for a potentially intriguing flip of Apocalypse Now: Instead of having to find a monster in the jungle, what if the monster was in the search party all along?”

I would agree with everything VanDerWerff says here except for “potentially.” What he sees as a lost potential, I see as a potent retelling carrying a powerful critique of the original. The problem of Apocalypse Now, and, its source material, Heart of Darkness, is that both works attempt to understand the problems of imperialism and colonialism by “othering” the imperialists. Both Colonels Kurtz are seen as madmen who have lost touch with the civilizing forces of white civilization. They have lost themselves in a jungle, literally, becoming the savages they seek to rule.

This Eurocentric and patronizing view of colonialism merely buys into a racist narratives of the colonized as inferior and deserving of their suffering. If they were stronger and more civilized, they would have driven the Europeans away. Instead, they are unable to avoid the predation of the most savage of white men. Therefore, it is up to the superior white man to restrain the impulses of their own fellow whites. If you need more arguments along these lines, just Google “noble savage.”

However, Kong: Skull Island flips this narrative on its head. Jackson’s Packard is totally powerless in the face of Kong. Kong swats the helicopters from the sky as one would swipe away a particularly bothersome insect. Toward the end of the film, where Packard seemingly has Kong in his grasp, Kong is shown to be perfectly capable of protecting himself. He does not need the noble white man to save him. By naming Tom Hiddleston’s character Conrad, presumably after Joseph Conrad, author of the Heart of Darkness, the movie makes this implicit critique almost explicit.

Instead, it is the various good liberals who are problematic here. Every one of them plays a role in this hopeless journey of colonization. The scientists are doomed by their curiosity that does not carry with it a respect for the lives and feelings of those they are investigating. Conrad suffers from a lack of forcefulness in confronting Packard throughout the movie. Additionally, there are a number of moments in the film where the “good” characters inadvertently make Kong’s life harder, by lighting a cigarette or informing Kong’s adversaries as to their location.

Weaver, the photographer played by Brie Larson, is depicted as hopelessly naïve about the power of media to defend the powerless. Hiddleston critiques her for being a “war photographer,” which she reframes as being an “anti-war photographer.” Also, at a crucial moment in the film, Weaver herself fires a flare that alerts Kong’s adversary to their presence, endangering Kong and all the people left alive on the island. At the end of the film, Weaver appears to agree that she will never share any of the images that she has taken on her journey.

The reason why Kong is the most sympathetic character is because he’s the one hanging out at his house mostly keeping to himself and the humans are the ones that invade his homeland either for science, military aggression, or pure noxious curiosity. None of the people is quite as bad as Packard, whose brooding cruelty Jackson has a blast projecting onto the screen. These other characters are bad precisely because they are bland. All of them are depicted as simply going along with the mission even though they knew it was a bad idea because they did not have the guts to say no. To the extent these human characters suffer in this movie, it is clear that their own ignorance and lack of humility is the cause. VanDerWerff’s critique that they seem to be left with nothing to do ignores the fact that they are doing something important with that nothing.

However, the second best human performance of this movie belongs to John C. Reilly’s Hank Marlow, a sort of anti-Kurtz pushing a further ciritique of Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. Marlow has learned to survive on Skull Island for decades by becoming humble. He made friends with the Japanese pilot who shot him down. He shows respect for the customs and traditions of his adversaries and the population of the Island. While he longs to escape, his considerable wisdom is ignored.

He is ignored precisely because he is somewhat out of touch with Western manners. He plays his character’s unhingedness with the kind of deft touch that Reilly brings to any portrayal. Reilly is at the same time both heavy handed and compassionate toward all his characters. The fact that Marlow is somewhat insane keeps the other humans from listening to his good advice. However, Marlow has actually gone somewhat saner than all the other humans by learning and respecting the world in which he was trapped. To the extent VanDerWerff thinks Marlow resembles Dr. Steve Brule, he has it backwards. Brule is a goofy know-it-all who doesn’t really know anything. Marlow is full of goofy humility, but actually understands what is going on.