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tilbageidanmark · 2 years

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Movies I watched this week #69

Flee, a harrowing Danish animated documentary, nominated for Best Foreign Oscar in 2021 (and losing to ‘Drive my car’). It tells of an Afghan refugee and his gut-wrenching and traumatic odyssey to escape the Taliban and settle in Denmark. 8/10.

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A star is born, the 2018 Bradley Cooper / Lady Gaga version: Raging alcoholic mega star discovers a young singer, falls in love and destroys himself as her career takes off. I loved it, especially the sweet romance and chemistry of their relationship’s first act.

I then tried to supplement it with the 1954 Judy Garland / James Mason version, as well as the 1976 Barbra Streisand / Kris Kristofferson one (the one with young Gary Busey!) but couldn’t get into either one. So this will do for now.

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3 Swedish masterpieces by Roy Andersson (and one by Jan Troell):

🎦🎦🎦 There are these rare films whose very first frame overwhelms you with so much emotion and awe, it’s as if you fell in love for the first time. Roy Andersson’s 2019 About Endlessness is one of them. It starts with a shot of two lovers who float in the sky, flown out of a modern Marc Chagall. Then 31 short, static scenes follow evoking various moods; tragic, absurd, humane, perplexing. Some are very simple: An old, absent-minded waiter pours too much vine in a glass.... Three young women pass by a cafe and start dancing to the song on the radio... A man and his young daughter stop on their way to a birthday party so he can tie her shoes in the pouring rain... Etc. (Photo Above).

In the same style as his previous ‘Living Trilogy’, all segments were created indoors, with artificial, awkward stagecraft that haunts, and seemingly with no relation to each other. Many starts with a slow and sad female voice “I saw a woman who...”.

The copy I watched was in Swedish (naturally) with Dutch subtitles, but there’s sparse dialogue, so if anybody’s interested, the descriptions on wikipedia cover pretty much all the ‘actions’, and this copy will suffice.

Best film I’ve been waiting for all week!

🎦🎦🎦 “....The world is not made for lonely people”... Roy Andersson’s exceptional debut film, A Swedish Love Story (1970), a perfect romance of a 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. Sweet, sensitive and absolutely beautiful. Completely different from his later years’ dour artfulness. 10/10.

(Copy is from YouTube).

I have now seen 5 of his 6 feature films (I can’t find a copy of ‘Gilliap’!), and I can easily say: He’s my absolute favorite film director.

🎦🎦🎦 After the failure of his 1975 Gilliap, Andersson gave up on cinema for 25 years, and instead earned a living as a successful director of advertisements. But in 1991, he directed the 15 min. World of Glory, in the same oblique style as all his later films. In the first shocking scene, a group of naked people are being executed in a gas van. But after that, one of the complicit silent witnesses, a drab and ordinary real estate man, goes on about his cheerless life. Bleak!

🎦🎦🎦 And one more: Jan Troell’s Maria Larsson’s Everlasting Moments is a 2008 Swedish true-story about a working class woman in the early 20th century, who wins a camera in a lottery and goes on to become a pioneer female photographer. Evocative, sentimental and nostalgic, it’s a beautiful feminist capture of eras gone by. 8/10.

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First watch: Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 Coffee and Cigarettes. 11 short stories told in static black & and white, about interesting people drinking lots of coffee, some of them smoking lots of cigarettes, and discussing life’s big & small mysteries.

Tom Waits for no one - as always he’s the scene stealer of this ensemble piece full of characters. 9/10.

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Bong Joon-ho X 2:

🎦🎦🎦 I have to admit that it took me 3 attempts in the last 2 years to finish Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s masterful and wild class-war horror film. When the invading poor Kim family settled down at the rich Park’s beautiful living room, I got so nerve-racked of what’s in store for them, that I had to put this film on hold - twice. But today I was finally able to overcome my anxiety and complete it. I agree now that it was one of the best films from 2019 that I’ve seen. The class warfare and wealth inequality were the biggest themes of this uncomfortable, tense thriller. 8/10.

🎦🎦🎦 Okja, a disappointing fable about a brave fourteen-year-old girl who saves a mythical “superpig” she had raised with her grandfather in beautiful faraway Korean mountains. The lovable hippo-sized creature is like a SGI-generated Totoro and the first half of the film in lovely and promising. But the story about the evil corporate greed, industrial factory farming and animal rights activism is misfired and cliched. The only unique aspect is the cruel scene at the massive slaughterhouse that vicariously show the mass murder happening there, unusual for a mainstream film, and especially for one geared toward kids. 4/10.

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Maigret Sets a Trap (1958), an old fashioned French serial killer film with Jean Gabin as commissaire Jules Maigret. An outdated atmosphere and story, but shot in a crisp cinematography and on gorgeous studio sets.

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3 with Laurence Olivier (two with Leo G. Carroll):

🎦🎦🎦 Young Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in Hitchcock's first American project, Rebecca, a “gothic” mystery from 1940. A fairy tale turns dark with murder, blackmail and clear lesbian intrigue. The most noticeable trait of the film is the relentless music which plays constantly over and under every single scene.

🎦🎦🎦 First watch: Wuthering Heights was my father’s 'Guilty pleasure’, and apparently he watched it many times during his old age. But why? It's a story of a poor, orphaned boy who was neglected throughout his life, and who sought love and revenge when he became wealthy. This part is clear. But what attracted him to the background of this particular landed English gentry?

🎦🎦🎦 “... Is is safe?... “ Marathon Man (1976), one of the great screenwriter William Goldman’s best-made movies, and another that can be re-watched again and again. Even the sadistic dentist torture scene. It was also one of the two films Olivier did in the 70′s dealing with aging Nazi war criminals hiding in South America.

With ‘Al Neary’ as “Karl” and ‘Chief Brody’ as the brother. 9/10.

🍿 A Cup of Coffee with Marilyn, a unique 2019 short (19. min) about Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci’s failed attempts to interview Marilyn Monroe before her death. Fallaci's probing interviews with Ayatollah Khomeini, Yasser Arafat, Kissinger and many of the world’s leaders of the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s made her “the most famous, and feared, interviewer in the world" (Italy recently voted to put her image on the Italian 20 euro bill). This ambitious short is a lush and condensed period piece, made by a 23-year-old woman with all young cast. Well done. 6/10. 🍿 2 Italian classics with Gian Maria Volonté and magnificent scores by Ennio Morricone:

After seeing the fantastic biography ‘Ennio’ last week, I decided to go back and try to catch up on the 500+ movies he wrote music for.

🎦🎦🎦 A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone’s first Spaghetti Western and an unofficial remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. The first of Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man of no name’ trilogy. Morricone’s early suite, credited here as Dan Savio, was more engaging for me than the rest of this ritualistic film.

🎦🎦🎦 Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Elio’s Petri 1970 Oscar winner black satire. Volonté is a right-wing police officer, so obsessed with power, that he murders his mistress just to show that nobody will believe he’s the murderer. A killer film that would be so much weaker without the killer juxtaposition of sound and image.

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Kevin MacLeod is a very prolific composer from Green Bay, Wisconsin. He became one of the most heard composers in the world by releasing thousands of his songs for free under a Creative Commons copyright license (The most composing credits of anyone on IMDB, with 3774). Even I used quite a few of his melodies, when I created Adora’s cooking videos years ago. There’s so much of interest in the implications of what he’s been doing.

But the hagiographic documentary Royalty Free: The Music of Kevin MacLeod is terrible. Uninteresting interviews with uninteresting friends, and banal explanations makes this a boring slog. 2/10.

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In my efforts to explore cinema from all over the world, I randomly picked Sweet face, my first Nigerian film. Unfortunately, it was a dull, lifeless story of a married couple, with wooden, expressionless performances and nil artistic merit. IMDB claims that this was one of 7(!) films the director, Kayode Kasum, made in 2020. This was not his best. 1/10.

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Timecrimes, a 2007 Spanish time-loop riddle. An ugly, low-budget and confusing mystery about an unappealing middle-age man who must relive the same sequence of events three times. I’m not sure how it popped on my radar, or why I finished watching it.

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(My complete movie list is here)

#movies

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goblins-riddles-or-frocks · 2 years

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Masterpost

Grishaverse Fics

Unmaking The Heart of The World — time loop AU, Nikolina, Darklina, Zoyalina, multi ship, grief, post R&R Alina marries Nikolai, but in another timeline, she’s only just been brought to the Little Palace following the discovery of her powers (ongoing)

Éminence Grise — Darklina, Nikolina, fake engagement AU where Alina is betrothed to Nikolai, despite her affair with the Darkling, who has also not showed his hand yet (ongoing)

Penance Without Penitence — Darklina, Nikolina, post R&R, the Darkling is resurrected without his power, so Alina takes him to Keramzin to make up for his wrongs (ongoing)

And I Said to the Star, “Consume Me” — Darklina, Darknikolina, alt S&S ending, the Darkling offers Alina a bargain, if she marries him, he won’t kill all her friends (complete!)

The Scorched Sea — Darklina, Darknikolina, role reversal AU, tired of his mother’s austere and fear driven lifestyle, Aleksander Morozova seeks out the Sun Saint and the splendor of the Little Palace

Ad Libitum — Darklina one shot, ballet AU set in a twentieth century inspired Ravka, Alina performs at a private event at the Grand Palace

A Reprieve From Thought — Darklina one shot, S&S era PWP set aboard the ship

Infinite Ruin — Darklina one shot, post R&R, Alina holds the Darkling captive

Silence — unrequited Nikolina, Darklina, one shot, post R&R, possession, Nikolai still hears the Darkling’s voice in his head

A Reunion — Zoyalina one shot, modern AU, the gang are snowed in at the Christmas Party

In The Morning — Nikolina one shot, only one bed, fluff

Fondness — Nikolina one shot, mildly fluffy character study, Alina has thoughts about her relationship with Nikolai on their wedding night

The Picnic — Genyalina one shot, set during S&S if Genya was with them, fluff

Benefits of a Gilded Cage — Darknikolina one shot, Alina puts the third amplifier on the Darkling.

Longing for the Sun — triple drabble, set during KoS, Nikolai has come to dread sleep

Hellsing Fics

Ice — monster of the week one shot, something of a The Thing AU

This Is Where Monsters Weep — one shot collection about a variety of ships and characters

Hold This Heart In Your Teeth — Alutegra one shot, dreams, angst, pining, mild bdsm vibes

In This Darkness, I Have You — Alutegra one shot, PWP, angst, pining, unwanted love confession

The Hand Which Holds The Leash — pre canon, one shot, Alucard attempts to talk to Integra about responsibility, instead the conversation turns to her ancestors

Leave Them And Walk With Dust — Seras and Integra roleswap AU, eventual Sertegra, (ongoing)

Fragments, Glory, And What It Is To Lose — Alutegra one shot, Alucard reflects on his servitude after that first encounter with Anderson

These Truths That Shape Us — one shot, Integra gets her first glimpse at the depth of Hellsing’s experiments, medical horror

Beautiful, Wicked, Brazen — Alutegra one shot, PWP

A Diversion — Alutegra one shot, PWP, set after the Museum scene

Spare a Cigarette? — Waltercard one shot, pre canon, the first time Walter encounters Alucard after Integra releases him from the basement

If He Wills It — Aluseras one shot, during the Rio trip, Seras realizes Alucard didn’t have to turn her into a vampire, and she’s angry about it

Waiting — Alutegra one shot, angst, Integra is dead and Alucard has no idea what to do with himself

Dream of Daylight — angst, one shot, horror, a Hellsing soldier was kind to Alucard, he doesn’t take it well

Grief’s Cold Hands — Alutegra one shot, angst, time skip, in the aftermath of the battle of London, and years after, Integra reminisces.

Mercy — one shot, during the Rio trip, Seras asks Alucard why he kills so… enthusiastically

Thirty Years of Silence — Alutegra, post time skip, angst, incomplete atm

Fate of Prometheus — one shot, torture, a potential look at Alucard's first few years of captivity. (this one’s very old…)

Misc Fics

By Moonlight and Candle’s Flame — Company of Wolves fic, the Huntsman gets his kiss.

Generosity — Locked Tomb fic, Cytherea the First offers to spare Gideon one last time.

Drop By Drop Upon the Heart — Gothic origfic, a young woman marries to escape her father’s occultist eccentricities, but soon discovers something is amiss in her new husband’s home.

A Worthy Sacrifice — Fate/Zero one shot, angst, Saber gets to Irisviel at the theatre in time, but no matter what she’s destined to die

Laundry Day — Fate/Stay Night one shot, fluff, Gilgamesh steals Kirei’s cassock

Fandom Discord Servers

Who Gave Dracula The WiFi Password? — Dracula, Vampire Chronicles, the Locked Tomb, other horror and goth stuff

The Gregs — Grishaverse books!

#hellsing #hellsing ultimate #shadow and bone #grishaverse #fate series #fate stay night #a string of words #*writer's cap*#i ramble sometimes #darklina #nikolina #alarkling #alutegra

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blind-rats · 3 years

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The Rise & Fall of Joss Whedon; the Myth of the Hollywood Feminist Hero

By Kelly Faircloth

“I hate ‘feminist.’ Is this a good time to bring that up?” Joss Whedon asked. He paused knowingly, waiting for the laughs he knew would come at the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer making such a statement.

It was 2013, and Whedon was onstage at a fundraiser for Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to legal equality for women. Though Buffy had been off the air for more than a decade, its legacy still loomed large; Whedon was widely respected as a man with a predilection for making science fiction with strong women for protagonists. Whedon went on to outline why, precisely, he hated the term: “You can’t be born an ‘ist,’” he argued, therefore, “‘feminist’ includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state, that we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us.”

The speech was widely praised and helped cement his pop-cultural reputation as a feminist, in an era that was very keen on celebrity feminists. But it was also, in retrospect, perhaps the high water mark for Whedon’s ability to claim the title, and now, almost a decade later, that reputation is finally in tatters, prompting a reevaluation of not just Whedon’s work, but the narrative he sold about himself.

In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of being “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” on the Justice League set when Whedon took over for Zach Synder as director to finish the project. Charisma Carpenter then described her own experiences with Whedon in a long post to Twitter, hashtagged #IStandWithRayFisher.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Carpenter played Cordelia, a popular character who morphed from snob to hero—one of those strong female characters that made Whedon’s feminist reputation—before being unceremoniously written off the show in a plot that saw her thrust into a coma after getting pregnant with a demon. For years, fans have suspected that her disappearance was related to her real-life pregnancy. In her statement, Carpenter appeared to confirm the rumors. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel,’” she wrote, describing Fisher’s firing as the last straw that inspired her to go public.

Buffy was a landmark of late 1990s popular culture, beloved by many a burgeoning feminist, grad student, gender studies professor, and television critic for the heroine at the heart of the show, the beautiful blonde girl who balanced monster-killing with high school homework alongside ancillary characters like the shy, geeky Willow. Buffy was very nearly one of a kind, an icon of her era who spawned a generation of leather-pants-wearing urban fantasy badasses and women action heroes.

Buffy was so beloved, in fact, that she earned Whedon a similarly privileged place in fans’ hearts and a broader reputation as a man who championed empowered women characters. In the desert of late ’90s and early 2000s popular culture, Whedon was heralded as that rarest of birds—the feminist Hollywood man. For many, he was an example of what more equitable storytelling might look like, a model for how to create compelling women protagonists who were also very, very fun to watch. But Carpenter’s accusations appear to have finally imploded that particular bit of branding, revealing a different reality behind the scenes and prompting a reevaluation of the entire arc of Whedon’s career: who he was and what he was selling all along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered March 1997, midseason, on The WB, a two-year-old network targeting teens with shows like 7th Heaven. Its beginnings were not necessarily auspicious; it was a reboot of a not-particularly-blockbuster 1992 movie written by third-generation screenwriter Joss Whedon. (His grandfather wrote for The Donna Reed Show; his father wrote for Golden Girls.) The show followed the trials of a stereotypical teenage California girl who moved to a new town and a new school after her parents’ divorce—only, in a deliberate inversion of horror tropes, the entire town sat on top of the entrance to Hell and hence was overrun with demons. Buffy was a slayer, a young woman with the power and immense responsibility to fight them. After the movie turned out very differently than Whedon had originally envisioned, the show was a chance for a do-over, more of a Valley girl comedy than serious horror.

It was layered, it was campy, it was ironic and self-aware. It looked like it belonged on the WB rather than one of the bigger broadcast networks, unlike the slickly produced prestige TV that would follow a few years later. Buffy didn’t fixate on the gory glory of killing vampires—really, the monsters were metaphors for the entire experience of adolescence, in all its complicated misery. Almost immediately, a broad cross-section of viewers responded enthusiastically. Critics loved it, and it would be hugely influential on Whedon’s colleagues in television; many argue that it broke ground in terms of what you could do with a television show in terms of serialized storytelling, setting the stage for the modern TV era. Academics took it up, with the show attracting a tremendous amount of attention and discussion.

In 2002, the New York Times covered the first academic conference dedicated to the show. The organizer called Buffy “a tremendously rich text,” hence the flood of papers with titles like “Pain as Bright as Steel: The Monomyth and Light in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’” which only gathered speed as the years passed. And while it was never the highest-rated show on television, it attracted an ardent core of fans.

But what stood out the most was the show’s protagonist: a young woman who stereotypically would have been a monster movie victim, with the script flipped: instead of screaming and swooning, she staked the vampires. This was deliberate, the core conceit of the concept, as Whedon said in many, many interviews. The helpless horror movie girl killed in the dark alley instead walks out victorious. He told Time in 1997 that the concept was born from the thought, “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers.” In Whedon’s framing, it was particularly important that it was a woman who walked out of that alley. He told another publication in 2002 that “the very first mission statement of the show” was “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.”

In 2021, when seemingly every new streaming property with a woman as its central character makes some half-baked claim to feminism, it’s easy to forget just how much Buffy stood out among its against its contemporaries. Action movies—with exceptions like Alien’s Ripley and Terminator 2's Sarah Conner—were ruled by hulking tough guys with macho swagger. When women appeared on screen opposite vampires, their primary job was to expose long, lovely, vulnerable necks. Stories and characters that bucked these larger currents inspired intense devotion, from Angela Chase of My So-Called Life to Dana Scully of The X-Files.

The broader landscape, too, was dismal. It was the conflicted era of girl power, a concept that sprang up in the wake of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement and the backlash that followed. Young women were constantly exposed to you-can-do-it messaging that juxtaposed uneasily with the reality of the world around them. This was the era of shitty, sexist jokes about every woman who came into Bill Clinton’s orbit and the leering response to the arrival of Britney Spears; Rush Limbaugh was a fairly mainstream figure.

At one point, Buffy competed against Ally McBeal, a show that dedicated an entire episode to a dancing computer-generated baby following around its lawyer main character, her biological clock made zanily literal. Consider this line from a New York Times review of the Buffy’s 1997 premiere: “Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys.”

Against that background, Buffy was a landmark. Besides the simple fact of its woman protagonist, there were unique plots, like the coming-out story for her friend Willow. An ambivalent 1999 piece in Bitch magazine, even as it explored the show’s tank-top heavy marketing, ultimately concluded, “In the end, it’s precisely this contextual conflict that sets Buffy apart from the rest and makes her an appealing icon. Frustrating as her contradictions may be, annoying as her babe quotient may be, Buffy still offers up a prime-time heroine like no other.”

A 2016 Atlantic piece, adapted from a book excerpt, makes the case that Buffy is perhaps best understood as an icon of third-wave feminism: “In its examination of individual and collective empowerment, its ambiguous politics of racial representation and its willing embrace of contradiction, Buffy is a quintessentially third-wave cultural production.” The show was vested with all the era’s longing for something better than what was available, something different, a champion for a conflicted “post-feminist” era—even if she was an imperfect or somewhat incongruous vessel. It wasn’t just Sunnydale that needed a chosen Slayer, it was an entire generation of women. That fact became intricately intertwined with Whedon himself.

Seemingly every interview involved a discussion of his fondness for stories about strong women. “I’ve always found strong women interesting, because they are not overly represented in the cinema,” he told New York for a 1997 piece that notes he studied both film and “gender and feminist issues” at Wesleyan; “I seem to be the guy for strong action women,’’ he told the New York Times in 1997 with an aw-shucks sort of shrug. ‘’A lot of writers are just terrible when it comes to writing female characters. They forget that they are people.’’ He often cited the influence of his strong, “hardcore feminist” mother, and even suggested that his protagonists served feminist ends in and of themselves: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism,” he told Time in 1997.

When he was honored by the organization Equality Now in 2006 for his “outstanding contribution to equality in film and television,” Whedon made his speech an extended riff on the fact that people just kept asking him about it, concluding with the ultimate answer: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” He presented strong women as a simple no-brainer, and he was seemingly always happy to say so, at a time when the entertainment business still seemed ruled by unapologetic misogynists. The internet of the mid-2010s only intensified Whedon’s anointment as a prototypical Hollywood ally, with reporters asking him things like how men could best support the feminist movement.

Whedon’s response: “A guy who goes around saying ‘I’m a feminist’ usually has an agenda that is not feminist. A guy who behaves like one, who actually becomes involved in the movement, generally speaking, you can trust that. And it doesn’t just apply to the action that is activist. It applies to the way they treat the women they work with and they live with and they see on the street.” This remark takes on a great deal of irony in light of Carpenter’s statement.

In recent years, Whedon’s reputation as an ally began to wane. Partly, it was because of the work itself, which revealed more and more cracks as Buffy receded in the rearview mirror. Maybe it all started to sour with Dollhouse, a TV show that imagined Eliza Dushku as a young woman rented out to the rich and powerful, her mind wiped after every assignment, a concept that sat poorly with fans. (Though Whedon, while he was publicly unhappy with how the show had turned out after much push-and-pull with the corporate bosses at Fox, still argued the conceit was “the most pure feminist and empowering statement I’d ever made—somebody building themselves from nothing,” in a 2012 interview with Wired.)

After years of loud disappointment with the TV bosses at Fox on Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon moved into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. He helped birth the Marvel-dominated era of movies with his work as director of The Avengers. But his second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, was heavily criticized for a moment in which Black Widow laid out her personal reproductive history for the Hulk, suggesting her sterilization somehow made her a “monster.” In June 2017, his un-filmed script for a Wonder Woman adaptation leaked, to widespread mockery. The script’s introduction of Diana was almost leering: “To say she is beautiful is almost to miss the point. She is elemental, as natural and wild as the luminous flora surrounding. Her dark hair waterfalls to her shoulders in soft arcs and curls. Her body is curvaceous, but taut as a drawn bow.”

But Whedon’s real fall from grace began in 2017, right before MeToo spurred a cultural reckoning. His ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a piece in The Wrap accusing him of cheating off and on throughout their relationship and calling him a hypocrite:

“Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

But his reputation was just too strong; the accusation that he didn’t practice what he preached didn’t quite stick. A spokesperson for Whedon told the Wrap: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife. Many minimized the essay on the basis that adultery doesn’t necessarily make you a bad feminist or erase a legacy. Whedon similarly seemed to shrug off Ray Fisher’s accusations of creating a toxic workplace; instead, Warner Media fired Fisher.

But Carpenter’s statement—which struck right at the heart of his Buffy-based legacy for progressivism—may finally change things. Even at the time, the plotline in which Charisma Carpenter was written off Angel—carrying a demon child that turned her into “Evil Cordelia,” ending the season in a coma, and quite simply never reappearing—was unpopular. Asked about what had happened in a 2009 panel at DragonCon, she said that “my relationship with Joss became strained,” continuing: “We all go through our stuff in general [behind the scenes], and I was going through my stuff, and then I became pregnant. And I guess in his mind, he had a different way of seeing the season go… in the fourth season.”

“I think Joss was, honestly, mad. I think he was mad at me and I say that in a loving way, which is—it’s a very complicated dynamic working for somebody for so many years, and expectations, and also being on a show for eight years, you gotta live your life. And sometimes living your life gets in the way of maybe the creator’s vision for the future. And that becomes conflict, and that was my experience.”

In her statement on Twitter, Carpenter alleged that after Whedon was informed of her pregnancy, he called her into a closed-door meeting and “asked me if I was ‘going to keep it,’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me.” She added that “he proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.” Carpenter said that he called her fat while she was four months pregnant and scheduled her to work at 1 a.m. while six months pregnant after her doctor had recommended shortening her hours, a move she describes as retaliatory. What Carpenter describes, in other words, is an absolutely textbook case of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the type of bullshit the feminist movement exists to fight—at the hands of the man who was for years lauded as a Hollywood feminist for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Many of Carpenter’s colleagues from Buffy and Angel spoke out in support, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” she said in a statement. Just shy of a decade after that 2013 speech, many of the cast members on the show that put him on that stage are cutting ties.

Whedon garnered a reputation as pop culture’s ultimate feminist man because Buffy did stand out so much, an oasis in a wasteland. But in 2021, the idea of a lone man being responsible for creating women’s stories—one who told the New York Times, “I seem to be the guy for strong action women”—seems like a relic. It’s depressing to consider how many years Hollywood’s first instinct for “strong action women” wasn’t a woman, and to think about what other people could have done with those resources. When Wonder Woman finally reached the screen, to great acclaim, it was with a woman as director.

Besides, Whedon didn’t make Buffy all by himself—many, many women contributed, from the actresses to the writers to the stunt workers, and his reputation grew so large it eclipsed their part in the show’s creation. Even as he preached feminism, Whedon benefitted from one of the oldest, most sexist stereotypes: the man who’s a benevolent, creative genius. And Buffy, too, overshadowed all the other contributors who redefined who could be a hero on television and in speculative fiction, from individual actors like Gillian Anderson to the determined, creative women who wrote science fiction and fantasy over the last several decades to—perhaps most of all—the fans who craved different, better stories. Buffy helped change what you could put on TV, but it didn’t create the desire to see a character like her. It was that desire, as much as Whedon himself, that gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer her power.

#Joss Whedon #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #Ray Fisher #Charisma Carpenter #Feminist

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vidavalor · 3 years

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Bucky flirting with Sam as part of the changing times theme in Ep 5...

This is on the long side. Contains brief mention of the show basically canonizing Bucky as a sexual assault survivor. It’s meta on Bucky and Sam’s identity themes and how the show is shifting into a theme of changing times with the latest episodes-- mostly about how Bucky’s journey is paralleling Sam’s, even while being a different kind of journey.

One of the more interesting subtle themes of Ep 5 is that while we have had a lot of emphasis in the earlier episodes on how much horror still exists in America-- and a very right, necessary emphasis-- as the show begins to pivot towards the part of Sam’s journey that involves him deciding to become Captain America, they are pivoting a bit to illustrate that as much as many things have, unfortunately, not changed the way they should have over time, a lot really has. (Also, the Sam-as-Captain-America thing isn’t meant to be a spoiler as I don’t really totally know if that’s the ending, it just seems um... really the only place this story is going...) They have been using Isaiah to illustrate this point for Sam quite a bit in Ep 5, especially. The core conflict comes from Isaiah believing that a self-respecting Black man wouldn’t want to fight for America after the horrors that have been done to Black people in its history, which is not something that Sam ultimately feels is true. He definitely feels the pain of Black history in America but he still believes *in* America and views it as his country and is accepting that everyone in it really has a role to play in making it live up to the ideals it espouses but has still yet to achieve. In deciding to appreciate Isaiah choosing to open up to him and share his story but respectfully disagree with him on what to do next-- and to have his ability to make this choice reinforced by Sarah supporting him by saying she knows he will choose to fight in the fights he believes in and she has his back-- Sam is choosing to become a symbol of something, even if he’s just a man, and he’s affirming to himself that it is okay for him to believe in this thing he believes in. It’s okay for him to believe in America and love America and what it stands for, even in all its extremely imperfect glory, because he can be the change he wants to see in the world. He knows there are many people who will support him in that and that it only happens if we make it happen and that America, in all its imperfection, has made a lot of positive change happen throughout its short history.

You know who else is enjoying similar truths in the same episode? Bucky.

Bucky arrives in Delacroix all “Hello, 21st Century! I’ve always wanted to flirt with a man in public! I will be over here, lifting heavy stuff and getting in the personal space of your next Captain America, Good People of Delacroix, Louisiana!” What’s so endearing about this is not even just that this is clearly the first time that Bucky has felt like he has some control over his own mind, after proving he can manage The Winter Soldier in him a bit in the last few episodes, but that he’s working towards this kind of peace in a time where he really no longer has to hide any part of himself. Long before The Winter Soldier, Bucky was so the guy with a girl on each arm and a guy in the dark of the back alley. He has never, in his entire century-plus of living, been able to really be who he is without fear. It’s not as if there is not any fear left for LGBTQIA people in the world because, sadly, of course there is but loving Sam would have gotten Bucky arrested twice over in the 1940s. Interracial marriage was illegal until the Loving Act of 1967-- and that was still just for heterosexual couples. Obviously, same-sex marriage wasn’t legalized in the U.S. until 2015. If Bucky had been caught with a man in his youth, let alone a Black man, they both would have been arrested. Even if they were let go (and Bucky would have been more likely to suffer less, on account of being white), their reputations and ability to work and serve in the military could have been impacted.

The show toys with this with Bucky’s interest in exploring it, even through the haze of a lot of severe trauma, back in Episode 1. While he’s mainly eating at the sushi bar because he’s befriended Yori on account of his amends project, he is living in a very modern existence by regularly conversing with these two. Consider that the show chose to make both of them Japanese, basically to illustrate that Bucky, in a sense, was always progressive for his time period. Bucky *could* have been the kind of WW2 soldier who forever saw people of the countries the Allies fought against as an enemy-- your grandfathers and great-grandfathers who never stopped hating the Japanese. But he’s not. He actually comes off as someone whose inability to fit the mode of the heterosexual white American guy in his own time period lent him a lot of empathy towards others and I might be wrong about this because I can’t quite recall at the moment but wasn’t he drafted, as opposed to enlisted? It’s doubtful he even really wanted to fight, although he’s always up for a fight against a bully and clearly hated the Nazis (but wanting to fight fascism makes you far from intolerant.) My point is that Bucky, back in Ep 1, is already experimenting with how living in the 21st century could be a positive thing for him in a life he might want to make for himself, if he can get through his trauma enough to do so.

He eats lunch on the regular with a man who is, in all likelihood, descended somewhere from at least one person who fought on the enemy side to Bucky in WW2. He regularly chats with Leah, who is completely unlike anyone he would have been able to talk to in the 1940s and seems almost designed to be *exactly* that intentionally-- she is a woman with a job that wasn’t like a nurse or a teacher or Peggy Carter lol. She tends bar, a job that was virtually exclusively male in the ‘40s. She has open visible tattoos and is probably putting herself through college-- something that women were just being able to attend, usually in female-only settings. She makes her own money and lives as a single woman, likely without the express intention on getting married and having a family relatively soon. (There’s nothing wrong with any of that. It’s more just that it would have been the exception, rather than the norm, in Bucky’s youth.) Atop that, she is Asian and works in a Japanese restaurant-- the ultimate business that would have suffered during the ‘40s as America didn’t exactly do right by its Japanese-Americans during the war and if Bucky, a white soldier, had been seen with a Japanese girl, it would have been bad for him but worse for her.

So the reason why Yori has noticed that Bucky always looks at Leah when they eat lunch is probably less about the attraction Yori assumed Bucky had for her and more that Leah is this personal fascination for Bucky-- a human being who is basically the total embodiment of everything that has changed in the world since Bucky was last freely a part of it. Yori assumes Bucky wants a date but Bucky really wants what he ultimately got out of it, which is more just to talk to her a bit.

They also play Battleship, which is kind of darkly funny. The game originated after WW1 and used to be played on paper. It soared into popularity in the 1930s and has never stopped being popular ever since-- so, in essence, the game they play is the one part of this that, like Bucky, has been in existence the whole time. It has taken on different forms, though. It became a plastic board game in the ‘60s and has been modernized a few times but it’s still here. (It’s also funny that Bucky is kind of losing the game with her, symbolizing that he’s not entirely figured out this whole modern world yet, even if he’s very interested by it.)

But the big thing is that Bucky is beginning to edge away from just observing this new world and trying to decide how he wants to participate in it. He’s basically decided that he might like to and while his heart is completely with Sam, he’s also afraid of himself and his ability to potentially destroy that one really strong wish he has to be with him, so he’s pushing him away by not answering his texts. He’s likely also, atop insecurity in himself, literally terrified at the idea of hurting Sam not just physically-- through some nightmare or some untapped Winter Soldier potential or failing to protect him-- but through the fact that he’s a guy from the 1940s who has literally never openly dated a man, had Black friends during the war but that was decades ago and is not really sure how to do this.

Forced into a date with Leah, he experiments with the modern world in a way because he’s here because sure, he likes her and all but he was more just interested in her world than her personally and he just didn’t want to disappoint either her or Yori, so he showed up. She seems fairly trustworthy (and he trusts no one but Sam and Yori, so that’s a start) but what he wants really is to say aloud to someone for the first time that he likes men. To see how that goes in this modern era. (Depending on how you take Bucky and Steve, he could have put this into words to Steve at one point, likely way back when, but it’s also possible that they both just knew and didn’t talk about it. Either way, you didn’t go around telling people you didn’t trust in the ‘40s and it’s doubtful that he’s ever just said it to anyone and for sure not on a regular basis.)

He even knows that this wouldn’t be a deal breaker for a woman, necessarily, in the modern era, which is probably blowing his mind a bit because you would have been hard-pressed to find a woman who would admit to someone she didn’t implicitly trust that back in the ‘40s and it wouldn’t have been so open and accepted. What he really wants in Leah is a new friend and she seems to sense that-- she likes this weird guy with the circulation problem that is nice enough to lunch with the old man at her restaurant, he seems okay enough, if broody and sad, so why not talk to him for a bit? She totally thinks he’s just a closet case (she’s not wrong lol) and won’t really be crushed by him rushing out of the date beyond like “too bad, he was pretty hot” but for Bucky, this is the likely the first time he’s ever casually chatted with another human being about his attempt at finding a guy he likes.

It’s actually really sweet in that he’s still sort of coding it a bit, if not that much. He’s still a bit nervous about this so he’s saying tiger pictures to reference men so he can say it without saying it. Leah gets it and just kind of rolls with it and probably has zero idea how big a deal it was for the century-old guy sitting at the bar.

He might have been intentionally dramatic a bit about how it was all “a lot” but he was also telling her the truth-- he did a little exploring online. Found some men. It looked like a lot of work to stroke all these egos. Bucky’s for the modern world but he’s kind of into more old-fashioned guys. He’s got a warm-hearted soldier kink. Family man kind of guys with generous spirits. He’s considering online stuff because he’s also a guy who has been through an absurd amount of trauma-- some of which the show will just come out and say involves sexual assault, off that Selby scene-- and he’s probably considering trying to get beyond some of it by just having sex with somebody. It’s not at all an uncommon response for people who have been raped to try to get beyond it by just having sex again and you know this is yet another level of anxiety for him when it comes to the idea of having another chance at life. He’s nervous around himself at this point and doesn’t fully trust himself, so he’s not sure how he can trust other people and the one guy he *does* trust and *does* want? Bucky has that whole ‘don’t want to burden him with my own issues’ thing happening. (That’s not a bad thing when it’s a situation of expecting your partner to be your therapist, which shouldn’t happen but Bucky would and should have expectations that someone he’d have as a romantic partner can be someone he can trust to care about him and be sensitive to how his past plays into his present needs, in and out of bed.) He’d trust Sam with this but he also wants to be like... he basically feels like he met the potential love of his life while trying to kill him and just got his mind back and the timing is all wrong. It’s a lot of ‘too broken for Sam’ self-narrative.

Whether or not Bucky actually went beyond scrolling and being astounded at the unattractive insecurity of tiger pictures or whether he hooked up a time or two, it’s clear he didn’t get what he needed out of it and he gave up on it, admitting to himself that he’s really basically a tired old romantic who wants love and trust and the whole dance of things and that kind of intimacy more than the back alley casualness of online dating. This is about as far as Bucky has gotten while trying to deal with his trauma while having a truly terrible therapist: he likes sushi now and would like to have his life’s first real chance at an open, mutual, loving, romantic relationship. He just didn’t know how to get himself there.

John Walker and the shield issues actually, ironically, gave him scenarios where he could, through actions that suited him better than those his therapist had assigned. He needed to learn not to not hurt anyone but how to manage it when he did. He needed to learn how to be a soldier that protects people again, not the Winter Soldier, and that he can control that part of himself. He needed the opportunity to show Sam that he really does care, he’s just a grieving mess of a man working through being so out of time and secretly scared that he might like this time better, might have a chance at being who he is for the first time, and he doesn’t know quite what to do with that. He lets Sam in enough that they can show one another that they understand each other’s traumas. He tosses himself out of a plane for Sam in the first episode to prove he’ll follow him anywhere, that he’s strong and will survive and come back, knowing about Riley not being alive when he hit that ground. Sam responds by seeing Bucky essentially frozen in a PTSD moment of the train car on the side of that truck and grabs him out of danger. They snark and bicker but the actions speak louder than the words-- there’s caring there and want and a sense that they’re a bit gone on the other.

Sam’s trust in Bucky-- even as Bucky is still learning how to trust himself with himself-- gives Bucky a confidence boost that he was missing when he pulled away from Sam out of fear of hurting him. The whole White Panther/White Wolf scene? Sam expected Bucky to grumble or blush, he was for sure flirting with him but didn’t expect quite that amount of flirt back. Without realizing it, he had hit on the exact part of Bucky’s identity that was giving him the biggest boost, that he understood the best at that time-- the White Wolf. The White Wolf is the freed Winter Soldier, a peaceful tender of goats, a wounded warrior beloved by a community who rescued him. He represents Bucky’s recent past into his present-- being able to work for the chance to shake loose the Winter Soldier and evolve into a different version of himself. He wanted to impress Sam with that-- he saw Sam’s flirting and parried back, which he didn’t always do, because he knew it would be impressive that the Wakandans had given him a (pretty sexy actually) nickname. He’s boosted by Sam still flirting, Sam still caring, still seeing something in him he’s working on seeing himself. He has some hope, even as they fight, because his attempts at getting closer to Sam are not being rejected wholesale and Sam keeps reaching out to him, often literally. After Madripoor and after Bucky going after and finding Zemo, he feels more ready. He’s more in control of himself. He thinks he has a path to getting beyond the worst of this stuff and he might not have worked out all the details yet or figured out what it looks like but he finally feels ready to try and since Sam hasn’t rejected him, he’s going to take Yori’s advice, just with the right person and stop waiting around, stop just looking and make a move.

In a way, Sam is introduced to 1940s Bucky for the first time in Delacroix-- this is the guy he saw glimpses of but was pretty deeply buried. He’s not reverted back to the Bucky of old as how could he, after all he’s been through? But this is the flirt, the natural charmer and he’s been set free for real for the first time, without worry or fear that he can’t live a life he wants and be the person he truly is without fear of rejection of who he loves, his family and the community at large. He likes this place that is the exact opposite of everything he’s suffered-- it’s so warm, he’ll never feel frozen again, physically or emotionally. The people here don’t care about his arm or who he loves, Sam’s family has Sam’s big, warm heart and Sam? Well, Bucky’s enjoying making him a little flustered. You like that stealthy White Wolf, Sam? Well, he’s got his eyes on you. ;)

Maybe the best part of this being the parallel to Sam’s decisions about how he wants to identify when it comes to him deciding to take up the shield is that it relates to a sense of freedom that is at the core of both of Sam and Bucky’s stories and is the whole point of Captain America and how it is supposed to symbolize a fight against fascism. Bucky has been told twice in the series that he’s “free” and each were, in a sense, a bit true. Ayo tells him this when he’s free from mind control and that is a major move forward for him-- life-altering-- but he’s not free from the trauma of it. Dr. Raynor tells Bucky that he’s free now and can build whatever life he wants but we see on Bucky’s face how those statements for him, in those early episodes in New York, really are conflicting ones-- he is free from mind control but still imprisoned in his trauma and that is what is keeping him from making the life he wants. Over the course of TFATWS, alongside Sam’s journey to decide how he wants to feel about America as a Black man and what he feels he owes to the country and the country owes to him, is the story of Bucky having to build his own identity as well. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is ultimately what these guys were-- the identities they still have at the beginning of the show. They’re going to end it Sam and Bucky, Captain America and the White Wolf. Bucky’s real sense of freedom only came when he realized he could trust himself to decide how he wanted to live, when he proved that to himself and took control over it. He’s still not completely fine-- no one really is, ever-- but he has a path now. Sam and Bucky have different identity conflicts but ultimately, at the core, their struggles with them and with what their country has asked of them and with how they want to live and what they want for themselves, is very similar and the core of a lot of why they understand one another well.

It wouldn’t surprise me if we find out that Bucky stopped answering Sam’s texts when Sam suggested he come to Delacroix. Bucky knew about the boat when he got there, the same way that Sam knew about Bucky’s nightmares, so these two were talking a lot, they were friends on a verge of more but both knowing they each had too many struggles to overcome first and I think that Sam had to have been trying to reach out and accidentally went too far. It’s kind of like in the therapy session-- most of the time, Sam is amazing at dealing with people who have been through trauma but he sometimes falls off his game with Bucky. The whole “this is what you wanted, right?” in the therapy session is frustration, it’s pushing a little too hard, it’s snarking over feeling like Bucky rejected him romantically, even if Sam understands why and probably wasn’t convinced they were ready for it anyway. It’s possible that Sam thought inviting Bucky home with him would be good for him-- and the sun and the Wilsons would have been-- but, at the time, it just made Bucky panic, which is then also why Sam just rolls over the fact that Bucky hadn’t been returning his texts when they see one another again. Sam kept reaching out to check on him but accepted the non-response because he felt like he might have kind of pushed Bucky too fast. They both know they both have feelings for one another but are scared by how much the other has to get through to get to that point and feel ill-equipped to really help one another, often blunder in their attempts to (and other times, get it just right.)

So, yeah. There’s still no shortage of conflicts to be dealt with but alongside Sam finding his path to living his truth in this modern world has been Bucky’s arc from daring to whisper about tiger photos to showing up to show off his prowess with heavy stuff and tools to win over his boyfriend in front of his family and hometown. It’s not subtext. It’s literally Bucky’s identity-themed character arc, existing in parallel to Sam’s. Just because they aren’t giving it a ton of labels does not mean that it isn’t the intent of the story.

#sambucky #buckysam #bucky barnes #bucky #sam wilson #tfatws

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overfedvenison · 2 years

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Iunno, it’s worrying how a lot of people have forgotten that war is a horrible thing. It has a tendency to warp people, you know? If you fight for a cause, and not to defend yourself, you can begin to justify anything, and we see that happen time and time again. The worst atrocities are committed in the name of a good cause There is a tendency to assume that there is a glory in it. Perhaps, once upon a time, that was true - How in the medieval era, war could improve the standing of your country and the resources it had. But, now? All modern war is a protracted, dragged-out thing that always brings years of suffering. People see horrors that will change them for life, push for victory at the expense of anything else, or die and leave a family behind. And this is for the whims of countries far detached from any individual, who would gladly throw away lives and futures for abstract gains. As the years go on, we kind of forget the reality of it all, and how no one in major conflicts is truly unaffected. There’s never an easy answer to any conflict, but the goal should never be escalation, you know? You should remember what war means, before you endorse it

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helloinquisitor · 4 years

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in that post about directors in the chibnall era i made a few days ago I kind of insinuated that I wanted to go on a separate rant about the cameras and the budget, or more accurately the show’s new production ethos (exemplified by the cameras) and the budget. So I guess I’m doing that now.

Honestly in retrospect I think the news that they had acquired better, more cinema-ready cameras for S11 should have probably been my first clue that something was wrong. It’s a small decision, but it’s very exemplary of exactly the ethos Chibnall and Co. seem to be going into their era with.

Doctor Who has always been kind of the odd one out in sci-fi for a number of reasons but not the least of which because it’s always noticeably been of a lower production value. Back in the day that used to turn a lot of people who were more accustomed to the American sci-fi standards of early Star Trek off. People looked at Doctor Who and thought it was kind of a visual joke. The wobbly sets (which tbf I literally never notice), the bubble-wrap monsters. And sure, it is true that classic who was really, abundantly clearly being made on some pretty sparse resources, but in it’s best and most prestigious eras, it didn’t try to escape that, it used it to its advantage.

I’m thinking of the Fourth Doctor’s first few seasons. That era of the show borders on being surreal horror sometimes, and it’s not really all that better looking than the seasons before or after it. The reason it’s so effective, though, is because instead of shooting for something they couldn’t do, the teams used their creativity to craft an atmosphere and a visual aesthetic around what they had.

It was no different in the NuWho eras predating 2018. Sure, they were technologically ambitious sometimes, they made leaps forward. They made the leap to HD in 2009, for instance. But they rarely pushed themselves beyond what was conceivable for the show. Because they knew that if they did that, some kind of sacrifice would have to be made...

And so we arrive back where we started at Chibnall and his era’s new cameras. I recall an interview from back in the glory days of actual hope (the year and change between the announcement of Jodie Whittaker and her first actual episode), where Chibnall made it clear that he wanted the show to “catch up” to its contemporaries. He would look at all these great shows on HBO and Netflix and then he’d look at Doctor Who and think, “we’re a bit behind the curve aren’t we”. This also should’ve been a warning sign.

Because here’s the thing. Yes, the show technically looks better than it did a few years ago. And yet, it looks the worst that it’s looked since the 80s. How did that happen?

It happened because they made one or two massive leaps forward well before they were ready. Chibnall and co desperately want the show to look modern and up to date. They want you to be able to hold it up to the new Star Trek, or Westworld or anything and they want you to respect it. They acted out embarrassment. Needless, almost cynically inspired embarrassment. Because what else, really, improved along with the cameras and the tech? Not a lot. The budget is still clearly well below what Netflix or HBO gives their creators, and when you mix that with the new tech they do have, AND the horrible directing I’ve talked about already... the result is a show that ACTUALLY looks embarrassing. I mean, sure, it has its moments of visual beauty. But everyone gets lucky sometimes.

But the hard truth is that usually they don’t get lucky, and we get horrors like The Tsuranga Conundrum. Empty, white walled rooms with so little production value they literally couldn’t even make windows or a basic flight deck. Some really poor lighting, to add onto that. But that’s not the worst bit about episodes like that. The worst bit is that a few years ago, in S8, 9, or 10, that would’ve been fine. Maybe not ideal, but certainly workable, because they would’ve had to make it work, whether they liked it or not. The show has always functioned within the parameters of what it is visually capable of, until 2018. It was never like a corporately devised spectacle.

I mean, you really want to have my point proved, watch Heaven Sent/Hell Bent over again. Those episodes look amazing, despite the fact that if you actually look around at the sets or locations they’re in, it’s all very sparse or shoddy. Because they said to themselves: this is what we have to work with, so we’re going to be creative and make it work. More than that, we’re going to make it look magical and unique and wonderful, like Doctor Who has always done.

Aside from the fact that the show is desperately trying to hide its own budget shortcomings these days, I also have a feeling they’re not actually handling their budget well in the first place. The disparity in scale between season openers/finales and the in-between episodes (you know, the bulk of the season) seems larger than it has in the past, like they’re trying too hard to impress us with stuff like Spyfall only to immediately throw us into garbage like The Ghost Monument or Orphan 55. I mean, previous teams have definitely made the same error before on a smaller scale (season 6 jumps out to me), but never to the extent that it’s being made nowadays.

I don’t know dude, the levels of incompetency piled on top of incompetency in this era are bizarre. I’m convinced some weird shit is happening behind the scenes that we’ll find out about in like a decade or something, because it seems like every decision on absolutely every level is wrong.

#anti chibnall #chibnall era #doctor who negativity #dw s11 #dw s12 #the tsuranga conundrum #spyfall #orphan 55 #the ghost monument #doctor who #dw season 12 #dw series 12 #dw series 11 #dw season 11 #doctor who season 11 #doctor who season 12

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siderealxmelody · 3 years

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The Downfall of The Tel-Assar

The Tel-Assar (ancestors to modern Grisha/Mages) had no need for a King or God but they needed stability, order. Their kind created blood feuds over the smallest matters. Their civil wars and territorial disputes were beginning to erode the land.

The Aes Sidhe (ancestors to the modern Titans, Fae, and Cubi people) were growing wary of defending their land and hiding from Tel-Assar Scholars. The Tel-Assar’s obsession with knowledge saw them cut open and experiment on not just the Chimera (ancestors to the modern Harbingers) but the Aes Sidhe and even each other.

The Tel-Assar held a mass Rêverie (a state of sleep-like meditation) and glimpsed their answer. A Tel-Assar would come to not only guide their people but bring an Era of peace to the land. This Tel-Assar began to be known as Eyn Sof Ohr Raz - The One borne of The Firmament.

Morozko, Indech, and Vairya were raised as Scholars in one of the many Tel-Assar Spires dotting the land. They had heard of the Mass Rêverie, everyone their age had heard of it. However, the sign of this mysterious figure was never revealed to any Tel-Assar born after the Rêverie. They didn't care, it was probably some half-crazed mass hallucination anyway.

Morozko wasn't worried about this supposed figure, he had a paper due on the Da'at, the music of the Stars. Tel-Assar spent their whole lives trying to understand. They knew that understanding it would lead to unlocking the nature of the very Universe. He had sat to write and didn't stop for the fourteen days and nights. His words not only cracked the music but set up the downfall of his kind. It is said he wrote the words in a state of Rêverie using his own blood as ink, and his skin as the pages.

He was who their people had been waiting for and was crowned the moment he finished his work. For a time all was good, his presence calmed the Tel-Assar and brought many Millenia of peace to the world.

But Indech grew jealous and fearful of Morozko's idealism. Morozko was too easily swayed by mournful stories and blood feuds. How was he supposed to lead them to an age of glory if he spent his time placating angry Aes Sidhe nobles and expanding the rights of the Chimera? So Medved leads his supporters against his younger brother. For a time Morozko held him off but that didn't last long. Aes Sidhe's support was split too evenly between them to make any difference.

It was then that Morozko's lead Scholar Vairya proposed an idea:

"A sacrifice of our kin my lord. Our people's power and blood is given to you to make sure he cannot kill you."

"And how many of our people is needed for such an endeavor Vairya?"

"Half."

"Half my court? Is that all? You made this sound as if it was a dire decision to -"

"Forgive me My Lord, Half of our race. Half of the people on this world that -"

"No, no absolutely not. I will not demand such a sacrifice from our people. Find another way, if I fated by the Da'at to die then I shall."

Vairya was sent away but performed the ritual anyway. Her vile act resulted in Morozko's safety yes, and Indech's easy defeat. But with half of the Tel-Assar gone, the fragile balance the world held plunged into chaos and lead to the Fimbulwinter and the events that followed.

Morozko was horrified by all of it and departed to his realm, locking those he could save in with him. He refused Vairya and her kin's entry.

"You created this horror, live in it."

Morozko would venture out to the world only two other times. Once 1,000 after the fall of his people to see how the world had changed. He came upon a young mage and helped save her village from the Titans. Before he went back to his realm she pressed him for a gift from him. When he asked what would satisfy her she asked for something of him that she could carry always - he offered to lay with her, to give her a child and a bloodline. The second was 200 to find the descendent of their union to tell him of his bloodline. He hoped in telling his descendent his family history he would be able to bring peace once again to the land. That descendent was named Ilya Morozova. Ilya only saw this family history as proof he was meant for something greater and sought to make it so. In doing so he crafted in Mervost and gave his daughter and Alek the shadows that defined them.

As for Vairya, she would later go mad from her guilt and give birth to Sankta Eostre of The Gardens - grandmother to Luda Volkova, Aleksander Morozova’s wife. She would call herself Nen, seeing herself as a cruel and capricious god that gave birth to this horrifying new world.

Morozko - God-Emperor, Frost of Gold, Lord of Winter, Eyn Sof Ohr Raz, Spinner of The Da'at, Blessed One of Da'at, Exemplar of The Stars, Child of Paradise

Indech - Beast of Justice, The Demiurge, The Great Serpent, Cleric of Da'at, Baron of Dreams, Paragon of Nightmares, Keeper of Balance

For like the three people that care about any of this... 😅

@xdarklingx

@truthuncovered

@thequillandthesword

@siiinfully

@rebelliousfamily

#reference

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my-darling-boy · 4 years

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What’s the main thing you find yourself liking about WW1 over WW2?

I’m often asked this, as it happens, since people find it odd I have a high preference for learning about one over the other and especially since I’m fiercely anti-war.

This is the main reason why I study WWI.

Sure I like the niche period male affection and the surrounding era, and I hate this it’s just an ad for a corporation, but this will ALWAYS ultimately summarise why I favour my studies towards WWI.

In WWI, there was no real enemy, only those fabricated by corrupt men in power. A good majority soon realised they had no reason to fight and yet were forced to. Horror had been experienced at such a magnitude by mass quantities of people for the first time that they could see war itself like a caricature, this raw and horrific hyperbole, and know to feel fear towards it, and know that to feel that fear was human. It was a needless and unjustifiable conflict that saw the manipulation of society and acted as a catylist to further the endless cycle of violence and abuse of political power; it played a critical role in desensitising the modern world to cruelty and pointless death. And it’s heartbreaking to know what people endured on all sides.

I’m fascinated by human connection and the power of kindness and love—and like I mentioned in another ask—learning about the war which forever altered our modern ways of experiencing and mirroring that deep and nurturing connection teaches us what horrible things happen when it is severed or lost because of fear, and why it is SO IMPORTANT to have empathy and avoid war at all costs.

Reading accounts of the Christmas Truce moves me so profoundly each time I always cry. Unity, kindness, and love is inherent in some way shape or form to all human beings before cruel men in power order that humanity to be stripped from us and be replaced by weapons and lies.

WWI makes me so upset because I can feel the fleeting humanity like an unnamed song on the wind haunting the fingers on triggers and drifting through the trenches steeped with gas and among beautiful embodiments of life now laying motionless and scattered across stretches of mud. It was still there, always there, the loving energy that links one human being to another, and would have had millions of men all throw down their weapons, but war drowned out the unified metaphorical hymn with machine guns, shells, and threats of imprisonment or execution. I believe what kind acts like those shown on Christmas Day 1914 between all who were affected by the war were the last notes in a song of compassion now lost to time, like a last goodbye before one fades away into the darkness. And even when this tune resurfaces in future conflicts, it’s all the more sorrowful because its presence reminds us that it continues to be forgotten and continues to grow weaker as time goes on.

It brings me to tears to think about the amount of boys behind guns and bayonets still hearing the melody and feeling so terrified of what punishment would await them if they gave in and stood down that they felt forced to ignore it. To think of the friends, secret lovers, and brothers each man held in their arms as they watched their lives slipping away knowing pieces of metal and promises of false glory would never bring their loved ones back. To think of the terror one must have felt to breathe poison gas or see a body mauled by a machine gun before knowing of such things’ existence. To think of the 15 year old child who was blindfolded against a post and shot because he was afraid of guns. It absolutely SHATTERS my heart.

In one fell swoop, universal respect and care for human lives was truly changed forever among the masses. And it still drives me to tears, looking at their faces, their stories, their graves, listening to their voices, standing below their names no one even bothers to stare up at anymore.... because I can see all too well, framed perfectly, plainly, and concisely before me the remains of a lost generation whose desperate grip on humanity was destroyed in one blow. And that generation who can no longer speak for itself is constantly twisted by conservatives on political platforms today to fit their hate-charged agenda or to serve as a false symbol of their nonexistent empathy, i.e. they wear poppies when they couldn’t give less of a damn about anyone who died and would gladly start a war if they could

“Lest we forget”, “remember them”, “never forget”.... these words have no meaning if we don’t truly know what they stand for. Not for their “sacrifice” or empty honour, not for boasting toxic nationalism or power in violence, not for disgusting imperialists, but for their ghosts in all their youth or ardency and laughter to remind us of what life was lost and what price we truly paid when we created hideous machines and monsters to permanently silence the nameless song which connects us all.

Too much research at one time gives me panic attacks, handling my genuine helmet makes my chest tight, writing about it gets me choked up more often than I wish to tell. I’m actually petrified of both gas and guns! And yet despite all the heartbreak and nightmares I am constantly subject to, I feel that if I can’t immerse myself in learning about it or the surrounding time period, I feel “lost”. That era plays such a part in my life and interests that it would be a deal breaker for me in a relationship if my partner didn’t care about the war or had no interest in the Edwardians. It also ties in to other interests of mine like the women’s rights movement during the Edwardian era, early 20th century LGBTQ+ community and views towards such following the Wilde Trials, the changing of male affection, learning to identify the ways in which conservative and insensitive Western values damage the world, and, as of course I’ll always recommend it, Testament of Youth, one of my favourite books, which is the memoir of feminist, pacifist, and former WWI VAD nurse, Vera Brittain.

In short, the way I feel about WWI actually overshadows the way I really feel about any other period in history. And I have a number of reasons I can’t get into learning about WWII, but I won’t get into them now :’) Main difference is: they’re both equally devastating in their own ways, but WWI sadness just Hits Differently and I’m more drawn to learn about that type of sadness? I hope I even described this all right??

Thanks for the interesting ask!

#I went through the five stages of grief writing this AH #tbh I don’t have a short answer for this #*makes self cry over sad WWI poetry*#‘god I wish Haig had been the first man on the Sun’#wwi #antiwar #asks #ok to rb

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dilutesworry · 4 years

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❛ 𝒉𝒆 takes no time to shake his wings dry again , but for us – a few drops of love are intense pain . wine rouses the heart , wine makes all men lovers – wine , undiluted , dilutes worry .

* omg hello , i’m so excited to be here i love mythology in all forms & i simply , am a s-word for it always . i’m cc , cst tz w / feminine pronouns & this is bacchus , who i’ve never written before but am excited to try my hand at ! in a nutshell , he can be described as scarily calm angry guy who’s wine drunk & has a flair for the dramatics . lots more under the cut , but i’m so excited for this so pls ! hit the stupid lil heart to plot or hmu for my discord ! general tw for alcohol .

❛ 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 & 𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒌 › 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐇𝐔𝐒 .

( YOON JEONGHAN, CIS MAN, HE / HIM ╱ well, if it isn’t BACCHUS, who has decided to grace us with HIS presence. I heard the GOD OF WINE & MADNESS has been living amongst the humans for 417 YEARS, and hasn’t aged a day, funny right ? they can be EQUABLE & WILY, you should watch out because they are also known to be INTEMPERATE & AUDACIOUS. HE harnesses the power of MADNESS INDUCTION, and have chosen the path of being AGAINST the humans. ╱ CC, 20, CST )

❛ 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆 & ��𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒘 › 𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒 .

he sits by the sea , swallowed in sand with an empty chalice in his hands . his eyes are tired , an irrationally calm ire that rests on impenetrable skin while he watches the sun rise . will he ever tire of the simple things ? there was once beauty in humanity – he’s spent centuries dancing naked in the woods , flowers adorned in his hair sending messages in the breeze ; life hasn’t been the same since last he blinked . oh , he tires , he longs to sink in the sand unforgotten , but accursed with the weight of mankind , he tires – of them .

❛ 𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒖𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒆 › 𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐒 .

✧ * CORE

↠ full name . bacchus / alias baek suhwan ↠ nickname(s) / alias(es) / title(s) . roman god of wine & madness , baek suhwan – in the modern age to mortals ↠ age / dob . immortal / appears twenty - eight ↠ hometown . rome ( if u saw me put greece here first no u didn’t ) ↠ current location . new york city . ↠ stance . against mankind . ↠ abilities . madness induction . ↠ gender . cis gendered man . ↠ pronouns . he / him . ↠ orientation . bisexual , grayromantic . ↠ occupation . ???? billionaire playboy ???? ↠ face claim . yoon jeonghan .

✧ * COUNTENANCE

↠ height . six feet , one inch / 187 cm ↠ build . broad shoulders , though he’s got thinner limbs than the more athletic of his kind . best described as lean , but well toned . ↠ tattoos . a couple hand tattoos , XII on the back of his neck . ↠ piercings . ears . ↠ scars . none . ↠ hair . these days he’s sporting jet black , messy curls that usually fall into his eyes . he’s been known to try different hair colors , but hasn’t been blonde or otherwise in the last century . ↠ eyes . dark , and always seeming to swirl with a mix of emotions – it teems on raw anger and sheer entertainment , but his eyes tend to always just be watching and observing , easily putting most mortals at unease if he wants to . ↠ clothing style . whatever’s on trend – but just , slightly off . in his youth on earth , used to sport bright colors and flashy clothing but in the most recent years ( decades , even , not centuries ) he’s toned it way down to neutrals and dark toned clothing . it’s jarring , since he’s mostly outwardly still the same , he just looks like he’s matured a lot more . ↠ usual expression . just slightly entertained , half a smirk written on his lips while a golden chalice is tipped toward them . always like he’s in on a secret that he’s not supposed to know about , like he’s just on the verge of ruining your life if you choose to approach him in the darkness of the party – he screams danger , but he’s tempting . ↠ speech . slightly off putting , as if when listening you’re unable to discern where he’s really from – because his words sound a little , ancient , a little too powerful . he speaks like he’s the most important person , and like attention and glory are owed to him . awfully crude , but he’s charming enough to get away with his egotistical tendencies and how harshly his words leave his lips . ↠ distinguishing features . an aura that demands attention – whether he’s earned it or not , worn fingertips that are always rough against others’ skin , tilted lips that always spread in a trouble - making grin , clever eyes that don’t seem to match the rest of his demeanor .

✧ * RUMINATIONS

↠ ( + ) positive . equable , wily ↠ ( - ) negative . intemperate , audacious ↠ moral alignment . chaotic evil ↠ likes . wine ( though , won’t complain about other types of alcohol either ) , long parties that last days – even if it’s not as common these days , the silent roar of the sea , the feel of an evenly balanced blade in hand , naked company resting between silk sheets , cliff diving ( won’t explain ) , being awake in a city that never sleeps – roams free barefoot in the streets from time to time , never ending adventures with heroes ; hasn’t found a hero worth following , though . ↠ dislikes . most mankind – they’ve lost his respect far too long ago , death ( of a party , of a favored mortal , of joy ) , disrespect toward him – everyone else is fair game , apparently , most demigods – they’re just annoying , being uncomfortable – therefore often indulges in the finest things in life , most modern music ( old man vibes ) . ↠ quirks . will pull out various , priceless chalices and goblets seemingly out of nowhere – usually accompanied by a rare , expensive bottle of wine ( won’t offer to anyone else , it’s just for him ) , raises his right eyebrow whenever he finds something interesting , carries around an authentic aureus coin at all times and is often seen flipping and weaving it between his fingers . ↠ hobbies . disappearing for multiple years at a time only to reappear as some new version of asshole , letting himself get into fights ( and willingly losing ) just to Feel Something , lounging in a silk robe in his penthouse and complaining to his household staff ( aka lamenting like an old poet ) , creating multiple social media personalities just to see how far he can get away with things if he pretends to be famous for a century or two .

❛ 𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒅 › 𝐂𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 .

trigger warnings : death , war – mentions of blood .

✧ * ASCENSION

* bacchus , roman god of wine & madness . he is not far from his greek counterpart , dionysus , & often has the same stories as him .

he’s born from the thigh of his father – birthed as a demigod while being raised by nymphs in order to be hidden from the wrath of an immortal queen . the first to cultivate grapes & turn them into wine , his first instance with mankind is spent in asia – teaching the mortals their the secrets of wine making . he is the last to ascend to mount olympus , the twelfth to take his seat among them & is inherently , the baby ( which , he lives up to ) .

✧ * 500 YEARS AGO

* the 1500s , bacchus arrives on earth – naked & drunk , awaiting his newest adventure . he loves mankind , despite the atrocities they perform upon each other . a traveling storyteller , he finds his place on a caravan of freaks while roaming in europe . rome isn’t what it used to be , now taken over by men from the north who are just learning about the earth being round – churches & monarchy are rampant , bacchus becomes a bard briefly . he has his way with the men & women of the court , charming them into sin , whispering forbidden stories of godhood into their ears as he brings in a generation of forgotten demigods that won’t amount to much . he falls in love with a mortal prince , watches him die in a baseless fight against the churches & the people . he disappears for a few decades before resurfacing in asia , finding an easy life with the sprawling dynasties . as always , adopts a life as a storyteller – a rambunctious drunk that has a way with words ( & royalty ) , earning him a comfortable life . he ends the era with still much love in his heart for mankind – they’ve been nothing but kind to him , they’ve loved him & cherished him , his anger is nonexistent .

✧ * 400 YEARS AGO

* the 1600s , italy calls him home , bacchus arrives at the same time of the greatest minds mankind has to offer . but as galileo & isaac newton are quick to make discoveries ( that are quite , common knowledge in his opinion ) , he’s the kind instead to be distracted by the pleasures in life . bacchus is the same bacchus as the child who took his first steps just a century earlier . he indulges in the finest wines & women , a sprawling palace built in his name as he lounges about being fed grapes . it’s here he has his first taste in adventure , after boredom settles into his bones . bacchus assimilates into mankind even more than he had previously – he’s quick to fall in love again , but not necessarily with someone – just , even more with mankind . he watches from afar as they grow & form ideas , becoming brighter & stronger than they were ever intended to . bacchus gifts more to mankind than ever , there are records of him all over europe – & to the east , a mysterious benefactor in the ottoman empire that matches his description . he most often brings up stories from this era ( & the 18th century , but , not there yet ) .

✧ * 300 YEARS AGO

* the 1700s , bacchus becomes more warlike than ever . he shows his godhood in both the american & french revolution , bares his teeth in every single major war that starts on earth . bloody & powerful , his stories during this century are a lot more somber . he witnesses horrors & pain that he didn’t know were necessary ( aren’t those usually things reserved for the gods ? he hasn’t experienced life on earth on the bad side , perhaps he would’ve seen more if he had – understood that mankind isn’t too far away from the gods themselves . the titanomachy tends to repeat , after all ) , he gains his first taste of disdain for mankind . even when he’s settled between wars with a crown on his head & a golden spear in hand , he’s starting to see humans forget him . they’ve shifted focus , weapons in hand with blood on their teeth , left his altars empty & forgotten . of course , if he just shifted his own focus back onto the courts ( & the rich ) he’d be better off . but , he spends this century as a disciple of war , for the first time on earth showing the strength of the roman empire .

✧ * 200 YEARS AGO

* the 1800s , bacchus falls back into old patterns – indulges more & more in his domain than ever . this is his worst century on earth – every god ever is aware of bacchus , who’s fallen very deeply into a spiral that’s difficult to get out of . when asked , it takes more than a thousand drinks before they understand what he went through . dozens of favored humans dead in wars , hundreds of children lost in one fell swoop – while the world just moves on , he’s stuck running around the world spreading his gifts & powers . chosen alcohol no matter where he goes , a never ending party left his wake , newborn maenads in his name , bacchus is an eternal mess . he spends very little actual time with sober humans , keeping other gods in his company instead . he almost misses home , almost chooses to return home , but is too stuck in his haze to really remember the way back . is it possible for gods to be drunk ? is it possible for them to absolutely forget their godhood ? well , it is for him .

✧ * 100 YEARS AGO

* the 1900s , his anger is at an all time high , bacchus is all but forgotten . his greek counterpart is far more remembered , he is left behind in the dirt ( though , who’s fault is it really ? over a hundred years as a drunkard , spilling old stories & fading from the forefront of man’s mind , he’s got nobody else but himself to blame ) . for the century , he’s a particularly cruel god – very sly , very cunning , very not great for mankind . a deal broker , he’s quick to help out humans , but always for a price & always an entirely too high one . it doesn’t make much sense , since there’s not much he can grant except momentary invincibility , a quick escape if needed , a personal maenad . he sets a quick record for inducing madness , more than ever in his entire four hundred years on earth – more people go insane than ever under his fingertips & he finds it absolutely entertaining . only toward the end of the cold war does he find it in himself to ... Relax , a little .

✧ * NOW

* nowadays , a new visage on hand , he returns to his roots from his favorite place earth has to offer . the first few years of the new century are spent around eastern asia , traveling about once again & teaching mankind new ways to succeed in the wine business . after he’s swindled enough mortals out of their money , he turns to the west & settles in manhattan , new york . a penthouse is purchased underneath the alias “baek suhwan” & he is content to live his days out , lounging about with the people that disgust him the most . he is calm now , though is anger is not forgotten . it’s turned almost – apathetic , a dangerous type of ire to hold , but he’s numbed out to it . most of what he does nowadays is insult everyone around him ( for entertainment ) or be the most dramatic person in the room ( for entertainment ) or cause a ruckus amongst the gods ( for entertainment ) . as for mankind , they’ve really done nothing in the recent centuries to win back his favor , & though he now more leans toward indifferent , he’d still choose to fight against them rather than ever fighting for them .

❛ 𝒅𝒊𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒆𝒔 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒚 › 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 .

so like , in theory : everything .

but in specifics i’ll just list some scenarios instead haha cause that’s how i do things cause smol brain .

001 : we always run into each other & i know exactly how to push your buttons so i always do & maybe you like it , or maybe you hate it – i’m still going to be as annoying as possible because technically , i can .

002 : for the greek gods – we’re technically related ( but i’m not greek & i never will be , ew , god ) & i’m technically still a baby god compared to you but i am annoying & i will annoy you but you can’t do anything about it because i’m the baby ):

003 : same as above except you DO do something about it because again : i’m not greek so yeah you beat my ass

004 : one time we accidentally started a small war between mortals & that was kind of messy but now we’re friends , except mankind insists that we’re enemies & we think it’s kind of funny .

005 : oh , yeah , i’m a “mortal” but i’m really not good at hiding it cause i kinda do whatever i want & i get away with it all the time but yeah , dude , i’m “human” – what do you mean why did i put it in quotation marks i’m not a god , dude – no i didn’t wink at you haha

006 : i did you a favor once & now you think you’ve gotta repay me back but like , i’m good – please don’t talk to me ever again , i don’t like you please stop bothering me & being nice to me please stop .

007 : oh , we don’t like each other & we both know it , so yeah we just don’t get along & i will fight you in public except the last time we started a battle it wasn’t cool & we got reprimanded for like 9 decades so let’s Not Do That but yeah , hate u , xx .

#ungodly:intro #alcohol tw #death tw #war tw #blood tw #THIS IS REALLY LONG AND I'M REALLY SORRY AAAAAAA

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years

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Quarantine Movie-Watching Journal, Continued

Throughout all this quarantine time I’ve been chronicling my watching movies, I’ve also been reading books, but have had assorted troubles on a level that seems close to basic comprehension, or just getting on their wavelength. Part of this is having a certain tendency towards the difficult or avant-garde in terms of what I think is “good,” but also wanting things to make sense or have a certain level of clarity: It’s maybe a difficult balance to strike but I don’t know, plenty of books pull it off, I have plenty of favorites. Nothing I’ve read recently has really been hitting, the only thing I’ve found compulsively readable is Virginie Despentes’ Vernon Subutex series, which I would hesitate to recommend as I also think they’re kind of bad. I want clarity on a certain level, and mystery on a deeper one; a lot of things essentially get the formula backwards, and feel incredibly obvious and free of ideas while employing obfuscatory language. (This isn’t to say I like “straightforward” prose, the “mystery” I’m referring to is basically created as an act of alchemy when language is functioning on its highest level, and insight, mood, imagery, and motion are all generated simultaneously. This isn’t “plain speech” I’m describing, but it doesn’t short-circuit the brain’s ability to make sense of it.)

In watching a lot of older movies I find that one of the things that help them maintain a level of interest is I possess a certain confusion about their cultural context. Even if something is a perfectly straightforward mainstream entertainment, there is still a sense of confusion or mystery about it, where you can follow it perfectly, but don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from, so it’s unclear where it’s going. In contrast, watching modern movies, especially more mainstream things but also, generally speaking, everything, I feel like not only do I know exactly where it’s coming from it’s also aggressively spelling everything out, as if to avoid moral confusion. This is also combined with a certain aggressiveness to the editing, so even as everything too fast-paced on certain level, it also ends up being too long, because it needs to fit in a certain level of redundancy. Older things tend to have a greater degree of storytelling clarity that’s also premised on a higher level of trust in the viewer’s ability to intuit things. Maybe there’s also a greater level of reliance on a set of semiotic devices that we’ve become more critical of over time, but what’s emerged in their absence feels more self-consciously insistent.

Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig

After watching this I looked up on IMDB to see what Gerwig is up to now and she’s slated to direct a Barbie movie? I hate this era, where success doesn’t lead to any actual clout to make important or interesting work, but instead forces artists into these traps of economic contract where they service a trademark. Also this movie is kind of weird because all these actresses are in their twenties but I think are meant to be playing teenagers for most of it? Or even younger? This movie basically feels like it is meant to be for children but is given this gloss over it to maybe seem appealing to young adult modern feminists but it doesn’t really seem like it would be except to the extent they’re indulging a youthful nostalgia.

Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

I’ve been wanting to watch Decker’s last movie Madeline’s Madeline because a lady I met and thought was cute has a small role in it. I guess all her movies are about artists and performers? I like that this one seems capable of depicting a fiction writer without just presenting their work as autobiographical but I guess that’s because it’s, you know, a real person whose story is being told. Elisabeth Moss is pretty good as Shirley Jackson. Jackson acts real weird and petulant and destructive and I sort of went in feeling like she would be depicted as a manipulative monster, but watching it I felt like it was probably well-researched and accurate to how she was but not in a way that makes me dislike Shirley Jackson — but also I do like destructive difficult personalities and I think that’s basically a fine and acceptable way for artists, or anyone, to behave. I still don’t think this is really a good movie, Shirley Jackson is not really the lead but more like the only interesting character: She’s got an obnoxious and self-satisfied husband, but the movie is more about this couple that moves in — a woman who’s pretty dull is the focal point, and her husband is boring, and manipulative too, albeit in a very commonplace way. Pretty average.

The Predator (2018) dir. Shane Black

A movie about how people with Asperger’s are the next step in human evolution that nonetheless uses the r-word slur to describe them, filled with some of the most generic actors imaginable. I like Shane Black movies as much as the next guy, but am indifferent to the Predator franchise. Maybe because, despite the R rating, they really do feel like they’re made to sell toys, like so many cartoons of the eighties? I hope the sequel the ending transparently sets up never gets made.

The Lighthouse (2019) dir. Robert Eggers

Wasn’t able to finish The Witch and I stopped and started this one a few times. Tries to avoid accusations that “all these modern horror movies are dumb as shit” by not being a horror movie but it also isn’t really anything else — Not funny enough to be a comedy nor evocative enough to be an art movie. Sort of like High Life in the sense that Robert Pattinson isn’t actually good in it but maybe it’s surprising that a mainstream actor would be in a “weird movie,” but he doesn’t really have to do anything in either, at least as far as building a character goes. It’s underwritten enough he might not even know how to read. Willem Dafoe is ok as a guy doing the sea captain voice from The Simpsons.

The Whistlers (2020) dir. Corneliu Poromboiu

Contemporary crime thing that vaguely reminded me of all the other post-Tarantino crime movies made in the past 25 years that I don’t really remember, particularly the ones in other languages. This one’s got characters learning a whistling language to communicate in a way cops will just thing is birds. Also a semi-complicated plot, told non-linearly. The female lead also pretends to be a prostitute and has sex with a criminal dude so the police watching him with hidden cameras don’t figure out what she’s up to, although, if I understand the plot, I’m pretty sure they work it out anyway.

Pain And Glory (2019) dir. Pedro Almodovar

This one stars Antonio Banderas, is pretty plainly autobiographical, being about a filmmaker approaching the end of his life -- Penelope Cruz plays the mother in flashbacks that are then shown to be a filmed recreation as an autobiographical work is begun, which is the sort of twist that could seem corny but isn’t. The film has a weird/interesting structure, the slow revelation of details from the character’s past forming a narrative a film can be made of eventually but before that there’s this totally separate story involving an actor, heroin use, and an ex-lover. That stuff’s good but also it sort of wraps up halfway through. Like, a bundle of narrative threads culminate, and then the film keeps going, to eventually tie up other bits that seem incidental. Maybe this would be fine in a theater but streamed at home I got a bit anxious. Penelope Cruz made me think “I could watch Vanilla Sky” but it turned out I can’t, it’s unwatchable.

High Heels (1991) dir. Pedro Almodovar

I love Almodovar, my stance has been that there’s a degree of diminishing returns the more of his work you see but it’s been years since I’ve seen one of his movies, and at this point I remember very little of any of them. This one’s on Criterion as part of a collection of films with scores by Ryuichi Sakamoto — Sakamoto’s not my favorite member of Yellow Magic Orchestra but he’s certainly an adept talent, and this one operates differently than I’d expect from him, most of the music feels saxophone-led, sort of in a jazz vein. Obviously you can compose for this instrumentation but yeah, not what I’d expect. The movie itself is pretty solid: bright colors, some melodrama, a ridiculous twist, a sense of humor which feels both over the top and somewhat deadpan. A woman’s mother returns to Spain after close to a lifetime away, she ends up sleeping with the daughter’s husband, he turns up dead, the daughter reveals he killed her stepfather as a child. The movie is primarily about the daughter’s yearning for the approval for an emotionally distant mother, at one point she summarizes the Bergman movie Autumn Sonata for her, but Almodovar is gayer and more sexually perverse than Bergman. so it’s less dour than I’m maybe making it sound. At one point the daughter is wearing a sweater with the pattern of the Maryland flag on it? But the credits reveal all her outfits are by Chanel.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) dir. Volker Schlondorff

The score is closer to what I would expect from Sakamoto here, in a martial/industrial vein, though not exclusively. Stars Natasha Richardson, and her performance feels related to what she did in Patty Hearst — a depiction of a woman shutting down parts of herself for the sake of her own survival, displaying inner reserves of strength through the appearance of submission. This seems a lot better than the current Hulu show, although I think it’s largely dismissed? It’s been a while since I read the book so I can’t remember how many liberties it takes. Obviously there remain traces of an exploitation bent in a weird way, through depiction of women in dehumanized sexual contexts but I feel like this movie is good at depicting competition between women in the context of a rigged patriarchal system.

Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence (1983) dir. Nagisa Oshima

Never seen any of Oshima’s films, despite the allure of explicit sex in an artsy context. This has Sakamoto in it opposite David Bowie. There’s a lot of English language being spoken in a thick Japanese accent. David Bowie plays a prisoner of war Sakamoto, as a military officer, falls in love with and tries to keep from harm, his score does the heavy lifting of highlighting these emotions. Was not super-into this movie but it’s always interesting to think about how popular YMO were, and if these are the type of faces you enjoy looking at you can do that. Sakamoto’s got a weird hairline. The movie is fine considered in the context of like, 1980s movies (not my fave decade) that are period military dramas (not my favorite genre) and exist in this Japanese film context that is neither super-insane and exuberant in its style nor is it super-austere and minimal.

A Farewell To Arms (1932) dir. Frank Borzage

Very well-shot piece of romance, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, in an adaptation of a Ernest Hemingway novel I don’t remember whether or not I read in high school. Hemingway didn’t like it, maybe because there were a lot of changes, which confuses the issue of whether or not I know the source material further. I don’t like this movie as much as I liked History Is Made At Night but it makes a lot more sense as a narrative, easily reduced to a bare-bones plot: He’s in the army, she’s a nurse, people don’t want them to be together during World War I, he ends up deserting to be with her. Feels lush, romantic, dreamy and swooning, but I feel like the strengths are more in the cinematography than the characters — the leads are fine enough, though not super deep, beyond the depths of their love, but the supporting cast is a bit dull.

War Of The Worlds (2005) dir. Steven Spielberg

Feel like I had heard this one was good? I appreciate Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible movies, and Spielberg some of the time I guess. This is a blockbuster that feels post-9/11 in a way where I wonder what a post-Corona thing would feel like — feel like it would shy away from away from a lot of spectacle or something but probably I’m wrong about that. So this one focuses on a parent and his children making their way across an increasingly demolished landscape to make it to the other parent, alien monsters are in the way, kinda just seems logistically weird or like the premise of the quest is unsound given the stakes should probably just be survival? But maybe this is post-covid thinking of how such a thing would operate — the disaster picture with a “human element” to focus the narrative on is a decades-old form and one I don’t really get down with nor do I think is generally considered to age well - i.e. I don’t remember growing up with The Towering Inferno being on TV.

My Twentieth Century (1989) dir. Ildiko Enyedi

Weird Hungarian movie where like… angels/stars observe? As two twins are born in the late eighteen-hundreds and go on to have separate lives? One as an anarchist, the other as like a party girl type who seduces rich men. The latter gets more attention than the former. Sort of a fairy tale atmosphere, which makes the explicit sex scenes awkward. There’s also a scene where a guy gives a sexist lecture about how women should be allowed to vote even though they have no sense of logic and are obsessed with sex. He draws a dick on the chalkboard and talks about how women can’t understand beauty since they are obsessed with erections which are disgusting. Not really sure what it adds to the movie as a whole since I’m not sure which one of the two characters played by the same actress is meant to be watching it, but it’s funny. A lot of things are confusing about this movie, but it’s still sort of interesting and therefore worthwhile I guess. Apparently the director has a new movie on Netflix — I don’t have Netflix at the moment but might get it for a month or two in the future to catch up on assorted things like Sion Sono’s The Forest Of Love and the David Lynch content.

His Girl Friday (1940) dir. Howard Hawks

not into this one. Rosalind Russell wears a cool suit at first though. Features the thing where a male romantic lead (Cary Grant) is openly manipulative but it’s sort of viewed as fine and funny because the woman in question is confident and modern, which kinda feels like a fascinating view into the gender dynamics of the time, although I don’t think it works as a comedy as far as me being able to figure out what the jokes are. The journalists getting caught up in crime intrigue plot is cool though, that kind of feels like something that always works.

Lured (1947) dir. Douglas Sirk

Kind of have no idea why I watched all the older Douglas Sirk movies on the Criterion Channel at this point, even the ones I liked I don’t think I liked that much? This one stars Lucille Ball, who I don’t love. Other movies I watched recently that were partly comedies and partly suspense things worked better than this. This one’s about attractive young women disappearing and Lucille Ball getting hired by the police to be an undercover detective. She ends up finding love, but then the man she gets engaged to is framed for murder by the actual killer. Features scenes where the police (led by Charles Coburn, who’s fine in this) talk about how crazy Baudelaire was. Wouldn’t recommend.

Far From Heaven (2002) dir. Todd Haynes

Not sure I have any strong feelings towards Todd Haynes, but it seems likely I might end up watching a bunch of his movies eventually. This came out in high school, and I had no interest in it, but I’m more charitable towards the whole fifties melodrama thing it’s paying homage to now. Julianne Moore stars as a woman whose husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay and repressing himself via alcoholism, who strikes up a friendship with her black gardener, (Dennis Haysbert) which scandalizes her neighbors. The moments Moore and Haysbert spend together are maybe the most interesting - particularly them going to an all-black restaurant - but the aspect of them being watched and judged feels more cliched. Similarly, the stuff about Dennis Quaid’s homosexuality is most interesting as a lived-in thing, and his drinking, hitting his wife, etc., is less so. The veins of sensuality running through the movie are richer than the plot structure that unites them. This might be one of the things that makes Carol a superior movie.

The Violent Men (1955) dir. Rudolph Mate

This stars a bunch of people I don’t like — Glenn Ford, Edward G Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck is fine in other stuff but boring here. Dianne Foster plays her daughter, and that’s the meatiest role basically- she gets to denounce violent men. This is a western about a guy being pressured to sell his land for cheap. Criterion Channel programmed this as part of a series called “western noir” and I don’t know about this stuff. Foster’s character is definitely the most interesting part — her parents are essentially these gangsters running the town, her teen angst feels like it stems from an inherent morality and disgust with them. Stanwyck is cheating on Foster’s father (Robinson) with a guy I think is his brother who also enforces the violence. The mom tries to kill the father, and then is herself killed by a woman in love with the person she’s sleeping with, so the daughter, you would think, would go through a gamut of emotions. But she’s a totally secondary to Glenn Ford’s male lead, who she ends up riding off into the sunset with — he initially was involved in a relationship with a woman who didn’t care about his inherent morality in favor of a materialism, but she just sort of gets dropped from the narrative at a certain point. The movie really tries to play it both ways with regards to the violence, but I feel like that’s pretty common actually: While I feel like today the title might primarily be intended as an indictment, it also feels like at the time it was very much the sales pitch to the audience.

Shane (1953) dir. George Stevens

Classic western, about homesteaders just trying to live who end up needing to get in gunfights with people who want their land. Jean Arthur plays the wife and mother, which is why I sought it out (especially sicne she had established rapport with Stevens) but she’s barely in it. The titular Shane is a good dude who wanders through and ends up helping them out. The kid’s infatuation of Shane is really annoying to me personally. I love how this has two big fist-fights though, the second of which is a They Live style thing, a conflict between friends that becomes incredibly drawn out. The first fight is also just incredibly brutal and well-choreographed, probably the high point of the movie.

Cast A Deadly Spell (1991) dir. Martin Campbell

TV movie made for HBO with very Vertigo Comics energy, I started off thinking “this is dumb” but very quickly got on its side. It’s a riff on HP Lovecraft mythology set in a 1940s Los Angeles where everyone uses magic except for one private detective, whose name is Harry Lovecraft. Pretty PG-rated, some practical effects (not the best kind, more like gargoyle demon creature costumes I assume are made of foam), and a pretty easily foreseeable “twist” ending where the apocalypse is averted because the virgin sacrifice just lost her virginity to a cop. Not actually that clever but clever enough to work and be consistently enjoyable. Julianne Moore plays a nightclub singer. My interest in this is brought about because there’s a sequel (where I guess the deal is the detective does use magic, and no one else does) called Witch Hunt starring Dennis Hopper and directed by Paul Schrader.

Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama

The climax of Cast A Deadly Spell shares a plot point with this, which I think is being reevaluated as a “cult classic” to what I assume is the same audience that valued the Scott Pilgrim movie: People ten years younger than me who think it’s charming when things are completely obnoxious. A lot of musical cues, all mixed at too loud relative to the rest of the audio, bad jokes. This tone does help power the whole nihilistic, I-enjoy-seeing-these-superfluous-characters-die aspect of the plot but the sort of emotional core of the horror is less present. This movie is basically fine, by lowered modern movies standards, but it’s perfectly disposable and not really worth valuing in any way. I watched Kusama’s movie Destroyer starring Nicole Kidman a year ago and don’t remember anything about it now.

Dead Ringers (1988) dir. David Cronenberg

Rewatch. I think for a while I would’ve considered this my favorite Cronenberg but nowadays I might favor eXistenZ? Jeremy Irons in dual roles as twin brothers, with different personalities, but who routinely impersonate each other, and whose lives begin to deteriorate as a relationship with a woman leads to them individuate themselves from each other. They’re gynecologists, and the whole thing is suffused with an air of creepiness. There’s this sense of airlessness to the movie, a sense of panic, which is present incredibly early on and just sort of keeps going, getting weirder and more uncomfortable as you become accustomed to it, that feels like a sure sign of mastery. I’m fascinated to think about how watching it in a crowd, or on a date, would feel. Most movies don’t operate like this.

Imagine The Sound (1981) dir. Ron Mann

Mann is the director of Comic Book Confidential, which I saw as a middle schooler. This is a documentary about free jazz, featuring interviews and performance footage. Paul Bley and Cecil Taylor are both shown playing solo piano, which isn’t my favorite context to hear them in. Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp say some cool stuff, there is some nice trio footage of Shepp with a rhythm section.

Born In Flames (1983) dir. Lizzie Borden

Easily the best movie I watched for the first time in the time period I’m covering in this post. I heard about this years ago but only seeing it now, when it feels super-relevant. It is shot in New York in the eighties, features plenty of documentation of the city as it was, but in the context of the movie, there has been a socialist revolution ten years earlier, and this film then documents the struggle of the women, particularly black women, who are slipping through the cracks, and fighting for the ongoing quest to make a utopia, but exist in opposition to the party in power. While focusing on black women, there’s also plenty of white women, also opposed to and more progre.ssive than the people in power, but that are having their own conversations which are very different. There’s also montage sequences of women performing labor that cut between women wrapping up chicken to close-ups of a condom being rolled onto a erect penis. The title song is by the Red Krayola, circa the Kangaroo? era where Lora Logic provided vocals. So yeah, this movie rules! It would be a good double-feature with The Spook Who Sat By The Door, though in a film school context, or a sociology context, you would need to do a great deal of groundwork first. Could also work as a double-feature with The Falls for how what you are seeing is the aftermath of a great sociological reshaping realized on a low-budget. I think I put off this movie I think because I was skeptical of the director’s self-conscious “artist’s name” but it turns out they got it legally named as a young child.

State Of Siege (1972) dir. Costa-Gavras

Also really good! Better than Born In Flames when considered in terms of its level of craft. Would make for a fine double feature with my beloved Patty Hearst. Tightly structured over the course of a week, leftist terrorists kidnap an American and interrogate him about what exactly he’s doing in their Latin American country that’s being run by death squads. He denies wrong-doing, but basically everything he’s done is already known to them. This exists in parallel to police interrogations of leftists. Pretty large scale, tons of characters, some basically incidental. Screenplay’s written by the guy who wrote Battle Of Algiers.

Olivia (1951) dir. Jacqueline Audry

French movie sort of about lesbian love at an all-girl’s boarding school that’s weird because everyone seems like they’re feeling homosexual love, but just for one instructor who eggs everyone on. Everyone acts weird in this one, basically. There’s a lot of doting. The atmosphere is pretty unfathomable to me. Chaste-seeming in some ways, but also like everyone is being psychologically tortured by being subject to the whims of each other, but also just rolling with it in this deferential way. Seems like it could feel “emotionally true” to a lesbian experience but only in highly, highly specific circumstances?

Lucia (1968) dir. Humberto Solas

Good score in this one, which is not that much like I Am Cuba but I feel obligated to compare them anyway - both are from Cuba and use this three-story anthology structure. All the stories in this movie revolve around different women named Lucia, in three different, historically important, time periods. The first is about a woman who falls in love with a man from Spain, during the time of Cuba’s war of independence, he says he doesn’t think about politics, but this is one lie among several. This ends with brutal sequences of war. The second takes place under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. The third takes place post-revolution, and is about a literacy coach teaching a woman to read and write under the eye of a domineering chauvinistic husband. As with I Am Cuba, it is the very act of considering these three stories together that brings out their propagandistic aspect, and makes them feel less like individual stories. They’re all beautifully shot, although it’s less in less of a show-offy way than I Am Cuba.

Mr. Klein (1976) dir. Joseph Losey

This one’s got a cool premise- About an art dealer, played by Alain Delon, who is buying art from Jews at low prices as they leave occupied France quickly, but who then starts getting confused for another person with the same name as him, who is Jewish. Gets sort of Kakfa-esque but also remains grounded in this world where there are rational explanations for things. (at least as far as the holocaust is rational) So the line gets walked between bits that feel vaguely verging on nightmare but also sort of maintain the plausible deniability of belonging to the waking world, of a paranoia for something the exact scope of which remains unnamed. Ends with Klein as one of many in a trainyard full of people being sent off to concentration camps, which to me felt sort of tasteless, as a large-scale recreation, but that feels deliberate, as a way of offsetting the scope of the film being primarily focused on one person, whose relationship to the larger horror, before it affected him, was parasitic.

Husbands (1970) dir. John Cassavetes

Not into this one. The semi-improvisatory nature of the dialogue never coalesces into characters that seem to have a real core to them, there’s always just this sort of drunken aggression mode. What even is there to these characters, besides the aggression they treat women with? What separates them from one another, makes them distinct entities, beyond the sense they egg each other on?

Casino (1995) dir. Martin Scorsese

Rewatch. Joe Pesci plays the violent Italian guy, Robert De Niro plays the level-headed Jew, Sharon Stone plays the blonde who gets strung out on drugs. Three hours long to contain everyone’s arcs, but also sort of feels like it neatly has act breaks at pretty close to the hour marks, while also telling this pretty big historical sweeping piece about how corporate control comes to Las Vegas, the notion that “the house always wins” but even the individual whose job it is to run the house is himself situated inside a larger house. Both here and in Raging Bull, De Niro plays a character whose third act involves trying to be an entertainer for reasons of ego, and it’s so weird. Yeah, a great movie, one of the few that the reductive view of Scorsese as “someone who just makes mob movies” applies to, I have no opinion on whether it’s better than Goodfella or not.

Blue Collar (1978) dir. Paul Schrader

Not great. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto co-star. Sometimes feels like maybe it’s meant to function partly as a comedy but doesn’t. It’s also mostly a crime movie, about people working at an auto plant who decide to rob their union’s vault. They end up not making any money from that robbery, but the union can claim insurance funds, so they get to benefit while the working men continue to be shafted, worried about the consequences of what they’ve done. Kotto dies, and Pryor and Keitel are turned against each other by circumstance, which the film tries to play off as being about the divisions among people that keep the working class weak. I definitely feel like the Schrader oeuvre begins with Hardcore.

Mona Lisa (1986) dir. Neil Jordan

This ends up kind of feeling like a lesser version of Hardcore, with British accents. Bob Hoskins, out of jail, starts driving for a prostitute, they dislike each other at first, but become friendly. She asks him to track down a younger girl she was friends with, who a pimp has gotten strung out on drugs. (Hoskins is also a father to a daughter, though his relationship with the mother is strained from having gone to prison.) Hoskins’ character isn’t that interesting and the film revolves around him, the female lead is more interesting but deliberately removed from the larger narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Neil Jordan movie.

The Untouchables (1987) dir. Brian De Palma

Rewatch. Great Ennio Morricone score in this one, a real reminder of a different era in terms of what constituted a blockbuster or a prestige picture. David Mamet provides the screenplay. De Palma is pretty reined-in, while Mission: Impossible is an insane procession of sequences of top-notch visual storytelling, the most De Palma trademark thing here is a first-person perspective of a home invasion scene, watching Sean Connery, that ends up being a deliberate choice of a limited perspective to surprise as he gets lured to his death. I feel like there’s a straight line between this movie and Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990), but obviously what that line runs through is the reality-rewriting effect of Tim Burton’s Batman.

Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino

Rewatch. Can scarcely comprehend how it would’ve felt to see this in a theater when it came out. I watched it the first time in college on a laptop and headphones and it blew me away, even after years of a bunch of it being referenced on The Simpsons and everywhere else. I haven’t seen it since. Rewatching is this exercise in seeing what you don’t remember when everything’s been processed a million times. Feels like Tarantino’s best screenplay due to its construction, more so than any dialogue, which is obviously a little in love with itself. Samuel Jackson wears a Krazy Kat t-shirt after his suit gets covered in blood. Quentin Tarantino casts himself as the white guy who gets to say the n-word a bunch.

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