#Voyagers wolf project
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Know someone who loves wolf research? Let them know that the Voyagers Wolf Project is seeking donations to support their winter field season.
"We need some help here folks! We need 939 donations by the END of today to unlock an extra $6K for the project (and likely more other monetary prizes). Donations can be of ANY size ($5, $10, etc) and go towards supporting our winter field season.
So if you enjoy following our project, please help us out by making a small donation. Each and every donation helps us toward unlocking some sizable prize money!
Why is today special/important? Today is Give to the Max Day in Minnesota—a day of giving to non-profits—and there are a bunch of other monetary prizes handed out and so the more donors we get, the more likely we are to win other prizes too. For example, last year we won an extra $13K in total because so many folks donated!
In particular, the project with the most donors gets an extra $6K. Last year we won this prize with 1,481 donors and think we will win again if we can get 1,500 donors— so far we have 561 donations so over a third of the way there!
Donations go toward our upcoming winter field season where we estimate the number of wolves in each pack, the number of pups that survived in each pack, the size of the wolf population, and social dynamics of wolf packs."
I'm in no way affiliated with this group personally. I just think what they are doing is very important. If you have seen new information regarding wolves it's likely its from this project's hard work.
Here is a link to the fb post
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New Beta canon for Owen Paris
The Wolf 359 Project states that Owen was made Head of Starfleet Operations in 2374. Which, technically messes up my headcanon and AO3 fics, but is still really, really cool.
#Admiral Owen Paris#star trek voyager#HIm being Head of Starfleet Operations is a really cool idea#Wolf 359 Project
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BRACKET REVEAL
Alright. At long last, I present to you the bracket...or should I say...*BRACKETS* for the Virtual Character Tournament!
Given the scale, the first round is going to be one bracket per week, 4 a day, with each lasting 24 hours. I know that this is still tight, but given how many contestants there are, along with the necessary inclusions of images and propaganda (oh and I guess also my job), it's what I can do to keep this semi-manageable. There's also no redemption round this time. It's gonna be a single elimination tournament. Be kind to your peers. This is not but a drop in the infinite ocean of the internet.
...oh yeah the brackets themselves. We'll be going in order over the course of 4 weeks. I'll make proper announcements for them as they commence. Given how many there are and what I want to get done beforehand, Bracket 1 will likely begin some time this week. But for the matchups...
Bracket 1:
Hatsune Miku (Vocaloid) vs. Elohim (The Talos Principle)
Flame (Yu-Gi-Oh! VRains) vs. The Supervisor/Mouthless (Tenkuu Shinpan)
XANA (Code Lyoko) vs. MetalMan.EXE (Mega Man Battle Network)
9-Jack-9 (Zot!) vs Poppy Pipopapo (Kamen Rider Ex Aid)
Sage (Sonic Frontiers) vs Mektryllis (Fate/Extra CCC)
Dot Matrix (Reboot) vs V Flower (Vocaloid)
Wizardmon (Digimon) vs Delta (Red Vs. Blue)
Sora (Ever17) vs Kasane Teto (UTAU)
The Doctor/EMH (Star Trek Voyager) vs Crash (Awful Hospital)
Burroughs (Shin Megami Tensei IV) vs Quorra (Tron Legacy)
The Machine (Person of Interest) vs The Rocket Dex (Pokemon)
P03 (Inscription) vs. M.X.E.S (FNAF Security Breach: Ruins)
Hakuno Kishinami (Fate/EXTRA) vs Data Riku (Kingdom Hearts)
Samaritan (Person of Interest) vs ART (The Murderbot Diaries)
Cortana (Halo) vs M-Bot (Skyward)
Mitsuko Miyazumi (Archer) vs Ritsu (Assassination Classroom)
Bracket B:
Ene (Kagerou Project) vs The Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe)
Amadeus (Steins; Gate 0) vs D.O.M (The Adventure Zone)
AM (I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream) vs Theo (Meta Runner)
Colonel.EXE (Mega Man Battle Network) vs Daia (Kiratto PriChan)
Agumon (Digimon) vs The Bobbiedots (FNAF Fazbear Frights)
Felix the Desktop Cat (Real Life) vs SHODAN (System Shock)
MegaMan.EXE (Mega Man Battle Network) vs Church (Red vs. Blue)
Shepherd (ENA) vs Dr. Coomer (Half Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware)
Sophie/Sophia (Persona 5 Strikers) vs Dizzy (Beyblade)
Miss J/SCP 5094 (SCP) vs Ultraman X (Ultraman X)
SAYU (No Straight Roads) vs Falulu (Pripara)
Incarceron (Incarceron) vs Benry (Half Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware)
Lea (Crosscode) vs Kiracchu (Kiratto PriChan)
Dragon (Prahumans) vs Murder-Bot 2.0 (The Murderbot Diaries)
Ai (Yu-Gi-Oh! VRains) vs Glitch Slime (Slime Rancher)
Eris (Wolf 359) vs Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club)
Bracket III:
Hera (Wolf 359) vs Shin AI (Your Turn to Die)
Alba (Star Twinkle Pretty Cure) vs The Denpa Men (The Denpa Men)
Guy (Free Guy) vs EDI (Mass Effect)
Aetna (Lore Olympus) vs Yui (Sword Art Online)
Nicole the Holo-Lynx (Archie Sonic) vs Gabumon (Digimon)
Jacqueline Box (Pripara) vs Mamechi (Tamagotchi)
Vanellope von Shweetz (Wreck-It Ralph) vs Cleverbot (Real Life)
The Phantom Virus (Scooby-Doo) vs Chiaki Nanami (Danganronpa)
Alter Ego (Danganronpa) vs Digit (Cyberchase)
Simulcast (Reflection TTRPG) vs SARA (Toonami)
Lumina Ichihoshi (Dig Delight Direct Drive DJ) vs The World Machine (OneShot)
Rumble McSkirmish (Gravity Falls) vs Holly (Red Dwarf)
HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) vs Samantha (Her)
PAMA (Minecraft Story Mode) vs Noah Kaiba (Yu-Gi-Oh!)
Agent Smith (The Matrix) vs O.R.C.A (Splatoon)
Spunc (Alpha Betas) vs Porygon (Pokemon)
Bracket Delta:
GIFanny (Gravity Falls) vs Coco (Aikatsu Friends)
Vic Fontaine (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) vs Red One (The Last Angel)
Glitchtrap (FNAF Help Wanted) vs Holo (My Holo Love)
Avina (Mass Effect) vs Light Hope (She-Ra)
Motherboard (Cyberchase) vs Aya (Green Lantern: The Animated Series)
Bonzi Buddy (Real Life) vs Tama (AI The Somnium Files)
Dragon (Worm) vs Bip (Runway to the Stars)
Failsafe (Destiny) vs J.A.R.V.I.S (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Aiba (AI: The Somnium Files) vs CanHaz (DC Comics)
SAYER (SAYER) vs Fey (Welcome to Night Vale)
Buddy (Buddy Simulator 1984) vs Ziggy (Quantum Leap)
Maggy (Hellspark) vs The Squip (Be More Chill)
Lyla (Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse) vs Durandal (Marathon)
Beta Jay 137 (Ninjago) vs Zero III (Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward)
Sergey Ushanka (The Magnus Archines) vs Demetra (Spy Kids 3: GAME OVER)
Alie (The 100) vs Lil' Hal (Homestuck)
As always, thank you for bearing with me during this long and arduous process. Sorry for the hassle, and be prepared, as it is almost upon us.
#virtual character tourney#tournament layout#there are a lot of characters so i'll be tagging them during the rounds#don't want to pack even more nonsense into the bottom portion#character polls
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for the record I have:
A swap AU, Essenceswap, that has a real 100k fic about it and will get a fangame and ending someday
An alphynecentric Fate crossover AU, Fate/SOUL, that also has a real fic that's nearly half done. Alphys summons the Spear of Justice as her guardian in the Moon Cell Holy Grail war, and together they fight for their lives, fall in probably doomed love, befriend some favorite weird ass closeted high schoolers they probably are going to have to battle to the death, and uncover a fascist plot that they must prevent from claiming the Grail at all costs. Also what if I fixed fate canon, with a hammer,
A fell AU (nameless) where Asgore crafted a crueler underground through RESETs to face the no mercy human only for Chara to get reincarnated first to stop the bullshit (also flowey AND UNDYNE get to be heroes due to the whole swap from protagonist to antagonist and vice versa) (also there's Doc, the world's best evil woman who put metal claws on her real claws like scourge from warrior cats and thinks it makes her cool and intimidating)
A Pokemon crossover AU (tentatively named Your Courage Will Pull Us Through) where monsters are the missing evolutionary link between humans and Pokemon and the evil Team SOUL wants to imprison them in pokeballs
A traveller crossover AU aka shlock Undertale (tentatively named Voyages of the Starship Ebott) where monsters have lost their home planet and been driven out of their star system by the evil Third Imperium. To find it and bring it back to where it belongs, an ancient and powerful monster starship has set out on a mission bearing the estranged, tentatively allied King and Queen of monsters, two psionically skilled skeletons, a monster supersoldier created by the Imperium and on the run after stealing herself from the unethical Project DT (she also spent some time finding herself with the space wolf furry antifa pirates), a once-normal scientist who got in over her head spying on Project DT, a robotic galaxywide social media influencer who secretly isn't a sapient AI, and a normal human kid who can talk to ghosts. The ghosts have been muttering the name of a forgotten star in a barren, distant, system, but can the TMS Ebott make it across a galaxy at war to find out what waits in orbit around Chara? Find out next week!
An alphynecentric magical girl AU based on a genderqueer reinterpretation of genre classics like Sailor Moon. When the famous magical girl known as Girl Indigo falls from the sky with a ruined eye, her ordinary high school classmate takes up the responsibility of taking her place while she heals. With a magical dragon mask that lets her transform into Girl Golden, Alphys learns on the fly how to be a magical girl from her hero, while Undyne just might find out what it's like to be a normal high schooler with a crush on the smartest girl in school... (Also Papyrus is a genderqueer magical girl, Asriel is an evil magical girl, and Chara Frisk and Kris are the cutest little ominous shapeshifting animal guides youve ever seen.)
A storyshift-at-home AU (tentatively titled Poemshift) with slightly different swaps (instead of Mettaton and Napstablook being the fallen children, Undyne and Alphys are and there's a secondary set of swaps that includes a bunch of ghosts and minibosses and shopkeepers and stuff that I haven't quite decided on yet) (also Toriel is a scientist and Asgore a guard, why would it be the other way around). No idea really what to say about this one as it's my newest concept but im like the ceo of swapping characters so you have to trust me anyway
A SBURB AU (SCAVE) basically everyone's a kickass god of mental issues and they have anime battles with chess guys. what do you want from me. don't look at me. we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. go home
#AUs#haven't really done anything with them on here yet except promote my fic so this is new terrain#hence why I want to know if people are interested in my guys or nah#I will not be mad if the answer is nah#I am already annoying enough about them elsewhere#I just wonder if I should spread the annoyingness out a bit. annoy discord friends less and tumblr more#''undyne you're not annoying'' you have no idea how much I think about these guys who don't even have fics mostly.
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Awoo! Spring is coming! Murkwood is thriving with the energy of spring and the swamps bloom to life. The chorus of frogs fill the air as flowers blossom out across the bogs, marshes and pits. Water voles run along the riversides, bird song returns as they migrate back to the warmer weather and bats shake off their hibernation to fill the evening skies. From catkins budding on the willows to the crimson buds of wych elms, the wetlands burst with colour.
And with spring comes tying up loose ends and organising our spaces. There’s so much to do before launch comes round! Finishing den lore we’ve put off. Saving wolf profiles for launch. Crafting customs for our starters. Deciding our future breeding projects. Drawing page breaks and shop fronts or scenes from our lore.
That’s why with the help of Kate and MaggotJuiceBox, we’re hosting Lorch! A month long creative challenge revolving around Lorwolf with a spring twist. Every day during March, anyone who wants to participate in this challenge creates either a drawing, writing or any other creative task involving their wolves or Lorwolf in general and post it online.
We’ve put together 31 days of prompts to get the creative juices going. (See above.)
Not liking some of the prompts? Here's a word bank you can replace any of the days with:
Transition - Rejuvenation - Sprout - Flora - Growth - Dew - Forest - Fountain - Home - Tidy - Breathe - Expand - Hope - Freedom - Voyage - Wonder - Energy - Alchemy - Delight - Acceptance
Rules:
You can post your submissions on Tumblr, in the Lorwolf’s Discord Lorch Channel under contest/challenges, or Lorch forum.
All creative tasks are counted, however irl activities like baking, knitting, woodwork, and clay-making do require an irl photo.
For written pieces: The minimum word count is 200 words. (The exception is poetry, but you must spend at least 20 minutes on your poem.)
All creative tasks must be created by you specifically for this event.
Prizes:
Prizes will be given as a code to use at launch!
Creative Task Ideas:
Aside from drawing and writing, there’s plenty of other ways to join in on Lorch. Creative Tasks can include cross-stitching, paper-folding, creating a tune, paper mosaics, crochet, scrap-booking, ceramics, cake decorating, making tea blends and jewellery. As long as it can be tied in to the prompts and Lorwolf, your den, lore or wolves, it’s a great task to do.
Don't forget to tag your submissions with #Lor-ch or tag @quichelewoof if posting on Tumblr, so others can find your wonderful creations and they can be tallied towards your prizes.
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My Top 25 Movies of 2023.
Sitting in cinema screens in 2023 has continued to re-enforce that it is a weird time for the industry, with huge three hundred million dollar (!) blockbusters attracting only ten or twenty people per screen on opening weekend and highly acclaimed independent movies being given no home except for a dumped VOD release. This year felt ‘tough’ being a fan of both great films and the big screen experience.
Anyway, scaremongering over... it is time for me to dust off the cobwebs from my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of this year, 2023.
[Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive.]
As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Which was a tough rule to stick to this year because I thoroughly enjoyed the lean and effective b-movie action horror antics of Last Voyage of the Detmer, which could’ve earned a slot on my list had its UK release not been pulled 2 weeks prior to its date due to its European distributor going bankrupt.
Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make fit yet believe they deserve a shout-out regardless and then I get stuck into what I think are the 25 best films of the year. Anyway, without further ado, here are the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list:
Action movies that I have enjoyed this year include The Covenant which holds the distinction of being an actually enjoyable and tolerable Guy Ritchie movie, John Wick: Chapter 4 who’s bludgeoning and unnecessary excess gives way to a final hour that is part ode to Walter Hill’s The Warriors and part ‘modern action classic’ effort, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 which was uneven but still the best Marvel effort in quite some time (though that is a low compliment), the first part of the French two-parter Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan which brings John Wick-ian action to the oft-told tale, the Gerard Butler ‘Prime Exclusive’ double-bill that was Kandahar and Plane, Denzel Washington’s (“final”) entry in his Equalizer series and Thomas Jane’s cheapo Brannigan / Coogan’s Bluff b-movie tribute, One Ranger.
Not many comedies impressed me this year but going off the ones that made me laugh and surprised me some what were the kind of delightful Woody Harrelson sporting underdog remake Champions, the vastly better than we all thought it was going to be / surprise sleeper success of the year No Hard Feelings and the ‘animals saying uncouth things’ silliness that was Strays.
I liked a lot of horrors this year; the legitimately great (no seriously!) Influencer, the gimmick-heavy but incredibly effective No One Will Save You, the immensely fun Kids Vs Aliens, the Covid-19 slasher that you didn’t realise you secretly sort of wanted that was Sick, the semi-disappointing yet still enjoyable recalibration that was Evil Dead Rise, the Godzilla-homaging creature feature The Lake and the frankly insane / insanely nasty Project Wolf Hunting.
Not a huge amount of animation blew me away this year but Leo was a stand-out for not just being shockingly good but for the sheer amount of repeated viewings it has gone through in my house with my boys without it losing too much. I have to also give props to Spiderman: Across The Spiderverse which was gorgeous to look at and immensely entertaining but excessive and unwieldly to its own detriment.
It was a good year for documentaries with both Milli Vanilli and The Pigeon Tunnel impressing me immensely. The former being surprising in its depth and emotion. But within the documentary form it was a banner year for the ‘biography’ approach with genuinely excellent and thorough studies of fascinating people. I loved Mr Dress Up, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Judy Blume Forever, Hatton and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.
Dramas I’ve liked a lot in 2023 have been Till which moved me immensely, the justifiably acclaimed May December, The Burial which was far more captivating than it had any cause to be, the Netflix survivalist preposterousness that was Nowhere, Ben Affleck’s fabulously entertaining Air which was another entry in the ‘business origins’ subgenre that continues to somehow flourish, Michael B. Jordan’s overdirected but strong Creed 3, the ode to old-fashioned 1990s studio potboiler thrillers that was To Catch a Killer, the Sky Original Dead Shot and the smart phone / techno warning Unlocked.
And in a little section all of its own marked ‘better than they had any right to be’ I’ve got to give a shout-out to Elizabeth Banks’ incompetently directed but decidedly fun Cocaine Bear, the Jackie Chan / John Cena greenscreen-heavy team-up Hidden Strike, the wonky but fun Scream 6, the exhaustive Extraction 2, the low-bar hurdling Blue Beetle and the absolutely insane (and mildly better than the last two excretable efforts) Fast X.
And now… my Top 25 favourite movies of 2023… but for those who know me to be an enormous John Woo aficionado I will make clear from the outset that at the time of compiling this I still have not seen Silent Night. Sorry.
25. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
We must mention William Friedkin’s last film before his death - a reminder that the man was a master filmmaker across the board but specifically a master at letting the material and the performance(s) lead. Never has that felt more reinforced than with his interpretation of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial where, like what he did with his excellent made-for-tv redo of 12 Angry Men, he lets the power of one single setting, a very good cast and exceptional material (in this case a soft update of Herman Wouk's 1953 play of the same name) lead and he gets out of the way and stays there. A more fragile or less confident director at the age Friedkin was, at that point in his career / so close to the end, would've likely been tempted to go big or get flashy to show they've still "got it". There was nothing fragile or unconfident about Friedkin right up to the end. This is an impressively engrossing watch with a great kick at the end that Jason Clarke absolutely sells the shit out of.
24. Talk to Me
I genuinely thought the 'hype' machine was going to have seriously done a number on this, a la BARBIE, but thankfully that turned out not to be the case.
Directors Danny and Michael Philippou have taken a weathered and well-worn concept - that grief and trauma can be open gateways for otherworldly malevolence to exploit - and they've injected it with a fresh voice / energy, whilst respecting 'old standards' like practical effects work.
The concept is decidedly hokey and the lead character isn't particularly likable to say the least (though Sophie Wilde is excellent playing her), but the Philippou Brothers are so thoroughly committed here and the practical effects work is so impressive that it's infectious.
You're almost pulled 'in' despite yourself because the scares are so well-executed and the feeling of dread is so effectively threaded. You know you're being 'played' and you try to fight against it, but it's a mark of its quality that it gets you anyway.
23. Beau Is Afraid
If Taika Waititi parlayed the goodwill and acclaim from a series of beloved low-budget Kiwi comedies into a mainstream career making multimillion dollar Marvel movies and becoming one of the most sought after studio hires of the last decade, then Ari Aster has used the instantly accepted and highly regarded successes of HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMER to... *checks notes* ... work through some complicated shit involving his relationship with his mother (and his father - who may or may not be an actual 'penis monster') and have arthouse kingmakers A24 pay $35 million for it.
This made less than a third of its $35 million budget back (because, come on now, how on earth do you effectively market this thing?) so it's tiring but true that the label "cult classic" has •already• been applied to it.
Look, I'm offering zero defence to accusations against the film that it is overlong, incredibly self-indulgent, ill-disciplined, carrying nowhere near the depth it claims to, tiresome and exhausting. It IS all those things. By the final stretch it is floundering haaard and there's a serious feeling of being trolled starting to set in.
But, first of all, it shouldn't be discounted how excellent and effective Joaquin Phoenix is here and Aster's wildly uneven material is greatly assisted by his casting. Secondly, it has to be acknowledged that there's moments - long stretches, in fact - where there's absolute brilliance at play here.
There's masterfully crafted moments of genuine hilarity (dark hilarity, for sure) alongside flashes of abject discomforting horror. I'd go so far as to say some of the most interesting, inventive, unique and intriguing moments in cinema this year are tucked away inside this behemoth of a clusterfuck.
People pushed hard for the extended cut of MIDSOMMER to be released. I'm pushing for the reduced cut of this.
22. There’s Something in the Barn
I thoroughly enjoyed and had a great time with this. It's not at all embarrassed to lean into its influences, evoking affectionate RARE EXPORTS / GREMLINS vibes without coming across like its heavily plagiarising from them.
It’s got a terrific dry wit to it thanks to writer Aleksander Kirkwood Brown's script and which the cast, especially Martin Starr (essentially doing his SPIDER-MAN shtick here) and a very winsome Amrita Acharia, sell well. And director Magnus Martens doesn't skimp on the dark stuff and sense of foreboding either.
There's no snobbishness to put up against this thing - it's a horror comedy that made me laugh multiple times and jump occasionally. That's a very solid success to me and I highly recommend it if the likes of RARE EXPORTS, KRAMPUS, CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS and SINT are favourites of yours.
21. Pearl
I'm a big fan of Ti West and I really enjoyed X, which was one of my Top 25 of 2022 and which in my review I defended by saying:
"... It's very easy to dismiss what West is doing here as just an exacting homage to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but it's more than that. Obviously there's overt nods to it but you could also suggest West is doffing his cap affectionately to Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO and, yes, both Lewis Teague's ALLIGATOR and Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE as well..."
This is an interesting companion piece to that movie (with a third entry, MAXXXINE, imminent) made more fascinating due to how it came into existence:
Whilst in their Covid 'bubble' prior to production beginning out in New Zealand for X, director Ti West and star Mia Goth became so enamoured with the backstory they were creating for the character of Pearl that they wrote an entire prequel, pitched it to A24 and built filming into the back end of the original production. A high value 'two-ffer' if ever there was one.
The end result is something less blatantly and broadly enjoyable than the first (second) story but it's definitely the more curious and interesting one; if X really was Ti West's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE / BOOGIE NIGHTS / PSYCHO / EATEN ALIVE bastardisation, this is his Douglas Sirk melodrama injected with Technicolor and falsely set loose as a 'follow your dreams' fable gone really, really wrong.
It obviously lives and dies by the lead performance and, by crikey, Mia Goth is so good here. That much-memed final credits thing is lauded but it's that late stage monologue that drops your jaw a little. If horror wasn't so easily dismissed her performance would've won awards.
For years we've always considered horror prequels to be the nadir of the genre. After all, who cares if Leatherface only became Leatherface because he was made redundant? Or Jason Vorhees killing nubile teens because he got his pot farm trampled on? Or... or... how no one taking Michael Myers trick or treating turned him into a psychopath? Here though, PEARL indicates that doesn't always have to be the case.
20. Reality
For those worrying as to whether Sydney Sweeney's tsunami of scantily-clad content across advertising and social media platforms has left her precariously overexposed (in more ways than one), along comes this fascinating and considered film to remind you that behind the bikinis, the false nails and the airbrushing is an extremely talented actress capable of incredibly powerful work.
Devoid of make-up, carrying the film nearly 70% of the time in close-up shots she can't fake her way free from and regimentally parroting the actual recorded FBI transcripts down to every sigh, stumble and gulp Sweeney is frankly astonishing in how she carries this thing.
Director Tina Satter keeps things tight in terms of both location, framing and running time (it plays as an almost real-time exercise) and as a result the film becomes a riveting, claustrophobic and maddening display (how did Reality Winner's actual charges and ridiculous sentence stand when all of this occurred without correct due process and legal entitlements being followed from the outset?) from a first-time film director showing exceptional command of her cast and her visual space.
19. Fair Play
Chloe Domont's corporate morality play / torchlight on gender politics by way of a recalibration of the 1990s style erotic thriller is all the more astounding because of how assured and masterfully controlled it is for someone's feature directorial debut.
Driven by two excellent performances from Phoebe Dynevor (who I'd not seen before in anything and was astonished by her) and Alden Ehrenreich (who I think is terrific and deserves treated way better by the industry), and supported by atypically great turns from Eddie Marsan and Rich Sommer, this thing has no right to be as engulfing and nail-biting as it is for what it is.
Domont refuses to make compromises or concessions in the way she presents latent sexism, money, toxic alpha cultures, wounded pride and corporate backstabbing infecting her characters. It's a brutal, relentless ride she takes us on.
One where the brash bloodied cunnilingus opener keeps returning to your conscience like it was heavy foreboding for what feels inevitable - these two can't keep tearing away at each other like this, surely? Not without someone dying at the other's hands.
You keep trying to shake that feeling off, telling yourself that it's not ~that~ kind of film. But as this thing starts to barrel towards its third act it is testament to Domont, and how Dynevor / Ehrenreich are executing her material, that you come to realise all bets are off.
18. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
There's action movie franchises and then there's •this• action movie franchise; hitting its stride at the fourth entry, delivering back-to-back masterpieces with its fifth and sixth and now this - a seventh entry so frickin good it rides out evident flaws (and Mark Gatiss' horrendous "accent") that would absolutely fatally decimate other films!
Because it feels sacrilegious to even say this but the latest entry manages to straddle both being very good, decidedly high end, etc etc and... *whispers it* ... kinda 'samey' to what we've had since Christopher McQuarrie became 'grand master':
Still no one trusts the inherent righteous genius of Ethan Hunt, forcing him to go against one and all. Blah blah. There's excessive shots of Tom Cruise running. Yes, yes. There's elaborate stunts seamed together by a 'not as clever as it thinks' plot. Of course. And too many characters. Far too many. Confoundingly, it feels somehow a little stale and yet brilliant.
The film's 'grand' action sequence this time round has been so overexposed, so heavily spoilt (a making of dissection for it ran before the film itself at my screening for Christ's sake) that you naturally assume it'd deflate a little by the time you see it 'in context'. That's not so. Mainly because it is actually just the entrée to the main course which is the train finale.
The climax is an utter masterwork of technical execution, mixing real stuntwork with very well done greenscreen and (yes, shocking as it is to say for a Tom Cruise movie) CGI facial replacement alongside terrifically accomplished narrative construction.
If like me you continue to be aggrieved by the presence of Simon Pegg's Benji and how he's ostensibly exactly the same character as Luther with exactly the same skillset, routinely forcibly sidelining a vastly superior Ving Rhames, then that's more evident here than ever before. So much so that they literally 'Poochie' Luther out of the film in the third act. Which is obviously racist bullshit. Also, I know I stand alone in my apathy towards Rebecca Ferguson (I really don't get the adoration for her / her character at all) and my hatred for Vanessa Kirby and all the stupid gurning that comes with her, but both are drowned out by a crackin' turn by Pom Klementieff and a performance from Hayley Atwell that you really need to believe the hype on; she lights up the screen and is a tremendous comedy player amongst all the weighty waffle.
And that's the film's biggest flaw that ROGUE NATION and FALLOUT both managed to masterfully swerve - the minute the action stops the film starts to sink under the weight of really heavy exposition. Mounds and mounds of the stuff, in fact. I know McQuarrie and Cruise have been open about how they conceive a script around action set-pieces but this is the first time where the stitchwork is so headache-inducing having to listen to it that you start to see a wobble in the method for the first time... even more so now McQ and Cruise have started injecting all this whiffery about "the choice" and portentous context about how IMF agents work, are recruited, etc. Like, what are you doing trying to 'John LeCarre' my fucking MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies, goddamnit?
Still, it's the most minor of hardships considering you're never more than 10 minutes off from getting out the other side of all that exposition and getting to another sublime action sequence or a close up of Atwell's wonderous smile.
17. Sisu
"Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness, and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English (tenacity, grit, resilience and hardiness are much the same things, but do not necessarily imply stoicism or bravery)."- Wikipedia
The RAMBO sequels should look to this, kneel before it and weep just for being in its presence.
And we better start doing the same with Jalmari Helander, who in just three movies has done Finnish 'interpretations' of John Carpenter horrors, 80s Amblin movies and now 'lone warrior' action films to magnificent effect.
This is a gloriously ridiculous live action cartoon of violent excess and bonkers propulsion; land, water and air set-pieces of utter insanity stitched together with inventive, nasty gore.
It is outlandish in its speed, its fat-free story construction and its refusal to ever stop or give way to wimpy, silly things like character development.
16. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
I totally get Hollywood's whoreish mentality for seeing something succeed and then bastardising it to the point that what we once loved is something we become bored by - it's why we suffered through a noughties onslaught of what felt like nothing but zombie movies because 28 DAYS LATER landed well or why everyone's trying to do "shared universes" now because of Marvel.
Or why after the massive success and instant affection for INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE every animated movie of late has been plagiarising the hell out of it.
You saw the trailer for this - a heavily belated sequel to a spin-off from a SHREK sequel - pulling that very shit and it just felt a bit like your old dad after your mum's left him, spraying on the 'hair filler' and squeezing into skinny jeans to "get back out there" and prove he's "still got it"...
... and then it just casually reveals itself to be a film of massively inventive design (both visually and narratively), that's surprisingly deep and very funny - and as a result superior to both its predecessor and the entire franchise from which it was born.
You don't •think• you NEED time spent in the company of Olivia Colman and Ray Winstone as Mama Bear and Papa Bear or Florence Pugh as Goldilocks and John Mulaney as Jack Horner... or best of all ELITE SQUAD's Wagner Moura as Death... but you absolutely do! Don't make the mistake of thinking you're 'above' this sort of thing, cos I can guarantee you you're not.
It's a delight!
15. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
It feels like I've got to be apologetic in my opinion of this if 'Film Twitter' / the critical majority is to be believed, in which case I'm sorry but I enjoyed this. I just don't think you should ever underestimate the positive impact factor(s) that can be drawn from this particular actor turning up on screen as this particular character, scored to John Williams' music. And I'm saying this as someone who's seen KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.
I can see why people would have issue with this latest / last outing; it's overlong to the point of bagginess (there's a staleness that starts to set in from the repetition of Jones and Co landing at a location, having the baddies immediately show up, outwit them and make off with the macguffin only for Jones to steal it back) and the character of Helena Shaw is a fairly odious and unlikeable one who exists to cause more shit for Indiana Jones than is tolerable (and I was no fan for the most part of how Phoebe Waller-Bridge played her).
And then there's the 'look' of it too. Did it HAVE to have such a shitty, plastic sheen to it? It cannot be overstated that one of the most tremendous qualities of those first three INDIANA JONES movies was in how Spielberg went out to REAL locations and had Vic Armstrong and Harrison Ford REALLY ride REAL horses and jumped on top of REAL tanks or fall under REAL trucks. Here, it's pixels and screens. Again. With nothing learnt from the issues KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL generated.
James Mangold has done a commendable job of 'apeing' Steven Spielberg and there's a lot - and I mean a lot - of great action here. But the vast majority of it has the shine taken off by continually cutting into terrifically adrenalinised action sequences to insert very obvious greenscreened shots of Ford and Waller-Bridge bickering and shouting like they were really honestly / definitely / maybe there involved with the sequence when it was getting filmed.
It's infuriating because this thing is stacked to the gills with thoroughly enjoyable, legitimately well-designed action sequences - the escape from the castle in the French Alps, the Apollo 11 parade and New York City Subway chase, the Tangier sequence, the Aegean Sea set-piece, the Ear of Dionysius cavern stuff and the airfield chase - but in every single one there's moments of really quite shoddy CGI that draws you right out of the moment to remind you 80% of this was done on computers. There's not ever a moment to make you gasp in awe at how the stunt-man survived like in the original trilogy. But there's a LOT of moments that has you thinking "This thing cost $350 million?"
But all that said, Mangold making a 'fan' version of a Steven Spielberg INDIANA JONES movie is better than Steven Spielberg phoning in one. And I'm not going to lie, this thing had me from the minute the font come up in the opening titles and we got a straight-up legitimate 1940s set INDIANA JONES mini-movie (which seemed to sit as an eery bedfellow to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7, weirdly enough) with the best... though still not flawless... de-ageing techniques I've seen.
14. The Fabelmans
It's more than a little disingenuous for all involved, specifically Steven Spielberg himself, to describe this as "semi-autobiographical" and "loosely based" on his adolescence and first years as a filmmaker when anyone who's read any number of books on the man or watched director Susan Lacy's 2017 biographical documentary can see the beats are all there, wholesale. If THIS is "loosely" then the biopic version would be the greatest invasion of privacy ever committed. This ~isn't~ a "fable", man!
I can also see with it why some have braced against it and the instant critical adoration that was applied to it, because the longer it sticks around the more muddled it becomes about what its point of view is and whether it has anything left to say. By the end it slides to a stop after 2½ hours with an admittedly wonderful (and wonderfully bizarro) comedic bon mot having scattered barely etched vignettes / sketches in its final stretch. And tonally, there's questions as to really what was trying to be said with that late 'Ditch Day' subplot and whether co-writer Tony Kushner was working through his OWN stuff within Spielberg's memory bank.
That being said, I loved it in all honesty. For the first two thirds of its running time, I thought it was •really• something special - and anyone pushing out the notion that this is Spielberg on autopilot ain't watching this properly. That cold pan cutting his [screen] father from the frame in a moment of parental happiness but leaving in his [screen] mother and her lover? That's some brutal, subtle craftsmanship there. And layered on top of choices like that is more precision cinematography from Janusz Kamiński and scoring (for the final time?) by John Williams.
The performances across the board from Gabriel LaBelle (as 'Sammy' / Spielberg), Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, [CENSORED] and Seth Rogen are extremely good. Though as atypically great as Williams is here, I'm not certain this ends up being the 'ode' to Spielberg's mum, Leah Adler, that some think it to be.
I totally understand the perspective of those that see this cynically as a 'pre-designed awards hoover' - you can't help but come away from Judd Hirsch's cameo feeling like the entire thing was written as a Best Supporting Actor Oscar clip reel - but for me it just hit me right in the chest... exactly as it will for anyone who spent some of their best summers with their dearest friends, being creative, making films, watching films, dreaming of a future that involved cinema, fending off unsupportive family and trying to hold close those that did try to help your talent flourish.
13. Babylon
As much as Film Twitter has taken against BABYLON's final moment, it must be said that for a "love letter" to cinema and the movie industry overall, Chazelle can 'sign it off' how he likes (and "SINGIN' IN THE RAIN to AVATAR" is certainly •a• take!) with no obligation to be subtle. However, considering there's NOTHING subtle about this film whatsoever preceding it, why you'd think it's conclusion would be any different is silly.
I'm a Damien Chazelle fan. I liked WHIPLASH and LA LA LAND enormously and I genuinely consider FIRST MAN one of the finest films of the last decade. No matter its flaws (of which there are several), I drew a great deal of enjoyment from this, his latest effort. Repeat viewings have put it as one of my favourite films of 2023.
It's a very, very messy film. Chazelle seems to believe the debauchery and excess of the era his narrative lands within - Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s - gives him unrestrained reign with an overindulgent running time and a cavalcade of graphic content. Added to all the blood, vomit, excrement, etc etc the opening Kinoscope Studios Exec's bacchanalian mansion party is the "opening sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" of debauched, drug-fuelled, orgy sequences in cinema.
There's no real consistent throughline to any of this which makes it all the more difficult to embrace across 190 minutes and because it plays like a plethora of sketches it has massive peaks and troughs Chazelle doesn't always seem to have total control of - the vignette involving Margot Robbie's Nellie LaRoy first experience of recording a 'sound' take starts solid, gets funny, outstays its welcome and then beats you into submission.
There's a lot of excellence here though. Whether that's in Brad Pitt's surprisingly layered, moving and deft turn or through the sojourns onto the desert location shoots of multiple oscillating productions, topped off with the very 'on' appearance of Spike Jonze's 'Not Otto Preminger' Otto Von Strassberger.
I'm thinking that opening on elephant defecation and sordid acts of urolagnia is something that in retrospect director Damien Chazelle may well be regretting now critics have been "pissy" about his latest film and it's now considered the big box office "turd" of the year.
12. The Killer
I've seen a few people talk about this as if it's "beneath" David Fincher, inarguably one of our greatest working filmmakers today. Like a tight hitman-out-for-revenge yarn based on Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon's comic book series is not "worthy" of him or something. Clearly these people are forgetting this is the same guy who spent 6 years in development hell on a WORLD WAR Z sequel, gave us the glorious (if flawed) bit of pulp that was THE GAME, the immensely effective b-movie in an a-picture gown in PANIC ROOM and remade an adaptation of a popular airport potboiler with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO in amongst whatever is regarded as his "prestige" flicks.
It's absolutely a David Fincher movie; that's apparent in the droll humour, the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack and the clever visual flourishes - like the entire Amazon 'bit' in the final stretch.
It's a caper. A yarn, if you will. A bit of pulp, just with high end flourishes - such as Fincher's meticulous choices, Erik Messerschmidt's cinematography and the casting itself (Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell and Tilda Swinton).
There's this brilliant layering here between the clinical, detailed voiceover Michael Fassbender provides (that leads us to believe this is an assassin at the peak of his 'game') and the actions we physically see from him on screen (missed shots, beat downs suffered, etc) that indicate there's a little bit more than what's on the surface.
I had an absolute blast with this - a tight / immensely refreshing sub two hour, jet black comedic (the aliases!!) thriller that sits as Fincher's hat tip to Jean-Pierre Melville's classic, LE SAMOURAÏ.
... Though I do want to deduct a star off my final rating for the bit where Tilda Swinton co-opted my favourite 'go to' pub joke that I've relied on for 20 years. Now whenever I tell it people are going to say I've just ripped it off this, goddamnit!
11. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
What an absolute gem of a film!
You knew you were in steady hands because Judy Blume's 1970 source novel is just that good, Kelly Fremon Craig's EDGE OF SEVENTEEN is an instant classic and there's a dependable excellence that comes with casting the likes of Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates.
But there was always the risk that this COULD'VE got fucked up. Some idiot at the studio might have tried to modernise it. Or believe that it needed more 'incident'. Or cast someone too precocious in the lead role. But James L. Brooks clearly bodyguarded this thing correctly.
The final result is a sweet, funny and very lovely little film with an absolute sweetheart of a turn from Abby Ryder Fortson as the title character.
I genuinely loved spending time watching this.
10. 20 Days in Mariupol
There's a moment in this - Mstyslav Chernov's truly harrowing frontline documentary of the twenty days he and his colleagues spent besieged in Mariupol after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine - involving an emergency cesarean and an unresponsive newborn that is more upsetting, more thrilling and more uplifting than the combination of every horror and every feelgood drama released in the last five years.
This is the most important and vital film you'll see this year and then never ever want to see again.
More so because as humans in this modern age we rather callously only seem to have the heart / stomach / attention-span for one 'war' at a time, and we appear to have abandoned the Ukrainian conflict to refocus our outrage on what's going on in Gaza instead.
For large parts of it we feel like Mstyslav Chernov's been given exclusive access to the pits of hell and he's taking us on a tour. This is intense and riveting, shockingly so considering the unrepentant footage of dead or dying children.
9. The Night of the 12th
I've worked in the field of investigation for over 20 years and I can tell you this much - this movie fuckin gets 'it', man.
In opening with the title card that it does it offsets any eventual disappointment you may feel when the ending arrives. You don't feel short-changed because you've been brought in from the start to share the frustration with the characters.
There's nothing easy here. Nothing pat. Just real investigatory pathways followed with dead ends jumping out in front when everything in your gut says this lead, that lead or the next was going to be 'the one'.
It painstakingly shows that the work is in the hours. And the work can become an obsession. An obsession that gives nothing back equitable to what it takes from you.
It starts with a suitably harrowing and upsetting sequence and it ends on character uplift in lieu of narrative resolution. It also sits as one of the best movies about the art and reality of investigation in modern cinema.
8. The Creator
If there's anyone out there still 'over crediting' Tony Gilroy for the success of ROGUE ONE - one of the best (and the last great) STAR WARS films - this is the "fuck you" exhibit.
Gareth Edwards' sci-fi action epic doesn't entirely land its thematic intentions and hampers itself somewhat by placing dramatic reliance on the anti-acting vessel that is Gemma Chan, but by crikey is it an enthralling and gorgeous-looking ride. (John David Washington remains a magnetic watch, though I do wonder because he sounds so much like his dad whether we're all just hooked on the idea that they've 'prequelised' Denzel?)
You're gifted something here that feels like 1982 Ridley Scott and 1993 James Cameron have got together to play with action figures and do a sci-fi Vietnam movie... it's glorious stuff!
Full of some of the best effects and well realised set-pieces of the year, it's the old 'protect the child' trope given a beautiful lick of paint thick to feel make it feel just about unique enough and a) stand out in an ocean of comic book movies and sequels, and b) probably make Neil Blomkamp go "Ahhh. That's how you do this? Riii-ght!"
So of course no fucker showed up to watch it!
7. Close
I don't really have friends. I don't have the sort of 'personality' that lends itself to people being able to find me tolerable at the most basic level - at least for more than a couple of hours at a time anyway.
I've come to accept and acknowledge this fact the older I've got in life. I've always tried to make friends / keep friends etc but the type of person I am seemingly lends itself to being easily used and/or quickly put down.
It wasn't always like this though. When I was a child there was a boy who saw something in me that others did not and could not. He was in my class and lived close by my grandparents, where I spent most of my time. We were bonded by our loneliness amidst a sea of heads at school as much as our shared sense of humour. Even at a young age I came to appreciate this friend for simply •liking• me and we quickly became inseparable.
On the last day of school, with a vast and limitless summer ahead of us before separate high schools would provide an inevitable divide, we had an argument. A silly, stupid, ~nothing~ argument - significant enough in postscript that I can still recall it now 31 years on - that degenerated into shoving and me accidentally banging his head off a bathroom wall during lunchbreak.
We left school that day with our friendship impacted and the first week of the summer holiday's heavily damaged by him not being by my side in it. And on the very night that I finally decided I didn't want this to continue any longer... that the very next morning I would pick up the phone and ask him if he wanted to go ride bikes in the dene... he died.
An asthma attack. A fuckin asthma attack.
He died not believing that I was his friend and that devastated me. It still does. 31 years later, I think about Neil at least once a week. I see clips of talent show magicians and KNOW that'd have been him. I've tried all my life to replicate a friendship like it and I've never succeeded. But can we ever generate that closeness in adulthood towards someone like we could as children, when we were free of responsibility and bonded by limitless possibility?
I've frequently wondered what my life would've been like if Neil had still been in it, telling myself over and over that this would've been one of the rare pre-teen childhood friendships that lasted.
I miss him and would give anything to be able to deliver the apology to him that he deserved then and is still owed now.
So... all THAT said... it goes without saying that this deeply human, carefully etched and very naturally drawn drama hit me like a train travelling at 150mph.
This is one of the most effective and important films about grief, trauma-processing, adolescence and friendship that there's been in some time.
It really is a brilliant piece of cinema that should be shown in schools to every kid from twelve upwards.
6. The Eight Mountains
Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's adaption of Paolo Cognetti's novel is a (both visually and emotionally) astonishingly beautiful effort with two fascinating and textured performances from Alessandro Borghi as the adult Bruno and Luca Marinelli as the adult Pietro.
It's an intimate epic; a careful, patient and quietly profound treaty on friendship, life, love, ambition, Buddhist concepts, ancient Indian cosmology, growth, nature and the weight of legacy.
Come for the stunning footage of the gorgeous Italian Alps, but stay to be deeply moved by something really rather special, wholehearted and sincere that steps right over whatever BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN esque expectations or assumptions you may well carry into this.
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
I've never understood anyone - especially the aged fanboys frequently responsible for ruining the STAR WARS and MARVEL 'discourse' - who's shown territoriality over the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES as a "franchise".
The reason this ramshackle 1984 indie comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird has blown up into five television series, seven films, multiple video games and a range of toys / merchandise for four decades is mostly down to the way it sorta reinvents itself every five or so years. Which means there's some form of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 'content' now for all of us in one way or another.
And one of the most impressive - but not THE most impressive - things about this film is how it incorporates something from everything that's gone before without becoming a complete mess. The spirit of the comic book source material is front and centre alongside the legitimate effort of the 1990 movie adaptation. The "that'll do" crappy clart of its sequels is avoided whilst the huge scale of the maligned Bay-ified 2014 - 2016 movies is represented. It definitely captures everything about the first Saturday morning cartoon that enamoured the property to us way back when.
It's a glorious effort. It truly is. I watched it with my son and his friends and the huge grins on their faces was infectious. I struggled to think of another entertainment entity that has moved so effortlessly through the generations like this has.
It's a visually resplendent film. It takes the reconfiguration of the animated form a la the SPIDER-VERSE movies and delivers a surprisingly more focused and tighter effort than the latest SPIDER-VERSE sequel. It is dripping with an energy and confidence that will surprise you, as well as a whole heap of heart and humour that will delight.
Yeah, there's moments here and there where the energetic visual styling becomes a little too cluttered in its action sequences but it is a minor grumble against what is a surprising instant masterpiece of its type:
A sweet and funny teen movie walking in the shoes of an animated giant sized comic book blockbuster wearing the coat of a New York conspiracy film, drenched in classic East Coast hip-hop and a score by by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and performed by one of the most impressively eclectic voice casts of recent.
(Within a roster of Hannibal Buress, Rose Byrne, John Cena, Ice Cube, Natasia Demetriou, Ayo Edebiri, Giancarlo Esposito, Post Malone, Rogen, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr, Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon, it is Jackie Chan that absolutely steals this thing by a considerable distance!)
4. Asteroid City
If you aren't a Wes Anderson fan this is not the film that is going to convert you. An immaculately stylised and composed metatextual 'Russian Nesting Doll' celebration of the construction of art and the art of storytelling? No way. No how.
There was elements of it that didn't work for me but what •did• work I was head over heels in love with. The [CENSORED]*constructs felt almost like afterthoughts and didn't particularly resonate. A lot of reviews hit Anderson for being unfocused and overindulgent, and I kinda can see where they're coming from. But only with regards to that particular element.
[* censored by me and hopefully by everyone else because they've done a wonderful job of hiding the story construct from the marketing]
The rest of the film is primo Wes Anderson in his most astonishingly stylised form with his attention to detail never more sharp.
A complaint that must be noted though is in the casting, where the usual 'Anderson Players' appear to have ran a 'pyramid scheme'; bringing in actors who's casting has attracted other actors to the point of it being too cluttered an ensemble in too lean a film to let everyone truly shine. Despite all the plaudits, I think Scarlett Johansson is well out of her depth here. And I just think if you're going to hire the likes of Steve Carell (replacing a Covid-addled Bill Murray at the last minute), Margot Robbie (who should've played Johansson's part, and vice versa) and the sublime Sophia Lillis but barely use them properly it's almost a crime!
When it's funny it is hilarious. When it is delightful it sits as a heavenly confection. And when it wobbles it still isn't as ponderous and disappointing as some of the lesser elements of THE FRENCH DISPATCH.
3. Oppenheimer
I found every plaudit for this to be true and what a reward it was to receive as cinema lies stale in its current state, crusted with the stale decay of innumerable shitty-sheened superhero movies and sequels to things no one was asking for.
Here's a mature, complex, expertly constructed character study of great depth and intelligence; a film primarily made up of scientists and mathematicians thinking and squabbling amongst themselves whilst a non-linear deep betrayal born of immense pettiness plays out almost as an appendices to the traditional biopic... yet, thanks to the music of Ludwig Göransson and editing by Jennifer Lame, it moves like this insanely kinetic action thriller instead.
The ending stretch feels almost ~too~ trite and neat though, it must be said. Although maybe I'm tarnished by a feeling that no movie should depend on the cripplingly irritating overacting of Rami Malek to play last-minute 'saviour'.
Cillian Murphy is frankly outstanding here and whilst most critics have the Best Supporting Actor Oscar locked for Robert Downey Jr (who's brilliant and who's Lewis Strauss receives a 'kiss off' by Nolan here that almost feels like a Marvel Cinematic Universe esque tease for a sequel about Strauss arranging the JFK assassination!) it would be good to see Matt Damon get some recognition here as his General Groves very nearly steals the whole movie with very little.
The casting is so sumptous overall that every scene induces a "Hey! That's..." as the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, David Krumholtz, Matthew Modine, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Macon Blair, Tom Conti, James D'Arcy, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, Tony Goldwyn, Alex Wolff, James Remar, James Urbaniak and (is it a spoiler to say?) Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman roll out to 'play' for one or two minutes.
It's the sort of movie so stacked and packed even at 3 hours that it puts Emily Blunt (as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer) in such an undercooked and underdeveloped role you wonder why they cast a 'star' in it... until that clearance hearing scene near the end where she goes and delivers the impact of a... well... an atomic bomb and you think to yourself "Oh. That's why they cast Emily Blunt!"
It's a gorgeous-looking - Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is luscious - cinematic achievement by Christopher Nolan, where his visual ambition and clinical cinematic technique have really come together once again to remind you the term "modern great" as a filmmaker is well earned.
2. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
A "great time" - seeing as the film itself had my beloved GAME NIGHT's Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley at the helm - perhaps. But a resoundingly delightful time that left me instantly eager for more of these movies and DEFINITELY future revisits of this one? I'm shocked at just how brilliant this was.
I can't believe that one of my favourite films of the year is a 'fantasy heist action comedy adventure' based on the infamous tabletop role-playing game.
Especially considering I've never played nor have any frame of reference / interest towards the tabletop game (my sole DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 'knowledge' stems from the 1980s cartoon series - which gets a pretty terrific nod here!) and one-third of the cast is made up of actors (Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page) I can't normally stand.
I've been a big Chris Pine fan for a long time now and his performance in this only increases the fandom. And I've flat-out crushed on Sophia Lillis since IT and she's pretty tremendous (if a little underserved) here. The whole cast - yeah, including Rodriguez - are pretty wonderful with Hugh Grant clearly having a grand ol' time, a "big star" mid-movie cameo that'll only land depending on your opinion of this diversive 'talent' and Justice Smith very nearly stealing the movie out from under Pine.
This thing is built within the framework of a marriage between THE PRINCESS BRIDE and the aforementioned GAME NIGHT. It's ostensibly LORDS OF THE RINGS meets OCEAN'S 11; a series of ever escalating challenges and heists that are thrillingly executed within a film that's very, very, VERY funny. The opening prologue is a complete statement of intent ("Where's Jonathan?") that tells you exactly the movie you're going to get.
Killers of the Flower Moon / Godzilla: Minus One
Simply astonishing to indulge in - there's such a deft, surprising delicacy to elements of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon that's all the more astounding considering the abhorrent subject matter.
That comes mainly from the performance Lily Gladstone provides this film with. In a sea of tremendous work - and by God it's both magnificent to see Robert DeNiro be great again and for Leonardo DiCaprio to finally do something in my eyes that lives up to his [overstated] reputation - she is working on some other stratospheric level.
Comments about the length by some don't resonate with me. I certainly didn't feel it, necessarily. It's probably the length it needs to be to do justice to the masterful source material its adapted, deliver a legitimate love story (of which, don't be fooled by its toxicity, this is), a film of weighted historical and cultural context AND a true life / true crime procedural.
It's surprisingly less gratuitous than you'd probably expect too. Especially considering we're in the hands of our greatest living filmmaker, someone who's never shied away from presenting us with absolute violence of an uncompromised nature.
There's also these splashes of jet black comedy occasionally popping up too - like the horribly bleak but darkly funny scene in which one henchman asks a lawyer about whether adopting then killing his Osage wife's kids would make him a benefactor of their riches. When the lawyer rightly points out it sounds like he's confessing to planning child murders he replies not unless the lawyer's answer would be affirmative.
This is a film that consumes you. It pulls you in and drags you down - you're in the presence of pure evil and weak character, and Scorsese expertly holds you there so escape feels as impossible as justice must have to the Osage.
It's very easy to 'throw around' the term "masterpiece" when it comes to Martin Scorsese. Mainly because the fucker keeps effortlessly making 'em. But by crikey this really is one.
Equally majestic as a piece of cinema, but in an entirely different form and genre is Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla: Minus One.
By concentrating on making an interesting drama with genuinely well-etched characters (that just so happens to have a giant radioactive monster passing through intermittently) equal to a barnstorming blockbuster creature feature (that allows itself to be infected with enthralling drama and character development), this steps up in the year of the Godzilla franchise’s 70th year to take the position as its best entry [by a considerable distance] in its illustrious history.
Buzzing with some of the best set-pieces of the year soundtracked to a thumping and all-consuming score by Naoki Sato, there’s genius in recalibrating a Godzilla movie – of all things – in order to develop an incredibly touching human drama and social commentary about what makes a family, what is the true definition of patriotism and courage, what real service to one’s country presents as and how to find air to breathe / the will to go on in a post-war Japan where unrelenting despair hangs in the atmosphere wherever your head turns and ‘fear’ manifests itself as a skyscraper-sized lizard-of-sorts.
We know we’re being played with the cute kid and the manipulative makeshift family relations, but that doesn’t stop it being wonderful. The marriage of sincere impacts caused by war and loss with sci-fi fantasy (but no less tense) fantasy action shouldn’t work, but they very much do. This thing is firing on multiple levels and it succeeds across the board to stand as the best blockbuster of the year.
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Here's a Letterboxd link for this whole thing if you're that way inclined.
Tell your mum I said hello.
See you next year...
#film#cinema#2023#ukraine#Mariupol#Martin scorsese#killers of the flower moon#Godzilla#Godzilla minus one#Dungeons & Dragons#oppenheimer#Christopher nolan#tmnt#teenage mutant ninja turtles#wes anderson#asteroid city#eight mountains#close#French cinema#Gareth edwards#the creator#judy blume#David fincher#margot robbie#brad pitt#Steven spielberg#tom cruise#mission impossible#dreamworks#Dreamworks animation
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One Final ESC 2023 Thought: Favorite Songs From Each Country (participating AND non-participating)!
AAAAA I'M SO SORRY FOR DISAPPEARING OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH FOR A WHILE! I just...never got around to my finale before we get to some fun Junior Eurovision 2023/Eurovision 2024 stuff! So here is my finale: Where I share my favorite songs from each country in Eurovision from 2009 to the present.
So, how is this going to work? I'm going alphabetically because it's easier to do it like that. I'm giving you my top 2 from each country, but not the placements. If you want those, they're on the Eurovision website (I will put the year down though). Now, let's get to it!
Albania: "World" by Lindita (2017)/"Ktheju Tokës" by Jonida Maliqi (2019)
Andorra: "La Teva Decisió (Get A Life)" by Susanne Georgi (2009)
Armenia: "Future Lover" by Brunette (2023)/"Not Alone" by Aram MP3 (2014)
Australia: "Promise" by Voyager (2023)/"Sound Of Silence" by Dami Im (2016)
Austria: "Who The Hell Is Edgar?" by Teya & Salena (2023)/"I Am Yours" by The MakeMakes (2015)
Azerbaijan: "Hold Me" by Farid Mammadov (2013)/"Fade To Black" by Nadir Rustalmi (2022)
Belarus: "Forever" by Alekseev (2018)/"Eyes That Never Lie" by Petr Elfimov (2009)
Belgium: "Rhythm Inside" by Loïc Nottet (2015)/"The Wrong Place" by Hooverphonic (2021)
Bosnia & Herzegovina: "Korake Ti Znam" by Maya Sar (2012)/"Ljubav Je" by Jalal & Deen/Ana Rucner/Jala (2016)
Bulgaria: "If Love Was A Crime"/"Na Inat" both by Poli Genova (2016 & 2011 respectively)
Croatia: "Guilty Pleasure" by Mia Dimsic (2022)/"Tick Tock" by Albina (2021)
Cyprus: "Alter Ego" by Minus-One (2016)/"El Diablo" by Elena Tsagrinou (2021)
Czechia: "Lights Off" by Domi (2022)/"My Sister's Crown" by Vesna (2023)
Denmark: Øve Os På Hinanden" by Fyr og Flamme (2021)/"Only Teardrops" by Emmelie de Forest (2013)
Estonia: "Goodbye To Yesterday" by Elina Born & Stig Rastä (2015)/"Rändajad" by Urban Symphony (2009)
Finland: "Something Better" by Softengine (2014)/"Jezebel" by The Rasmus (2022)
France: "L'enfer et moi" by Amandine Bourgeois (2013)/"Évidemment" by La Zarra (2023)
Georgia: "Warrior" by Nina Sublatti (2015)/"Echo" by Iru (2023)
Germany: "Taken By A Stranger" by Lena (2011)/"Ghost" by Jamie-Lee (2016)
Greece: "Die Together" by Amanda Tenfjord (2022)/"Aphrodisiac" by Eleftheria Eleftheriou (2012)
Hungary: "What About My Dreams?" by Kati Wolf (2011)/"Running" by Andra Kallay-Saunders (2014)
Iceland: "Hear Them Calling" by Greta Salome (2016)/"10 Years" by Daði Freyr (2021)
Ireland: "Playing With Numbers" by Molly Sterling (2015)/"That's Rich" by Brooke (2022)
Israel: "Same Heart" by Mei Finegold (2014)/"Rak Bishvilo" by Moran Mazor (2013)
Italy: "La Mia Città" by Emma (2014)/"ZITTI E BUONI" by Måneskin (2021)
Latvia: "Aijā" by Sudden Lights (2023)/"Love Injected" by Aminata (2015)
Lithuania: "Stay" by Monika Linkyte (2023)/"Discoteque" by The Roop (2021)
*can't wait to see Luxembourg next year!!!*
Malta: "This Is The Night" by Kurt Calleja (2012)/"Je Me Casse" by Destiny (2021)
Moldova: "O Mie" by Aliona Moon (2013)/"Run Away" by Sunstroke Project & Olia Tira (2010)
Montenegro: "Adio" by Knez (2015)/"Breathe" by Vladana (2022)
Netherlands: "Arcade" by Duncan Laurence (2019) *CONGRATS ON 1B SPOTIFY STREAMS!*/"De Diepte" by S10 (2022)
North Macedonia: "Crno I Belo" by Kaliopi (2012)/"Jas Ja Imam Silata" by Gjoko Taneski (2010)
Norway: "Fairytale" by Alexander Rybak (2009)/"Queen Of Kings" by Alessandra (2023)
Poland: "Flashlight" by Kasia Moś (2017)/"River" by Ochman (2022)
Portugal: "Amar Pelos Dois" by Salvador Sobral (2017)/"Vida Minha" by Filipa Sousa (2012)
Romania: "Playing With Fire" by Paula Seling & Ovi (2010)/"Amnesia" by Roxen (2021)
*I would like to look into which artists do NOT support the war before sharing my favorites for Russia*
San Marino: "Adrenalina" by Senhit & Flo Rida (2021)/"Stand By" by Senhit (2011) *yes...same artist 10 years apart*
Serbia: "Samo Mi Se Spava" by Luke Black (2023)/"Goodbye (Shelter)" by Sanja Vučić ZAA (2016)
Slovakia: "Horehronie" by Kristina Pelakova (2010)/"Don't Close Your Eyes" by Max Jason Mai (2012)
Slovenia: "Carpe Diem" by Joker Out (2023)/"No One" by Maja Keuc (2011)
Spain: "Quedate Conmigo" by Pastora Soler (2012)/"Dancing In The Rain" by Ruth Lorenzo (2014)
Sweden: "Heroes" by Måns Zelmerlöw (2015)/"Popular" by Eric Saade (2011)
Switzerland: "Tout l'univers"/"Répondez-moi" both by Gjon's Tears (2021 & 2020 respectively)
Turkey: "We Could Be The Same" by maNga (2010)/"Dum Tek Tek" by Hadise (2009)
Ukraine: "Under The Ladder" by Mélovin (2018)/"Time" by O. Torvald (2017)
United Kingdom: "I Wrote A Song" by Mae Muller (2023)/"Never Give Up On You" by Lucie Jones (2017)
Thank you so much for joining me this year! Looking forward to the new year of Eurovision stuff!
#esc#eurovision song contest#eurovision#esc 2023#eurovision 2023#esc2015#esc2014#esc2016#esc2009#esc2010#esc2021#esc2011#esc2022#esc2012#esc2013#esc2017#esc2018#esc2019#esc2020
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I'm quite interested to hear your opinion on lily's acting... Do you agree that it's always monotonic or she's boring? I heard someone say she's just to classy to do hard core stuff
Well I am always sincere despite I having a blog dedicated to her, I think it’s only fair to say what I really think, saying that I believe that whoever said this whatched probably one movie (Voyagers) the most known besides The King ,you don’t need to like her , but unfortunately people don’t actually watch her stuff , first cause her movies are either “weird” or really small movies.
Movies I like the best her performance are Crisis(she plays a drug addicted) it’s really small part but she was good, Wolf had good performances by all the actors, I even like the very first movie she did (the acting) for a first movie , Planetarium, there is a scene that I Love that she is crying on cue that is moving and totally “real” and shows how much potential she has…
I guess the problem is maybe people just see one bad movie and they say bad actress, she is not, but not amazing ofc, I guess with these new projects being bigger people can see more what’s coming.
Also many times is not just their fault , from the actor/actress, have seen many GREAT really great actors/actresses having a shitty acting cause of the movie/director/script , so depends on people actually seeing stuff before judging cause of one bad movie , but finally answering you, I don’t think Wolf was too classy (very weird movie) The idol, The governesses, and now Nosferatu is for someone that is too classy, but she did really small movies and now that she is getting bolder roles.
Sorry for the long answer ;)
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The Bitter Salt of the Sea
by mrdcoolblue
Word count: 15,898
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Relationship: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Additional Tags: Treasure island AU, The Alpha Pack, Pirates, Alpha Peter Hale, Beta Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Treasure Hunting, Betrayal, Ocean Voyage, pirate ship, Mutiny, Kidnapping, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Alternate Universe - Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Sailing, Desert Island, Angst
Summary: Treasure Island AU, where Stiles finds himself falling in love with the silver-tongued cook on the ship. The only problem is that he was warned, "Beware the Hale wolf," and Peter has secrets of his own.
. . .
I desperately wanted to read this AU, so I had to write it myself. I'm proud to present my little Steter adventure story.
#teen wolf#fanfiction#teen wolf fanfic#treasure island#steter#my writing#my fanfiction#i had fun writing this#and i want to share it
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ESC 2022 - 1st Impressions (PT. 1)
Since ESC will start today, I decided to do a first round of listening, to get in the vibe and have a better grasp on what the songs are about and who are the artists singing them, since last year I struggled a bit!
Alright let's go! 🎉
Albania: Ronela Hajati – Sekret
I really enjoy the sound and the vibes of this song! I also liked the mix of english and Albanian language. It made me feel like I at least understood the song a bit even though I didn't have the translation of the entire song. I appreciated that!
Latvia: Citi Zēni – Eat your salad
I'm so mad at ESC for having to censor songs! Even though they are going to censor it, this song will never loose its power. It is iconic from start to end! It convey a message in such a memeable way! I think I'm in love... 😍 This song is going to make history!
Lithuania: Monika Liu – Sentimentai
In my life I unfortunately never had many occasion to hear people speak Lithuanian and listen to this song made me feel sad about it because it really sounds good! And I also fell ib love with Monika Liu's voice! I really liked the song too! Basically take sadness ans make it sensual. It made me want to cry while dancing in someone's arms! Hope to find it in a few playlist about characters I like!
Switzerland: Marius Baer – Boys do cry
I love this song with all my heart! I cried while listening to it, and I think I'm going to do it again and again every time I will listen to it! Marius Baer's voice is amazing and I think it is part of why the song is so emotional! I love the meaning and the message it delivers! I'm still crying!
Slovenia: LPS – Disko
EXCUSE ME?! HOW OLD ARE THEY?!Love them! They made me want to dance, that's a really good sign! Haven't had the chance to read the translation of the lyrics though... Hope the lyrics are as good as the vibes they have!
Ukraine: Kalush Orchestra – Stefania
I love this song so much! The kind of song Ukraine brought to Eurovision in the past two years (I've started following eurovision in 2021, so I have no idea what happened before) truly fascinates me! The meaning it conveys, the importance it has!
Bulgaria: Intelligent Music Project – Intention
This sounds a bit nostalgic (?!) I don't know how to properly explain it... But it feels like those kind of music you would hear in "old" teen movies! If you miss them, then that's the song you'll need!
Netherlands: S10 – De diepte
Oh... I'm sad now... NOICE! 🙃 The heartbreak I'm feeling in this moment is powerful! I just remembered my Ex... I'm not ok... 💔🙃
Moldova: Zdob şi Zdub & Frații Advahov – Trentuțul
This gave me such a Summer Festival vibes! I want people to dance to this song when summer festival will come back!
Portugal: Maro – Saudade, saudade
Damn! The sound and the harmonies of this song are amazing, it really lulls you to sleep while crying! That's the type of vibe I got! Also loved English and Portuguese alternating each other! Loved it!
Croatia: Mia Dimšić – Guilty pleasure
Oooh~ I like this! It sounds so good! I can see it being used for a few edits and playlists! 👀
Denmark: Reddi – The show
YES! YES! YES! This is me! This is my song! It felt so relatable in an extraordinary energetic way! I fucking want to destroy everything! 🔥🔥🔥
Austria: LUM!X feat. Pia Maria – Halo
Oooh~! I like this too! It gave me similar feelings to Denmark's song! I'm feeling like destroying something! 🔥🔥🔥
Iceland: Systur – Með Hækkandi Sól
This song is something so gentle and soft but also so powerful at the same time! The kind of song that played outside at night would feel like a magical experience. I voyage of its own... Love the vibes!
Greece: Amanda Georgiandi Tenfjord – Die together
Sound (?!) wise it is not the song that struck me the most, but I really enjoyed this one too! I'm waiting for edit with this song too! The lyrics are great!
Norway: Subwoolfer – Give that wolf a banana
Oh my God! They have meme power like Latvia, but of a totally different brand! I'm living for this! THANK YOU!
Armenia: Rosa Linn – Snap
This song is relatable for me! The kind of song I would listen to late at night or during a trip, or maybe both! I could also see that being in a few playlists and some nice and sad edits! Can't wait to see them!
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WIP Ask Meme
Tagged by @starknstarwars - Thanks for the tag!
No pressure tags for @ftmshepard, @a-muirehen, @davidoodles
"Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips.* (You can make your own post or reblog this one!) This isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? DnD campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!!"
*Or just tag a bunch of people. I have too many wips.
I’ve omitted individual chapter documents and a few long-abandoned concepts that never made it past the “handful of bullet points” stage but which I still have open tabs for because pigeon collect shiny; all the same, I give you the following:
A Dream of Small Minds
Field of Fire
Rumors, Bargains, and Lies
The Hunted
Shadow Dancing
Grand Moff Kilran’s Last Mistake
Stars Beyond Shadow
Becoming Revan
Mass Effect: Wolf and Lynx
In the Ages Lying
The Witch’s Familiars
An Infernal Inquisition
These Are the Voyages...
Star Trek Endeavour: Inter Arma
Far Beyond the Stars
Columbia Effect
The Lost Jedi, Or Sol Orbital III: Jedi Healer
All Alone in the Night
Stay Fate This Night
Heaven’s Gate
Fate/solar retribution
Fate/strange magus
Harry Potter and the Holy Grail War
Sparks Liner Reforged
Fate/invincible souls
Fate/indefinite splendor
Those Who Challenge the Sun
BNHA/Worm: Plus Ultra
Touch of the Sky
Beyond Skyrim: Azeroth
Alduin World-Eater, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Thu’um
Children of Necessity
Through Fire and Flood
The Spirit Bender
Snow on the Breeze
Telling Wicked Lies
The Rhododendron Society
The Wrong Airbender
BNHA: Hyperion
Hero With a Spark
Star Wars: Hope Unleashed
Star Wars: Mother of Invention
Fade Effect
Coming of Age
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DS9 Companion liveblogging (5/14?)
First half of season 3 (3x01-3x10):
Interesting context on the first part of season 3, which was the only time when DS9 was the only new Star Trek show on air (between the end of TNG and beginning of VOY): Quark and Odo were apparently the favorite characters, people wanted more travel outside the station, and were lukewarm toward the Bajoran religious and political plots. Fascinating.
The Defiant was originally going to be called the Valiant but that name was vetoed because it was too similar to Voyager. Both ship names come from TOS episodes.
Some interesting notes on the reveal that the Founders are Odo's race: Behr and Wolfe joked about the Founders being Odo's people throughout season 2, then Michael Piller separately floated the idea to them and they cracked up and decided to propose making that happen. And Auberjonois was worried about the reveal because he'd always joked that the day Odo's backstory is revealed, that's when he's getting written out of the show. But he was reassured that they had more directions to take Odo's character post-reveal.
^ I'm sorry, it will always be funny to me that Bareil had a sizeable fan club. Interesting notes about why Eddington was brought in. (Eddington's character is apparently influenced by a character of the same name in the film In Harm's Way. I am unfamiliar with this film though.)
3x01 "The Search Part I": There's a note here about how Armin Shimerman didn't like the scene where Sisko asks Quark to kiss the nagal staff since there is an air of mocking Ferengi culture to it, but I love that scene. 👀 (For horny reasons lol.) Also apparently the prop sculptor (Dragon Dronet) based the head of the staff on Quark since he was given Quark's picture as a reference and didn't realize the prop was meant to belong to another character entirely.
Oh yeah, I forgot about Jadzia's very short-lived hairstyle in this season opener. Apparently it was controversial so it was changed afterward.
3x03 "The House of Quark": Love this episode because of all the ridiculous drama of Klingon noble houses and inheritance law meeting very polar opposite Ferengi sensibilities. There's some notes here on how Gowron's actor Robert O'Reilly was pleasantly surprised to transition to DS9 after TNG ended. Also, this is sweet:
Looks like Keiko's temporary departure from the show was to free up Colm Meaney for film projects (mentioned earlier) and to allow more focus on the Bashir/O'Brien relationship.
The story behind 3x04 "Equilibrium" is so funny. Basically, a producer got really into a stage magician and bought a pitch for a DS9 episode that just had the magician as a guest actor and his act involving masks, and the writing team had to create a whole plot around it: "Moore recalls that the original storyline had something to do with 'the circus coming to Deep Space 9, and this magician was in it, and we thought, "Well, we're not gonna do that."'" -- lmao. Initially it was about Odo before they realised that masks worked better as a metaphor for Trill hosts.
Apparently, the original plot of 3x05 "Second Skin" involved O'Brien as the secret undercover Cardassian instead of Kira, but the writer couldn't make it work with the Keiko/Miles marriage resulting in a human baby. Also some interesting thoughts on a more ambiguous version of the ending we got, where it is Kira's determination to be Kira and Bajoran that is what makes her so:
(The theme of this episode is that everyone is wearing a fake deceptive appearance (i.e. a second skin): Kira, Ghemor, the Defiant and Sisko, Garak, etc.)
Wow, lots of interesting notes on 3x06 "The Abandoned" -- so many I can't really summarize them all. Briefly: a lot of teenagers growing up/maturing in this ep including Jake, the Jem'Hadar, and Odo himself; Avery Brooks (who directed this ep) felt it was very much an allegory for how to deal with a generation of troubled, addicted, and potentially violent youths and what it says about society if it gives up on them (very much grappling with race and class issues although through sci-fi allegory and not direct analogy); Mardah's time on DS9 spanned from 2x17 "Playing God" to 3x10 "Fascination"; the way people worry about the age difference and Mardah's job but no one in this episode blinks an eye at her and Jake's interracial relationship, a casual depiction of a post-racial world; Jake gets a new outfit; Sisko also gets a dignified three-piece outfit for the dinner with Mardah, to indicate how seriously he's taking meeting Jake's girlfriend and how he doesn't want to embarrass Jake.
Also some interesting notes on Odo getting quarters in this ep (including the scene where Kira gives Odo flowers that he puts in his old bucket, and later flings that bucket/vase in 4x13 "Crossfire" -- Auberjonois added that detail to the "Crossfire" scene) and also makeup restrictions on babies/children, which constrained the young Jem'Hadar looks.
I like how the synopsis of 3x07 "Civil Defense" only covers the A and B plots of the Ops group and the ore processing group, making no mention of the Quark and Odo C plot. It's okay -- the two of them literally contribute nothing plot-relevant to that episode lmao. Reading the summary, I really love this episode. It's one of my favorites just for the ridiculousness of the security program that has Dukat cringily chastising rebelling Bajoran workers and responding to an increasingly severe hypothetical uprising in a way that manages to come off as both smug and panicked, and his boss publicly shaming him for abandoning his post lol. Like, nothing about this security program makes sense; it's all just done for the lols and for the sake of making things increasingly dire. I suppose maybe it establishes that there is just something buffoonish about the way the Cardassian military (/fascist governments more generally) operate. But mostly it's just a very silly plot.
On polishing the script for 3x07 "Civil Defense": "'He [Michael Piller] hated it, he hated it, he hated it,' states Behr, likening the tortuous experience to one he and the other staff writers on TNG went through to turn 'Yesterday's Enterprise' into a solid script." -- So surprising to hear this, because the final result (of both episodes) is so good! I am considering reading whatever is the TNG equivalent of this book because I have so many questions about what they were thinking / what was going on in some of those episodes and plotlines...
^ O-omg... 😂
^ I always wondered about this... I like the look without the belt better too, although maybe if it were around longer it would have grown on me.
^ I agree. 3x10 "Meridian" sucks. It has some interesting cinematography because Frakes directed it but the romance in it is so painful and unconvincing.
Dang, I didn't realize the alien in this episode was Jeffrey Combs' first Star Trek role ever. (Apparently, Frakes cast him because he remembered him from the Riker audition! -- according to Memory Alpha, not this book.)
^ I always kind of wondered (1) when did the writers first get the idea to make Odo's feelings for Kira romantic, and (2) when in the timeline of their relationship did Odo develop his crush (kind of wondering the same question, just from a Doylist + Watsonian point of view). For (2), I think this is the earliest explicit moment (it has kind of a "I hope this doesn't awaken anything in me" kind of vibe going on with Odo), although I suppose the feelings could have started earlier. But it looks like the answer to (1) is sometime after this point. Interesting!
(Also, I feel kinda bad for Quark in this episode as I think a lot of the humor is a bit mean-spirited/at his expense. But at the same time, Kira and Odo ganging up on Quark is a great dynamic (see also: 2x24 "The Collaborator").)
Some interesting notes on 3x09 "Defiant" on where the story idea came from (they wanted to do something with Tom Riker and have a plot where the Maquis are gaining strength due to his help/leadership); the humanization of Dukat; Tom's characterization (vs. Riker); that this episode sets up that the Obsidian Order are planning something but what exactly was not decided at this point; and the dangling plot thread of what happened to Riker. I agree that it always bugged me that you never find out what happened to Tom (Frakes says he envisions Kira would at some point get sent to Cardassia to get him out of his sentence). He and Kurn are two great TNG characters that DS9 brought back just to do something vaguely depressing with, and I'm honestly tempted to just render those plotlines non-canon. 🤷♀️
Some interesting notes on (1) 3x10 "Fascination" being an homage to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and (2) how the set design and costumes were played with in light of that:
Also, OMG:
^ I mean, Quark does have cartoon character energy... Shimerman's evaluation of the episode is a bit cranky but he's not wrong.
More on the earlier note about Odo's crush on Kira from "Meridian": "And it ["Fascination"] openly reveals a plot point that only had been hinted at previously: the fact that Odo loves Kira. Interestingly, this was a case where an actor's performance strongly influenced the producers. 'There was a moment in 'The Collaborator,' Behr recalls, 'where Rene [Auberjonois] does a take with Nana that we hadn't been expecting. And we all looked at it and said, "Odo loves her. That's what he's playing!" Recognizing the rich story possibilities, Behr's team took the ball and ran with it, giving Auberjonois plenty of material to play with in the coming seasons." (I'm guessing he was referring to "Meridian," not "The Collaborator.")
Oops, I have to end this post a bit early because apparently I am hitting Tumblr's limit for images in posts. (Also, I know I focus on Odo and Quark a lot in my notes. I am biased.)
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Progress Update:
Hey! It's been a wild week, but don't think I'm just sitting on my hands!
So far, I've gotten most of the characters vetted and confirmed. I'm still trying to figure out what I should do about the many 1-vote submissions. I'm most likely going to sort through them and do some form of preliminaries. It's gonna be quite a bit though, as of the 300+ submissions for the 128 slots, only about 50 or so were characters with more than 1 vote. As such, I'm likely going to first be handling characters from franchises that have more than 3 representatives, and then go to like IPs. I need to check how many that will get us, and then move from there. It's gonna be getting about 78 characters from around 100~ submissions, so it's just removing a few.
...but I understand there's been a large wait. So I'll at least give you the characters that have gotten 2 or more votes, and will definitely be moving on!
Hatsune Miku (Vocaloid)
Ene (Kagerou Project)
Hera (Wolf 559)
GIFanny (Gravity Falls)
Little Hal (Homestuck)
Porygon (Pokemon)
Monika (DDLC)
Ritsu (Assassination Classroom)
Sophia (Persona 5 Strikers)
Alter Ego (Danganronpa)
The Doctor (Star Trek Voyager)
Aiba (AI: The Somnium Files)
J.A.R.V.I.S. (MCU)
Chiaki Nanami (Danganronpa)
Dr. Coomer (Half Life VR but the AI is self aware)
MXES (FNAF Security Breach)
Nicole the Holo-Lynx (Archie Sonic)
Lea (CrossCode)
The Squip (Be More Chill)
Holly (Red Dwarf)
Sage (Sonic Frontiers)
Kasane Teto (UATU)
Benry (Half Life VR but the AI is self aware)
Agumon (Digimon)
Motherboard (Cyberchase)
Hakuno Kishinami (Fake/Extra)
Light Hope (She-Ra)
Yui (Sword Art Online)
Glitchtrap (FNAF Help Wanted)
Daia (Kiratto PriChan)
Sayu (No Straight Roads)
Buddy (Buddy Simulator 1984)
Zero III (Zero Escape)
AM (I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream)
The Machine (Person of Interest)
Popy Pipopapo (Kamen Rider Ex Aid)
Lyla (Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse)
Murder-Bot 2.0 (The Murderbot DIaries)
Lumina Ichihoshi (Dig Delight Direct Drive DJ)
ART (The Murderbot Diaries)
XANA (Code Lyoko)
Noah Kaiba (Yu-Gi-Oh!)
Guy (Free Guy)
Tama (AI: The Somnium Files)
Also, of the 1 vote characters, I'm moving 3 more forward to autoqualify due to significance and also for one of them, my own bias (I ditched one of my own autoqualified earlier with the whole riddle thing).
These characters are:
SHODAN (System Shock)
Mamechi (Tamagotchi)
Aya (Green Lantern the Animated Series)
I'll keep you all posted, but I'm hoping to have those preliminaries figured out and up this week. I'll let you know if there are sudden changes.
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Φlaumen Cooperative (Lisp-y style guide ref, part 1...)
Reads as Pflaumen, loosely inspired onto the eponymous information technology firm within Machinegames' Wolfenstein franchise (reference page card below...) & plenty of historically-informed inspirations like DEC, Symbolics, Konrad Zuse KG, KDE E.V, etc.
Context
Essentially, I build my way towards a small creative business to call my very own (with major technological & culturally-driven aspects), which is also related to personal worldbuilding projects & manifestation goals of mine.
Some reference pictures
Keywords dump
Groovy soft natural retro grunge warm natural filmic comfort, tramway at dusk from mesas to the ocean far away, distant future LISP DIY copyleft cartoons, symbolic CAS LISP Gruvbox poetic devkit, soft-rounded bold geometric shape language, fontmap vector prefab modules, slice-of-life cozy rollerwave cartoons, communal retrofuturistic optimism, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, "Gruvbox Light Medium + OldBook Light Academia" mashup, seventies toon cel, copyleft GLOSS data transparency movement, soviet-bloc indie shareware culture, Nintendo 64 console with 64DD expansion cartridge, SEGA Dreamcast, DEC Alpha, Sanyo 3DO TRY, Nuon, Ouya, Commodore PETSCII CBM-II, Commodore Amiga 3000+4000, bronze-age historical time period, Chronokinesis, True Polymorph, lunarpunk mysticism, Teslafunk, Solarpunk, Cyberfunk, syndicalism, georgism, ecology, harmonious innovation, progressives, seventies rollerwave futurism, filmic, OGG container format, OGV, OPUS, Vorbis, OpenEXR, Animated SVG, CSS3 animations, PK3/ZIP file archives, USD format, harsh raster XY plotters & printers, selectric typewriters, comforting Shoshone music / songs / hymns; "Soyuzmultfilm", "Helluva Boss", "The Powerpuff Girls Z", "The Powerpuff Girls", "Jet Set Radio", "Newgrounds", "Jin-Roh The Wolf Brigade", "Android Arts", "Nicky Case", "Jucika", Nintendo 64 with N64DD module, SEGA Dreamcast, Sanyo 3DO, Nuon, Ouya, DEC Alpha, Commodore 64, DECmate II, DECmate III, Intersil 6100 & 6120 lineups, PETSCII, OpenXanadu web, IBM Z/16 Linux One mainframe, OpenPOWER, Libre GLOSS data-transparent Apple Silicon M3 system, RTTY protocols, Minitel / Videotex services, hard-copy terminals, Typex, Telex Teleprinters (read-only & Read/Write), block data terminals, explorable explainers, federated ActivityPub RSS feeds, SPARC Voyager, Xerox Daybreak, R2E Micral Portal, libre bio-modding & cyberware, Pflaumen, Utalics, Lambda Star, Lambda Nova, Wyatt, Sass, MathML, XML+XSL, OpenREXX, PDP-8/e, PDP-12, PDP-15, ALGOL68, LISP 1.5, Steel Bank Common Lisp, Trial Engine, GNU Hurd, Linux, Macroware, SoundTracker, Multi-Agent Simulations, Mixtapes, Android Clades/Classes (Robots, Droids, Synthetics), Open Virtual Worlds, "Rogue Servitors"; "Liberty" caucus within "Union Party", Al-Gore (2000), Trump + Michelle Oprah (2004), Theodore Roosevelt (1912), Charles Hugues (1916), Progressives party since ~1910-1915, Pedro II of Brazil + Haile Selassie equivalent figure during the later 19th century, political split around 2024-2025, female programmers still in charge, gender inclusivity, major 3D, animation & game engine-y frameworks abundant in Common LISP (Trial Engine + AutoLISP as copyleft GLOSS / open source licensed software); Rust red dark grunge wood, translucid glass, matte plastics, fuzzy wool, forest flora, ocean water, arcade cabinets, hyper mall shops & stores, conversation pits, wax cylinder records, 45rpm autoplay mini-vinyl records, datasettes, cassettes, analog Laserdiscs, DECtape, MiniDiscs, programmable androids, retro unit record equipment, mainframes, LTO tape cartridges, amber earmuffs, black spirals-pattern balls, black matte libstick, cloven hoof shoes;
Links
Implicitly includes this blog's archives, especially what deemed relevant under the "maskoch", "maskutchew" & "16^12" hashtags;
Additional detailwork
GRUB 2 Bootloader custom theme, custom global theme with window decorations / Plasma styles / application styles combo, splash-screen / lock screens / login screens, vector-based wallpapers + icons & animated? cursors, 3x4 (soft, medium, hard; dark Gruvbox-alike, light Gruvbox-esque, warm olive green & warm rust orange-red variations), ;
DETAILS
OS: TuxedoOS (will diversify drastically soon, seriously)
DE: KDE/Plasma & KDE/Liquid
WM: KWin
Terminal: Konsole
Shell: Fish shell, with Bash as fallback
Fonts: Cascadia Code & Cascadia Mono
PlasmaStyle: Daisy (+ Old Plastics?), Breeze
Cursor: Simp1e-Gruvbox-Light
ColorScheme: WarmColorsLight
Icons: Gruvbox Plus Dark
Web Browsers: Librewolf, Firefox...
Dotfiles: Not yet anywhere near ready at this time.
More to come relatively soon...
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About time for the annual year-end horror list and here it is:
2023:
The Pale Blue Eye
Scream VI
Evil Dead Rise
Renfield
Skinamarink
Cocaine Bear
VHS '85
Infinity Pool
Project Wolf Hunting
Last Voyage of the Demeter
Dark Harvest
Totally Killer
The Offering
The Blackening
The Meg 2: The Trench
It's a Wonderful Knife
Brooklyn 45
Malum
Talk to Me
The more I think back on it, the more I love Renfield and its exploration of toxic relationships. The movie is just pleasantly rewatchable (its horror movie comfort food, like Christopher Landon films such as Freaky or Happy Death Day)
Infinity Pool was great, but I think Possessor is the stronger Brandon Cronenberg film. Possessor just had this disorienting, hypnotic feel that I'm not sure Infinity Pool even wants to replicate. I am definitely looking forward to whatever he makes next though - the cross-section exploration of horror and technology is such a unique brand to both Cronenbergs and their films.
Totally Killer was a really good time and made good use of its time travel plot. The slasher villain was actually pretty scary, and the gore wasn't half bad either.
The Blackening was a lot of fun as well, had some really funny moments and some good tension. I liked that I didn't recognize a lot of the actors and was very impressed with a lot of their work in this.
Talk to Me is the more interesting the more I think about it and definitely has a lot of staying power.
Films not from 2023:
Possession (1981)
Warlock (1989)
Knights of Badassdom
Hellbound: Hellraiser 2
The Dark & The Wicked
The Keep
Deadstream (2022)
The Blob (1988)
The Wailing (2016)
Offseason (2021)
Phantoms
The Faculty
Tag
I've heard The Faculty was great, but sadly it's taken me this long to get around to it. Tag was also really good, at some point I do plan on getting around to Love Exposure. Hellraiser 2 has such an epic scope for a horror film that it was an immediate breath of fresh air. Possession was an absolutely bonkers allegory and worked very well. The Blob was one of the more obvious 80s classics I've somehow missed. The Keep was this foggy, chilly world war II set-horror that sadly, only exists in a butchered cut of the film. What's left is interesting and full of logical holes, but somehow the atmosphere carries it. Hopefully some day we'll discover the three hour cut in some old vault or something.
TV:
The Last of Us
Yellowjackets S2
From S2
Junji Ito Maniac
Wild Blue Yonder (Doctor Who special)
Fall of the House of Usher
Parasyte the Maxim
Between Last of Us, Yellowjackets, From, and House of Usher this year's horror television line-up was stacked beyond belief. That's also only what I got around to. There were some Emmy-worthy performances this year too between Bruce Greenwood in House of Usher, Nick Offerman in Last of Us, and Carla Gugino in House of Usher.
Games
Dredge
Diablo 4
Lunacid
Diablo 4 definitely has a much stronger horror aesthetic than Diablo 3, the presentation of D4 is much more cinematic which helps.
Lunacid is genuinely scary at points, especially dungeon crawling through low-lit tunnels.
Books/Comics:
Hellblazer: The Family Man
Immortal Hulk vo1 1: Or is he both?
The Flash (2023) #1 (Si Spurrier)
Animal Man (New 52, Jeff Lemire) vol 1
So I've read a ton of body horror this year, and it was awesome. The juxtaposition of superhero tropes and grotesqueries hits my brain in just the right way
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Top Favorite Aviation Movies
Below is a list of my favorite movies themed around aviation:
TOP FAVORITE AVIATION MOVIES
1. "Airport" (1970) - Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin starred in this adaptation of Arthur Hailey's 1968 novel about the discovery of a bomber aboard a Chicago-to-Rome flight. George Seaton directed.
2. "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" (1965) - Ken Annakin wrote and directed this all-star comedy about a 1910 air race from London to Paris. Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles and James Fox starred.
3. "Apollo 13 (1995) - Ron Howard directed this adaptation of "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13", Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger's 1994 book about NASA's ill-fated fifth mission to the moon. Tom Hanks, Gary Sinese and Kathleen Quinlan starred.
4. "The Rocketeer" (1991) - Bill Campbell starred in this adaptation of Dave Steven's comic book about a stunt pilot-turned-costumed hero battling Nazi agents in 1938 Los Angeles. Directed by Joe Johnston, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton and Jennifer Connelly co-starred.
5. "The Right Stuff" (1983) - Philip Kaufman directed this adaptation of Tom Wolfe's 1979 book about Project Mercury, NASA's first program of test pilots-turned-astronauts. Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward and Scott Glenn starred.
6. "The Aviator" (2004) - Martin Scorsese directed this adaptation of "Howard Hughes: The Secret Life", the 1993 book about Howard Hughes' life as an aviator and film producer between 1927 and 1947. Leonardo DiCaprio starred.
7. "Death in the Clouds" (1992) - David Suchet starred as Hercule Poirot in this television adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1935 novel. Stephen Whittaker directed.
8. "Pearl Harbor" (2001) - Michael Bay directed this fictionalized account of the December 1941 attack upon the Pearl Harbor Naval Base. The movie starred Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale and Josh Harnett.
9. "Flight" (2012) - Denzel Washington starred in this movie about an alcoholic airline pilot who miraculously crash-lands his plane after a mechanical failure. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Don Cheadle and Kelly Reilly co-starred.
10. "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" (1990) - Bruce Willis starred as John McClane in this adaptation of Walter Wager's 1987 novel and sequel to the 1988 movie, "Die Hard". Renny Harlin directed.
#aviation movies#airport#airport 1970#dean martin#burt lancaster#jacqueline bisset#jean seberg#helen hayes#those magnificent men in their flying machines#ken annakin#stuart whitman#sarah miles#james fox#apollo 13#apollo 13 1995#ron howard#tom hanks#gary sinise#bill paxton#kevin bacon#kathleen quinlan#ed harris#the rocketeer#the rocketeer 1991#walt disney studios#touchstone pictures#cliff secord#bill campbell#jennifer connelly#timothy dalton
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