JOIN BRAVERN!!! ENLIST NOW!!!!

Why do people say Murata is thirsty for Garou? Doesn’t he do that for every character?

Hohum~ :3c Looks like someone's new around here. Because it's been pretty obvious to those familiar with Murata's no-chill behavior since his streaming days. (No one is as thirsty as Murata when it comes to Garou, but Aoki the s2 animator is also very thirsty for Garou too~)

I've already compiled a Murata's Garou thirst alignment chart just to illustrate how extensive it is~ Because there's probably no other character who can fill it (with plenty more gratuitous examples to spare) all by himself. Likewise, Garou can also complete the 'shirt cut meme' all on his own with official content too; the range of his power! 8'D

In general, Murata may be quite equal opportunity when it comes to lavishly rendering every character's appeal, but when given the chance to indulge in more fanservice (or draw more panels, because of course), it's consistently been Garou & Fubuki who are Murata's go-to favorite poster boy & girl (respectively) in that department. (See: “Murata’s Garou pinups look like magazine covers.”)

See also the back muscle compilation: Murata hyper-rendering Garou's back (modeled after Bruce Lee) was a common early manga staple, until his tastes evolved and drifted lower to include Garou's other assets of his entire backside showcased from head to literal toe. :P You can see where some of Murata's current tastes reside by how conspicuously curvaceous (in the hips & thighs) he tends to draw him, enough to rival Murata's best girls! (Plot twist: maybe Garou is Murata's best girl?! *pretends to be shocked*)

Garou vs Darkshine was probably the peak (imo) of Murata's h0rnyness for him however; did you know Murata went back to edit round 2 soon after it released to be even steamier? :P Heh. Honestly, I've never seen a male mangaka want to f*ck his own male character design this badly before. (Right down to all the suggestively prone shots & angles.) Like geezus Murata, calm down!

Murata's not shy about being thirsty for Garou on main either, where in preparation for the Garou chapters he'd be working on (like those Darkshine chs), he'd often psych himself up by spam retweeting some of his thirstiest Garou arts in the meantime. Murata's even self-aware enough to caption his posts with ガロ肉 (Garou meat). :P Classic Murata; like I say, this man just cannot be stopped! He's just way too excited to get to draw him~

Anyway, the list continues on, but you're more than welcome to check out my archives for more examples from some of Murata's thirstiest Garou eras you may have missed~

Can I just cry for a minute (in a good way) about Good Omens?

I mean, I'm always doing that, but today it's about costume design and the way women are shot.

I'm just...so tired of the way women are dressed and shot in popular franchises. Joss Whedon talks in his director's commentary on Avengers (2012) about how everyone cringed reading Natasha's opening scene because she had no sleeves, so they couldnt pad the stunt double for her stunts. J.J. Abrams and some of the Star Trek (2009) cast laugh about how Zoe Saldana was kind of uncomfortable with how short Uhura's skirt was, and he spends the first thirty seconds of her portion of the casting commentary talking about how sexy she is, even though none of the male actors appearances are commented on. Both of these men could have fixed the costumes to make it more comfortable (and safer!) for the actresses. They did not.

And that doesn't even cover gratuitous and unnecessary underwear shots and camera angles that linger creepily on body parts.

But Good Omens...oh, Good Omens. There is no creepy lingering. There are no weirdly tiny skirts or excessive bare skin. Anathena has a sex scene that doesn't put her on unequal footing with her male partner or feel exploitative. The canonical sex worker (Madame Tracy) is shot with more respect and dignity, even in lingerie, than most movies shoot professional scientists or business women (although Madame Tracy is a business woman in her own right).

If Good Omens were a Hollywood film, Anathema would be in a short skirt. Instead she gets a full length (and honestly gorgeous) one instead. Madame Tracy would be at least a decade or two younger, and shot in revealing underwear as much as possible. Instead she gets a robe and respect. Even Pepper, at eleven years old, would most likely be in pigtails and short shorts. Instead she dresses like an actual child (and I love her red raincoat). And that doesn't even touch on the female actresses playing genderless angels and demons!

And all I can do is to cry in relief and thank @neil-gaiman and his team profusely, because it's so hard to find female characters (or actors) who aren't treated like glorified pinup posters for male viewers to objectify. Good Omens is so far beyond that, and it's a more than welcome - and much needed - breath of fresh air.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

I mostly like Quentin Tarantino's movies, but when I saw this in the theater I considered it one of his worst. But I still liked some stuff about it. I liked the thick atmosphere of late-sixties Los Angeles, and I liked Leonardo DiCaprio's character's arc & his performance, and I liked some of the playful touches, even though some of them feel indulgent. "Indulgence" is a big concern when it comes to evaluating QT's movies. Sometimes his indulgences are charming and sometimes not so much. I'm kind of hoping a second viewing will make me like this movie a bit more. Okay, here goes…

Vintage Columbia logo. That kind of thing always works well on me.

First five minutes or so are cinematic in a familiar way, not much to note. But at about 0:06:15 there's a jarring little interruption where a narrator tells us LD just lied. The only moment of narration at all.

Then Al Pacino is reflecting on some of the movies he's been watching, and we see some clips. They look kind of vintage, but also kind of Tarantino-y. Like, that scene where LD torches Nazis doesn't actually look like it could be from the 60s.

"Bounty Law! Starring Rick Dalton!" Then a cut to a dorky TV musical sketch. Kind of funny. Not subtle. I love that announcer voice that says "Bounty Law!"

One thing that often works well in QT movies is when he has an actor deliver, and savor delivering, a weighty minute or so of dialogue that really sets up a situation. Think Christopher Walken's monologue in Pulp Fiction or the first scene with Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. This AP conversation where he talks to LD about where to take his career is like a mini version of one of those but doesn't last as long.

0:15:10 - First really nice period shot of LA. Very nice to look at.

I think the intended audience for this movie knows details about the Manson murders that most moviegoers don't actually know. For example, the ominous close-up of the sign for Cielo Drive. I don't think it's a mistake; I think he's knowingly alienating some viewers so he can give a better experience to those who do know about them. So I can't imagine recommending this movie without also strongly suggesting studying the Manson murders first.

Brad Pitt speeds down a boulevard in West Hollywood, a filming location which has been very lovingly decorated in the style of the period. The production design of this movie was rightly heralded.

Sequence with BP in his trailer making dinner for himself and his dog. Vivid; at one point they cut to a closeup of a pinup poster. Doesn't seem to be a reason for that except for "I'm Quentin Tarantino and I do whatever I feel like". Indulgent, is what I'm saying.

Also indulgent is this minute we're spending watching Roman Polanski drive to this party at the Playboy mansion.

I don't remember noticing this before, but that's Damian Lewis playing Steve McQueen and that's kind of perfect.

Scene where Kurt Russell is telling LD that BP has a creepy vibe and killed his wife, then we cut abruptly to apparently a scene of BP having a mundane argument with his wife maybe… okay, leaves the audience wanting more info, but maybe in kind of an irritating way.

Now this scene with Bruce Lee holding forth. Bruce Lee probably didn't generally speak in arrogant, bullying Quentin Tarantino monologues. Entertaining scene though.

But the left-me-wanting conversation from the previous scene helps this scene with Bruce Lee be more tense. Also the not-ringing-true snottiness of Bruce Lee makes it funny how that fight goes down.

0:52:30 - Okay, LD is in costume as a bad guy on a show, and he's got the long hippy hair that was spoken of in the AP scene. Just saying, I like that it was described and now we're seeing what I'd pictured.

And now this memorable conversation between LD and the little girl actress. The kid acts so grown up. This could have failed because of course no eight year old talks like this girl. But this scene is awesome. And without movies by QT, there aren't scenes like this.

Now Margot Robbie. We've seen her in a few scenes so far as Sharon Tate, but she's only been depicted as a dancing starlet bopping around town. For those of us that know she's a Manson victim, it works in a certain way. But does it work otherwise?

Okay, this is a peculiar part of the movie, it's pretty fun but kind of insider-y. LD is talking about being in the running for Steve McQueen's role in The Great Escape, and they edit in some outstanding CGI scenes of LD in the actual movie of The Great Escape. Playful, but just a weird bit of color…

…but then here's this next scene where MR, playing Sharon Tate, happens upon a cinema playing a movie she's in, and after a leisurely-paced interaction with the cinema workers, she goes in and watches the movie. Unlike the CGI trickery demonstrated in the last scene with LD, we watch actual Sharon Tate on screen. MR is visibly delighted to see "herself", and to hear the audience reacting to her performance. It all works, maybe more in spite of than because of QT's ever-present choice-broadcasting (which is also why we get a good look at MR's feet in this scene).

This is followed immediately by the sequence of the TV show LD is shooting. More playful indulgence. We see the scene edited as it probably would have been edited in 1969, but shot with modern cinematography, and interrupted by LD calling for his line, then backing up and redoing some of the scene. Can it be justified beyond just the undeniable fact that it's pretty interesting? Maybe that's enough. Maybe I'm being a snob, but also, what, was I not supposed to acknowledge it at least?

Stuff now starting with BP picking up Margaret Qualley's dirty hippy flirty cultist character. Before she even has any lines, the screen is practically bulging from the force of MQ's personality. It's entertaining.

1:28:30 - More of the TV show. We get to see LD's character be a good actor, and impress the director and the kid actor, which touches him, it's nice.

It's an hour and 38 minutes into the movie, and now we're to the scene on Spahn's Movie Ranch. I'm already thinking that by now we should be deeper into some kind of story than we are, and now this scene that I remember vividly. Not totally in a bad way, but for all the good things about it, it is stretched way out. Suspense is built up, skillfully, but without the kind of payoff we'd probably like. I mean, it's like a horror movie, with the rat squirming in the trap and the tense music and the "HE MAY BE TIRED" line from Dakota Fanning, but then it's back to not being a horror movie….

…in fact, it's on to this charismatic-tough-guy scene that feels Pulp-Fiction-y. Our MINDS are BLOWN that he hit the guy so hard and made the cultists so mad, it's a fantasy come to life, but just in a movie!!! This stuff is long, but not THAT boring, but maybe it could have been a little less boring, plus more relevant to later events.

LD and BP are now watching an episode of a show he'd done. Way more violent than TV shows probably were in 1969. They like watching his little "heavy" role and chuckling about it.

Then a SIX MONTHS LATER card, and some narration for the first time since that little jokey bit in the beginning. Also jokey is the fact that this new section is narrated, VERY narrated, and is the fact that Kurt Russell is the narrator also jokey?

2:02:50 - "…going back to Missouri." LD's character is from Missouri? With that accent? Is this also an in-joke?

The aforementioned narration persists for a long time. Seems gratuitous. QT was clearly like "We'll do the first two hours of the picture without a narrator, and then suddenly there will be a whole bunch of stupid narration hahahahahahaha! No one else would do that!!! That's reason enough for me to do it!!!!"

Finale is going on now with the Manson cultist killer people approaching the house. If you know what really happened, you're freaking out. But if you know what really happened and you already know how this movie changes that story… it's entertaining. What I'm saying is that it's funny this second time through, without the worry about seeing what really transpired.

"And you were on a horsie!" "Nah something dumber than that" Hahaha BP is super funny in this scene.

Dang, the dog just mutilates Tex, and it's funny!

He violences that woman very very very much, it's nuts, kind of funny but so disturbing.

LD flamethrowers that girl in the pool. She's in the pool. But still dies from being on fire. /shrug

We never did get the whole story about BP killing his wife.

The last scene, MR talks to LD, inviting him up for a friendly drink with her friends. It ends with us thinking how nice it would be if she and her friends hadn't been the victims of a cruel slaughter just moments earlier. That's not a bad way to end a movie. But it's a long movie, and I'll say this again: indulgent. You might not feel that in on the jokes, and even if you do, you might not have as much time for them as this movie requires.

Molly Ringwald Interviews John Hughes (1986)

MOLLY RINGWALD: Growing up, were you obsessed with girls, as so many of your male characters are? JOHN HUGHES: No. I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw Doctor Zhivago every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater. The usher would say, "Hiya, your seat's ready." And I just sat there, glued to the screen. Most of my characters are romantic rather than sexual. I think that's an essential difference in my pictures. I think they are more accurate in portraying young people as romantic - as wanting a relationship, an understanding with a member of the opposite sex more than just physical sex. MR: What about teen sex in your movies? You never show it in Sixteen Candles or Breakfast Club. Did you want to leave it up to the viewer's imagination? Or were you just looking for a PG rating? JH: No. What's the point? In Sixteen Candles, I figured it would only be gratuitous to show Samantha and Jake in anything more than a kiss. The kiss is the most beautiful moment. I was really amused when someone once called me a purveyor of horny sex comedies. He listed Breakfast Club and Mr. Mom in parentheses. MR: Oh, god! JH: I thought, "What kind of sex?" Yes, in Mr. Mom there's a baby in a bathtub and you see it's bare butt. And in Breakfast Club, there's some kissing. MR: You wouldn't believe how many people came up to me after they saw Breakfast Club and said, "So what really happened between you and Judd in the closet?" JH: Older people or younger people? MR: Mostly older people. JH: Yes, older people asked me that question too. MR: I never even thought about that. I did a phone interview and somebody said, "So, what really happened in the closet?" And I thought, "Why are you asking me that? What happened was shown there on the screen." JH: Yes. The only thing we took out of the scene was a bit of dialogue. You walked into the closet, and I cut away to the other story I was telling. MR: You did cut out one great kiss between Judd and me, though. JH: Too much kissing. I find that screen kissing wears very thin very quickly. I go into the editing room and say, "Less, less." Why watch someone kissing when people really close their eyes when they kiss? MR: I see your point, but I just thought you cut out a great kiss. Anyway, would a woman like Kelly LeBrock have been your ideal when you were a teen? JH: No. Too scary. MR: So why did you create the character she played in Weird Science? JH: Well, the object there was - MR: That she taught them a lesson, right? JH: You're making fun of me. MR: No. I'm sorry. Go on. JH: Two lonely guys tried to create the perfect woman. But, they didn't. They created a physical fantasy who turned out to be an actual person. They hadn't planned on getting a real person, just a great body. They were concentrating on the physical, which is only a very small part of anybody's identity. MR: Isn't it a contradiction to talk about how kids have more on their minds than just sex and cars and then show two characters dreaming up the perfect mate? That was purely sexual. They didn't even want to give her a brain at first. JH: No. I don't think there's a contradiction, because when those guys got her, sex was the last thing on their minds. They wanted a girl, but they had no idea what girls were. They didn't understand them at all, because girls weren't really accessible to them. So, their concept of girls was media-based. MR: Do you think that goes for most teenagers? JH: I don't think so, no. There's a very fine line there. And it's a line that I probably didn't respect enough in directing the film. You know those sexy pinup posters people put up in their bedrooms? I always saw them as being kind of silly and vacant. That was to be the point of the movie - that this glistening body in this semi-revealing outfit with this come-on look on the face is a real empty, pointless image to carry around or to look for. MR: So, which of your characters were you most like while growing up? JH: I was a little bit like Samantha. A lot of my feelings went into her character. I was also very much like Allison in Breakfast Club. I was a nobody. And I'm also a lot like Ferris Bueller. MR: But of all the characters, which would you say is most like you? JH: Most like me? I'm a cross between Samantha and Ferris. MR: How did you write the story of Pretty In Pink? JH: You told me about the Psychedelic Furs' song. MR: About Pretty In Pink? I just love that song. JH: And the title stuck in my head. I thought about your predisposition toward pink. I wrote Pretty In Pink the week after we finished Sixteen Candles. I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away. That's why I tend to work with the same people; I really befriend them. I couldn't speak after Sixteen Candles was over. I returned to the abandoned house, and they were tearing down your room. And I was just horrified, because I wanted to stay there forever. MR: Do you think you'll always work with young actors? JH: Not every time, maybe, but . . . MR: You won't abandon them? JH: No, I won't abandon them. MR: Do you think the Brat Pack's recent obnoxious image is deserved, or does the press just pick on them because of their age? JH: I think that this clever moniker was slapped on these young actors, and I think it's unfair. It's a label. MR: People my age were just beginning to be respected because of recent films such as yours, and now it's like someone had to bring them down a peg or two, don't you think? JH: There is definitely a little adult envy. The young actors get hit harder because of their age. Because "Rat Pack" - which Brat Pack is clearly a parody of - was not negative. "Brat Pack" is. It suggests unruly, arrogant young people, and that description isn't true of these people. And the label has been stuck on people who never even spoke to the reporter who coined it. MR: Such as myself. I've been called the Women's Auxiliary of the Brat Pack. JH: To label somebody that! It's harmful to people's careers. At any rate, young people support the movie business, and it's only fair that their stories be told. MR: A lot of people said in the reviews of The Breakfast Club, "Why should somebody make a movie about teenproblems?" I couldn't believe that. I mean, we are a part of this society . . . JH: I think it's wrong not to allow someone the right to have a problem because of their age. "People say, "Well, they're young. They have their whole lives ahead of them. What do they have to complain about?" They forget very quickly what it's like to be young. MR: Who would want to remember? I'm tortured. People forget the feeling of having to go to school on Monday and take a test in physics that you don't understand at all. It's hard. Right now, I don't think I'll ever forget it. JH: Ferris has a line where he refers to his father's saying that high school was like a great party. Ferris knows what his father was like, and he knows that his father has just forgotten the bad parts. Adults ask me all sorts of baffling questions, like, "Your teenage dialogue - how do you do that?" and "Have you actually seen teens interact?" And I wonder if they think that people under twenty-one are a separate species. We shot Ferris at my old high school, and I talked with the students a lot. And I loved it, because it was easy to strike up a conversation with them. I can walk up to a seventeen-year-old and say, "How do you get along with your friends?" and he'll say, "Okay." You ask a thirty-five-year-old the same question, and he'll say, "Why do you want to know? What's wrong? Get away from me." All those walls built up. MR: Do you think that society looks at teenagers differently today than when you were one? JH: Definitely. My generation had to be taken seriously because we were stopping things and burning things. We were able to initiate change, because we had such vast numbers. We were part of the baby boom, and when we moved, everything moved with us. But now, there are fewer teens, and they aren't taken as seriously as we were. You make a teenage movie, and critics say, "How dare you?" There's just a general lack of respect for young people now. MR: I think so, too. What were you like growing up? JH: I was kind of quiet. I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly girls and old people. There weren't any boys my age, so I spent a lot of time by myself, imagining things. And every time we would get established somewhere, we would move. Life just started to get good in seventh grade, and then we moved to Chicago. I ended up in a really big high school, and I didn't know anybody. But then The Beatles came along. MR: Changed your whole life? JH: Changed my whole life. And then Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home came out and really changed me. Thursday I was one person, and Friday I was another. My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on. I liked them at a time when I was in a pretty conventional high school, where the measure of your popularity was athletic ability. And I'm not athletic - I've always hated team sports. MR: You've been sticking pretty close to Chicago, but now that you and your family have made the transition to L.A., do you think you'll go back and film everything in Chicago? JH: I think I will. I'm very comfortable there. It's out of the Hollywood spotlight. And I like the seasons. MR: What about what you were saying about the way Dylan and Lennon were constantly moving forward? Don't you think you've done a lot of movies about Chicago? JH: No, they weren't about Chicago. Chicago's a setting. MR: But, they're about suburban life . . . JH: I think it's wise for people to concern themselves with the things they know about. I don't consider myself qualified to do a movie about international intrigue - I seldom leave the country. I'd really like to do something on gangs, but to do that, I've gotto spend some time with gang members. I'd feel extremely self-conscious writing about something I don't know. MR: I think one of the most admirable things about you is that you do write about the things you know and care about. I think that teen movies were getting a bad reputation because these fifty-year-old guys were writing about things they didn't care about. JH: I love writing. When I finish a script, it's a joy to sit down and go all the way through it. It's a very private thing, because a screenplay is not like a book. When a book is written, it's a final product. But, when a script is finished, it's really just a blueprint. And it's an extraordinary experience for me to watch someone take what I wrote and imagined and make it three-dimensional. And it's great if someone adds something I hadn't thought of. MR: Would you consider yourself fashion-conscious? JH: Yeah, I think so, as far as I'm conscious of everything. I'm a former hippie, so clothes are important to me - your clothes defined you in that period. I guess clothes still defines people. But, I change a lot. I'm in my Brooks Brothers period now. I think when I first met you, it was - MR: High-top tennis shoes. JH: Yeah? But I've changed. MR: So how does your wardrobe define you? JH: My wardrobe is a hundred shirts, and I don't like any of them. How does that define me? Well, I get bored easily. I have a real short attention span, and that feeling transfers to clothes as well. And if I see somebody else wearing the same thing I am, I always think he looks better. I admire people like Judd Nelson, who have an innate sense of fashion. Judd could wear a bathrobe and sanitarium sandals and a fedora and look good. MR: If you weren't in film, what might you like to do? JH: I've always wanted to be in music, but I'm not talented at all. Now I just go to concerts, and I'm fascinated by the bands and their music. When I go to a concert, I can't believe that people pay lots of money to see a band that they obviously like and then they dance the whole time. MR: But a lot of people dance as a way of communicating. JH: You can go home and put the record on and dance. I want to watch how the band does it. I want to look at their faces. MR: When we went to see Squeeze, these girls were standing on their chairs and getting on top of people's shoulders to dance with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. They were right behind me and my sister, and we were tempted to do something violent! It really bugs me when people act like going to concerts gives them license to act like jerks. But I don't mind people dancing. In fact, I hate it when people say, "Sit down, sit down" when I want to dance. JH: I suppose it would be really alarming to an artist to play in a concert and see everybody just watching. MR: Oh, that's terrible! JH: I'm one of those who do that. MR: Yeah, I've been to a concert with you. JH: I'm not a good-time guy. I'm not one of those guys who says, "Oh, we had some good times last night." I'm just not. MR: But you wanted to be in a band at one point? JH: Yeah, but I'm too old for that now. Rock 'n' roll is a young form. People over twenty-five ruin it. This whole censorship thing has come about because old people are playing with a form that is essentially young and rebellious. Do you know how brilliant it was for The Beatles to break up when they did? MR: Yes, it was great. But I don't think rock 'n' roll burnout has anything to do with age. I just think that people can go only so far. People reach a point. JH: I can't deny people their art form. But you have to be challenged, and you have to meet that challenge. MR: What are your favorite bands? JH: The Beatles and The Clash are the greatest. I've listened to the Beatles' White Album for more than sixteen years, and when we were filming Ferris Bueller, I listened to the album every single day for fifty-six days. MR: That's the album I listened to all during Pretty In Pink, remember? JH: Yeah, I know. MR: How do you see yourself changing in the next fifteen years? JH: Growing older. MR: I know. JH: It's a foregone conclusion. What's next for you? MR: I don't know. I'd like to finish high school, and I'm totally late on everything to do with my SATs. I'm going to apply to colleges soon. So do you have anything you're dying to do? JH: I have a hundred things I'm dying to do. Make that a hundred and four. I'm going to write for a while. Going to see Pretty In Pink. Get to go sit in theaters and look at the film with great pride. I like watching you work - you know that.