i'll bite what is the fabelmans about

thank you for asking i hope you don't regret it <3

the fabelmans is a fictionalised version of steven spielberg's childhood and adolescence. it follows spielberg's self insert sammy fabelman (played by gabriel labelle) as he discovers his passion for filmmaking and begins to use it to cope with his control issues and anxiety. his father, burt (paul dano), is a computer scientist who discourages sammy's filmmaking, calling it a "hobby". he's a scientist, unfailingly logical and reasonable, and just doesn't understand the whole "artist" thing. he's also exceedingly kind and sweet, which makes him a bit of a pushover (people on tumblr write the absolute nastiest smut about him it takes up the whole tag). sammy's mother, mitzi (michelle williams), was a pianist who gave up any hope of being a professional musician when she got married and had kids. she's dreamy, flaky, and youthful (spielberg described his mother as a "peter pan" type - she never grew up), and while she loves burt and the kids she's implied to be both deeply unhappy and mentally ill (she's impulsive, she has periods where she can't get out of bed, and she's explicitly stated to suffer from panic attacks). sammy takes after his mother in basically every way - they're both artistic and ambitious and have panic attacks. throughout the film, burt and mitzi's marriage starts to fall apart and they eventually divorce as sammy watches and films it. there are also school subplots where sammy deals with anti-semitism, his first girlfriend, and a somewhat homoerotic relationship with a school bully.

the short version: it's about a kid watching his parents fall apart and wanting to shield both himself and his mother from the pain. it's also about how art can become an obsession that eats you alive and alienates you from everyone around you.

Co-Stars pt.7

Callum Turner X Actress! Reader

Summary: Emmy Awards... Y/n is nominated, Callum too...

Warning: Pure joy/ Swearing/ use of Y/n/

Y/n's dress:

She made her way on the red carpet with her cast and directors. Photographers were shouting at them. ‘’Y/n, Callum, a kiss!’’ one of them yelled. The couple looked at each other before bringing their face close to each other, only to pull away before their lips could touch, they laughed and kissed rapidly. ‘’Do you guys think Y/n is going to win?’’ another photograph asked. ‘’We hope so!’’ Austin replied, making the woman smile. There they were, the Emmy Awards, Master of the Air as been nominated for a lot of things, one of them being the best supporting actress in a drama show, Y/n was nominated. When the nomination was announced, she couldn’t believe it. Callum was so proud of his girlfriend. ‘’Mr. Hanks, what do you think about Y/n’s nomination?’’ The woman looked at the men she admired when she was younger, he inspired her so much. ‘’I think it’s fully deserved, she worked hard, and I hope her hard work is rewarded’’ He replies. Y/n’s eyes filled with tears; she was touched by his words.

Master of The Air already won 5 awards tonight, it was amazing; but now, it was the time for the best supporting actress in a drama series. Y/n was nervous, she felt like throwing up. ‘’The nominees are Y/n Y/l/n in Master of the Air’’ Y/n blew a kiss to the camera as she watched a little piece of her work on the screen. ‘’You don’t think I care? Every time you go up in the air, I’m terrified that you won’t come back! So, no I don’t understand what it’s like up there, but you don’t know what’s it like here!’’ she yelled. That scene was when she yelled at Bucky. It was an amazing scene. ‘’And the Emmy goes too…’’ Helena Bonham Carter was announcing the winner. Y/n took a deep breath as she, and all her co-stars waited for the results. ‘’Y/n Y/l/n in Master of the Air!’’ She couldn’t believe it, she put a hand in front of her mouth as she looked around her. ‘’You did it, baby!’’ Callum said, hugging her, the rest of the cast joined in the hug. Her first reflex was to take off her shoes, she didn’t want to do a Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars. She quickly kissed Callum before making her way on the stage, barefoot. She got up, hugged Helena, took her trophy and got closer to the microphone. ‘’Oh my god, uh, hi everyone!’’ she said, tears falling from her eyes. The crowd cheered on her. ‘’Where do I start? Thank you to everyone that voted for me. Uh, I’m losing my words. I want to thank Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman for creating this amazing T.V show. Tom, you’ve always been an inspiration for me, I’m honoured to have had the opportunity to work with you. To all the girls out there, keep going, hard works pays off.’’ She had to stop and take a breath; she was speaking fast. ‘’Uh, to my co-stars; I love you guys so much, thank you for making me feel welcomed and making this experience so fun. To my mum and dad, thank you for always believing in me. Lastly, I want to thank my other half, Callum Turner. You’ve always been there for me, since the beginning of all this, I love you so much, baby, I couldn’t have done this without you, being your love interest has been really fun, and you made me comfortable with the exploration I did with the character, with certain emotions. Thank you for being my rock, I love you. Thank you so much everyone’’ she said, blowing a kiss to Callum, before lifting her trophy into the air. Her co-stars were cheering for her at the top of their lungs, Y/n laughed when she heard them.

‘’The Emmy for the best supporting actor in a drama show goes to… Callum Turner, Master of the Air!’’ Callum was smiling so much. He and his girl both won the same award. Y/n jumped in his arms to hug him. He made his way to the stage, hugged Johnny Depp, took his trophy and got closer to the mic. ‘’Wow! Thank you so much, it’s amazing! First of all, I want to thank Tom, Steven and Gary, thank you, God I’m saying the same thing as my girlfriend. Uh, to my co-stars, it’s been a crazy journey, from boot-camp, except for you Barry’’ his comment made the hole cast laugh. ‘’Thank you for supporting me during the process. To my beautiful girlfriend, you’ve been with me since my first movie, we were together ever since. Just like you, I couldn’t have done it without you. Y/n, quit smiling like this, I’m trying to do this without stuttering, you’re making it difficult’’ he said to his girlfriend who had the proudest smile on her lips. ‘’I love you so much. Thank you everyone! Have a goodnight!’’ Callum smiled as he left the stage.

‘’8 wins tonight, congratulations, if we can get back to Y/n, how are you doing, dear?’’ the journalist asked. The ceremony was over, tonight felt like they were ascending to Nirvana. Y/n and Callum were floating on a euphoric cloud. ‘’I’m still overwhelmed at the moment, it just feels really good, having my hard work being rewarded, mine and my boyfriend’s. I try to soak it all in’’ she smiles. Her cheeks were hurting from smiling so much. ‘’ And you, Callum?’’ he stopped looking at his girlfriend to answer the question. ‘’It doesn’t feel real, it’s an amazing night and yeah, I can’t wait to celebrate with them’’ he laughed. They got asked other questions, but when they got in the limousine, everyone was looking around. ‘’8 fucking wins!!!!’’ they all yelled at the same time. ‘’I just won an Emmy!!!’’ Y/n said, showing her statue around. The guys started to laugh; it was euphoria. ‘’You both won an Emmy!’’ Barry said, looking at Callum. He took his girl and kissed her passionately, all the joy and the relief were transmitted in that kiss. It was the greatest day of their life!

mutual 1: what if steven spielberg was bisexual

mutual 2: girlrotting

mutual 3: almost fell asleep during the fnaf movie was a 10/10

mutual 4: NEED stan and kyle to kiss on the next episode of south park 🙏

mutual 5: will graham themed collage i’m working on right now!!

mutual 5: PEANUTS MOVIE SKFKSKD2928SKFJSIRKWJFJZJCJSJFKWJFJDJFKDF

mutual 6: worried about dracula (book i’ve read four times)

mutual 7: it’s really beautiful. this is how i imagine lelouch greeting me every day when I get home. no funny business, either. doesn’t have to be sexual. when i’m gone i long for him all day. the time we spend together is beautiful. i wouldn’t trade it for anything (other than the real thing, of course.)

mutual 8: love when gay people watch straight romances like they’re horror movies

mutual 9: 1989 TV??? KARLIE WAS THERE??? KARLIE HAD BRACELETS THAT SAID CHEAP ASS ROSE AND KNOCKOUT?? BLUE 1989 FOLKLORE AND ENCHANTED OUTFITS??? NYD SURPRISE SONG????

mutual 10: take me home. i can never go home

mutual 11: dad rock is good actually

mutual 12: i’ve just been informed the red mnm threw the first brick at stonewall

mutual 13: i miss you 2018

me when i look up The Fabelmans on Tumblr to see what other people think about that fact that eventually an artist must sacrifice their entire life for their passion and i mostly just find people calling Steven Spielberg's dad a slut

rewatched the fabelmans today and i’m sorry steven spielberg for the thoughts i have about your movie dad

Some more dubious TV:

GRISELDA: Griselda Blanco, la padrina de cocaína in early '80s Miami, gets the #girlboss treatment in this six-part miniseries starring Sofía Vergara. Writers Doug Miro and Ingrid Escajeda seem to have made a close study of the 2007 film AMERICAN GANGSTER, about Frank Lucas, which is similarly structured and has a similar abundance of period detail that never feels organic or authentic. If you know anything at all about the real Griselda Blanco, it also feels pretty sanitized, and of course prettified. For contrast, there's also a 2017 Lifetime movie called COCAINE GODMOTHER, starring, improbably, Catherine-Zeta Jones, which is much more tabloid-lurid, although calling Jones' performance and accent "a broad caricature" would be giving it more credit than it deserves. Curiously, the Lifetime version is much more upfront about presenting Griselda as bisexual: Both it and the new mini indicate that Blanco's bestie, who eventually died of a drug overdose (called Carolina in the 2017 version, Carmen in the new one), was in love with her, but the new version is weirdly noncommittal about Griselda herself. Pondering the behind-the-scenes politics of that is honestly more interesting than much of what's onscreen.

MASTERS OF THE AIR: Lugubrious Apple TV+ miniseries about the USAAF 100th Bomb Group of WW2, based on the nonfiction book by Donald L. Miller and produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman, obviously keen to recapture the success of BAND OF BROTHERS. A heavy-handed and often tedious propaganda piece, MASTERS is basically a long-form modern version of WW2 movies like AIR FORCE or THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO, full of contrived patriotic uplift (inevitably underlined by obnoxiously syrupy orchestral scoring), lots of CGI (most of which looks like a video game), and a few more naughty words than the 1940s Production Code would have allowed. The promos suggested the show would deal with the experience of Black fighter escort pilots, which could have had some interest (especially since the 2012 movie RED TAILS did such a disastrous job of it), but the handful of Black characters don't appear until the eighth episode, and they're much more thinly drawn than the white officers who comprise the core cast. Most of the main characters are theoretically based on real people (who are shown in a brief coda in the final episode), but the show's dramatization is much less effective than a decent documentary treatment would have been, particularly since it's already reliant on sleepy voiceover narration to hold together its disparate story threads. The main consolation is that there’s a refreshing lack of distracting stunt casting; I didn’t recognize anyone in the cast, which is for the best with this kind of thing. A show for your dad or grandpa who only watches WW2 documentaries.

STAR TREK: PRODIGY: I only barely struggled through the first four five episodes of this animated STAR TREK spinoff, and the kindest thing I can say about it is that I'm not even remotely adjacent to the target audience. The animation and character designs caused me physical pain, and overall it feels like what we would get all the time if STAR TREK became another of the many properties absorbed by the evil power of the Mouse. One shudders to think.

bitches be like “it’s unethical to fuck steven spielberg’s mom and dad!” and then talk about how they wanna fuck death, destroyer of worlds

i dont even get how wanting to have sex with arnold spielberg is unethical. i mean he was an electrical engineer and oppenheimer created a death bomb. i think wanting to fuck oppenheimer is worse. is it because arnold is a famous directors dad or something and it somehow makes it weird. because i think wanting to fuck the guy who made the atomic bomb is weird

Close Encounters of the Third Kind 

By, Christian Lavarello 

I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind for the first time, and I enjoyed this film very much and my respect for director Steven Spielberg has increased given the technical special effects utilized during this time and his imagination to bring it to life. The film was written and directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1977. This film tells the story of main character Roy played by Richard Dreyfuss, an increasingly obsessed man with UFOs and subliminal messaging following his experience with extraterrestrial beings. Roy builds a model of the mountain in his home and his obsession causes a separation from his wife and children but drawing him closer towards parallel investigations being conducted by scientists and the military.

"I guess you've noticed something a little strange with Dad. It's okay, though, I'm still Dad" - Roy

Many critics have called this film revolutionary given its’ creativity and special effects utilized during its’ time and reviews from its' release date to current time have been mostly positive with some criticizing the story as an uneasy tension, specifically Roy’s decision to leave his family behind. Other reviews such as the one from Reels Review states the following, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a great movie, but it also benefited from peerless timing. Released on the heels of Star Wars, it was able to absorb the pro-Science Fiction atmosphere that had arisen as a result of George Lucas' unexpected blockbuster. Suddenly, everyone was into stories about space and aliens. And, while Close Encounters is a much different film than Star Wars, it played to the same audience”. Rotten Tomatoes has rated this film at a 90% while the audience has rated it at 85% and The New York Times called it “...the best—the most elaborate‐1950's science fiction movie ever made, a work that borrows its narrative shape and its concerns from those earlier films, but enhances them with what looks like the latest developments in movie and space technology”. 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind does not fit into one conventional or unconventional category; however most would argue that it does align with conventional films and I would agree, yet there are aspects of the film that tell the contrary. For example the film does not have any superstar actors or actresses and interesting enough I found out through some research that Meryl Streep auditioned and was not given a role in this film. Close Encounters of the Third Kind made a profit of $288 million worldwide, including $116.39 million in the United States and Canada, and $171.7 million in foreign countries. This film was the most successful Columbia Pictures film during the 70s. I found the style of the film to be form a connection with the viewers of this time that were highly involved with extraterrestrial beings that the aliens are friendly. For example, during the scene where scientists were attempting to communicate with the aliens there was a believable and compelling message about the way aliens used soothing and melodic music to communicate and this informed the audience that they were friendly. 

Something additional that I found interesting was that in 1980, the the film was replaced by a 132-minute version, with the central section tightened and extra material showing the inside of the mother ship at end. On posters, but not on prints, this was subtitled The Special Edition. In 1998 a 137-minute collector’s edition was issued on home video; this eliminates the inside of the mother ship but restores footage around the hero’s nervous breakdown. The film was also released in 2022 as the Close Encounter of The Third Kind: Amended. Overall, I found this film to be interesting and I was mostly surprised with the special effects utilized during its’ time of release. I would recommend this film if you were a Steven Spielberg fan and keep in mind that films of the past are what brought films of the future or current time.  

Animation Night 145: Brid Bard

...Bard Brid? Sorry, the line’s not very clear here. Say again...

Oh, Brad Bird?

OK, so. Imagine there’s a really dad-like guy who directs movies. Someone for a lot of nostalgia for his childhood during which, Cold War not withstanding, he was impassioned by witnessing The Jungle Book (not unlike a certain Richard Williams) and encouraged by supportive parents to pursue animation. And it went well. Really well. Our boy Brad got an ‘unprecedented’ internship at Disney with Milt Kahl(!) off the back of his film The Tortoise and the Hare, had a chill time at high school, then went to CalArts on scholarship where he studied alongside John Lasseter (keep an eye on him. not just because he might sexually assault somebody but also because he’ll be in this story later), Tim Burton and Henry Selick.

In short, about the most direct and uncomplicated route into animation you can imagine.

Brad Bird joined Disney (their investment paying off) in 1978, working on films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron, but soon clashed with the studio heads who he judged not to be upholding principles he believed Disney represented. (He would be vindicated in a way by Don Bluth throwing down the gauntlet a few years later and kicking off the ‘Disney Renaissance’.) One of his last contributions must have been to The Brave Little Toaster, where he worked alongside the future founders of Pixar.

There followed a few years in which he moved to the SF Bay Area (perhaps not so gentrified back then(?) but Bird definitely had money), pitching projects left and right. One of his big passions was to adapt the comic book The Spirit. Mostly he tried experiments that didn’t pan out, like making a CG film at Lucasfilm with Ed Catmull, later founder of Pixar. He worked on The Plague Dogs (AN 86) until he got fired again.

Nevertheless, his reel of hypothetical films did catch the eye of Steven Spielberg, who absorbed Bird into his company Amblin Entertainment in order to expand his short film The Family Dog, co-created with Tim Burton, into an episode of the anthology series Amazing Stories. (Family Dog would later spawn a disastrous spin-off series in 1993, but by this point Bird had moved on). I think it’s worth noting this one because it gives a sense of what sort of original ideas Bird is working with: a dysfunctional suburban family as seen through the eyes of their dog. ‘Dysfunctional suburban family’ would be the centre of... almost every single one of Bird’s works since.

Bird continued to work under Spielberg’s wing, still clashing with execs; he got straight-married in this time to film editor Elizabeth Canney. Things seemed to be going well enough, despite his frustrations - until his sister Susan was killed in a murder-suicide by her estranged husband. This understandably fucked with him pretty hard. After a few years of depression he recovered, enough to take an invitation to work on The Simpsons in 1989 after Matt Groening was impressed by the cinematography in Family Dog. (Seriously he’s connected to just about everyone in the animation industry!) He continued on the Simpsons throughout the early 90s, working part-time to ‘oversee the script-to-animation pipeline’ and introduce this same filmic sensibility, as well as contributing to other animated sitcoms like The Critic and King of the Hill.

Let’s fast forward to the end of the 90s. As we’ve discussed... many times on this webbed site, this is when the steam of the ‘Disney Renaissance’ was about to run out, and the new CG era was about to begin. Our boy Brad, meanwhile, is struggling trying to juggle being a Dad(TM) with spending all his time making animated films. Which leads to Brad writing... a story about a suburban family strained by one of them being a superhero, yeah.

But Brad wouldn’t get to make this film just yet. Instead, his successful pitch was something called Ray Gunn, a scifi story about a detect in an Art-Deco retrofuturistic world. This movie also did not get made... but it’s because Warner bought up the studio Turner that was making it, and shut down Ray Gunn. Instead, they offered Bird a different animated film with a nostalgic bent, adapting childrens’ book The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, which was in its turn written to help his children cope with the death of his wife Sylvia Plath (yeah that Sylvia Plath!). Bird liked the pacifist themes of the novel, but while the children’s book has the feeling of a parable, he gave it a concrete setting in the 50s, and centered the story on the paranoia of the Cold War, seen from the point of view of an innocent boy.

So with this first movie we see start to see the major preoccupations of Brad Bird come into play (though he did not write the screenplay in this case). The Iron Giant comes in the middle of a brief handful of traditionally animated films made by Warner to ride on the coattails of Disney; the others include Space Jam and Osmosis Jones. They were by and large not very successful; The Iron Giant was the one critical success but failed for blah blah marketing y’know reasons. Like most of Bird’s films, the core relationship is a father [figure]-son one, in this case beatnik artist Dean who lives in a junkyard and ends up becoming surrogate father to nine-year-old protagonist Hogarth.

The themes of the film are pretty on the nose: in an idyllic American small town (Bird explicitly referred to Norman Rockwell and sitcom character Ward Cleaver) masking severe paranoia falls a harmless alien robot. It’s viewed as a threat by everyone but the social outcast and the child. The military get called in, gung-ho to throw around their toys; by the time the townspeople figure out that they’ve been huge cunts, a missile is in the air. What saves everyone is the fact that our nine-year-old protagonist has gone to the effort of teaching the Giant good old American values, so it goes and intercepts the missile in a heroic sacrifice... undercut with a final hint that it can regenerate. In fact Bird originally planned an ending where full scale war breaks out between the US and USSR, but ultimately this was softened.

What sells it is charming character animation. The production seems to be the opposite of most animated film stories: meticulously planned, prevised and storyboarded, while making effective use of cel-shaded CG for vehicles and mecha scenes, putting it among the first works to experiment in that direction. In another anime-like touch, the animation of the film was divided up by scene rather than by character.

And, within the American full animation tradition, it’s probably one of the only films to address the Cold War at all. Of course there are others from other countries! When The Wind Blows is probably the most direct; anime is rarely directly about the Cold War (the Future War 198X controversy excepted) but it’s implicit in most works that deal with sci-fi and military themes such as Akira. And in modern times, now that it’s History and serious animated dramas are more accepted, you get films like Funan about the Cambodian genocide. In the USSR... it’s complicated.

But in America... while animation studios were recruited en masse to produce WWII propaganda, for the most part animated films from the 50s through to the 80s don’t really touch on the war. They adopt mythological past settings, or tell stories closer to home. Perhaps by the time of The Iron Giant, with the war over, and the specific setting now 50 years in the past, it was considered safe enough.

The characters of Bird’s film are very much archetypal. It’s kind of a fable about the Cold War, and in the final edit of the script, a reassuring one. The ‘illusion of life’ animation techniques are used to imbue each character with enough charm and specificity but they are largely defined by their roles. I’m not saying this to criticise; this is precisely the model of film that American animation specialises in and it uses it to very good effect. Ultimately though because it’s a fable, you can only take so much from it.

Despite the commercial failure of The Iron Giant, it did finally give Brad some clout as a director. A certain John Lasseter to a new studio that was making serious waves in animation... yeah, you know them, it’s Pixar. I wrote about early Pixar back on Animation Night 75, so go check that out if you like.

At Pixar, Bird ended up directing the studio’s sixth film, finally getting a chance to follow up on his pitch for The Incredibles which features... that’s right... a suburban family with a beleaguered father in a setting designed to nostalgically reference a mid-20th-century American aesthetic. Mmm.

By this time, Pixar movies had started to establish a formula. The characters would be some kind of high concept centering on characters like toys, bugs, monsters or fish that wouldn’t face the limits of rendering humans. Usually they would center on a duo of male characters who would start off at odds and but gradually build a bond over the course of the film. They’d be suitable for kids but have enough comedy to amuse adults. There would be a villain to overcome, and a wider sphere of quirky buddies to support the main duo. Women would be almost nonexistent. At this time, it seemed that Pixar could do absolutely no wrong; their films were basically always hits.

But even so, I remember when The Incredibles came out. It hit the nerd sphere like a bomb. I remember all the memes about Edna Mode (voiced Brad Bird) shouting ‘no capes!’; I also remember the articles that argued that the film was in fact Objectivist propaganda.

Looking back, it’s hard to entirely disagree with them! The thrust of The Incredibles is that an ungrateful public rejects the special superheroes, leading to an end to their romantic days of vanquishing evil and staging dramatic fights on top of trains; now they’re all caught up in the banality of the capitalism. Bob, aka ‘Mr Incredible’, works in a miserable cubicle as an insurance salesman; Helen aka ‘Elastigirl’ is an exhausted suburban housewife trying to rein in somewhat estranged superpowered teenagers. The pencil-necked bureaucrats of Society, you see, have denied them the chance to exercise their special abilities as they did in the romantic past.

But lo! There is a new supervillain after all; it is Syndrome, once a starry-eyed young superhero, who after a rejection by Mr Incredible, came up with a plan to create a high-tech scheme to sell gadgets that would make just about anyone be able to use superpowers - even if, the arc words declare, ‘if everyone is special, no-one is’, a sentiment that basically goes unexamined further. However, his plan to stage a superhero battle to sell these gadgets backfires resulting in an out of control robot. Luckily, the Incredible family have been united over the course of their adventures and can defeat the robot, society reevaluates the superhero issue, and the captains of industry heroes can assume their proper roles of being naturally better than everyone.

It is, looking back with adult eyes, a very strange narrative to be pushing; it’s possible to see the feelings that Bird must have put into it but damn lmao dude’s got some shit to examine. But as a film it’s technically pretty much impeccable, with memorable sequences that got memed about as much as any animated film from the 2000s. It opened ‘families amirite fellas’ as an avenue for Pixar to tell stories about, which they’d dig into much further later with films like Inside Out.

But I won’t spare too any more words on The Incredibles, since I’m not actually planning to show it tonight. No, the other film of Bird’s I’m planning on showing is...

Ratatouille! A film whose influence lasted so long that you’ll get an extended parody even in 2022′s Everything Everywhere All At Once. As far as Pixar high concepts go it’s pretty up there, centering on a food-loving rat Remy who befriends a chef and hatches a scheme where he will give instructions by tugging on his hair while hiding under a chef’s hat. This concept was not due to Bird but to Jan Pinkava, director of Geri’s Game, who had developed the film for years; Bird was pulled in to attempt to salvage what Pixar saw as a hopelessly mired production. Bird, with some reticence, took the established design work, but rewrote the script into something that better fit his tastes in filmmaking. Pinkava for his part refused to comment, but left Pixar not much later.

So the Brad Bird angle enters in the secondary plot, with Remy’s relationship with his dad who doesn’t understand his artistic passion for food. The story is probably what you’d expect given these elements! ‘Probably’ because... I actually haven’t seen this movie, it’s like the one major gap in my knowledge of ‘classic’ Pixar films.

Since Ratatouillie, Bird departed animation and started directing live-action films, including an episode of Mission Impossible that breaks the formula (unless it’s got some kind of dad arc I don’t know about), and Tomorrowland which gets back on the 50s nostalgia train. I haven’t seen any of them so I can’t really comment too much except to say that it sounds like Tomorrowland doubles down harder on the vague Objectivism angle lmao.

But rather than an explicit philosophical conviction, which Brad Bird the self-described ‘centrist’ doesn’t particularly seem to have, it seems more that it’s just a channeling of not entirely examined frustrations about his difficult time getting established as a filmmaker. Bird, it seems, grew up basically being told he was a one of a kind animation genius, and entered the animation industry with a lot of romantic expectations which were frustrated by its reality. It’s easy to read his films as mostly being about how people didn’t understand clever Brad Bird.

Bird is a bit of an odd case in another way. Like basically all animators he rails against the ‘animation is for children’ stereotype of the medium that just doesn’t seem to break, yet his films are very much about archetypal characters with very clearly defined, abstracted arcs. Perhaps that’s just what he’s able to make. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in pushing the envelope anywhere particularly weird or discomforting. Beyond his ambition to bring live action cinematography in to animation, his ‘superpower’, once he got to exercise it, seems to be that he’s very good at planning. His scripts are tightly focused, his productions are on schedule, and he’s the guy you call in when old Jan isn’t finishing his movie on time.

Still, all these criticisms aside, he’s one of the major influences on the subsequent decades of CG films, and his films are consistently very solid. So if you’d like to join me - with apologies for the late start - we’ll be watching The Iron Giant and Ratatouille over at twitch.tv/canmom. Hope to see ya there, films start in about 15 minutes!

how did you feel about the fablemans?

i went to see it with my dad and it left me with the same sort of mild irritation a lot of films spielberg had directed leave me with. i don't really know how to articulate it, it's like he learned that good and bad aren't discrete categories and decided the only way to cope with that is to never deliver an unrestrained blow. or maybe it isn't and i was just distracted during the viewing. that said the performances were good overall. something about spielberg's more realistic films just feels indecisive to me it's like he's trying to avoid expressing an opinion he can't escape. sorry for the rant btw love on earth etc etc [alex benedict voice] goodbye genius

oh my. um. for me it was like. this man has been making a film about his parent's divorce for like forty years....... and then when it comes time to do it for real he mostly just made a film about how cool it was that he was a kid who made movies.... like okay. that's fine i guess. this was the one time i actually really wanted to learn about your parents getting a divorce...... but i guess watching your oc sammy make movies and kiss the hot christian girl is also fine. like i think there's a more interesting movie in here and the more we spend time with sammy who is the least interesting of them the more i am falling asleep. but yeah i think you said it more articulately than me. i will be honest y'all. i don't really like steven spielberg lol. when i was watching this movie i was thinking about a quote from the souvenir part two, similarly about its filmmaker's coming of age and coping with that through filmmaking, and there's a scene where one character tells our protagonist, did you resist the temptation to be obvious?

anyways. steven. stevey spiels. did you resist the temptation to be obvious? we all fucking know you didn't.

I just watched Fury Road for the first time in...two years? Maybe? It lives in my brain so much that it's hard to say, and also years? How have I let that much time go by?

I was raised on violent movies as a kid, with 'Road Warrior' being my favorite, meaning post-apocalyptic stuff, especially with cars, is up my alley...Damnation Alley.

At some point in my childhood my dad and I were watching something on TV and there was some song or another that I was bored with. In my peripheral vision I saw my dad raise his hand to his face and he was wiping away a tear. I asked him what was wrong (tears were not common at all in our household) and he replied that sometimes music did this to him now; it was just so emotionally overwhelming to him and he had to release it (but emotions were very common).

Today I started tearing up three separate times because this movie is so good with action that seems so chaotic and random but it's only because it's been carefully storyboarded and planned and rehearsed for so long and then it's tightly edited and music is added to just smack you in the face over and over and you can't look away or blink or breathe...

And in between long stretches of the movie gripping you by the throat there are actual moments of raw emotion, of characters revealing who they are with a word, with a grunt, with a look, and actual honest to goodness character development that makes you weep.

I had a good time watching the MCU Infinity Saga; they're generally pretty fun popcorn movies - films that are really good for nothing more than an excuse to go to the movie theater and get some snacks and watch something - and there's no crime in that kind of pop culture enjoyment. But for George Miller to come back to a franchise after 30 years when he would have already been remembered for his contributions to the medium, and just...make a masterpiece? What? What about directors who didn't try to make a masterpiece, just make another good movie based on a franchise from their past? Well, George Lucas famously wasn't able to do this; Steven Spielberg tried with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with very mixed results (I would say that he failed); Ridley Scott tried with Prometheus but, ultimately, I'm not too sure what story he was really trying to tell with his pretty and haunting prequel.

I'm not really trying to talk shit about the other directors, but I will say that Miller had a vision, worked with different people over years and years, and put out the movie that he wanted to make. He trusted his instincts and they were right. That by itself can be a damn miracle these days.

And if nothing else he gave people in the Bay Area the perfect gif for when we talked about pilgrimages to Burning Man:

mutual 1: (reblogging pictures of pink food sourced from some Japanese blog in 2008)

mutual 2: i hope no one comes to my house and calls me a stupid puppy and fucks my ass hard while i wear a collar

mutual 3: (ten paragraphs about the twinks from evangelion)

mutual 4: i want to fuck steven spielberg's dad

mutual 5: i want to fuck steven spielberg's mom

mutual 6: i hate terfs

mutual 7: oooooghggiggh i want hsi pussy so bad (man from an obscure 80s horror movie)

mutual 8: whats a mans pussy im a visual leaner

mutual 9: (video of someone masturbating with a monster can)

mutual 10: what if ants had tumblr what would the discourse be like

mutual 11: batman villain x reader 6632882537k words part 253

steven spielberg would be thrilled to know the teens are making sammy fabelman fancams on tiktok but i can't say the same about the way people on here post about his dad.

With the release of Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny tomorrow for the US I want to express why Indiana Jones means so much to me with the original trilogy among my favourite movies of all time and why I want to be working in the entertainment industry

Raiders of the Lost Ark: the first time I watched this movie I was amazed like I never saw anything like it before and I consider Raiders Of The Lost Ark as the greatest action movie ever made from it’s perfect pacing to action sequences which are still impressive, the score being one of the best I’ve ever heard and the amazing acting

Temple of Doom: my personal favourite Indy movie because it’s tone is so much darker almost horror like (that’s because both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were both going through divorces) but still feels in the same spirit of Indiana Jones, the opening sequence in a rendition of Anything Goes blew my mind and actually got me into musical theatre. Also fun fact this was one of those movies in my childhood that scared the heck out of me.

The Last Crusade: this is my opinion the funniest movie in the series down to the dynamic chemistry between Harrison Ford and the late great Sean Connery, it has one of my favourite transitions shots and one of the funniest edits. Fun fact in 2019 one of my local cinemas showed the trilogy back to back to back and me and my dad went to this, when the credits started rolling after the movie ended I started to cry because the Movie was about fatherhood and letting go of the past troubles.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: the black sheep of the franchise is one I very much loved ever since 2010 when I first saw it. Apart from some wonky CGI this is on par with the rest of the movies which BTW people complaining about Aliens being in a Indy movie and that being unrealistic is something I find laughable. the original trilogy is a tribute to the serials of the time, Crystal Skull is tribute to 50s B Science Fiction movies and Cold War tension at the time.

The Dial of Destiny: I saw this Wednesday (two days before the US theatrical release) and it was my most anticipated movie of the year and was my Star Wars The Force Awakens so if this was a disappointment I would be furious but when the ending happened (not getting into spoilers) I started to weep and when the credits started playing the familiar Raiders Match I started to cry with joy knowing that James Mangold made a perfect finale and in my opinion it’s does something that modern blockbuster has done for me recently it was movie magic and the sense of wonder when I watch the original trilogy for the first time. This is my second favourite movie in the series but that might change with a second watch later this weekend.

If I haven’t seen these at the right time I would be the person I am today and I’m glad that Dr Henry Indiana Jones Jr gets the triumph final stand he deserves.

I’ve seen some people on here talking about how bullying film bros is anti intellectualism. I just want to clear that up because I’m not talking shit about film bros because they have elevated taste, they fucking don’t. I’m talking shit about film bros because they talk about Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg as if they’re niche fuckin auteurs that no one has ever heard of. If you’re gonna pitch a movie to me like its some life changing art piece that nobody’s ever heard of don’t then recommend me a Cohen brothers film that my dad showed me when I was 12 with the stipulation “Don’t tell your mom.” It’s just mansplaining but like about a specific thing. Like these fuckers will talk about the shining like its some slept on foreign film that has the power to change your perspective on capitalism with no sense of irony.

please talk about arnold spielberg. tell me things about him. the only thing i know about him is that he's steven's dad. and i also know he has great boobs. but you and dean are the only reasons why i know that.

his birthday is february 6th 1917 and he died at 103 years old. he was born in cincinnati. he was an electrical engineer. he helped develop the ge-200 series of computers which were used for data processing. he started building radios at nine years old. he built a crystal radio receiver out of parts from garbage cans. he helped design airplane antennas. him got divorced in 1965 and he didnt remarry until 2016.

there are many interesting facts about arnie :3