misty woods (Kokdak Ektar 100)

Film Friday: Bullet Train

I've been missing a few Film Fridays lately, partially because mental health has just kinda been like that and partially because I've been struggling with a slightly more meaty analysis that my brain just won't let me figure out properly. As such, I'm going to get into the swing of things again with a movie that is pretty stupid, and I say that with all possible love and admiration.

Ladybug isn't really comfortable with the title of hitman anymore, he's trying out a more harmonic life, but even so he does find it in himself to undertake what should by all accounts be a simple last-minute job. Board the eponymous train, grab a suitcase, and get off at the next station. Oh, were it only so easy. Turns out said bullet train is flush with kooky assassins and hitmen who are either out for the suitcase, the lives of one or more of each other, or have larger and more ominous designs.

There's Ladybug, of course, the quirky pair of British wetworks men Lemon and Tangerine out to escort a drugged-out VIP and a suitcase full of money, notorious and sneaky The Hornet who's skulking about somewhere, the megalomaniacal but brilliant Prince playing a larger game with the life of desperate father Kimura's child as ante, as well as the hot-headed Wolf who is out for vengeance and a paycheck, but mostly the vengeance thing. It's quite the web of coincidences, interferences, and merry chaos as these murderers navigate the crowded train.

It's chaotic, but one throughline that honestly makes the constant shifting priorities and allegiances of Ladybug and the other hitmen work is that it's all a job to them, a very messy job that may or may not be arranged by a Russian usurper of the Yakuza crime syndicate known as White Death, but still a job. Whenever it's expedient for our heroes and antiheroes to not kill each other, they'll show professional courtesy to each other, bantering in that "a little bit too cool" stylized way that's second nature to Hollywood assassins.

What sets the banter apart, though, is a distinct sense of humor. Lemon, much to Tangerine's annoyance, has a theory of human personalities and moral character based on Thomas The Tank Engine. Ladybug has luck that fluctuates wildly between being impossibly good and impossibly bad, and he has a problem with remembering faces which makes some of the networking with his fellow killers challenging. Wolf's role in the movie is short in a way that feels darkly comedic yet apt, and I was surprised to learn this was, in fact, a cameo from musician Bad Bunny (listen, I'm old, ok?)

It's all breezy fun. The movie takes itself about as seriously as any movie that features a Japanese-language cover of "Holding Out For A Hero" in a moment of high drama, but that's fine, the movie expects you to chuckle along, knowing full well it has your heart in a vise by the third cover of "I'm forever blowing bubbles." Not a joke by the way, the few moments that Bullet Train allows itself to express emotion more complex than "holy shit" and/or laughter, it's acted well enough and with enough genuine skill that it actually gets to me a fair bit.

It'd be an act of overstatement to call Bullet Train all that deep, but it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It ends up saying some fun things about fate. I wouldn't exactly cite it in a philosophy paper or anything of the sort, it is fun to sit at the end of the "Michael Shannon plays Russian roulette in an oni mask to look badass" movie and go "You're right movie, maybe human misery DOES come from the hubris of believing ourselves to be masters over fate." I don't know, it's just nice for a crowd-pleasing action movie to go out on a note of what seems like a genuinely held belief and not "welp that happened" glibness. It reminds me a bit of Mr. and Mrs. Smith like that, a movie I'll probably end up talking about here one of these days.

NEW • Adam Driver 📷 at the introduction for the US Premiere of Ferrari (2023) at Alice Tully Hall for the 61st New York Film Festival, October 13, 2023 — Penélope Cruz, Sheilene Woodley and Gabriel Leone. Film Festival | NYFF | 61st | Screening | 1K | 13.10.23

Flickpulse: Each week, we handpick the best movies that will help you kick stress to the curb and fill you with inspiration and motivation.

Will Rogers Theater, Chicago, 1987

Film Fridays

So I drew Maria Priscilla Thurston Williams. She was born in 1866. In Versaille, Missouri. She served as editor-in-chief from 1891. To 1894. of the Kansas City weekly New Era. This caused her to seek greater independence by founding, writing and editing her own newspaper called 'the Women's Voice' sponsored by the 'colored women's auxiliary' of the Republican party, the paper was described as having 'many pleasant things to say on a choice of timely topics.' In 1916, Maria went on to publish her memoir 'My work and public sentiment' in which she identified herself as a national organizer and speaker with the Good Citizens League.She stated that 10% of the proceeds would go to supressing crime among African Americans.In 1916, She also married entrepreneur Jesse L. Williams, who owned a movie theater among several other businesses in Kansas City.The pair co-managed the movie theater, which gave the couple experience in the distribution and release of films for African-American audiences. With Maria serving both as the company's secretary and treasurer, the couple went on to co-found Western Film Producing Co. and Booking Exchange,and Williams went on to write the script for Flames of Wrath, produce a film from the script and play the role of prosecuting attorney in the five-reel film.That same year unfortunately, her husband died, and she soon married another man.She died in 1932. in Kansas City Missouri She was shot to death.The plot for 'Flames of Wrath' which was the silent crime drama in 1923.concerns the investigation of a murder after a robbery. Aimee Dixon Anthony stated that Maria could also reasonably be considered the film's director, given how undifferentiated the two roles were at that time. That distinction is typically granted to Tressie Souders, however, who served as director of 1922's A Woman's Error. Now before she became an editor she was a teacher.She was interested in activism, independence and liberal arts, which led her first to newspapers then into the film production, script writing and acting. She was the first black woman producer

images from To Die For (1995)

creator

meolog

Me waiting for In Marion to come out

📸 Instagram: @meganlynnhostetler

🎥: In, Marion

Coming soon.

Winter Morning (Kodak Portra 160)

instagram

Film Friday: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

After my last FF being of a slow burn indie movie of excellent pedigree, I figure it's time to talk about something big and (joyfully) stupid to even things out. I joke, but Dungeons and Dragons have been on my mind these last few days, so why not talk about the movie adaptation. No, not that one, the good one. Trust me, I will get to the Jeremy Irons Chewing The Scenery movie eventually, but today we're talking about Honor Among Thieves.

One of the greatest joy of the current era is that with the mainstream-approximate popularity of Actual Play shows like Critical Role, Dimension 20 and Naddpod, there's a wider understanding of the kind of storytelling that goes on in tabletop roleplaying games. The particular way these stories blend character-focused storytelling with a main plot that usually functions as a lens for said character focus isn't unique to roleplaying necessarily, but it is a central component that this kind of storytelling needs.

As such, Honor isn't a quest for a magical artifact to slay an evil wizard undertaken by brave adventurers, it's more the ongoing catastrophes of a bunch of walking disasters that also happen to feature some looking for magical artifacts and slaying some evil wizards more as a matter of consequence.

To wit, our story follows bard Edgin, Barbarian Holga, Sorcerer Simon (I SEE what you did there), and outcast druid Doric as they attempt to reunite Edgin with his daughter Kira, now the ward of former friend of Edgin, Forge. Complicating matters is that Forge turns out to be a lying, thieving, betraying backstabber who has teamed up with an evil red wizard to rule the town of Neverwinter, and he's not much keen on relinquishing his ward, so it's-a-thieving our adventurers must go.

When I say the storytelling follow the beats of a D&D campaign, that isn't only on the character focus stuff, it's down to the structure of the thing. The band of adventurers plans to preform a heist, but needs a magical artifact to do so, so they enlist a legendary warrior whose hyper-competence and cryptic advice makes him the most obvious GM PC I've ever seen, for the uninitiated is a GM PC is a NPC made to follow the rules of a player character, usually for the GM to get some vicarious playing thrills and/or wrench the plot back on track directly. Together with this hot piece of HP, our heroes fumble some puzzles, circumvent some puzzles and gets into moderate to severe peril, as is tradition.

There's a real sense of fun to the proceedings, and the movie is filled with the kind of gags that might arise from a table full of giddy nerds. Of course the bird-man Jarnathan becomes the most important character in the room for like ten minutes, that's the kind of character players latch on to. Of course, our players have a close call with a pack of Intellect Devourers, who it turns out have no interest in the group. For one nobody plays a class who benefits from high Intelligence, they're also idiots, not that they let that stop them of course.

All of this comes together to create this infectiously enthusiastic film. The action scenes are made somewhat more kinetic than the miniature and/or imagination-based fair it's based on, yes, but there seems to be some attention paid to structuring most of them like D&D fights. The final confrontation with the aforementioned evil wizard in particular has the distinct flow of a climactic campaign-concluding encounter. There's stuff to nitpick, of course, but show me a single D&D group who plays strictly "Rules As Written," and I will tell you that you've shown me some miserable gits that'd be happier playing a video game.

There's obviously a lot of love behind Dungeon and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, from the writing and directing choices above to using practical effects to show off some more fantastical humanoid races that they didn't really need to show off, although I would be derelict in my duties if I didn't remark that while Tieflings can indeed have human skin colors, it is highly unusual for a player to chose to be anything but blue, red or purple. I'm not saying Sophia Lillis should've been in body paint this entire time, but it could easily be justified.

Horror movie titles

made by me / use with credit

Film Fridays

Today I drew Charles Burnett, whose work has been praised for its portrayal of the African American experience. He was born on April 13th on 1944 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In 1947. His family moved to Watts, South LA. He was interested in expressing himself through art when he was younger but because of economic pressure, he chose to study electronics at Los Angeles City College instead, but then he took writing classes and even earned BA in writing and languages at the University of California, LA. Watts really really influenced his movies because of violent riots on 1965. And protest against police brutality committed on Rodney King on 1992. In fact his first feature film was set there. And he said in an interview for Cahiers du Cinéma 'I always felt like an outside, an observer who wasn't able to participate because I couldn't speak very well. So this inability to communicate must have led me...to find some other means to express myself...I really liked a lot of the kids I grew up with. I felt an obligation to write something about them, to explain what went wrong with them. I think that's the reason I started to make these movies.'. He continued his education at the UCLA film school, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in theater arts and film, which really had an influence on him as well because of his friends, classmates and mentors. On 1967. And 1968. The turbulent social events that was vital in establishing the UCLA filmmaking movement and that Charles Burnett was involved in was the 'Black Independent Movement' their films were very relevant to the politics and culture of the 1960s. Their characters were shifting from the middle class to working class to highlight the tension caused by class conflict within the African American families. The independent writers and directors stayed away from the mainstream and they have won critical approval for remaining faithful to African American history. They also created the Third World Film Club to break the American boycott banning all forms of cultural exchange with Cuba. 'Black Independent Movement' also considered to respond to Hollywood and Blaxploitation films that were popular around the time. His first films with friends were 'Several Friends (1969)' and 'The Horse (1973)'. His famous movies were 'Killer of Sheep (1978)', 'My Brother's Wedding (1983)', 'To sleep with Anger (1990)', ' The Glass Shield' and 'Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (2007)'. Including some documentaries such as 'Nat Turner: A Troublesome property (2003 Which won a Cinematography Award from the Long Beach International Film Festival)', 'America Becoming (1991)', 'Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland (1998)', ' For Reel? (2003)' and 'Warming by the Devil's Fire (2003)'. He earned:

MacArthur Fellowship

The Freedom in Film Award from The First Amendment Center and the Nashville Independent Film Festival

Honors from The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Human Rights Watch International Film Film Festival

The prestigious Howard's University's Paul Robenson Award

Governors Award

The wonderful Sridevi (RIP <3 ) giving her famous wedding speech in English Vinglish (2012)