#just watched the 70s movie and dang!
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when something has been banned from places both bc it's considered blasphemous and bc it's considered religious propaganda (for the same religion it was blaspheming) then you know it's got something
#jesus christ superstar#was looking on the stage musical's wiki page and. yeah#neither of them are. like. wrong#just watched the 70s movie and dang!#anyways just found out alice cooper(!?!) was in the john legend version so maybe i need to watch that now#myposts#musicals
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People you'd like to get to know better tag. ✨️
Thanks so much for the tag @theosconfessions. 😊💛
Last song: I had to check YouTube because I listened to 8 billion this morning, and its Say Anything's In your eyes. 😄
Favorite color: Oh man, it's still purple although I also love yellow, blue, pink, and green. 🌈
Currently watching: The Summer I turned pretty and And Just Like That.
Last movie: Red, White, and Royal Blue. It's amazing as hell and I want to read the book too. 😍 I kept gasping out loud at the cuteness.
Last book: One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. (😱😍😄 I love it so much). Random not-so-mini backstory: I based my sim Cameron Kang on Jane Su from the book. Jane is this 24 year old punk rock leather jacket wearing lesbian from the 70s stuck in a time loop thing on the Brooklyn Q train, and is helped by our main character August Landry who's cynical in love but starts to fall for Jane.
Originally I was going to have Piper date a guy sim I made, but I went into the Kang household and made a sister from Cecilia Kang's genetics based sort of on Jane's style and liked the name Cameron for her. Then I was like oh dang what if Piper meets Cam at a party and they hit it off and start dating, and thus their relationship began and it's still going strong. 😊 sorry for the rambling I'm just so obsessed with this book, as you can tell. 😅
Sweet/savory/spicy: Spicy.
Last thing Googled: 😳 Well, okay. This is embarrassing because I just raved about it for 8 million paragraphs, but One Last Stop. 😅
Current obsession: Oh man, at this point it's going from a get to know me to a get to know my love for this one book. 🥴 But yeah, the same as what I Googled: One Last Stop
Currently working on: Well, I'd have to say my random as heck sims posts. Right now I'm focusing on Piper and Cam because they're really cute together and I like writing cheesy but sweet dialogue for them.
Okay, I feel like I'd better stop writing before I ramble for 8 paragraphs more about One Last Stop or my sims because dang once I start writing about that I end up rambling. 😅
I want to tag @pink-chevalier @justkeeponsimming @coliemoongaming @izayoichan @gingerbeardmansim @ophswhim @hypanova @silwermoon-sims @silverspringsimmer @nightlifeseries @thereesespiece @weisskralle and anyone else who wants to do the tag. 😊
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TAG GAME TUESDAY: SPRING EDITION
Thank you for the tag, my darlings @energievie & @too-schoolforcool
🌈🌞🌈🌞
your name: Cyn
where in the world are you? Northern New England, USA
your favorite color: Black, followed by hot pink 🖤🩷
a song that always puts you in a good mood:
your favorite flower: giant white calla lilies
it’s a beautiful sunny day and you’re going? Chilling out in my backyard. We're either on the hammock or the pod swing. My son's likely wiggling & being annoying. 😅 My wife's probably begging him to lie still before someone gets hurt. 🤣 And I'm smiling like a fool 'cause the sun's in my face & this is music to my ears. There are birds singing, bees buzzing; it's idyllic in how imperfect it all is.
bumblebees or butterflies? Both, please. I great quantities.
describe your ideal weather: Sunny, clear. Slight breeze. Mid 70s.
what are you reading right now? Just started "Dear Martin" by Nic Stone.
museum date or nature walk? Museum, followed by nature walk.
it’s movie night in the park and your turn to choose, what are we watching? Oh man, don't ask me to pick. I've got horrible taste in movies. 🤣
and finally, share some sunny words for your friends & followers:
📸: can be found here
🌈🌞🌈🌞
Tagging @francesrose3 @notherenewjersey @too-schoolforcool @surviving-maybe & anyone else who wants to play
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Top 5 '70s songs and/or Top 5 '70s movies.
The 70s are a weird time period for me and not one I usually gravitate to HOWEVER this is an awesome excuse for me to think about it, thank you!!
Top 5 70s songs:
1. I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor (I sang this song at my 8th grade talent show and it’s a go-to karaoke song for me and I fucking love it)
2. Mamma Mia by ABBA (my other go-to karaoke song and a song that never fails to make me happy)
3. Songbird by Fleetwood Mac (my favorite non-Stevie song from Fleetwood Mac and one of my favorite songs of all time)
4. Delta Dawn by Helen Reddy (I actually knew the Bette Midler cover first and I literally just this second learned it’s originally a Tanya Tucker song dang but anyway I adore Helen’s voice and I’ve been singing her version in my car a lot over the last few months)
5. I Shall Be Released by Bette Midler (in another case of me loving a cover of a Bob Dylan song, this one really hits me deep and I love the way she sings it)
(I have discovered that all the Cher songs I love most came out in the 60s or 80s or later and I don’t really like anything she did in the 70s oops and same thing for Barbra Streisand. And this is why the 70s are often a blind spot for me in music. All my faves were before or after this decade. My 70s love is pretty much Fleetwood Mac and ABBA and that’s about it lmao this list was a bit of a challenge.)
Top 5 70s movies:
1. Bedknobs and Broomsticks (very important to my childhood)
2. Pete’s Dragon (I promise this whole list won’t just be Disney movies but that’s really what I’m all about here)
3. Live and Let Die (one of my favorite James Bond movies)
4. Diamonds Are Forever (another favorite James Bond movie)
5. The Deep (it’s a treasure hunting underwater movie and it’s awesome and I want to watch it right now)
Honorable mention to A New Hope, which is my favorite Star Wars film and did come out in the 70s.
(Once again, 70s films are hard for me because everything I love is earlier or later!! I looked up so many movies and was like oh dang that was the 80s oops)
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(Yes I have insomnia again. Stupid rambling time)
You know, it occurs to me I have seen just about all the classic horror movies from the silent era up to the 70’s. I’ve also seen a ton past that up to recent stuff. ** I always think I don’t like horror movies, and yet I LOVE so many!
I suppose it boils down to the fact that I don’t need horror movies to churn up fears, but to give me a safer sort of scares. Life is cruel, and as Mom used to say “If someone can imagine doing it, then someone somewhere probably has.” A serial killer might slaughter you tomorrow, but ghosts, vampires, demons, and all the rest can never hurt you. Humans are terrifying but monsters feel like friends.
I adore dark fantasy, sometimes pitch black, but I need it to be fantasy. I don’t want to be submerged in bleakness or be infected with possible terrors to haunt my thoughts. I am perfectly capable of nightmares, anxieties, and jumping at bumps in the night all on my own thanks!
But dang, it’s Halloween! I want something new to watch! I long ago saw all of Hammer, Universal, Vincent Price, Bava, Val Lewton, and every other “cozy” *** type horror I can think of. ****There has to be something good left I’ve missed.
Getting a time machine to hunt up London After Midnight because I am out of classic horror to watch seems a bit drastic! LOL
** My blind spot is the realistic and things the revel in sadism. I can take a lot of gore, but context matters. I prefer the fantastical rather than things that cut too close to reality.
*** Cozy by my standards. Some I enjoy others finds legit scary. Actually, a lot others find scary. Considering others find The Exorcist, an utterly hilarious movie scary, I know my tastes are atypical. It’s all subjective.
**** New stuff to me this year was the completely annoying Conjuring 2, the eye rolling comedy of Survival of the Dead, the abysmal Creepshow 2, the even more awful Satan’s Triangle tv movie, the actually rather cool Baba Yaga (1973) , the “is it horror or not” Svengali (1931), the interesting EC comics like Dead & Buried, and some very pathetic Puppet Master movie I can’t remember the title of that left me wondering “Yes, the baddie is a Nazi, but the film makers expect us to laugh during the hate crimes….so I am not sure they aren’t seeming to endorse the hate”
Yeah, they aren’t all bad movies, but it’s rather underwhelming quality-wise compared to other Halloweens.
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post-migraine movie night
watched phase iv; kind of goofy, druggy, "hippie" 'science and technology are helpless when it comes to understanding the mysteries of Nature' scifi-diatribe from the 70s. it's about ants taking over the world, because humanity has, once again, messed up.
the basic idea here is that especially with our computer and science modern life we're pretty dang dumb and helpless and mother nature would "love" us if we just stop fighting back and "get the message"
("love" in this context pretty much meaning: "you need to lose what makes you human and become something entirely different";
so, if we fight back, which amounts to just living as we are, "Nature" will basically just kill us because we know too much and want too much and stare at computers too much.
and i guess this is supposed to be a message of peaceful co-existence, and not walking to suffocate in a sacrificial sand-pit while the ants watch on, probably confused as F with what the naked funny monkey man doing now.
but the visuals were good and i did kind of enjoy the straight-faced pathos of it all, though i did feel sad i don't smoke the funny grass anymore, this movie was made for that.
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Loove reading the letterboxd comments on Sherlock Holmes 1916 because it's full of people seeing the movie through the lense of literally one hundred years of Sherlock Holmes adaptations.
Like they don't stop for a moment to think about it. They're just out there, comparing a 100 years old silent movie to series that were made 50 to 70 years later.
They not only judge Gillette's acting but also his writing, and that, only through years and years of media creation and consumption.
They had so much difficulties having to read intertitles that they don't even have the energy to look for further informations and learning that Gillette adapted the play for the USAmerican audience.
"Gillette does have the silhouette and accessories of a Sherlock Holmes" mate... HE put in place those.
Why does Sherlock Holmes get the girl? Because it's an USAmerican play, written to please the USAmerican audience from 1916.
Why isn't Watson here most of the movie? Because narratively there's no much point and hum... It's a Sherlock Holmes play, and the books write about Sherlock Holmes more than Watson because Watson is writing it. Like sorry but there are plenty of stories where Watson mentions that Holmes is fucking around and finding out on his own before coming back and talking about his findings.
And the bonkers: the different cuts makes the pacing weird and they do not really connect between each other. Like coebxis pal??? LOOK FOR INFORMATIONS FIRST.
The reason why this movie is cut in four parts and each part is itself cut in two chapters is because the only existing copy of it is a French one.
The original movie wasn't cut like that, but for the European release, it was decided that the movie would be cut in four and be released every week, therefore turned into a serials.
The movie is from 1916 but was released in 1920 in France, which is merely a year and a half/two years after the end of WWI.
(there's a Wikipedia page for the movie but I also made one for the bakerstreetderivatives.miraheze.org wiki)
And... the play was inspired by several original stories?? I think Conan Doyle partially wrote the dang thang??? But I don't see you judging Conan Doyle too.
And then the rest of the comments are just a copy/paste of news articles about the movie.
.
So advice to anyone who wants to watch it.
1) it's a silent movie. This is Charlie Chaplin level y'all. You gonna have to use your eyes and read. No being on your phone while it plays. This is old school style. Get in the vibe.
2) It's almost 110 years old. The story was made for the people of the time. You can't apply your modern worldview on that. Also it was the middle of the war so chill out.
3) Gillette is thee Sherlock Holmes' actor. He's the one at the base of everything. He was so into it that he sent a fucking telegram or whatever to Conan Doyle asking "Can I marry Sherlock Holmes?" Everything you saw that was made after this movie? All based ON him.
4) It's two hours long. I'm not kidding. Use the French serialisation to go grab drinks and stuff.
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"Come little children, take thee away..."
Well, friends. I got signed up with a career coach and I’m doing a resume bootcamp thing. I probably should have waited longer, I really am in no mood to think about my work and what I’ve done and how I’m gonna distinguish myself from a million other candidates BUT no time like the present I guess.
Which means after I finished my bootcamp exercise, I decided to eat a gummy and get into some good spooky szn viewing. Because fuck it! I can do what I want right now. Mostly. And this seems like the best way to view the new Haunted Mansion Disney movie.
I am very much an adult, thank you.
I’m gonna preface this by saying I’ve only seen the trailer and hadn’t read anything about it but I was assuming it’s going to be terrible because that sounds right, even though the cast is actually kind of ridiculous. You got all these people to be in this movie? Dang, y’all.
Also, I love the Haunted Mansion ride. Disneyworld makes me happy. I’ve only been a handful of times in my life (was one of those times last winter with my 70-year old parents? Yes. Just me, a 30-something and my parents. That’s a thing I did recently. No regrets) but Haunted Mansion is always fun. I love spooky shit. Even if it’s a disney-version of spooky. Who let me know that ride when I was like 5 though? Y’all are miscreants.
What I’m trying to say is: I watched it.
And it’s pretty cute, I’ll admit it. Like, the premise is crazy, but they went for it. Like, they realized it was ridiculous and they leaned into it. And I’m about that.
I tried to ask my husband: “If you entered a house and realized that you were now haunted and had to STAY in that house, would you knowingly have other people come into the house and get haunted too, because you needed help figuring out how to be unhaunted?”
And he was like:” I don’t want to call people, I’ll just die there by myself, it’s fine.”
So then I said, “but what if the house was filled with 999 other ghosts that were being haunted by a more powerful ghost who was trying to escape into the real world and fuck things up, by using your spirit as the 1,000th ghost?”
And he goes, “It’s a ghost haunting other ghosts? Nah, you can’t haunt me, I’m already dead. We’re good.”
So we’re different people. But that’s how you’d explain this movie and that’s so SILLY and sometimes you need that. But underneath there’s a nice story about getting through grief and believing in yourself and making friends. And sometimes you need that too.
Real cute you guys, that was real cute.
The point is, I love October, only if to re-watch some random favorites. Which means, this week on What G’s Watching: scary recos 👻
If you can’t tell from my reaction to Haunted Mansion,I’m basic as hell, I’m woman enough to admit that. So here are my basic-ass go-to’s:
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Haunting of Hill House
A house-flipping couple with four kids buys a property in Massachusetts that they think will net them a bunch of money, but instead it ends up ruining their family and pretty much everyone’s lives for a really long time.
Y’all. I LOVE this show. It’s the first one Mike Flanagan did for Netflix and when it came out I was immediately obsessed. I remember watching it on the couch in the dark with our first rescue pup and just being totally engrossed. It’s perfectly crafted and it’s creepy and only sometimes outright absolutely terrifying, and it pays off SO well. Bent Neck Lady is still one of the most upsetting, depressing, heartbreaking storylines I’ve seen. Just, really, really haunting. I’ve rewatched it a few times, and it’s still really devastating.
Haunting of Bly Manor
An American governess running from her own problems takes a job looking after two children at an English estate wherein nothing and no one is as it seems.
This one came out after Hill House and is also Mike Flanagan - he uses a lot of the same actors which messes with my head a bit but they go all in, it took me a while to connect the dots. I’d say less scary than Hill House as well, but the backstory is really what’s driving the entire thing and it’s weird and sad and a great example of vengeful spirits (I’m cleary still watching Supernatural). It’s fascinating. I don’t love it as much as I love Hill House, but they definitely compliment each other.
SCREAM(s)
A psycho wearing a ghost mask is hell bent on murdering whoever they can because reasons.
I know Scream is not really a Halloween thing, but it’s become one, for me. Like I said, I’m not huge on slasher movies really, but the original 3 hold a special place in my heart. I mean, the first movie is like a love letter to the late 90’s, Neve Campbell and that incredible opening scene with Drew Barrymore, and the fashion and just everything.
And again, because I’m a weirdo, I love the meta-ness of it all. The original killers want to blame everything on violence in media, and then the massacre inspires a movie franchise inside the SCREAM world. Scream 3 might be a hard favorite of mine, EXCEPT for the fucking bangs they put on Courtney Cox. it’s like someone just went at her with a pair of scissors with their eyes closed and then were like “yeah, that’s a look we want to go with.” It’s a real shame.
Even the reboots are worth a watch, I enjoyed 4-6, but if you’re gonna do anything, do the original or the original 3. Scream 2 also doesn’t get enough love - baby Timothy Olyphant and Jerry O’Connell! Sarah Michelle Gellar! It’s all so a specific moment in time and it makes my heart happy.
Hocus Pocus
The new kid that’s just moved to Salem, MA doesn’t believe in magic so his virgin ass lights a candle and summons the best witches possibly ever.
I know y’all are watching this. If you were born in the 80’s and 90’s, you’re catching it on tv or putting it on specifically and you should. It just feels good. And maybe that’s specific to people my age but Hocus Pocus is definitely a true childhood comfort movie. Bette Midler is amazing and I definitely had a crush on that kid, and it’s just fun. The musical number! I can conjure up that song in my mind so easily. This movie is another core memory.
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I probably won’t watch all of this, of course. And it’s possible at some point I might put Hubie Halloween on in the background while I do something else (I will always watch Adam Sandler make a fool of himself) but they’re all good.
I’m also planning on getting into Fall of The House of Usher (because if he made Hill House, it’s gonna be stellar) and potentially the new Goosebumps show. Because why not. Apparently the way I celebrate holidays now is with random tv, which I guess is an okay replacement for trick or treating. As long as there’s some kind of candy involved.
So yeah, in-between thinking about the kind of job I want and doing random assignments and house things, I’ll be here, creeping myself out. Thank you, October.
#what g's watching#hocus pocus#haunted mansion 2023#scream franchise#haunting of hill house#haunting of bly manor
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We just slipped passed out first official week of our holiday season. It’s the week with Kimmer's birthday in it that wound up being a very lovely day with the added bonus of sunshine through and through. Which, sadly, doesn't usually happen on her birthday, the sun coming out like that.
So it made for an extra special day.
Linzy joined us after we did birthday cards and presents and breakfast and a bunch of lazy first thing in the morning. She came bearing purple tulips after which she 'n I got down to making a special cake for Kimmer with Linzy taking the lead and doing the heavy lifting.
It turned out fabulous, by the way. So fabulous, in fact, that a few days later she gathered up a new batch of ingredients and made another one for herself.
Of course, while I appreciate the initiative... I can't help but think of it as a scam to get out of sharing.
Boooooooo.
We watched the movie “Sing Street” together while Kimmer multitasked a bit indulging her current craft project as the movie played.
Afterward, we went up the street to Rapport for a little bit of dining. A Tapster-style wine experience aided and abetted by a pair of flatbread offerings that were both, interestingly, spicy.
Good thing we had the wine, I must say.
At night, it was Kimmer 'n I again and we headed down to our new favorite bar to finish the night, Pub70 on the waterfront. The bartender there was an absolute gem of a human being, setting Kimmer up with a Pumpkin Hot Toddy. Then a few minutes later he comes back over to our table, worried that he didn't make the Toddy sweet enough. With that in mind, he's brought her a short glass of warmed up honey.
One more time:
Warmed up.
Honey.
Dear lord, in that moment, it legitimately felt like we might never leave our cozy booth.
Ever.
😊
By the way, we already indulged a Christmas movie. The 2019 film "Noelle" with Anna Kendrick, Bill Harder, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Shirley MacLaine in what has become an instant holiday classic for us.
We have also, actually just me, seen our first Christmas tree lot. Open for business at that Grocery Outlet on the corner of MLK and E. Union. With lights and everything.
Dang.
This week, I got serious about our Christmas letter, going through my Facebook activity that does a pretty good job capturing what we were up to any given month.
I'm up to May.
With that in mind, Kimmer's told me I'm absolutely forbidden to buy new Christmas cards.
Why?
Because every year I buy new ones and end up not using all of them. So at this point... I have a pretty significant stash of old (but new) Christmas cards.
We're gonna unearth them either today or tomorrow.
Lastly, we did a little pre-functioning for Linzy's birthday. Linzy invited a bunch of friends down to Dreamland Bar in Fremont last night around ten. Only she didn't figure on how packed the place would be on a Friday night.
Without reservations.
Whoops.
So one of her friends got their name on a list for our group whilst we headed a coupla blocks over to the House Bar, a couple bars over from the High Dive on N. 36th. True, there was a hardcore metal band screaming their music in the downstairs courtyard... but the upsidedown ocean and clouds and model wooden ships scene crafted into and onto and extruding from the ceiling was fascinating.
Plus, I won't lie, the free beers were delicious.
Thank you, Harry. 😁
Somewhere in there, the word came down our table was ready at Dreamland. And boy was it ever. They had a long table set up for the lot of us where we finished the evening.
Basically, it was 1am Saturday morning by the time we slipped outta there.
Tonight, Linzy's got another party going on. A 70s themed something or other in downtown someplace or other. And then this coming Tuesday, her actual birthday day... we'll spend the day with her for our family celebration.
So yeah.
The holidays. They are a-movin'.
❤️❤️❤️
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Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection
I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.
Legend:
rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection
dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.
* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.
Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.
Cotton Comes to Harlem
I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.
Across 110th Street
And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.
The Long Goodbye (rw)
The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.
Chinatown (rw)
I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.
Night Moves (rw)
Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.
Farewell, My Lovely
Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw)
Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.
The American Friend (dnrw)
It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.
The Big Sleep
Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.
Eyes of Laura Mars
The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.
The Onion Field
What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)
Body Heat (rw)
Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.
Blow Out
Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.
Cutter's Way (rw)
Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.
Blood Simple (rw)
I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.
Body Double
The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.
The Hit
Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.
Trouble in Mind (dnrw)
I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.
Manhunter
'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.
Mona Lisa (rw)
Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.
The Bedroom Window
Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!
Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time)
Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.
Swoon
So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.
Suture (rw)
The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).
The Last Seduction (dnrw)
No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.
Brick (rw)
Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.
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Blue Exorcist 10th anniversary book Q&A session
The 10th anniversary book has a section where Katoh answers 100 questions submitted by fans on Twitter, so here they are translated/paraphrased! May contain manga spoilers up to the recent flashback arc, so be warned.
(Note that I’m playing it very fast and loose here because there are A HUNDRED OF THEM, so not exact wordings, but it should capture the gist. Lemme know if there are any you want elaborated on)
1. Katoh likes the feel of traditional drawing more than digital but is impressed with how far digital has come
2. Meph THOROUGHLY ABUSES spacetime to watch all his shows and ensure that he gets all the merch he wants
3. Did the girls take all of Yukio’s school uniform buttons in middle school? Yes, they did (apparently it’s like A Thing for girls to ask for a button from their crush at middle school graduation, based on some sad movie from the 60s where a guy who got drafted as a kamikaze pilot gave a girl one of his uniform buttons to remember him by)
4. Rin's tail is about a meter long
5. There are tons of servants working at Mephisto's mansion. Belial is in charge of them
6. Katoh borrows from all sorts of neat real locations when making settings
7. Katoh identifies with pretty much all the characters the most! Except Lucifer.
8. Demon designs she's proud of include the impure king and hachirou, pretty much anything that was the main one in an arc
9. Katoh lists a bunch of her favorite musical artists/music she’s listening to recently: King Gnu, Official Hige Dandism, Kenshi Yonezu, BAD HOP, Sakanaction, Keyakizaka 46, Hypnosis Mic, Aimer, B’Z, Queen Bee.
10. Awww the rabbit manga that characters are often reading isn't just Robo to Usakichi, it's an even older one that she drew as a little kid
11. She likes industrial style interior designs
12. Rin and Yukio alternated who got the top bunk growing up, because they couldn't agree on it lol
13. Katoh cares a whole lot about panel layouts and speech bubble positions, might even be her favorite part of the process (it shows!)
4. Katoh does NOT have a mashou, lol
15. Rin has probably been practicing in secret so he can learn to carry stuff with his tail
16. Izumo probably got into shojo manga around 1st grade, her mom had some around the house
17. Specialty dishes: Rin - lots of stuff but especially nabe Yuri - stuff you can throw together quickly Shiro - stuff he learned from Yuri and/or cookbooks, alongside teaching Rin Yukio - Does. Not. Cook.
18. Can't pick a favorite place she's been on research, but there's no place like Japan
19. Kinzou's band isn't currently meeting because demons, but he's probably still thinking of new songs
20. Hardest characters to draw: anyone with detailed flowing hair. Hardest to write for: Lightning and Gedouin. She had to go read books about serial killers specifically for material for Gedouin, lol
21. Suguro actually gets a dorm room to himself, though allegedly Yukio is technically assigned as his roommate, lol. Didn't end up that way what with Yukio being a teacher and also Rin’s whole...situation
22. Shiemi makes some of her own hair accessories! Cute
23. Katoh doesn't mind if you include stuff with fan letters but check with the editor first
24. Time for making each chapter: Planning/storyboarding: 1-5 days. Sketching: 3-5 days. Drawing/inking: the rest. Just...the rest of the time
25. Neither Suguro nor Izumo have dated before and neither is currently dating. But that's probably just because things were hectic for them! It could happen
26. Yukio breaks 5 or 6 pairs of glasses a year, someone get this kid a strap or something
27. How many spare glasses does Yukio have? Check the fanbook lol it's in there (dang it Katoh)
28. The demon she wants us to pay the most attention to is Lucifer. Because plot.
29. What's under the Order's big meeting table? It's a BOTTOMLESS PIT and if you fall in it you DIE that's what makes it COOL (laughs)
30. What are the job requirements for the angelic legion? Literally just Arthur liking you and inviting you to join
31. She WANTS to do more character profiles but just hasn't gotten to it
32. Rin's tail feels like a cat tail, texture wise
33. The "red Assiah fire" is literally just actual fire nothing special
34. Rin's current hair color is light blue fading to white at the ends
35. Thoughts on Rin's growth: she likes that he stays positive in awful situations and she also thinks it's very main character of him to face the past instead of avoiding it
36. Mephisto didn't purposely surround Rin with stuffed animals when he woke up after going crispy. Mephisto's bed is just Like That
37. Kurikara was based on a cool sword she found in a sword book, but that one was technically just a ceremonial sword. The symbol on it us a Sanskrit letter kaan (sp?) associated with Fudou Myouou
38. Kuro can communicate with normal cats and hangs out with them often
39. Sometimes Shiemi's skirt is extra fancy around the hem what's up with that? Apparently it's an optional accessory that comes with the skirts help I haven't noticed this and don't know any fashion terms in any language
40. When coloring, Katoh always tries to have an overall theme in mind ("emphasis on blue" etc) so it comes together in the end
41. Yes the twins are genetically related to Shiro because of Goro (she says they're like his nephews but I say GENETICALLY at least they'd be indistinguishable from his children)
42. Strongest mom of all the strong moms around here? Yuri! Did you SEE her give birth??
43. Are you careful about your own health Katoh-sensei? Not particularly! Her mom has had to bring her food at work sometimes! Don't do this at home kids
44. At the dating events Shura goes to, does she drink cocktails in moderation? Yeah, she probably downplays her normal drinking habits at these things. But normally she's down for just about any kind of drink
45. Lucifer just really likes oysters okay
46. How many pages of manga does Katoh draw in a day? If she's being good about self-care: three. Maximum number ever: TEN
47. Mephisto is one of those folks who can eat like a garbage compactor and never gain weight. Possibly because his body resists that sort of change the same way it resists aging etc
48. First food Rin cooked: fish burger type patty. Yukio's favorite things Rin cooks: fish simmered in soy sauce, yellowtail with daikon radish. It's fish all the way down
49: Did Rin ever get more monthly allowance from Mephisto? It doubled! He gets TWO 2000 yen bills now (rip) [T/N: That's uh, that's USD $37.26 a month or 33.10 euro]
50. Why isn't Rin more popular with the girls? He gets nervous talking to them, plus he's too oblivious to notice even if he DID have some fans
51. Why change Suguro's hair? She gets bored with keeping everything the same, and she wanted a visual representation that he was getting serious and going into kind of a training arc
52. Things Katoh pays extra attention to when drawing: trying to capture the feel of whatever she's drawing (like "that looks warm and soft" or "I bet that guy stinks" cough Lightning cough)
53: Does Rin take after Yuri more? (He's got her eyes!) Katoh tried to draw Yuri so she looks like both twins. Personality, too - Yukio has her smarts and Rin has her optimism
54: Do you ever wanna be like Mephisto? Well she'd like to be able to get away with just ANYTHING EVER, but no, let's not be like Mephisto
55. Konekomaru not only carries around a cat toy in case he meets any cats, he MAKES cat toys to carry around based on what he thinks the cats would like
56. How'd you come up with Shima? Go read the fan book!
57. Do the kids have Twitter/Instagram accounts? Rin - probably not. Konekomaru might be on some social media. Paku and Izumo are totally on instagram
58. Is there something Rin makes that you wish you could try? All of it! That's the whole idea! He's good at cooking!
59. Will we ever have a (G-rated) reveal of what ALL of Mamushi and her family's tattoos look like? Maybe! She'll think about it
60. Does Arthur have a repertoire of different hairstyles? Not really, he just puts some of it up on the top. Heck he might even have people to do that for him
61. If you wrote a shojo manga what would it be about? She'd have to do a lot of research before even coming up with a story, since there are so many style differences between the genres aside from just the subject
62. The other two of Mephisto's top 3 favorite foods: Cup ramen and....f-fried bubblegum?? Is that a THING???
63. Where do you start when drawing a character? Usually the outline of their face but if it's a complex pose/composition she'll start with whatever's in the foreground (like hands)
64. If Katoh could have a familiar, what demon would she choose? Mephisto. As the all-powerful author, she might actually be able to command him as a familiar!
66. If you swapped Yukio and Rin's relationship around what would change? not much, you'd pretty much have Rin going to the Illuminati and Yukio going to the past
67. Top 3 foods/souvenirs to try in Kyushu? Well she doesn't know what’s good CURRENTLY but when she was there she always used to like burdock tempura udon, hakata torimon (a kind of manju with white bean paste inside), and Chikae style cod roe. today I learned Katoh went to high school in Kyushu
68. Katoh listens to music a lot while she's storyboarding, then when she and the assistants are all drawing and inking they put various videos/movies and stuff on in the background
69. For all his hitting on girls, is Shima actually popular with the ladies at all? He's got enough girls in his life that he probably COULD find a girlfriend if he really wanted, but the double agent thing tends to get in the way. He still wouldn't be as popular as Yukio though (side thought/translator’s note: Shima would be proud of being number 69.)
70. Katoh has the ending planned out in a big-picture way, but there are still a few details here and there that she's fretting over
71. It's cute when the boys put their ties over their shoulders when they're working on something! Where'd that come from? She just figured a tie might get in the way and that seemed like a realistic way to get it out of the way
72. Looks like Yukio is getting some facial hair! What about Rin? They're both about the age for it, but maybe Rin can't grow a beard yet. Maybe a little peach fuzz here and there
73. Katoh's favorite blue exorcist merch? There were some exorcist licenses a while back, and the exorcist pins. Basically it's really cool that these little accessories she drew ACTUALLY EXIST NOW, LIKE YOU CAN HOLD THEM IN YOUR HANDS
74. Okay realtalk how long do we have left, I don't want the series to end yet? We're solidly in the second half by now but it's not, like, ABOUT to end yet
75. Katoh would be a Knight meister, based on what characters she likes to play in games and such
76. How many people in the whole exorcism cram school? More than you think! She doesn't give a number but apparently licensed exorcists also attend classes for new meisters, etc, so there's a wide age range attending
77. How's Arthur feel about, like, studying Taming on the way to becoming Paladin? He's at least mostly accepted that you have to use demons to fight demons effectively
78. Konekomaru started wearing glasses in his first year of middle school, so like 7th grade (more recent than I thought!) He has one spare pair, in contrast to Yukio lol
79. Katoh's current obsessions? Ghost/scary stories! She's even been going to live readings of them recently
80. Media Katoh consumes for inspiration? A wide range of foreign teen drama, horror/suspense, shojo manga, light novels, anime, etc. Special focus on things where two boys are in conflict or there are brothers involved
81. If they weren't exorcists what jobs would they have? Rin - chef. Yukio - doctor. Shiemi - uh, florist?
82. Inspiration for the design of True Cross Town? Katoh and her assistants gathered up a bunch of references, picked out stuff they felt matched the tone, and mashed them all up together
83. Did you use any references etc for the school/exorcist uniforms? She says she probably should have but she just kind of made them up before publication
84. Favorite part of drawing? For color pages, picking out a color scheme. For black and white, drawing in all the little details (though she doesn't always get time to lately)
85. Once again confirms the demon kings' weird hair is a representation of their horns. ADDS THAT PEOPLE WHO CAN'T SEE DEMONS CAN'T SEE THE WEIRD HAIR
86. Now that Yukio's at the Illuminati, where's he gonna get his Jump SQ and spare glasses? Well he probably never planned to stay for long, but hey it's a big ship and they might have an optometrist and/or newsstand there
87. Do you base the demon characters on any references etc? Not really, she just gets a general idea of popular demon designs and then makes up her own in her own style
88. Merchandise Katoh personally wants to have made: stuff that an adult could just use in their day to day life. Also, it's not gonna happen, but if her favorite figure brand made AoEx figures she could die happy
89. If Beelzebub's host body was a beautiful woman, how would Shima react? Would the womanizing win out over the bug phobia? Katoh replies that Shima would probably just faint from being near a girl that pretty, before the bugs even got involved
90. Will the twins ever get to smile and eat dinner together again?? We'll just have to wait and see!
91. What do you check at a "scenario check"? what's a scenario check man I dunno They check for people being out of character or the setting feeling off. They had a lot of these checks for the anime, but they also do them for the drama CD, games, and all that other stuff where multiple authors are involved
92. Why does Shura use baldy as an insult for people who are clearly not bald? She feels like they have some kind of metaphorical, mental kind of "baldness" and she's calling them out on it. Whatever that means
93. After Blue Exorcist ends, what do you want to draw next? She has SO MANY IDEAS, SO MANY
94. Did Katoh make up the Shinto chants that, for example, Izumo used against Gedouin? They're assembled from bits of actual Shinto prayers according to what feels right in the scene
95. Yukio reads the Jump SQ, right, and, just hear me out here, he likes gag manga, right? Does this mean he reads Salaryman Yukio? It's something he would read, but let's say that in the AoEx universe there's just a very similar manga that he finds oddly relatable
96. What do Yukio and Shima do in their free time on the Dominus Liminus? oh my god you guys this ship has so many amenities. Yukio probably spends time reading in the library, which they totally have. There's also, like, a gym, and a movie theater, and a THEATER theater, all of which are free. Shima probably hangs out at the pool (!) and goes to the movies, and hits on illuminati girls, lol
97. Easiest character to draw? The ones with boring simple hair, lol. Lightning gets an honorable mention for ALSO not having eyes in most shots, but Rin wins--he was specifically designed to be easy for Katoh to draw because that's what you want in your main character
98. How do demons understand gender? They just possess whatever feels like the best match to how they feel in Gehenna, whether that's a man, or a woman, or a rat, or whatever
99. Where do you start when you're coming up with a story? She starts with character design and how the characters relate to each other. Currently she's just continuing an existing story, so she works on splitting up the overall plot into episodes and fleshing it out with scenes and information about characters
100. When do you feel most happy? She honestly feels like she lives a very happy life overall. Mentions noticing a lot of little things, like how nice her cats' heads smell when she cuddles them or taking a nice cold refreshing drink of water. There's happiness in everything. aww.
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Track of the Moon Beast (1976)
A BIG LIZARD THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN and also happens to be allergic to shirts.
‘theyre mixing the 'I'm a thing from space' genre with the "thing from space on your face' genre’ @inktail
Seriously, the amount of times the main character is either wearing no shirt, removing his shirt, or changing his shirt is ridiculous.
to quote @gwenfrankenstien, ‘this is really just a movie about everyone else trying to make paul wear a shirt’
stereotypical native american character portrayal. its the 70s. decide if that’s a deal breaker for you. i’m mentioning it but not covering it in-depth. at least professor is actually portrayed by a native actor?
Anyway, the rubber lizardman costume is awful and i love it. You get a really bad transformation sequence, too. It’s a delight. i wish we saw more of the costume
everyone keeps chanting MOON LIZARD in the chat. alas, not in the actual film.
There’s so much bad not-science in this! ‘this science is JUUUUST bullshit enough to be plausible if you're high off moon rocks’ @paintsplattere
uhhhhh there’s a bit of stuff regarding the main character trying to kill himself so suicide warning for this i guess. it’s not particularly. realistic or anything but i’m mentioning it. probably more ideation than anything.
rating of lizard/lizard on the lizardometer. i dunno, this one’s squarely middle of the road? would be higher rated if the plot of the movie was solved with the power of love. ending made of bullshit but it’s in line with the rest of the film’s bullshit, so shoutout to adhering to its own canon i guess? mostly just a dang letdown. wow.
Ship of the Movie: Moon Lizard x Manape (throwback to Horror Express)
Movie Emoji:
[Watch it on Youtube!]
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Out of your ocs how affectionate are they? (For example if cuddles happen how long will they last?) (I really want to know how affectionate The Professor, Nohi, and Midnight are. Fluff sustains me and for some reason my three favorite are in the least fluffy of all your stories) By the way thank you for creating and sharing all of your wonderful ocs! They are all so cute.
I can give you some good ole head cannons. (Do I still call it headcannons if they’re my ocs?) (Okay, just finished writing, but it turns into more scenarios.
Professor
You guys rarely get peace or enough alone time because you guys work on an Intergalactic Science Station. it’s either the Professor having the quarantine for a while because an experiment went wrong and got all over him or you having to rush to your area to make medicine for an alien that ate one of your poisonous mushrooms because, and you quote, “You said mushrooms tasted good.”
Although, there are those rare days were after you guys finish work, nothing goes wrong. So, you walk into your living quarters to see Professor already on the couch with a blanket draped over him with the projector having an Earth movie on.
Poor man just wants to have you in his arms as you guys watch a movie, but you want to ‘take a shower’ and got to ‘order food’. I hope you don’t mind listening to a dramatic alien drape himself over your couch and complain about how he will die if you don’t cuddle him.
Finally, you come back in your pjs and a bag of food. He uses one hand to hold the bag of food, another to hold the blanket up for you to fit under, and another two to grab your waist and pull you into him.
Finally, with you in his arms, he dips his head down into the space between your neck and shoulder, enjoying the feeling of your warmth to his cool skin. His six black eyes shut in contempt as all the stress from the past solar setting all just melt away.
After a few seconds of just enjoying your warmth and inhaling your oddly calming scent, he pulls back and let you rest on his lap comfortable. He turns you, so your small human frame is nestled in his chest.
This is where six arms come in handy. One hand is rubbing your scalp, another is rubbing your temple to make sure you don’t get those weird brain pains you call ‘headaches’. Another two is giving your back a massage to relax your muscles. Then the last two are unwrapping your food and feeing you.
He doesn’t mind pampering you if you stay curl up against him like this.
Nohi
Getting this snake to admit he want cuddle is probably close to impossible. Instead you get things like this.
You will be laying on your couch watching something on your phone, when a small hiss gets your attention. You turn you head to see that Nohi is standing near your bedroom holding a blanket around his neck. His eyes are still half closed, but you can tell he’s glaring at you.
“Why aren’t you in bed? It’s freezing cold in there?” Translation, is that he’s cold and wants you there.
You try to tell him that it would be warmer in the living room since there’s bigger windows in here. He just frowns at you as he realize you aren’t picking up on what’s he’s trying to do. You are, but you just want him to actually say it.
“The couch doesn’t fit all my tail on it, especially if you were to be on it. I take up the couch with 70 percent of my body.” Translation: We both can’t fit on the couch.
“Well, I got some more quilts in the closet that can keep you warm on the bed,” you teased returning back to your phone. You pretend to scroll while Nohi just stood there with his mouth open.
He let out another hiss to get your attention, but you pretend to not hear him. He start to thump the back of his tail, but you still didn’t budge.
He slither closer to you and watched as you continued to look at your phone. Your boyfriend is cold in YOUR house and you’re not being a good host by running to cuddle in the bed with him.
You watchin through your peripheral as Nohi stared you, watching the gears turned in his head. He looked around the room before noticing something next to the couch.
He slither past very slowly before he let out a scream. You pulled your phone down in time to see a 12 foot of solid naga falling towards you. All the wind in you were knocked out as he landed on your side.
“Your dang fuzzy socks. Told you to get those things off the floor last night,” he grumbled, trying to not seem suspicious by snuggling into your side. His face was turning red as he felt that burning heat that humans left off.
You tried to hold your laughter in as you realized he just tried to slip on a sock to cuddle you. “Come here you big goof,” you laughed. You wrapped your arms around him and let him snuggle into your chest.
His tail slide up on the couch and wrapped around your legs. He let out a slow hiss as he melted into you. Your fingers came up and played with the back of his neck. He loved when your rubbed or scratched there because of the mixture of scaled and hair coming out.
“Next time, just asked to cuddle and you can be here even faster,” you taunted. He let out a small growl and open his mouth to playful bit your collarbone. “Right, right. You would rather let 6 feet of muscle magically slip on a few inches of sock.”
He ignored your comment on his horrible acting for grabbing your free hand. He entwined your fingers and ran his thumb over your knuckles. Pulling on them gently, he brought them to his lips were he pressed a small kiss to them. “Love you.”
“Love you two,” you whispered back, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. He let out a happy hiss as he snuggled closer to you and closed his eyes. That’s your naga for you.
Midnight Mask
Where you slightly sick because you decided to do a photoshop with a newly wed in the pouring rain? Maybe, but they did tip well, so it was totally worth it.
The only problem was that your body felt too weak to even slide out of the bed, not to include how freezing cold the outside world seem from under the blanket. You did not feel like getting up for work.
“Sugarplum?” You lifted your head to see Midnight dangling from a vine outside your window. You had started to leave that window unlock just for him since he seemed more comfortable using that than walking into your apartment to use your front door.
“Hey, sweetheart. Come on in,” you wheezed out. Your throat felt so dang dry. You lifted your shirt to cover up your cough. Man, you felt bad.
Midnight slight moved in as he watched you in bed. He’s seen you sick before, but never this bad. What was wrong with his sugarplum?
“I’m okay. Just a little cold... maybe the flu. But don’t worry, I’m fine,” you tried to reassure your scared looking boyfriend. That didn’t really help calm him at all.
He crawled onto the bed and got on top of you. His black eyes were searching all over you, seeing your shivering form and how glossy your eyes looked. Your nose seem to be red.
He crawled off of you and headed into your kitchen. You really didn’t question him. He thought more in his head than he did out loud. So when he was ready, he would explain to you what he was doing.
You were awaken by the feeling of the bed dipping. You rolled over to see Midnight crawling into bed with what appeared to be a giant palm leaf in his hand. He used his other free hand to lift you up, so you were laying against his side and sitting more up.
He put the leaf on the bed, allowing you to see everything that was in it. There was a bowl of what appeared to soup, a cup with some purple liquid in it, and a thing wrapped in multilayers of leaf.
“For cough,” he whispered, picking up the cup. He picked it up and went towards your lips.
“What is it? you asked, trying to stay awake. You lean your head on his shoulder to try to stop your head from spinning. He rubbed his forehead on your and let out a small whine.
“Medicine. Good for humans,” he whispered. He pressed small kisses to your head as you took the drink. You open your lips and started to let the liquid slide down your throat. Surprisingly, it tasted like.. water. Like nothing, but a hint of something there.
“Now, soup. Soup of chicken and lots of herbs.” You let out a small groan at that. You didn’t particularly feel hungry and you really wanted to lay down and just sleep the night away.
He stared at you down with his eyebrows drawn down. His tribal marks seem to be glowing in the dark room. Whelp, that’s something new. Got to ask him later.
His hands slide under your leg while the other one let go of the soup. You were scared it was going to fall, but it just stayed up in the air. He wrap his arms around you and lifted you into his lap. “Going to use leaves. Will clean later.
Leaves started to grow from outside of the window and slip into your room. They were careful of your things as they headed towards your bed. They begin to slide under Midnight and before you knew it, you guys were in some sort of vines hammock. Surprisingly it was keeping you warmer than the blanket under you.
“Say ah. Airplane,” he said. You turned towards him to see a spoon floating towards you with soup in it. Wait, you get to cuddle Midnight while being fed warm soup by some magic.
You let out a small smile as you open your mouth. Midnight continued to use whatever magic he had to feed you the soup while his arms stay wrapped around him.
Near the end of the bowl, he started to notice that you were chewing a lot slower and your head was nodding off. When your eyes slide close, he floated the bowl over to your desk to let you have your rest.
Sliding down into the hammock, he continued to let you have your rest as he rub small circles into your back. Every so often, he would reveal your forehead to press small kisses to you. He don’t know what sickness you had, but if it thought it could make you feel bad when he was around, it was wrong. Nothing would dare hurt the love of his life when he was around.
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I hope my touch-starveness didn’t come off too hard in this, haha. I miss writing like this. This was so refreshing. Thank you anon for the inspiration.
Realized I didn’t answer the ask, but the yes, very affectionate. They love you, so of course they will cuddle you for as long as you want.
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Star Wars: The Franchise
Back in the mid 70s around Modesto, California, it is doubtful that George Lucas could have imagined that his idea for a space opera would become the second highest grossing movie franchise of all time. There has been some questionable content, however, since the groundbreaking original, and the returns have not been as great. There were also some one-offs that a lot of the younger fans might not be aware of. For my own sanity and organization, here is a listing of all feature length movies in the franchise:
Star Wars IV: A New Hope (1977) -
Definitely the most successful film (heck, one of the most successful films of all time) that made almost a billion dollars at the box office worldwide...in the 80s. Amazing. The story mimics the hero's journey as described by Joseph Campbell, giving it basically the most satisfying story imaginable. Nobody except for friend of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, thought it would be as successful as it was. This kind of popularity meant there was going to be some sequels and, since George Lucas was the man behind the whole thing, only one man was about to get tasked with future success.
Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) -
This was a TV movie that was made to cash in on the massive popularity of the first movie while the second one was in production. It is terrible. I generally try to hold back judgement and point out subjective opinions, but I think I can say that this made-for-TV movie is objectively bad. It is the equivalent of a variety show, a format which was popular at the time, and it was awful. It is widely considered to be one of the worst visual productions of all time. Just to give a hint of its awfulness, the movie follows the adventures of Chewbacca's Wookie family and they only speak in growls with no interpretation or subtitles. Laughably awful.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) -
Arguably the best of the films as far as story and plot, this film was actually directed by Irvin Kershner with a George Lucas story adapted to the screen by Lawrence Kasdan. This film is legitimately fantastic and not just new and fun. It is so well written and directed with the famous reveal between Luke and Darth Vader. It also is incredibly downbeat at the end that perfectly sets up the next film. I personally think this is the best example of fine film in the franchise, although it doesn't have as much big action and no giant space laser. Well worth watching and makes the third film a must see.
Return of the Jedi (1983) -
Well, not as good as the first two, but still pretty darn good. This film introduced the Ewoks and the Endor moon battle. Many fans thought that the introduction of living teddy bears was a mistake that distract from the story. What really made the film, apparently, was the whole sequence at the beginning that takes place at Jabba the Hut's palace and involves Princess Leia in a metal bikini. We also find out that Luke and Leia are twins, so that kiss in the second film suddenly becomes kind of awkward. This becomes kind of a theme from here on out: should we disavow canon or put in throwaway lines and scenes to cover things that were mentioned in previous movies. It plagues the prequels.
The Ewok Adventure (1984) -
I get a lot of garbage about it, but I love these movies because I grew up with them. They are not that great and the copy that I saw over and over had ads from the early 80s throughout. Heavy nostalgia. Also, some of the Ewoks were played by established actors from what is now called Episode VI, Warwick Davis as Wicket and Tony Cox as Widdle. It was a lot of fun, but definitely a higher budgeted TV movie. It did become so successful that it got a theater release as Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. This naming style stuck around for the spin off films that were made in the late 2010s.
Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985) -
Hot dang, they made a second one with Wilford Brimley! Both of the Ewok films were thought up by George Lucas and sold to ABC. Both films were also given special Emmy awards for special effects. I can't fault either Ewok film as far as visuals since both got the ILM treatment. I have stated that I liked both of these movies more than some of the prequels, and I stand by that.
The Phantom Menace (1999) -
The next three films followed the first three episodes in the Star Wars saga and are now generally known as the prequels. They are also pretty widely hated. One reason for that was the introduction of young Anikan Skywalker (eventual Darth Vader) and his growing attachment to Lord Palpatine (Darth Sidious). The problem with the prequels is that it was a path leading to a result that had been established over 20 years ago in the first film. They also introduced a character named Jar-Jar Binks who was just awful. There was a great pod racing scene and an epic Sith vs. Jedi battle that really were the highlights of the film. The music was also pretty epic, but the film was otherwise not that great. It was completely made under the helm of George Lucas and fans were suddenly starting to wonder if he was the genius they had thought him to be. What I consider to be the best YouTube deep dive movie review of all time, a group called Red Letter Media made a seven part review that explains why the movie was such a problem. You can watch the first part and it will auto load all seven here:
(1) Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 1 of 7) - YouTube
Attack of the Clones (2002) -
Alright, here is where things really start to go down hill. There is a fine actor by the name of Hayden Christiansen that is just awful in this film. He is given nothing to do for the most part. He is supposed to be this amazing Jedi general, but he spends most of his time walking around speaking in a very monotone voice. He does have some fun piloting scenes, but he is written as such a whiny brat. There are two epic battles (the coliseum and Dooku vs. Yoda) and we get to see a bounty hunter in action. It does seem like a lot of fan service glued together by boring politics and horrifically bad acting.
Revenge of the Sith (2005) -
This is widely considered the worst of the prequel movies and generally laughable at some points. There is supposed to be an epic lava battle at the end, but it is just a bunch of screaming about a failed bromance. We get to see the end of the characters in the prequel and set up the original movies...that were now almost 30 years old. It was unsatisfying and not even slightly worth the wait. It was at this time that George Lucas said that there would never be a seventh episode that would follow the original trilogy.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) -
There was a very compelling series of Star Wars shorts in 2003 made by Genndy Tartakovsky that did very well. George Lucas saw this and decided that a lot of the most interesting Star Wars events had occurred during the time between the prequels and the original series. Lucasfilm put out an animated movie to test the waters and it was so successful that 7 seasons of great animated adventures were made to show the epic battles that were supposed to take place between the second and third episode. I honestly believe that this was the very best space action of the entire franchise.
The Force Awakens (2015) -
George Lucas sold the Star Wars franchise over to Disney and fans got a new movie that was never supposed to happen. Once Disney came on board, the brand became much more prolific. Until the pandemic, there were plans to put out a Star Wars movie every year for a decade. The first was episode seven and was made by J.J. Abrams. It was similar to the first film (episode IV) in so many ways that fans started to think it was just a remake. It even had a lot of the characters from the original trilogy. It was much better received by fans following the prequels and introduced a storyline that was not already spoiled by previous movies. There was a lot of unnecessary fan service for those who loved the original trilogy. This makes since because it involved Lawrence Kasdan, who helped with the screenplay for episode five and six from the original trilogy.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) -
A full big budget release of a Star Wars movie that wasn't one of the episodes was an interesting idea. It was an entire movie to explain a throwaway line from the original 1977 movie. I lot of people died to get some plans for the big weapon in the first film and people wanted to know exactly how that happened. Actually they didn't. But Disney thought it was a good idea and it seemed like it would make a lot of money (it did). It gave the producers a chance to make a movie with new characters and only mentions of the famous story (this was important because the other actors where making the next episode).
The Last Jedi (2017) -
This was an interesting change of pace from the rest of the films because it seemed to drop the idea of the "chosen one" and say that anyone could be a Jedi. It is basically one giant escape story and is closer to Mad Max in space than it is to the other Star Wars films. It was given in full by Disney to Rian Johnson and it shows. This was the first episode film that had nothing in common with any of the production group from the original trilogy. No Kasdan, no Kirschner, no Lucas, all Disney. It was not very well received.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) -
The worst performing of any of the Star Wars live action feature length films, this was the story of Han Solo. That's it. There is not a lot of history about the character and he is so cool, fans needed to have a stand alone movie about his youth. That's a lie, Disney wanted a movie to come out between episode eight and nine. This was the best that the suits could come up with and it definitely made money, but it is lame.
The Rise of Skywalker (2019) -
Well, the movie completely helmed by Rian Johnson was not popular enough so there was a total retcon situation and this film basically picked up where episode seven left off. It was the same team from episode seven (since that film was so much more popular) and they made a final film that wraps up with a bow. Sort of. There was definitely room in the film world for more Star Wars movies to be made (it is owned by Disney) and I really don't believe it is finished as a franchise.
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Just in case there are people who were nervous that this was the end of the franchise, there is currently a stand alone film called Rogue Squadron that is supposed to come out in 2023. Thank goodness. There was also the popular Mandalorian series on Disney +. But the franchise has been making huge films for almost 45 years now, so maybe it is time to stop. We have the MCU that has made almost twice as much money as the Star Wars universe, so most movie goers have picked their setting that they want to see. Maybe there could be a crossover (I am kidding, please no) and it would be the most watched film of all time.
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aesthetic tag 🏡
tagged by @hobeemin, @tweedlekoo, and @bangtantaegi - thank you all! sorry i’m doing this so dang late🥺🤍
SOFT - 13/20
baby pink | iridescent | glitter is always a good option | no bra | minimalistic tattoos | cherry patterns | sweet scented perfumes | wearing generous amounts of blush | doodling hearts | getting excited to pet an animal | fun nails | rewatching old barbie movies | hair sticking to glossed lips | heart shaped sunglasses | taking pictures of the sunset or sunrise | stuffed animals | protecting nature | stickers everywhere | teen movies | the light rain that falls from a clear sky at the beginning of the night
DARK ACADEMIA - 13/20
neutral tones | masculine outfits | studying languages | worn down copy of books | grey skies | turtleneck sweaters | loose fitting pants | hair tied with a silk ribbon | trying to remember a cool difficult word you read somewhere to use in a convo | thick belts | minimal makeup | windows fogged by rain | vintage jewelry | blouses with cuffed sleeves | reading a murder mystery and trying to solve it | oxford style shoes | sweater vests | subtitled old movies in a language you don’t speak | leaves crackling as you walk | annotating books to express your emotions about the story
EDGY - 17/20 this section just called me tf out
closet full of dark clothes | fishnet tights | makeup sweating off | neon signs | searching for unknown songs | chokers | band tees | doodling on old converses | finding smoking aesthetically pleasing but not doing it | weird humor | accidentally very dramatic | dim lights | layered outfits | chain belts | chipped nail polish | messy hair | low quality pics | piercings | combat boots | scribbling on desks
70’S - 13/20
colorful wardrobe | doodling flowers | wearing short shorts | using a bikini top or bra as a normal top | listening to ABBA | flowers in your hair | DIYing everything | jamming to songs alone in your room | drunkenly telling your friends you love them | patterned bandanas | mid heeled shoes | messy braids | flared sleeves | walking barefoot on grass or sand | bold sunglasses | the good kind of tired you get after doing something you enjoy for hours | feeding stray animals | fun patterned socks | room decorated with succulents and other plants | likes to go roller skating or skateboarding
PREPPY CASUAL - 13/20
collared clothes | drinking juice out of a champagne glass | getting excited to see the met gala looks | thick headbands | small pastel cardigans | making your friends take your ootd pics | plaid mini skirts | tweed two pieces | watching reality tv to pass time | frilly tops | watching old hollywood movies | academically driven | long manicured nails | new year’s eve fireworks | colourful tights | layered golden jewelry | yearns for luxury brand items | decorating your room with fairylights | cursive and neat handwriting | lace details
FIRST OFF, HOW THE HELL WERE THEY ALL 13/20 EXCEPT FOR EDGY?? but this was fun. thank you for tagging! i love these.
tagging (optional as always!): @sketchguk, @trustingofwinds, @bratkook, @chateautae, @writtenwhalien, @stayjimin, @dis-easedfairy, @hobiandsprite, @hoebii, @kittaebrat, @cremeandsuga, @honeyj00ns, @lurejoon, @yoonia, @yeoldontknow, @joontopia ++ anyone else that wants to do this!
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Hi celebrity crush anon here! dw your choices are all valid and not even that embarrassing! YES Robin Hood is a fox in that film but hey he’s still hot af and I was like 9 or something when I watched it 😂 I forgot to mention Disney’s 1953 Peter Pan, Prince Naveen, Gerard Butler from the 2004 Phantom film (guilty as charged), Rachel York in Kiss Me Kate, Colin Firth (basicccc), Amy Adams, Jenna Coleman, 70s Cher, Cherie Chung - a local Hong Kong actress in the 80-90s who will forever be the epitome of beauty to me and yeah Andrew Garfield is cute! I never watched Sherlock but I am/was a Doctor Who fan so I had a short Matt Smith phase lmao. I was also obsessed with the singer JJ Lin when I was 16. But Brian!!! Hoo I actually got a horrible start with him because back when I didn’t know much of anything about Queen my friend made me read this RPF as a joke - basically an extensive epic-novel piece of Brian-centric porn with plot that involves Roger, Brian, Adam (yes it’s present day) and a freakishly young Y/N doing… stuff (i feel like if you’ve even caught a glimpse of this fic’s summary you’ll KNOW this is what I’m talking about). it TRAUMATIZED me, and I couldn’t even bear to look at him without nauseating images flashing in my mind lmao. But um yeah I did see that photo you linked, also that other low angle shot of him playing guitar in 1974 and just the entire Music Life 1976 photoshoot and my world was ✨forever changed✨ BUT um your next sentence… that never crossed my mind😭✋ I personally don’t really have a specific limit but it sort of ends somewhere in the mid 1990s although I do understand how some people thirst for him beyond that,, to a certain extent 😃
Another question: what are your favourite musicals?
Dang, you sure have liked a lot of people! Nothing wrong with that, though. It’s normal for our brains to go “ooo pretty face.” My friend had a huge crush on Gerard Butler in her Phantom phase. The women you picked are pretty, too. Cher is an icon lol
*sigh* I absolutely know the fic you’re talking about. I hate to speak negatively about fics publicly but I think that one is a little infamous in the fandom lol. It’s definitely not the only old man smut out there, though. I enjoy reading posts and fics lusting over current Brian to my mom lmao. I wish I’d recorded some of her reactions. I’ve done it to some friends too and they’re like 🤯 Now you have a new mental image for that ‘74 pic ;) We all get that moment with Brian like *Squidward voice* oh no he’s hot!!!!
Ah, favorite musicals! My all time favorite is Sweeney Todd. I do prefer the movie adaptation and think it’s the most cohesive version of the show, but I still like the stage show. I can go on about that one for a long time. Others, in no particular order, are: Into the Woods, Les Misérables, Hamilton, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Book of Mormon, Company, Fiddler on the Roof, and Avenue Q. I’d say Into the Woods to JCS are in my top 5 with Sweeney Todd and the others are ones I really enjoy.
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