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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years

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Gene Autry's Horse

Peter David recently posted a short essay on the current brouhaha over Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola saying the Marvel movies aren’t real cinema, not genuine works of art, but just “thrill rides”.

Before going further, let me state my unabashed respect and admiration for Peter David. He’s a creator who certainly earned his spurs, he has a massive body of work, he is an all around mensch, and his opinion is hard earned and well informed.

Except in this case, his conclusions are wrong.

To prove my point, let me ask Peter a question:

What was the name of Gene Autry’s horse?

Those of you wondering what Gene’s horse has to do with the Marvel cinematic universe (hence MCU), my explanation is this: The single largest genre of films made before 1960 were Westerns.

Add to that television programs, where Westerns remained a staple until the mid-1970s.

And radio shows.

And pulp novels.

And comic books.

They were the definitive American movie genre from 1903’s The Great Train Robbery until Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid drove a stake through the heart of the standard genre offering in 1969.

There are some who claim Blazing Saddles did the genre in, but Westerns had endured numerous comedy and parody versions in the past.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid killed the Western as a popular genre by simply having Butch and Sundance do the most logical thing at the first sign of danger, the thing the real Butch and Sundance did in real life: They ran away.

And thus a genre trope was forever slain…

This is not to say they’ve never made another film that falls into the broad category of “Western”, but there’s no audience clamor for more of the genre.

Westerns are now simply historical films set in the American west during the period from the fall of the Alamo (1836) to Arizona becoming a state (1912).

There are films that employ Western genre tropes that take place in the contemporary era (Road House and Extreme Prejudice to name two) or transplant the Western genre to other lands (Sukiyaki Western Django and Tampopo, f’r instance), but as a genre it is dead-dead-DEAD.

Yet at one time, Westerns were so popular that not only did everybody know the name of Gene Autry’s horse, but said horse starred in his own TV series!

So what happened?

Well, several things.

I could cite the changing audience in America, going from 80% rural prior to WWII to 80% urban / suburban after WWII (with a corresponding rise in detective and spy genres, as well as sci-fi), or I could cite a huge glut of material made even more accessible by television, but the truth is this: The overwhelming bulk of American Westerns were nothing but product.

It was actually built into the genre. I’ve been trying to locate the original essay, but a scholarly study some years back concluded only 8 basic plot conflicts drove Western stories, and only 17 stock characters carried said stories (they can be good, bad, or neutral characters, effectively tripling their number).

The essay went on to liken American Westerns to Japanese noh or kabuki dramas: Far from familiarity of material being a problem, audiences came expecting certain tropes and stock characters, and gained their enjoyment from how well said tropes and characters were presented.

Sound familiar?

This is not to say there weren’t films that fell into the Western genre that also aspired to art, but you either had to be a Hollywood heavy hitter to get a chance at making a film like that or, at the tail end of the genre, flying so low under the radar that nobody recognized what you were doing until you did it.

Does that sound familiar?

But the overwhelming majority of Westerns, while possessing technical craftsmanship, were just product: So many feet of gunfights. So many reels of stampedes.

Big budget A-picture or bare bones B-movie, they all fell into the same general patterns, and studios, large or small, promoted them the same way.

And audiences were fine with this. Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans frequently wound up among the top 10 box office draws in Hollywood during their careers.

Where are those Westerns now?

I’m a big fan of old B-Westerns, having grown up with them on TV as a kid, and know a fair amount about the personalities and production companies involved, seeking out B-Westerns on Amazon Prime and YouTube and the multi-pack bargain bins at big box stores.

How many of today’s superhero fans could identify William Boyd or Red Barry or Rocky Lane or Buck Jones?

They might remember hearing the names of Roy Rogers or Gene Autry since those stars were involved in mainstream marketing such as fast food restaurants or baseball teams (and Autry donated a museum to Los Angeles that’s named after him), but how many have actually seen any of their movies?

We have two competing superhero universes today, DCU and MCU.

Where are the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents movies? How come there’s no Dr. Solar or Brain Boy or Magnus, Robot Fighter films?

Answer: No large corporation stand to make billions promoting those characters and licensing them to toys, video games, vitamin, and Underoos.

Corporations possess no sense of integrity to the original creators’ concepts. They will change things in the blink of an eye if they think it will boost their profit margin. They’ll promote the silliest and the most self-damaging ideas if they think it will make them a few extra bucks today.

Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman succeeded at DC bcause nobody there cared what the creators did so long as they turned their work in on time.

Product.

Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and Jim Steranko blazed exciting new trails at Marvel because Martin Goodman couldn’t have cared less what they were doing so long as they delivered on schedule and under budget.

Product.

They flew under the radar. They worked in a fast and grungy fashion, knocking the books out as quickly as they could.

To amuse themselves they trafficked in big ideas, eccentric art, outre stories.

That it caught on and blazed a new trail proved a combination of talent and luck.

There was no similar boom for romance comics or nurse comics or Western comics during the same period.

Right now the MCU movies are riding high and they are made with a great deal of technical care and they are amusing and entertaining.

So were Westerns.

MCU movies aim at too specialized an audience. They appeal to this generation, but there’s no guarantee they’ll appeal to the next.

Indeed, there’s a strong argument that the next generation will reject the previous generation’s entertainment simply because it’s…well…theirs.

The films of Coppola and Scorsese will be watched.

They’re not product.

Oh, there were financed to make money, sure enough, but they were financed to make money by expressing the director’s personal taste and vision.

Further, they tend to transcend genre.

Yeah, two generations from now people who really love gangster movies will probably look up The Godfather and GoodFellas.

But people who love film, people who love art will be watching them as well.

They’ll also watch Public Enemy and Little Caesar, but unless they’re film buffs with specialized tastes, they’re going to skip the dozens of “programmers” cranked out in the 1930s to satisfy fans of that genre.

And the reason? The Godfather and GoodFellas and Public Enemy and Little Caesar transcend their genres.

They are about people, not thrills and chills.

Consider classic Universal horror films.

James Whale & co. snuck one bona fide brilliant work of art past Carl Laemmle with Bride Of Frankenstein but after that the brakes clamped down hard and fast.

Uncle Carl couldn’t have geniuses running around doing whatever they felt like, thus risking the audience for Universal’s product.

Consistent mediocrity is better than risky genius in the eyes of the corporations.

The classic Universal monsters? Reduced to The Munsters now; familiar icons, to be sure, but empty jokes, shadows of their former selves.

Replaced by newer monsters who in turn have been replaced by newer monster who in turn have been replaced by newer monsters and who will be replaced by newer monsters still.

‘Twas ever thus.

I begrudge the enjoyment no nobody who enjoys MCU movies.

Have fun. Knock yourselves out.

But never mistake popcorn for caviar.

Champion was the name of Gene Autry’s horse.

#Peter David #Marvel #superheroes #movies #B-Westerns #Gene Autry #Champion the Wonder Horse #MCU #Francis Coppola #Martin Scorsese

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darkspellmaster · 6 years

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Costume designs and the role of the Skirt in the Modern Female Hero.

With recent discussions over costumes in regard to not only She-ra but in the past few years in regard to Wonder Woman and several other prominent female heroes, I wanted to step back and take a look at why a skirt, in a lot of cases, is actually a better option for a fight then say a very tight leather outfit.

I had this discussion with my male friend who had just started to read Wonder Woman with the New 52 and he asked why it was that people were upset over the redesign with the pants. My answer at the time was, they look like jeans, you can’t really fight well in jeans designed like that. They will rip and tear, and she is a warrior and shouldn’t have to be restricted by what’s on her legs for moving. A skirt or shorts would work better for her.

He at the time replied that she should wear pants. We went back and forth for a while until I brought up the fact that having a lady wear a skirt isn’t meaning she’s a weaker fighter, skirts are actually less restrictive for movement and one of the reasons why the Romans and the Greeks wore them into battle, along with the Scots who wore kilts. The idea of the skirt as a worn by a warrior predates a lot of modern conceptions as women and men wore the style when fighting. Lets we forget that part of the idea of armor during the time of the knights was because of the newer weapons that had supplanted the bronze age swords of the period with harder steel weapons, so they needed more to protect them than the light armor and leather that they were wearing.

However this idea of the skirt still stuck around regarding fashion for women, because, well, people like legs (although for a long period showing any legs off was a bad idea). Women, and men, in the entertainment world tended at the time to stick to shorts and it was shown in how Strong men were used for the Superhero look (see DC and Marvel with the outside underwear) while ladies like Wonder Woman were given more of a swimsuit/athletic look. Now the change to this started around the time of the whole issue with the Comic book Panic that came about because of the book Seduction of the innocent came out and freaked people out about various things in comics. Women at this time were wearing skirts, though they were limited.

This changed by the 1950s to Female heroes wearing skirts to show their feminine side. The idea had always been there that women could wear make up and look “dolled up” in comics way back in the days of Wonder Woman, because she wore make up all the damn time in the stories. Also a number of the female heroes were Girls, and seen as well teens and children. The reason being that girls in the period wore skirts. It was pretty much ordered by the schools that girls had to wear skirts at the time. It was the 50s. Into the 1960s things changed and you saw skirts replaced with pants, shorts and in some cases the start of the bathing suit look. The trend continued into the 1970s, and some what in the 1980s where the suits changed some, but were mostly one piece swim wear for the most part for costumes of some characters. It really wasn’t until the 1990s that you saw this “Overly sexy” look come about and I can point to the shift being by the late 1980s you had a lot of cheese cake showing up in movies, so to drive sales of comics (which the industry screwed up on it’s own) a lot of artist started to turn to making women look more desirable and wearing less. You can kind of thank Image Comics for a lot of that as well.

So why talk about any of that? Well to give an idea of where the skirts came from. Most heroes that wear skirts were invented in the 1950s and the look was popular among the female population. So of course you would have the characters in books wearing skirts. This never though replaced the fact that they were strong and independent characters that had their own villains to fight and later on allowed for newer female characters to come in and stand out as leads.

By the way for those that think that a strong character can’t wear a skirt and still kick butt, well here are a few characters that do wear skirts and are seen as iconic, independent and strong females that have inspired both men and women in all walks of life.

Starting with Super Girl.

Kara Kent, or Kara Zor-el is as strong as her cousin Clark and can pretty much take on anyone he can. She has the same set of powers that he does, and one version of her later became Power Girl who, depending on the writer, can in some cases lift twice as much as he can. She also almost single handed beat the Anti-moniter.

Marvel Girl -aka Jean Gray

Early costumes for Jean was this green piece after graduation. Her reason for it came down to her wanting to look different than the other members of her team and fashionable as well. She is, bar Xavier, arguably the strongest mutant on the planet with her mental capabilities, and has been shown to have so much power that the Phoenix force stayed with her for many many years after the first Saga finished.

Mary Marvel

Mary is the sister of Billy Baston, aka Captain Marvel aka Shazam. Like her brother when she calls down on the power of Shazam she can become Mary Marvel, who is just as strong and powerful as her brother, and blessed by the gods. This girl can do what her brother can, and, on top of all of that, has proven to be able to go toe to toe with Super Girl and Power Girl in recent years. She is a force to be reckoned with. (And Ignore the Black Mary Marvel stuff that Johns wrote for Countdown it made no sense.)

Flamebird aka Bette Kane

The niece of Kate Kane, Elizabeth “Bette” Kane started her career as a wanna be side kick and a fan of Robin. She grew to be as good a fighter as her aunt, and pre -52, she ended up becoming a teacher who was a strong detective in her own right. Her Aunt has taught her various forms of martial arts and the two train together as Bette intended to become a person that could protect others the way that she saw Robin (Dick Grayson) protect people during his tenure.

Bomshell version of Batwoman

Basically Kate Kane as a baseball player and wears the outfit that her team wears when she fights. It’s pretty much all the awesomeness of Kate Kane but just wearing a female baseball uniform worn in the 1940s.

Ms. Marvel aka Kamala Khan

While technically considered a tunic, the top part of Ms. Marvel’s outfit is considered a dress and can be worn as such. Kamala added the tights and other aspects because of her preference for dressing. However, yes that is a dress she has on. Also let’s not forget how powerful she is and how cool she can be even when geeking out. See her meeting with Wolverine for the first time.

The Sailor Senshi

When Naoko Takeuchi first created this group of girls she had one thing on her mind. Sentai. You know, Power Rangers. But she wanted to use fashion as it is one of her passions. So she created these strong girls who grow as the series goes on, but every one of them wears an outfit that is recognizable to the female population in Japan, that of the school girl uniform. Yes the skirts are short, but that allows for their movement and is part of the Sentai look of uniformity with color co-ordination. Also did I mention that Sailor Moon literally saved Earth and everyone from a darkness by the power of her love for it, and killed parts of Chaos, an entity that has existed since the dawn of time. Yeah, girls in school skirts can crush monsters.

Jun from Gachaman

Jun, or princess if you go by BoTP, is one of the strongest fighters of the Gachaman team. Her skills as a master of Kagaku Ninpo allow her to use her aglity to create powerful kicks and hits on her enemies. She also uses a Yo-yo as a whip and flail and it’s electric.

Wonder Woman aka Princess Diana, Diana Prince

Do I even need to talk about her? I think not.

Xena Warrior Princess

Played by Lucy Lawless until the early 2000s, Xena was a huge character, powerful and full of compassion. After being a battle hardened character who at one point was an enemy of Hercules, she later went on to spin off on her own show and became not only a mother, but also was seen as a gay icon for many women and men.

The Female lead in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

A Spartan by birth, our canonical lead here, as said by the development team and the books, sports the same fashion as her non cannon male counter part.

Both run around in a skirt and are warriors trained by birth to do battle with the forces that are causing issues for their people.

Chun li Street fighter

One of the oldest Video game heroines. Chun Li is an interpol agent and has many awards under her belt. A known master of various martial arts, she also is a sharp shooter. Her outfit is that of a Chinese qipao, a type of dress made popular in the 1920s, which she wears in honor of her late mother, and which she modified for movement.

So with that in mind I would like to Add She-Ra to this list of Bad -ass females that wear skirts when fighting.

She-Ra aka Princess Adora

With a strong sense of morality, the same strength as her brother when he’s in He-man form, and the skills with a sword and a gun, (and a strong jaw line to boot) She-Ra fights in a war that has nothing to do with her directly and left home to help her friends in the Rebellion. Her transformation is much like that of Mary Marvel, in that she calls down the power from Gray Skull and becomes a more powerful version of herself capable of fighting off Hordak and his evil Horde.

So, with that in mind. Anyone else know of any bad-ass female characters that wear skirts?

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beatyoutothepunchline · 5 years

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On Getting Dressed

Getting dressed in the morning has always been difficult for me. If I can, I will wear the same outfit four times in one week to avoid having to think about it any longer than necessary. My go-to outfit at the moment is my green and black J-Crew plaid button-down, my high-waisted Madewell skinny jeans with the button fly and my Doc Martens. At this point in my life, I do not ask myself, “Do you think somebody will realize you’ve been wearing the same pair of jeans for the last four days?” but, “Do these jeans look and smell clean enough that if someone were to realize you’ve been wearing them for the last four days, they wouldn’t call you out on it?” If the answer is yes, I will throw on the outfit again. I don’t dress to look nice most days. “Nice” meaning my makeup is done, my hair is straight and parts in a way that frames my face in a flattering way, my outfit is coordinated, cleaned and ironed and my shoes match the vibe I’m going for. When I look "nice" there is generally a vibe I am going for and that can vary day to day. A coat of concealer and a flat iron are nice, but it isn’t really necessary. Some days I run around Chicago in an oversized sweatshirt, with bags under my eyes and my naturally wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail. Sometimes I’m more dressed up, others I’m more dressed down. I’m most comfortable in jeans and a tee shirt and because I tend to get more done when I don’t feel like I’m sticking out for looking good or bad. There are certain days where I have to critically think about my wardrobe as I might an essay or an article for class--interviews, dates, holidays--and those days are agonizing. I would argue there is just as much nuance and subtext in the right outfit as there is in a Hemingway short story. Which is why most fashion related things go over my head. But every now and then, I force myself to stand in front of my closet and edit my wardrobe to what I wear. I’m not a person with many clothes, but there are always a few things I find I can get rid of. As I pick up each piece and I asked myself, “Is this still me?” I stopped to wonder, “How did this become my thing? Is it even my thing, or is it someone else’s?” Like most people, from birth till about I was old enough to make my own decision (and for those decisions to be preferably color coordinated, realistic, and weather/event appropriate), my clothing wasn’t my choice. So none of my clothes were my thing, rather what my mom thought would look cute on me. This is why there is a picture of me in an Angelina Ballerina tee shirts and pink capris with a fairy wand and crown on my fourth birthday, and a picture of me in fifth grade wearing a striped, pink white shirt and short sets from Old Navy while on our family trip to Hawaii, and why my first day of school photo from seventh grade I’m wearing a short sleeved and khaki jacket with a lacy pink tank top and black shorts. I can separate my current wardrobe, almost perfectly into black, white, denim, olive green, and varying shades of blue. I have one pink sweater (which my mother bought me) and while I will occasionally throw it on and wear it around my apartment, I end up tearing it off within twenty minutes because of the I cannot stand the color or cut of it. The reason I wear the monochrome is because I am pale and my skin has a naturally pink undertone. If you flip my wrist over, you can see every vein in my arm up to my elbow. You can see the veins in my feet, in my thighs and my stomach. Wearing, black, white, denim, olive and shades of blue makes the pinkish undertone is less noticable and helps the bright blue veins blend in better. Wearing pink, or bright yellow washes me out and makes weird details intense. As for the cut of it, it’s a cropped sweater with side splits up to my ribcage, on top of being wildly ineffective at keeping me warm, it makes my long torso appear even longer than it is, and it just isn’t me. Nothing in my wardrobe is really “me” though. I came to this realization after glancing at the mess of clothes scattered across my bedroom floor while taking a “break” from spring cleaning this last weekend. Everything in my closet I own because of someone else. I own a pair of Gold Cup Sperry Topsiders because my freshman year of high school there was a senior boy with a British accent who browsed the bookshelves of the library before school in a pair of Sperry’s. In the era of Victoria Secret yoga pants tucked into beat to hell Ugg boots and calf-length Nike socks slipped thoughtlessly into pairs of ADIDAS shower slides on the way out the door, his shoes, as well as the pressed khaki pants and button-down shirts, his perfectly gelled hair, and his accent, captured a kind of class that seemed lost on the rest of the students at my high school. Though my own Sperry’s seem to more closely resemble some douchebag college frat guys than the classy look of Boat Shoe Guy’s, when I look of them I think back to being fourteen, working up the guts to sit at his table in the library, not quite brave enough to say anything, and listening to him talk in what I later found out was a fake British accent about things I can’t remember with other, older people and feeling cool. Not in a conventional way. Cool in a nerdy way I didn’t realize I could be until I met him. When I look at the gold hoop earrings I keep in my great grandmother’s teacup with the rest of my small jewelry collection, I realize that my love for them comes from mother, who wore perfect silver hoops earrings frequently throughout my childhood. When I think of them I think of box blonde hair, and regrettable bangs and her capped tooth smile. I’m the opposite. My hair is dirty blonde, I don’t have bangs (never again after my mom cut thick ones so far back on my head that for several months I had Joe Dirt’s mullet). My hoops aren’t perfect circles and they are gold color, not silver.I don’t look or act much like my mother, but occasionally when I put them on I feel like I can fake that same kind of magnetic charm and try to smile with my teeth like she does. I decide I can pull off the hoops, but not the toothy grin and leave it at that. I own a black pea coat because of the movie Giant. Which doesn’t seem like it would make sense give it’s a movie set in Marfa, Texas, but let me explain. My freshman year of high school my grandma bought a copy of Giant for my dad’s birthday and one day a few weeks after she’d given it to him, I found it lying on the buffet in our living room. Being the movie buff I am, and being intregued by the front cover I decided to watch it. The entire time I just kept thinking the blond guy from the front cover was cute (which, in retrospect, is the dumbest take away a person could have after watching that film). After the movie I decided to Google him and came upon a picture of him walking down the rainy street in New York City. Wet cigarette hanging out of his mouth, collar of his iconic black black pea coat poped. And Where I can’t say I’ve ever fallen in love at first sight, I imagine it’s similar to seeing James Dean in that jacket. In an excerpt from ‘Women in Clothes,’ an anthology about how clothes define and shape us, Leanne Shapton, author and artist, writes of a similar love-at-first-sight feeling she with an Isabel Marant dress she saw a woman wearing at a party, “I admired her hair: worn loose, flecked with grey. And her manner: warm, thoughtful, sincere. She wore no makeup, and the dress, which was sack-like, lent her a modesty I liked. We spoke about our children. Then, in a lull in the conversation, I came back to the dress, complimenting it again. She nodded, knowing. Then I did something that surprised me: I leaned down and picked up the edge of her skirt and touched it, marveling aloud at the light, smooth fabric. I have never touched another woman’s dress like that before. A fur sleeve once, but I’ve never had that grasping, clutching impulse.” In her essay, Sharpton wonders if her feelings she had about the dress “also had something to do with admitting I want something. I’ve struggled with admitting what I want most of my life, not admitting until the last possible moment that I wanted a child. Admitting I flat-out wanted this dress was new to me. I was nervous.” Where I can’t say I relate to the wanting a kid portion of that statement, I can relate to the feeling of wanting something. Wanting to be unique and confident, two feelings I don’t feel like I’ve ever fully had but have just been chasing after my whole life. The reason my go-to outfit is what it is is because of directors like Sofia Coppola and Point Break era, Kathryn Bigelow. There is this picture of Kathryn Bigelow standing in front of a monitor next to Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze: white tee shirt, baggy blue jeans, cool boxy shades, and a Reebok baseball hat. When I don’t know what to wear, or when I need to do something I’m not sure I can, I dress up and pretend to be somebody I think can figure it out. Be the woman who can direct a surfer bank heist movie, the woman who can speak French, beautifully while eating a croissant, scarlet lips pouted, Rick Blaine tripping over his shit, the Dude who’s got no idea how the hell things are going to work out, but isn’t too worried about it. Cause maybe things just will in the end. It isn’t an exact copy, it looks similar enough to them that I’m able to capture their attitude, power. . . their magic, but different enough that it’s still me. So I put on my version of that outfit when I don’t know what else to wear because it is comfortable and easy and because I’ve tricked myself into thinking it will inspire some sort of brilliant direction and confidence I don’t feel like I have on my own. Even if it doesn’t do what I think it will and my voice gets caught in my throat and I let someone talk over me, or I get rejected, or I fail and fall flat on my face. When I wear my navy Calvin Klein wrap dress, everyone I know groans and says, “You wear that all the time. Don’t you own another dress?” I do. There is the ombre floor length prom dress that lives back of my closet at my parent's house which I bought because it made me look like Jennifer Aniston, and the crochet white and orange dress that I bought from Urban Outfitter’s because it reminded me of Shasta Fay Hepworth’s orange dress in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. I don’t usually have the occasion to wear either of these dresses, but the navy wrap dress works for almost any occasion so that’s why I wear it. It creates some shape on my fairly shapeless form, and I like it because it makes me feel like Lauren Bacall. Equal parts sexy, mysterious and classy in a way that I am otherwise not. I’ve never worn it on a date, but I’d be lying if I said if I’d never worn it to a half hour meeting to look “nice” only to walk around downtown Chicago just to see people turn their heads and wonder, “Who is she?” Then, for a fraction of a second, I am the woman I’m not to somebone. When I am at home on Saturday mornings, and my hair is all frizzed out and drooled on and I can’t be bothered to put on actual pants, I walk around in my boxers, oversized and stained Sid’s Liquor tee shirt and a cardigan. I throw on some sunglasses, debate making myself a White Russian and go full-on “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski. Cause it’s hard to relax when you live and work in the same place and I can only seem to do it when I’m someone else. But it is me? Dressing up as someone else might get me through the day, but what if I never take risks as myself? Years from now, will there be some girl who sees a pair of Madewell skinny jeans at the bottom of a pile at a thrift store or finds an old pair of boots that will say, “Oh my god, I love it. It’s so Sidney Thompson.” if I can’t even dress up like her? Am I just a shot for shot remake with nothing new to offer, to contribute, to inspire? Will people see me or will they tease my style apart and say, “Oh, she’s ripping off So-and-So.” I’d like to think I’m more of a Quentin Tarantino homage to all my favorite fashion icons. You can see where I stole, but I’d like to think every now and then there’s someone out there is able to see that part of me poking through one of my costumes and thinks it’s pretty cool.

#essays #theblondefiasco #writing

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bizarre-dollhouse · 6 years

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Animation Direction and Aesthetic Appeal: Why I Didn’t Like Book of the Atlantic

For the record, if you really loved Book of the Atlantic and thought it looked great and/or are sick of people bitching about it, you probably won’t want to read this post.

If you didn’t like the movie, thought the movie looked terrible, are curious about how and why people don’t like it, or, most importantly, want to read about aesthetic techniques and how they relate to anime in general, please continue.

I want to really talk about animation, visual direction, and adaption techniques, and I want to use Kuroshitsuji: Book of the Atlantic as a negative example, because I soooo wanted to love this movie and ended up really disliking it.

For the most part, this post is just me getting something off of my chest, because I feel like there’s this grand misunderstanding held by people who didn’t like the movie about why the movie looked bad.

I just disagree with the consensus so strongly that I...I have to make a post about it. Because every review I’ve seen of this movie mentions how just the cgi is bad, or it just looks like they didn’t have enough money amiright?

I just think it is so much more interesting complicated than that.

Lots of text under the cut.

I’ll just get the basics out of the way: the cgi does not look well integrated and some of the background faces are derpy.

Moving on.

Part 1: Something to keep in mind:

Anime movies tend to look better than weekly anime tv shows because they are given both more time and a higher budget. This is why so many people thought it was unfair that A Silent Voice was up for Best Animation in the Crunchy Roll awards.

This is kind of unimportant but I would like you to keep it in mind while reading the rest of this post.

Part 2: What does good animation even mean?

I’ve heard a defence for the movie’s lacklustre animation is that it looks like all of the money went towards the fight scenes, or that the fight scenes make up for everything.

I’ve seen the fight scene between Sebastian, the reapers, and Undertaker a few times and I’ll admit, there are a few nice cuts early on with some very dynamic dodges and attacks, but after that it’s a lot of easier techniques, like held poses, slow motion falls, cut aways, frame movement, etc. The fight scene as a whole I would (personally) consider to be pretty “meh.”

This might sound kind of harsh, but even if you totally disagree with me and think the fight scene looked great, that just means it looks nice.

That fight scene is not especially well animated.

What takes up the most time and money in animation is the amount and detail of movement (key animation). Look at any important fight scene from FMAB, or BNHA, or the early episodes of Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. Those big fight scenes have a lot of key frames and details, and they all have wwwaaaay more key animation than the big fight in BotA despite being weekly tv shows.

One Punch Man is a great example because the animation in that show is fucking stellar and the director straight up said that the budget for One Punch Man is not much higher than a typical tv anime budget. Time and skill are the more important factors.

So, not speaking from the perspective of visual appeal, but from the perspective of animation quality, the big reaper fight scene in BotA isn’t that good.

Even the scene everyone raves about, where Lizzy fight all of the zombies: there’s a nice cut of her steps and a cool shot where she stabs one of the zombies in the head from above, but her sword then turns into a flash and we don’t see many details involving aim or choreography. Her stabbing them through the hallway also doesn’t have any real choreography other than her running and spinning once. After she stops to talk to Ciel, the scene gets a little more dynamic with more complicated moves, but it’s shot from far away and still has few key frames. I’ll admit I think it still looks kind of cool and maybe better than how it looked in the manga, but I don’t even think it’s close to the level of quality that’s in a lot of Bones shows.

Anyways, even if you’re in the majority camp and think these scenes look good, compare them to any of the shows mentioned above and you’ll see that even if they look good, they wouldn’t be especially difficult or expensive to animate, and aren’t impressive from a technical standpoint.

Part 3: Make a collage with those cut corners

Shifting focus a little bit, let’s talk about Higurashi.

Higurashi is one of my top 10 favourite shows (I highly recommend it if you’re not too squeamish). This show also looks awful. Like, really awful. There’s barely any movement, the characters are off model almost 100% of the time, and it has a very simplistic art style.

Despite being outright ugly, Higurashi still visually impresses me more than BotA because of one very simple, yet very very important fact:

The director and animators are trying their best.

Check out the scene in this gif set (gore warning). There’s a shadow silhouette, repetitive movement, and not much detail in the eyes, so it’s not technically impressive in terms of animation, but the way that the screen shakes when the bat lands, the lower angle used to put Keiichi in a dominating position of the frame, and the colour blur expressing the fact that this is both very emotionally intense and set at a different time make my brain say “ah yes, thought was put into making this scene look good with limited resources.”

Simpler yet is this scene, where it’s just two characters standing and talking while being atrociously off model. But the way they’re placed on the screen (ie parallel but opposing) is both cool visually and thematically relevant. It’s got a nice colour pallet, too.

Higurashi likes to play around with visual perspectives. This scene (violence warning) has no animation in the first gif and repetitive, fast movements in the second, but it takes the perspective of a man about to be beat to death with a baseball bat, which still makes it feel tense.

There’s another top fucking notch scene where someone is digging their own throat out with their finger nails, and instead of showing what would be a difficult scene to animate, they have a zoom in on the character’s back from the perspective of an impending threat that may or may not exist closing in on him and it’s terrifying despite the fact that nothing is animated.

Directing choices like these are extremely common in Higurashi.

Another slightly less obvious example would be Princess Tutu (which is one of my top 5 favourite shows that I recommend to everyone). Princess Tutu has very very few moments of sakuga and lots of repeated animation and kind of inconsistent movement in some scenes.

It looks cheaply made and is not well animated, but literally no one gives a fuck because that show has beautiful character designs, beautiful colour design, and interesting/creative set pieces.

The point is it’s 100% possible to make a cheap as fuck, poorly animated show and not have it look terrible.

I guess this is just my opinion, but when I compare the visual direction in Higurashi and the art of Princess Tutu to the flat, poorly blocked, and underwhelming visuals that make up a lot of BotA, I grow significantly less impressed with it.

The production team stuck pretty damn close to the manga, but the manga looks good because the panels are highly detailed illustrations that are specifically designed to look good when they are standing still and in black and white. They are also placed on a page which controls the visual pacing and lets you fill in movement with your imagination.

Translating this directly into animation but taking out the detail and shading in the illustrations and having the movements look worse than they did in my imagination does...not...look as good.

Part 4: Adapt

Let’s say, hypothetically, that BotA had fewer resources than most anime movies for some reason (money, time, staff, etc.). Sure, I don’t know the behind the scenes details. I doubt this was the case, but it very well might be.

.......Then why did they adapt the source material the way they did?

The manga for Kuroshitusji is fucking gorgeous and has some really iconic panels. For example, check out this post comparing a beautiful panel with the same scene from BotA.

...Why? Why would you make it that way?

Is it because you think it’ll please the fans to keep it the same? Because you wanted to cut a corner and use the manga as a storyboard?

Because it sure as fuck wasn’t because it would look good in the anime adaptation.

If the director and/or animators wanted to do the same scene but with limited resources, they could have maybe cropped it so it focused just on the undertaker’s face and the girl’s face, and then focus on making that look pretty and/or detailed. They wouldn’t have to put extra time and effort into drawing a nice full body shot, but they could still have it look good.

I came up with that time and money saving idea in less than 10 seconds and I’m not even a god damned animation director.

This goes back to my previous point, where it can be possible to make a passible looking show with limited resources, but this movie opted for sticking to the source material even though they really couldn’t do it justice.

Which is fine!!!! Embrace stylism!!! Kill la Kill has some goofy looking fight scenes with cut outs and cheeky techniques, but it does it in a way that builds the environment of the show and works within that universe because it’s clearly a part of the style.

Heck, studio Shaft practically gets away with murder by embracing weird styles with some of their older, cheaper shows.

Those particular styles almost definitely wouldn’t work with BotA, but find your own! Adapting the source material means exactly that: adapt it. Change it in a way that makes it just as good, if not better, than the original product in this new format.

In fact, I remember 2 scenes I thought looked pretty cool in this movie: one where it’s showing how the bizarre dolls work and the animation goes all Madoka Magica, and one where it shows this shadowy version of Sebastian before he makes his contract.

Both of those scenes have a style that is unique to animation and were not in the original manga.

I mean I guess it’s somewhat admirable that they were trying to stick to the source material, but they just...didn’t do it well.

Part 5: Does anyone here know CPR?! Because we need to breathe some life into this movie!

LITERALLY ALL OF MY PROBLEMS WITH BOOK OF THE ATLANTIC CAN BE EXPLAINED IN ONE SCENE.

IT’S KIND OF INCREDIBLE HOW MUCH THIS SUMS IT UP.

So there’s this scene in the manga where Ciel thinks he’s about to watch Lizzy get eaten by zombies and is, understandably, pretty torn up about it, as seen here:

This is a really great panel: Ciel’s face is expressive, the sea water makes it ambiguous whether or not he’s crying or sweating, and it’s from a unique angle that ensures his face and desperately reaching arm are both in the foreground.

Here’s the same scene in the movie:

Ciel’s face is less expressive, the angle is a lot simpler, and minute visual details are straight up omitted.

It’s like “yeah, we’re practically using the manga as storyboards*”

*unless the panel is like, hard to draw or expressive to the point where it might look off model.

I feel like the studio was deeply afraid of using animation that was too off model for reasons I don’t understand. Maybe it’s because they were afraid that the characters would look too unattractive but like...

it’s okay to have a character look a little fucked up if they feel a little fucked up.

Returning to Higurashi: that horror series has become famous for its highly emotive facial expressions.

Check out Rena’s furious face in the fourth gif of this set.

Or Rika’s super fucked up expression when suffering intense harm.

Or the sheer intense terror in Keiichi’s eyes in this gif and this gif set.

Like sure, the show looks like garbage and has lots of other derpy, off model faces, but they clearly had an idea of what they were going for and how to use animation as acting.

I feel that maaaybe the production team for BotA confused looking ugly (having faces distorted by emotion) for looking bad, but that’s 100% speculation.

Part of my reasoning for that speculation is in the following scene:

So, in the manga/BotA, Sebastian and Ciel run into Druitt, and the scene plays out like a well timed joke when Druitt asks them how they know him and they go like this

and it’s funny.

The exact same punchline is in the movie but it looks like this

like, the idea of the joke still comes across, but the expressions aren’t as humorously exaggerated and the joke isn’t as funny as a result.

This is also a scene where I don’t want to hear any “this scene looks bad because of money” arguments because drawing the simplistic expression from the manga would have been easier and less time consuming.

Again, let’s look at the comedic scenes from Higurashi:

This particular style probably wouldn’t look good in a Kuro adaption but the idea is that you can deform facial expressions for the sake of joke and sometimes it will make the joke funnier.

The point is also that Higurashi is a really well directed show despite being poorly animated. Can you tell I’m pushing Higurashi?

Please do not misunderstand this point: BotA for the most part has fine facial expressions that communicate the desired emotion. It’s fine. My point is that they probably should have been more daring with their creative choices to make certain scenes more emotionally/comedically effective.

In fact, part of the appeal of animation as a medium is the ability to play with reality through drawings.

Or just, you know, just draw a kid looking sad from a nice angle.

Conclusions:

Kuroshitsuji: Book of the Atlantic is obviously not the worst movie ever. In fact, there are quite a few scenes with good animation, good framing and competent direction.

(Ooh, I should have mentioned this earlier, but there is a legitimately good cut where Sebastian and Ciel are reaching for each other and it shows blood appearing before you see Seb get stabbed. This was a good choice and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it was not in the manga.)

I can totally see someone saying this movie looks good, and that’s a perfectly justified opinion, I just strongly disagree when looking at the overall product and how it compares to the manga and pretty much every other decently made show/movie.

I’m just upset because this arc in the manga is amazing and the most cinematic, and it clearly was not adapted to its full potential. And now it probably never will be.

Please let the impossible happen and let Bones or Madhouse get the rights for the Green Witch arc and make an amazing adaption. Pleeeaaaassseee.

When I die I want A-1 Pictures to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.

That being said, if you have not seen this movie and (for whatever reason) are dead set against ever reading the manga; give this movie a watch. The story’s utterly fantastic and it’s a...watchable...movie.

But here’s the moral of this whole post:

Book of the Atlantic does not look bad just because it looks cheap. .

Book of the Atlantic looks bad because it looks bad.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Tal-- *passes out*

#kuroshitsuji #black butler #book of the atlantic #higurashi no naku koro ni #text

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britneyshakespeare · 6 years

Note

12, 19, 25

12. a song by an artist who’s from where you’re from (town/city/state/country)

hmm. Whenever I think of Boston I think of that infamous Dropkick Murphys song used in the trailer for every crime thriller set in my apparently oh-so-charismatic hometown. I honestly have no idea what I think of that song from a critical standpoint. It makes me feel like I’m lying, in a fetal position, in the middle of Fenway Park on the baseball diamond being kicked repeatedly in the stomach by Wally the Green Monster.

Okay, now that my standup bit is out of the way, I’m uhhh actually gonna go with Hangin Tough by New Kids on the Block because it’s an unironic BANGER

19. the last song you had stuck in your head

Fuck. This should be so easy to recall and for some reason I’m having trouble with it. I often don’t realize when a song’s stuck in my head unless it’s really, really stuck in there. I think it was Girls by Rita Ora which I only listened to because I was fascinated (read: weary) by all the recent discourse which I think is mostly… tedious. On all sides. Rita came out though so I guess we’re all happy now. I usually don’t listen to her but eh I found it as a song pretty tiresome and uninspired.

25. a song with a great music video

I don’t usually watch music videos. I love the medium of film but if it’s not actively apart of an already established film/play, I don’t demand much from music videos. I guess I really love the Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend video from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) that a lot of people tend to extract from the context of the film and for some reason see as the genuine, authentic Marilyn Monroe but I ranted enough about the public’s perception of her in 2014 when my not-really-a-phase Marilyn phase really took off. It’s just so actually iconic and GPB is one of my favorite films from that decade, and one of my favorite creative properties, I love the creator of the original comic strip and Broadway musical Anita Loos (the first SCREENWRITER of any kind, let alone female screenwriter but male film snobs won’t tell you that because they likely don’t know it themselves), I love the cast of the film, I love the humor, I love the characters. It’s all very dated but in a charming way. It’s delightfully superficial. How can one not become enthralled?

Other than that, uhm… Legit music videos. Oh shit I was about to say the Can’t Buy Me Love video but that’s also from the A Hard Day’s Night movie, shit. Maybe… I don’t know. I honestly don’t. The… uh. The Emperor’s New Clothes video was pretty cool I guess??? I’m so out of date with these things.

send me music asks

#thanks nancy yer a doll #sorry for goin the hell off #u asked good questions #or maybe im just a good answerer #pavlovers #dianswered

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equivvitch · 7 years

Text

Fassathon: A Summary (Part I)

So, this summer, in the year of Our Lord 2017, I decided to do something stupid and unnecessary, as I do, by watching every single theatrically-released movie Michael Fassbender has been in thus far. Every single one. I dubbed it the Fassathon and didn’t rest until I was finished. (I know a lot of his early career was in television and in television movies (trust me I know the only thing I have to type in my search bar is “im” and his IMDb page pops up automatically) and given more time I’ll probably watch some of those but for the sake of not having to watch like seven more movies I granted myself that leniency.)

All in all, I’d say it took about two months. In total I believe I watched 24 movies, having already watched five beforehand (the new X-Men trilogy, Shame, and Jane Eyre) for a grand total of 29 damn movies (full disclosure, one was a bonus which you’ll see eventually but whatever). Some of them were actually ones I needed/wanted to watch but a lot were….not.

In any case, for the sake of posterity and making myself feel better about being a dumbass, I decided to write up some kind of summary piece about it, so that’s what this is. It got fuckign long so it’s gonna be divided into three parts: two just reviewing the movies and one with some summary thoughts.

This is part one, but first, it wouldn’t be a post by me without eighty disclaimers so let’s get that out of the way first:

This is all subjective obviously. Keep in mind I had to watch all of these so a lot of times I tended to compare them more to themselves than films as a whole. I tried to see the big picture after the fact but when you have 28 films to watch you tend to get hyper-focused on the task at hand. Also I’m not a film critic. I’m just an asshole and a dumbass, a dumb asshole if you will. I am interested in film theory but that means about jack since I have no formal education in it.

It should also be noted that a) Fassbender’s performances in these movies were almost uniformly excellent. The man can carry a movie on his goddamn back and often does if required to do so. This was noted consistently to the point of it being funny in the reviews of each movie. b) A lot of these are British movies. They’re not Hollywood. Just…..pointing it out. And c) I’m 1000% attached to some of these films/franchises outside of this “challenge.” X-Men in particular and also Jane Eyre I’m invested in deeply so that might affect my ideas.

That out of the way, without further ado, some reviews, thoughts, and recommendations:

X-Men: First Class (Erik Lehnsherr)

Rating: 8/10

Quick Summary: At the height of the Cold War, Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr meet under unlikely circumstances and form an even more unlikely bond. They end up with a common goal in defeating a ghost of Erik’s past, Sebastian Shaw, who is determined to cause nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union in hopes of destroying all humans and making way for mutant rule. The two set out and put together a team of mutants to help combat him, but push their relationship in the process to an unfortunate breaking point.

Some Thoughts: I have watched First Class so many times you have no idea. Understand, I once did a full rewatch of this movie for the sole purpose of fact-checking a post that was talking about how many times Charles says “Erik” throughout the movie. I sat there and tallied them by rewatching the entire thing. I love this movie to pieces, so I really have no ability to objective over it. Because of that I do know its flaws pretty well, trust me. It has issues (coughs about the ridiculous awful romantic subplots), but I really do think it’s a strong film and an interesting start to this quasi-reboot. Ultimately it’s a movie about the relationship between Erik and Charles, so that is its strongest point. There are some big shoes to fill, considering Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan had the roles first, but McAvoy and Fassbender do a great job with it. It was stated in interviews that McAvoy was cast first and then they made the guys going out for the role of Erik read with him to cast a chemistry instead of a person and it shows. It really is shot like a love story, especially when the B-plot is an explicit romance between Hank and Raven. In my opinion it’s a fun ride, watching everyone meet and use their powers, train together and learn together. The ending is not that happy and I always shake hands with movies that dare to do that, especially big films like this (see GotG 2). It can be silly and frustrating at times, but after Last Stand I feel like we could only go up. I know some people really don’t like this movie which? I guess I’d like to hear from someone who doesn’t to understand why. That being said, Armando deserved better. Fuck his nonsensical death.

Warnings: Montages? Also some violence. Not a ton but what’s there sticks in your head.

Recommend?: Yeah! If you like superhero movies this is a pretty solid one.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (Erik, but this time in the 70s, and with less turtlenecks and more scarves)

Rating: 9/10

Quick Summary: (This plot is so convoluted I’m going to have to be vague otherwise this could take years.) In an apocalyptic future these robots called Sentinels are murdering everyone, particularly mutants because at one point a guy named Dr. Trask got ahold of Mystique’s DNA and used it to make them indestructible. The always wonderful and patient Logan gets sent back to the past to try and stop this from happening. There he finds Charles in a terrible, drug-induced spiral having lost everything and has to attempt to get him out of it so he can help find Raven who’s gone rogue and wants to kill Trask for his experimentation on mutants. In the process they join up with Erik, courtesy of Peter/Quicksilver, which doesn’t go well, which no one could have ever seen coming. The whole thing comes to a head when Raven has to decide whether to become a murderer and risk an even darker future or let Trask walk free and go against what she believes in.

Some Thoughts: I remember so clearly sitting the theatre and seeing the first preview for this, turning to my family and joking about the really stupid title. Like “Days of Future Past? What kind of title is that?” It’s up there with Back to the Future in terms of dumb titles, but is somehow pretty much acknowledged as the best of the current three, alternate timeline movies?? In spite of its ridiculously convoluted plot, it’s a really solid film and has great character development for two of the big players, Charles and Raven. Wolverine acts as a familiar foundation and point of view for the story and grounds it as he often does. Charles has to learn to stop trying to control those around him and move on with his life despite past losses, and Raven has to make a pivotal choice for her character. The scene at the end where it’s flipping between the future and past and all the original cast and the new cast are fighting at the same time is really cool, and the character arcs are strong and satisfying. The only one who doesn’t change much is Erik, but arguably First Class was his platform for character development or, more accurately, regression. He doesn’t do anything that helpful (which is….true to form) but watching him lift an entire fucking baseball stadium, fly it through the air, and drop it on top of the White House is pretty rad. Also Quicksilver is incredible holy shit the way they do his scenes is iconic. Kind of confusing maybe, but it also retconned almost the entirety of the original timeline in a genius move to destroy Last Stand once and for all. It’s usually called the best for a reason.

Warnings: Wolverine gets stabbed by stuff and shot a lot but that’s par for the course

Recommend?: Yep! But you might want to have watched some of the other movies first. Watching it with no background would probably be….too much.

X-Men: Apocalypse (Still Erik/Polish(?) Lumberjack/Poster child for Man Pain™)

Rating: 5/10

Quick Summary: An ancient mutant named Apocalypse (or En Sabah Nur if we’re going to be technical) awakens in the midst of the 80s (because there must be a 10 year gap between each movie it’s a rule). He used to rule but now he doesn’t and he’s mad so now he wants to destroy the world or some shit and rebuild it in his image. He does this by getting together his four horsemen (get it) including Erik who is inexplicably in Poland with yet another family that gets fridged. The X-Men find this out and get together to take him down.

Some Thoughts: I can (and have) ranted about this movie for literal hours. I have some serious personal gripes with it and it annoys me to the point where I’ve blown it out of proportion so keep that in mind. That rating might be a bit low but this movie is mediocre at best. I guess the core of it is because the X-Men conflict is a lot more interesting when they’re up against some government entity or society as a whole rather than just some random villain, at least to me. This movie also does not have a strong foundation like the first two did, no solid grounding point. In XMFC it was Erik and Charles’s relationship, in DoFP it was Wolverine being the POV character, but in this we really have nothing. The stuff with the kids is probably the most interesting and I hope they do more of that in the upcoming sequel. It has a few good moments (Quicksilver’s scene and Erik dramatically throwing down giant steel beams in the shape of an “X” in front of Apocalypse as he switches sides to save Charles and co stick out in my mind) but it tends to drag otherwise. There are about twenty plots going on and it takes forever for them all to connect. The romantic subplot crap is a pain in the ass and dragging Moira back was particularly idiotic when you realize they once again gave her nothing to do in the final act except overlook Charles completely violating her personhood in the first movie by wiping her mind without consent so she can get back together with him. The shit with Erik’s Poland family is stupid even if it’s done well. Magneto of all fucking people does not need more man pain for god’s sake. Lawrence is so checked out she really might as well be a phone recording as Lindsay Ellis points out in her Loose Canon series on YouTube. The only one who really had any interesting development was Storm and I hope they keep on with her because she’s a really good character. There’s just not much there for me, or what is there isn’t of any value. I really hope the next one is better. (Probably a far-fetched hope but a girl can dream.)

Warnings: Lazy writing (and comic-book-movie-typical violence)

Recommend?: I mean you probably want to watch if you’re watching the series. It’s not the worst X-Men movie. I’m probably a little harsh on it. There are the Wolverine sequels. Still, if you’re not that invested, it’s probably not worth it.

Jane Eyre (Rochester)

Rating: 11/10 10/10

Quick Summary: Jane Eyre has lived a fairly unfortunate life, having been put under watch of her cruel aunt after her parents’ deaths and consequently sent to a boarding school that beats its pupils into submission, but remains strong in spite of this. She finds herself a new job as a governess at Thornfield Hall and soon meets its master, Edward Fairfax Rochester. The two begin to talk and form an interesting relationship in spite of their large age difference. Jane begins to fall for her employer, overlooking his rough exterior to the person underneath. Rochester reciprocates, but all is not well. Jane discovers her lover is hiding a dark secret and must decide whether to be true to her love for him or to herself.

Some Thoughts: I WOULD DIE FOR JANE EYRE TBH THE DAY NETFLIX TOOK IT OFF WAS A TRAVESTY. Really, though it’s such a good movie and very loyal to the book. It’s a period piece, but it’s very different from something like Pride and Prejudice, a lot because Jane is such an interesting character. I love her and Mia Wasikowska does a great job. Rochester is a bitch, but…..he’s a bitch with a good heart. Realistically he’s supposed to be kind of….not good looking? So casting Fassbender might have been counterproductive, but it does mean he has to compensate for his incredibly square jawline which can’t be hidden behind that shit sideburn beard with his acting, which he does very well. His charisma kind of helps to smooth over the fact that Rochester can be standoffish to viewers that aren’t prepared for him. He is no Mr. Darcy. The chemistry between the two is great and the story is really enthralling. The music is gorgeous and the ending is satisfying. Well-shot, well-paced, loyal to the original, just a great adaptation all together. It’s not a happy movie, but it has a happy ending. I really have nothing but good things to say about it. Please give it a chance if you’re even a bit interested.

Warnings: You might cry/a little blood

Recommend?: Yes!

Shame (Brandon)

Rating: 10/10

(Quick note: if you’re like “wow you sure aren’t harsh on these movies” listen this was back when I was actually choosing the ones I wanted to watch….so yeah….these are mostly good ones at first. There are definitely some bads on here….don’t you worry…)

Quick Summary: Without giving away everything: Brandon is a pretty normal man struggling with a sex addiction which he basically refuses to acknowledge at the beginning of the movie. His lifestyle is disrupted when his younger sister Sissy comes to stay at his apartment without asking him first. The rest of the film is about their complicated and mildly toxic relationship and Brandon dealing (and not dealing) with his addiction with mixed results.

Some Thoughts: This is one of those movies like Brokeback Mountain that just kind of….sticks on you. I felt that way about Silence of the Lambs too where you watch it and then you can’t really forget about it. Fassbender has worked with Steve McQueen who directed this film three times, this being the second, and they make a great pair. McQueen loves him some long takes and he does them well. His style of directing is unflinching to the point of it being uncomfortable which works well for the type of stories he likes to tell. It’s a very quiet movie, not much dialogue, but it really hits home. This really is one of Fassbender’s best of performances in my opinion. He can do a lot with just his expressions and it really shows here. The dynamic between him and Carey Mulligan who plays Sissy is really poignant. I probably could never do it justice with words alone. It’s difficult to watch, but worth it. It’s one of those movies where the protagonist doesn’t really grow, pointed out very blatantly here. True development hasn’t taken place, at least not yet. Whether or not you think it actually will after this is left up to how optimistic you are for the characters and the story.

Warnings: This is rated NC-17 for a reason. They do not shy away from anything and they do not cut you a break by easing into it. Translation: if you’re disinterested in becoming familiar with some very particular bits of Fassy’s anatomy I’d steer clear. Also strong warning for themes (and fairly graphic depictions) of self-harm.

Recommend?: I would never tell someone to watch this movie, but I would definitely advocate for it. Read the description (that a professional has written, not just mine fff), check the warnings, see if you’re up for it. This is one you need to choose to watch, not be forced to.

Macbeth (Macbeth)

Rating: 6/10

Quick Summary: Oh god, I still don’t remember the plot of this thing…. I swear I read it once but you’d be better off reading the Spark Notes or something. It’s based on the Shakespeare play (obviously) where this dude named Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth go around killing people to gain power because some weird ladies in the middle of a field told him he’d be king. Everyone fucking dies at the end per usual due to really ridiculous loopholes. A grand old time, as always, with Mr. ‘speare.

Some Thoughts: Listen pal I got food poisoning trying to watch this damn movie THE CURSE OF THE SCOTTISH PLAY IS REAL. But really, it’s kind of what you’d expect? All of this is coming from me, an idiot, who doesn’t remember the play super well and is shit at Shakespeare, so bear that in mind, but?? It stuck to the original pretty well. It’s played dead-ass straight, so know that right now. There is no humor in this movie ever; it’s completely serious. Also impossible to understand because it’s Shakespearean English in Scottish accents. You’d be better off with a background knowledge of the play I think. That said, the visuals in this movie are absolutely gorgeous holy shit. The ending fight scene is incredible. That alone made it worth the watch for me at least. Marion Cotillard who plays Lady Macbeth is amazing as well. What a great performance. It’s a solid film. You need to accept its no-nonsense attitude to get into it, but otherwise it’s fine.

Warnings: It gets pretty bloody, but not overly so.

Recommend?: Not really, unless you really like the play or have a good knowledge of it already. It’s beautiful, but a little too serious for the casual viewer. I assume that’s why its reviews are kind of mixed.

Prometheus (David)

Rating: 6.5/10

Quick Summary: Two scientists discover a series of ancient drawings, all of which are very similar despite appearing hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart. They believe this might be a clue as to how the human race came to be, a path to our creators. They set out on the Prometheus to investigate a planet they believe to be the origin of these so called “engineers.” Things go awry as one might expect when they find the planet is already inhabited, but not by any “engineers.” Moreover, several crewmembers have secret motivations of their own for coming along which doesn’t really turn out well for anyone.

Some Thoughts: I feel like a lot of people don’t like Prometheus because it’s a think-y movie. It’s not really an action-packed thriller like other movies in the Alien franchise. This was the first in the franchise I’d ever seen so I didn’t really go in with those kind of expectations which I think was to my benefit. If you go in looking for answers you’re probably going to not like it, but I just sort of went to have a good time and pretty much did. Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw is really great. I really enjoyed her as the main character. There are some really good actors in this movie and I think they do a good job. I loved Idris Elba’s character a lot for example. It’s a beautiful film as well. Fassbender plays David, the resident android of the ship. It was interesting to watch him play a robot because he is, to me, a very emotive actor and this had to be more restrained. I don’t remember the movie super well which probably speaks to it just being an average sort of film. It’s not great, but it’s not as bad as some people seemed to think it was. Just go along for the ride and it can be a good popcorn flick.

Warnings: There’s one really graphic surgery scene that was hard to watch, but otherwise it’s (compared to the other Alien film on this list) not too bad. It really is more introspective than bloody. Also, maybe obviously, there are aliens in this movie.

Recommend?: If you’re into sci-fi thought-pieces, sure. Just don’t go in expecting a masterpiece.

Alien: Covenant (Walter and David, yes both)

Rating: (completely subjective) 8/10

Quick Summary: A group of forgettable, idiot crewmembers who are all inexplicably married for no reason other than a desperate bid to get you to care about them in any way (you won’t. trust me. they’re so stupid you’ll probably rooting against them eventually) are piloting a ship called the Covenant with 2000-some passengers and a lot of embryos on a colonizing mission. Along the way they intercept a strange transmission coming from another habitable planet they hadn’t noticed before which is much closer and decide to investigate. Once there things take a turn for the worst. After several deaths and the completely avoidable destruction of their ship, they run into David who’s been living alone on the planet for ten years after the Prometheus crashed there. They soon learn that they would have been better off braving the planet and waiting for rescue alone.

Some Thoughts: Listen I went into this movie completely expecting it to be horrible. This really was the one that started it all, where I decided I’d watch all of them. I wasn’t going to watch it because it looked ridiculous, but then it was available to rent and I was curious. In all honesty, I really only went in to see with my own eyes how and why the actual hell Fassbender was playing two characters which at some point kiss, so that was part of it. Ultimately I ended up really liking it. Now mind you, this is not a good movie. It’s not. The cast is forgettable and stupid to the point where you just want them to die already and get it over with. The only person I even slightly cared about was Daniels, the main crewmember character you follow. People die without any pomp and the movie is riddled with clichés. That said, it is a lot more like what I expect an Alien movie usually is. There’s a lot more fighting of aliens and a lot more blood. So what’s with the rating? Really it’s completely subjective, but if you know me and watch this movie you’ll probably understand. Let’s just say I have a very specific type of character I tend to like and this movie delivers.

Fassbender carries this gotdamn movie on his back half the time and somehow pulls off the ridiculous scenario of him being the two different robots. The interactions between Walter and David really were some of the more interesting parts of the film for me, completely ridiculous as they are (“I’ll do the fingering”). If you can just suspend your disbelief and go with it I insist that it can be a good time. My favor of the movie really comes from my opinion of David and I think that’s what will make or break the movie for you. It was a ballsy choice of protagonist, and when you realize that I think the forgettable main crew is a little more justifiable. Big kudos for the ending as well, at least from me. It ended exactly the way I wanted it to, and I ended up being invested in who I needed to be invested in. It’s a stupid movie, but I do think you can have fun watching it if you’re in it for the right stuff (namely the fassbots).

(Also, people are not happy about the fuck-million more Alien movies in the works but hear me out…. I have a great pitch idea….what if with every new movie we just double the number of Fassbenders…… so there’s four and then eight and then sixteen all the way until we just have infinite Fassbenders….. listen this is a great plan Mr. Scott please hire me as script consultant from now on)

Warnings: This is a lot more of a horror movie than Prometheus. It’s bloody and violent, and yes there are more aliens. Also it is really stupid. Also warnings for that sweet, sweet ‘bot-on-‘bot action ;)

Recommend?: I mean….not really. Again my opinion is so subjective here that it’s worth a grain of salt. If you do, you need to watch Prometheus first because you need to form an opinion of David.

Hunger (Bobby Sands)

Rating: 5/10

Quick Summary: Without me sitting here for like a half hour looking up a lot of proper names and dates (which I’ve already done once when I was watching the damn thing), this a movie about a hunger strike led by a man named Bobby Sands. It takes place in a prison in Northern Ireland. A group of people called the Republicans who are fighting against being part of Britain and want one united Ireland are being arrested for political acts and are protesting in any way they can. This begins with bathing and clothing strikes, and eventually leads to a hunger strike when this accomplishes nothing.

Some Thoughts: So this is a critically-acclaimed movie and I know people really like it. I guess I can see why but compared to McQueen’s other films I didn’t think it was super impressive. It’s his first project with Fassbender and in a lot of ways it feels like an early-career film. It has a lot of pacing issues. I read reviews saying it’s two movies in one and it really is. As an American (and therefore a dumbass when it comes to conflicts in other countries because our history classes here are Shit) it was sort of a confusing movie to watch just because I didn’t really have any background knowledge about what was happening. I was doing a lot of googling throughout to catch myself up with the conflict and acronyms etc. It’d definitely strike more of a chord with someone who knew about it beforehand. It is a prison movie and it’s difficult to watch because of that. There’s a lot of mistreatment of prisoners and just kind of gross stuff in general. I was whining at one point about the hunger strike not starting until like…20 minutes before the movie ends but I see now why it didn’t because you’re basically just watching Fassbender starve to death from that point on and it’s Not Fun. There are impressive parts of it. There’s a long take of a conversation between Bobby and a priest where he explains his idea of starting a hunger strikes that is, I shit you know, seventeen fucking minutes long. It’s crazy. There are other long takes in the film but they’re not always used super effectively. This can cause the movie to drag at times. The use of sound in the movie is also really amazing. It’s very quiet usually, but picks its loud moments and picks them well. Overall I didn’t get much out of watching it, but that’s just me. I didn’t think it was worth the difficult watch.

Warnings: It’s unrated but I bet it would be R or even NC-17 if it was. Lots of disturbing shots of violence against prisoners and behaviors of the prisoners themselves tbh. There’s nudity as well, but it’s used as humiliation mostly. As usual, McQueen’s style of filmmaking is unflinching and watching someone starve to death isn’t fun.

Recommend?: Not really. McQueen has better films you could watch. Unless you’re personally interested in the conflict at hand, I’d skip it.

Frank (Frank)

Rating: 10/10

Quick Summary: An untalented aspiring musician named Jon suddenly stumbles across the opportunity of a lifetime to play in actual band when they find themselves out a keyboard player the day before a performance. Jon lends them a hand and is accepted into the group in spite of some friction with most of the members. They invite him back on what ends up being year-long trip into the woods to write a new album. While living with the band, the Soronprfbs, Jon gets to know the members better, as well as their many quirks. Notably, there is Don, the manager who seems level-headed if somewhat depressed, Clara, who doesn’t take Jon’s being there very well, and Frank, the apparent leader of the band. Jon takes a special interest in Frank who appears to be the heart and soul of the group. In spite of wearing a giant fake head at all times, he’s very friendly, encouraging, and strangely inspiring. As they work to write their album, Jon begins to record and post their progress on social media, gaining them a new following of people amused by their bizarre antics. This new popularity ends up landing them a bigger gig than they’ve ever had before, but comes at the cost of risking the band’s identity and solidarity.

Some Thoughts: Frank is an amazing movie. If someone wasn’t interested in Jane Eyre but wanted a Fassbender rec, I would 100% give this one. I love this movie to pieces and I’m so glad I watched it because I was initially on the fence with it. In fact, I liked it so much I watched it twice within my rental period, and have now purchased it. If you’re looking for something close to a comedy on this list, this is it. I kind of describe it as if Wes Anderson directed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, threw in a strong lesson about mental illness, and bumped up the rating a bit. This movie is hilarious and wonderful and poignant. The message is a really good one and one I don’t think we hear a lot. It’s a good commentary on the relationship between art and mental illness, and it’s done respectfully for the most part. Fassbender as Frank is kind of incredible. You don’t see his face for the majority of the film, but he still gives an amazing performance. I think it shows how talented he is as an actor that he pulls this part off so well. You’re intrigued as much as Jon is by him, or at least I was. The humor is a little out there and some of the themes may be off-putting, but I really do think this is one to see. Maggie Gyllenhaal as Clara is fantastic as well. It’s a difficult part but she pulls it off so wonderfully. Domhnall Gleeson as Jon gives a decent grounding point of view character as well. It’s funny and touching and goddammit maybe someday I’ll watch one of these movies without crying but that ending hit me right in the heart.

Warnings: Themes of self-harm and mental illness are present. They’re not played as a joke, but they’re there.

Recommend?: Yes please watch this movie I beg of you it deserves all the praise

Fish Tank (Connor)

Rating: 5/10

Quick Summary: The movie is a coming-of-age story of sorts for the protagonist Mia. Mia has a difficult home life with a neglectful and often abusive mother as well as a penchant for causing trouble. Having been kicked out of school she is directionless which only furthers her spiral downward. Her only true passion is dancing, but she prefers to do this privately. One day she meets her mother’s latest fling, Connor. Unlike the others, however, Connor seems there to stay. Mia begins to interact with Connor and the two form a relationship. Connor is kind to both her and her younger sister, treating them with respect and parental affection they do not receive otherwise. Connor encourages Mia’s hobby and leads her to begin searching for a career in dancing, helping to turn her life around. Things take a turn when Mia and Connor overstep a boundary in their relationship and this leads to Mia discovering that Connor was not what she thought he was.

Some Thoughts: I’m very…ambivalent about this movie, so I don’t probably have a lot interesting to say about it. It seems to me that Fish Tank is a part of a very particular genre of movie about a specific part of the British lower class, making it difficult to relate to for someone who hasn’t experienced that way of life. I watched another movie called Beautiful Thing a long time ago that was part of this genre as well, and that’s what Fish Tank reminded me of more than anything else. It seems to be characterized by poor, crowded living conditions and abusive family dynamics more than anything else. The characters struggle to get by and are generally mean-spirited to everyone they encounter automatically. It can make for a bitter watching experience, even if it is realistic. Mia is a somewhat believable teenager. Since this is a British movie about hip-hop dancing however and the actress playing Mia has…little to no actual dancing skill, any parts of the movie that have to do with this dancing can be embarrassing to watch. You really have to accept that it’s stupid and move past it to watch the thing.

The relationship between Mia and Connor is…troubling which I’m sure it’s supposed to be but it’s never resolved. Some of the scenes in the movie are disturbing as some in Hunger. One of my biggest issues with the movie was there really seemed to be a conversation missing. The end of the film felt like it was lacking a crucial interaction between the two and it made the ending fall pretty flat, at least for me. I know people like this movie and it’s award-winning but I couldn’t relate to it in any meaningful way. It left me feeling conflicted more than anything else. I have no strong or final opinion on this movie. I do respect that it had a female director, but I feel as though I very clearly wasn’t its intended audience, so its impact on me was minor at best and non-existent at worst. There are some nice cheesecake shots in it of Fassbender I guess. I think it still wins for best ass shot afdjks;lj

Warnings: Some disturbing character behavior, especially from Mia. Abusive family dynamics and physical child abuse are also present. Also statutory r*pe. Also some really embarrassing excuses for hip-hop dancing and general cultural appropriation shit that comes from a British movie about hip-hop.

Recommend?: You can try it, but I wouldn’t advocate for it. There are better artsy films to watch unless you’re actually in the target demographic and think you might like this sort of movie.

Inglourious Basterds (Lt. Archie Hicox)

Rating: 7/10

Quick Summary: When she was young, Shosanna’s family was murdered by Nazis hunting down Jewish families who had escaped to France. Now, as a young woman, she finds herself with the opportunity to get revenge. Meanwhile, Lt. Aldo Raine has formed a group of rogue Nazi-hunters called the Basterds, infamous throughout Germany for their lack of restraint and ability to avoid capture. His team is hired by the Allies to help with a plot to hopefully take out all the big political figures in the Nazi party, including Hitler himself, in one fell swoop. It just so happens these two plans are meant to take place in the same place, on the same night.

Some Thoughts: This is the first Tarantino movie I’ve ever seen and I do think it was good for me to at least see one. I was glad to see the movie itself too, actually. It was one on here I just needed to watch outside of this thing. I enjoyed it for all it reveled (as expected) in gore occasionally. I really loved Shosanna. Mélanie Laurent did an excellent job with her and she was easily the best part of the film for me, though I did enjoy Brad Pitt’s shenanigans as Aldo. Fassbender has kind of a bit part in this one which was a little different, since he tends to steal the spotlight otherwise. It really wasn’t my favorite performance of his. It was a little unfocused, though that might be because his character is just a plot device. Kind of a shame but in true X-Men fashion all he did was show-up, fuck things up, and then make his exit. Ah well. It’s well-shot and a good time, if a little long. The blood was there, but not excessive. Maybe a good choice if you, like me, wanted to see one of these movies, but were a little nervous about the violence.

Warnings: Typical Tarantino violence, I presume. Really, it’s just a few focused shots of it, but there is scalping in this movie, as well as some mutilation and gunshot wounds. I whipped my hand up to cover the screen more the once throughout and I’m pretty decent with blood.

Recommend?: Sure. It’s a pretty solid film and last time I checked it’s free on Netflix.

Centurion (Quintus Dias)

Rating: 6.5/10

Quick Summary: In the something-or-other A.D. the Romans are up somewhere near Britain trying to expand the empire, as one does, but are having trouble with the native peoples of those lands called the Picts. The Picts keep decimating their armies, as they do with Quintus Dias’s men. The Picts take him in rather than killing him because he speaks their language, allowing him to escape and meet up with another regiment. Together, they try again to attack the Picts and again are defeated handily. This time the Picts take their general of sorts. Dias and a small group of men are the only ones to survive and attempt to rescue him, but ultimately fail. Afterwards they begin their attempt to escape to safety, all the while being hunted by the Picts.

Some Thoughts: So I fully expected to hate this movie. When I saw this was the other one on Netflix I was Not Happy, but? It kind of surprised me. I think really it did a couple small things well and that turned my favor of it. It really isn’t that great of a movie, with a lot of narration and not a ton to say, but it’s certainly not offensive. It turned into a survival movie rather than a war movie which I greatly preferred. They also weren’t super over the top with the romantic subplot which was….SHOCKING. Usually, in my experience with the Fassathon, if there can be a sex scene there Will Be A Sex Scene, but not here. They meet a cool witch lady along the way who takes to Quintus, but never is it obnoxious, nor does it waste time with it. It was a breath of fresh air tbh…. I’m probably patting this movie on the back for little things too much, but I really do think it could have been a lot worse. It’s fine. I don’t really know who the target audience was supposed to be but it might be good for a night when you’re bored and can’t think of anything else to watch. You get to watch Fassbender run valiantly and stupidly shirtless through the snow if nothing else.

Warnings: It can get bloody, but not overly so. Also mentions of past sexual assault, but nothing shown.

Recommend?: Eh…like I said. Maybe for the night you’re flipping around and there’s nothing on. Decent popcorn flick, probably not worth spending money on.

Trespass Against Us (Chad Cutler)

Rating: 3/10

Quick Summary: Nothing I could write will make this movie’s plot make any damn sense but I’ll try anyway. Basically there’s this family called the Cutlers who are….Irish tent-people and also a weird kind of mob family with a patriarch named Colby. They live in this little trailer park circle and commit crimes to get by. The plot basically revolves around Fassbender’s character Chad Cutler trying to get out from under Colby’s thumb in order to give his wife and two children a better life. Unfortunately, it seems again and again that he’s already dug his grave and there’s nothing to do but lie in it.

Some Thoughts: So this is a weird movie. The whole conceit is weird and another one that you just kind of have to go with to be able to watch it. Its problem is that it doesn’t really have an arc or a narrative that goes anywhere. If it really had wanted to do something it would have needed to allow Chad to make any progress in his attempts to get away. The dialogue is full of slang and really difficult to understand at times. The whole dynamic of the family is sort of confusing and it’s never explained, just thrust upon you immediately. There are some good interactions, notably between Colby and Chad. The parental relationship between Chad and his son is interesting too, but it really just doesn’t go anywhere with itself. I got a little caught up in the emotionality of it watching it, but looking back I can see how flawed it is. I really don’t see what the director was getting at. Also the religious overtones are strange and didn’t do a whole lot. Just kind of unimpressive if still nice to look at sometimes.

Warnings: Animal death. A lot, actually, and often purposeful. Disturbing behavior, especially one scene where a man is stripped and humiliated. It was surprising and difficult to watch.

Recommend?: Hard pass. Skip it.

300 (Stelios)

Rating: 4/10

Quick Summary: Gerard Butler leads a group of 300 dudes against a gigantic, vaguely racist depiction of the Persian army.

Some Thoughts: I have nothing original to say about this movie, I’m sure. I was……not super happy to find it on here honestly, so I did my best to just enjoy it by making fun of it. Most people know what 300 is like. It’s got some interesting visuals, but it’s definitely one that looks pretty and does as little as possible. Mostly it’s a male power fantasy interwoven with quite a bit of racism, particularly in the portrayal of the Persians. It’s saturated with slow-mo shots and rousing speeches that aren’t really that important to anything. It’s a good one to watch on a bad movie night probably if you don’t mind some of the gore. This was Fassbender’s first theatrical appearance if I’m correct and he’s fine. I guess one plus-side of this movie is that everyone’s practically naked the whole time and super buff so that can be fun to ogle if nothing else. It is what it is.

Warnings: Body horror, lots of blood, and war stuff. Tiddies? Racism? Scottish yelling?

Recommend?: It’s your life buddy. It’s probably one to see once so you can rag on it in good conscience.

Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs)

Rating: 9/10

Quick Summary: A movie shot in three parts showing a dramatized version of the events before the release of three of Jobs’s products, focusing in on his relationship with his coworkers as well as past lover and daughter.

Some Thoughts: This is an excellent movie. It’s another one I’d readily recommend to anyone. The scale of the script is unheard of, meaning it’s super dialogue-heavy but you don’t notice at all. It’s completely absorbing. The performances are top-notch all around. This is another one of Fassbender’s best performances. He sinks into the role completely and does a phenomenal job. Kate Winslet is equally wonderful and balances Fassbender’s Jobs well. I really knew nothing about Jobs before watching this movie and I don’t know how much is true and how much is dramatized but I think that shows that even someone who knows nothing can enjoy it and find it interesting. The politics of it all were particularly wild to bear witness to. It’s a great character piece and it deserved the nominations it got in my opinion. I really liked Jobs’s relationship with his daughter as well. I don’t know how they managed to make a movie full of mostly talking so exciting but they did. I also think they did a great job of not idolizing Jobs at all, nor vilifying him. They walked a fine line and wrote him so he seemed truly human rather than a historical figure. That’s hard to do but they nailed it. Once again, I have little bad to say. If you’re not interested in Jane Eyre, Shame, or Frank here’s another good option for you.

Warnings: The IMDb parental advisory page said something about there being some sex/intimacy stuff but I never saw anything which makes me Highly Suspicious

Recommend?: Yes! Give it a chance!

(cont. in pt. 2 / pt. 3)

#fassathon #shut up alice #holy shit an actual post?#that's never happened before #listen i know this is long as shit #and no one's going to actually read this #but i spent a long-ass time on this #and i wanted to actually put it up for posterity #really i'm just proud of how hard i dragged the counselor #i'm sure there are grammatical errors in here but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#i had to wrap this thing up somehow #it's 1000% self-indulgent but....i don't Care #if i had anywhere more appropriate to post this i would but....#where tf else am supposed to put this crap

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dippedanddripped · 4 years

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What makes sneakers special is that they empower kids to own a piece of their favorite athlete’s greatness. By slipping on a pair of Air Jordans, you can, to some degree, “Be Like Mike.” And as an adult, a new pair of sneakers can connect a person with fond memories from their childhood.

Yet as sneakerheads mature — as do their disposable incomes — more “adult” objects like furniture and cars often take a front seat to the fleeting nature of fresh kicks. It still doesn’t make owning a hard to find, next-level expensive, vintage Ferrari (say, MJ’s 550, which inspired the Jordan 14) any more likely, but as streetwear evolves, its references to the newfound interests of its customers must, too. That’s just business. In 2020, there’s a way for these more adult shoppers to scratch that itch for both cars and clothes, thanks to a new wave of auto-inspired fashion from the likes of Aimé Leon Dore, Supreme, L’art De L’automobile, and Period Correct.

The connections between streetwear and car culture are undeniable. In Supreme x Lamborghini, which dropped in April of 2020, you see the same kinds of things you’ll find at a cars and coffee meetup on a Saturday morning in Scottsdale, Arizona: The instant visual signifiers of taste via logos, the one-upmanship, and the desire to collect rare, hard-to-find things. Beyond that, there’s the fact that both cars and clothes can be aesthetic extensions of their owners. The guy who loves vintage Patagonia fleeces and J80 Land Cruisers evokes different sensibilities than the man who rocks Saint Laurent and drives a Lamborghini Urus. And while both are items built primarily as commercial pieces, with the right combination of passion and taste, they can ascend to the level of art. Engineering, materials, and performance are all critical factors in both clothing and automotive design, whether it be the latest Air Jordan or Aston Martin.

Bryan Calvero, who founded the car-inspired label Period Correct (itself a reference to the various parts and pieces of a certain model) in 2013, puts it simply: “If you like good design, you’ll like cars.” He calls cars “the best form of art,” and in 2018, collaborated with McLaren on a collection to honor the brand’s F1, which debuted in 1993 and held the record for fastest production car in the world for over a decade. The things that make it great — its timeless design, its center driving position, the fact that it was the first fully carbon fiber body ever made on a car, and its 24K gold engine lining — are the same kind of innovations that sneakerheads or fashion obsessives glorify in new collections.

Calvero represents the guy who’s a fan of both worlds, and demonstrates how loving style and cars can spawn out of a similar sensibility. At the same time Calvero was developing a love of cars, he was also getting into Polo (he proudly calls himself a ‘Lo Head), and cites Ralph Lauren — one of the world’s greatest designers and greatest car collectors — as an inspiration for how to mesh the two passions together.

“I appreciate the level of detail in his collections, and I saw that we have so much in common,” he says, claiming how throughout the years, he’s even spotted his idol at the world famous Pebble Beach Car Show. Lauren lives the aspirational lifestyle that his collections evoke, and that lifestyle doesn’t stop with clothes. Living the Ralph Lauren way means bringing that love of The Good Life into every corner of one’s existence, including the home they live and, of course, the car they drive.

Similarly, Dunhill, the British menswear label that was founded in the late 19th century by creating accessories for new motorists, is interested in tapping into the 360 degree visual identity of car enthusiasts. Its Spring/Summer 2020 collection, titled “Automotive,” was conceived by creative director Mark Weston to honor the brand’s heritage and enhance the lifestyle of who he perceives to be The Dunhill Man.

“It is more about building an identity. I work a lot with what I kind of call design codes, which are references that talk to either a certain material or whether it speaks to a certain item or piece,” Weston says. In other words, because cars can become such a part of a person’s lifestyle, they serve as useful references when trying to discover who an ideal customer is.

But because not everyone can emulate Ralph down to his fleet of Ferraris, clothing that simply references this lifestyle is now a viable alternative as well as more readily available, thanks to the rise of streetwear. And his influence on people’s love of clothes and cars can be felt in collections of some of the hottest labels today. Take Aimé Leon Dore, which in February 2020 collaborated with Porsche on both a capsule collection and a one-off, Loro Piana and Schott leather-lined 964 Carrera 4, are a 2020 update to the kind of 360 degree brand experience that Ralph Lauren ushered in. While ALD’s taste level is arguably unmatched, it allows its customers to buy into its love of cars without expecting them to drop $100,000 on a vintage car, but rather through an embroidered logo on a coach jacket or a T-shirt that gets right to the point, i.e. “Porsche / Aime Leon Dore / 964 Carrera 4.”

Then there’s Paris-based L’Art De L’automobile, which since 2017 has taken the cars x clothes lifestyle to a literal level, operating as both a clothing brand and a high-end dealership for rarified, expensive models. Having a fleet of old Mercedes and BMWs shows people that L’Art de L’automobile’s founder, Arthur Kar, is not just an enthusiast, but a real-life collector. That authenticity is imparted upon graphic T-shirts, sweatshirts and caps. Kar explained in a recent interview that at the heart of his label is a desire to combine authentic car culture and fashion, even if he doesn’t see himself as a designer per se. In a world where fans are constantly looking for a reason to call bullshit, that kind of honesty only helps his cause.

Despite the quick-hit nature of a T-shirt with a manufacturer’s logo, being a label that references cars in 2020 doesn’t necessarily translate to the simple formula of automaker logo plus garment equals hype. For its Fall/Winter 2020 runway show, Off-White used split-in-half-cars placed vertically to look like they were growing out of the ground as set pieces. Goodfight, an LA-based contemporary label whose Spring/Summer 2020 collection is titled “My other car is a Singer,” is inspired by cars, but expresses it in a much more metaphorical way.

“You don’t see any logos, per se, because when it came to silhouettes and everything, I was thinking more on the level of how the car is put together,” says designer Calvin Nguyen, who in his daily life drives a Subaru WRX. “I was more interested in what kind of materials they use, how they’re put together, as opposed to the overall aesthetic of the car.” Still, the resulting collection of modern suits, baseball shirts, coach jackets, and other minimalist staples, signal how automotive design can cross over into the world of fashion in less obvious ways.

To a certain extent, streetwear and fashion are constantly on the hunt for new niche cultures to reference, and cars are just the next in line. But nostalgia often informs those references, and right now, with streetwear’s earliest adopters entering their 30s and 40s, it’s the perfect time for car references to take center stage. There’s no denying that these beautiful, expensive, somewhat dangerous objects have a unique way of captivating the soul — and why, like sneakers, they tend to stick with us from the time we’re children. There’s also a sensory experience that comes with cars, and the fact that they (quite literally) move you. And thanks to movies and Hot Wheels and the Internet, we can tap into that nostalgia for cars even if we’ve never driven them or seen them in person.

“Whether it is the sixties, seventies, eighties — I think people have a connection, whether you see it in iconic films, […] something like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, when you’ve got a Mustang there and there’s a real sense of […] character from it… or it’s The Thomas Crown Affair,” says Dunhill’s Mark Weston. And these clothes, whether they reference a model or maker we love, or simply have that automotive touch baked into their fibers, remind us of that roller coaster feeling we had in our dad’s convertible, a poster on our wall, or a time when things were simpler.

Ultimately, what connects fashion and cars boils down to some combination of yearning for the past, engineering interest, and cars’ potent ability to do a lot of a brand’s world-building for it. Cars evoke cool, and allow a brand to leverage that in infinite ways, both through overt references to specific makes and models as well as tapping into what being a car-lover means. Even though enthusiasts still aspire to own their dream car, for almost all of us (especially those living in cities like New York), it’s probably not going to happen. But buying clothes that allow us to feel closer to that dream than ever is a viable alternative — at least for the time being.

#supreme #Supreme x Lamborghini #period correct #Aimé Leon Dore #L’Art De L’automobile #streetwear blog #cars

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her-culture · 7 years

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Color and Casting

Colorism (According to Oxford’s Online Dictionary): prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.

The “Brown Paper Bag” Test:

Black individuals with skin lighter than a brown paper bag would typically gain more privileges than those who had a darker complexion compared to the color of a brown paper bag. This test was mostly used in the 1900s to determine if a black person looked white enough to gain acceptance or admittance into the upper class part of society.

Color has been something that has separated many things - crayons, laundry, and especially people. While discrimination against people of color is often talked about and brought up on various platforms, it does not seem like there is enough being said about colorism within non-white communities, like the black community. As a dark skinned African-American woman in a colorful family, I’ve grown up hearing many sides of how black people tend to receive different treatment based on the shade of brown they are. For those on the outside looking in at this issue, I am going to explain the effects of colorism in two contemporary films.

Hollywood in general often receives a lot of controversy when it comes to who they choose for roles, especially in films that are supposed to receive a lot of attention when they hit theaters. One of the many reasons for why a movie’s casting can be controversial is when a role based on an actual person, a well known fictitious figure, or even an individual who ideally is supposed to be of a certain ethnic background- is portrayed by an actor who does not accurately fit the description. Whitewashing has been a big hot button topic lately, as there is a belief that movies will sell better if there is a well known white actor involved. There are far too many examples to highlight, but a few that caused major discussion were Emma Stone’s portrayal of an Asian woman in Aloha (2015), the three principle actors in The Last Airbender (2010), Ben Affleck portraying a Mexican-American man in Argo (2012), Tilda Swinton as a Buddist monk in Doctor Strange (2016), and Scarlett Johansson playing a character from Japanese anime in Ghost in a Shell (2017).

To many, these examples are clear indicators of of casting done incorrectly, but there are also examples with films featuring stories of people of color where the ethnic background is accurate but not the right skin color. Why is this so important? Well to start, many of the key issues and conflicts within these plots tend to stem from not just the background, but the appearance of the character. This is too crucial of a detail to get wrong, especially in films that wish to showcase a portrait of someone’s black experience. Skin color is a character in itself. This can not be overlooked, otherwise the story will lose some important value in its message. No matter how well an actor can transform themselves for a role, acting the part is really half of the battle.

NINA (2016)

Director Cynthia Mort, best known for writing for the sitcom Roseanne , released this film as her directorial debut. This biopic of the late, great singer and artist Nina Simone was already eleven years in the making, and many critics had voiced that it should never been released, as not enough research and care was taken with handling the story of an individual who was more than just a black woman with the blues. Mort had spent a day with Ms. Simone in the early 90s and didn’t know herself that it would one day be the inspiration for her first film as a director. She was no doubt in awe of the singer and wanted to do something to honor her memory. It is evident that Mort did her best to research many aspects of Simone’s life, but I believe that the biggest plight of her life was lost in translation, simply because Mort could not relate to the story. As a white woman, she did not consult nearly enough black women, or even those who knew Nina well in general to be able to authentically capture what really brought out the emotion behind Simone’s voice.

In 2012, it was announced that Zoe Saldana, a well-known black but light skinned actress, would take on the role of Nina Simone in Mort’s film.

This is where any potential for the film finding positive acclaim had diminished. Nina Simone’s daughter, Simone Kelly, had even mentioned publicly that Saldana was not the best choice to portray her mother. Because Nina Simone grew up in a time where she was told “her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark,” casting a woman who couldn’t naturally relate with that struggle took away a great deal of what made Ms. Simone so unique and powerful. Simone’s family and estate denounced any ties to the film and were very vocal about their outrage towards it. A white director sticking to the decision to use a light skinned woman (who in the picture above had to paint her face in order to appear to have ‘dark’ skin) is indirectly a display of anti-black racism and further proof that the closer a black individual is to whiteness, the more desirable they are. Nina Simone’s life and legacy completely defied this notion, yet this is how she is being represented and shown to audiences.

I do not doubt that Mort’s heart was in the right place, but I cannot forgive the fact that her mind was not. Those close to Ms. Simone and those who know well of her personality would agree that even Nina herself would be insulted by this if she were alive and knew that this is how she was being shown in a film.

The trailer of the film Nina:

I personally cannot bring myself to watch the actual film based on what I’ve seen in this trailer alone. As a dark skinned woman, I know that I would certainly be offended if I knew a light skinned woman would be portraying me, since a huge part of my identity is based around how I learned to love the skin I’ve been given.

MARSHALL (2017)

Chadwick Boseman, a prominent black actor and dark skinned man, portrays Thurgood Marshall on screen. Boseman has actually got a great track record with representing the black community well. His filmography includes other starring roles in biopics such as 42 (2013), where he played the hall of famer baseball player Jackie Robinson and Get On Up (2015), where he portrayed the wild and complicatedly brilliant singer and musician James Brown, not to mention The Black Panther coming out this year in February, where we will see him and a mostly black cast portray heroic individuals who are also African royalty.

This makes me wonder why Boseman wanted to take on this influential figure when, unlike for his roles of Robinson and Brown, he does not carry a believable resemblance at all to the subject.

Hudlin is known for making many cult classics for the black community such House Party (1990), Boomerang , (1992), The Great White Hype (1996), The

Ladies Man (2000), etc but this will be is first time debuting a cinematic biopic. His motivation behind creating the film is pretty clear, but one might question what exactly made him decide on Boseman for the lead role. Boseman is clearly great at portraying black icons, but that doesn’t mean he needs to do it even when he has little to no likeness to the person at all. I guess I do appreciate that unlike the Nina film, Boseman did not have to wear makeup to make his skin appear lighter in order to portray Thurgood Marshall. That would have been another case of insult to injury.

Some would say this is a very minor setback, as it is predicted that Boseman will deliver another amazing performance in this role, but that is not what I’m doubting here. I’m more so worry about Thurgood’s story.

I’m sure that the plot of this film will be very engaging and the story within will have very moving and poignant aspects, but the actual Thurgood Marshall could not do a lot of what he did at that time if he was as dark as Boseman is. It feels weird for me to celebrate the release of Marshall like I did with Selma (2014) and other works that put revolutionary black leaders on the big screen, when I know already that a big part of what made his life what it was, is the fact that he had light skinned privilege. Marshall would definitely pass the brown paper bag test.

My first reaction when I first heard that this film was in the works was confusion rather than outrage. Surely there are great light skinned black men who could have taken on this role, just like there were deserving darker skinned women who could have accurately depicted Nina Simone.

Part of me understands that we’ve seen so much brilliance from Boseman that maybe it’s just assumed that he can play nearly anyone - but that is a very slippery slope and I would hope that Boseman doesn’t repeat something like this in the future. He is a great talent who doesn’t always need to be the lead, especially in a film based on a light skinned black man who used his advantage to help him get ahead in the rankings of the justice system.

I take biopics very seriously. The actor chosen to play the role, as well as the story and the key elements in the plot need to be on point, otherwise I find myself very disappointed. You are essentially showing the life and legacy of someone to people who may or may not know of that person, but feel as though they will learn more about them through watching the film. Some of the best biopics I’ve seen that beautifully capture their subject’s character and adversities are Selena (1997), Ray (2004), and Frida (2002). Not only was the casting nearly spot on, but the performance of the actors along with the story of these individual's lives comes off as authentic without me having to think too hard about how accurate the details are while watching it. I’m not claiming that these are perfect depictions, as it’s very difficult to have a completely truthful biopic and there is always some point of bias being shown, but I have always thought those those three did an incredible job of focusing more on the person rather than their politics.

I do actually plan on seeing the movie Marshall. Even though I am not satisfied with the casting since it will already make the story partially inaccurate, it still presents some type of empowerment for black people.

The trailer for Marshall:

The Nina film is unnecessarily dramatized to make Ms. Simone a lost soul, who needed the saving of a kind man to stay by her side even as she grew bitter. Maybe that display of Mort’s version of Nina Simone wouldn’t be that terrible to see if it was an actual dark skinned woman, who was communicating this struggle to overcome oppression along with her personal demons. Having a light skinned woman try to explore that while wearing brown paint is unfathomable. It continues the history of darker black women being treated as jokes, not even worthy enough to play women that were naturally dark like themselves on screen. Though this may appear as a double standard, having a dark skinned individual take the place as a light skinned one does not come off as damaging. It seems that black audiences are still getting used to seeing themselves in mainstream films in a positive light. Rarely do we conquer and outsmart our oppressive white counterparts, or the system which oppresses us in general without facing some fatal retaliation or lesson that will carry on to cause further pain among our our people. Marshall is triumphant. A celebration of the black mind and I will look forward to that more than it revealing a new perspective into the life of Thurgood Marshall.

As an upcoming filmmaker myself, works like these make me more cautious in how I will chose to represent people in the stories I create, whether they are based on real individuals or not. The skin color of a person does not just impact how they will be viewed by others around the world, but within their own communities - and of course, themselves. A message will be sent to the audience merely by the person chosen to lead the story. This alone is a key factor in making a work of film either feel relatable or out of touch with reality.

People should be judged by their content, not by their color; but characters on screen need to at least be the right color in order for us to judge the content of the film or how that person’s life is being visually shown to us.

Head image sourced from http://everydayfeminism.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/dark_girls_caro_page-bg_29012.jpg

#race #colorism

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