Goddd the interviews with Max Hubacher and Frederick Lau for Der Hauptmann (2017) are sooo disappointing!! "Yeah I think Kipinski is a character that has this kind of kill or get killed mindset that turns him to violence".... what. He's bashing war prisoners heads in for fun. Where's the self defense in that. Are we talking about the same movie

The Spreadsheet Digest | Vol 29

Howdy folks!

This is the final Spreadsheet Digest of 2023! I started the spreadsheet back in May as a way for me to keep up with everything I read. Basically, I was having trouble finding fics I had read so I could reread them or I was getting two chapters into a new series before realizing I'd already read it. So I did what I do and I made a spreadsheet about it. Then I felt like other people might benefit from a searchable list of fics. Then, and I don't know why, I thought people might want to know what I thought about the stuff I was reading. And here we are - 29 volumes and 34 weeks later.

Sorry for long intro! This week I have 16 fics for you (Frankie, Joel, Max Phillips, Javi P, Ezra, Dieter, Dave York, and Jack/Whiskey). Summaries and Tags provided by the author where applicable - sometimes I filled in some stuff.

You can find my masterlist here and all my fic recs here

Recs under the Pedro!

My Way - Frankie one shot by @goodwithcheese

Summary: Frankie's working on his truck... you interrupt him Tags: PIV Sex, Frankie uses his words, aka "you know he talks you through it," frankie is bossy Thoughts: if he uhhh "uses his words" this much in the series this is technically set in, I do believe I'll be reading that. This was HOT. Like absurdly hot. Lemme be you car girl, Frankie

Cocoon - Joel series by @secretelephanttattoo

Summary: A short ode to Joel's coat. / a bath with Joel Tags: Angst and intimacy. 1 reference to blood and allusion to canon typical violence (nothing is described) Thoughts: God i love little intimate moments like this... wrapping yourself up in Joel's coat, washing the bad day out of his curls... I am SICK! Someone let me hold this man, please.

I'll Leave a Light On For You - Max Phillips one shot by @oonajaeadira

Summary: Max has reservations when it comes to love, and for very good reasons. Tags: Angst. Character death. Allusions to the atrocities of war and its lasting effects. Max is a vampire. Traumatic soul memory. Me assuming I know anything about French culture of the 1930s. Thoughts: This is beautiful. Just absolutely stunning. I have a fascination with the concept of past lives, and I adore the way it's written about it here. There are some really interesting takes on it here with Max being a vampire. Also, side note, this fic made me cry. It's that soft angst that you don't expect to make you sob, but holy shit. When it hit (you'll know it when you read it) it hit. I was devastated. And then because it's adira and "we do soft here" it ends sweet.

Once in a Blue Moon - Dieter one shot by @whatsnewalycat

Summary: You're the only person working when a Christmas blizzard rolls into town and snows you in with a notoriously difficult guest, Dieter Bravo. Tags: one shot, slight dub con elements (power imbalance, isolation, alcohol) although both parties are enthusiastically consenting, hotel guest x hotel staff, blizzard, Minnesota because that’s my best friend, dieter generally being an ‘if you give a mouse a cookie’ ass bitch, kinda enemies to lovers???, Christmas, loneliness, palm reading, food and eating, cannabis, conspiracy theory mention, fluuuuuufffff, smut, dirty talk, a dash of conflict, painting stuff, power outage, poverty mention Thoughts: Aly has this way of writing Dieter that is like she knows him in real life. He feels so personal and real to me in her stories. I think I say this every time I talk about her fics, but my Dieter would not exist without hers. Anyway -- this fic is wonderful. Dieter has all that silly druggie boy charm he always has, there's a really interesting inclusion of him having PTSD from working on the movie from The Bubble and a really interesting way that he's dealing with it. It's got perfect vibes for us christmas haters too. I loved this so much.

Jingle Balls / Dashing through the ho - Frankie series by @idolatrybarbie

Summary: Santa Frankie porn... that's it. That's the fic Tags: santa kink???, cockwarming, cum, like so much cum, unprotected vaginal sex, unethical use of a mall Santa Village, semi-public sex, dirty talk and pet names, mentions of free use. / santa kink again, free use, spreader bar, creampie, come eating, facefucking, throatpie, anal sex, degradation, cum, pet names (honey, little girl, sweet girl, baby), praise, CUM AGAIN GUYS LIKE IDK WHAT HAPPENED HERE. Thoughts: This is mostly my fault and I refuse to apologize for it

Galletita - Javi P one shot by @gasolinerainbowpuddles

Summary: Your sister and brother-in-law have enlisted your help with their small business while they await the birth of their first baby. You help with the cafe and find yourself face to face with a new customer whose appetite might have met its match in you. Tags: big boi Javi P is hungry and a little cranky, you like to bake and Javi likes to eat, belly kink, feeding kink, probably bad Spanish, we’re playing fast and loose with timelines, canon, and everything in general, so just forget about timey wimey boo boo wah wah and enjoy the story lmao Thoughts: I do, in fact, need a big boy

Devour - Ezra one shot by @frannyzooey

Summary: Falling for Ezra on the Green Tags: harvesting violence, mentions of gore and blood, mentions of cannibalism, love as consumption and all the visuals that come with it, so much fucking and filth and ass play and cum eating it isn’t funny Thoughts: It was a gift for me, so I really probably should not be so amazed by how much I love this fic. But oh my god, dude. Love as consumption, freak nasty smut, Ezra being Ezra, bi!Ez, the Din/Ez hints (I'd like to know more about that), it's all perfect. I will never stop being obsessed with this

Tear You Apart - Dieter one shot by @psychedelic-ink

Summary: it's the 70s and your friend invites you to an underground club where one of your favorite musicians is playing: dieter bravo. Tags: innocence kink, mild corruption kink, backstage sex, piv, dirty talk, weed, oral + handjob (male receiving)obsessed with rockstar Dieter. Thoughts: I'm surprised I haven't seen more rockstar Dieter. This was hot, filthy, and just... in the words of the man himself perfect.

One Man Show - Dieter one shot by @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

Summary: Dieter gets himself off! Tags: male masturbation, use of sex toys, anal fingering, butt plug, sex tape??? i guess Thoughts: I'm loving this solo session concept so much. Dieter filming himself!!! for no reason!!! is so hot. Everything about this is so fucking hot. I want him to send me that video...

I am a nightmare, you are a miracle - Joel series by @party-hearses

Summary: After your two year relationship with Tommy Miller ends, Joel takes you in — and it’s home like you’ve never quite known before. Tags: slow burn, explicit (eventual) smut, language, infidelity, alcohol, age difference, soft!joel, no cordyceps outbreak, sarah doesn’t exist (sorry), tommy stans don’t come for me. Thoughts: I have been very intentionally not reading WIPs and waiting for them to be finished, but I fucked up. I was scrolling the dash and frannyzooey recc'd this and it caught my eye and I just didn't even check if it was finished. But I regret nothing. Ch 4 is coming soon, I'm manifesting it. I fucking love Joel in this and I'm super intrigued by reader's uhhhh mommy issues and the way that those manifest.

MASTERLIST BINGE INCOMING | @brandyllyn

To sell your love for peace - Javi P series by @brandyllyn

Summary: You are Javier’s newest informant. You’re not his usual type but he’s willing to make an exception. More than one. Tags: smut, sex work, canon typical violence, javi being a moron Thoughts: I adore a lovers to idiots to lovers story... and man is Javi an idiot. The characterization of Javi here is perfect. Protective!Javi is very canon and I love seeing it in fic. Also, I don't normally go for miscommunication tropes (they tend to annoy me) but this was perfect. I loved every second of this story.

The Serpent Under It - Dave York one shot by brandyllyn

Summary: Dave is very good at his job Tags: Canon typical violence. kinda dark yo, soulmate AU Thoughts: I don't typically read soulmate AUs, but I actually read several of brandyllyn's this week. They're very different from the normal trope. This one broke my heart and it's less than 800 words.

To perish twice - Javi P series by brandyllyn

Summary: You can feel when your soulmate comes. Tags: smut, soulmate AU, Javi being an idiot, male masturbation, piv sex Thoughts: This is what I mean... you can feel when your soulmate has a fuckin orgasm??? What a concept. This was really hot, kind of funny, and had just the right amount of angst.

Cross My Heart - Ezra one shot by brandyllyn

Summary: While waiting at a clinic for the hope of a prosthetic arm, Ezra meets a woman who will change his life Tags: Talk of self harm / suicide but no one does it, discussion of medical procedures and prostheses, some use of ability based slurs by Ezra and others, canon typical violence Thoughts: We love a man who will threaten to murder someone's entire family for you... no seriously. I absolutely love Ezra's characterization here and I love the FMC's story AHHH. It's just a very sweet story... with a little Ezra flair.

Into the Shade - Ezra series by brandyllyn

Summary: Why would anyone fake having a soulmate? Tags: Ezra being Ezra, con man!ezra, soulmate AU, smut, Ezra x OFC smut, Ezra x reader is in there though. Thoughts: Yet again, the typical soulmate concept has been turned on its head here, and I love it. I also adore the flores animae - the particular soulmate mechanic in this fic. It's really interesting!

Dreams are Sweet Until They're Not - Jack Daniels series by brandyllyn

Summary: A crimson rose could only mean one thing. Tags: soulmates au, Jack being a slut, angst, smut, happy ending Thoughts: Okay last soulmates AU on the list, sorry. I went a little nuts. They're just so good. The ending of this one was so sweet, dude.

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My fics this week:

Something Sweet - Javi p x reader - You’re new to the team in Colombia and all alone on your birthday. Your partner, Javier Peña, decides to do something sweet for you. (fluff, smut)

Under Your Skin - jack daniels x javi p x reader - You’ve worked on Chucho’s ranch since you were 15 years old, grew up with Javi, loved Javi… He comes back after nearly 20 years to find you hooking up with a certain former secret agent. He’s jealous, for sure, but of who? (smut)

in the a.m. - javi p x reader - Between sleeping with informants and getting in bed with Los Pepes in the fight to bring down Escobar, Javier Peña also finds time to be with you. Wrestling with crippling self hatred, Javi tries and fails to keep his blood stained hands off of you. Based on some of my favorite Arctic Monkeys songs (smut, angst)

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Happy Reading!

Almost every American has thought about the prospect of a second Civil War. Considering the man hiding pipe bombs around DC last election year, it becomes clear why this would come to mind. Which is why this election season is the perfect opportunity to release a movie about a modern civil war written by an Englishman who quite apparently doesn't know anything about American culture, politics, or small unit tactics.

Alex Garland's Civil War is a movie about the fall of democracy as the US is shattered by a violent military conflict as its fascist President violates the constitution in order to retain power, but it actually wants to be a movie about a cozy witch in a small German village in the alps. Ok not really. This is a movie that promises to be about political violence in America but is really about War Journalism. It tries to do both and does none of them well. But first and foremost it's a showcase of regrettable AR furniture and trite culture war references.

After January 6th, 2021, I was discussing the Capitol riots with some right-voting blue-collar workers, and the most memorable takeaway from that conversation was being told "it was our turn." This one sentence told me everything about American cultural rage that this film completely misunderstands.

Every now and then I come across a film that's very good from a visual and structural standpoint but completely falls apart thematically. This is Civil War. Alex Garland knows how to make movies, and this is a solid film that knows how to position needle drops and position the camera to really Say Something About America. Except it doesn't do that last thing.

Politically, this is a film you could make if you fed the AI bot that writes Nancy Pelosi's campaign donation emails ten thousand hours of January Sixth footage and asked it to write an article for The New Republic. Close readings reveal that this is a film about Covid, particularly journalism, but Garland shoehorns the story he wants to tell about journo ethics Cloverfield-style into a much more complicated narrative. It's simply intellectual laziness to make a movie about a morally and politically complicated war and then handwave it away with a simple "it doesn't matter." You're releasing this on an election year! This is a movie that needs a spine! How does Micheal Bay have a more biting criticism of American presidential candidates in his movies than you do?

The movie isn't politically neutral necessarily. Nick Offerman looks exactly like a certain 45th president of the United States (he even dissolves the FBI). There's a proud boy/boogaloo boy militia committing war crimes. One of the main battles we see is fought in Charlottesville, a city that saw little fighting during the actual Civil War but is infamous for the 2017 murder of a counterprotestor at a confederate statue rally. And let us not forget the film's much-quoted "what kind of American are you?" segment so prominently displayed in the trailers. The movie displays the prototypical NPR host handwringing, and this level of political commentary only serves to make the film feel even more out of touch, made all the more lukewarm at the film's halfhearted play at neutrality in the pursuit of something that #makesyouthink.

The film is like Apocalypse Now! if Coppola really wanted to shoehorn in a thematically irrelevant main plot and never answer any of the questions raised by the much more interesting events that make up the movie's backdrop. It's like Children of Men if the director didn't really care about the atrocities his characters were witnessing as much as he just wanted to make a roadtrip movie. It's not bad, it's lazy, and this makes me angrier.

This is a movie that reminded me about Greta Gerwig's Barbie. A very well shot film with a solid director, great cinematography, and no idea what its message is. Except Garland didn't have a feel good montage at the end to save the movie for him. Just underwhelming combat. The only thing this film got remotely right about a modern American Civil War 2 is the fact that the Ford Excursion is the perfect vehicle to take into a war zone.

No matter how gorgeous the cinematography, don't let this movie fool you.

The White House isn't so cartoonishly simple to storm. Attack Helicopters would not be performing air support roles that close to buildings. M4 pattern rifles have a much sharper report. An abandoned JC Penny doesn't mean that America has fallen, it just reminds you that the Shopping Mall was never a sustainable business practice. The sniper scene is really good, I'll admit, but also not how any of this works.

This movie lacks the spine and the conviction to say anything real about the American Condition in any meaningful way other than "they own guns and experience cultural polarization," a take much too bland to be worth the price of tickets + popcorn.

Why I dislike the LotR movies

A few weeks months ago @acaseofsilverspoons​ asked me why I say I hate the Lord of the Rings movies, and I promised I would try to give an explanation. Sorry for the delay, I have a lot of thoughts and it has taken a bit of time to order them in my head and then I forgot about this draft.

Movie people following the newsletter: stop reading now. I am going to spoil the hell out of it. And even if you don’t care about spoilers, if you like the movies you’re probably going to get defensive and enjoy the novels less because of it. I don’t want to be the reason you enjoy Tolkien less. Come back once you’re done reading, I’ll be happy to discuss then!! ^^

Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the movies. I have a very weak visual imagination and I hated the design of the elves on sight, so I decided to avoid getting them as my default elves; and I react very badly to peer pressure, which means the more people tell me I need to watch them the least I want to. I still think I have enough information to base my opinions, but well. There you go. Can't tell me I lied to you.

The first, and main reason, I “hate” the LotR movies is very well summarized by this strip of the webcomic Weregeek.

The movies are good enough, and good enough adaptations, and enough of a cultural milestone, that people talk of them as if the movies and the novels were interchangeable. Tolkien was never exactly obscure, and it’s not like people are at risk of forgetting the novels exist, but a lot of people have seen the movies but will never read the books, and even people who are into the genre will read the novel after seeing the movies. So you have people who have only experienced the movies thinking they know all that there is to know, and people who have experienced both getting to the novel with the preconceptions of the movies (see all the people analyzing Frodo’s actions as effects of the Ring from day 1 in the newsletter, or people immediately assuming book!Denethor is an abusive parent... we’ll come back to that). I’ve heard people say “don’t worry about reading the novels, the movies are enough”. And they are NOT. They are very much NOT. Even if you think every single choice in the movies is justified and good, there were a lot of choices made. They’re not equivalent.

Let me expand on that under a Read More because believe me, this is going to get long.

Let’s start with the themes.

First of all: Lord of the Rings is not an action story. If anything, it is an anti-war novel. Even though most characters admit that violence is sometimes necessary, almost universally it is considered a necessary evil. We have Faramir, the closest to a Moral Compass Man we have, literally spelling that he doesn’t like war for itself, but only for what it defends. And the narration mirrors this: except for the Battle of Helm’s Deep, every battle is either skipped over (the Black Gate), told in retrospect (Isengard) or interspersed with sections about the grief it brings (Pelennor). And in all cases, we end them with lengthy descriptions of the people that died and the grief they caused. It’s hard to finish the novel going “oh, the battle of Pelennor was awesome! I wish there were more!” when the last thing you hear about it is three pages of obituaries. In contrast, the movies fall into the trap of wanting to utilize their shiny new technology and their great visuals for battle scenes, and end up making battles cool. I have lost count of the dudebros whose take on the LotR movies was “weren’t the battles awesome???”. And before you come for me with “but the text says”, to quote Lindsay Ellis, movies are a visual medium. If you make the battles the most visually appealing and fun part of your movie to watch, you can have characters have unending monologues about how bad war is, that’s not the message people are going to get from it. And if you make a LotR adaptation whose message is “war is cool and fun”, you’ve missed the mark by a mile.

Secondly, another big theme about Lord of the Rings is that in the end, it’s the small people that make the difference, and that noone wins alone. To quote Elrond, “you may find friends upon your way when you least look for it”. But the movies, in their (reasonable) quest to streamline the story to fit a movie runtime, choose to prioritize the more classically heroic characters and arcs, sacrificing the small people for the big flashy kings and warriors. Pippin and Merry’s contributions get pushed to the side, while Aragorn not only retains all his original plotpoints, but even gets a shiny new subplot that was only in the appendixes in the novel. And also everyone who isn’t a member of the Fellowship (and not even that.. we’ll get back to Gimli) gets their role changed to make the actions of our heroes more necessary. Théoden is under a literal spell that needs to be lifted by Gandalf, and has to be told how to do war by Aragorn; the Ents decide not to attack Isengard and have to be reminded of the stakes by the hobbits; Denethor is such an incompetent nutjob that Gandalf can hit him in front of his guards and nobody cares. I understand the urge to make the main characters more important,, but LotR has a very strong feel of people in the same danger uniting to fight together instead of fending for themselves; this way, the secondary characters feel less like allies and more like sidequests.

And that gives me a nice segue into another, less important but more annoying issue: the characters.

Noone who follows my tumblr will be surprised to discover that Pippin and Merry, especially Pippin, are my favourite characters. If you asked me to tell you what are my favourite scenes in the book, which parts I’ve re-read the most often, they would be A Conspiracy Unmasked, P&M’s meeting with Treebeard, Éowyn’s monologue, the passage with Pippin and Bergil, and The Scouring of the Shire. Do I need to explain more? Except for Treebeard and Éowyn, none of these scenes made it into the movie. Which is a crime against me, personally. But apart from being annoying to me because I like them, it also means that their entire character arcs (again, especially Pippin’s) completely disappear. Pippin has the most traditional coming-of-age story in the novel: he’s a teenager dragged in an adventure bigger than he expected who has to grow up and learn that the world is bigger than he ever imagined and some things are important, and who then comes back home all grown up and ready to fend for himself. By cutting both A Conspiracy Unmasked and The Scouring of the Shire, you cut both the setup and the payoff of his arc, and by aging up the actor playing the character, you turn him from a learning teenager to a bumbling adult. Is it important in the grand scheme of things? Not really; but every time I see a meme about how Pippin is an idiot I feel like punching a wall.

Denethor. I didn’t know it was possible to be this offended on behalf of a character I don’t even particularly like. When I first looked up Denethor meta I thought I had slipped into a parallel dimension for a while, until I discovered it was just that Peter Jackson had performed a little character assassination of his own. Book!Denethor is not a nice or an endearing character, but he’s not an easily hateable one either. He’s the leader of a country in perpetual war against an enemy way stronger than they are (he has probably been born already under the Shadow of Mordor, knowing he would have to lead his people against it since he was a kid). He is cold, and calculating, and shrewd, and he has sacrificed his humanity (and his family) in order to make the decisions he thinks need to be made. To put it bluntly, he’s a character type who would be a good (and successful!) guy in Game of Thrones. But because he is in a story whose core themes are empathy and friendship and compassion, he’s a tragic figure: when the grief of the sacrifices he was willing to make hits him, he has nothing and noone to lean on, and he breaks. From everything I’ve seen, Peter Jackson has decided to take his character in a more “abusive father” direction. And look, I’m not going to say book!Denethor was a good parent. He was not. But he didn’t just “love Boromir and hate Faramir”. It’s more complicated than that. He was sure of Boromir’s loyalty, while he feared that in a conflict situation, Faramir would side with Gandalf and not him. And as a general, that is a big concern. Also, from everything I’ve read, movie!Denethor’s military tactics are whack from day one, which kind of diminishes his characterization as a cold but effective general. But that might just be a question of filmmakers not understanding medieval military methods, which... fair, I guess. On a related note, what’s that about a scene of him eating a tomato?? Did they really give him a scene explicitly designed to be disgusting and unrelatable?? The quest to make Denethor more hateable, though, is not only a problem because of his character. His character choices bleed onto others. In particular, Boromir, Faramir and Pippin. If Denethor is an abusive nutjob, why is Pippin drawn to swear loyalty to him? Is he an idiot?? Boromir comes off as the favoured child in an abusive household. But the worst is Faramir. A few weeks ago someone who is movie-only described him to me as “Faramir is the brother of Boromir that is hated by his dad, right?”. And I don’t think I can explain my reaction to Faramir, fucking Faramir, being reduced to a wet blanket who looks very sad and does nothing while his dad walks all over him. Just give me that gif of a guy screaming into a pillow.

And lastly on the “character assassination” column, Gimli. I think I’ll leave @carlandrea​ take the mic on this one, they can say more than I could possibly, and better. All I’m going to say is that, from everything I’ve seen, the movies take one of the more well-spoken, dignified characters, and made him into a bumbling, crass comic relief who fits closer to a D&D parody dwarf than anything Tolkien ever wrote.

And now, let me end with some quick-fire complaints that wouldn’t be important if the ones above hadn’t happened.

What happened with the male elves’ design?? I understand holding a casting for “otherworldly beautiful men” is not doable, but why do they look like that?? And it’s not that they can’t do elves, Galadriel and Arwen look good! Were they scared to make them “look gay” if they were too pretty?? If that’s the case, why didn’t they lean into the “otherwordly” part of it and made them alien-looking? WoW elves look more interesting than that!!

Also, I need to have a serious talk with the wig department. Why do the elves’ wigs have no volume?? Why do they look limp and dead? Why is Elrond balding? What’s going on here??

While we’re on the topic of character designs, it’s a pet peeve of mine that the hobbits only have hair on the top of their feet. It looks more decorative than anything and I don’t like it.

Last complaint about the character designs, I promise: this is not a criticism of Elijah Wood’s acting. I have never seen him act, I couldn’t say. But Frodo is supposed to be a middle-aged gentlehobbit. Why is he played by a 20 year old skinny guy who looked like a teenager?? Why is Frodo not fat?? On that note, why is Sam the only fat hobbit? They are hobbits! They are defined by ruddy cheeks and round bellies!! Did the producers think a middle-aged fat protagonist would be too much for an audience to swallow??

I’m not sure if I got this right, but I think in the movies Arwen’s life is tied to Aragorn taking his throne?? Because if that’s true, wow, way to make her into a more active character in the beginning only to tie her entire existence to a male character’s story arc!

And while we’re on the subject of stuff I suspect but I’m not sure of, I’ve seen enough Éowyn takes with the same uncanny valley feel as Denethor’s to suspect they did something to her character. And if they turned her into a Hollywood Strong Female Character Who Don’t Need No Man (TM) I will bite someone.

Lastly on this category, I am very confused about the elves from Lórien who apparently appear randomly at Helm’s Deep. Is Lórien not being attacked in this version of events (again, reinforcing the idea that everything revolves around the main characters)? Where do they go after the battle? Did they come for two days and then go back to Lórien? That sounds like a stupid plan... And also, you are aware the Rohirrim are super fucking distrustful of elves, right, PJ? How the hell did Aragorn convince Théoden and Éomer to let a battalion of elves into the Helm??

If you’ve gotten all the way here, thank you so much! It got longer than I expected, which was already very long, so thank you for bearing with me! I am willing to discuss and debate all of these, as long as it is civil.

Review: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

 Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Rated PG for action/violence, rude humor/language, and some scary moments

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/12/review-puss-in-boots-last-wish-2022.html>

Score: 5 out of 5

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a movie I missed last year, which made it kind of annoying to hear so many people praising it to the heavens as one of the best animated films in years, not least of all because I'm the kind of guy who does not like spoilers. Flying down to Florida just in time to share a house with three little kids over Christmas break gave me the perfect opportunity to check it out, and the only thing I'm disappointed about is not seeing it sooner. It doesn't reinvent the wheel or have any pretensions of being a particularly revelatory movie, but it's still an outstandingly well-put-together one in everything from the animation to the characters to the humor to the mayhem. Putting it side-by-side with Shrek, the film that put DreamWorks Animation in the spotlight and which this one is a sequel to a spinoff of, shows just how much the studio has evolved in the twenty-plus years since then, going from mischievous, Looney Tunes-esque pop culture spoofs with barbs aimed directly at Disney to a kind of family-friendly, character-driven adventure comedy that's clearly inspired by the Mouse but still has enough unique style and dramatic edge to stand out. I don't really have much to add to the conversation on this one except to say that it's easily one of the best films that DreamWorks has ever made, especially given what I thought of the movie they released just eight months before this, and one that I expect to stick around as a classic just like Shrek itself.

Set in a fantasy/fairy-tale version of Spain, our eponymous protagonist is an intelligent cat who has exploited his nine lives to become an adventurer who doesn't fear death... at least, not until he loses his eighth life thanks to his carelessness fighting a monster attacking a town. Suddenly, he no longer feels so invincible, especially once he encounters a mysterious wolf bounty hunter who seeks to claim his ninth and final life after watching him squander his previous eight. Going into retirement in an elderly cat lady's home after burying his sword and gear, Puss is dragged back to the world of adventure when Goldilocks, the thuggish leader of the Three Bears Crime Family (guess who her "enforcers" are), seeks to hire him to find the Wishing Star, a magical rock that would grant one wish to whoever discovers it -- and she won't take no for an answer. Puss decides that this star is his key to regaining his nine lives, and with help from an old flame named Kitty Softpaws, he sets out to find it himself, staying one step ahead of Goldilocks, the evil businessman "Big" Jack Horner who wants it for his own ends, and of course, the Wolf.

The look of the film is one of the most immediately striking things about it. While it's not the first film to use cel shading to make computer animation emulate the look of hand-drawn animation while being distinct from both (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. the Machines did something similar recently), it's going for a different set of influences than those films, its look instead resembling a mix of the fairy tale artwork that the Shrek movies have always spoofed and anime in the action scenes. The settings feel lifted almost from a highly stylized painting or storybook, while the action looks downright sublime, the film's characters doing battle, chasing one another, and facing various treacherous foes on their quest for the Wishing Star in all manner of awesome ways. Even as cats, Puss and Kitty came across as credible and cool adventure heroes, especially with Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek Pinault leaning heavily into their live-action screen personas, Banderas playing Puss as a riff on Zorro where the only real "parody" element comes from his species and Hayek playing Kitty as the cool femme fatale who has history with the hero that they'll inevitably have to settle. Florence Pugh was hilarious doing her best gender-flipped Ray Winstone impression as Goldilocks, especially with the real Winstone himself voicing one of the three bears (alongside Olivia Colman and Samson Kayo), while John Mulaney made Horner into an absolute bastard who I couldn't wait to see get his well-deserved comeuppance. At first glance, with three separate groups of characters all racing for the Wishing Star, this film can feel sprawling, and yet it always manages to tie these three stories together in a way that feels organic.

The key to doing this was the Wolf. From the moment we're introduced to him, he's presented as a metaphorical representation of death itself, an impossibly skilled fighter who trounces and nearly kills Puss in their first encounter and who is seemingly unstoppable from that point onward, every meeting he has with Puss feeling like it could be their last. The film's comedy stops dead cold whenever the whistling announcing his arrival starts up, Wagner Moura's performance lending him an almost demonic menace without going over-the-top into cackling supervillainy. He is one of the best villains I've seen in any animated film in a long while, a no-nonsense monster whose evil combines the most terrifying elements of an unstoppable force of nature and somebody who hates you personally, the closest thing that a family film could come to an outright slasher movie villain. There have been many jokes made about this film having one of the most realistic depictions of a panic attack in any animated film, but watching it, it was no joke: I understood immediately how this guy completely disarmed Puss' suave, arrogant demeanor and left him a trembling wreck running for his life. The Wolf wasn't just scary, he was a perfect villain for Puss, a representation of how his wasted life is finally catching up with him, and watching Puss reach a place where he can finally confront the Wolf and turn the tables on him was immeasurably satisfying.

From this, we get a fairly simple moral that largely boils down to a celebration of living life to the fullest rather than either wasting it on hedonism or remaining stuck in an idealized past. It's nothing revolutionary, but not only is it exactly the kind of thing that the fairy tales this movie is sending up have long embraced, it's well-told enough that I fully bought into it. If the original Shrek was a deconstructive parody of fairy tales that sent up their moral messages while offering a few of its own, then this film serves largely as a more faithful, straightforward throwback to them, amped up with a swashbuckling action/adventure plot and some jokes for the parents but otherwise falling squarely within the modern, post-Kung Fu Panda DreamWorks wheelhouse.

The Bottom Line

It's a very straightforward movie once you get past the stylish animation, but hardly to a fault, as it's still a riotous, heartfelt, and just plain awesome ride that delivers exactly where it counts and doesn't overstay its welcome. Easily one of the best family films of the last ten years.

"Anne Bonny (1700–1782, exact dates uncertain) was an Irish pirate and privateer who fought under "Calico Jack" Rackham between 1718 and 1720. Along with fellow pirate Mary Read, she was one of the most formidable female pirates of Rackham, fighting, cursing and drinking with the best. She was captured along with the rest of Rackham's crew in 1720 and sentenced to death, although her sentence was commuted because she was pregnant. She has been the inspiration for countless stories, books, movies, songs and other works."

"Most of what is known about Anne Bonny's early life comes from Captain Charles Johnson's "A General History of the Pyrates", which dates from 1724. Johnson (most, but not all, historians believe that Johnson was actually Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe) provides some details of Bonny's early life, but he did not list his sources and his information proved impossible to verify. According to Johnson, Bonny was born near Cork, Ireland, probably around 1700, the result of an affair between a married English barrister and his maid."

"The unnamed attorney was eventually forced to bring Anne and her mother to America to escape the gossip. Anne's father settled in Charleston, first as a lawyer and later as a merchant. Young Anne was spirited and tough: Johnson reports that she once severely beat a young man who "would have lain with her against her will". Her father had done very well in his business and Anne was expected to marry well. Instead, around age 16, she married a poor sailor named James Bonny, and her father disowned her and threw them out. The young couple left for New Providence, where Anne's husband made his living trading pirates for bounties. Sometime in 1718 or 1719, she met the pirate "Calico Jack" Rackham (sometimes spelled Rackam), who had recently wrested command of a pirate ship from the ruthless Captain Charles Vane. Anne became pregnant and went to Cuba to have the child: after giving birth, she returned to the life of piracy with Rackham."

"Anne proved to be an excellent pirate. She dressed like a man, while fighting, drinking and cursing like one too. Captured sailors reported that after their ships were taken by the pirates, it was the two women - Bonny and Mary Read, the last who had joined the crew by then - who incited their companions to greater acts of bloodshed and violence. Some of those sailors testified against her at her trial. According to legend, Bonny (dressed as a man) felt a strong attraction to Mary Read (who was also dressed as a man) and revealed herself as a woman in hopes of seducing him. Read then confessed that she too was a woman. The reality may have been that Bonny and Read most likely met in Nassau as they were preparing to ship with Rackham. They were very close, maybe even lovers. They would wear women's clothing on board, but change to men's clothing when a fight was to come."

"Mary Read died in prison about five months later. What happened to Anne Bonny is uncertain. Like her childhood, her later life is lost in shadow. Captain Johnson's book was first published in 1724, so her trial was still fairly recent news as he wrote it, and he only says of her: "She continued in prison until such time as she was committed, and then she was Dismissed by Time. to Time, but what has become of her since then we cannot say; we only know this, that she was not executed. So what happened to Anne Bonny? There are many versions of her fate and no truly decisive evidence in favor of any of them. Some say she reconciled with her wealthy father, returned to Charleston, remarried, and lived a respectable life well into her 80s. Others say she remarried in Port Royal or Nassau and bore her new husband several children."

"Anne's impact on the world was primarily cultural. As a pirate, she didn't make much of an impact, as her pirate career only lasted a few months. Rackham was not a major pirate, mostly taking easy prey like fishing ships and lightly armed merchants. If not for Anne Bonny and Mary Read, he would be a footnote in pirate lore. But Anne gained great historical stature despite her lack of distinction as a pirate. Her character has a lot to do with this: not only was she one of the few female pirates in history, but also one of the headstrong ones, who fought and cursed harder than most of her male counterparts. Today, historians of everything from feminism to cross-dressing scour the available histories for anything about her or Mary Read. No one knows how much influence Anne had on young women since her piracy days. In an age when women were kept indoors, deprived of the freedom men enjoyed, Anne went off on her own, left her father and husband and lived as a pirate on the high seas for two years. Her greatest legacy is probably the romantic example of a woman who grabbed freedom when the opportunity presented itself, even though her reality probably wasn't as romantic as people think."

Source:https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-anne-bonny-2136375

do you have any horror manga recommendations? I've been reading them a lot lately

ooh that is a very very good question!! and honestly if you've been following me for a while you've probably seen my catalogue of horror manga lmao. as much as manga is my preferred medium compared to anime and ykno i have a casual fondness for horror, it actually takes me a while to work through new manga DX DX i do have a couple of stuff i can probably suggest, though.

(since you're actively seeking horror, i'm gonna take a guess and assume you're not really in need of any major trigger warnings, since a lot of these recs include gore/violence/sexuality/abuse/general skeeziness, or at least can anticipate that you're gonna run into unsavory stuff, but you can follow up and let me know if there is actually something i should take note of.)

One thing I find with horror manga (and horror in general, but manga especially) is a common big genre drift with things action or comedy or adventure or something. A lot of the well-known names on rec lists have horror elements rather than being primarily horror, or the horror influence ends up downplayed as the story goes on. but still excellent. If I have recs in the realm of "horror-lite/influenced", I'd say:

Kemono Jihen by Sho Aimoto, kid joins a detective agency in Tokyo meant to resolve supernatural incidents between "kemono" and humans.

Dandadan by Yukinobu Tatsu, a girl who believes in spirits & ghosts and a boy who believes in aliens become friends! And a lot of things happen because the creator assisted for Fujimoto of Chainsaw Man fame, so it has a lot of the same off-the-wall, irreverent humour. While it's not as tight or classy as CSM, it's still a fuckin fun romp with nice horror moments.

Both of those I actually need to catch up with, haha. I'll actually recommend Can You Just Die, My Darling? as well, although I'm not sure if you're the anon who recced it to me first. Much stronger on the horror & violence elements, but it's another one I still have to catch up on.

I'm trying to avoid the obvious recommendations that you can get off any list, like Junji Ito or idk. Tokyo Ghoul, Dorohedoro or something like that. But special shout out to Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. I'm most familiar with the 2006/07 anime series rather than the games (besides a couple of let's plays) and the manga, but I watched it with my sisters when I was young, LONG before I considered myself a horror fan, and I still consider those question arcs to have some of the best horror sequences ever experienced blind. Hugely influential.

In a similar vein to trying to avoid obvious recs, I know that Shuzo Oshime has gotten more popular as of late, but I've been working through Blood on the Tracks, which is about really insane mommy issues, so if you're cool with that!! You can also check out his other works that I haven't gotten to, but yeah I think he's

For probably my biggest recommendations though - the first one is a short-ish read, I think it was only one volume? The other two were excellent recommendations from my friends!

Helter Skelter by Kyoko Okazaki is about how fucked up the modelling & beauty industry is. There's also a movie adaptation that I haven't watched it.

Hikaru Ga Shinda Natsu (The Summer Hikaru Died) by Mokumokuren, a relatively new BL ongoing series about two friends who live in a rural village - except one of the friends had disappeared months ago in the mountains.

And my actual personal favourite recommendation, Kurosagi: Corpse Delivery Service. It's about a team of students at a Buddhist college who start a company to deliver corpses. They also solve murders along the way! This is a really great series and pretty easy to get into, I think - there's some ongoing plot, but a lot of the arcs are more episodic in nature. A lot of fun discussion on Japanese culture and views on death, it's funny, the gore and horror art are just great, it's just a cool unique series. The only thing is that while I believe it's completed, it's not fully translated in English - I think translations only go up to chapter ~89? So while there's story threads that are unanswered, the translations don't end on a cliffhanger at least.

I do have a "To Read" list compiled after going through some other rec lists / Youtube videos about horror manga. I can't speak to the quality of these yet, but they must have been intriguing enough for me to write them down. Here's a selection of them, not including general creators I wanted to check out:

Dai Dark by Q Hayashida of Dorohedoro fame

Doubt, Judge, and Secret by the guy who did the Higurashi manga.

Another

The Serial Killer is Laughing in the Rain

As the Gods Will

Jagaaan

The Horror Mansion

Fear Infection

Mushihime

Homunculus

Ichi the Killer

Mister Arashi's Amazing Freakshow

PTSD Radio

Dementia 21

Dark Hideout

Halloween Desetsu

The Quiz

Mantis Woman

Presents

If you've read any of those, or get to them before I do, or read any of the prior recs let me know your thoughts!! Always down to chat horror.

Aside from that. Well Digimon: Ghost Game was pretty fun when I was watching it. Had some spooky ooky moments. If you like Digimon o:

actually i'm going to use this opportunity to again reiterate how validated i was when horikoshi had that comment about how he'd like to try doing horror when one of my prominent thoughts when the MVA arc was running was how much potential the guy had as a horror artist and how it could really free him. my goddamn vision.

The first review I saw for this movie said that it wasn’t brilliant, but that it was great fun. Then a bunch of reviews poured out saying that it was pretty bad, and I wasn’ sure what to think.

Maybe it’s better to go into a movie with no expectations?

Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom picks up after the events of the first Aquaman. Arthur is king of Atlantis now, he’s married Mera and has a young son who he raises at his father’s lighthouse. Things aren’t simple, though; the Council of Atlantis doesn’t let him institute all the changes he’d like, especially as they still don’t respect him for his half-human heritage. The world is also becoming considerably more polluted, causing a plague among Atlanteans. And Black Manta, hoping to repair his equipment with the help of Dr. Shin, has stumbled upon an ancient Atlantean artifact that will give him an edge over Aquaman.

Alright, so! One of the most talked about things regarding this movie was Amber Heard’s role as Mera, considering she had a very public trial in 2022 regarding her marriage to Johnny Depp, in which public opinion was violently against her despite the UK’s High Court of Justice ruling in 2020 that 12 out of 14 incidents of violence by Depp were “substantially true.” I did not follow that 2022 trial–that is not the sort of thing I think people should watch as entertainment, and I have better things to do than follow a trial regarding domestic abuse as if it was entertainment. 

All the same, people wondered how much Mera would be in the movie, if at all. The answer: she’s not in that much of the movie. She’s not a non-person in the film, and does a lot in the climactic battle at the end. All the same, it is really weird that the first quarter of the movie deals so heavily with Arthur’s home life, and his raising his son, and his wife is barely in those portions? And with almost no lines? One would think that the mother of his child would be more vocal and more a part of the storyline, wouldn’t you? It’s a little awkward, and I think there was more here that was probably cut. I would have appreciated her being in more of the movie, considering her personality and prominence in the first one.

And speaking of those early sections: I don’t know how I feel about Arthur’s suitability as king. Part of the conflict between Arthur and Orm is that Orm doesn’t think Arthur has what it takes to be king. YMMV on whether he does, but the movie makes it clear that a lot of Atlantis doesn’t accept him as a king. Season four of Young Justice did something similar in its Atlantis arc, and resolves it in an interesting way. This movie only has it so… Arthur remains king and overrules his council, I guess? It didn’t seem adequately resolved.

I will say, though, that I think Manta’s character arc is one of my favorite supervillain arcs in a cinematic universe? Let’s be real here, Marvel generally sucks at making a coherent, movie-to-movie character arc, especially for villains. Black Manta doesn’t have that problem though–his actions here follow his characterization in the first movie, and I like how even when he’s making bad choices, they’re choices that make sense for him. Also, he looks really cool and has laser eyes.

Orm, on the other hand, evolved in an interesting way. He’s a villain in the first movie, sure, though he’s played a lot more sympathetically than he is in, say, the Justice League cartoon series or Young Justice. Here, he has to team up with Aquaman to save Atlantis from Manta, in an interesting but not too out-there twist. I think he gets off a bit lightly–the man did start a war, after all, and no matter how much he cares about Atlantis, it’s a difficult thing to forget. It certainly works better than Malcolm Merlyn’s “complex” character arc in Arrow, because at least Orm was explicitly trying to murder the poor people in his community. I suppose it helps that Orm was raised in a culture that’s explicitly unhealthy in its outlook on sovereignty and international policy? And overcoming that is part of his arc here?

[There’s one point in which Arthur even calls him ‘Loki’, which felt a bit too on-the-nose, considering how similar of a Plot this movie had to Thor: The Dark World.]

It is fun, though, I suppose. Maybe I’m working too hard to make Orm’s character arc into something it’s not.

I think that some people might be bothered by how the Plot heavily involves pollution and global warming? I don’t think it’s too much of a problem. Yes, it’s heavy-handed; however, this is exactly the sort of thing that Aquaman is supposed to care about. And it’s often pointed out as the source of conflict between Atlantis and the surface world. I don’t mind it being part of this movie.

The tone of this movie is pretty light, which I don’t think is bad, though at the same time I found myself thinking several times, “Well, they wouldn’t go that far, would they?” It means that the movie is loads of fun to watch, while at the same time the stakes don’t quite feel as real. There’s very little I was actually afraid of happening to the characters. YMMV on whether that hurts your experience too much.

There are still plenty of cool action scenes, too. I am always happy to see these guys fight with tridents, and towards the end there’s a duel between Aquaman and Manta that I really enjoyed. There are less massive battles, and giant sea monsters, which is a bit of a bummer, though there are still huge monsters, chase scenes, and jaunts through Atlantis.

There was a persistent rumor that Batman would be in this movie in some capacity. Following The Flash, and the rebooting of the DC universe, it flip-flopped between being Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck. As it turns out, no version of Batman appears in this movie, and honestly I can’t think of how he’d fit in, so it’s probably for the best.

I think this is a good movie, though not as good as the first one. It’s more fun than it is actually well-written, though I don’t think there’s anything bad in it. Maybe it’s hard to look at positively for some, as DC is throwing away this continuity; either way, that’s not this movie’s fault, and I had a good time watching it.

Kinda of random but what do you think of Alan's Moore comments about people liking comic book movies could lead into fascism? Seems like bitter old man territory but what do you think?

Long reply. These are just my personal thoughts/opinions ~

Tbh I don't read Alan Moore but I know of them, I know of their works, and I know that alot of the wrong people take their work and basically "Fight Club" it.

If you know the movie Fight Club then you understand how a piece of media is often taken into the wrong context. What was supposed to be a satire/examination of anti capitalism was usurped by men thinking they need to be in peak form/fight for what they want, reprogram themselves etc. Basically they thought all the wrong ideas.

Moore's Watchmen gives way to such things like The Boys, where violence in superhero media is the focus rather than the message behind Watchmen. So everyone focuses on the violence, the spectacle, etc.

Many people treat comic books like it's a thing for kids, or people who can't read books, or whatever.

Yet comics have been a form of literature for a long time. Comics have a finger on the beating pulse of pop culture, world events, and shifting tone of the public thoughts.

For example: Something Happens. In the world, real-life, a big event occurs that effects many people. Someday you will see that someone has written a very good book about the subject, but by then maybe years have passed, meanwhile a comic captures things in the moment as time moves on, you can see the trends in the form political cartoons, or someone who was effected creating a comic witin days/weeks, or generations of people who grew up effected and began pouring their message, their hearts into comics. Some stories that are not easily told through novels.

Superhero Comics began as a message from Jewish creators, a hope, a story.

So while I know people will be quick to dismiss Moore as a bitter old person, I would really recommend people stop a moment and look at what they are saying.

See I think it's less "Liking Superhero Movies will lead to fascism" and more "consuming media controlled by massive corporations uncritically will have an effect on people".

Look at the way Superheros Movies have a chokehold on pop culture, look at the way there are literal nations of fans supporting Superhero Movies. Look at the way they defend Superhero Movies even at its worst, at its racist, at its mysoginstic, at stuff that literally makes my skin crawl. Look at the way these super fans doxx marginalized actors/ess, at the way they harrass, they swarm into comments to spew their hatred. Look at the way they say "it's just a Superhero movie, it's just a cape comic, it's nothing serious".

Then I need you to look at the way Marvel tried to market a choice to people: "S.h.i.e.l.d or Hydra, which side are you on?"

Hydra isn't just a bad guy team. It's Nazis. It's always been Nazis. It's literally headed up by the biggest fictional Nazi to ever have been created. So not only this question but, to make contests, merchandise, so much for this event. It really makes you sit back and ask: How did we get to this? How did this industry get from superhero characters created by Jewish people, to a comic company asking if you would join Nazis.

Fascism doesn't just happen. It's created over time, over years, and I agree and disagree with Moore. In my opinon not every Superhero Movie is propaganda for the American Military but many are, not every movie is racist/has propaganda, but there are those that are, not every Superhero Movie will lead a person to Facism, but some will plant the seed. We can't control how people internalize things or what deep web rabbit holes they follow, or what Nazi/Racist/Facist groups they join.

Movies are power, movies can reach a lot of people, not everyone will be able to read the same books, or comics, but many people will be able to watch the same movie. I just think people should be critical to Superhero movies when there is something to discuss. I don't mean complaining about the cgi, but talking about the actual plot, who is making the movie, who did they cast in what role, etc. Blindly following whatever big companies decide to put in their movies isn't a good idea.

I may not be a Moore fan but I do think he's earned a right to be bitter after how the Comic Industry has chewed him up and spit him out. Many creators are ground down by how the Comic Industry runs, and the Superhero Movie Industry has become a behemoth, to ignore an industry that shapes the mind of kids and has a hold on adults is pretty dumb. Again, I don't think it's a pipeline of Superhero Movies > Facism, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look critically at movies just because they are about people flying around in tights.

I've been asked (hi there, @notasapleasure) to say what I think about the movie Wet Sand / სველი ქვიშა (2021, dir. Elene Naveriani) once I see it. I watched it recently and actually like to share my feelings with someone so...

My impressions follows:

Inspiration by the greatest ancient classics such as Antigone by Sophocles in modern popular culture is rare and always welcomed

Even more praise for showing love among elderly people - which somehow needs even more courage than showing young queers

I believe if the movie was more mainstream this jacket would go viral

Making the same actor saying similar text as in And Then We Danced seemed somewhat cheap to me at first, but then I thought it was kind of winking to ATWD fans: "Hello, we know you're there!" - so okey, that was kind of nice...

...and besides obvious similarity - the line still sounded different due to its intentions and conditions. So might it be condidered some kind of polemic with ATWD line even?

I really liked the way the title never was explained directly "in your face" - yet somewhere in the end you are shown a wave coming and going over the sand: leaving it wet, then slowly drying, then wet again, and again, repeatedly... And suddenly you realise how much it fitted the character's life

I wonder if the girl's comment on the photo (that was not itself shown to the audience) was a hint of that person being trans? (it was something like "beautiful as his mother" but I don't remember exactly)

The scene with the letter and the wine bottle has the potential to make me cry my eyes out everytime I think about it... (because yeah I definitely needed to elongate my "sob-on-demand" list, thank you movie makers...)

Yes of course I am going to compare Wet Sand and And Then We Danced even though such comparison can ONLY be justified by the fact that those are only two georgian movies I know and both happen to be queer

Best thing is that those are two very different and independent stories😋

I've seen some reviews complaining that in ATWD there were too many social issues at once, suggesting like it was forced or something... But it is Wet Sand that is literally overfilled with those, not only homophoby but also domestic violence and generally intolerance and prejudice toward everyone and everyone a bit different than the rest of the conservative community.

And no matter the kind of "happy ending" that was in Wet Sand and not so much in ATWD (more "open ending" it was than a "happy" one) - still to me ATWD felt a tiny bit more hopeful. Alright, the film concentrating on death and funeral obviously had no chances of being overall optimistic. Especially when ATWD was showing the point of view of joyful freeminded young people who still have hopes and chances for the better life before them. And we were not shown any really terrible scenes there, only hearing about poor Zaza, like it was just gossip and not a person of flesh and bones. Also I think when living in the capital city one may count on more support from community of people alike - simply because the community is larger and stronger than a tiny group of "outcasts" in the province can ever be.

There's a short description of Wet Sand on IMDB using a phrase "friendly people" and now after watching the movie it makes me feel sick to see it...🤢

...especially as some of the most terrifying acts of those "friendly people" so much reminded me of Aftermath / Pokłosie (2012) dir. Władysław Pasikowski...

...but still one of their most horrible actions - accidentaly turned out to be the right thing to do - so that was kind of a spark (nomen omen) of hope

So generally it was a good movie. Maybe not a great one. But definitely GOOD.

And, when I think about it, it reminds me of so many other good and great movies I know and would gladly recommend to anyone interested (most of them also being on my "sob-on-demand" list BTW)

Organising funeral of a lonely man a bit like in Still life (2013, dir. Uberto Pasolini)

A story about relationship and loss seems like a reversed version of the one shown in A Single man (2009, dir. Tom Ford) (my very favorite queer-themed movie before watching ATWD, now my second favorite)

Of course a bit of similarity to Brokeback Mountain (2005) dir. Ang Lee as well

And The Bridges of Madison County (1995) dir. Clint Eastwood too...

Departures / Okuribito (2008) dir. Yôjirô Takita is a similar not only because of the burial theme but also the atmosphere. No kidding, when watching Wet Sand I felt like watching a japanese movie, only with strangly not-japanese looking actors in it.

And that will be it for now.

What's your favorite film about fathers and sons?

Since so much of your content is about masculinity and how we learn about it, I wanted to see if you had any thoughts or examples from pop culture that explored that relationship. (And obviously, it doesn't need to have a "father" or a "son", but somehow connected to cultural ideas of masculinity.)

For me, I've always loved grifting stories, so Catch Me If You Can is an all-time fave. I love watching Frank Abagnale Jr as a mindful student of his world up until the moments when he needs to perform inside of it.

And ultimately, having to "perform" masculinity is an overwhelming prospect. It's so stressful and exhausting that, eventually, Frank realizes it's not even worth financial security or prestige.

When we meet Frank's dad, he's telling a story at the rotary club about "two little mice" falling into a bucket of cream, frantically flailing for life until they churn it into butter.

Later, while pretending to be a doctor with a law degree, Frank tells that same story to his prospective in-laws. It moves them so much, they don't hesitate to give permission to marry their daughter. It also creates the image of an impossibly hard-working man that Frank will have to spend the rest of his married life trying to prove.

It's not until we see Frank catching up with his dad at a diner that we see how much this has been tearing him apart. After learning his father has fallen into a secure, yet boring, mail job and is no longer pursuing his ex-wife, Frank begs his dad to "Tell me to stop". The performance is causing him too much stress and, ultimately, isn't worth the financial and familial security of maintaining the grift.

On the other side, we have Carl Hanratty, an FBI agent who couldn't care less about performing for others. When in a car with two other agents, Hanratty doesn't laugh at one of the other agents' lewd stories. Annoyed, he asks why Hanratty never laughs, so Hanratty asks if they want to hear a joke. When they say, "Yeah," he sets up a "knock knock" joke only to reply, "Go fuck yourselves." He's not interested in performing for other people, even the masculine tradition of telling off-color jokes.

By the end of the movie, Frank has a closer relationship to Hanratty than his own father, and the main reason is that Hanratty wants Frank to be himself. Sure, that means letting himself be arrested and confessing to his crimes. But it also means letting himself be vulnerable: to let himself be arrested instead of shot down, to share his secret about passing the Louisiana Bar exam, and to help others instead of just himself. It's such a strong motivation that Hanratty lets Frank get on a plane, breaking his parole, and says he trusts him to come back to work.

So yeah, watching his father perform masculinity left such a strong impression he let it absorb his entire life to the point that he became an internationally wanted criminal.

(FYI I don't know how Tumblr works; i just started using it and don't know if this will show up on my feed, like a post, or will be direct messaged, so this is me trying to learn this system as much as anything else; thank you for your time.)

I absolutely love this question, and your example, as well. This is something I've thought a fair amount about (I actually have a video on fatherhood in media planned for the future!), and I have a whole handful of answers, but I'm going to go with the first one that jumped to mind:

How to Train Your Dragon is definitely up there for me. I really appreciate the way it tackles patriarchy in a sort of... non-judgmental light while highlighting the problems with it, if that makes sense? It's not framed as "Clearly this traditional, combative Viking (masculine) way is bad and terrible and destructive and shameful", but rather based around fear of the unknown and the drive to protect one's own. For that reason, it's understandably glorified, even in its violence, because that violence is seen as serving an essential purpose.

Hiccup and Stoick's relationship is so fascinating to me, because it's clear there's love between them, but the fact that they have nothing in common means the relationship begins and ends at familial, there's no friendship or connection beyond that. You don't get the sense that Stoick is disgusted by Hiccup's poor masculine performance so much as worried about his ability to stay safe and fit in. I'm not going to go so far as to say he's not embarrassed by his son's eccentricity, even Hiccup calls it out that his dad wanted a son who's all power and glory, but Stoick never says that himself, he more just laments Hiccup being different. Stoick's own words point more at apprehensiveness where his son's safety and social future is concerned, as well as frustration about how to raise him. He talks about his own boyhood, his father telling him to bang his head against a rock and doing so without question, the way he was taught that being a Viking (man) means power, ruthlessness, and following orders--how he embodied that as a boy... and Hiccup doesn't. For me, this reads less as him being ashamed of his son and more as him simply not knowing what to do because the blueprints he was given are useless. We even find out he's tried typical father-son bonding activities, but Hiccup's nature always means they deviate from the plan and he's left at a loss again.

That Stoick feels this way is really driven home when he finds out that Hiccup is a natural born "dragon slayer", his love for his son is so obvious here when he says "We finally have something to talk about," and is downright giddy over the opportunity to connect with him. But that promptly falls back into their usual distance and awkwardness, because the problem of Hiccup pretending to be someone he's not hasn't been solved; he's just gotten more skilled at lying.

When Hiccup eventually does try to show his dad his truth, Stoick isn't ready for it. Eccentric deviation from the norm is one thing, but he's gone so far off course that it poses a much larger threat, welcoming in the Dangerous Other they've been at war with. Because of this, Hiccup isn't just confronting his dad with his own truth, he's confronting his dad with the fact that he, Stoick, was misled. That his entire worldview of what it is to be a Viking (MAN) is based on fear and misunderstandings rather than an accurate assessment of the world.

So he does what that misinformed framework taught him to do in the face of opposition. He lashes out, doubles down, and refuses to communicate and engage with the fact that maybe he's just wrong. He fights. Again, this comes from that protective impulse, but we begin to see where it becomes internally destructive in addition to its external destruction; it's been paired with the fear of fallibility and a threat to the status quo.

What a love so much about Stoick realizing his mistake is that before anything else, this rock-headbutting, skull-crushing pinnacle of manhood apologizes. He apologizes and he verbally acknowledges his son's autonomy. After the grand finale, he recognizes that it's his son's differences that not only make him wonderful, but were the key to solving an ongoing problem of violence and suffering. "Turns out all we needed was a little more of this." "You just gestured to all of me." The call back on that one is just *chef's kiss* The Old Way was one of defensiveness and mistrust, and The New one of empathy and understanding. I love the way this message is given, and the way it highlights how guidance in growth is a gift children can give to their parents, as well, when given the space to do so.

Viddying the Nasties | Eaten Alive! (Lenzi, 1980)

This review contains mild spoilers.

I watched this years ago at around the same time as I first saw Cannibal Ferox and remember hating both. As I’ve been watching a bunch of cannibal movies recently and also apparently hate myself, I decided to give this another shot, having revisited the other movie not too long ago. To paraphrase the slogan of a popular potato chip, when it comes to Umberto Lenzi cannibal movies, you can’t watch just one. With rewatches, my opinion of the other movie hasn’t improved by much, but with this, maybe it has. Through some combination of desensitization and greater exposure to lower budget cinema where technical prowess is beside the point, I didn’t actively hate the experience this time around.

Like the other movie, which will serve as a useful point of comparison, it contains all the things we expect from cannibal movies, namely horrific violence and animal cruelty and insulting portrayals of other cultures. Unlike that other movie, a lot of this is repurposed footage from Jungle Holocaust, Slave of the Cannibal God and Lenzi’s own The Man From Deep River. And I think it goes to prove what I’ve been saying about the animal cruelty in these movies, that if you could replace it with stock footage instead of staging it specifically for the movie and it would still work in the same way. The first time I watched the movie, I didn’t realize this was recycled footage, and only caught it this time around as I’d seen Slave of the Cannibal God less than a week earlier. Now, I think the ultimate test would be if you replace the animal cruelty with something less noxious, like, I dunno, a guy in a gorilla suit. Maybe the gorilla suit scenes from Carlos Tobalina’s Jungle Blue, which were shot in the jungle and probably would blend in well enough, and also horrify for completely different reasons.

This movie’s big hook is that it’s a cannibal movie with a Jonestown-like cult, although if anything it plays like a Jonestown-like cult movie with cannibals added in. But really neither element is fleshed out that intelligently. The cult is led by Ivan Rassimov, who does a lot of ranting and raving that leads me to believe that the cult fell under his spell before the movie started, and all the other characters who fall under his influence during the proceedings do so offscreen. Halfway into the movie he’s demanding that everybody drink the Kool-Aid, which seems a bit premature. He also has an interesting way of settling disputes in his cult. One of his enforcers accuses the hero played by Robert Kerman of hiding a bottle of whisky. Kerman calls the guy a liar and punches him out. Rassimov considers the case closed. I guess might makes right in this cult. One will also note that the clothing worn by the cult is far from gender neutral, with the men wearing togas and the women wearing a lot less, but as this means that Me Me Lai spends all her scenes in a loincloth or less and Janet Agren can be seen nude in gold bodypaint, I found it in my heart to overlook this one flaw. One will also note that the commune seems a bit too small to house all the members of the cult, unless they’re using bunk beds. The movie halfassedly introduces the possibility of cannibalism early on, showing us documentary footage in a gesture that likely evokes the lineage of this genre with mondo movies, and later awkwardly rushes out the cannibals to wrap things up. It’s as if it wanted to be its own thing but couldn’t help succumb to genre demands.

Anyway, the cast is the best thing about this movie. Rassimov, while not particularly effective in this movie, I still like seeing because I’ve seen him in enough of these Italian horror movies and after a certain point it’s like hanging out with a friend. Lai and Agren bring obvious aforementioned charms. And Kerman is a lot of fun, doing a low rent adventurer shtick, having some nice chemistry with Agren (“Curiosity killed the cat, lady”) and bringing a nice physicality as he throws himself into the stunts. (It looks like that’s really him dangling from the helicopter towards the end.) He’s joined by fellow porn character actor Jake Teague, who describes a recent spate of crimes as “very, very spooky”. We also get Mel Ferrer show up to pick up a paycheque ("Americans will believe anything that's tax-deductible”), although neither him nor Teague get anywhere near the jungle. We do get a scene at the end where Kerman, Ferrer and Teague share the screen and spar verbally, which might be the only time in cinema history that the guy who did Debbie in Debbie Does Dallas, Audrey Hepburn’s ex-husband and the dipshit psychiatrist from A Woman’s Torment shared the screen. A real clash of the titans.

Despite the animal cruelty (and I admit I still frequently look away from the screen during these movies), this one holds together better than its obviously cobbled together nature might suggest. There are enough narrative happenings to hold one’s interest, Kerman especially gives a fun performance, and the jungle has great presence. It certainly feels more like a “real movie” than Cannibal Ferox, even if the latter’s flimsiness adds to its pungency and effectiveness as pure exploitation, pieces of film barely stitched together to present the ugliest imagery one can conjure. That being said, there is one particular noxious sequence here, where a woman is at first captured and raped by cult members, and then killed and eaten by cannibals, and the way her body is laid out like a pinup during the latter occurrence left me a little queasy. This character has been totally objectified, completely reduced to a piece of meat.

So I was watching Order of the Phoenix again I feel the need to talk about the fight scene in the ministry in spite of the fact I’m sure this discourse has already taken place on some corner of the internet. Having said that, THE FACT THAT SIRIUS BLACK, raised not only by a pure blood family, but radical blood purists on top of that, makes the move to before all else punch Lucius Malfoy in the face for fucking with his godson says so much about his character. Like we all know there is no way that this man, having been brought up solely around generational magic users, would instinctively do anything but pull out his wand (which by the way he has on hand from apparating in) and use it to promptly hex Lucius in the face. But instead he clocks the man in the face with his fist, such an inherently muggle action, and in the movie, the first instance of physical violence outside of Hermione (the only muggleborn present) using a spell to knock over some prophecies causing them to crash into one of the Death Eaters. The punch is such an inherent ‘fuck you’ to pureblood blood purist culture and a masterful way of communicating how much Sirius has grown and changed from the person his parents raised him to be and the lengths he’s gone to to distance himself from that identity. Also, punching someone in the face is totally a learned action especially in this case. By who you ask? Would James Potter punch a Death Eater in the face? Probably. But if he had a wand on him? No way in hell. Would Lily Potter? Absolutely. And don’t even get me started on Sirius owning a flying motorcycle. Like we know that flying vehicles are by no means common in the wizarding world, and he still went out of his way to purchase a motorcycle (which I feel like we can assume he uses as a straight motorcycle at times, not even flying) as opposed to, I don’t know, apparating like the rest of the wizarding world, or even using floo powder.

UPDATE: I just saw a TikTok where Gary Oldman is the one proposing the idea, so I don’t know if this was the intention behind it but I’m still absolutley gushing.

Horror Movie’s I just watched: May 2023

Shorter list this time. Here we go:

Resurrection (2022) I saved this one for Mother’s day because I heard the main character was a Mom. I was a bit afraid it wouldn’t factor into the plot that much, but I was reassured, especially with the final scene.

This is another one, kinda like Censor, where the whole thing might be in the protagonist's head. Where she’s so wound up tight at the beginning that her daughter’s accident only starts the ball rolling in her head some nightmarish fantasy of the worst case scenario. It helps that we never got any confirmation about whether of not Tim Roth’s character was a hallucination or anyone else can see him. Hell, given that we never get a flashback with him and his first lines is him saying he doesn’t recognize her, there’s a disturbing possibility that he is real, but is some poor guy who just looks way too much like her ex and she’s hallucinating everything he said. And that final reveal about the baby actually being inside him is too surreal and supernatural to not have heavy implications if it wasn’t in her head.

Granted, like the best of ambiguous films, the story works regardless if this theory is right or not. The point is, externally or internally, this character is tormented. I feel like the moral of this story is; Girlbossing can only help you in limited ways. When it come to trauma as severe as this, try to find therapy. Though given our culture, she still probably couldn’t. It’s not fair.

Mad God Here was a movie I couldn’t take my eyes off, and I still feel like I missed a few things. That’s how striking the imagery was. I don’t know what I can add to what’s already been said about the themes that others haven’t already. Cycles of violence not solving anything, the de-personification of mass labor, civilizations rising and falling again despite the sacrifices; those are what I can glean. Also, being reminded at various points of Eraserhead, Fallout New Vegas, Metropolis, and Cemetery Man. Probably not even half of that was intentional. 

It just wows me. Any one of the creatures in this could be the centerpiece or high point of any other film. Stop motion really has become a lost art. Sure, we know now a big reason why studios heavily prefer CGI, despite how good it actually looks, is cheaper and faster to make then any other effect. But works like this show that, if you’re actually comfortable letting film take as much time as it needs and use as much money as possible to make it look good (Better there than some executive’s overstuffed salary), you’ll allow a lot more variety in how each film is made and look. Gee, it’s almost like time crunches and trying to save money is actually bad for the product. WhO kNeW?

Scare Me I recognized the male lead, Josh Ruben, from CollegeHumor. And after that, this whole movie, to me, played like an extended Hardly Working sketch. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

I was worried a whole movie mostly about two people (briefly three) telling scary stories, and not actually showing us the stories, would look too cheap. Thankfully, there were some technical flourishes. The performances, including the bits their characters acted out so they’re effectively a performance in a performance, are good even if the stories themselves are hit or miss. 

The first werewolf one is just goofy, but that’s intentional. The Grandpa one is ok, even if it’s a touch ableist at a point. The troll’s a bit fun. And the “deal with the devil” one has a fun payoff. 

What this actually ends up being about, insecure white male (maybe?) getting violent with his more successful female colleague was pretty inevitable given how passive-aggressive they both are. Honestly, that they’re both such a-holes help kept what would be a too uncomfortable situation pretty light. You can mark this as another case of “actor known for comedy taking a serious villain role to show their range” movie, like Robin Williams. This was effective enough here, though I don’t know if it would work for him outside of it. 

Final note (and mild spoiler for two films), can’t help but felt like the mid-credit scene reminded of the very end of the 1982 movie Death Trap. Not sure if that movie was a direct inspiration for this. I saw that for the first time about a month ago so it’s fresh on my mind. Outside of that, this is pretty much a good hang-out horror movie. Especially for fans of the old College Humor.

That’s all for now. I’ll probably have less films to talk about next time, but I’ll try to make up for it in July.

I am re-reading Homestuck

Here are my thoughts.

>> Digital culture isn’t what it used to be.  How many 13-year-olds do you know who chat with friends through desktop apps or even use desktop computers?  When was the last time you played a computer game using a CD?  This came out just a little more than a decade ago, and so much of the story already feels vintage.

>> Our internet is so very precious, guys.  It really is.  And if we don’t treasure it, if we don’t archive it, if we don’t take active steps to keep it accessible, we will lose it.  Homestuck’s early chapters are difficult to read from a technical point of view due to the passage of time.  I had to install a browser extension to access the Flash content.  (The one I used is called Ruffle.  It works perfectly on both Firefox and chrome-based browsers.)  There are links in the text of the comment that don’t work.  There are images that don’t load.  Homestuck isn’t some artistic masterpiece, but it is an important piece of ambitious digital art that broke a lot of interesting ground and it deserves to be preserved long into the future.

>> It’s weird that this was written about 13-year-olds, and weird the main audience was teenagers.  Not necessarily because of violence or sex, but just how complex the story is, how much higher level vocabulary it uses.  I learned so much vocabulary reading Homestuck the first time around, and even as a 20 year old reading for the first time, I still didn’t really get it.

>> It’s interesting reading a story about people whose primary social lives exist in a digital space.  Friendships aren’t any less real just because they don’t exist in meat-space, but it’s sad we live in a world where in-person friendships are being whittled away by alienating forces, where more people than ever report they don’t have real life friends.  Homestuck was produced by a culture that suffered those problems.  This isn’t to say Homestuck is bad because of this.  But it is interesting that a very popular piece of media treats this social isolation as being completely normal.

>> Another social norm that finds its way into the story: Consumer culture.  Consumer culture isn’t just people wanting to buy a lot of things.  It’s when we take it a step further and begin to identify ourselves with the things that we consume.  When we meet several of the characters, the first things we learn about them is what type of movies they watch, what type of books they read, what type of decorations they get for their houses, what type of stuff they have.  Who would John Egbert be without his love of bad 80s and 90s movies?  I’m not saying Homestuck sends a “bad message” or “promotes” consumer culture, it merely reflects the consumer culture that exists in the society that produced this story.

>> Class identity is presented in an interesting way which also reflects modern western culture.  In the modern western world, we are taught to view ourselves as consumers first, and as working class people never.  The kids don’t view themselves as belong to any type of economic class.  They don’t ever talk about what they want to be when they grow up.  We only get some vague ideas of what their guardians do for a living.

When characters are rich or poor, their wealth of poverty is just considered to be a characteristic of them or their families, not as a result of a social relationship.  

And once again, an ever-present problem in media, the middle class, professional-managerial life style is viewed as a default.  John Egbert, your quintessential every-man character, lives in a fairly large suburban home, has a dad who works a white color job, and seems to live fairly comfortably, which is something that a pretty large portion of Americans don’t have.  This is a problem in a lot of American media, not just homestuck, of course, but I thought I’d add it to the list because it struck me as interesting.

i think people cant rlly put a concrete line of "does society benefit people who have sex over those who dont" because, as we know sex in the modern times and before has literally never been a secular concept, sex is treated wildly different in Every Single region or place in the world and is often one of the most ritualized concepts in human cultures, by all means, you cant say people who engage in recreational sex are benefitted the same way people who only use sex as a procreation act, because they really arent once you look into it for more than 10 minutes.

By all means the general notion in most places in the world is that sex is a procreation act first and foremost and all other acts with it should be highly scrutinized by a bunch of particular rules or prejudices regarding how, when and with who it should be with, this isnt to say that seeing it this way is inherently a punishing way to see sex, as i said, it is part of us to ritualize certain acts based on historical events, hygienic motivation and religious concepts and so on.

Even the image of an cishet older man who gets constant sexual gratification up until death is seen as someone who must be: able to provide monetarily on the very least as to maintain a status, be stationary, is probably not emotionally mature, probably has a miriad of problems he is never willing to expose, can be health wise, can be mental wise, can be other thing. The expectation that sex cannot ever be in hand with "true" affection or emotional fullfillment unless it conceives a family and never tackled again affects literally anyone ever.

People lumping sexual coercion/manipulation/abuse as something inherent to courtship is what muddles people´s view of sexuality in the first place, these acts are really just other manifestations of violence and the act of overpowering one individual or more for your own sake, whether people ritualize them or not (and any family is capable of ritualizing any sort of abnormal behavior) is not meaning that they are actual Parts of what makes sex, Sex itself.

You cannot manifest sex as clear hierarchical category, because it is more like, a tool, like a stick, every one is gonna see the stick differently, whether is a punishment tool, a guidance tool or something just to burn, the stick doesnt have an inherent meaning as much as it is just a natural part of the reality and its meaning is adaptable to the needs.

You cannot talk about sex in a "secular" way because the majority of the world is gonna talk about it different ways, it is impossible to pin down, and it doesnt help that a grand miriad of cultures have a certain role/caste/type of person who are literally described as "those who dont engage in sex" either for spiritual or other reasons, even just like, work ethic wise, and their perceived hierarchy in a social scale vastly differs in each one depending of the culture, their gender, or lineage.

This is what mostly bothers me about discussions around sex coming from a very sensationalized and scandalized and Americanized treatment of sex that really has just festered from people taking what they see in movies or books to face value as things that people just do just because and completely ignoring religion or culture or the politics in their state or such.