#the last shot: poetic cinema
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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: The Rings of Power
1x08: Alloyed
2022 - | dir. Wayne Che Yip
#tolkienedit#tropedit#ropedit#tvedit#*#the rings of power#trop#trop spoilers#galadriel#halbrand#sauron#the last shot: poetic cinema#*1k#3k
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Okay so like objectively the way he killed Myung-hee was extremely fucked up but there's a certain sick artistry to it I have to admire
#please feel free to ignore this#I'm watching Vincenzo#The last shot of her on fire while the music plays... poetic cinema
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The feminine urge to draw fanart at work today
#in my defense I literally have no assignments even my supervisor is failing to come up with shit for me to do#I feel bad drawing random shit while on the clock but still….#Watch the season finale of s9 of smallville last night and oooh myyy gooood ohh my gooood oh my gooood#that was genuinely the best finale of that show so far oh my god#that phone booth scene with Lois Zod and Clark? poetic cinema#I’m not thinking today I’m just replaying it in my head over and over#and that cliffhanger??????? I was sketching that final shot during my break and I wanna keep going#anyway#my brain will not stop making noise today and the only way to calm it down is to draw
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i despise Ben Hope as much as the next person but I was literally sobbing at his arc, every time he was on screen, I couldn’t help but feel my heart break a little because this is a 16 year old boy who’s living with homophobic parents, who has a friend group filled of arrogant, asshole-ish jerks and has spent years cultivating his ‘bad boy’ image because men are raised to be like that. If you’re not a bad boy, your masculinity is questioned. And in between all this hatred, this boy is coming to terms with his sexuality and hating it—he hates himself and who he is. Which turns him into a bitter and hateful and a horrible person altogether and it doesn’t excuse how he treated Charlie and the assault or any of the horrible thing he’s done ofc, but I hate how this kid was turned into this shitty scumbag of a person because of circumstances and whatever. And the last scene, kudos to Charlie for saying fuck off to him, but also wishing him to change, because I feel the same, I wish Ben works on himself and stops hurting others and himself and that last shot of the rainbow making it’s move towards him and him stepping back—poetic cinema honestly.
I wish that Ben and boys like him find the courage and strength to take that step and jump into that rainbow.
#i can’t shut up about this show byeee#heartstopper#Ben hope#Charlie spring#Nick nelson#kit Connor#Joe Locke#heartstopper spoilers
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Things about Ron Speirs that live rent free in my head - PART II
-We can see 4 soldiers running to the Eagle’s Nest, but no Speirs with them at that moment. I’m headcanoning he was already waiting for them at the door, smoking his third cigarette and impatiently tapping his foot.
-He smoked so much, because he didn’t know what to do with his hands in social situations, don’t change my mind.
-That instant regret, when he tried to socialize in Carentan and told the soldiers they were moving soon. That last look he threw them always make me cackle. He was SO DONE. And probably didn’t even try to socialize for the next month at least.
-Him being: clean shaven with hair slicked back, with his helmet on and with ruffled hair falling on his forehead - are three different demons and they all hit you differently.
-It’s super adorable that he was the most soft-spoken and sweetest when he was or dead tired or drunk.
-And you know, in all the moments when he forced his facial muscles to smile - every time, somewhere in the universe an unicorn has died (Forced, not genuine. When he smiled genuinely every time an unicorn shat a granade).
-“Lieutenant Lipton! :DDDDD” *gross sobbing*
-All the scenes, with his side profiles, when he stood with his arms folded on his chest and silently judged the universe.
-His relationship with Janovec. Like. I can’t even imagine how hilarious it had to be in general xD
-The moment when Harry didn’t allow him to steal and he looked at Winters, like he wanted help from dad (someone else on tumblr mentioned it and it’s a perfect catch).
-It's almost canon (some deleted or not filmed scene?) that Speirs (and Jones) dragged drunken Lipton to his quarter. I guess, he would have done that after all the "officers chilling and drinking time". Dick would have done that with Nixon. (And they would just have left Harry behind, duh).
-“Hey, Liebgott, you wanna sit this out?” master troll strikes again :’) (also it’s quite funny, because real Webster really admired Speirs and said he was one of the very few officers he really liked).
-The pure admiration in his eyes for his commander, when Dick cancelled the another patrol.
-It’s quite interesting how fast he has learnt about the abilities of all of his sergeants and knew who could do the job.
-The way he taped Lipton’s chest with his knuckles, after Lip was promoted and that soft smile :’)
-All the pouts.
-The fact he had no nervous system in combat situations and then he was all meow, meow with people he liked and felt comfortable with.
-“This war is not about fighting anymore. It’s about who gets what.” On the funny note, it’s hilarious when we consider his sticky fingers here. On the serious note, knowing what happened next aka the cold war – he was totally right.
-The scene in ep 7, when Lip talks about him and he emerged from the fog like a ghost and then scared the shit out of Christenson and other poor souls. Poetic cinema xD
-The moment when he called God, because Lipton was liptoning and refusing to lie down, while being sick. (And yes, in real life he told Lip to take the ONLY bed. Lip, because he was Lip, refused, but then he was ordered, so he agreed… I don’t know what to do with this information, seriously….).
-That hand tremble while he was pointing the gun at the asshole that shot Grant. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife, it was that thick.
-Also the line “When you talk to the officer, you say sir.” is so damned corny when you think about it, but because it was Speirs and the way he delivered it, it ended simply great. Also, A+ acting again.
-There is a lot to unpack in this scene, because why the ruthless killer, who was nicknamed “Bloody”, didn’t shot the bastard? He has had enough of killing? The prisoner was defenceless? He calculated the consequences, because he already knew he was staying in the army? All of this? Who knows.
-The fact we again, didn’t see his face for a moment, when he holstered his gun and said Grant was going to be ok - damn, I would want to see it.
(On the real side note, I think I’ve read somewhere (probably it was the Fierce Valour), that real Speirs said to Winters, that he didn’t really know, but there had to be some kind of doubt in his mind, that’s why he didn’t pull the trigger.)
Ok, the END.
It’s quite embarrassing how much time I’ve spent thinking about this asshole, but whatever.
Part one (x)
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I LOVED LOVED LOVED the finale and here's why:
The acting? Phenomenal. Walker did such a good job with the range of emotions Percy goes through, his courage and his fear and his anger and his betrayal and his affection and his humor. I also really loved the little expressions everyone in the cast had to express affection- you can see how much Poseidon and Annabeth and Grover and Percy and Sally all care about the people they interact with just by the most minuscule movements in their faces
They did such a good job with Luke. I was never really on board with him reading the books since he seemed pretty irredeemable to me from the get go, which made his sacrifice in The Last Olympian fall pretty flat for me. But here? He makes some really good points, he starts out not wanting to hurt Percy, and I'm almost on his side until Percy tries to apologize for hurting him and he responds by attacking. That to me is the fundamental core of Luke's philosophy: at its core, it is very valid, but the way he goes about fighting for it is what makes him a villain
Also, the scenes of Luke training Percy to fight and talking to him about the gods interspersed with his fight with Ares and his journey to Olympus? Poetic cinema
Olympus itself was breathtaking. I had to pause during the first shot of it and just take it all in
The humor! Grover wanting to email Zeus, Percy calling Kronos "grandpa"... the spirit of the books lives on in those moments
#percy jackson#sally jackson#grover underwood#annabeth chase#luke castellan#pjo poseidon#percy series spoilers#riordanverse#ray rambles
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Okay but can we please talk about how beautifully crafted are the final scenes of each episode in this season?
I'm gonna talk mostly about episode 4, but I need to praise the other ones as well. For real, the way the first three episodes end is just... pure poetry. Blackbeard's speech about the bird that spends its entire existence in the air? His crushing delivery and the way he fails to hide his emotions behind his mask anymore? The "Fuck you, Stede Bonnet"/"Good night, Ed Teach" tranistion? Poetic cinema!
The second episode with the storm scene is one of my favourite scenes in the entire show. The slow motion and the song are perfect and I thought that it was so God damned beautifully shot! And Ed's "finally" was perfect, that showed us that it was his plan all along to get the crew to hate him so much that they end him.
I don't even know what to say about the ending of ep 3 that hasn't already been said, the song choice and Stede talking to Ed and bringing him back to life was amazing AND THAT LAST SHOT OF ED TAKING STEDE'S HAND WAS PURE PERFECTION!
All of the final scenes are incredible, the end of episode 5 being yet another favourite of mine, I literally melt every time I see the thumb war! But the ending that really stood out for me was episode 4! First of all, that was a solid and amazing episode as a whole, but the symbolism of "People don't change. Not into birds or otherwise" but then!! Buttons turns into a seagull, and we can see in Ed's reaction that he is somehow filled with hope, hope that people *can* change. And just like that, as if on cue, Stede comes back for him, unlike he did in season 1, when he left him waiting. The song! Them running excitedly towards the ship and towards a future together!!
And back on the ship, Izzy smiling genuinely for the first time in the show! That last shot, with Izzy standing as a figurehead to the Revenge ship *and* to the revenge crew. He is their unicorn now, their protector, and so buttons flies off, showing once again that people *can* change, showing us that Izzy embraces his own change, and that he embraces this new life as a protector of the crew, and maybe he embraces feeling loved by the crew finally. We can see his reluctance when Fang embraced him in episode 1, but from this moment on, he never turns away from affection and we see it in future episodes as well.
THIS SHOW, I SWEAR.
#ofmd#our flag means death#ofmd meta#ofmd spoilers#ofmd season 2 spoilers#ofmd season 2#ofmd blackbeard#stede bonnet#blackbonnet#izzy hands#I needed to pause my assignment to write this down because this show lives rent free in my head
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I found it hilarious that Jojo has been loosely touting a Taylor Swift parallel when it comes to Mew and his relationship with Top (and it's obviously a surface level joke) but if you actually listen to the songs in Reputation and Lover...the storytelling is 100% Ray. It's finding love at your lowest. The self-loathing, seeking love as salvation, blowing up good things in fear and realizing too late, secret rendezvous where neither knows what game is really being played, finding their purported last love in a world that hated them--who is all of these things but Ray?
The Taylor Swift thing is mostly just an entertaining observation for me but the thing that the thematic elements and imagery in her music prompted me to re-think was that famous final scene in episode 10. While you watch Ray's eyes morph the therapist into Sand, there's a stoic golden glow to imaginary-Sand as he sits in the therapist's chair like a throne, as though you've walked into a temple dedicated to him--a temple Ray has dedicated to him. It's almost like Ray has always seen Sand as a god.
Throughout the confession that follows, Imaginary-Sand is mostly emotionless, minimally responding to Ray as Ray maintains an incredibly reverent face despite breaking down in tears. The apology contains so many reused phrases as though Ray were reciting some sort of prayer, and even while sitting in the sofa, the camera kind of points up at Sand rather than at the even level he is really at when you see things through Ray's vision. Finally, when Ray gets on his knees and imaginary-Sand appears to console him, it's not clearly romantic or friendly. There's a godliness to it. The point is, the whole thing just felt akin to a religious awakening to me. And then I realized I felt those same feelings emanating from Ray in the caravan, in the music room, at the party, drunk in the parking lot, on the rooftop, in the kitchen(s), when they wake up together for the first time...
I don't know what this means for the relationship Ray and Sand have and whether it will ever really be healthy, but it certainly made for poetic cinema. Has Sand eclipsed the unattainable Mew? Has he become the unconditional heavenly father (I say, mostly in jest)? Another point of consideration is that Ray always seems to be wearing a cross. Just saying.
Anyway this theory is pretty out there, and in any case, it's less about proving the idea and more about seeing what others thought about it as a vantage point of discussion, and whether it colors how Ray, and Sand and Ray as a couple, are interpreted.
Those are such great observations! Taylor Swift's lyricism is so fascinating and complex to me, and I agree that there are so many lyrics that could easily apply to Ray.
In my opinion, Ray is easily the most complicated character in this show. It's no wonder they chose Khaotung to play him because there are so many feelings he has to work through, especially in these emotionally-charged scenes. When the camera pans behind Ray's head and Sand appears, Ray slowly looks up at him with tears in his eyes. That first moment when he meets eyes with him and says his name just speaks to how agonizing this confrontation is for Ray, because he's confronting himself through the image of Sand. This entire scene is the acceptance of just how much Sand means to Ray, just how badly Ray has screwed up yet again, and just how much gratitude Ray has for Sand in his heart.
Your analysis of the religious aspects of the scene is so compelling. The golden coloring behind Sand echoes a lot of what @thewayuarent has analyzed about the contrast between cold blue lighting and warm gold lighting for both Sand and Ray. Also interesting your point about how the camera is slightly angled up at Sand rather than at eye-level. Originally I wouldn't think too much of this but contrasted with the shots of Ray at eye-level, it seems super intentional.
"Religious awakening" is a great way of describing it. There's been a lot of discussion about Ray putting Mew on a pedestal and idolizing him, but I think we see a similar kind of reverence being displayed here, but with some notable differences. With Mew, it felt like he was always something distant, something Ray wanted but could never quite touch. But in this scene, we have Ray facing Sand, on his knees for him, embracing him. Despite the whole thing being imaginary, it feels very real in a way I struggle to articulate. There's a worshipping aspect, I agree, but there's also a realism in the way Ray is very honestly considering his emotions. With Mew, I'd argue those feelings of idolization were allowed to grow out of Ray's fantasy, but with Sand, it isn't something Ray has blown up in his head. My main point being--I don't think it's necessarily suggesting an unhealthy power imbalance with Ray as the worshipper and Sand as the godly figure (in the way we saw with Ray and Mew), though I think this scene does an excellent job of emphasizing how Ray views Sand as someone honestly and purely good.
Another reason I think Khao delivers this so well is that he speaks through his eyes in every one of those scenes you mention. He sees all of Sand's goodness, but I don't think he's directly confronted his own behavior until this moment. Yes, he's apologized and yes he's realized that he was in the wrong. But here he is laying it all out on the table. Following the topic of religion, it almost feels like a confession. In Ray's imagination, this is a space where he can expel all of his feelings to the image of Sand. It's almost better that Sand can't react here (seeing as he's imaginary) because it brings the focus back to Ray. Even though Ray is crying to Sand and about Sand, it's all a reflection of his own flaws in their relationship and otherwise.
#fantastic analysis anon thank you for this#I love talking about colors and the cinematography is also a great point#only friends the series#only friends#ofts#sandray#raysand#raysan#sanray#sand x ray#ray x sand#ray pakorn#only friends ray#only friends sand#only friends episode 10#ask#only friends ask#only friends meta#only friends analysis#firstkhaotung#first kanaphan#khaotung thanawat
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we can’t finish our one-shot sincE LAST YEAR and i miss my party sooooo here’s a little sketch of our mairon and eönwë(guess who’s me)
no but me and the mairon girl were literally in same clothes but of opposite colors- poetic cinema
#yes guys a kokoshnik#i was wearing a kokoshnik i always wear a kokoshnik#eonwe#eönwë#mairon#silmarillion#eye art
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Marzieh Meshkini’s three-part film, “The Day I Became a Woman,” from 2000, is a masterwork of symbolic cinema; it depicts, with vast imagination, the ordeals faced by women in modern Iranian society. Meshkini reportedly made it as three separate short films, in order to elude the system of official censorship that governed features but not shorts. The result is a trio of tightly composed and lyrically filmed episodes, titled by the name of their protagonists, that offer images of enormous psychological power—images that ought to haunt both the memory and the subconscious of anyone who sees them.
The film set on Kish Island, in the Persian Gulf, and all three episodes take place largely by the sea, making use of both its photogenic and its metaphorical aspects. The first story, “Hava,” features a girl on the day of her ninth birthday—the day, according to her grandmother, that she becomes a woman, and, as a result, the day that she must cover her hair with a head scarf, and that she can no longer play with her best friend, a boy named Hassan. After Hassan is sadly turned away and Hava, bewildered, protests, Hava’s mother finds a rather ingenious loophole, allowing her one last brief outing with her friend—but, by the time Hava arrives at Hassan’s home, he’s virtually imprisoned there, forced to do homework for fear that his teacher will hit him. Instead, the two forlorn friends share a snack, through the jail-like bars of his window, that evokes both the submission to religious law and the power of yet another law—the one of unintended consequences—that gives rise to surprising behavior and knowledge and reverberates with scriptural overtones regarding forbidden fruit and the power of temptation. (It also delivers, in a subplot involving Hava’s head scarf, a notable metaphorical suggestion of whom society’s rules empower and whom they restrict.)
The second story, “Ahoo,” features a man on a galloping horse, loudly calling the name of the protagonist and scaring away the animals and birds on the scruffy plain. The creatures get the idea; striking fear is his intention. He aggressively gallops toward a large group of female cyclists who are pedalling urgently along a narrow seaside road and rides menacingly close to one biker, Ahoo, whom he orders off her bike and back home. (Looking straight ahead, without even wasting a glance at him, she whispers, “No,” in a cinematic moment of sublime defiance and freedom.) He leaves—and then returns with another horseman, a mullah who’s there to perform a divorce on the spot if she won’t give up her bike (which the clergyman calls “the devil’s mount”). She blankly intones, “Go ahead, divorce me.” As Ahoo speeds ahead through the pack of bikers and then slows down and falls behind, the number of horsemen showing up to coerce her off the bike and back to the family and the tribe successively increases. It’s a fablelike mechanism of poetic repetition that Meshkini’s direction emphasizes, in a series of simple, swift, majestic, and recurring (or rhyming) images that follow Ahoo, from the side in tracking shots, from the front in closeups, and from behind in her virtual point of view, as she makes her way among the crowd of other women cyclists and away from her oppressive male pursuers. What’s clear is that the black-clad group ride is actually a horde of women fleeing their husbands, families, and clans—it’s a ride of freedom with a funereal tone, a simple yet spectacular fusion of kinetic ecstasy and tragedy.
The third story, “Hoora,” features an elderly woman, stooped and limping, disembarking from an airplane at the Kish airport. There, a boy working as a porter pushes her, in a wheelchair-like cart, on her peculiar errands: he takes her to one shopping mall after another, where, pulling cash from her stocking, she spends enormous amounts of money buying a wide variety of household goods that she has always lacked, including a refrigerator (all her life, she says, she wanted cold water), an ironing board, a bathtub, a washing machine, a stereo, makeup, and a batch of pots and pans. As the boxes full of her treasures accumulate, she’s followed by a line of young porters towing them on their carts, until she orders the workers to spread her possessions on the beach. What results is an amazing precursor to Agnès Varda’s film “The Beaches of Agnès,” in which Hoora virtually moves onto the beach, with her most important new possession as the centerpiece of the display: a bedroom featuring a big bed and a wedding gown. No less than in Varda’s film, this scene stages the passions of a lifetime in terms of a first-person reckoning. Meshkini’s breathtaking tableaux suggest a double absence, rendering Hoora in the split guise of a merry widow and a Miss Havisham, even as she prepares for another, perhaps final, and similarly symbolized journey (one that nonetheless unites the three tales in a deft and bittersweet flourish).
Stream “The Day I Became a Woman” on Vimeo.
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for whenever you see this.
my dear friend,
i am writing to u as i bawl. this ep was so fkn beautiful, i have no words. just a ripped and battered heart, a blocked nose, red, puffy eyes and the most sadness i’ve felt in months.
i cannot believe it is only ep 2, mon. the way the story is written, the way it’s shot, the way jimmysea have acted. THAT LAST FKN FISH TANK SCENE. 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔
omfg friend. we know so little about morkday and yet it feels like i’ve known them for ages and so damn well because i can feel their pain, their fear, their sadness, everything. this ep was so so sooo beautiful. i am sooo soo soooo excited for the remaining 10 eps but i know they’re gonna RUIN me. how will we survive this, bestie?
🫶🏼, a broken sam 😭😭😭😭
MY DEAREST SAM,
HERE'S AN ACTUAL DEPICTION OF ME WAKING UP THIS MORNING KNOWING THAT LAST TWILIGHT EPISODE 2 IS REAL AND ACTUALLY HAPPENED
forgive me if im just gonna be holding you on the spiritual plane as im still lacking the words to properly express how this episode made me feel. the entirety of part 4 alone irrevocably changed the direction of my life the foundation of my personhood the chemical make up of my brain and my entire being on a molecular level. it just had everything: tenderness vulnerability understanding acknowledgment recognition care fondness adoration me in front of the screen screeching crying throwing up blood ascending onto a higher sphere of human consciousness. the fish tank scene at the end may very well be the most beautiful poetic romantic symbolic fairytale-like 5 minutes to ever be put on screen in the history of television and im gonna need to spend the rest of the week in a sensory deprivation chamber to decompress and recover from the parallelism romanticism soulmatism of it all
IM JUST SO DEEPLY GRATEFUL TO EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THIS SHOW FOR BRINGING TRUE LOVE AND REAL CINEMA BACK ON MY SCREEN AND TO THINK THIS IS ONLY EPISODE 2..........THERE ISN'T ENOUGH SEDATIVE IN THE WORLD TO MAKE ME COME DOWN FROM THE SHEER EUPHORIC UNHINGED RABID ENERGIES THIS SHOW HAS GOT ME GOING ON
💜💜💜,
YOUR FRIEND MON WHO'S VERY MUCH IN NEED OF A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS INTERVENTION TEAM IN THE ROOM WITH HER RN IMMEDIATELY
#BUT ALSO IM SORRY BECAUSE IM LITERALLY CONTRIBUTING NOTHING VALUABLE OR SMART OR EVEN JUST COHERENT ENOUGH TO BE WORTH READING TO THE FANDOM#IT'S JUST ME AND THE FRANKLY WORRYING AMOUNT OF NEW MENTAL ILLNESSES I END UP DEVELOPING WITH EVERY NEW EPISODES#sam ❤️#m: ask
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alright i didn't have time yesterday so i guess we're doing TWO episodes today. well. if the sea gods get to it in a timely manner, that is. anyway,
ep3 let's go
........did they seriously give SWIMMING baby pterosaurs only to immediately get them murderized???? are you fucking kidding me. i mean i love the crocs. BUT COME ON
that blue dragonfly is so pretty???!??!?!?
giant murder chicken :D :D :D
awww that shot of the filling river is so chef's kiss 👌👌👌
LETS GIVE A WAHOO FOR BEELZEBUFO!!!!!! HE SO CHONKY I LOVE HIM
okay. alright. but listen, every time, and i mean EVERY TIME, sir mister attenborough says "looking for A Mate" that scene from doctor who replays in my head. Every. Time.
my man got SO much more than he has bargained for lmao😂😂😂
that slow dejected blink is exactly what i was talking about before. THW DETAIL. poetic fucking cinema.
i swear to god if any of them stomp on my fucking frog i will RIOT
(ง'̀-'́)ง
okay but can i just say that i LOVE the beelebufo segment??? last season they only appeared in one (1) scene, snacking on babies because of-fucking-course, but now my man is fist fighting sauropods. it's so good.
OMG IT'S REXY!!! HI REXY!!!
WAIT ARE YOU SAYING THAT REXYS HAVE LIZARD TOE BEANS??!?!?!?? IS THAT WAT YOU'RE SAYING??!? IS IT??!
dead babies counter: |||||||||||
i think this was my fave episode so far? the segments seem longer and more focused which was great. but also. WHY was it so much shorter. like wtf.
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The Black Cat (1934) an early horror classic with a dark revenge storyline.
Edgar Allan Poe may never be truly adapted to the screen due to the nature of his work. The Black Cat is a story of a diseased man with an intense and all consuming horror of cats. And that is all that makes it into universals first of only two attempts to adapt Poe in some form.
Bela Lugosi plays (Dr. Werdegast) the closest thing to a hero that he was ever allowed to. It shows that he was capable of playing characters that weren't always evil or demented. At least for a little while until the Dr. finally gets his revenge. We can see that there is a decent man who would still not see the young couple be mixed up in his game, either out of kindness, or out of worry that they could interfere. "where the soul is slowly killed." says everything we need to know, and there is no one living or dead actor that could have played this character better. There is something truly sinister in the performance, about his desire for revenge that led him to doing something to Poelzig that is poetic and deserved, but equally disturbing and gruesome. I also enjoyed The Raven (1935) that gave Lugosi the chance to go further with this sinister performance. In that film, I like to think that maybe it was a what if Werdegast survived, but after torturing his worst enemy to death, he became addicted to it. Now that would make for a fine fan edit.
'The skinning scene effectively uses the power of suggestion to convey the horrible deed with shadows, and somehow that makes it more shocking. Horror isn't always seen, but it can always be felt. I don't need to show you a man being skinned alive to scare you; If the characters are strong enough, it only takes a good director to use the power of suggestion to get under peoples skin (pun intended.)
That's the beauty of horror fiction, as it is an exploration of the feeling that pushes our minds into new territories to meditate on. Is that not what Poe did? Just as Poe was an early pioneer of the genre in his time, so was early horror cinema in the 30s.
I wish that this film was longer and had more to it than a little more than an hour runtime. Werdegast's fear of cats doesn't really play much into the plot save for a few moments. It could suggest that the inuman torture he lived through as a P.O.W. involved cats in some way maybe. That and the fact that his daughter was alive with Poelzig, didn't add any real stakes to the story like it should have, other than showing the cruelty and madness that both men share for each other. The production is nothing shy of what was as good a film that was being made at the time. Every shot is a dreadful and haunting image of this pleasure palace built on war scorned land that tells just as much of the story. The music isn't bad; overbearing at times, but can be striking in other sequences. Performances that are not only career highlights, but do stand tall. These are truly fleshed out and ghastly men stalmated in their game of death, that I have no problem believing has lasted for decades.
Boris Karloff plays maybe his most menacing and inhumanly evil character ever; and yet Poelzig is as mortal as we. Not a man sewed together from body parts, or a thousand year old mummy who woke up and went for a little walk. nope. Poelzig is just a man that is as soul dead as Werdegast from his time in the war. Only he is a satanic priest of his own coven who has guests over for rituals and sacrifices of beautiful women who can't resist his charms. Oh and he tends to keep them on display as well...The satanic elements not coming off as over the top or campy like other works about satanic cults. It's just an element to his character. Which satanism is more about worship of the self rather than the devil. And I could see Poelzig as being so vane to sacrifice people to himself as he fancies himself his own dark lord. Boris had a screen presence that was and is still unmatched. He was able to generate such a real tangible menace without speaking a word. And this was one of the first films that allowed him to speak dialogue, and that gave him the opportunity to show how soft and hypnotizing his voice was. When he speaks, we listen. When he is silent, we feel his very auro that echoes despite being without a soul; that people are just objects at his disposal.
The Black Cat (1934) is a truly effective horror film that realizes its horror through great characters and the legendary performances behind them. It is a trip to the darkest depths that a man's soul is capable of descending to. One consumed by the evil of his actions and only able to find peace when others are suffering; and the other consumed by a hatred that slowly killed his very own soul, and has come all this way to lay about 15 years worth of wraith upon him.
It is a great film, but I have to admit that it isn't a very good adaptation of Poe. And I don't blame it for that. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be. I see how the story has influenced many elements of the screenplay. I also have to say, that a remake wouldn't be a bad idea here if universal decides to do so. I doubt it would happen; It didn't have mainstream appeal then, and it doesn't now. But I would love to see some talented filmmakers explore the ideas and characters further. Robert Eggers comes to mind; he would understand, and would go to great pain staking lengths to achieve the same surreal malice, that universal achieved almost 90 years ago.
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TW: Svicid&⚠️
Fandom of “The Eclipse”, I want to share a crazy theory with you all!
(I hope everyone is loving the series as much as I am! 💕🥰 check out the playlist I made about it!! ✨)
Since the beginning of the series, we’ve been getting this clues from the director, the novel and some scenes that suggests a tragic ending to our main couple.
I won’t mention Thua [totally mentioning him 🤓]. I think at this point everyone knows he’s plotting something. (I mean, he’s the only one from the main cast who doesn’t have an iPhone. Apple doesn’t allow villains using their products on camera, hence he is not innocent.)
I want to talk about another thing.
This week’s episode had one scene in particular that kept me up at night.
The pool scene (not related to KinnPorsche 🥸🤪), to be more specific, their kiss. One thing I love in cinema, is the art of foreshadowing, and that underwater kiss felt like it. I don’t quite know if it was the way they were holding on to each other, or if it was that last upper shot where we aren’t able to see them (as if they were on a very deep body of water), but something caught my attention.
My theory is poetically painful, here it goes: what if in that scene we saw on the first trailer (released 10 months ago, so they obviously made some changes since that.). When Akk is standing over the edge of the cliff, Ayan tries to save him, but only gets there in time to hug him one last time, for they both fall into the water, sealing their infinite love with an underwater kiss, before dying together. Making a beautiful, yet morbid parallelism with the kiss they shared on the pool. That in my opinion was their real first kiss, after all, that was the first time Akk didn’t interrupt it, even tho they were at school.
Again, this is just a theory, maybe I’m reaching, I hope so… To be honest I don’t think they’d give such a soul crushing finale to a BL in 2022, but we never know!
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Movies I watched and books I read this Week #127 (Year 3/Week 33):
The Fury of a Patient Man, a tense Spanish thriller about a man who waits 8 years to take revenge on the killers of his fiancé.
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2 tender Japanese dramas by female director Naomi Kawase plus another by Yasujirō Ozu:
🍿 Tokyo Twilight, my 6th Ozu drama. A story about an older, single father, two grown up sisters, a mother who left and then came back, an unplanned pregnancy and a death of a daughter. Tragic, subtle and patient family soap opera, his last film that was beautifully shot in black and white.
🍿 I used to enjoy eating Dorayaki, the cookie-snack made of two small bean-filled pancakes, which we often bought at ‘Ranch 99’ stores. Kawase’s Sweet bean is a slow, emotional food porn story, about a solitary owner of such a small Dorayaki store. He hires a 76-year-old woman with a recipe for a better red bean filling, as well as a dark personal secret. Gentle and poetic.
🍿 I was curious about her earlier (1992) art film Embracing because of (personal) reasons. It’s a cinema-verite exploration of her own search for her father, who had left her and family when she was a small girl. Meditative poem about abandonment, loss and identity.
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Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure is the first-ever hard-core, triple-X pornographic cartoon from 1928. It was made clandestinely by certain unknown illustrators from three studios, Disney, Max Fleischer and the Mutt and Jeff studio. It's as explicit as you can get, and involves masturbation, intercourse, bestiality, anal penetration, dildos, ejaculation, and so much more. It was made for a private stag party at the studio, and obviously was never exhibited publicly. Available in full on Wikipedia, and highly recommended. (Photo Above).
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2 directed by Pixar’s Peter Sohn:
🍿 Partly Cloudy, his earlier short about a stork that is delegated to delivering the “less desirable” babies, these of porcupines, and crocodiles and electric fish. Really, Storks?…
🍿 The disappointing new computer-animated Elemental was the first Pixar product I couldn’t finish. A shallow 100% Disneyfied world building that started at a Disney cruise, and moved into a mythical Disneyland, without a heart or a soul. 1/10.
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Because I'm a political masochist, I watched the 4-hour 2020 documentary The Reagans. I always held that this despicable puppet-master, was the most destructive modern American president, even more than Nixon. A good looking elitist, affable reactionary, a nicely-smelling, racist piece of shit, who changed America for the worst, and laid the foundations for all the horrors that were later Donild Trump. As Higgins told Condor: "You poor dumb son of a bitch. You've done more damage than you know."
I have to stop watching movies about monsters.
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Paco León Spanish sex comedy 'Kiki, Love to love' that I saw last week, was kinky, delightful and original. So I was surprised to read that it was a remake of an Australian film. However, The little death had no juice at all, it was forced, prurient, unfunny and worst of all - unsexy. 2/10.
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On the flight from Denmark to Israel I read the “erotic” thriller Skinny Dip. I used to like Carl Hiaasen years ago, but this story of a wife who survives being thrown from the deck of cruise ship, was mediocre pulp. The worst part was the Hebrew translation, which made it unreadable. 1/10.
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(My complete movie list is here)
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Thoughts on Episode 1 of The Last of Us
Pedro Pascal. Holy shit. He’s amazing as Joel, and has already given a heartbreaking and riveting performance in the first episode. Also side note but I’m in love with him.
The visuals are gorgeous, I absolutely love the environment they’ve created.
That final shot set to Never Let Me Down Again by Depeche Mode?? Poetic Cinema🤌Absolutely perfect song choice, don’t mind me listening to it on repeat for the next 72 hours.
The characters are great, they’ve done a wonderful job introducing each of them so far. Even with characters like Sarah, who’s only in the show for the first half of the episode! Her death was beyond heart wrenching. I just want to say again that they did a great job with Joel. He’s a really strong protagonist and already a complex and interesting character the viewers can gravitate towards.
I haven’t played the video game, but I have watched the first part of it- enough to be able to tell just how loyal the show is. It’s honestly insane how good of a job they did replicating it.
Overall I loved it and cant wait for next weeks episode!
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