🎃 fred jones in trick or treat scooby doo! (2022)

Love me, love my raccoon [Part 3/3]:

—Meeko's new favorite human <3

I don’t usually make posts like this, but I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-intellectual junk lately, and I really think we need to put the word “pretentious” up on a shelf until people learn what it actually means.

It doesn’t describe someone who likes artsy-fartsy deep meaning media. People who are pretentious are fake. They’re posers trying to be sophisticated and unique, not like other girls. They pretend to only like stuff they think will make them sound cool when they talk about it. They want to act like they know something you don’t, and they want attention for it.

By definition, if you genuinely enjoy something, you can’t be pretentious. If it resonates with you, and you analyze it, and you don’t care what people think, that’s the polar opposite, actually. If you love obscure experimental prog music, if you watch underground high concept indie films through English teacher eyes, if you spend hours in a modern art museum reading each piece as a vessel for storytelling, if your backpack’s full of poetry books that inspire you, if you play underrated games that were someone’s passion project, if you have an interest in studying the classics or the masters, you are not pretentious.

Of course, some people just don’t like some stuff, and that’s fine, but that’s not what this is about. Don’t let anti-intellectuals shame you for enjoying things just because your interests are inaccessible to them, because they refuse to be brave and put effort into critical thinking. You’re not stuck up for refusing to overlook the craft of artists.

Gael García Bernal in Déficit (2007, dir. Gael García Bernal)

(these gifs also feature Luz Cipriota and Camila Sodi)

Gifs are all 540px wide so you can click to see larger.

[other gael filmography gifsets]

I think PrinceZam should be put in a saw trap. Not that it’d be good for him just that it would force him to either confront the worst of his mortality and all of his fears and force him to reckon with the parts of himself that he continually tries to deny. Or die trying

If there’s any other possibilities you’d like to share, leave it In the replies pls!

Spoilers for the ninth Detective Conan OVA, "The Stranger From 10 Years Later."

Realistically, out-of-universe, I know it's little more than fanservice. It's a peek at what a popular recurring character's future could be, a snapshot of how things may turn out for him. But in-universe, I can't help thinking about the implications of 26- or 27-year-old Heiji's short cameo appearance in Shinichi's literal fever dream.

There's an immense level of detail to the entire scenario. The tree in the Kudo yard has grown taller, downtown Tokyo is littered with new buildings and renovated old ones, a high school teacher's face is lined with more wrinkles than he ought to have after a mere "few months." It's a vibrant, breathing world that Shinichi's imagined—one that indicates to me that he's deeply considered the possibility of never returning to his old life. He's walked by his home, in a body so small that he can't even unlock the gate, and thought to himself, "One day, that tree will tower over the fence, but I'll still be stuck as tiny Conan." He's ruminated about it, wondered and speculated and deliberated, how the city around him will change while he hasn't been allowed to, not in the way he wants.

And he's done the same concerning Heiji. And... it's positive. Immensely so.

Interviewer: For today, we'll be interviewing... The famous detective from Naniwa, Hattori Heiji-san! He has brilliantly solved numerous intricate cases and is now recognized all over Japan! He's even opened his own detective agency!

Or, at least, it is at first, anyway. It's quickly revealed that Heiji and Kazuha's relationship hasn't progressed in the slightest, which, while obviously not a particularly favorable outcome for either of them, does say something about Shinichi. Because you could argue that Shinichi envisions Heiji living the life that he himself so desperately desires. You could say that the true purpose of Heiji's appearance in this OVA is to accentuate the future that Shinichi craves but cannot have, not yet and never as himself, where he's the mastermind behind a thriving, well-renowned detective agency, where an interview with him is unquestioningly broadcast on a huge screen overlooking Tokyo streets, where busy passersby stop in place, look up, and listen to what he has to say.

And... where he's also popular with girls.

Heiji is known as "The Lady-Killer of Naniwa" in Shinichi's imagination, and especially early in the manga, Shinichi does explicitly enjoy that kind of attention (File 10, included as File 1 in Volume 2, spells this out directly).

Interviewer: I've heard that the young ladies have a certain nickname for Hattori-san... "The Lady-Killer of Naniwa."

But the fact that Heiji and Kazuha have gotten nowhere points me elsewhere. This isn't an idealized fantasy that Shinichi wishes he could have for himself in the slightest. Ran is his dream. The emotional heart of this special, the dominant, overarching tragedy, is how Conan's overwriting and erasure of Shinichi prevents him from being with his lifelong love. There's no way that Shinichi would ever imagine a "happy end" that's anything like what Heiji and Kazuha have going on in this OVA.

So, what does Shinichi's conception of 26- or 27-year-old Heiji mean? A few things:

Even in this nightmarish "bad end," Shinichi cannot conceive of a life without Heiji, just as he cannot conceive of a life without Ran. It's unthinkable.

Shinichi wholeheartedly believes that Heiji will be wildly successful in his career.

Shinichi wholeheartedly believes that Heiji is so attractive and good-looking that of course he'll be wildly popular with women. Undoubtedly.

tl;dr, Shinichi's thought about Heiji's future, and those thoughts are really essentially, "Yeah, there's no way that my boy Hattori isn't going to have his own fantastic detective agency one day, and also, he's a hunk, so he'll be called 'The Lady-Killer of Naniwa.'"

Seriously.

What’s INSANE to me is how blind studios are to what actually sells. This and Mattel’s desire to have a MCU for themselves, convinced that what sells is their thousand IPs…

Girl (gender neutral), what made Barbie sell was Greta Gerwig, and a sort of original take on what could have been just a two-hour long publicity stunt, but instead cared about telling a story and having a strong point of view (and a bunch of investment on marketing, not gonna lie... which only means that if you market your original films smartly you can also have a good revenue).

Elemental (an original animated movie) sold way more than Lightyear or The Flash! After a soft opening, the box office remained steady, because, who would have thought, if you give original content time it will grow an audience ! ! !

It's not about original movies being risky, it's about the amount of investment being put in mediocre productions just because the executives in high power believe they understand how the industry works, when they don't. THEY DON'T.

Calling any cg animated film with a stylised 2D inspired aesthetic “like Spiderverse” or Spiderverse-esque” is starting to become the animation equivalent of describing any experimental movie with a disturbing, uncanny or surreal tone “Lynchian”.

i was going to make a joke here about how the OG anti jedi movement was started by george lucas and is called the prequel trilogy (and they are like garbage as films but not because of that) but i realized that actually as someone whose family luckily is not in star wars a more salient irritation to me is the conversation about The Luke Of It All and like i could go on about this at length but mostly what i want to say is that in high school i decided i wanted to celebrate my eighteenth birthday by having all my friends over and having a marathon of the original star wars trilogy, which we had all grown up with and loved except one girl who had never seen them and when this came to light we were like WHAT????? HOW CAN THIS BE?????? and we were all a little judgmental when she got bored and went to bed halfway through. because we all had been star wars fans since childhood and thought the movies ruled. we were obnoxious and superior teenagers who went to the last two prequels preparing to hatewatch and eager to make fun, and it was consensus (not shared by me, a lifelong lover of critters) that the ewoks were dumb, but our love for star wars was deep and sincere. my dude friends probably had some knowledge of the world beyond the movies even from like video games and maybe some novels idk. anyway. so we sat down on my birthday to watch these movies that we all agreed were awesome and great. and one of my friends was like, “i should count every time luke whines onscreen.” and we were all like LMAO HAHAHA THAT’S SO FUNNY YES DO IT. and he got to like 110 whines by the end of a new hope and then abandoned the bit. but like. one thing that makes me feel insane is if you’d asked me in november 2017 “how do star wars fans feel about luke?” i UNHESITATINGLY would have said, “oh they think he’s a whiny bitch and the most lame character in the movies and also that mark hamill can’t act.” like i can’t emphasize how much this was the reality i knew as a person who liked star wars but in a normal way. i swear i wrote some line to this effect into a piece of fiction at one point. and in fact as a person who tends towards generosity once i’ve decided i like something i also could have told you of the years i spent alone in the luke-loving trenches, coming to his defense because yeah he does whine a lot but that’s part of his charm. it’s part of the magic of the movies, went the argument i swear to you i had made, that if luke is on the screen he’s probably whining. it wouldn’t be the same any other way! this was, i stress again, as per all evidence available to me, a niche opinion. like it was a really hot take to be like “yes luke whines so much… but i like him anyway! and i think mark hamill is pretty good once you get to empire.” so like i feel really truly berenstain/berenstein bears about this universe i portaled into 5 years ago where apparently longtime star wars fans have always thought that luke was awesome and cool and a total hero. like setting aside all debates over artistic merits and narrative consistency and how to read the best star wars movie of all time (the last jedi), it just makes me feel fucking crazy that people would act like “luke sucks” is a concept invented out of thin air by rian johnson in 2017. like it goes against everything about my experience of being a person who has thought the original star wars trilogy is pretty great since i was 8 years old in 1996.

it is that serious actually the projector sound in the back of you are in love demonstrating the small snapshots you play back from falling in love

can i be so honest. every critique ive read of nope so far has been very lacking

We Still Kill the Old Way (1967)

i dunno how much this guy knows, but...

(i’m putting behind a read-more until it’s officially confirmed because I don’t want to start a panic lol)

so, if this dude isn’t just making things up, it’s not a case of still “no release date”, but a delay until next year.  

2023 reads // twitter thread  

Never Been Kissed

adult demi mm romance

a film studies graduate managing his town’s dying drive in theatre is desperate to save it, and tries to convince a reclusive local director to show her lost media film

also his ex crush/best friend is the new social media manger there