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purpleglitch · 8 months

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I ramble for too long about my art (The post)

(Drawings here)

Thanks again to Nunki and Nov so much for pulling me out of art block 😭💕 I had so much fun drawing all of this and experimenting with poses and colors, etc. that I wouldn't have tried before this!! i'm so sorry this took like 2 months to finish there was lots of stuff going on but I finally finished it and i'm very happy how it all turned out. I made this post just to go through my thought process LMAO

DAY 1: Early SMP Days

This one was inspired by the "he asked for no pickles" meme and how in an early dsmp stream c!dream (in full enchanted netherite armor) asks c!george (half iron/diamond armor) to protect him with a crossbow while they go to l'manburg

At first this one was gonna be a quick drawing but then i got too invested into drawing the armor that it got out of hand and suddenly i had spent 2 days on that 💀

Also all the other drawings were gonna be like this one, a bit simple than what i usually do, but i got too invested x2 and ended up rendering(?) more the rest of drawings

C!dream is c!george's baby, like the cc's dynamic 👍

DAY 2: Objects of Affection

THE SHIELD DEMONS GOT ME 👹👹👹👹 also c!gnf keeps the mask even though it's a bit broken :3

C!gnf is a bit dirty because he doesn't shower, also he sleeps on the grass sometimes, he doesn't get sunburnt because XD protects him from that, also c!sapnap is the one that finds him like that and brings him back to kinoko

I think this is the drawing with most layers only because it was for setting the lighting

This one set the bar of how many details can i put on the next drawings haha got too silly and flew too close to the sun

DAY 3: Worship/Devotion

Inspired by religious imagery in renaissance paintings, they're very pretty and detailed and ohgggg i thought that aesthetic fit XDNF's dynamic ^_^

When I finished the drawing i added a canvas texture so it looked like the mentioned paintings' texture

The pose was so complicated but thankfully i hid all the weird anatomy under capes and hair(?) 🤭 and I have a mirror right next to my computer so i used myself as reference for the hands

The halo around c!gnf's head could be a reference to the headcanon of georgeeeHD existing and being another dsmp deity or also hinting at george's "destroying the smp" stream and how powerful and crazy insane he is!!! also the reflection of XD's halos on his eyes, they worship each other i think, xdnf makes my tummy hurt /pos

DAY 4: Visions/Dreams

Inspired by my weirdcore demons :3 i love that aesthetic so much

I did the error pop up on this custom generator!!

Saved a lot of time by making c!dream faceless since it would be covered by the pop up anyway, but it can also be symbolism for c!gnf not remembering his face or something crazy

I again used myself as reference for the hands i'm so cool and epic

Also I used a tutorial on how to make the vhs effect/chromatic aberration on paint tool sai and added grainy texture on the background for more spice :3

DAY 5: Reunion/Post-Nuke

I reused an old sketch of c!dnf side profile for this one, hashtag work smart not hard 😎 except i polished it and changed some stuff and now it looks way better than the old version

The concept was happy reunion, they're happy to see each other!! c!dnf good ending, i say in tears.

c!gnf touching the c!dritties :3 jk he's feeling his heartbeat, he can't believe he's real!!!

I had so much fun drawing the blood on the bandages and c!dream's scars, please zoom and admire them, it took so long,,,,

DAY 6: Roleswap

My demons..... my beloved rs au..... the posts i made some while ago were based on this drawing, i have a tag on my blog now for that au

RS!dnf wear matching chains!! also the concept for this drawing was that someone interrupted their make out session :3

Symbolism moment!! I like to draw characters with nail polish of the color it represents them, in this case green for dream and blue for george, but for this au, their colors are swapped: green for george and blue for dream, it symbolizes how their roles (king/knight) on that story are different and don't match with the canon. storywise, they're so in love they wanted to keep each other on themselves somehow so they exchanged nail polish colors

DAY 7: CC Roleplay/Cosplay

Sisyphus would be proud of me (<- almost gave up before drawing this), unironically i got demotivated when i finished day 6 so i took a break and then i went insane with this one

The concept was c!dnfies wearing cc!dnf outfits, dream specifically has so many outfit options but I ended up choosing the famous "dteam in madrid" outfit plus a cat beanie, and I couldn't find a fortnite jesus poster for george's shirt so i just found a silly cat pic and yeah ^_^

Thank you random twt user for the idea 👍

And that's it! I probably forgot to say some stuff more but i started to get anxious this post would be too long. Again thank you so much guys for being supportive over the wips i showed you and also being insane about c!dnf too 😭 <3

#glitch.txt

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klessard · 1 year

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The Culkin Brothers: Macaulay Culkin became a sensation in the 1990's for his portrayal of Kevin McCallister in the Home Alone movies. His brothers Kieran and Rory are also actors, and they feature in some of my favourite productions from that era.

Home Alone, directed by Chris Columbus, 1990

A movie I love to watch every Christmas vacation and never get tired of. With Macaulay Culkin as the lead, but also Kieran Culkin as Kevin's bed-wetting cousin Fuller. Also starring beloved Canadian comedians Catherine O'Hara and the late John Candy. Wonderful soundtrack by John Williams.

The Mighty, directed by Peter Chelsom, 1998 Based on the novel Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, this underrated gem is funny, uplifting and heart-breaking all at once. Kieran Culkin plays a gifted teenage boy suffering from Morquio syndrome. He befriends a strong yet learning disabled boy who becomes his legs while he becomes his brain. Another movie I love to watch around Christmas since an important part of the story is set at that time of year. Hilarious performance by Gillian Anderson as "the Queen of Saxony". Set in Cincinnati but filmed in Toronto. Amazing Celtic-tinged score by Trevor Jones.

Signs, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, 2002 I include this film even though it was released in 2002. It is close enough to the 90's and the story was conceived in a pre-9/11 context. The technologies used by the characters are still those of the 90's (VHS tapes, cathodic televisions, baby monitors) and the fashion as well (Rory Culkin's character rocks the denim overalls and plaid shirts like a pro). This movie is dear to me because of its raw depiction of a man's faith struggle and its effects on his family. But it also offers a wonderful message about God's sovereignty.

#home alone #macaulay culkin #kieran culkin #rory culkin #the mighty #freak the mighty #90s #90s movies #catherine o'hara #john candy #signs #m night shyamalan #elden henson #mel gibson #roberts blossom #christmas #chris columbus #peter chelsom #joaquin phoenix

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mripad · 1 year

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Lip sync animation practice! Capcut VHS effect my beloved <3333

#if you saw me accidentally post this prematurely #no you didn’t #my art #animation #2d animation #oc #frame by frame #programs used:#rough animator #and #capcut #audio from home movies

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 10 months

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Further FOX AND THE HOUND Observations

I watch THE FOX AND THE HOUND... Like, a lot...

Not too long ago, while scoping around Goodwill... Even though I have largely halted collecting Disney VHS tapes (something I regularly did from the early 2000s up until the late 2010s, with some additions every now and then afterwards), I couldn't help but pick up some Disney VHS tapes that I saw there...

One of them was the 2000 release of THE FOX AND THE HOUND, which was in the Gold Classic Collection. This release came in both VHS and DVD formats, but I scooped up the tape, largely for the front artwork. I never really collected the Gold Classic Collection editions, even though they were the newest releases of several Disney films when I was in my late single-digits. I had gotten a couple of them, too, back in the day, as previous editions were no longer available. I had FUN & FANCY FREE, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER circa 2000-2002. I had also gotten the GCC DVDs of THE SWORD IN THE STONE and THE BLACK CAULDRON. Many years later, when I started collecting Disney VHS tapes, I did eventually throw in at least one more GCC release. I remember being given the 2000 release of TOY STORY from a relative, and... I didn't really pick up any after that, until I got the FOX AND THE HOUND VHS the other day.

I tend to watch the movie a lot, and I wanted an excuse to the other day, so I popped in the VHS. I had never seen what this transfer of the movie looked like, I was only familiar with how it looked on the original 1994 VHS release (from "The Classics" line) and the 2011 Blu-ray... But, THE FOX AND THE HOUND fascinates me, even if it's not among my personal favorite Disney animated features...

There was a period in my life where I watched it frequently, too. Circa early 2002, I want to say? And another time around mid-to-late 2005-ish, when I was nonstop watching many of the animated classics. Studying them like the obsessed 12 3/4-year old that I was at the time! These films are like my sun and moon, even the ones that aren't regarded as the greatest, or even considered below par.

Anyways... Where was I? Yeah, THE FOX AND THE HOUND. Well-known amongst the average animation (and/or Disney) historian as the smack-dab-in-the-middle of the transitional era picture of the Disney animated feature library. The film whose production was fraught by Don Bluth's mass exodus from the studio, resulting in a half-year delay and the enterprise scrambling to hire many new animators to work on the picture, getting it to its summer 1981 release date. A film worked on by many future giants in the animation and cinema landscape, from John Musker to Chris Buck to Glen Keane to Brad Bird to Tim Burton!

Wow-wee!

THE FOX AND THE HOUND wasn't quite a beloved picture upon release in 1981, with some brushing it off as yet another Disney cartoon in the age of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. In fact, this dog picture shared the same summer with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. It is a very compromised picture, as it is well-known that the young artists and the veterans were both at odds- not so much with each other, but with a very strict management that feared the wrath of angry letters from parents and the Bible Belt. This middle-management wouldn't allow the animated features in the works at the time (THE RESCUERS, this film) to be more in line with the films overseen by Walt Disney, films that weren't afraid to frighten young children and commit to their visual drama. Thus, you had Chief surviving a fall from a railroad bridge that was *supposed* to result in his death (thus fueling Copper with vengeance and hate for his best friend), and a general lack of oomph in other scenes. Jerry Rees, one of the animators of the film, recently revealed in an interview that the directors and executives didn't want the death of Tod's mother in the opening sequence to be explicit! They had to fight, tooth and nail, to get that gunshot sound effect in the movie!

That tells you everything you need to know...

THE FOX AND THE HOUND was in full production by the end of 1978. An inked and painted image of Tod and Copper meeting each other in the fallen log appeared in a November issue of LIFE Magazine that year, in celebration of Mickey Mouse's 50th birthday. In this issue was also some concept art done up by Mel Shaw for THE BLACK CAULDRON, which ended up being the feature film to be completed after FOX/HOUND. Not too long ago, I had read that one of the remaining bits of Don Bluth's work on the film was in the scene where Tod causes trouble in the barn while Widow Tweed is tending to Abigail the cow... and yeah, it does look like a Bluth scene!

There's a particular way Bluth does eyes, and I feel like you can see that with both Tod and the cow. Also, Tod doesn't keep his tongue in his mouth (before he takes a drink), another Bluth staple. You can see where his work is, using the tongues as your guide, in THE RESCUERS and WINNIE THE POOH AND TIGGER TOO. He has a thing for characters' tongues flopping out of their mouths.

But I definitely think that Bluth-ness can be felt in other scenes during the film's first 10 or so minutes, such as Big Mama comforting Tod after losing his mother, and Widow Tweed feeding Tod milk. And then about 20 minutes or so into the picture, once Amos, Copper, and Chief go on their lengthy hunting trip, you can see where things resumed following Bluth's September 1979 exit from the animation wing. You can see the work of the Cal-Art animators, and the vibe of the picture is slightly different. The first 10-20min of the movie have that '70s slow quietness to it, the veterans and the animators who already had ROBIN HOOD, TIGGER TOO, and THE RESCUERS under their collective belts... And then the rest of the picture, the new animators. There's a looseness to the animation and structuring of that half of the film, I feel.

I find that very, very fascinating. We have roughly a quarter of the movie that was made in 1978-79, and then the rest resumed in - presumably - early 1980. Of course, the story itself was probably locked by the end of 1978 with few major changes made afterwards (for example, the earliest iterations of THE FOX AND THE HOUND had some crow characters instead of woodpecker Boomer and the Brooklyn-accented sparrow Dinky), it's the execution of what was laid down. One team handling the first 10-20min, the other handling the rest. There's at least two schools of thought at play here, maybe a third, because Glen Keane's bear sequence feels - from a visual and staging standpoint - like it's from a completely different movie. The powerhouse sequence showcases a kind of intensity and raw pencil-drawn power that did the early Walt-era films proud, that the rest of the movie could've lived up to if the filmmakers had been allowed to just make a great family movie without the fear of upsetting someone.

Then you look at MICKEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL (1983) and THE BLACK CAULDRON (1985), it's the new team's work through and through... THE FOX AND THE HOUND is the full bridge from the end of the Nine Old Men's lengthy careers to the "Young Turks" who would eventually be at the forefront of Disney Animation's "Renaissance"... You have a little bit of everything in it, really... Nine Old Men stuff that feels like it's from the late 1970s, Don Bluth stuff that's in line with his work on THE RESCUERS and his first feature THE SECRET OF NIMH (and also his part-time short BANJO THE WOODPILE CAT), the new animators' work that rings more CAROL and CAULDRON, and Glen Keane just absolutely going off with a scene that looks like it could've come right out of one of the '90s movies.

Kind of an eclectic collection of filmmaking choices, if you think about it, all rolled into this often-overlooked 83-minute movie.

#the fox and the hound #disney animation #random observations #unorganized thoughts

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zephyrblu · 3 days

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Most alive in the twilight (an essay)

I always knew I was an odd one based on my early, unequivocal, and undying love for The Twilight Zone.

In 1994, my parents were rear-ended while I was in the womb. My mom was rushed to the hospital in a flurry of panic for the unborn (look where we are now) - my father sustained a back injury that went virtually unnoticed in the commotion. He loves to remind people of that.

During my childhood, every year from New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day there would be a Twilight Zone marathon on tv, channel 38 (no cable). I would binge endlessly, captivated by the irony, the curiosity, the humanity, the penchant for the uncanny. I recognized even then that each episode touched on the deepest truths of life and death, and of course, the space in between them.

To this day every time the camera clumsily and endearingly shifts over to Rod Serling’s unmistakable image, cig in hand, a literary Don Draper at his best, all I can hear in my mind is my dad mimicking his voice and inflection with emphasis. I wish I could write the sound of his impression into this essay so you could hear it. It’s pretty good.

My aunt Mary had a lengthy DVD collection, including all of the show’s seasons. I was never sure whether she had so many DVDs before Mattie got sick or because he got sick. I suppose we were only on the cusp of the VHS to DVD transition when that particular manifestation of the in-between-ness of living and dying began to seed itself. (2000? 2001?)

My parents…being cheap, would borrow what they could as far as movies. We borrowed the Twilight Zone box set, and again I binged over those sweet indulgent winter breaks you still get in middle school when you don’t have a job yet but you’re old enough to stay home alone. As a child I found myself somewhat bored by the episodes about elderly life and 20th century wars - things I had little entry-point to relate to at the time. (“if it doesn’t involve me I just have to remove it”-Lauryn Hill in self-critique).

On the Eve of 2023, I found myself with a hankering for the nostalgia of a Twilight Zone marathon. As if it were a friend from my past that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Someone long forgotten that I’d only briefly checked in with on social media a couple times, but didn’t really know what their life was like these days. I found a place to stream it online, and with just a hit I felt my life-blood flow and my infatuation with the show re-invigorate. I realized more and more how much its aethetics, storylines, acute observations, and brutal irony had been woven into the fabric of my worldview.

I “discovered” the word liminal during college. 2015 or so. Joan Watson (bless her chaotic heart) opened my eyes to the siginiface of etymology in the language we use. As I was struggling to find my Art and searching for ways to describe the things in my heart, mind, and spirit that words could not (such is the point of making art) I would leisurely look up etymology of different words that I found interesting or relevant. At some point I stumbled upon this miraculous word that held within its grasp everything I felt life was about. (My path of truly understanding the weight of this would take years - until I decided in 2020 to name my art practice in this word and my beloved material’s honor.) Liminal - a threshhold. An in-between. Comes from the same etymology as the words line, limit. It’s true it is used in calculus, eg, “the limit does not exist!” (I waited so long from the Mean Girls hayday of 2004 until I finally got to calculus in 2011 to find out that I still didn’t get what she meant when she said that, meaning they just phrased it that way for cinematic and quotable effect. What a disappointment.) To me the concept of liminal was very real and very expansive.

I had always been fascinated by that space in the early evening sky just after sunset where it transitioned from the clouds being lighter than the background - white on blue - to them appearing darker than it - darker grey on light blue. Was it just an appearance? An optical illusion? An Albers style color instability? Much like the sky being perceived as blue in the first place? Regardless - it looked real, it was potent, it was inspiring, it was magnificently beautiful, and most of all it was repeatable. It was not a one-time fluke. I began to see it many evenings in the sky. Then I began to see it in other things. Everywhere.

This in-between-ness or transitional space became louder in my awareness until I had to put a name to it. Liminal space.

The time between night and day, day and night. Twilight is liminal space.

The time between summer and winter, the extremes of climate - spring and fall are liminal space. Things being born and things dying. Not yet fully alive or fully dead.

The full moon and the new moon are liminal space. When it’s full it has a brief moment from growing to being full before its starts shrinking again, and same in reverse for the new moon.

The organ that serves dutifully as the barrier between our inner and outer worlds - our skin - is liminal space.

The state of gestation for both carrier and child (pregnancy) is liminal space. For the carrier: not just one person, but not yet two. For the child: not not alive, but also not an independent living being just yet.

Water is a liminal medium. It is the amniotic fluid, it is the ocean, it is the baptism, the cleansing, the life-blood. It carries and nourishes its own liminal spaces. The space between the container and the overflow of the container, where the water stays due to surface tension.

Every threshold, every transtion, every moment of change, of growth or decay - is liminal space. It is everything. It could be god. (I've heard that god is change.)

At some point it dawned on me that my formative years watching The Twilight Zone and imbibing its concepts and subtleties had prepared me for this later synthesis of understanding. It had formulated this idea in my mind before I had the capacity or life experience to recognize or contextualize it. Now, when describing the liminal space to askers, I often refer back to the Twilight Zone. Some folks get the reference, others don’t.

Fast forward (or rewind, not sure where we are at present) to 2017. A vision for a life I’d be truly content with and inspired by was budding in my heart for the very first time. I was sleeping in a tent in Marshall, NC on Josh’s property.

In the liminal space between sleep and waking - hypnopompia (a great word) - I looked up blurrily at a very real and crisp pink moon, a waning gibbous. A guy I’d met over the past few days said to me, as if out of the sky, “you have a good moon for your drive,” referring to the 500 mile journey home to Baltimore that lay ahead of me that day. The moon was definitely there in “real life” - but was his voice? Why was it him? He had no significance to me. Was it a hypnopompic hallucination, as they call it? Or was the message just as real as the moon? I didn’t know, but decided to take it as a good omen.

I awoke; everyone else was already gone. Having the place to myself, I went up the hill and blissfully picked blueberries, filling one of my newly fired baskets with their bounty. That ceramic basket of blueberries was on the floor of my passenger seat when it happened. The basket survived. The blueberries didn’t.

Had I not stopped for gas, to do a quick and dirty duct tape job on part of my bumper that was coming loose, would it not have happened? Would it have happened to someone else? Would it still have happened to me in a different way? The liminal space of time passing, moment to moment, and the infinite possibilities, permutations, and forking paths hung heavy. This haunted me for a while.

If I had died, would there have been some sign? Like in the episodes Mr. Death, or The Hunt, or The Hitch-Hiker - the deceased witness their loved ones mourning, or their still body on the bed. They eventually stumble upon the messengers of death who clarify everything and sweep them away wistfully to eternity. In my case, life went on as usual for those around me and I never had what they call an “out of body” experience of seeing myself from the outside.

I was unconscious for an unknown amount of time. Seconds, minutes? I'll never know. Maybe that was when I left my body and my heart won't let me remember.

He had earbuds in. All the times my dad had taught me to not be afraid to use my horn when necessary ran through my mind as I leaned on my horn and the noise deafened me and I looked up to my right and he kept on going as if he heard nothing and saw nothing and felt nothing. He was heartless, soul-less - from my view - in those seconds. Was he Mr. Death?

It was a roller coaster. I haven’t been on a roller coaster since, though I used to love the thrill and the dropping in my stomach. Now sometimes I panic that one day, I will find myself at an amusement park, and briefly, blissfully, forgetting my trauma I will step down into the car of a roller coaster, be strapped in, only to remember at the last moment, when the car starts moving, it’s too late to get off, and find myself reliving my own pseudo-death. It sounds like the worst of nightmares and I don’t know why I put myself through imagining the reality of it and the utter fear and pain I imagine I would feel. (Although…what if it de-sensitized me? I don’t really want to find out.)

The stand-in mother who'd been driving behind me and saw the whole thing play out thought I was dead. My therapist said she was my angel. Does that mean I really was dead? And that’s why she could see me? Did she bring me back to life with that water and that hug?

I had no way to know that she saw what was unfolding and would have been prepared to stop. Certainly the cars behind her wouldn’t have. Cars in the fast lane are brutal. They literally don’t seem to care if someone dies as long as they get to their destination “on time” while achieving the adrenaline rush of driving 90 mph.

I also knew my parents had taught me that a sudden stop could cause a rear-ending (when I would stop for a squirrel). And I knew from driver’s ed that you should keep at least a 6-second following distance when driving at highway speeds at all times. I also knew that no one actually follows that rule. Somehow in that moment I envisioned a pile-up if I stepped on my brakes. A disastrous one. The kind where 20 cars get piled up because everyone was going over 80 with a 1-3 second following distance. A recipe for disaster. I thought the only way out was forward (see Don Draper).

It may have been, but the way it happened, that’s when I lost control.

I was alone. But when I awoke I saw Kaity in my passenger seat, dead from not having her seatbelt on. She wasn’t really there. Her pots were all dead though.

One never realizes the muscle memory of the every-day minute activities we ask our bodies to do, like clicking the button to remove your seatbelt. When you are right-side up and gravity is working in your favor, it’s nothing to press that red rectangle with your thumb and it just pops out and you’re free. But when you’re upside-down, and gravity is against you, and you don’t know what the fuck just happened, that car became my prision the seatbelt my cell and the button the key that was hanging just a couple inches farther than my arm’s length away. I panicked, seeing the whole car blow up with me and Kaity inside of it. Why is this so hard? Why can’t I click it? Until I did click it and slid gently up the seat to rest my head on the ceiling. The window was half open. I managed to escape through it before the inevitable explosion (that never ended up happening). Once free, I ran. Shoeless, scared, I fought to get out and then I flew. I needed to get as far away as possible.

“Ma’am… please sit down ma’am,” the trooper patronized me with hands on hips. (When did he get there? How long was I out? Who called 911?)

He froze me. I would have kept going as long as the adrenaline would take me. I could have run miles in that instant. The crabby grass and highway shards beneath my feet held no bearing on my personal marathon for survival. I didn’t think I had made it out alive yet.

“You’re so stoic,” they said in the ambulance.

“You look like you’ve been mud-wrestling,” they said in the hospital.

Another angel, a nurse, let me use her phone. I still didn’t call my parents. Theirs were the only numbers I knew by heart.

Kyle was my Shrek, his volvo, Donkey (a knight and his noble steed). Against all odds, they came and took me home that night. I took a bath. Submerged, I gestated and took stock and prepared for life after.

The following weeks were a cloud of acute PTSD, fooling myself I was well enough to work, not knowing how one deals with a situation like this and the legalities of it, facing a cannabis possession charge in Virginia, being taken advantage of by the other driver's insurance company, and feeling utterly alone. Some of these never stopped.

I don’t even know how I moved back home. I don’t remember that flight. I don’t remember seeing my parents for the first time or other relatives. I don’t remember getting home that day or what I ate or how I felt. I know there was home-ness, comfort, love, support, friends, and gratitude.

That soon became tainted with the sensation that I wasn’t really alive - that all of this was a dream that was happening in the moments of my blackout while still in the overturned car. I never knew how long I’d blacked out for, so it seemed to reason that maybe I was still there, blacked out. Like a dream that feels a lifetime but takes place in a few moments. I moved like a ghost. I got a job, went to work, got in the car and commuted an hour each way every day, including on the highway. I had undiagnosed panic attacks when a truck came close to me on the road, or really any other car. Or when my co-worker came to work with his windshield completely smashed in by a rogue tire that came off a semi and flew straight at the glass and into his back seat…. I didn’t go to counseling or physical therapy. I thought I might lose my license due to having been caught with a gram of weed in my car when the whole thing happened. Couldn’t even smoke because I thought I’d have to get drug-tested. Our household got scabies. It was a dark time. No wonder I thought I was dead.

The feeling never really went away. It wasn’t all that different from earlier experiences of feeling that it’s all part of a matrix. Early knowings of a soul/witness self that exists on a different plane from this physical world. It was and is so easy to shift my lens from presence and living/being to dissociation and the sense of being removed, of watching a movie or dream play out, purporting to be my “life.” It’s much harder to shift back.

A couple of months ago in the midst of my most recent Twilight Zone bender I watched an episode called “The Hitch-Hiker.” It opens with a young woman, around my age, white, blonde, alone, on a road trip. Nothing revolutionary but I identify with her immediately. She is being helped by a man on the side of the road, and they talk about how she’d gone off the road and been very lucky to come out okay and be able to continue on. She does - continue, but things are different. She begins to see an older man, a hitch-hiker, a very average looking man but with a somewhat spooky or unsettling, curious air about him. He always seems to be ahead of her wherever she goes. She begins to panic, facing a reality of being stalked by this man, who says to her, “I think you’re going, my way?” (or something like that). Finally she becomes stuck on railroad tracks in her car while he watches. As a train approaches and she is unable to start the car, she finally exits just in time before the train plows on down the tracks. She goes to a phone booth and calls for her mother. She states who she is to the woman on the line, who seems to have answered because the mother has had a nervous breakdown. The woman on the line questions her, saying that the young woman herself had died in a car crash just days prior, sending her mother into deep sorrow. The young woman drops the phone in disbelief.

I had seen the episode before but did not remember the ending, and I don’t think I’d seen it since my crash. It dawned on me: THAT IS WHAT MY LIFE FEELS LIKE. I had never felt so seen, so understood, had my post-crash experience described so accurately as to arise goosebumps in my maybe ghost/maybe alive arms (liminally alive).

I wrote in a journal during the dark time that the crash and its aftermath had been the loneliest experience of my life. I still feel that way, which is what prompted me to write this. In the hope that maybe, finally, I can communicate what I went through with others in a way they’d understand.

But before today, on watching that episode, I felt, this is it. This is my life. This is going to be the best way to describe to anyone the feeling I’ve had ever since the crash that I’m living as a ghost in some alternate reality or dream or hallucination - that somehow I didn’t fully die but am not fully alive. That I’m living out this version of my life in the twilight, in the shadow, in the impression of what my “real” life once was. Before. (Not to say it’s been lived in the shadow, I have a beautiful life I am extremely grateful for, when I’m able to be present. That’s the duality.)

When I told all of this to Wendy, she found it fascinating. To the proposition that I might be dead, and this all a dream of sorts, she simply said, “maybe you are!” For some reason, that alone was validating and healing like nothing I’d heard before in all the mess of folks not knowing what to say. I finally have begun to understand: maybe I am a ghost or a brain-dead body on the hospital bed, living out a sort of dream version of what my life could have been, noticing tv shows that play on this exact theme and taking great meaning from them. Maybe I did drive straight into the Twilight Zone. Maybe when I woke up that morning with the pink moon I was already in it. But is this liminal space that I may or may not occupy any less real that what I’d previously considered “real life”? Is it any less real than the blue color of the sky, or the pink color of the moon that morning, or the voice telling me I had a good moon for my drive, perhaps forecasting my survival?

It’s all happening in my retinas and that mysterious body/brain/spirit connection - there seems to be no hierarchy of “real.”

#living with ptsd #trauma healing #trauma processing #twilight zone #dissociation #mva #motor vehicle accident #mva survivor #car crash survivor #questioning reality #storytime #creative writing #healing

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nightwere-mojo · 2 years

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4, 7, 17, and 24 for animation asks :)

4) Do you prefer watching feature length films or short films? I don't think I have a strong preference between the two, having enjoyed films on both sides. Maybe leaning towards short films simply for the ease of fitting in time, but I definitely think both have their merits, like novel vs novella in books.

7) What is the darkest piece of animation you’ve ever seen? I really had to think on this from the amount of Don Bluth and oddball animations I've run into: For my primary answer, I'll pick Paranorman (2012) for the twist that happens. If you know, you know. Two honorable mentions: -Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969) - saw this really young on my dad's VHS tapes, so even when I knew what to expect (there were several animations on one tape and I watched it through repeatedly) the impact and long droning piano note sure unnerved me! -The Brother's Grunt (1994) - this is actually Danny Antonucci's (Ed Edd n Eddy) first series. It's not really dark as much it is shocking, disgusting and gross, but it gets a mention for not only making me run out the room and hide as a kid when it came on MTV, but also triggering a panic attack when I tried to look it up again in 2009 (age 21). Needless to say I don't recommend, lol.

17) Why do you think animation is still largely seen as a “more childish” form of media compared to live action, even though there are many beloved adult animated films made throughout history?

Disclaimer that I fear the following is out my ass, and from a Western perspective for sure, but I'll take a stab:

If I took a guess I think some factors include: the overwhelming shadow of Disney and maybe like studios, American culture starting with and ingraining the idea historically, stereotypes driven by advertisements and capitalism (basically asking which segment makes the most money and aim to them, kids can't or don't have interest in live action, the target marketing zones in to kids and kiddie nature (and their families) to the detriment of mature animation which gets sidelined or even judged as "weird"…)

I think it's gotten a little better after the rise of anime in the 2000s, which I know is seen as more of a "teenager to young adult" medium. (Or at least that's how their target market). But I think it may have built somewhat of a bridge? I know Netflix was axing animations now but seeing more things like "Arcane" or "Love Death Robots" becoming more known before that happened...

24) Gush over an animated film (feature length or short) that you find highly underrated!

I worry people may have different definitions of what underrated is, especially with the internet making many older animations more accessible, but, …

The Secret of NIMH (1982)! I think this was my earliest exposure to anthro characters outside of Disney. Besides the dark and detailed aesthetic, there's a lot of glowing light effects (glowing eyes, light bulbs) that look great and really pull off the mood of the mystical places sized for small mammals, as well as the "wizardly" characters.

Also worth mentioning, The Thief and the Cobbler (60s-80s) for the masterpiece parts of mega-detail and perspective that we managed to get out of that despite being unfinished 😔 Dude, the war machines from hell. Man

Finally I want to mention: There is a series of early 3DCG animation called "The Minds Eye" (1990) (also called Short Circutz in Canada?) that I really enjoyed. There's no story, but the visuals, at least to little me at the time, were mesmerizing. My favorite is "The Temple" which I would daydream about while running around somewhere. I'll go ahead and end by embedding The Temple here:

youtube

#ask games #animation #I forgot the early sea punk aesthetic got included in the end of that clip

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spaceraceart · 2 years

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realized ive barely drawn the big shot himself! definitely an interesting challenge to make him look like spamton while also getting rid of all the puppet features

also yeah spamton can pick up cars now

#deltarune #spamton #spamton g spamton #big shot spamton #art #fanart #vhs effects my beloved #i have a bunch of headcanons involving spamtons design and his history that i need to put down into words one day #funfact: if you give him a smooch on the cheek you'll get 50% off of your next down payment!!#utdr

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jyou-no-sonoko19 · 3 years

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「Oh, it’s Principal Wardwell now.」

#Michelle Gomez #CAoS Lilith #Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #CAoS #Lilith #my beloved #I've been wanting to do this scene for so long #But listen tho #this was done for enjoyment on pc #Something as small as a phone is unlikely show the VHS effects in full #a tablet should be fine #I also think mobile will reduce the teal tint which would be a shame #mvip

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invertabeeb · 2 years

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messing with vhs effects my beloved <3

the phoebe is drawn in paint 3d and then i just shoved her in aseprite with color indexing on because i wanted to see how that looked <3 i like it <3

#sid's funny art #my ocs #daisy in dreamland #oc: daisy #oc: phoebe

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forthegothicheroine · 3 years

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The King in Yellow, 1949

Much of this story is true. Warnings in the tags.

When I had pneumonia in my early teens, my mother brought home an armful of VHS tapes from the library to alleviate my misery. Knowing my snobbish preferences, she had grabbed copies of whatever she found in black and white. I remember something musical that I suspect was Busby Berkeley, I remember Mildred Pierce (a bad choice, as it turned out- the plot includes a young girl dying of pneumonia), and I remember a period piece called The King. I faded in and out of consciousness while I watched it, but it soothed me while I was awake and filled my fever dreams with sparkling images. I could never find it at the library again, nor at Hollywood Video or even early Netflix (once my father got the subscription service where you could order practically every DVD.) It was a bit odd that it seemed to be so obscure, given that it starred old Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman (and, although I initially forgot it, Marlene Dietrich.) But even big stars make films that fall by the wayside in public memory, and it seemed that this was one of them. Google was no help, and at the time that was that.

I didn’t see the film again until I was watching Turner Classic Movies at my grandparents’ house. I loved watching that channel with them while filling out the crossword puzzle that came in their little TCM catalogue (all of it based on movie trivia, the only kind of crossword puzzle I’ve ever been any good at.) I recognized a certain scene where Bergman stood on a balcony, looking sadly at the moon. Her face had an expression of unutterable melancholy, and the crescent moon reflected in each of her eyes, giving the impression of two moons in one sky. I had very little time to catch up on what I’d missed before we had to go meet my cousins at the local Italian restaurant. I knew logically that the movie would be long over by the time we returned, but I turned on the channel anyway. Of course it had moved on to the lesser known Alfred Hitchcock film Stage Fright, but then I heard Marlene Dietrich sing before I could reach the remote to turn the tv off in disappointment. I knew that I had heard her sing before, and I knew it had been in The King.

Dietrich’s singing often comes across as somewhat campy today, with its Rs pronounced as Ws and it’s up-and-down tone. Madeline Kahn parodied it brilliantly in Blazing Saddles, such that it was a bit of a disappointment when I finally saw Dietrich’s western Destry Rides Again and found it to be lifeless and inconsistent next to the parody. Still, we remember her voice for a reason, and when I remembered it that night, I knew that its sardonic loneliness had rung through The King and made me shiver in my dreams.

The TCM schedule didn’t list The King in its time slot, but something else. If I had taken down the name, maybe it would have helped me find it. Sometimes the same movie runs under multiple names.

I didn’t see the film all the way through for many years, after I graduated college. I had found a web page that listed public domain film noir, including one called The Masked Guest. The website described it as a costume noir, and I curiously clicked on the link. Once I took in the credits running on the youtube window, my eyes grew wide and I did not move from my place on the bed until the movie had run its course.

The credits did indeed list it as The Masked Guest, but I recognized the strange repeating design on the title cards. They told me that in addition to starring Dietrich and Bergman, it was directed by Fritz Lang, and a character called The King was credited to “???” (I hadn’t seen that kind of credit since the first Karloff Frankenstein.) When the King finally appears on screen, though, it is unmistakably Orson Welles’s voice that booms out from behind his elaborate costume.

Here are the things I understand about The King, or The Masked Guest, or The Man in Yellow, or any other title I’ve found for it on public domain archive searches. Dietrich and Bergman play princesses named Cassilda and Camilla, respectively. Though Dietrich’s accent is German and Bergman’s is Swedish, they blend together to give the film the impression of being set somewhere on the map that I can’t quite find. The scenery and camera angles are very Freudian, with a great deal of archways and pillars.

The first act of The King involves frankly dull romantic plotlines, and the only thing that really saved it was the feeling that the suitors were supposed to be insipid, a suspicion lended credence by the fact that the love interests were listed so low on the credits. Dietrich is the scandalous sister and Bergman is the responsible one, though each takes on aspects of the other as the film goes on. Dietrich sings her song at a party, dressed in a fake 17th century gown and leaning against a piano. Although just a moment ago she had been laughing and joking with her gentleman friends, her song takes an abruptly serious tone (not seductive, not sentimental) as she tells the story of a city lost to time and memory. Bergman slips away from the party and onto the balcony, where we see that wonderful shot of the moon in her eyes. Is she mourning? Is she longing?

Dietrich cuts off the song by abruptly screaming “Not on us, King! Not on us!” She flees the party weeping and shaking, and from there on the film goes mad.

Though uncommon, it is not unknown for movies to switch between black and white and color, done most famously in The Wizard of Oz. The film The King recalls here is the silent Phantom of the Opera, which had a masqued ball scene tinted in shades of red and green that tried to provide a whole spectrum of color. The effect is even odder in the masqued ball scene in The King- the only color that appears is yellow, highlighting things like candlelight, Dietrich’s hair, a passing gown, a vase of tulips. It also highlights one particular masked figure, whose expressionless mask was decorated with a black pattern against a sickening yellow canvas- the same pattern I had seen in the opening credits. The color of his costume causes him to stand out from the crown even when he is far off in the background, just one head among many others. It must have taken long and painstaking hours of work to color in every frame.

Dietrich still seems broken up days after her song, though Bergman tries to coax her into joining the dance. Finally, at midnight, Dietrich goes out to face the party, but only to demand that every guest remove their mask. The yellow man with a voice that once warned America about a Martian invasion tells her that he wears no mask. Bergman reacts with disbelief, but Dietrich starts laughing like a woman unhinged. As she laughs, the yellow hue seeps out of the King’s clothing and face- if that really is his face- and begins to color the entire ballroom crowd. I think that what follows is bloodshed, but if there is any carnage (doubtful under the Production Code censorship), the blood must be tainted yellow and splashed across the camera like daubs of paint. Dietrich’s laughing face is doubled and tripled on screen until it dissipates, but even when it has faded offscreen, it feels as if her ghost continues to watch the proceedings.

By the end of the scene (filled with German Expressionist camera angles and mad violin screeching), only Bergman remains alive, cowering behind a grandfather clock. It does not hide her for long. The King steps towards her and extends his hand. Reluctantly, but with a fatalistic expression, Bergman takes his hand. They walk away together hand in hand. The screen shifts back into black and white, and then the credits roll before we can get a good look at all the bodies in the scene. The credits say it was based on a play called The King in Yellow, although Raymond Chandler of all people apparently had a hand in the screenplay.

As I said, that’s what I think I understand. It’s an oddly experimental art film for the era, and it may be awaiting rediscovery by the film festival crowd. I feel as if I alone know about it, though that obviously isn’t true. It is my little secret; I tell myself that my husband doesn’t need me to show it to him, it would be too odd for his taste. I’ve rewatched it many times, even if it seems like each time I search for it I have to find a different video platform or torrent. Naturally, no subscription site has it available. Maybe I am the last person who will ever watch it. Maybe no one will ever think to look for it again after me, and it will be completely forgotten.

When I was hospitalized, they let me use my laptop at night before I went to sleep (no power cord, though, in case I tried to hang myself.) I found a youtube link for The Man in Yellow, and I watched it every night. It wasn’t a soothing sort of movie, but having it in my mind all day and then watching it in the evening allowed me to think as opposed to crying endlessly while the other patients shot me awkward looks. I clutched the childhood stuffed animals my mother brought me when she visited, and I always held them extra tight when the masquerade scene started.

I watched the movie when I had to move away from my beloved San Francisco. I watched the movie when I lost the last of my grandparents. I watched the movie when a doctor unwisely took me off my medication and I couldn’t manage to eat for a month. I watched the movie when the whole world got sick and we all locked ourselves away from each other. I don’t mind that I don’t entirely know what it means. I don’t mind the nightmares. In the hospital they kept telling us about mindfulness exercises, and maybe the fact that I can focus on every aspect of the film so closely that all else falls away is the reason I keep coming back to it. I’m being mindful. I’m not letting any stray thoughts invade my head. I’m just watching and waiting for the next beat of every scene, leading inexorably to that yellow-stained bloodbath.

Streaming media doesn’t last forever, and each time I find The King, I worry that it will be the last time I ever can find it. My efforts to download it have so far been unsuccessful, odd considering that it is in the public domain.

When I watch The King, I am once again a child in my bedroom being cared for in the throes of agonizing sickness. I am once again sitting on the couch with my grandparents in front of the tv, both of them alive and lucid again. I am once again in the hospital, all alone except for my stuffed animals and the staff trying to keep me alive. The film reflects in my eyes like the crescent moon in Ingrid Bergman’s gaze. It sings to me.

I am determined to find a way to obtain The King under any name so that I never have to worry about losing it. During some of the worst times in my life, it is the only thing that has kept me sane.

#the king in yellow #cw mental illness #cw disordered eating #cw institutionalization #cw suicide

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howdoyoufeelaboutmakingthesong · 2 years

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What is Interesting?

From Warehouse to Lexie to Frankie Cosmos to Interesting...read on for a glimpse into Alex Bailey’s journey and his newest solo release.

Today we will take a closer look at the beloved bassist of Frankie Cosmos, Alex Bailey.

Alex's Atlanta-based band Warehouse played with Frankie Cosmos a few times over the years (as labelmates on Bayonet!) before going on a tour opening for FC in 2016, which led to continued friendship and collaboration. First, he and Greta created side project Lexie. Alex offered up 2nd guitar parts for the recordings of Duet and Jesse (for FC’s 2018 release Vessel), and officially joined as FC bassist in late 2017 (with the promise to continue to switch around and play guitar sometimes!).

He continues to create music on his own bandcamp as Interesting. His latest release Guitar With Talking is out now.

Q & A with Alex Bailey

What first compelled you to sampling movies/radio/etc.?

Around 2014, I was reading the David Byrne book How Music Works and in it he describes My Life in The Bush of Ghosts, the album he made with Brian Eno which utilizes “found vocals” over instrumentals. This idea really appealed to me, even though I still have not listened to the album. At the time I had VHS tapes and started layering talking from movies onto guitar loops, and eventually started feeling like I was fine-tuning it. But I never actually sat there and dragged the samples perfectly into rhythm with the song, I did not use music software, only loop pedal and cassette. This added to the romance and magic of using the samples, by letting them fall into place rAndOmly. I really fell in love with the concept. So, I had a project that was just that, called “Parent Trap”. Guitar loops and talking from movies. [Which has since been removed from the internet].

How has that evolved into your latest Interesting release Guitar With Talking?

I should start by saying that basically, all of my “solo” work has been made with leftover energy from playing in a band. First with Warehouse and now with Frankie Cosmos. While recording the latest Frankie Cosmos album I was trying at every possible turn to add soundscapes to the songs, like street noise or whatever. Understandably, those were kept to an absolute minimum, though some did make it in. This experience really stirred up a lot of energy and reinvigorated the part of me that identified with the “found vocals” ethos. I recorded almost all of Guitar with Talking in the week immediately following recording with FC. As a response to the pressure of recording in a digital format with endless opportunities for perfectionism I luxuriated in recording onto a 424 Portastudio (cassette 4 track). And chose not to stress over making sure every microscopic detail was just right, letting little imperfections live.

Does the talking inspire the guitar parts or do you find talking afterwards that boosts the guitar parts you already wrote?

Fishing for sound effects, like fishing for fish (I’m assuming), is a soothing process. I sit at the radio, recording static and little bits while switching between stations. Not quite as “cool” as in 2014 when I’d actually go to a thrift store in my free time and look for any videos about horses, or surfing, or a preacher warning of end times and the dangers of rock n roll. Also, for this album, I took the easy way out and tried to find similar types of videos that have been ripped and put on the internet. Once I have a good crop of samples, I’ll tend to get excited at the prospect of using them, thinking about what the song might sound like, and that eagerness kind of carries me through the process of recording an instrumental. Adding the talking last as a reward.

I feel like your personality comes through in what samples you pick. And more often than not what I’ll end up using is something I think is funny out of context. Sometimes I’ll prefer that the listener can’t understand the words and use it more as part of the guitar texture. But it’s hard to resist the urge to add a bit of humor.

You picked up classical guitar in the last few years. Has this influenced your own music?

“Classical guitar” was something I picked up during lockdown. As it was for many others it was quite a low point of creative productivity for me. I ended up watching the documentary “John Williams at Ronnie Scott’s” and wanted to try and play a few of the songs, (insert big laugh) “Classical guitar” is great because it demands daily practice and it made me play guitar in a very deliberate way that I hadn’t done before.

What do you find interesting?

OK, I’ll take this opportunity to go absolutely off the deep end and say the harpsichord sonatas of Scarlatti and Soler and I suppose the harpsichord repertoire in general. You don’t have to go far down the “classical guitar” rabbit hole before you start hearing about the harpsichord. Harpsichord gets a bad rap— and there’s a whole history as to why— but it’s definitely something I would classify as “interesting.” To me it’s a beautiful, misunderstood instrument and a close relative to the guitar. Both are plucked string instruments with no sustain. A note is plucked, dies and is resonant. It’s beautiful. In my opinion. By the way I think the bottom of the guitar rabbit hole is actually just keyboard.

Listen to Guitar With Talking on Interesting’s Bandcamp

#guitar #samples #indie music #frankie cosmos #warehouse #interesting #music #bandcamp #bandcamp friday

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ash-and-starlight · 3 years

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how do you make ur art look grainy but like in a good way

yknow what i mean

like it’s 90s Anime but the rebooted version that’s higher definition but still definitely 90s Anime bc it’s just easier on the eyes

i have fragile eyes and i must know ur secrets

NOISE EFFECT MY BELOVED! MY ONE AND ONLY!

Idk which art program you use, but it’s a pretty common tool, you can find it in photoshop under Filters > Noise > Add Noise (I usually keep it at 4-5% so the pic doesn’t become too grainy)

((also if u want even more of a vaporwave 90s anime recorded on a VHS look you can add a smiiidge of chromatic aberration at the edges, I don’t do that often but it does look cool))

#who would I be without the silly little noise effect #ask

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princesssarisa · 3 years

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Cinderella September-through-November: "A Tale of Cinderella" (1995 filmed stage musical)

I had almost forgotten about this Cinderella's existence, but then I remembered having noticed it on various video store shelves in my childhood. Why I never bought it or rented it I don't know. It's a filmed stage production of a musical produced by the New York State Theatre Institute, with music and lyrics by George David Weiss (known for such pop and jazz standards as "What a Wonderful World," "Can't Help Falling In Love" and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"), and additional music by Will Severn. It was videotaped in 1995, then released on VHS in 1997, and aired many times on PBS too.

The first and foremost way A Tale of Cinderella sets itself apart from other musical versions of the story is by setting the scene in 19th century Venice, and by peppering the lyrics and dialogue with Italian words and cultural details. The heroine is referred to interchangeably as "Cinderella" or as "la Cenerentola"... and just as in Rossini's opera La Cenerentola, her real name is Angelina. But this adaptation has other creative details too. It features an extended role for Cinderella's father Paolo, who loves his daughter and isn't weak-willed by nature, but whom the beautiful yet wicked stepmother Pulchitruda commands with a magical crystal amulet, which makes him hopelessly enthralled by her charms. Thus Cinderella has no defense against Pulchitruda or her bullying daughters Moltovoce ("much voice," or "loudmouth") and Seppia ("squid"). But she does have an ally in her beloved grandmother, La Stella, the mother of her own late mother, who urges her never to give up hope... and who is also her fairy godmother, stirring up magic with a wooden pasta spoon instead of a wand.

The handsome Prince Nicolo also has a fairy godfather of his own, a slightly pompous and bumbling yet benevolent gentleman called Il Compare, who carries a magic sword. The Prince and Cinderella first meet in the town square, he disguised in an elegant Venetian mask, and are instantly smitten with each other; after she departs, Il Compare's magic lets Nicolo hear Cinderella's singing from afar, which makes him fall even harder. This inspires him to extend the invitations of the already-scheduled masked ball from only princesses to every unmarried maiden in Venice and to have them all sing for him in hope of finding her. But when Cinderella finally steals and hides her stepmother's amulet to free her father from its spell, Pulchitruda refuses to let her go to the ball unless she returns it, and she sadly gives up the ball for her father's sake. Fortunately, La Stella conjures up a gown, crystal slippers and a gondola so she can go after all. And when Prince Nicolo searches for the foot that fits the slipper she lost, just as Pulchitruda lies that there are no other young ladies in the house than her daughters, Il Compare's magic makes everyone hear Cinderella's singing yet again, revealing her presence. Meanwhile, La Stella and Il Compare share an adorable, teasing December/December romance that unfolds at the same time as their godchildren's love.

The songs are numerous: "Buon Giorno," ""The Tale of Cinderella," "Hear Us," "Cinderella," "Poor, Poor, Poor," "In The Air," "These Graceful Hands," "Showoff," "Have Faith," "Make Magic," "Demons and Devils and Witches," "Peliculo," "Unmarried Women," "Out of the Ashes," "Bring My Porridge," "Some Sweet Day," "Can You Believe It?" "Love, Love, Love, Love," "Bells/Mi Dispiace," "The Amulet," "Don't Mess With La Stella," "Be Back By Midnight," "Compliments," "No One Ever Told Me," "The Prince," and "You Are My Love." While they don't equal Rodgers and Hammerstein in quality, all the same they make a tuneful, charming score. The Venetian-flavored costumes are equally appealing and the simple yet effective stage sets and magic effects serve their purpose well.

Christianne Tisdale, a veteran Belle from Broadway's Beauty and the Beast and Christine Daaé from Yeston and Kopit's Phantom, is an engaging Cinderella. Her voice is equally at home in sweet operatic tones and in powerhouse belting, though it can be thin at times, and she does a fine job of portraying the feistiest, most "modern" Cinderella since Libuše Šafránková in Three Wishes. While still kind, selfless, and vulnerable to sadness and yearning, this Italian Cenerentola is also witty, smart-mouthed, angry, and more than capable of defying her stepfamily or fantasizing about revenge. The rest of the cast is likable too, particularly Sean Frank Sullivan's lively Prince Nicolo with his bright tenor voice, Joel Aroeste's poignant, fatherly Paolo, and perhaps most appealing of all, Lorraine Serabian's warm, sassy, exuberant La Stella and John Romeo's endearingly swaggering yet insecure Il Compare.

This underrated Cinderella musical is definitely worth seeking out. It might not outshine the Rodgers and Hammerstein versions or Disney's animated film, but it's still charming from beginning to end.

@superkingofpriderock, @ariel-seagull-wings

#cinderella #fairy tale #cinderella september through november #a tale of cinderella #musical #1995 #1997 #george david weiss #will severin

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