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watching-pictures-move · 2 years

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Viddying the Nasties | The Funhouse (Hooper, 1981)

The Criterion Channel was nice enough to put up a bunch of ‘80s horror movies this October, so I’ve been spending the last few days working my way through the collection. Rather than prioritizing the closing of blind spots as I normally do early in the month (although I did finally get around to The Keep, and...eh, it was fine), I’ve tackled a few movies I’ve been meaning to rewatch. Inferno went up significantly in my esteem, the wisdom I’ve accumulated in the years since my initial viewing having primed me for greater appreciation of its merits. The House by the Cemetery also went up quite a bit, although this was more of a Stockholm Syndrome situation where I’ve just spent enough time with the movie to embrace what it does well and ignore its shortcomings (in the case of Stockholm Syndrome, that you’re being held hostage; in this case, that it’s dumb as hell and makes no sense). I will say that in those cases, I could at least recognize some of the films’ merits even on my first viewing, even if I didn’t gel to them entirely.

The Funhouse is one that I also saw back in the day and didn’t gel to at all. I don’t have an old review to look back on and figure out what my criticisms were, but my vague memory is that I thought it was boring and nothing happened. This was before I pushed myself to write about what I saw and as such hadn’t developed much of a vocabulary to articulate my feelings. I will say that I did have some fond associations with the movie, as I’d watched it back then on Scream, the now defunct horror-themed cable channel that used to give free previews every October during my high school years until they closed up shop. That channel was a pretty big influence on my horror movie fandom and cinephilia in general, so revisiting this movie did provide some nostalgia for that reason. I also vaguely remember discussing this on the now defunct Rotten Tomatoes forums. I’m pretty sure I said something to the effect of “this is boring and nothing happens”, which may or may not have exasperated some of the horror fans on there. But those horror fans were and still are good people and I consider them some of my oldest internet friends. For those of them reading this, let me reach out and offer a warm hug, preferably in a darkly lit environment with lots of fog while tense music plays in the background.

But yeah, on a rewatch I can confirm that this is boring and nothing happens. Okay, that was a little harsh, but this is not at all heavy on incident. The movie opens with a Psycho fake-out, not unlike the one in Neon Nights the same year, although it makes more sense here as this is a horror movie and that one’s a weirdly dreamlike porno. I vaguely remember being really put off by the nudity in this scene when I first watched this, but the reason behind my reaction has been lost to time. Then the characters go to the carnival, and basically walk around for over half the movie. There is some nice, gaudy carnival atmosphere, and at least one good gag (involving a magic trick conducted by William Finley), and a pretty weird one (one of the carnival barkers promotes a striptease act by telling people to check out his hot sister), but none of this accumulates to actual dread. (Also, there’s a tent of deformed animals, with the centerpiece being a probably fake two-headed fetus, but the two-headed cow they have readily on display is way cooler, in my humble opinion.)

The supposed dread kicks in after the halfway point, when the protagonists spy one of the carnival freaks (in tights and a Frankenstein mask) getting a handy from the psychic, for which she charges him a hundred bucks in 1981 US Dollars. I don’t know what the going rate for a handjob is, but considering that the act lasts like barely a minute and taking inflation into account, a hundred bucks seems pretty steep. Anyway, the freak kills her and then along with his father (who is not a freak but still unsavoury), goes after the protagonists in classic slasher movie fashion. Some of this uses the darkened, depopulated carnival setting to good effect (although one kill blatantly borrows from Alien), but I dunno, I would have enjoyed this more if it had been spread out better across the movie instead of being saved for the end. I normally like when movies build to the good stuff, but this never actually does. I didn’t hate hanging out in this movie, I just wish it did more with what it had.

I do think this is interesting to consider in the context of Tobe Hooper’s career. There are similarities with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in their similar level of cacophony and the family dynamics of the killers, but the comparisons do not work in this one’s favour. In the earlier movie, the assaultive approach and sheer level of noise really puts you through the ringer, where in this one, it does not. In the other movie, Leatherface, thanks to Gunnar Hansen’s unsettling physical performance, has pretty distinct body language, one which the movie mines for horror and pitch black humour. Here, when the freak is startled or wounded, he flails around, but I don’t sense the same intelligence in how he’s portrayed. (Also, I’m definitely in the minority here, but I think the freak’s appearance is pretty lame, like a kid who dressed up for Halloween in black tights and threw on an ugly mask at the last minute.) This is also closer to the more concretely defined slasher dynamics of the early ‘80s than the prototypical form of Massacre, in that it explicitly defines the heroine as a virgin and frames that against the freak’s sexual troubles. I will also note that I was aware that Rob Zombie is a big fan of Hooper and you can readily see the influence of Massacre and Eaten Alive in his movies, but revisiting this, with its colourful carnival aesthetic, provided another piece of the puzzle.

#film #movie review #viddying the nasties #the funhouse #tobe hooper

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moviesandmania · 2 years

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THE FUNHOUSE (1981) Reviews and overview

The Funhouse, Tobe Hooper’s 1981 horror classic is being released for the first time on 4K Ultra HD by Scream Factory. The two-disc set features a brand-new 4K scan of the film on both UHD and Blu-ray discs, as well as a variety of special features and will be available to September 6, 2022. Disc 1 (UHD): New 4K scan of the original camera negative – presented in Dolby Vision Audio Commentary…

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#1981 #Blu-ray #carnival #Cooper Huckabee #film #horror #monster #movie #review #reviews #slasher #The Funhouse #Tobe Hooper

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doukeshi-kun · 4 months

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Since we’re all discussing stalker kolya rn i go insane every time i think about him at his work desk (maybe he is reviewing papers for more funhouse?¿..) and he turned around to see his dove fell asleep on his bed ('ω') he would get so excited to see it ,, he would probably take pictures and get cuteness aggression （＾∇＾）even better if she fell asleep hugging one of his pillows,, or one of his shirts..

once she left he would be so happy that his bed and pillows smell like his dove =(^.^)=

he would do that for sure! stalker!nikolai always has some sort of aggression when it comes to you <3 he'd take a lot of pictures and he'd stare at you for quite a while just to savour your beauty and peace while you're sleeping like he can literally count each icks you have while you're sleeping and he thinks they are the cutest ever! and he would always be there if you are having a nightmare, deliberately hugging and comforting you. it's true that he loves seeing you in his clothes and he certainly would bury his face on the pillow where your head was once on.

#道化師-says❃ུ۪

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mifhortunach · 10 months

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Emily St. James' Sopranos Reviews for the AV Club

Season One The Sopranos 46 Long & Anger, Denial, Acceptance Meadowlands & College Pax Soprana & Down Neck The Legend of Tennesse Moltisanti & Boca A Hit is a Hit & Nobody Knows Anything Isabella & I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano

Season Two Guy Walks Into a Psychiatrist's Office... & Do Not Resuscitate Toodle-Fucking-Oo & Commendatori Big Girls Don't Cry & The Happy Wanderer D-Girl & Full Leather Jacket From Where to Eternity & Bust Out House Arrest & The Knight in White Satin Armour Funhouse

Continues under the cut :)

Season Three Mr. Ruggerio's Neighborhood Proshai, Livushka Fortunate Son Employee of the Month Another Toothpick University Second Opinion He is Risen The Telltale Moozadell ... To Save Us All From Satan's Power... Pine Barrens Amour Fou The Army of One Season Four For All Debts Public and Private No Show Christopher The Weight Pie-O-My Everybody Hurts Watching Too Much Television Mergers and Acquisitions Whoever Did This The Strong, Silent Type Calling All Cars Eloise Whitecaps

Season Five Two Tonys Rat Pack Where's Johnny? All Happy Families... Irregular Around the Margins Sentimental Education In Camelot Marco Polo Unidentified Black Males Cold Cuts The Test Dream Long Term Parking All Due Respect

Season Six Members Only Join the Club Mayham The Fleshy Part of the Thigh Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request... Live Free or Die Luxury Lounge Johnny Cakes The Ride Moe n' Joe Cold Stones Kaisha

Season Six Pt. 2 / Season Seven Soprano Home Movies Stage 5 Remember When Chasing It Walk Like a Man Kennedy and Heidi The Second Coming The Blue Comet Made in America

#ppp #sopranos sunday #the sopranos #posts just 4 me :)

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hartshorn-and-isinglass · 8 months

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So Yeah I Just Got Done Watching The Sudbury Devil

...and it kinda blew my mind. It's somehow the most-unreal and most-real historical film I've ever seen. This is basically a thesis piece on de-romanticizing the period movie, and I cannot imagine anyone else currently in the biz who would even want to try and do that, and that's what makes this such a special project.

Watching this, I was reminded of how people dress up as fairies and elves and go to Ren Faire with the justification that "well people back then believed in those things so this is what their world would have looked like to them!" and let's just say this movie is a bit of a dark funhouse-mirror version of that idea. If we run with the conceit of looking at the Puritans' world through their eyes, it's less glitter and elf ears and more penis magic and Rosemary's Baby. Satan lurking around every corner, horrors beyond comprehension... and on the other side you have the more quotidian horrors of an oppressive and rigid hierarchy, ostensibly the side aligned with God. I grew up in the Evangelical milieu, so that shit hits a little close to home. Maybe one day I'll tell the story of how church life in my teen years was so miserable I accidentally a witchcraft... but I digress.

Admittedly I may be biased because I've watched so much of Andy's stuff and I get where he's coming from, so I don't know what this is going to look like to people being introduced to Andy's work for the first time, even if they are history enthusiasts. Watching a lot of the Witchfinder General's antics helps with the Original Pronunciation dialogue, and Andy's videos on King Phillip's War are a primer on the themes he's working with in this movie. I remember King Philip's War in school being the merest of footnotes but Andy treats it as crucial to understanding this country in all its fucked-up complexity and he's kinda winning me over on that one.

I should note that this movie is definitely not going to be for everyone: this has a level of gore that's on the bleedin' edge of what I can stand and a lot of sexual content, apparently enough that some people had to walk out of the premiere. All of it is in the service of the story, though. So yes, I recommend giving this a whirl when it comes out on streaming/to a theater near you if you can stomach some very literally visceral stuff. It's so much more unhinged and weird than I could possibly convey in a review, I dunno. I'm so glad I got to see it (but EVEN SALTIER that I didn't get to go to the IRL premiere now after seeing what Dr. Justin Sledge brought to the screening).

#atun shei films #the sudbury devil #puritans #17th century values #myth magic and medicine

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racefortheironthrone · 10 months

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The whole Council of Ricks thing was because Rick is a toxic asshole who falls short of a super villain only to the extent that he doesn't need or want what drives other characters to villiany. The Council is an illustration of how consistently awful he is. And now, every Spider-man a fan might have loved over the years is a Rick, except if they are blessed by association with St Miles? And, "Imma do my own thing" is NOT toxic individualism?

Post #3 really started to piss me off.

First off, RIck and Morty are not the originators of the trope of a multiversal council - the Council of Ricks first appeared in 2014, but Marvel was playing with the same idea in 1986 with the Council of Kangs, the Spider Society dates back to 2001 and the Spider-Verse to 2014, Hickman gave us both the Interdimensional Council of Reeds in 2009 and the Parliament of Dooms in 2012, and on and on.

And the entire thematic point of having an "Alliance of Alternates" is to interrogate the nature of a character by throwing them into a carnival funhouse of mirrors. It's very common to have the story end with the main character turning against their alternates - Hickman had 616 Reed reject the ICR over their lack of ethics and morality (because the one thing that made 616 Reed different is his love for his family), for example.

(I've already addressed this point, but the movie shows very clearly that not every Spider is a Rick, because a bunch of Spiders join Gwen's bad.)

While "imma do my own thing" is a statement of individualism, it's hardly toxic. A major thematic drive of the movie is the outside world trying to impose a narrative on Miles, whether that's a well-meaning guidance councilor trying to get him to use a hardship narrative to get into Princeton or Miguel telling him that he doesn't belong (which is a direct call-back to Rio's monologue about Miles never letting anyone tell him he doesn't belong) and wasn't supposed to be Spider-Man. And as I said in my review, Miles is entirely right to push back because Miguel is wrong about him and whether he was supposed to be Spider-Man, about canon events and the multiverse, about what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man.

#astv #across the spider verse #spider society #spider verse #miles morales #marvel #marvell meta #multiverse

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lowkeyed1 · 5 months

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✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

@bifuriouswaterbender tagged me and dude i love to talk about myself so thank you XD! i started writing again after a long long long spell of writer's block and it's been ALL willow. willow is my favorite show. willow is my roman empire. willow i love you T_T

Words and Fics

128,442 published words, another 10K of WIPs or about to be published, and another 8K of plot bunnies, dialogue snippets, and meta notes.

most recent drop: Under the Mistletoe, a fluffy one-shot about airk and graydon going to a christmas party

11 published one-shots, ranging from 276 words to 7,638

2 ongoing WIPs on Ao3, one at 58K and one at 47K, no end in sight

1 unpublished WIP that i'm very excited about, called What a Prince and Lover Ought to Be

Top Fics by Kudos

Velvet Fist, Iron Glove

Thrown Like a Star

Zombie Crack: Night of the Living Dental Dam

Shattered Sea Crack: It Came From Beneath the Mud

Funhouse Crack: Mirror Maze

My fandom fic events in 2023

@tanthamoretober - wrote 8 short works

@tanthamorewinterfest - wrote 1 short work (so far!)

collaborating with some folks to put together an upcoming prompt meme i'm VERY excited about :D stay tuned!

Upcoming Events and Projects for 2024

continuing Thrown Like a Star and Velvet Fist, Iron Glove

doing some more one-shots for @tanthamorewinterfest

continuing to develop my new WIP, What a Prince and Lover Ought to Be (i'm a little afraid this might turn into a big one like my other two WIPs lol)

developing and publishing the prompt meme and everything associated with that!

Rules & Tags below the cut!

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass but don’t feel like you have to do this either.

Tags: @bisexualshakespeare @blackdalek @peterbenjaminparkour @rotaryshakes @queen-of-meows @aurorawest @mareebird @spybrarian @wigster07 @eviltoxicmosssauce @jaimebluesq

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doshmanziari · 2 years

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A Phenomenology of Gazes || Nope

“Nope” is almost aggressively defined by gazes. Anyone who has seen it will remember Daniel Kaluuya’s character, OJ, not so much deducing as intuiting, within a life-or-death scenario, that the movie’s flying saucer — really, more of an Unidentified Feeding Object — consumes anything which grants (or appears to grant, as the movie’s climax demonstrates) it attention. This recalls a pivotal scene from “Get Out” wherein the protagonist, also played by Kaluuya, avoids falling under hypnotic suggestion by stuffing his ears with cotton. In both scenes, the person is in direct contact with the threat and nullifies it by an autonomous denial, the preservation of a crucial sensory faculty.

But a quick review of the rest of the film reveals that the gaze is everywhere, from the eyes-on-you gesture shared between OJ and his sister, Em (Keke Smith); to the moment when a chimpanzee “animal actor”, Gordy, having just exceeded his limit for being a captive and gone violently berserk on set, locks eyes with a surviving boy actor, Jupe (Steven Yeun); to what becomes a shared concern, or obsession, among OJ, Em, Angel (an electronics store employee, played by Brandon Perea), and esteemed filmmaker Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) to film or photograph the UFO.

As with OJ’s intuition and aversion, the gaze here is also defined by its avoidance or negation: when OJ, who has inherited a horse ranch from his father, brings one of his horses to the set for a commercial, he tilts his head down and away from the reach of the rest of the irksome crew; OJ’s father is killed when miscellanea is ejected at blistering speed from the UFO’s oral-anal hole and a nickel enters his brain through his right eyeball; a recapitulation of the scene involving Gordy, as viewed from different cameras and moments before the assault, stresses the chimpanzee’s presence by his absence by keeping the focus solely on the humans (this ocular exclusion is also an effective technique for invoking an expectant anxiety).

What to make of all this? Locating a theme only tells us that the theme is there, or that it may be interpreted as being there. What I’ve omitted to mention so far is that OJ is black, as are his sister and father.

In certain ways, “Nope” is as much a UFO movie as it isn’t. Although Jordan Peele’s screenplay engages with contemporary incidents and aspects, both reputable — Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean’s NYT article of 2017 is mentioned — and disreputable — Angel’s namedrop of Ancient Aliens prompted a ripple of knowing laughter among the theater’s audience — , its narrative is ultimately a divergent appropriation of the UFO phenomenon. The only black-eyed humanoids here are costumed folks playing a prank on OJ, while the UFO turns out to be an aerial life form, a sort of enormous, sky-bound variant of oceanic siphonophores. Its interiors are not curvilinear metallic chambers containing operating tables but a network of puffy, ribbed digestive tracts, an inflatable funhouse from a thrumming nightmare.

That these divergences might disappoint some people (including myself, to a degree) is beside the point that “Nope” is the first major UFO movie I can think of which so prominently foregrounds black people, to say nothing of Jupe or Angel. While it racially implicates the film industry and the uses of photographic technology, this foregrounding also evokes the notable lack of black Americans’ accounts of, or engagement with material concerning, UFOs. Barney and Betty Hill’s experience still stands out today, not just because of its situating as the United States’ first widely publicized, domestic account of alien abduction, but also because of Barney’s blackness. So obvious and pervasive is this lack that when Patricia Avant produced a short film featuring her own footage, she was compelled to entitle it like a corrective assertion: “Black People Do See UFOs.”

Undoubtedly, black people do see UFOs. The phenomenon is worldwide, relentless, and seemingly nonselective (excepting an understudied intergenerational pattern). Yet when one examines, at least as far as the United States goes, the details of authorship, reports, and cults, one does find a dearth of black people. Anthony Lane’s review for The New Yorker is keen to illustrate a difference between OJ and Richard Dreyfuss’ character in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”: “Both guys lean out to see what’s happening. Roy gets flashed and scalded for his pains, and, as the encounter ends, he is left panting and shuddering in shock. O.J., on the other hand, opens the driver’s door, glances upward, and then, with unforgettable aplomb, slowly closes the door again. He contents himself with uttering a single word: ‘Nope.’”

OJ’s utterance is the equivalent to “I don’t fuck with that,” and the retraction of his gaze is as self-assured as it is self-preserving. But we needn’t only look forty-five years ago to Spielberg’s movie to find a difference of attitude: during “Nope”’s final confrontation with the UFO, Antlers removes himself from shelter for the sake of a money shot and is gobbled up. Although the movie’s internal context might sooner prompt one to consider Antlers’ decision as being informed by a suicidal-romantic commitment to True Art, for me it recalls the cavalier attitude of modern contact-pursuing cults like Steven Greer’s, wherein everything that is dangerous about UFOs has been sidelined by an underlying arrogance. It is just as unsubstantiated and reductive to suggest that black Americans may generally avoid talking about UFOs because of some uniform, trauma-informed cautiousness as it is somehow unsurprising to know that Greer is white, as were practically all of the UFO cult leaders mentioned by Jacques Vallée in his 1979 book, Messengers of Deception.

Antlers’ hand-cranked film camera, like all cameras, is an eye with its own type of gaze: directive and reflective, but not affected. Its antique form calls to mind an early scene, wherein Em joins OJ on the commercial’s set to give the background for the ranch’s business. Referring to one of photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s later chronophotographic sequences depicting a black jockey upon a horse, Em explains that this “nameless” jockey, in contrast to Muybridge’s renown and the horse having a recorded name, is actually identifiable (a fiction of the movie’s) and her family’s thrice-great-grandfather. Expanded to a fuller context, the centrality of the camera here, and elsewhere, speaks to its real-world powers as an arbiter of history, reality, and humanization, or dehumanization. OJ and company’s fixation on the cameras they install on the ranch to film and thus prove the UFO’s existence is simultaneously reasonable and unprecedentedly modern. Objectivity, as it were (with all the ways by which the camera objectifies), has priority over empirical reality. The subject is made or unmade by the lens’ presence.

So there is an irony to Em’s historical pride, not lost, I think, to the movie: a dimension of her and her family’s racial, cultural, and vocational lineage has been legitimized by a prototype of the same technology which has been used to invisiblize them. The fact that we are, in many respects, more beholden to the camera, and its industries, than it is to us is suggested by a feature of the shapeshifting UFO’s final form: an angular, green projection containing a sort of inscrutable mouth and, with each of its undulations, producing a whipping sound. Here is the green screen placed behind actors, ready to tame and overpower them, and future audiences, with a consuming spectacle. Naturally, this implicates “Nope” itself, to a degree.

The movie’s simultaneous engagement with and disengagement from the UFO phenomenon, and its fixation on the gaze’s powers and vulnerabilities, also aligns it — unintentionally or not — with a commonality among abduction reports. The main pop-cultural legacy of Whitley Strieber’s Communion: A True Story, published in 1987, may be the crude, shameful reduction of Strieber’s trauma to a sort of prison-rape “joke”; but its secondary legacy is surely its disturbing cover: a painting of an almond-eyed being who looks at us with a sort of unknowable, arresting placidity. Accordingly, one finds within the literature (John E. Mack’s and David M. Jacobs’ books being exemplary) descriptions of a being staring into the abductee’s eyes. The abductee, who has little to no control over their body, has the profoundly naked impression that they are being mentally infiltrated, that nothing about their inner or outer life can be kept secret from the gaze. These experiences are caught between the aforementioned mean-spirited joke, New Age sentimentality determined to see the phenomenon only as a drawn-out protocol for spiritual guidance, and scientific disciplines which categorically refuse to study them even from the angle of a collective, subconscious fiction with psychosomatic effects.

If the phenomenon is the product of human minds, then it would seem to be meta-fiction rather than fiction, in the sense that dreams are also sorts of demon-strative fictions with, nevertheless, a psychic (and then physical) reality. This reflective quality of meta-fiction brings us back to the fact that to examine aspects of UFOs is to also examine aspects of ourselves and the ways of the world (and perhaps universe). In cattle mutilations are resonances of our meat industry; in crafts’ killing of the verdure they land upon are resonances of the effects of our vehicles and airplanes; in their effects upon witnesses’ skin, hair, and internal organs are resonances of our scientists’ acquiescence in developing weapons of biological warfare; in the beings’ remorseless forcing of humans to be medical subjects are resonances of productions such as Unit 73, or our experiments upon “lower” animals.

It is the Otherness of the phenomenon which simultaneously readies a gazeful cognizance of its horrors and a blindness to our own capacity for even greater heights of “inhumanity” — a nice word that allows us to believe evilness is the corruption of an inherent gentility. That the threat of “Nope”’s UFO centers around its voracious nature and violent excretions (an inversion paralleling the camera’s inversion of an image) is not, then, only symbolically indicative of socioeconomic or sociocultural hegemony but its phenomenological nearness to us, a horrific immanence settled below a constructed normality. This nearness is never more powerfully illustrated by the movie than in its thunderstorming scene where the UFO hovers right above the ranch house, dumping a deluge of blood and phantasmic screams upon its exterior. It is this scene above all others where one may reconsider whether or not this is truly “just” a hungry creature, and not also the revenge of the unconscious, or the anima mundi.

When OJ asks Em, after having first seen the UFO, “What’s a bad miracle?”, the answer to his question might be a miracle, all the same. Sophocles’ tragic observation, “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”, is as applicable to the invention of the magical camera (now so common as to have had its obviously magical qualities regularized and diminished) as it is to the emergence of the magical UFO phenomenon. Prior to the camera, there was the camera obscura, the “dark chamber.” We can literalize and metaphorize this term for a statement: the camera obscures as it reveals. And is not the same thing true of UFOs, those cameras, vaulted chambers, of the sky? To gaze upon the miraculous, the wondrous, is to receive all of its afflictions.

#movie criticism #nope #sociology #ufology #nope movie

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zalrb · 5 months

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knock off tvd walter boys 1x02 review

Is there a reason the author wanted it to sound like altar boys? Do they all worship the goddess that is Jackie?

Damon, I mean, Cole, and the best friend. DRAMAAAAAA.

"He used to be the best quarterback in the county" why are we doing exposition like this? Can't she see a picture or a trophy or something and it can be a kernel for something to explore later?

This is definitely giving me when Elena went to Damon's room for the first time and saw that there were books and it was supposed to be a REVELATION.

Honestly, I'm probably just going to make constant TVD correlations now. If I didn't take this show seriously before, I definitely do not take it seriously now.

"He smashed up his leg last winter and now he can't play anymore. Cole lived for football" I can literally see this as written exposition in the wattpad story.

Why doesn't this child have to do chores?

"I usually warm up with a jog, sound good?" I don't run but is that not how every runner warms up for a run?

Show his abs all you want, he is not attractive.

This show is so bad at chaos. I know not everything can be The Bear and especially 2.06 of The Bear but at least channel Cheaper of the Dozen which this is also clearly inspired by

THIS is chaos.

Why wouldn't Donna tells Jackie that there's a schedule for the bathroom? Why wouldn't Jackie deduce that when there is a village of children living at this house?

Bro, I'm breaking that fucking camera.

I know it's supposed to be boys boying and I know teenagers are sociopaths but her entire family basically has just died. And you're doing things like bleaching her hair? Her family is dead! LIKE?

That Black woman deserves more than this Andrew Garfield funhouse knockoff. I swear this show fills me with rage.

"Hi." "Hi." That's your future mother in law and you guys sound like you barely know each other.

"They think we're too young" you look like you're 35.

Like at least when they wanted me to believe that Tom Welling was a senior in high school, it was Tom Welling so I got to look at this

"Jackie. Is this your locker?" Who ELSE would it belong to, Elijah Wood Stefan???

"Fellowship of the Ring. Do you know it?" I CAN'T DEAL WITH HOW PAINFUL THIS IS. Why WOULDN'T she know it? At least the title.

You know, Fake Damon and Fake Stefan are both extraordinarily terrible, Fake Damon this is how you tease-flirt? "Who takes this many notes?" "Me." "Pfft, yeah, dorks like you." ARE YOU IN GRADE 4? Jake Peralta that shit, man

AT LEAST MAKE IT PANDIE

"I'm not a dork!" "Relax, Jackie, I'm just joking" would you still be upset if someone called you a dork in the 10th grade?

What is Jackie's personality exactly?

"You need to come see me. It's not a request, Cole. Make an appointment soon." My guidance counsellors would just call you into their office in the middle of class.

"Damn girl..." never, NEVER, say that again.

I am crying because I think I'd rather watch TSITP and I hate TSITP.

This is how bad all of this is.

I can't deal with Grace and Surfer Damon in the same scene, I think I will throw things.

"Ladies." EW.

AT LEAST BE TIM RIGGINS.

I hate everything about this experience.

THEY GAVE A STELENA SCENE

TO JACKIE AND BLOND BIMBO DAMON?

"the cole effect" "damon just got under my skin"

Someone find me a current teen show that doesn't have stilted dialogue. Do they exist?

That is an aggressively blue cardigan.

"Janie left after you called her bangs stupid" did I just have a particularly mean high school? WHAT are these "insults"? Not even something like "Janie left after you said her bangs made her look like Spock"? REALLY?

Shouldn't there be a staff advisor for student council?

Why do you need to get married now? Just wait or elope if it means that much.

"You're not the only one who wants to get out of here, you know. I want to major in political science at Georgetown." Why is it a big deal in this show for people to have goals?

"People from my background, we don't have much political influence. I want to change that!" NO ONE SPEAKS THIS WAY.

*SCREAMS INTO THE VOID*

WAIT. wait. WAIT. wait. WAIIIIIIIIT. Matt Rife Knock Off Damon isn't a senior??? HOW OLD IS THIS MAN SUPPOSED TO BE?

I'm 14 minutes in. I'm only 14 minutes in. WHY.

Hayley. Jackie. Grace. Kylie. Erin.

"Is that obvious?" "That you're a New Yorker? Yeah." How?

So, there's this scene in the movie Twister where Bill's city fiancee goes back home with him so he can get divorce papers from his first wife and they end up chasing tornadoes, you know, as you do and she stays for dinner and she's just going through a shock and trying to be polite but is close to being catatonic

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that should've been a scene. And now I want steak.

"It's a good save with the hat, though." Is that not just common sense?

Has anyone read this story? Do the characters struggle to flirt and find things to talk about in the story as well?

"So you snitched?" You guys are pranking her and her family is DEAD.

Still, at least you're not Belly.

Did he just give her weeds? Like not even a flower but weeds?

No, I'm forwarding through the most awkward play fight or chasing or whatever they're doing.

Sombre music because Jordan who invades everyone's personal space has to give up his camera?

Oh my god, another teenager with GOALS???? THE ANOMALIES.

"Alex, thank you for sticking up for me" do you have any other dialogue with this non human person?

Jackie and Hobbit Stefan are terrible with absolutely no chemistry but she at least looks like she's trying with him

"Man, again?" SHE HAS BEEN THERE FOR LIKE THREE DAYS.

I hate everyone for asking me to watch this but myself the most for agreeing 😫

#review

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fibula-rasa · 8 months

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Cosplaying Patty Duke as Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Take one of my closet cosplay of Patty Duke as Neely O’Hara in the telethon scene in Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Or, as Patty Duke herself called it, “Valley of the Dreck.”

Why Duke would continue to feel chagrin over Dolls and her performance even after the film developed a devoted cult following is no great mystery. Dolls was Duke’s first film after the end of her sitcom, The Patty Duke Show. What Duke envisioned as a potential first step in a full career of proper adult work was marred by an abusive work environment and resulted in a funhouse mirror reflection of the novel and, eventually, a cornerstone of Camp.

Take two of my closet cosplay of Patty Duke as Neely O’Hara

Duke wasn’t the only one in the cast hot off major television roles: Barbara Parkins and Lee Grant had prominent roles on Peyton Place, Martin Milner and Paul Burke starred in Route 66 and 12 O’Clock High, respectively. However, for Duke, Dolls held extra weight: between the end of her sitcom and the production of Dolls she had been institutionalized for her mental illness and she had finally been able to seek work free from the abusive management team she had as a child. There would naturally be a lot riding on Dolls for her, professionally and personally. For Dolls to not only be a shitty filming experience but a dud of a film—garnering Duke bad reviews—would understandably leave a lasting bad taste in her mouth.

Despite Duke’s negative recollections of the production and release of Dolls, it’s clear in her memoir, Call Me Anna, that Duke approached the role of Neely in earnest. She would be immediately dispirited, however, witnessing first hand the poor treatment of Judy Garland, originally cast as Helen Lawson, and experiencing abuse of her own from the director Mark Robson. Duke even alleged that casting Garland in the role was a publicity stunt; as it was long rumored that Duke’s role of Neely O’Hara was inspired by Garland.

A troubled production isn’t always destined to fail and, in fact, Dolls was successful at the box office. However, in this case, what resulted was a sort of “passionate failure”—to quote Susan Sontag—which has cemented its place in Camp canon over the fifty-six years since its release. Quite a few writers have examined that more thoroughly than I could here, so rather than doing a full literature review, let me instead recommend you do some reading on your own about Dolls’ Camp pedigree. Instead, taking note that I love Valley of the Dolls, I can provide some context on how the film became what it is—and why Patty Duke suffered for it.

Take three of my closet cosplay of Patty Duke as Neely O’Hara

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Jacqueline Susann’s bestselling novel, Valley of the Dolls, published in 1966, is also a Camp classic (in a wholly different manner than the film—another story for another time). Regardless of Camp status, the novel pushed a lot of boundaries in terms of the social mores of the 1960s. Susann frankly depicted drug abuse, queerness, female friendships, and the difficult realities of living life on your own terms as a woman in the social climate of mid-century America. As you might imagine, a Hollywood film made in 1967 would hardly be able to present much of that effectively.

To start with, the filmmakers heavily sanitized the entire work and also condensed the timeline of the story significantly.* The language used and nature of conversations are heavily censored or completely removed. The events that form the basis of the three lead characters forming their friendship are elided or rewritten, making the intertwining of their lives/careers feel like little more than a narrative device.** In my opinion, the most obvious victim of the changes is Duke’s Neely O’Hara.

The novel takes place between the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, with relevant flashbacks/backstory for many of the characters. Neely is only a teen at the start of the book and is in her mid-thirties by the end. Obviously adapting a novel to a single feature-length film requires truncations. Characters are removed/reduced/remixed and a lot of backstory is erased—understandable and expected. But, a puzzling choice in the case of Dolls is that the bulk of the events of the nineteen years of the book are still included in the film. Which means packing a lot of pretty serious life events into a drastically shorter timeframe—a move destined to produce absurdity.

“Neely had no education, but she had the inborn intelligence of a mongrel puppy, plus the added sparkle that causes one puppy to stand out in a litter. This puppy was clumsy, frank and eager, with a streak of unexpected worldliness running through her innocence.” — Valley of the Dolls, Jaqueline Susann

In the case of Neely, she has her big break, gets married, gets a Hollywood contract, gets addicted to pills and booze, her marriage falls apart and she has an affair with/marries her costume designer who then cheats on her and they divorce, she hits rock bottom and she’s institutionalized, then she steals Anne’s boyfriend and when she’s poised to make her big comeback, she gets sloshed and can’t go on. All of that goes on in the film with little to no change in fashion or styling to indicate time passing. This makes Neely’s rise and fall and rise and fall come off as absolutely outrageous.

No matter how earnestly Duke might have pursued her characterization of Neely originally, she was going to emerge looking ridiculous. [IMO, ridiculous in a highly entertaining, non-mocking way, but nevertheless ridiculous.] Whether it was possible to foresee this outcome at the time, I can’t know for certain. However, Susan Hayward’s insistence on having her hair white, instead of being bald from cancer treatment (screenplay) or hair treatment gone awry (book), makes me wonder if the more seasoned performer saw the writing on the wall and wasn’t willing to commit to such extremities?

Take four of my closet cosplay of Patty Duke as Neely O’Hara

With the benefit of time, fifty six years after the film’s initial release, the Camp factor of Dolls has only increased. If it had been competently adapted and had better direction, I feel confident that we wouldn’t still be talking about it in 2023. And, if Patty Duke’s performance hadn’t been so wildly over the top, Dolls might have been kind of dour and slightly boring. That’s not to deride Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, Susan Hayward or Lee Grant, they did great work with what they were given—but they also weren’t given jobs as impossible as the adapted Neely.

Duke’s performance is often derided (even by herself) and Dolls did end up being deleterious to her transition to adult screen roles. But, her Neely O’Hara is a Camp icon and I have a great affection for her work. It’s a performance that’ll stick with you—love it, hate it, or laugh at it. Maybe it’s the irony of having such a young actress (only twenty two!) so convincingly portray a performer that’s already been chewed up and spit out by the industry. Maybe it’s the energy she brings—the bottled up ambition to make it stick and no longer be thought of as a kid. If nothing else, Duke’s Neely is one of a kind.

“Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation—not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it’s not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn’t propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn’t sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures.” — Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag

What do you all think about this film? It’s divisive for a lot of very good reasons! And also bad reasons!

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Footnotes:

*Only in writing this did I learn that one of the two screenwriters credited for Dolls, Helen Deutsch, is also the screenwriter who adapted Paul Gallico’s The Love of Seven Dolls into Lili (1953). If you have also read the book and seen that film, the, um… creative choices there would also leave you questioning some things. Though maybe I should give her some leeway and assume that they weren’t strictly her creative choices given that, under the studio system in Hollywood at the time, it’s not likely that a closer adaptation of the book could have passed the censors or been palatable to studio heads. Ditto with Dolls.

**Most instances of queerness of the characters (mostly Jennifer and Anne) are erased entirely. I will talk about this more in future posts!

#1960s #1967 #Patty Duke #Valley of the Dolls #cosplay #Cosplay the Classics #Mark Robson #jacqueline susann #Camp #american film #classic movies #classic film #film #closet cosplay #classic hollywood

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onelonelystory · 11 months

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I know a bunch of people are making way more helpful beginner’s guides to tumblr but for anyone who may be making the leap during the Reddit exodus here’s my two cents:

try following friends first. get the hang of how reblogging functions and of all the posting features. if you use desktop add an xkit extension and use their quick reblog. change your header and profile and title from the default. consider not using an unstylized picture of yourself as a profile; anonymity is valued here (though of course, coming from reddit, I’m sure you understand.)

curate your own dash. follow people who post about things you’re interested in, follow friends, follow friends of friends, unfollow anyone at any time if you notice that their posts are not for you. don’t feel obligated to follow certain people just to participate in certain corners of the internet. if they really have so much good shit to say, it’ll probably make its way over to you eventually. the trending and for you pages are kind of useless and serve best as an occasional peek into a funhouse mirror version of the internet you thought you knew.

don’t overuse the add-to-reblog comment feature. if there’s additional commentary you want to share with your audience, that’s what tags are for! it shows up in the poster and previous reblogger’s notifications just the same. somewhere down the line someone might see your tags and decide to append them to the main post. we affectionately refer to this process as “peer review,” because once something has been added to a reblog any further iterations of the post will include that addition so it’s really just a way of saying said commentary adds to the post in a way that is not exclusive to your own audience.

that said if you do feel you have additional context or a necessary perspective to add to a post and you deliberately want to attach it, don’t be afraid to say your piece. people can reblog it or ignore it if they like, that’s their business.

if you disagree with the contents of a post, try not to do a discourse about it. If it seems like well-intended misinformation, you can add a correction with a source, or whatever additional context you feel is necessary for anyone who may not know better. any questions about what the post really means or follow-up is maybe best directed towards op’s ask box, as the narrative of reblog threads can get lost in the notifs tab. don’t be argumentative, don’t make assumptions; this is the internet. nobody on here gets an editor to make sure their words are framed exactly as they intended. if you really feel like being negative take a screenshot of the offending section, redact op’s url and any tagged or visible accounts, and make your own post. we all want to just tear into something from time to time and disagreements are a part of life. but try to avoid unnecessary conflict, it’s neither fun nor productive for any party.

if you see someone being a bigot block them. don’t dunk on them, don’t send them anon hate, don’t argue against them in the reblogs. there’s no algorithm on this site and nothing spreads without people spreading it. the best way to stop vitriol is to disengage.

block anyone. block people for being hateful bigots, block people for being annoying. block people for trying to start discourse on your posts even if you feel bad about it. if you start thinking to yourself wow, my life would be just a little bit better if this person couldn’t see my posts and I couldn’t see theirs, block them. block me for being preachy. block your best friend of six years bc they’re spamming your dash with their untagged spongebob liveblog and then dunk on them in your 20 person discord server.

treasure your mutuals but don’t feel like you have to be following people to be friends. tumblr dms are busted as hell just send someone an ask instead unless it’s that private. the search function does not work. polls are new and we’re all still constructing the etiquette of those together, but so far they’re mostly a vehicle for pitting characters against each other chunin exams style. ignore any part of this post that you don’t want to listen to I am legitimately not the boss of you. make your own truth go crazy drink water have fun.

#long post #196

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pushovermediacritic · 9 months

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Hunchback of Notre Dame 2 Review

Hunchback 1 is my favorite Disney Musical, but I never watched Hunchback 2, so I decided to share my thoughts on the direct-to-video sequel that no-one ever talks about.

The MacGuffin of this movie is a huge bell with gems encrusted on the inside. You'd think the ringer would BREAK THE GEMS, but I guess not.

Oh GOD, the animation is so much worse! The characters all look like their stunt doubles! Also, ew, there's a "funhouse mirror" gem in the bell that reflects Quasimodo without his deformities, and he looks cursed and I hate it. Man, the movie looks so bad at points, it's actually corrupting my memory of the first one.

Zephyr, the son of Esmeralda and Phoebus, does not look like Esmeralda at all and he is so annoying.

Sarousch is the villain of this movie, and the plot is an extremely cliche "guy wants to steal something, so he has his female assistant seduce the main character close to the thing he wants to steal, but the main character is so charming that he wins her over" story I've seen in a billion other things. Honestly, Stuart Little 2 did it better (and wow, this and that both came out in 2002, bad year for originality).

Sarousch's relationship with Madellaine is just a copy of Frollo's relationship with Quasimodo, they both adopted the other off the street and have convinced them that they wouldn't make it in the world without them. Which rings more hollow because Madellaine is a pretty woman without any of Quasimodo's disabilities. Sarousch is just a generic narcissist magician thief, he really sucks compared to Frollo, and the climax of the movie is the most anti-climactic thing I've ever seen.

Honestly, though, props to the movie for having Madellaine take one look at Quasimodo and nope out of there because he's so hideous. She's not some pure innocent mislead saint, instantly able to see through imperfections. Shame that Madellaine is in a story with such bad writing, because her voice actress is really giving it her all.

So, the movie confirms that the Gargoyles being alive is magic. No-one else but Quasimodo, Madellaine, and the goat can see them move, but Madellaine can see and hear them.

Festival De L'Amour sucks, Ordinary Miracle sucks, I'd Stick With You sucks, Falalala Fallen in Love sucks. There isn't a single good song in this film.

Why does Phoebus have to apologize at the end? He didn't say or do anything wrong. He was completely right to suspect and then accuse the circus workers of stealing stuff, because they were stealing stuff. It was entirely Esmeralda who connected his suspicions to gypsies and made it sound like he was being bigoted, she's the one who twisted his words.

Speaking of Esmeralda, she is USELESS in this movie. She gives some advice to Quasimodo, judges Phoebus for distrusting people who turn out to be distrustful, and hangs on Phoebus' arm any time she's not judging him. Her independence as a character is GONE.

There are some interesting lines from Sarousch when he's first talking to Madellaine, lines like "a girl like you could never make it out there", similar to what Frollo would say about Quasimodo's physical disability. I guess what those lines were supposed to be alluding to is that Madellaine was a thief when she was 6 (which is a really stupid thing to be ashamed of).

But what I thought when listening to those lines is that Madellaine was going to have some sort of mental or intellectual disability, to mirror Quasimodo's physical disability.

I think I'll adopt that headcanon, since it instantly makes the movie a lot better, especially the montage where Quasimodo is showing her around Paris and how to experience it with other senses than sight. If Madellaine has Autism or something like that, that scene goes from a ham-fisted "ugly things are pretty on the inside" metaphor (just like that stupid bell) to something a lot more beautiful.

#the hunchback of notre dame #the hunchback of notre dame 2 #madellaine #quasimodo #phoebus #esmeralda #disability

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