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i-watch-too-many-movies · 3 years

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5 Favorite First Viewings of July 2021

Quick note: Hi everyone, I'm back, things have honestly been getting better for me, and I'm glad to be on this site full of cinephiles, people that are too horny, and cinephiles that are too horny. I'll be more active on here. But anyway, let's talk about some movies.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) (dir. Russ Meyer)

CW: Abortion mention

What a picture. What a gorgeous, sexy, horrifying slice of what Hollywood and star life can do to a bunch of bright-eyed young people looking for success. Also is a critique of how macho nature can ruin friendships and romantic relationships with total ease. I was obsessed with the scene transitions, like Pet pouring pancake mix onto a plate after the abortion scene, or Kelly singing after someone screams before their murder in the opening scene.

Great, campy flick with exceptional music too.

Deep Cover (1992) (dir. Bill Duke)

Laurence Fishburne plays Russell Stevens, a Cincinnati police officer who hopes to do well by the community, to make a difference. He’s traumatized by the death of his substance-abusing father, and wants to make sure that he can help the people of his own town. He goes undercover on assignment as a drug dealer, where his boss orders him to take down the kingpin. Stevens realizes the police’s own failings while on assignment. The racist abuse he takes from Agent Carver, and the realization that the police department is protecting drug kingpins like Gallegos and Barbossa. Giving drugs to Black kids and Latinx kids so there will be less of them. The cops are no different than the drug kingpins looking to make filthy amounts of money.

Fishburne’s performance is excellent, as Stevens feels he has to maintain a stone face so he doesn’t get caught by Jason or Barbossa or any of his cronies, but also he maintains a stone face to try and hide his emotion, his trauma. But when he gets pissed, Fishburne acts it beautifully, as is when he has to deliver a funny quip to counter Jason’s douchebaggery. And the production design, holy fuck, the sets and the lighting.

A perfect neo-noir for the HW Bush years, arguably one of the most timeless commentaries on the era, as well as the police as a whole.

Fast Five (2011) (dir. Justin Lin)

I was torn between including this or Furious 7, but I ultimately went with Fast Five because it felt like an important turning point in the series, it's a great heist film, and it reached the same chaotic highs and genuinely excellent filmmaking that I had been waiting for since 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift.

Fast Five opens where Fast & 4ious left off. Dom is hauled away to prison on a bus. Mia and Brian drive in their high-tech cars and knock the bus over, helping Dom escape. The title drops. Fast Five. It’s such an intense yet short action scene, and dropping the title immediately after it lets the viewer know that this movie is not fucking around. It’s arguably gonna be more intense and insane than the previous one.

And it is. The filmmakers made the decision to use a lot more practical stunt work for the film, and as a result, it leads to, so far, the best action in the entire series, since 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift. It’s not just how it’s shot or edited, it’s the geography of the locations, the rooftop chase echoes the rooftop chase of Jackie Chan’s masterwork Police Story, particularly the way each character bounces from top to top.

And of course, there’s the silliest moment in the movie, the one that matches the intensity and kineticism of a film like 2 Fast, which is driving the Reyes’ bank vault throughout the street, getting chased by corrupt cops.

I know we make fun of Vin Diesel for saying “family” all the time in these films, but there’s a reason we remember him saying all of these impassioned monologues. Because he’s unbelievably sincere, and has so much love in his heart for every single person in the room. Anytime he delivers a speech to any of them, it’s genuinely heartwarming.

This is the film that finally shows La Familia in their best environment, which is working together, in a movie genre that allows them to work together, which is a heist film. And a great one at that.

Last Days (2005) (dir. Gus Van Sant)

CW: Mention of suicide

Several films have been made about legendary rock artist Kurt Cobain, and for good reason. He is one of the most tragic figures in rock and roll. A tortured genius who has written and performed classic song after classic song with his band Nirvana. He was called the voice of a generation, and helped change the face of mainstream alternative rock music as we know it. But with that fame, and all of those expectations came a worsening depression and further drug abuse, and his eventual death. But most of the films about Kurt Cobain ask one question which gets under my skin way too much:

“Who REEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLY killed Kurt Cobain?”

It was him. He did. And it’s okay, I’m sad too. Thinking that Kurt Cobain was murdered is completely ignoring the depression that he faced. And despite Last Days being more inspired by the death of Cobain rather than actually about it, it feels much more honest than the conspiracy documentaries on his death, wanting to leech off of his dead body.

This is the last installment of Gus Van Sant’s “Death Trilogy”, the previous two installments being Gerry (2001), and Elephant (2003). While I have not seen Gerry, I have seen Elephant though, and love that film for its minimalist, raw nature, and its boldness for not romanticizing the school shooter or the lives they had taken. Last Days falls into that trap once, as I don’t agree with the shot of Blake’s soul climbing up a ladder, that always struck me as cheesy in a film that is anything but.

Last Days is similar to Elephant in terms of the way it is filmed. Its usage of long takes, and still shots of characters doing various things, such as Blake playing his guitar behind a drum set. The way these moments are shot is similar to a Chantal Akerman film, particularly Jeanne Dielman. Where the acts of the mundane are the stars of the film. Blake wanders around an empty house, and the viewer can feel the pain, not just through Michael Pitt’s acting, but from the house itself. Its decay, its paint peeling from the walls, from the soft glow of the lamp that lights his face.

I say this is the most honest film about Kurt Cobain, because, despite the characters technically being fictional (the main character who looks, walks, and acts like Cobain is named Blake), this film focuses on the mental state of a person before they eventually take their own life. They’re still working, still making music, still trying to talk to friends and bandmates, but the depression lingers on. Not once does this film try to make you believe that someone else killed him, because you can see the signs of his own suicide taking place just through the film’s excellent cinematography by Harris Savides, showing his mental state only growing worse through the production design.

And it’s empathetic with him. There’s no judgement for leaving rehab, there’s no finger-wagging at him or the people he was with, there’s just a silent prayer at the end of the film, hoping that he is in a better place than he was.

Sometimes you don’t need to show every event that led you to where you are, all you can show is the moment, which also makes this better than most biopics as well, as it never feels messy or muddled, just showing one moment of Blake/Kurt’s life.

I really loved this film, and I’ll be writing about it in full soon.

The Village (2004) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

The Cracked.com/Channel Awesome audience stuck in 2012 will tell you that this was the beginning of the end for Shyamalan. That this was when people stopped taking him seriously, that this was when he became more of a punchline because of his twist endings.

But why?

The Village was released in 2004, deep in the Bush administration, during the early stages of the Iraq War. The leaders of the time were talking about imaginary boogeymen, terrorists that would attack the civilians if they could. Because of 9/11, politicians could get away with these false ideas with the majority of Americans fully believing them. The boogeymen in The Village are “The People We Don’t Speak Of”, monsters attracted by the color red. Yet we find out that they are all costumes made by the Elders of the land, designed to prevent people from going outside the land. They rule by fear disguised as love. They’ve gone through their own traumas through the deaths of their family members, but they’ve decided to completely abandon the lives that they’ve had and have their children living lies.

9/11 impacted American life by teaching citizens to live primarily by fear, to not trust anyone but their own people. And yet, post-9/11, all that increased was not “coming together”, but hate crimes against South Asian people. The rage white Americans had felt led to conservative politicians pushing fear-mongering agendas, and said white Americans blindly accepted. The outside world was progressing, but too many people were fine with living with further conservative politics only regressing American life further and further back, all for the illusion of safety. Meanwhile, the only threats to them were not the brown citizens outside of America they were so afraid of, but the white elders, the white politicians.

The Village explores these fears so eloquently, all while having a terrifying atmosphere, an enchanting score, and brilliant sound design. I enjoyed this movie very much.

Other viewings I enjoyed:

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) (dir. Mike Judge) (re-watch)

Blow Out (1981) (dir. Brian de Palma) (re-watch)

Clueless (1995) (dir. Amy Heckerling) (re-watch)

Furious 7 (2015) (dir. James Wan)

The Long Goodbye (1973) (dir. Robert Altman)

Lupin III: The First (2019) (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)

Unbreakable (2000) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan) (re-watch)

Velvet Goldmine (1998) (dir. Todd Haynes)

The Visit (2015) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

#favorite first watches #these movies are (chef's kiss)#beyond the valley of the dolls #russ meyer #deep cover #bill duke #fast five #justin lin #last days #gus van sant #the village #m night shyamalan

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fibula-rasa · 3 years

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12 Christmas Films of a Century Past

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to watch somewhere around 50 Christmas and Christmas-adjacent silent films from before 1920 to put together a playlist for you all. So, I hope you enjoy!

I chose these twelve as a representative selection. My general criteria were:

Christmas should be central to the story

The plot should be novel to a modern viewer or something a modern viewer would be surprised to see so early on film

The list on the whole should have a variety of settings and narrative structures

Here’s a direct link to the YouTube playlist if you want to watch them all in one go. (They are all shorter than feature length!)

Two quick presentation notes: 1. Some of the videos have music and some don’t, so you may want to check your volume level. 2. The intertitles for some of these films are not in English, so be sure you have captions turned on for English translations.

See the whole list BELOW THE JUMP!

1. Santa Claus (1898) (UK)

Directed by George Albert Smith

Short and sweet, this film sees children put to bed by their nanny on Christmas Eve and Santa Claus coming down the chimbley to fill their dutifully hung stockings. Director G.A. Smith used his own patented technique of double exposure to show Santa’s arrival without cutting away from the children’s room. Santa Claus might not pack the punch of a Méliès trick film, but it’s a fun novelty and is purportedly the first appearance of Santa Claus on film.

2. The Little Match Seller (1902) (UK)

Directed by James Williamson

This one’s quick but effective adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson tragedy featuring impressively well-coordinated superimpositions.

3. The Christmas Angel (1904) (FR)

Directed by George Méliès for Star Film Company

The Christmas Angel follows an impoverished girl driven into the city to beg on a snowy winter night. First she’s chased away from a church by more seasoned beggars; then she’s thrown out of a poultry seller and harassed by police. On the verge of falling asleep in the snow, a rag-and-bone man rouses her and offers her help. Later, the girl passes out beside a road but is luckily spotted by a wealthy couple on a car ride. When they learn of her plight, they bring her home along with food and gifts.

Though not as fantastical as some of Méliès’ more famous works, The Christmas Angel is still highly stylized (and stylish) and features special effects that photograph beautifully. It’s also worth noting that the version of the film included here is the American cut. The original French cut, titled Détresse et Charité (Distress and Charity), did not include the sequence with the wealthy couple and instead ends with the girl dying in the snow.

4. The Night Before Christmas (1905) (US)

Directed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison Manufacturing Company

This is the first time the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” was put on film. Loosely following the poem, we see Santa Claus prepare for his yearly trek while a middle-class family prepares for his visit. When Santa heads out, we are treated to an extended panning sequence with a fully painted backdrop for a mini Santa and his reindeer to glide across. When Santa arrives at the family home, he chaotically dumps presents and decorations around their living room and makes a large, decorated tree appear out of thin air. (Across many of the movies I watched to put this post together, this seems to be a favored scenario for the jolly fat man around this time–and it’s delightful.) The family then wakes to find their gifts and the film closes with Santa directly wishing us a Merry Christmas.

5. A Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus (1907) (US)

Directed by J. Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter for Edison Manufacturing Company

Even at the risk of this list being too Edison heavy, I couldn’t leave this great short out. While walking with his mother, a rich little boy encounters a poor little girl alone in the cold. They take her home to play and warm up. When the boy learns that the girl doesn’t believe in Santa because apparently Santa doesn’t visit poor children, he hatches a scheme. On Christmas Eve, the boy has a stake out near the fireplace and takes Santa hostage, tying him up and holding him at gunpoint. The boy then forces Santa to visit the girl–going so far as shimmying down the chimney himself to let Santa in the front door. When the girl wakes up to a beautifully decorated tree, new toys, and a full stocking, she can finally believe in Santa Claus. While I’m generally not so into stories about supposedly benevolent rich people, I do love the implications this story has on how Santa Claus works and I also find the means with which the boy gets his way hilarious.

6. Il Natale di Cretinetti / Foolshead’s Christmas (1909) (IT)

and Come fu che l’ingordigia rovino il Natale di Cretinetti / How Greediness Spoilt Foolshead’s Christmas (1910)

and Il Natale di Cretinetti (1911)

Directed by Andre Deed for Itala Film

This entry is a three-for, which I hope you’ll excuse, but I couldn’t decide which Cretinetti Christmas to share! Cretinetti, the comedic persona of filmmaker Andre Deed, is an absolute agent of chaos.

In the 1909 film, Cretinetti attempts to bring a tree home for a Christmas party. The destruction escalates wildly, culminating in an entire building falling to pieces.

If you can believe it, the stakes are even higher in the 1910 film, when Cretinetti can’t resist sneaking out of bed on Christmas Eve to snack on the candy decorating the tree. When Santa sees what Cretinetti has done, he chides him and takes him back to his workshop, which is apparently in heaven. Destruction ensues. Cretinetti then proceeds to cause havoc for Saint Peter, annoying god so much that he calls the devil to come get Cretinetti. Cretinetti is then chased to hell where demons try to cook him alive. Thankfully, spoiler alert, it was all a bad dream and he wakes up on Christmas morning with a terrible stomach ache.

The 1911 film returns to localized chaos. Cretinetti has a run-in with a mail carrier and his Christmas packages get mixed up with one of the carrier’s parcels. The parcel contains three bottles of ether which then begin to emit gasses in the middle of the family Christmas party.

I wasn’t familiar with Cretinetti before reviewing films for this list, but I’m definitely going to seek out more of Deed’s movies. Each of these films had well-executed chaotic slapstick; over-the-top in all the right ways.

7. Making Christmas Crackers (1910) (UK)

Produced by Cricks & Martin Films for Clarke, Nickolls, & Coombs Confectionery

To start, if you’re not sure what a Christmas cracker is, it’s a colorfully decorated paper tube that makes a cracking noise as you pull it open. Inside the tube is a paper hat, a joke, and/or a small toy. It’s a traditional part of UK Christmas celebrations.

This short starts as a documentary of the workers at Clarke, Nickolls, & Coombs constructing the crackers. It’s a fun thought that as early as 1910, people were interested in watching how mass-produced consumer goods were made. It’s also fun to see these skilled workers ply their trade so deftly (even though I’m sure wages and working conditions were less than ideal). The film ends with a family celebrating around a Christmas tree topped with a functional giant cracker.

8. A Christmas Carol (1910) (US)

Directed by J. Searle Dawley for Edison Films Manufacturing Company

There are so so so many film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol made before 1920 that it was hard to choose which one to include on this list. In the end I chose this 1910 version for its economy of storytelling, fluid use of special effects, and for Marc McDermott’s great performance as Scrooge.

9. Broncho Billy’s Christmas Dinner (1911) (US)

Directed by Gilbert M. Anderson (Broncho Billy) for The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company

Gilbert M. Anderson was an incredibly prolific and popular filmmaker and star of early American film, particularly in his role as Broncho Billy. As was typical for Anderson, he’s pulling triple duty on Broncho Billy’s Christmas Dinner as the star, director, and producer. The film features a simple and heartwarming story.

On Christmas, Billy comes across a young woman in peril as her horses got startled and are now pulling her cart along wildly. Billy manages to wrangle the horses and in gratitude she invites him to Christmas dinner at her parents’ home. Unfortunately, her father happens to be the sheriff. But, all is well, as it turns out that Broncho Billy’s been given a pardon and the sheriff welcomes him to the table gladly.

The enduring appeal of outlaws or criminals getting into the Christmas spirit is fascinating to me and it’s cool to see such an early instance of the story!

10. Le Noel de la princesse / The Little Princess’s XMas Gift (1911) (FR)

Produced by Société Générale des Cinématographes Éclipse

In all honesty, this is the least Christmassy of all the films I included here, but its style and novelty stood out. The sets, costuming, and production design are lush. It might also be one of the weirdest Christmas stories I’ve even encountered.

After Lord Othberg passes away, the conniving Otto plans to assassinate the baby prince in order to inherit the lordship himself. He poisons the baby, but the princess prays for her baby brother to come back to life as her Christmas gift. An angel appears to her and they summon Jesus, who resurrects her baby brother. Of course, they then place the revivified baby in the castle’s nativity scene, to the joy of all but Otto.

11. Ida’s Christmas (1912) (US)

Directed by Van Dyke Brooke for Vitagraph Company of America

With a more classic Christmassy story, Ida’s Christmas tells us of a family who are facing hard times. Ida (played by a very small Dolores Costello) has her eyes on a pricey doll. Meanwhile, her mother seeks out employment with a wealthy family. The matriarch of the wealthy family overhears Ida’s wish and decides to buy the doll for her as a surprise. Later, Ida is distraught to find that the doll has been purchased but comes across a wallet that someone has dropped. She considers taking the money, but chases down the owner instead. The old man gives her some reward money for returning the wallet. Ida rushes to see if she can buy the doll, but has second thoughts when she thinks about how much her family could use the money. She arrives home with the money just in time for a Santa-esque old man to show up bearing packages and an assurance that the wealthy family has work for her father. The film ends with the family celebrating an unexpectedly Merry Christmas.

It’s a sweet story that hits so many beats of what we now consider traditional Christmas tales.

12. Rozhdestvo obitateley lesa / The Insect’s Christmas (1913) (RU)

Directed by Władysław Starewicz for Khanzhonkov

Fair warning, if you thought The Princess’s XMas Gift was odd, you might need to ready yourself for this one. Stop-motion virtuoso Władysław Starewicz (Ladislas Starevich) spins a tale about a tiny ornament of Santa/Ded Moroz coming to life on Christmas and going out into the wild to bring Christmas joy to creatures small and smaller, including a frog and a ladybug. Starewicz’s animation is as impeccable as ever and the short is imaginative and quirky.

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trixree · 3 years

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Feminist, Queer, Playboy, Philanthropist: Why Ironman Belongs to the Shes, Gays, and Theys

Introduction:

This material originally comes from a media critique project I did for an undergrad philosophy course and I've attempted to adapt it into a tumblr post that doesn't make your eyes bleed. I may or may not have been successful. Upfront, I'm giving you a trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault/rape. If you'd like to skip that part of the analysis, mind the red content warning [start/end].

Trix, what are you up to today? Well, I’d like to present an alternative narrative interpretation of the capstone of the MCU. At face value, Tony Stark shows us a wise-cracking, suave, and hyper-masculine superhero. His soundtrack is AC/DC and he arrives on the battlefield in a shower of gold sparks and hydraulics, wearing sunglasses that cost more than my uterus would fetch on the black market. However, this character presents us with so much more than just a hyper-masculine caricature of straight, cis heroism. Not only does he embody typically “feminine” film tropes—such as the hypersexualized “fighting-fucktoy” role, the policing of his body and promiscuity, and the climactic “rape scene” in which his predatory father-figure drugs him and steals his “heart”—additionally, he embodies classically queer film tropes. Unlike most male action-movie protagonists, his story line is an identity crisis at heart, culminating in a climactic “coming out” scene. His character is promiscuous and spurned for it, and camp is a constant underlying theme in his character design as a whole. I explore these themes in two main parts: the femme and the queer. We'll start with the femme.

Hyper-Masculinity & Tony Stark

In order to understand the subversive nature of Tony Stark, we must first establish the typical nature of hyper-masculine and the hyper-feminine character tropes. Before we can ask the question, “how is this character coded as femme?'' We must first ask, “how is this character coded as masc?”. Further, what do these tropes tell the audience about those characters? Ultimately, the hypermasculine caricature lends power to the subject while the hyperfeminine caricature strips the subject of all agency.

Hypermasculinity is defined, generally, as the exaggerated portrayal or the reinforcement of “typically male stereotypes” (typical male meaning, in this context, that of a Westernized man) such as aggression, strength and power (both physcial and otherwise), as well as sex appeal, and integrity. Hypermasculinity takes a keen focus on the physical male form as a dominating force (1). A hypermasculine character, then, would be one that portrays a domineering, powerful man that is above his peers in some way, and is sexually desirable, in that he exemplifies a pornified picture of a male physique. This desirable and desiring caricature of manhood “socializes boys to believe that being a man means being powerful and in control” (2).

In contrast to this idea of hypermasculinity is the media’s typical portrayal of women. The typical hyperfeminine characterization of women in media is that of a passive, pretty, and overtly sexualized side-character with little agency or autonomy within the story. This is true of both blockbuster hits starring men and movies starring women, too. “We had many more interesting characters on screen in the '20s, '30s, '40s than we do now… They could be the femme fatale and then turn around and be the mother and then turn around and be the seductress, and then turn around and be the saint, and we accepted that. They were complex human beings” (2). This is no longer the case for a typical role for women on screen.

The documentary Miss Representation (2) presents a common caricature that a woman in Hollywood might find herself portraying. Action movies with a female lead surely must exhibit agency in their own story lines. However, the female-action-movie-lead is dubbed the “fighting fucktoy” by Miss Representation. Although she makes her own decisions and it is her narrative that drives the story, she primarily exists as eye-candy. Thus, even the “fighting fucktoy” is just that to audiences--a “fucktoy”. She may be “strong” but primarily, she must be pretty. The MCU character Black Widow perfectly exemplifies the “fighting fucktoy”. Her physical strength may be unquestioned, but primarily it is her beauty that is the focus on-screen. Never do we see her fighting in a t-shirt and sweatpants. Even outside of the skin-tight deep-vee catsuit, Black Widow’s plain clothes outfits consist of tight jeans and even tighter shirts.

This is true for both hyperfeminine and hypermasculine stories. Both the men and women starring in mainstream productions are expected to exemplify a western ideal of peak beauty standards at all times. However, where the hypersexualization of male’s bodies is associated with power, dominance, and strength, the sexualization of women’s bodies is linked to submission, frailty, and possession. Hence the name, “fighting fucktoy”. Her beauty does not make her powerful, it makes her a “toy”, an object, a possession. The sexualization of men in media gives them power within their narratives. For women, it does the complete opposite. It makes them objects, even when they are strong. Beauty and sex make them the victims of their own stories. Ultimately, the hypermasculine male character is envied and emulated, not coveted.

Ironman: Femme Fatale

The storyline of the first Iron Man movie is one concerned with bodily autonomy in a way typically reserved for women--Tony Stark is presented as a fighting fucktoy with an unattainable heart. Not only that, he must struggle against the literal policing of his body by friends, family, and government agencies alike. This subversive, unexpected feminine story culminates in the pinnacle “rape scene” wherein a trusted older-male drugs and assaults Tony in order to take advantage of his “body”, the arc-reactor.

Let’s examine Tony’s coded “fighting fucktoy” persona in two parts: the “fighting” and the “fucktoy”. Miss Representation identifies what female leadership often looks like in movies. “When it comes to female leaders in entertainment media, we see the bitchy boss who has sacrificed family and love to make it to where she is” (2). Odd as it may seem, this perfectly encapsulates the metaphorical role of the arc reactor powering the Iron Man suits. First and foremost, the reactor represents Tony Stark’s heart. Not only is it literally located within his heart for the purpose of keeping it intact, it represents his rebirth as a caring, philanthropic man--it encapsulates Stark’s “fight”. Before his kidnapping and the subsequent implanting of the reactor, Stark was every inch the “bitchy boss who has sacrificed family and love” as well as morals themselves in order to be a war profiteer. His “fight” consists of standing up against the same system that had allowed him to amass his fortune. This “fight” is inextricably tied to his “bitchy boss” caricature as someone who has had to surrender love.

It is clear to the viewer that Stark has had to sacrifice love to get where he is in life. Many allusions are given towards the “will they won't they” nature of his relationship with Pepper Potts and Stark’s work is identified as the reason why they won’t. At the end of the movie, Stark attempts to seduce Potts, asking if she ever “thinks about that night” to which she replies, “Are you talking about the night that we danced and went up on the roof, and then you went downstairs to get me a drink, and you left me there, by myself?” The viewers are aware that the reason Stark ran off was because he had received news that Stark weapons had gotten into the wrong hands. Later, Potts will gift him the original arc reactor with the engraving: PROOF THAT TONY STARK HAS A HEART surrounding it. In an unconventional way, Stark portrays the frigid boss who sacrificed everything to get where she is in his titular fight against a war profiteering machine.

Next, let’s examine his role as the fucktoy. This is a more subtle theme throughout the film, present in body language and subtext. I will focus mainly on scenes which present a femme-coded sexualization--scenes where emphasis on Stark’s body does not lend Stark power, but instead strips him of his autonomy. Take for example the scene pictured below. In this scene, Stark bares his chest to Stane. He is quick to cover up and fruitlessly attempts to redirect Stane’s curiosity. Much like a scene where an attractive woman shows skin, the emphasis is placed on Stark redirecting Stane’s predatory interest. Notice the tension in Stark’s stance, the challenge in his eyes and the contrasting pose of Stane, mid-motion, pushing so close into Stark’s space. Stane is clearly coded as the aggressor once the reactor comes out. The same effect is observed as when a woman bares skin--an apparent loss of autonomy as other characters (and even the cinematography itself) takes a pornographic view of her body. Instead of a powerful male character baring his chest in the heat of a battle, giving the audience a glimpse of corded muscle and strength, this scene leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable on Stark’s behalf.

[TW Start] This femme-coded sexualization that leads ultimately to a loss of autonomy again rears its head in the titular “rape scene”. This is the clearest instance of the reactor--a literal part of Stark’s body, symbolically present as his heart--lends itself to his victimization. Just as a hypersexualized female character with no bodily autonomy, Stark’s bodily autonomy is forcefully violated so that a powerful male figure in his life can exploit a part of him. This theme becomes horrifyingly clear when the scene is examined up close.

Notice the position of their bodies. Once again, Stane towers over Stark, pressing into his space on all sides. In the first image, to the right, he has an arm draped over the back of the couch--a parody of a romantic or perhaps affectionate gesture from one intimate partner to another. Stane visibly radiates power in this position, even if the viewer were unaware of Stark’s paralyzed state. Stane’s shoulders are squared, even sitting down. The position of the reactor in his hand is relaxed and undeniably taunting. Looking at Stark himself, the horror and powerlessness of his situation is clear. His eyes are open, but almost appear to be unseeing. He is not looking directly at the reactor nor at Stane. In fact, it seems as though his eyes are looking below the reactor and to the room at large. I can only describe his expression as hollow--the blank eyes fixed out to something the viewers cannot see, his mouth partially open, his skin sickly pale.

In the second image, pictured above, Stane leers over Stark’s body, cradling his head in, once again, a parody of a lover’s tenderness. He coaxes Stark’s now limp form down onto the couch, having just paralyzed him with a fictional, technological nerve agent. The horror is shockingly clear on Stark’s face and the perverse joy is just as clear on Stane’s. This scene itself is an undeniable parody of rape, or, at the very least, physical assault. [TW End]

Tony Stark presents us with a clear, femme-coded character as his story line draws upon classicly feminine tropes wherein the sexualization of the character’s body is exploitative at heart and leaves them vulnerable to physical predation. In this way, though he is strong, his “body” makes him the victim of his own story. Not only that, his character arc itself travels from the heart-less profiteer to the philanthropic man with a heart of gold, drawing upon another classically femme-caricature of the “bitchy boss”.

Queer Tropes & The Closet

Queer tropes are much harder to draw upon than that of feminine tropes. Queer tropes in film developed in a time of great censorship and as a result are often subtle. There are three main tropes I would like to reference for the purposes of this critique. Within the Iron Man franchise, there exists a distinct sense of camp, a problematized sexual promiscuity, and, ultimately, an identity-reveal/coming out storyline.

One of the most obvious of these tropes is camp. Camp is “defined as the purposeful and ironic adoption of stylistic elements that would otherwise be considered bad taste. Camp aesthetics are generally extreme, exaggerated and showy and always involve an element of mockery” (3). Camp is present in queer culture most commonly in the ball and drag scenes. Camp is the gaudy, the glitzy, the over-the-top, the classic-but-not, the in-your-face… Camp is all of the above and more. This is why it is so easily recognizable to audiences.

The Advocate identifies a series of seventeen queer caricatures in media for consideration, one of them being that of the “promiscuous queer”. Everyone knows the myth of the promiscuous bisexual, even when the reality is that bisexual individuals are no more or no less likely to view monogamy as “sacrificial” than gay or straight individuals (4). The stereotype of the promiscuous bisexual is inaccurate and harmful, and they are by no meals alone in being labeled overly promiscuous by a general audience. The “promiscuous queer” is defined as a character that may struggle with emotional intimacy and, as a result, sleeps around to mask the love they are missing in their life. “Films going back as far as the ’80s British period piece Another Country have featured gay male characters who use sex to cover for their inability to feel true intimacy with another human being” (5). Among their list of guilty perpetrators are Queer as Folk, The L Word, The Good Wife, and How to Get Away With Murder.

The last trope I’d like to present is that of the “coming out” story. Far from being problematic, the “coming out” is often necessary when telling a queer story. Coming out storylines can be problematized when they are presented as “Big Dark Secrets” that weigh heavily on a person until they are spoken. Ultimately, coming out is a choice. Many queer people choose to come out while many do not. There are many people who fall in between--some people may be comfortable being out to select individuals while not to others or to the world at large. In any case, people can be satisfied and fully fulfilled in any of those choices. Coming out stories are undeniably part of queer culture in media. Consider the recent hit, Love Simon alongside Transparent, Empire, Supergirl, and Glee.

Camp, Secrets & Sex

Through the camp of the Iron Man persona, the problematized sexuality of Stark, and the underlying theme of a “coming out” journey, Tony Stark presents audiences with a classically queer experience in film. Take the Iron Man suit itself. The iconic red and gold, the whine of the repulsors, the sleek metal edges and the furious glow of the arc reactor all scream camp. The red and the gold, the opening bars of Back In Black, the facial hair cut into odd spikes, and the sunglasses do, too. Each and every part of the Iron Man persona is camp. “Stylistic elements that otherwise would be bad taste”... talk about gold-plated biceps and a bright red, glowing chest piece! It's camp, baby!

The problematized sexuality of Stark is harder to see as reminiscent of a queer trope. Take, for example, one of the first scenes in the movie. “I do anything and everything that Mr. Stark requires, including, occasionally, taking out the trash”, Potts remarks in reference to a one-night stand she’s ushering out of Stark’s home. Here, Potts implies that Stark sleeps with “trash”. The following scene gives us the feeling that this is not a one-off occurrence. As Potts enters the room, Stark asks, “how’d she take it?” References to his repeated promiscuity are obvious. “Playboy” is an integral part of his persona. Equally obvious is Potts’ disapproval. Taking these inferences of his playboy lifestyle with what viewers know of Stark’s lack of attachments--his “bitchy boss” exterior, if you may--it appears as though his promiscuity is a symptom of the promiscuous queer stereotype.

“Don’t ever ask me to do anything like that ever again,” Potts says after removing the initial arc reactor model from Stark’s chest cavity. “I don’t have anyone but you,” Stark replies. The viewer has a clear picture of Stark as a playboy type who is truly lonely on the inside--who struggles with emotional intimacy. This struggle is evident, given that Potts, Stark’s secretary and co-worker, is the only person in his life he trusts to assist him in what is essentially open heart surgery. His playboy lifestyle mirrors the circumstances of the promiscuous queer trope in media.

Finally, we come to the last scene of the movie-- the climactic reveal. “I am Iron Man”, Stark says. This scene most clearly illustrates a queer story-line. Stark reveals his “identity”, shedding his last secret, and declares to reporters (and effectively the world) that he is Iron Man. To understand how this scene evokes such a strong sense of queer experience in viewers, I’d like to reference another recent in-universe identity reveal in the Marvel Cinematic canon. In Spiderman: Far From Home, the end-credit scene shows Peter Parker reacting in horror to his identity being leaked via doctored footage from the villain Mysterio. This scene can read as nothing but a deep violation. Even the main characters themselves react in abject horror at the news. The Spiderman identity reveal and the Iron Man identity reveal are two sides of the same coming-out process. In one, the character had full agency. In the other, the reveal was non-consensual, a complete violation. It is clear that both of these scenes draw explicitly upon themes that resonate particularly with queer audiences.

To Infinity(War) and Beyond

Growing up, I latched onto Iron Man and Tony Stark as an outlet for my “otherness”. I was well and truly obsessed with the character for reasons that I could not really put into words. He was weird, he was loud, and he was, frankly, unapologetic about any of it. I remember very clearly on my first day of tenth grade listening to Thunderstruck by AC/DC in the car and putting on the brightest shade of red lipstick I could find. Tony Stark gave me confidence. He gave me a voice. Throughout high-school I must have watched the first Iron Man movie upwards of twenty, maybe even thirty times. It was a comfort to me because it showed experiences I resonated with and it showed a strong character recovering from them. Tony Stark rose from the ashes every time and gave me the strength to rise from my own ashes every time he did.

Our heroes can be anything. And Tony Stark was mine.

#thechestnuthead #here you go #yall asked for it #long post #really fucking long post #meta #trixree speaks #ironman #tony stark #marvel meta #analysis #this took a long time rip #if yall want the full paper you can hit me up for a PDF #my posts #trixree gets meta

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uomo-accattivante · 4 years

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I recently came across a bunch of press articles and photos about Oscar Isaac that are so old, they appear to be out-of-print and pre-date social media. Considering they were probably never digitally transcribed for internet access, I’m guessing that the majority of current fans have never seen this stuff.

Even though a lot of these digital scans are challenging to read because they are the original fuzzy news print, I think there some gems worth sharing with you guys. Over the next several weeks, I will transcribe and share those gems on this page. Hope you enjoy them!

Let’s start with this fantastic 2001 profile piece done before Oscar was accepted into Juilliard:

South Florida’s rising star isn’t just acting the part

By Christine Dolen - [email protected]

February 4, 2001

As fifth-graders at Westminster Christian School in Miami, Oscar Isaac and his classmates were asked to write a story as if they were animals on Noah’s Ark. Oscar turned in a seven-page play – with original music – from the perspective of a platypus. Then he starred in the production his teacher directed.

He hasn’t stopped expressing himself creatively since. Today, Isaac is one of South Florida’s busiest young theater actors, and certainly its hottest. And not just because he’s a slender five-feet nine-inches tall with an expressively handsome face and glistening brown eyes.

Since making his professional debut as a Cuban hustler in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage in July 1999, he has played an explosive Vietnam vet in Private Wars for Horizons Repertory, a pot-smoking slacker in This Is Our Youth at GableStage, another Cuban on the make in Praying With the Enemy at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the entrancing narrator of Side Man at GableStage, a Havana-based writer in Arrivals and Departures for the new Oye Rep and, most recently, a young Fidel Castro in When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba at New York’s Cherry Lane Theater.

Beginning Wednesday, he’ll be juggling five roles in City Theatre’s annual Winter Shorts festival, first at the Colony Theatre in Miami Beach, then at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. But that is not all: During the two weeks he is doing Winter Shorts, he’ll also be playing dates with the punk-ska band The Blinking Underdogs (www.blinkingunderdogs.com), which features him as lead singer, guitarist and songwriter.

Oh, and he just got back from auditioning for New York’s prestigious Juilliard School of Drama.

All this for a guy a month shy of his 22nd birthday.

Sure, you could hate a guy who’s that talented, that charismatic, that transparently ambitious. But the people who have worked with Oscar Isaac don’t. On the contrary, they’re all sure he has it – that magical, can’t-be-taught thing that transforms an actor into a star.

Playwright Eduardo Machado, who put in a good word for Isaac at Juilliard, says “he does have that star quality that makes your eyes go to him. It’s great that someone with that talent still wants to train.”

“He has a star quality that’s rare in a young actor,” adds Joseph Adler, who directed him in Side Man and This Is Our Youth. “Without a doubt I expect to be hearing great things from him.”

‘I JUST LOVE CREATING’

Isaac, who also makes short films, can’t say exactly why he was attracted to acting. He just knows it makes him happier than anything, that it’s what he was meant to do. And he’s been doing it since he was a 4-year-old putting on plays in his family’s backyard with his sister Nicole.

“I just love creating, whether it’s music or films or a character on a stage. I love taking people for a ride,” he says. “In Side Man, every night I would love being that close to the audience. I felt like I was talking to 80 of my closest friends.

“I could feel what the audience was feeling.”

His powerful, mournful-yet-loving monologue near the end of the play, he said, “worked every night. I knew it would get them. I’d hear sniffles.

“But it had less to do with me than with the atmosphere [created by the playwright and director].”

You could understand if Isaac, surrounded as he is by praise and possibility, had an ego as burgeoning as his career. Instead, he channels the positive reinforcement into confidence about his work.

“He has such a charm and an ease onstage, but he’s very modest,” says New York-based actress Judith Delgado, who shared the stage with Isaac in Side Man. “He’s hungry. He’s got moxie. I was blown away by him.

“He saved me a couple of times. I went up [forgot a line] and that baby boy of mine came through. He’s a joy.”

FORGING HIS OWN PATH

The son of a Cuban-American father and a Guatemalan mother, Isaac was never a stellar student. But he found ways of turning routine assignments – like the Noah’s Ark story – into creative challenges.

His science reports were inevitably video documentaries underscored with punk music. He acted through middle and high school, though he had a falling out with his drama teacher at Santaluces Community High in Lantana over his misgivings about a character. When she refused to cast him in anything else, he got his English teacher to let him play the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors his senior year.

His skepticism about authority and love of playing the devil’s advocate have long made him resist doing things the usual way. His post-high school “training” consisted of one semester at Miami-Dade Community College’s South Campus (where he met his girlfriend, Maria Miranda), touring schools playing an abusive character in the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s Breaking the Cycle, and working as a transporter of bodies at Baptist Hospital, where he absorbed the drama of people in emotionally intense situations.

“It was the most magnificent dramatic institute I could’ve attended,” Isaac said. “I was able to observe the entire spectrum of human emotion, people under the most extreme duress. I was mesmerized watching the way people interacted with each other in such heightened situations.

“I learned everything about the human condition, and it was real and harsh and brutally honest.”

Yet even given his propensity for forging his own path, something nudged him another direction while he was in New York making his Off-Broadway debut in December. Walking by Juilliard one day, he impulsively went in to ask for an application. Though the application deadline had passed, Isaac persuaded Juilliard to accept his, noting in his application essay that most of the exceptional actors he admires had acquired “a brutally efficient technique” to enhance their talent by studying at places like Juilliard.

Though he won’t know whether he has been accepted until the end of this month, his audition last weekend went well, he says. He did monologues from Henry IV, Part I and Dancing at Lughnasa, adjusting his Shakespearean Hotspur to a more fiery temperature at the suggestion of Michael Kahn, head of Juilliard’s acting program – though not without arguing that Hotspur wouldn’t be speaking to the king that way.

Isaac, not surprisingly, loves a good debate.

Adler, GableStage’s artistic director and a man who is as liberal as Isaac once was conservative, savored the verbal jousting they did during rehearsals for Side Man.

“He knows exactly how to pull my chain,” Adler says with a laugh. “Intelligence is the cornerstone of all great actors, and he’s bright as hell.

“He has relentless ambition but with so much charm. He’s very hard to say no to. He has incredible raw talent and magnetism that is very rare in a young actor along with relentless energy, perseverance and ambition. I see his growth both onstage and off. He’s mature in both places.”

Part of his growth, of course, will necessarily involve dealing with the rejections that are part of any actor’s life. His career is still too new, his string of successes solid, so it’s anyone’s guess how failure will shape him. But director Michael John Garcés, who picked him for When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba after Isaac flew to New York at his own expense to compete with a pool of seasoned Manhattan actors for the role, believes his character will see him through.

“Oscar is realistic, but he’s so willing to go the whole nine yards,” Garcés says. “He didn’t go out when he was in the show here. His focus earned the respect of the other actors, some of whom have been working in New York for 30 years.

“He hasn’t had a lot of blows yet, when the career knocks the wind out of you. But he has talent, determination and focus, and if he has perseverance – my intuition is that he does have it – he could achieve a lot.”

FAMILY TIES

His father and namesake, Baptist Hospital intensive-care physician Oscar Isaac Hernandez, couldn’t be more proud. (Isaac doesn’t use the family surname in order to avoid, in his words, being “put in that Hispanic actor box.”)

“I’m ecstatic that he’s probably going to be going to the most prestigious drama school in the United States,” he says. “School will help him focus his energies and give him discipline. He’s got the raw material and the drive.”

Isaac’s mother, Maria, divorced from his father since 1992, is a kidney-transplant recipient who acknowledges that she’ll miss her son if he moves to New York. But, she adds, she wants him “to live out his dreams. He amazes me every day. He calls me every day. I’m very proud of him.”

Even the other guys in The Blinking Underdogs are fans of Isaac’s acting, though it could take him away from South Florida just as the band appears to be, Isaac says, on the brink of signing a recording deal (it has already put out its own CD, The Last Word, with songs, lead vocals and even cover photography by Isaac.

“Oscar’s the leader of the band, a great musician who amazes me and motivates us,” says sax player Keith Cooper. “I’ve been to see every one of his plays. He’s a phenomenal actor.

“I completely buy into his role in every play. As close as I am to him, I forget it’s Oscar.”

His South Florida theater colleagues credit that to Isaac’s insatiable desire to learn and grow.

Gail Garrisan, who is directing him in Donnie and One of the Great Ones for Winter Shorts, observes, “It’s not often that you find a young actor who is willing to listen and who doesn’t think he knows everything. He loves the work.

“He really brought the young man in Side Man to life. When I saw it in New York, it seemed to be the father’s play. When I saw it here, I felt it was his [Isaac’s] play.”

Oye Rep’s John Rodaz, whom Isaac calls “the best director I’ve ever worked with,” gave the actor his first important job in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage. They met when Isaac came to see Area’s production of Oleanna and the actor, knowing Rodaz ran the theater, introduced himself.

“He has so much energy and such a sparkling personality,” Rodaz says. “He knows how to move in the world. He seems to take advantage of every situation in a good way; he’s not a cold, calculating person who’ll stab you in the back.

“[But] he wants it so badly. Everything he does, he’s the leader. When I was 21, I was taking naps.”

Rodaz coached Isaac on his Juilliard monologues and found the experience energizing.

“I got chills just watching him. That happens so rarely. I was so exhilarated when I came home that I just had to go out and run. You just know he’s got all the tools.”

Christine Dolen is The Herald’s theater critic.

###

#oscar isaac #vintage #juilliard #blinking underdogs #area stage company #john rodaz #gablestage #when it's cocktail time in cuba #side man #arrivals and departures #this is our youth #praying with the enemy #sleepwalkers #private wars #winter shorts #the miami herald

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watchinglikeafangirl · 3 years

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Lovely Writer Epsiode 8 - analysis

I have to say, this week's episode is the best one so far because so many things got explained and the puzzlepieces suddenly find their places. It's incredible how much hidden forshadowing the other episodes contain. Every week, I sit here and find clues they placed in episode 3 or something. It's really nice and that's what good writing is about. I find the script really great because this show focuses on so many different aspects, it's literally overwhelming.

On the one hand, we have Nubsib and Gene's lovestory which mostly happens apart from all the other stuff going on. Lovely Writer makes fun of all these cheesy romances with cringey dialogue underlined with a soundtrack that doesn't fit the atmosphere in the scenes at all. Gene and Nubsib have scenes which mix all the cliches at the same time. But at the same time, their lovestory is slow and their affection for each other is not all about physical attraction because love is not about that. Of course, enjoying kissing and having sex is a normal part of a relationship but I often feel like BLs want to tell me all the other stuff happens "off screen" because the talks late at night and taking care of each other are actually way harder to write. But Lovely Writer shows us very much about all those other aspects of a relationship, for example when Gene and Nubsib talk on the phone for hours. These are relationship goals which are rarely addressed but take place way more often than making out.

On the other hand, Lovely Writer is not about a lovestory at all. They make the Thai BL industry look bad by showing the harmony on camera and during interviwes is a fassade because all this pressure and fame gets to one personally and you turn out to be the worst version of yourself. This industry basically wants the actors to sacrifice their life, their identity for entertainment. This is a very sharp critic and Lovely Writer portrays this very well. They manage to switch between lovestory and toxic film business quite well.

Lovestory in a fairytale

Last episode nubsib went to the house where Gene hid and this story continues in this episode. We all know, what happened last week, there were many gifs about it and the cuteness continues here on an even higher level.

But all this takes place somewhere far from their work with no other people around. They are in this house together and spend two day there of explorig their feelings and I guess, talking about stuff most of the time. The rooms are always flooded with daylight and it looks very cozy and warm. Their relationship went next level and they both are very happy about it, so the first half of this episode contains a lot of positive feelings and the outside is not interfering. It looks more like a lovestory in a fairytale because they are drunk on happiness and excitement. It's something new, the start of a relationship and that's a big step. In the beginning they don't face challenges and can basically live happily in this house. But of course, the fairytale has to end and they go back. The mood switches at an instant and the lighting is different because now they aren't as free any more. Before, they were in a lonely house and were free to do anything.

This sort of bright lighting returns on the balcony because there, they can't be disturbed either and are just two young people in love again. Being in love in a silly and cheesy way is also part of a relationship and it's something normal, so Gene and Nubsib have those moments too even after they are back because now we (and Gene) know it's real. It's not something that happened in a different world. It is the reality and takes place even in the normal life.

Relationship goals

Like I said, their relationship looks very natural and is not faked or forced. In fact, their romance is too good to take. They share a few kisses but it's not the kisses which make my heart melt. It's Nubsib ask for consent in those moments. It's their talks. It's the little actions for me because little actions of care and love are way cuter than just a bunch of kiss and NC scenes. That's not what I want. I only watch BLs because they are about a love despite what society might tell you is right. I'm not here for kiss scenes. In some shows, all the private scenes of the main couple contain either kissing or sex and I don't understand why. In a relationship, you like this part as well but like the person you do that with more.

So, I like Gene and Nubsib's relationship being more lovingly and honest very much because trust, loyalty and honesty are more important.

Also, we can see they are both very serious about the relationship and go all in for it. There is no angrily storming off again. There is no being mad for a whole epsiode any more. There is no annoying shyness and blushing. Both characters don't really match the cliche dynamic and I love that because stereotypes just make me sick.

Here, Gene and Nubsib have an argument and even though they get disturbed, Nubsib makes sure they will talk about it later. They will have a mature and conversation about this when they both have calmed down. And this is real. This is normal and nothing to be very scared of. It's just a little argument that will probably be solve in a few sentences.

Lovely Writer has a whole concept. We got a moment when one of them was storming off and was mad for a whole episode but they just did that to reverse it and portray it as unrealistic and unfair for the other person because this way Gene wasn't giving Nubsib any chance to apologize nor explain himself.

Oversexualization

If I'm gonna talk about the fact the love story doesn't contain a lot of kiss or NC scenes, then I need to talk about this problem here. Actually, the oversexualization of BLs is harshly criticized in this scene and I belive Gene is totally right but the thing is, it's not just the Thai BL industry and it's not just BLs. It's far more than that and I believe westernization is a part of it (that's a huge topic, I know. I will only address one tiny aspect here). I don't know very much about the eastern countries of Asia. I only know what I've seen in documentaries or on the internet, so I can't say I'm an expert at all. But from what I know and what I've seen, Eastasian societies are more closeted about relationships and sex. I'm not saying every country (please, don't be offended and feel free to correct me) and I don't know how open Thailand is about this topic but I feel like the "western" countries are more open about it. I live in Germany and here it's a topic like everything else and people tend to overshare. I feel like the countries which are that open, oversexualize very quickly because it's no difficult topic among the people. So, oversexualization happens in all film businesses of such countries and since Thai BLs have fans all over the world, they oversexualize too in order to make the people like it. The whole internet seems horny all the time, so it works and sells itself pretty good. So, Gene doesn't just call out the Thai BL industry. He basically calls out half of the world's film businesses because they all do it.

But like Hin said, that doesn't mean NC scenes should be banned or are bad. Just an overuse of such passages is the problem here because then it's not about romance any more. Then, you can call it an erotic novel. When there's one or two NC scenes and they make sense in the story, it's totally fine. The writers and authors just need to find the right balance. And since the preview looked like things will be happening, then it's just happening because the mood was right. See sex as part of bonding because relationships are basically just good friendships with some next level stuff.

Consent

People love Nubsib asking Gene for consent whenever he wants to kiss him and that's really considerate but I saw this post here and discovered Nubsib is not the king of consent at all. He's only asking for consent whenever they are alone. But not when they are with other people because he knows Gene is shy. He outs him to three people during this episode even though he said he'll wait and Gene obviously doesn't want him to do that. Afterwards, he even comforts Gene to lift the pressure but he can't deny he put this pressure on Gene in the first place. As I said, Gene is shy towards other people, Nubsib knows that and plays this card. With others, Gene won't say anything because he's too polite and also, you don't have an argument in front of others. So, Nubsib doesn't stay true to his words and is still manipulative.

Finding your soulmate

Believe it or not, but I totally see Lovely Writer fulfilling the "soulmate" trope because this episode both indicated this - more or less through words.

Nubsib tells Gene, he felt lonely all these years in America and this loneliness vanished when he saw Gene again. He had a relationship before but still felt lonely (also, I love his previous relationship doesn't matter at all. There's no jealousy or anything). This sounds like he wants to say Gene is his long awaited soulmate.

Gene was lonely as well over all these years and got used to it but as soon as he and Nubsib grow closer he's reminded of the loneliness. He doesn't accept it any more and I believe he's nearly dying inside right before he calls Nubsib. They spend two days alone and many things happen emotionallywise, so when he gets home, he feels very lonely. Nubsib reminded him what it's like to not be lonely. He became aware of the loneliness again and hates it even more now he has someone freeing him from that feeling. Even though Gene doesn't say it, I feel like they want to tell me Nubsib is his soulmate too.

Product placement

This show's product placement cracks me up everytime. The picture with this woman... what was that lmao

Why would she hold up a face mask for a picture?

Also, the spray is so misplaced... Gene was upset but Nubsib was like "at least smell good"

Nubsib: the king of comforting

#lovely writer #gene x nubsib #this episode was too good #their relationship is so pure

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Many Saints of Newark Is a Trashy Gangster B-Movie, There’s Nothing Wrong with That

https://ift.tt/3uzeb2V

When I first walked out of The Many Saints of Newark, my initial reaction was to call it a B-movie. What I didn’t say at the time, however, was how much I love B-movies. While I saw the flaws in the film and couldn’t wholly endorse it to cinemagoers spoiled by the perfection of The Godfather, Goodfellas, and New Jack City, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to people like me. Those who appreciate the low-budget gangster movies sometimes because of their warts. A majority of fans of The Sopranos will have the same reaction: Meh, The Many Saints of Newark could have been better. So when’s it playing next? I plan to see it again, more than once, on the big screen.

In one of the film’s quieter moments, the Soprano family is gathered around a TV set, watching the classic Key Largo (1948). The specific scene on the screen begins when Humphrey Bogart’s cynical combat veteran Frank McCloud defuses a tense situation with the gangster Johnny Rocco. Played by Edward G. Robinson, Rocco is very loosely based on Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the godfather of organized crime, who had been deported and barred from American soil. He is suffering the same doubts Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) worries about in the pilot episode of The Sopranos: Are the best days of this “thing” over?

All gangsters want, as the black and white film explains, is more. Will they ever get enough? They never have. I don’t suppose they will. It is the same for gangster genre fans. We want more. And it doesn’t have to be great. “I don’t want it good. I want it Tuesday,” Jack Warner famously said about the gangster films his studio excelled in. Warner Bros. invented the gangster genre, and I felt a thrill when their name came first on the screen during The Many Saints of Newark. WB’s Key Largo is a prestige film. It’s got John Huston directing, he’d go on to make amazing mob movies, culminating with his magnificent Prizzi’s Honor. Key Largo boasts an A-list offering with top stars like Lauren Bacall, Claire Trevor, and Lionel Barrymore. And it’s a pairing of two legends who take their performances seriously, and believe in the art of acting: Bogart and Robinson.

But Bogart and Robinson made four B-movie gangster classics before they made the prestigious Key Largo: Bullets or Ballots, Kid Galahad, Brother Orchid, and The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, which was so badly scripted that the two leads took to calling it “The Amazing Dr. Clitoris.” I’ve seen it eight times. Are there holes in the story? Of course. And they don’t get any better after the third viewing. What does get better is watching the performances of two professional actors in films they are on record as saying they did not like. Twice, as it turns out, because it was revived as a radio play a few years later, according to the book Bogart, by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax.

Robinson played a psychiatrist, studying Bogart’s gangster, and the two characters bond while keeping a wary distance. This is very similar to the dynamic between Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) on The Sopranos. She even worried the mob boss was using their therapeutic sessions in the furtherance of crime, something Bogart’s character did in the B-movie gangster film, King of the Underworld, which is awful and I never miss. I love that movie, not in spite of Bogie’s misunderstanding of the meaning of “the moronic type,” but because of it. He doesn’t do that in other movies, even in the masterful B-movie gangster comedies, It All Came True and All Through the Night.

But Bogart also made Dead End (1937), a quality piece, which happens to be my favorite film, ever. Based on the play by Sidney Kingsley, it spends a lot of its time in the same way The Many Saints of Newark does: teaching the young generation how to be gangsters. This is seen even more blatantly in the film Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), which paired James Cagney with the Dead End Kids. But threads of this even reach the juvenile delinquent movie Blackboard Jungle, also not a big-budget film, but realistic enough to show the teenagers were actually moving swag for bigger names.

It happens in real life, the mob looks to street gangs for promising young movers. Future dons make their bones wearing colors. Gangster films capture this. From Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) in Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City to Spike Lee’s Clockers, original gangstas groom carbon copies. Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) sees potential in young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) during The Many Saints of Newark. Great potential.

When Tony and his young gang hijack the Mr. Softee truck and give out ice cream to kids for free, it feels like The Sopranos creator and The Many Saints of Newark co-screenwriter, David Chase, was chasing the feel of the East Side Kids. Old Bowery Boys movies were aired weekly in the New York/New Jersey area when Tony was growing up, and all those movies were made by the icon of B-Movie studios, Monogram Pictures.

Monogram Pictures sat on Hollywood’s “poverty row,” and churned out pictures as fast as Detroit made cars. The Bowery Boys comedy troupe made almost a picture a month alone. But just like the Warner Brothers assembly line occasionally manufactured transcendent art, some of the cheapies are magnificently crafted. Sopranos fans should watch Angels in Disguise, one of the lesser-known gangster comedies, directed by Jean Yarbrough in 1949. It is, if not the first, one of the first mock-documentaries, and it is a good bet David Chase saw it, more than once. Leo Gorcey is even more of a master of the malaprop than Carmine Lupertazzi Jr. (Ray Abruzzo) on The Sopranos.

Monogram Pictures also caught the attention of French directors François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who structured films based on their model, according to the book The Films of Jean-Luc Godard by Wheeler W. Dixon. It is no wonder, the studio’s almost-no-budget 1947 quickie Dillinger turned RKO contract player Lawrence Tierney into an icon of film noir. The Fall Guy, from the same year, dared to coke up the star Leonard Penn, and we’re not talking soda pop.

Also in 1947, 20th Century Fox’s low budget Kiss of Death introduced the screen audiences to the sadistic Tommy Udo. The role earned Richard Widmark an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and the admiration of “Crazy” Joe Gallo, whose insurrection against the Five Families of New York crime was the basis for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

Low budget studio production paved the way for the independent film movement in America, which The Many Saints of Newark proudly emulates. Director Alan Taylor recently admitted to Den of Geek that he’s “drunk deep at the well of Scorsese,” and we can see Mean Streets all over the Sopranos prequel. Also in evidence is Barry Shear’s Across 110th Street (1972), which pitted the Italian mob against Black gangsters; John Cassavetes’s 1976 indie classic, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie; The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), directed by Stuart Rosenberg; and Abel Ferraro’s King of New York (1990).

The Many Saints of Newark is also too closely related to Wim Wenders’ 1977 gangster film, The American Friend, which cut corners on plot points as much as it did on budget. Logic is replaced by street smarts, and continuity is a game of three card monte in B-movie gangster films. The Many Saints of Newark is not exempt. There is a scene where one mobster’s mistress is sleeping with the rival for his turf. Except for one rude stare, the audience doesn’t see it coming. But how it turns out, with the convenient surf and turf to cover the evidence, is telegraphed from a mile away.

Movies

Once Upon a Time in America Is Every Bit as Great a Gangster Movie as The Godfather

By Tony Sokol

Culture

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Real-Life and Pop Culture

By Tony Sokol

Arthur Penn’s genre-redefining Bonnie and Clyde came out in 1967, the same year as The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Roger Corman spared every expense for his B-movie mobsterpiece. There are scenes where it is visibly apparent that a fleet of vintage background cars are just the same few automobiles driven in circles around the set. I’ve seen both movies multiple times, and enjoy them equally each time.

Just because The Many Saints of Newark isn’t a perfect film does not make it less of a classic. It certainly doesn’t make it less appealing for repeated viewings. The film follows a grand tradition of gangster filmmaking: street legal over mainstream currency, it could have fallen off the back of a truck. I would love to see whatever scenes were cut to make it fit into a two-hour viewing, because the film felt rushed. But I will watch it again.

The Many Saints of Newark premieres in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, Oct. 1.

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The post The Many Saints of Newark Is a Trashy Gangster B-Movie, There’s Nothing Wrong with That appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3itcyz8

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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skippyv20 · 4 years

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Dear Skippy, I thought with PG away it might be nice to send a riddle interpretation, I’m very rusty on these with life seeming to get in the way of being able to contribute recently, please pardon any major mistakes! Thank you very much MM Anon and Skippy for the fun :)

NOTFLIX…………… MEGASTEAL……… So apparently The Duke (hehehe, sure whatever you say…) and Duchess of Sussex have founded a yet-to-be-named production company and signed a multiyear deal with Netflix, which will pay them to make documentaries, docu-series, feature films, scripted shows and children’s programming. In my humble opinion, the only children programming MM is capable of is replacing the batteries in Archie Darren Doll. … Anyway…. as many have pointed out today there are a huge number of connections between Netflix and what I’ll politely say is the shadier side to MMs past. According to a lot of headlines this is a “MEGAWATT deal”. I could compose better play-on-words headlines than this as a pre-teen, ridiculous… I like MM Anons ones… this deal is shady, who knows if it is real, it is the usual steal-the-limelight, Meghan driven, probably not going to happen rubbish that if it does happen will likely be as successful as her elephant documentary voiceover (pre-release headlines went along the lines of shrieking MM SIGNS EXCLUSIVE DISNEY DEAL), my recollection tells me it flopped and she talked about elephants passing wind.

a bereaved silence ……… In an announcement issued three days before the 23rd anniversary of Diana’s death, Harry and William revealed that a statue of their mother will be installed in the garden of Kensington Palace next year on what would’ve been her 60th birthday. Now we are quite clued up about looking for what we don’t see, PR tells us what to see (believe), it is what we don’t see that can be more truthful. PW has not commented beyond this statement with his brother. We are led to believe through PR that PH and MM planted some forget-me-nots at a kids school in memory of his mother… on the anniversary of her death. Now tell me in all honesty, on such a day, not PDs birthday but on or near the anniversary of her DEATH (sorry to be blunt here) would a son really do a publicised appearance, in a country his mother had little to do with, with no supporting commentary beyond what is published in the tabloids (which he apparently hates!). Just No. I am more than confident saying that both PW and PH have marked the occasion with public silence and going through the motions of bereavement, despite MMs PR suggesting otherwise.

a rose-en opportunity …………… Elton John adapted his song ‘Candle in the Wind’ to perform at Princess Dianas funeral to be ‘Goodbye Englands Rose’. The clue is backwards rosen-en compared to en-rosen (Englands Rose). So I take this that the opportunity has been missed or sent someone backwards. That someone would be MM with her usual misfiring antics. Looking at the past clue about forget me nots.. I have taken this from a post on Skippy page reblogged etc but from @mybuntyworld thank you! ‘Forget-me-nots’ were NOT Princess DIana’s favourite flowers - and MEGAIN should certainly know that: WHITE ROSES were Diana’s favourites.

From Reuters: “ White roses - the favourite flowers of Prince Harry’s late mother Diana - arched over the organ loft and West Door of St George’s chapel, where he will marry American actress Meghan Markle on Saturday.”

Another anon pointed out that MM even got that wrong and she had pink, not white, roses at her wedding. What a missed opportunity… Could have nailed the Diana 2.0 image at the wedding, failed…. Could have nailed the Diana 2.0 caring, humanitarian image on the anniversary of her death by planting roses… fail (I’m sorry again to be blunt it just grates on me that she has tried to grift off the pain that others feel over PDs death, no-one more so than her ‘husbands’ pain, it is sick)

“were gonna need a bigger bubble” ………… I think this relates to the the covid-19 ‘bubble’ that is at Balmoral as many of the royal family are joining HMTQ during the squall summer break. We know that the Cambridge family are there, perhaps the bigger bubble is accomodate PH :)

“ it’s school Jim , but not as we know it”………… Across the world, schools are re-opening in one shape or form to accomodate learning during the covid pandemic. There are so many different approaches which take into account online learning, staggered on site times, masks, social distancing etc one thing is for sure, it is school and learning but not as we traditionally know it. This is one of MM Anons favourite Star Trek references XXX but not as we know it! This may also talk to Prince George and Princess Charlotte as we have had clues about their learning in the past, whether (PG in particular) go to boarding school etc. The Cambridge children like all children will be learning in an environment they are not used to.

NOVICHOC…………RULE BRITANNIA RULES@……………… The German government announced on Wednesday that it had confirmed that the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalnyi was poisoned with a substance belonging to the novicok neurotoxins.The novitch, apparently used in Navalny’s poisoning, was developed in the Soviet Union as a weapon of mass destruction.

The BBC has reversed its decision not to have Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory sung at The Last Night of the Proms. The U-turn follows fierce criticism sparked by reports that the lyrics were being dropped due to associations with colonialism and slavery.

In regards to both the clues above, take from the media headlines what you will… I think it points to the huge upset and unrest that we are seeing globally with various power and political agendas at play. For what it is worth, my personal thoughts are, be interested and informed but take time off the news - this is good for you, remain open minded, place trust in your instincts, be kind and be grateful for all the awesome stuff that plops into your life each day.

go fly a kite😱😱……………… Don’t just fly a kite, be David Blane and channel the movie Up! The illusionist floated over the Arizona desert on Wednesday by holding onto about 50 helium balloons. He ended up floating to 24,900 feet – or about 4.7 miles – before skydiving and parachuting back to the ground. Cool!

cheap steroids ……………… Pooled data from covid-19 studies and more than 1700 patients from around the world, found fewer patients died and less needed intensive care support when they received steroids (a less expensive alternative) compared with usual treatment. At a time when drug supply may become a serious issue this is welcome news to continue improving outcomes of people with covid-19.

Winter Blunderland I’d like to think that this relates to MM continuing to (or being stopped from!) making more blundering mistakes as we head towards winter. On the other hand, this is a given for as long as the MM charade goes on so will take this as a covid-19 clue. As an illness which presents very much like a cold or flu (with serious consequences) many people in the northern hemisphere will feel uncertain about with the upcoming winter cold and flu season. I think more pressure will go on governments to ‘fix their blunders’, learn from how they have handled this pandemic in the past to make the best health and economic decisions approaching winter. Regardless of where you are and what challenges you are facing, can I please share a few words we say here that I mean very sincerely for Skippy and this community…. kia kaha my whanau with arohanui

That is wonderful! Thank you! Oh this was so entertaining.....thank you so much! Great job!😊❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

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yourdailykitsch · 3 years

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Taylor Kitsch, an actor known for his roles in such Hollywood productions as "Battleship: Battle for Earth" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", is starring in the new Canal + series "Defeated". In an interview, the actor reveals what he remembers from history lessons, what connects the series' story with the modern world. He also explains why, according to him, every person should visit the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Taylor Kitsch started his adventure in Hollywood as a "hottie" - an actor associated with a great body and beautiful face. All because the first role that brought the popularity of the former model Abercrombie and Fitch was the character of naughty lover Tim Riggins in the cult series "Friday Night Lights".

Kitsch did not avoid tough moments in his career - for example, when the $ 250 million John Carter, his first such big role, suffered a disgusting box office failure. But the Canadian knew this taste already - after coming to the USA, he was homeless for some time before finding a job.

For years, he has been successfully playing in big titles and alongside big names. Oliver Stone ("Savages"), Ryan Murphy ("Heart Reflex"), roles alongside Chadwick Boseman ("21 Bridges"), Michael Shannon ("Waco"), Michael Keaton ("American Assassin") and Rihanna ("Battlefield ), the HBO series "Detective," starring Vince Vaughn and Rachel McAdams. Meanwhile, Kitsch finds his way to charity, especially for children.

From 1 January 2021, we will watch him in "Defeated" . There he plays the role of Brooklyn policeman Max McLoughlin, who in the summer of 1946 is sent to Berlin, which is divided into four spheres of influence. Its task is to support the emerging police structures in the rubble. But upholding order in a space of brutality and lawlessness and clashing political forces - French, American, British and Soviet - will not be easy. Especially since Max does not know that he is used as a pawn in the game to open the Cold War, and somewhere in the maze of Berlin rubble lurks his brother Moritz, a self-proclaimed Nazi hunter who will stop at nothing ...

In addition to Kitsch, the main roles will be: Nina Hoss (local policewoman Elsie Garten), Sebastian Koch (criminal known as Engelmacher, Al Capone of post-war Berlin), Logan Marshall-Green (Max's missing brother, Moritz) and Michael C. Hall (consul Tom Franklin ).

The "Defeated" takes place in Berlin, right after the war. When you decided to play Max McLoughlin, did you have any knowledge of what the situation in Germany was like then?

The seres begins six months after the end of the war. I have the impression that this is a moment that is missing in the educational process - we learn a lot about the war itself, but about what happened immediately after it, for example, I had no idea. The plot of "Defeated" is made up, but our director Måns Mårlind (co-creator of the hit series "Bridge over the Sund") constructed it on the basis of many true stories. I have the impression that fact and fiction are perfectly balanced here. In the process of preparation, he gave us many documentaries and articles that helped to build an idea about the climate of the city from 1946. Discovering the next details of the story was fascinating for me.

Your work gives him a chance to get to know the world, its history, extraordinary places and people. Do you appreciate it?

This is the best part of my job! With each new production, I have a chance to immerse myself in its world and get to know it thoroughly. It could be a war movie like "Survivor", a story about a cult leader ("Waco"), the world of a detective ("Detective") or the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, as in "Heart Reflex". When I was an aspiring actor learning to act in New York, I never imagined that I would be able to live and work like this. Train with Navy Seals or meet Larry Kramer [American playwright, writer and activist for LGBT rights - ed.]. I am very lucky!

Prague, where you shot "Defeated", is a cult city for many Polish filmmakers, due to the famous FAMU school, but also a popular, atmospheric excursion destination. How was your time there?

Lovely. He will refer again to the privilege of working like this: six months in such a wonderful place, it is almost immoral! The only downside was the tight schedule so I didn't discover all the nooks and crannies that I had on the agenda. Fortunately, my driver, a guy in his fifties, was a great-grandfather from Prague, very talkative, and from him I learned the most interesting things - stories about the adventures of my ancestors and friends! Besides, in Prague, if you want to take a history lesson, you go out twenty meters in front of the front door - and it's already getting started. We shot in the summer, before Covid. We had an international team - Czechs, Swedes, Russians, Germans, French ... In use - not only behind the scenes, but also on the set - several languages simultaneously. Really, the only problem for me was my diet. Flour, red meat, stews ... I don't really like to eat like that. At least the beer was delicious, really amazing! In general, I really liked the culture of drinking and eating outside, these gardens, the community ... wonderful thing.

Due to the fact that the film was made in Europe, you had the opportunity to see places related to the war with your own eyes. What made the greatest impression on you? I was lucky, although it is not quite an adequate term that during the shooting we managed to visit the site of the former Auschwitz camp. Of course I knew, I had read about concentration camps before, but this direct contact with the site was invaluable, it gave me a clear idea of what happened. It is difficult for a man to believe what he sees around him. He's standing right next to him, yet he doesn't quite believe it. The space made a huge impression on me. I did not realize how huge Birkenau was, how perfectly organized the entire extermination was. This architecture, the surrounding houses, barracks. Someone designed it, thought over the function down to the smallest detail, and during my visit, I had the chance to trace how and where the whole process took place, step by step. I was standing there and it felt like I was choking, my whole body ached. Such experiences helped me a lot to bring my character to life. Max did not survive the camp himself, but he appears in a place marked by this tragedy, the tragedy of World War II, it affects him. I wish everyone could visit this place because it is a life changing experience.

Movies set in the past can be a perfect mirror for what is here and now. What analogies do you see between that reality and today's world? - Division, the dictate of fear, fear of the unknown, of otherness. Different ways to work through your trauma. These are all threads that connect the "Defeated" space with our reality. For my character, especially the experience of trauma resulting from family history, from the relationship with my brother, becomes the key. They both underwent a similar shock, but their reactions were completely different. I found it very interesting. Max is still hoping for a change, Moritz, as the saying goes, "the platform is gone". They have a completely different perception of one and the same event. Again, it is also a very contemporary thread - one event, situation, and extreme different opinions about it.

Your hero comes from Brooklyn, after you came from Canada, you spent a lot of time in New York. What is so special about the atmosphere of this city that gives it such a "mythical" status? For me, it has always been, I fully agree! Scorsese's "Streets of Poverty" has always been such a cinematic quintessence of New York, with its excellent Keitel and DeNiro. This film is set in the 1940s, which is the present day of Max. He was my point of reference in terms of the accent. Those years were difficult, the inhabitants struggled to make ends meet, and that also had to affect my character's character. Besides, New York has a chic character, New Yorkers feel proud of their roots. It's also something that Max defines.

And you had to transfer this New York feeling to Berlin ... ... to the razed Berlin, which for Max becomes, in a way, another space of trauma, personal again, but this time much more intense.

For this role, you had to master not only a Brooklyn accent, but also the German language. It was difficult?

I had an amazing accent teacher from Berlin, Simone. My rock! Fortunately, Max is an American who speaks German poorly and not a German, because if I had to play a German, I would have had a nervous breakdown! German is a damn hard language, especially for someone who wasn't exposed to such sounds when growing up. I learned everything phonetically. Sometimes I was "suspended" during the scene and then I was saved by Nina [Hoss, a great German acting and screen partner of Kitsch - ed.]. In my career, I have had to play with a South African, Texas, New York accent ... I've learned that there is no such thing as an optimal effect, someone is always dissatisfied. I focus on the vision agreed with the creators and I stick to it. Language is an amazing link between the actor and the protagonist, gives a unique insight into his state of mind and view of the world. I definitely prefer to play the character with an accent than to speak as usual. It's a great transformation tool. The arrangement of the lips, the appearance of the face, and the term are changing. In "Waco" my character, the guru of the sect David Koresh, had an unnaturally high, soft voice, which immediately made the viewer feel differently.

We associate you with American hits, but you are, like Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling, Canadian. Do you feel like an American, or is Canada a state of mind after all?

I started my adventure with the USA when I was 20, I came to school. Now I'm forty, so I've spent half my life here. Madness! Over time, I have grown into this space, I have settled down and I feel at home. I'm talking to you from my home in Austin, Texas. But at the same time, I'll always be Canadian. I go there often, visiting my family and familiar places. Maybe I'll go back one day, who knows?

You've had moments in your career that turned from a promise of triumph to failure, such as the high-budget John Carter, who failed at the box office. Do you have something that you already know: "I'm avoiding this"? I don't have things that, as a rule, I don't do or know that I will never do. But there are some that I don't like. These include radical weight changes. My dear friend must have gained twenty-five kilos for a small, independent film. The first week was great because you eat what you want, then depression started, joint problems, sugar jumping ... I never put my back, but I lost weight. I lost a dozen kilos for the role in "Waco", before that for the "Bang Bang Club". It's fucking hard and very exhausting, especially the older I get. My body and head hate it! Also, until Scorsese calls with some great proposal, I say: enough.

#taylor kitsch #Shadowplay #interview

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palmtreepalmtree · 4 years

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Alright, friends and enemies. I’m back with the most recent edition of The Worst Movie on Netflix Right Now™.

Tonight, we’re gonna talk about a little movie called Roped.

I’d love to say that you can learn everything you need to know about this movie from its one-sheet, but naw. I mean, you look up you see a cowboy and a cowgirl kissin’ in the rain. Nothing like a little ranching love, right?

Yeah, no. The premise of this movie is that a rodeo rolls into a small Northern California town where it immediately faces opposition from the animal-rights progressives who don’t want that kind of cruelty-for-entertainment in their town.

The main characters are young rodeo rider Colton, played by legitimate hottie Josh Swickard, and pre-frosh at UC Santa Cruz Tracy, played by....

...Lauren Swickard? Yeah. Looks like the two stars of this little film got married last year. She was originally credited on the production as ‘Lorynn York’, but she’s making a change. And you know, what? Good on you, Lauren. You’re a good looking couple and I wish you both many happy returns.

And now I’m going to insult your very fine work in this here production of Roped.

So Tracy wants to be a lawyer and is entering a 6-year program at UC Santa Cruz to get her law degree fast (Is this even a thing? Never heard of it). But in her last summer in her small hometown (somewhere in Sonoma, I believe), the rodeo has come into town. Only thing is her town councilman dad (played by Casper Van Dien, helllllloooo daddy), is a passionate vegetarian and thinks the rodeo should leave.

That’s it. That’s the conflict. It’s a cheap-ass reverse version of Footloose, where the preacher’s councilman’s daughter just wants to go to the rodeo and eat a damn cheeseburger but her father won’t let her because of his values.

I gotta tell you folks, the biggest problem with this movie is that it’s fucking boring. There is no meaningful conflict here. Yeah, her dad gets mad when he catches her doing various shocking things like sneaking in a half hour past her 12:30 curfew. But Tracy and Colton are both adults and there is nothing stopping them from having a summer fling.

A summer fling that involves nothing more than consensual kissing---but only once Tracy has ended things with her asshole high school boyfriend. He’s careful to make sure not to kiss her before then. Because that would be morally wrong. “Love is worth the risk”? What fucking risk? Everything in this movie is set up to be so perfectly honorable and polite that there’s nothing interesting going on. The stakes are so low, I started to wonder if this was a movie or just a Ken Burns’ documentary about America’s heartland.

But then I remembered. Oh yeah. If this was a documentary, there would be a hell of a lot more Jesus in this movie.

And that’s the thing that just really sucks about Roped. It’s bullshit. It presents a world in which the animal-loving townspeople are so closed-minded they can’t see the beauty and value of the rodeo. They’ve lost touch with the history of the rodeo. And they don’t know rodeo people, because if they did, they would understand how well rodeo people value the animals and how well treated and cared for the animals are.

Now look, I don’t know shit about animal treatment and the rodeo. I’m not wading into that business here. But I have been to two rodeos in the last ten years, including a fairly recent one in Yuma, Arizona. And if there is one thing this movie gets plain wrong is that no one at this fictional rodeo ever talks about Jesus. And that matters.

Consider how a Christian movie review site describes the themes in Roped:

“ROPED has a strong moral worldview where the rodeo cowboys overcome the Romantic, politically correct, progressive, environmentalist worldview of the townspeople led by Tracy’s vegetarian father. The cowboys show the closed-minded progressives how the cowboys actually take care of and love the rodeo animals. The movie also extols family and thankfulness.”

And you know what? That’s an accurate description of the film.

But if the politically correct progressives are the closed-minded ones, does that mean the rodeo cowboys are open and accepting of all peoples? Is that what we’re supposed to take away here?

If so, that’s a fucking fantasy. And a delusional one at best.

I mentioned having been to a rodeo recently, because the one I attended opened with the emcee announcing to the crowd that there are people in this country who want to take away religious freedom and take away their right to worship god, but there at the rodeo, they would never stop worshiping our lord and savior Jesus Christ, and god bless the rodeo and god bless the United States of America. The crowd uproariously applauded.

Now I have no problem with opening an event with an invocation or prayer. It can be a meaningful and thoughtful moment. It can invite all people into a moment of welcoming and thoughtfulness. But it’s quite another to begin an event with a declaration that your right to worship Jesus is under attack, and to equate loving god with being a patriot. As an atheist and a Jewish person who does not accept Jesus into my heart, I felt so uncomfortable, I felt like I should leave.

And that’s the problem with so many of these small town fantasy movies. They present these smalls towns as loving and caring communities. People who look out for each other in a way that people don’t do in the big city. People connected by bonds to the land and this small town life. And sometimes they mention God.

But they don’t talk about Jesus. Not the way real people in the United States talk about Jesus. So often, real people in these small towns talk about Jesus in a way that excludes all others from that warm circle of welcoming that they feel so proud of.

This is not everyone. It’s not. I don’t want anyone to walk away from this post thinking that I dislike Christians. I do not. I actually think there can be something valuable in any religion and especially in the communities built around them. But those communities have to be open to all and they have to be respectful of those who are different.

And for this movie to thematically accuse its progressives of being closed-minded without fully and accurately representing the way that rodeo culture can also be closed-minded makes this film doubly reprehensible. Not only is it boring and bad, its moral superiority is unearned bullshit. And for that, it is The Worst Movie on Netflix Right Now™.

But hey, at least Christian film reviewers and profane atheist film reviewers can agree on some things:

That said, ROPED is a lackluster romantic drama that doesn’t evoke any emotion in the audience other than making viewers want to watch something else.

Giiiiiiiiiiiirl, same.

#the worst movie on netflix right now #ptpt reviews #moral superiority is fucking useless

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oldtypenewtype · 4 years

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7 years ago I had this article professionally translated. 1986 is considered to be one of if not THE defining years of the medium. In this article Newtype intervies 21 anime industry leaders to discuss what’s wrong with the industry, ways it can be fixed or just their gripes with with it all. A true snapshot of some of our anime heroes while they were younger.

*reposting article altogether in one post.*

アニメの予言者21人

21 Prophets of Anime アニメ大予言'86 Grand prophecy of Anime ‘86 今、アニメ界に求められているのは、こんな企画だ！私はこんな企画を出す！1986年のアニメ界をリードする21人が業界の問題点と自らの解決策を語る。これを読めばアニメの未来が見える。 This is the project needed by Anime world now! I propose this project! 21 leading personnel in Anime world in 1986 talk about problems in the industry and their solutions. You can see the future of Anime by reading this.

Page 46 & 47

(Article Title)

1985 was a flat year in the animation world. Let’s ask the hit makers who hit the home runs on how to put an end to this situation.

HAYAO MIYAZAKI (writer and director of “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”)

(Blurb)

What are the animated works that the young ones, the ten year olds to fifteen year olds want to watch? Doors will surely open if you keep them in mind.

It’s unthinkable that new hope can come out of TV when one episode from a TV series needs 3500 cells to be drawn. On the other hand, in movie theaters as well, there are no films that will mobilize moviegoers other than anime fans. I think that filmmakers have forgotten the basics of selling movies. Collaboration films intended for overseas markets are all the rage, and even though I want the fans who are in Japan to see these films, they can’t and all I’m left with is frustration. Only deterioration can come out of this situation. Actually, there isn’t even one anime today that is aimed at older kids in elementary school to kids in middle-school - the very kids who should be watching anime. (The anime available now) is aimed at younger kids at elementary school and then jumps straight into anime for college kid anime maniacs. It’s a tough time for fifteen year olds who are put aside by society. Twelve year olds to fifteen year olds are the kids who need the most comfort and yet the situation now is that they get their comfort from handheld video games. Those who produce animation are losing sight of their targeted audience. The remaining anime fans are making anime that they want to watch, and this is a symptom (of the present situation) that is beyond redemption. This is why video animation is still backward in terms of its production, and only its format is new.

If one has an earnest approach, children will definitely react. This is a real example - in a run-down middle school, in his morning greeting, a new principal said, “I don’t determine a person’s value by his or her grades or appearance”. Miraculously, all misbehavior was gone from that day’s afternoon onwards. What children want has always had just one theme - an adventure that saves the mind and heart.

(Caption for illustration at the top of the page)

The hero “Pazu” and heroine “Sheeta” from “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”. Mr. Miyasaki comments that “For a young lad, living at all times in itself is an adventure. The reason why Japanese adventure novels are boring is that the hero (in these novels) makes a living out of going on an adventure.”

SUGII GISABURO (executive director of “Touch”)

(Blurb)

What people want nowadays can’t be found in data. What is the secret of the hits “Night on the Galactic Railroad” and “Touch”?

Honestly speaking, if anything, I genuinely make animation to match my desires, not thinking that today’s animation is trending towards this way, or future animation should be this way. In other words, I think a great deal about my daily life, figuring out what is lacking and coming up with desires felt by everyone else. I just happen to be a person who creates, so I vent out those accumulated desires and discontent and let them combust in my work.

My works are quite heavy in terms of cycle and tempo, whether it be “Night on the Galactic Railroad” or “Touch”. I sometimes think if this kind of heaviness is ok or not. But that is because I have a desire for this heaviness, and also because I have this easy pleasure within me. Instead of work that is borne out of being hung up just on data, I think work that is borne out of my inner natural desires is more acceptable to people. In the meantime, “Touch” will be shown as an hour and a half movie in the spring so please look forward it.

ISAO TAKAHATA (producer of “Laputa”)

(Blurb)

Movies that make the mind and body come alive are what’s important. As for me, I am trying my hand at my first live action film. I am shooting a documentary.

I think nowadays, the thing that a lot of people working in anime has forgotten is the excitement they felt watching adventure movies when they were kids, the kind of excitement that even your body moved spontaneously. In that sense, I think that works such as Hayao Miyazaki’s films should be brought out to the rest of the world and after (producing his) “Nausicaa”, I am still producing. When kids’ minds are liberated, there’s no reason to think that they won’t spontaneously move. In this day and age dominated by computer games, a lot of kids’ play involve just using the brain and nerves so I’d like them to experience things that energizes the blood and makes the body dance. The difficulty is, I think it’s a difficult time now to have a situation in place wherein you let them experience adventure. If you can’t make people believe in the world portrayed onscreen, you can’t pull viewers into the adventure onscreen.

It’s not that I’m not doing my real job as a producer. I am now producing a live action documentary movie set in Yanagawa in Kyushu. It is about how our Japanese ancestors developed towns which utilized waterways. There is also a part in the movie that has graphic illustrations using anime. It’s less than 2 hours and is slated to be shown after the summer.

MAMORU OSHII (scriptwriter and director of “Angel’s Egg”)

(Blurb)

This is a warning!! Please reduce the number of collaboration animes before Japanese animation is annihilated.

If I’m going to be severe about it, I’d say that I want all collaboration animes gone.

Those who work in big studios and places with systems in place may not feel a sense of crisis yet. But in the case of freelance animators like us who work together and put together a workplace and disperse once our anime is done, a part of our actual work is outsourced. Recently however, the small video studios and finishing studios that we outsource to are loaded with collaboration work. Japanese animes can’t compete with collaboration animes in terms of profit so when that happens, we just have to rely on the goodwill of the studio bosses, or make them feel the same way we do with regards to the contents of our work, or by chance see an opening and aim for that, or appease them or plead with them. We can’t work in just that kind of a situation. That’s why it’s almost impossible to make highly compact and solid animes in Japan now. Even without going that far, it’s almost impossible to make even decent animes in the country today. In fact, anime TV series are almost all in shambles, and I can’t even be optimistic about the video quality of the anime we have now. In this kind of situation, I can’t help but seriously think if next year, our ideas can be made into anime.

(Caption for illustration at the left side of the page)

A girl from Mamoru Oshii’s original video anime “Angel’s Egg” (drawn by Seikou Nakura). Mr. Oshii revealed that he is having a hard time because there aren’t enough animators to make even just one anime video.

YOSHIKAZU YASUHIKO (director and screen director of “Arion”)

(Blurb)

I haven’t decided yet on what I will make after “Arion”. I will not take part in the new Gundam series.

I am very busy now with screen work for the anime “Arion” which will be shown in theaters on March 8th. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m conscious of the fact that this is my anime for 1985. Therefore, I haven’t decided yet on what my anime will be for 1986. I feel like I want to take a break for a year.

“Arion” is quite restrained for an anime to be shown in movie theaters. I’m happy that this movie is being touted as “the” main animation movie this spring but conversely, it’s a shame that there aren’t a lot of big anime movies for theaters. It’s already been decided that “Arion” is going to be shown in top-class movie theaters throughout Japan. It just shows how much anime has received recognition. I’d like to wait for animes that will pick up on this trend.

With regards to anime TV series, I was in charge of character design for “Z Gundam” this past year but I’ve decided not to be involved at all in the sequel’s new series. I think it’s better to relegate “Gundam” to the younger animators, starting with Hiroyuki Kitazume, who have grown so much in their craft. Now I sincerely think, if only someone as good as Kitazume were around eight years ago to help with “Gundam”, I would’ve been saved…

(Caption for illustration at the bottom of the page)

The heroine “Lesfina” from “Arion”, which was produced, character designed and screen directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. This is the drawing touched-up by Mr. Yasuhiko. As we have discussed in a series of character designers in last month’s issue, he breathes life into his anime characters, showing genius capabilities.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch it!

MASAMI YUUKI (manga artist)

As a rule, the three things I’d like to see are: “something that isn’t originally from manga”; “robot animation that isn’t dark”; and “in one year, a collaborative anime by Osamu Dezaki and Akio Sugino for release in Japan”. I can watch TV anime while casually lying around but I’d like anime that I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off of the screen, something that is both easy to watch and amusing. And as written in other magazines before, I’d like to see Mr. Hayao Miyazaki’s version of “Atragon”! (Translator’s note: “Undersea Warship” in Japan)

YUUKI KUDOU (actress and singer)

I’d definitely watch anime that’s fun to watch, anime that will make me happy. At any rate, I’d like a hero on the side of justice who will beat the hell out of the bad guys and put them in a bind.

RYOKO YAMAGISHI (manga artist)

If there were an anime like Disney’s “Fantasia”, I’d watch it!

Pages 48 & 49

(Article Title)

Major producers from each of the anime/production companies talk about their hits for 1986 and foresee what their companies will be producing

KENJI YOKOYAMA (Toei Animation Co.)

(Blurb)

The new hit TV show Gegege no Kitaro from the fall of 1985 which received top ratings reflects modern times.

This is what I’ve been thinking with the third conversion of Gegege no Kitaro into animation. One is the change in children’s thinking with regards to ghosts/monsters. Of course “Ghostbusters” and “E.T.” have influenced this change, and now kids consider ghosts almost as pets. So in this way I think that if you match the present mood and go in the direction of lighter anime, you’ll be able to create different things from before. Children’s lives are too managed now, so they’d want an outlet to vent too. And in a society that has too many things and where, if you have the money, you can buy anything, things like the Toyoda Company fraud scandal and shady investment journals can also be construed as monstrosities. This anime has this overall theme: In the ideal world of Kitaro, monsters, people, animals, grass and trees should all co-exist so I thought I’d have various new approaches within the anime.

As a new endeavor, our company is going into video anime. It’s called “Amon Saga” and we’re not just going to sell it in video format, (I’m also hoping) we can show it in any movie theater even for just one week otherwise it’ll just be too sad. Especially with regards to original works with names that aren’t well known, I think it’s dangerous to rely on just one production studio. After “Konpora Kid” ends, beginning February, we’re planning on animating “Kinka”, a serialized manga in the weekly magazine Shonen Jump.

(Caption for illustration on the left side of the page)

A figure from the very popular “Kitaro”. They can’t keep up with the demand for a ghost eraser that they’ve produced and now it is a hit product. It’s also been decided that there will be new movie releases for this anime in the New Year and in the spring.

EIJI YAMAURA (Nihon Sunrise Co.)

(Blurb)

Find common ground with your viewers and defeat this lethargic mood!

Sunrise has now expanded into six studios and at any given point in time, we plan to work simultaneously on two to three anime TV series, video anime, anime for movie theaters and collaboration anime. Overall, anime today is manga magazine-driven, so our question is how far can we go in staying on an original anime track. Robot animes have vastly decreased in number, so conversely, I think this is a chance for us to come out with epoch-making anime. I’d like to make anime that will allow us to seriously converse with our child viewers.

TOSHIMITSU SUZUKI (Artmic Co.)

(Blurb)

Making anime that will be understood by the whole world! The robot anime boom is shifting from transformation-type robots to robots that merge into one.

Speaking of Japanese products in the international market today, mechanical products come to mind. This is also true in the animation world since Japanese robot animes are extremely in vogue. Especially in the American market, they already have transformation-type robot animes, so animes that have robots that merge into one are new to them. We’ve already exported “Beast King GoLion”, following that, (we’re going to export) “Dancouga Super Beast Machine God”.

We at Artmic plan to make animation that can be exported to foreign markets and we also are also keeping in mind to configure these anime with universal values. The video anime “Gall Force” is the first step in that direction.

NOBUO INADA (Tokyo Movie Shinsha Co.)

(Blurb)

Our track remains the same - making collaboration animes for foreign countries but we also have new anime.

I can’t necessarily say that the present state of anime is good. But the passion for anime during the anime boom of “Gundam” and the like was an anomaly so I feel that the state of anime now is the real one.

As you may know, not only do we make anime for Japan but we also produce anime for foreign countries. It’s a difficult situation for us now to concentrate on anime just for Japan because of production costs. It can be said that Japanese anime should be improved from the very basic level.

In 1986, we plan to have “Little Nemo” and in the fall, an anime for movie theater release by the duo Desaki and Sugino. At any rate, we’re doing our best.

JUNZOU NAKAJIMA (Nihon Animation Co.)

(Blurb)

We’re aiming for improving the quality of our masterpieces and we’re also trying our hand at new anime!

As you may know, our company has mainly been making masterpiece animes for more than fifteen years but I think we’ve made a habit of making similar anime. But we’ve been able to improve on our animes’ degree of perfection precisely because of the buildup of our experience in animation. We’re also working hard on our technology, and on the authenticity of our masterpieces. At any rate, we’re trying to make anime that is still interesting to watch even after five or six years have passed. Next year, we plan on making “Pollyanna” after “A Little Princess Sara” ends, and a new SF series called “Space Sagittarius”. We’re also going to have one TV special around May.

HIROMICHI MOGAKI (Tsuchida Production Co.)

(Blurb)

Just like what we did in “Tsubasa” and “Kimengumi”, we’re adding our original flavor to animation adapted from manga!

Even with regards to animating manga, the time when you aren’t creative when adapting something is over - just like our approach to our anime “High School! Kimen”. In manga, the fun is enclosed in a comic cell. Differing from that, we were able to bring out fun that moves freely (in the anime format). (Our decision to) put two episodes in one anime has also been well-received. We are also planning to have an anime TV series next year but all will depend on how long “Captain Tsubasa” will last. Captain Tsubasa’s storyline is that the finals will end in March, and the European leg will begin. This will catch up with the manga version’s storyline so I’m thinking of making a new one or taking a temporary break.

MASAYASU SAGISU (Eiken Co., Ltd.)

(Blurb)

Please watch the cooking scenes in the manga “Oishinbo” animated in a live-action format.

The anime “Sazae-san” is going to be seventeen years old. I think that the things that last for a long time are not manga for boys or manga for girls but manga for adults such as “Sazae-san” that has a family theme. But there aren’t many of this kind of anime today.

There has been a lot of SF space anime but nowadays it’s quite possible for kids to go to space someday. But the world of “Sazae-san” where the grandma, the grandpa, the old maid and the troubles they encounter while living together is farther than space in today’s world of nuclear families. Conversely, this makes Sazae-san’s storyline fresh.

For next year’s anime, we are developing our plans to animate Mr. Shinji Wada’s manga “Pigmalio”. We’d also like to do SF action animes, and a totally new genre - animating Big Comic Spirit’s serialized manga “Oishinbo”. Following a ten-year cycle, monster animes might come out next year but we’d like to try out new genres.

HIROSHI KATO (Ashi Production Co.)

We are developing original videos for the anime “Dancouga”

Our company has concentrated mainly on original anime and we are continuing with this direction in 1986 and beyond. Even though our animes are popular, I don’t know why we are edited a lot. Even “Dancouga” which originally had fifty-two episodes was reduced to thirty-eight and the final story was changed. We are going to sell a one and a half hour video in March and we’d like to include the real final story in it. Seventy percent of animators in Japan today are working on collaboration anime. The pay (for collaboration anime) is more than double, so we have to do something about it.

TOSHIHIRO NAGAO (Kaname Production Co.)

I’d like to see different kinds of SF anime. “Windaria (Once Upon a Time)” is the first step in that direction.

Generally speaking, I’d like to go with polar opposites - simplistic anime that has funny gags and anime that explores heavy themes. I think our company would like to take a short break after “Windaria” ends and then we’re going to do a lighter anime. We’ve also talked little by little about producing an anime TV series, but can we really do it with the present situation? Companies we outsource to are doing a lot of collaboration anime and we don’t have the confidence that we will win the price war and if we dabble in (anime TV series) incorrectly, it will be a death blow. With this situation, it seems like we will be concentrating on video anime for now. With regards to the direction of our anime, we’d like to consider doing SF anime with our own touch and foray into different parts, for example, making modern anime like “Radio City Fantasy (Machikado no Marchen)” that merges footage and music.

(Caption for illustration on the left side)

“Mujigen Hunter Fandora”, one of the original video anime from Kaname Production Co..It is said that the second part will be released in March.

YUUJI NUNOKAWA (Studio Pierrot)

(Blurb)

“Magical Emi, the Magic Star” will end in February. We’re working on the anime that will follow this.

Ever since our “Dallos” anime, anime in the video anime genre have increased, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to foresee what’s ahead. But I feel our viewer base will return to children after the continuous increase in anime fans.

In our animes’ genres, it seems that we foray into unprincipled things but through trial and error, we are at that stage where we are aiming for our own style. In 1986, we plan to stop producing transformation-style anime after “Emi” and we are now working on an anime with a witch theme, with a nod to our very first anime. We have also decided that we will make a sequel to “Rumic World”.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch it!

MIKI TORI (manga artist)

And yet there are only a few animes wherein you can feel each anime’s distinct character. I understand that anime is a group effort, but like manga, the director’s tastes dominate. If the time comes when the writer can say “that is good but this is also good”, I think that anime will become more vibrant.

AKIO YOSHIDA (manga artist)

If I’m going to watch, I might change the channel if they’d revive anime like the long adventure animes of Toei. It would feel just like watching the movie “Mothra”.

YUKI SAITO (actress and singer)

I was in a manga research group when I was in high school so all I watched were anime from Sunrise. I like “Gundam” and “Ideon”. If there were anime in that vein, I think I’d be obsessed again.

Pages 50 & 51

(Title)

A Glance at the Anime World: The Hit men and their Predictions

SHOJI KAWAMORI

(Blurb)

It’s important to have interesting anime that will be universally accepted!

I haven’t really watched TV anime these past two years. Once you get rid of a habit, it’s not good. Once you distance yourself from anime, you won’t even be able tell which anime is good and which is bad. It’s scary to think that I’ve been watching anime by force of habit.

I also haven’t watched that many video animes to be fussy about it but I feel that video animes have become closer in form to manga. I can’t say though that it’s already at the serialized manga level, but it’s just a matter of time. But if you’re going to make video anime and you don’t make it differently from TV anime, it will be a waste. Probably change the design a bit…just like what Mr. Oshii is doing. Once your attempts go beyond the realm of attempting things and once you’ve achieved something basic, I think we’d probably be able to see the direction of video anime for the first time. If I were to create video anime, I’d like to make a short sixty minute one, something that is highly concentrated and can’t be fully “digested” in a TV anime format. Sixty minutes is too short for a movie and too long for TV, and I think it is a length that is untapped and put aside.

Compared to video, TV’s strong point is that you can make serialized anime on TV. Nicely put, TV is a medium wherein if you don’t have “ordinariness” (badly put, “mass appeal”) you won’t succeed so in this sense TV is a more demanding form of media than video. I also don’t like the trend wherein anime that don’t appeal to the masses are turned into video anime. I think that video anime should also have universal appeal.

For 1986, if there are proposals that come my way, I’ll do them. I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do.

TOMOKO KONPARU

(Blurb)

With regards to video anime, I have “The Super Girl” and I’d like to try my hand at a new kind of animal anime.

Anime is said to be on a low note right now but I think that the number of anime being produced now is just right because there was a time when the anime that was being produced went over the production capabilities of those in the anime world. I even think that the number should be reduced by just a little bit more, but only if the quality is improved. It seems that 30 animes will be released in 1986, but I think that in terms of quality, (those that aren’t good) will be culled.

I don’t have any children yet but as a housewife I don’t think that anime has a bad influence on children. Since I was little, I myself grew up watching anime. Even now, from the standpoint of someone making anime, I don’t want to forget about the children. But on the other hand, I also think that mothers who just park their kids in front of the TV to watch anime isn’t good either.

The anime following “Hai Step Jun” will be “Maple Town”, an animal anime but I don’t want it to be anime with just “good” characters in it. I want to try making anime for young girls, which will be a new thing for me.

ICHIRO ITANO

(Blurb)

There must be anime that only young animators can do!

I think that mass media has a very strong influence on children. I want people to be more conscious of that. I feel that anime that is being made today just to make money is overly increasing - animators don’t question things, or assert themselves. An extreme example is the Lolita complex boom of late. If a person is being shown something like (a Lolita anime) from way back (from childhood), that person’s imagination takes precedence instead of the ability to adapt to another human being, and stress builds up as a result. I think we should oppose this current reality, and as for myself, I plan to try different things. I wonder what I’d be able to do before I turn thirty-five, and I also think that you can learn from failure.

MITSURU KANEKO (MK Productions)

(Blurb)

The computer is absolutely infiltrating the anime world.

It’s possible to think that in the future, the possibilities of computer graphics will first be used in the industrial fields. For example, the depth maps of the Japan Coast Guard just have numbers on them now but if you input these numbers into a computer, you’ll be able to see valleys (under the sea) that continue for miles as video images. And if this (technology) presses forward, for example, there is an (American) masterpiece special effects movie called “Fantastic Voyage” wherein they (physically) made the sets and then shot the film but in the future, you can make the movie set by inputting data in a computer.

Speaking of another side (of this technology), take the example of video images shown on large screens that have been demonstrated at an expo. Just like what was shown in the expo, video images and 3D images shown on dome-like screens can only be made using a computer.

In this way, the spotlight is now aimed at anime as a means to (showcase technology). Animation’s possibilities will also become limitless as it will need to respond to the diversification of people’s demands.

(Caption for illustration on the right side of the page)

This is Cindy, a young girl from a biker gang in the anime “Megazone 23 Part 2”. Mr. Yasuomi Umetsu’s character design is original, as personified in this drawing. This anime has a different kind of appeal compared to Part 1.

KEISUKE FUJIKAWA (scriptwriter of the anime “Once Upon a Time” or “Legend of Fabulous Battle Windaria”)

I researched and compared the recent trends, the trend in fans’ consciousness about anime and anime programs and from around last year, it seems like the age of wanting “salvation” has come. I think that in so many ways, we are being stifled and we are seeking breakthroughs. I think that how anime as a medium is going to lift this issue up is going to be important. Even “Once Upon a Time”, which we will show in 1986, takes up issues of the present times. I’m putting emphasis on what I will say to the youth of today through SF that has stories of people in it instead of just hardcore SF. For this year and the next, I’d like to dig into aspects of the youth in different ways. I’d like to make anime that makes viewers think that there is something out there that matches their present selves perfectly.

(Caption for illustration on the left side of the page)

This is Anasu, the heroine of “Windaria”. Illustrated by Ms. Mutsumi Inomata, this character personifies the pure themes of Mr. Fujikawa’s anime.

YOSHINOBU NISHIZAKI (producer)

(Blurb)

I’d like to make a video anime that will be a preview of a movie theater anime

With regards to “Odin: Photon Sailor Starlight”, I didn’t make excuses and I haven’t commented on it but there are clear reasons why that movie ended in failure. That anime was originally a one-hour program, twelve episode TV anime - in other words, it was an anime made to be aired for twelve hours. I think there was a big mistake in the producers’ thinking that they could digest this into a two and a half hour movie.

I used to say that after 1955, there wouldn’t be a hit anime made for movie theaters. The same thing is about to happen in the video anime world. If the overproduction of low-quality anime continues, there will definitely be a backlash. It seems that the most basic idea during planning anime has been forgotten. And this basic idea is this: things expressed through anime must rouse people’s imaginations.

We’re planning on releasing an anime for movie theaters on July 9, 1986 based on “Desler”*. But before that we’re planning on selling a promotion video about the movie in April. In making this video, budgetary issues, which have always been a concern in video animes, have been set aside so I’m planning on making it in the same high-quality as the movie. I’m also thinking of releasing a trailer of the movie at the same time.

*Translator’s note: Desler is a character in the anime “Space Battleship Yamato”.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch them!

FUJIHIKO HOSONO (manga artist)

I like the works of Mr. Hayao Miyazaki. I heard that he said that he wanted to make an anime about the Period of Warring States (in Japanese history) so if that anime is made, I’d definitely want to watch it. Personally, I’d also like Mr. Miyazaki to make ninja anime. With regards to other animators, I like Mr. Mamoru Oshii, the one who made “Beautiful Dreamer.

SHOJOTAI (a singer/actress trio)

Reiko: Among animated characters, I like Peter Rabbit. I’d like Peter to guide me into a dreamy nature scene.

Miho: I really like Phillips. I’d like to plunge into a world adventure with a kitty cat.

Tomo: More than anything, I like Snoopy. I’d watch any number of animes with Snoopy in it. I’d like to watch happy animes.

#anime #newtype #21 prophets of anime #translations #translation #translation project

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benmcm18 · 3 years

Text

Our Doc!

Production -

Documentary filmmaking is very new to me. I’m used to creating short films (And I still haven’t figured that out completely haha) and enjoy creating cinematic ones at that. So when tackling the task of filming a doc on Jack’s friend (Hunter) I had to make sure I knew what I was doing so we could capture everything we needed.

Not going to lie, it didn’t as smoothly as I expected. *Spoiler Alert* It did turn out pretty good I gotta say, the reason I say it “ as smoothly ” is purely because I felt I could have done better. I’m really struggling right now being able to do cinematography for others visions because I’m so used to having my own.

We began the day by filming in Hunter’s room. It wasn’t what I expected (Smaller than I thought) so I had to re-evaluate my plans of shooting to work with the room. I wished we could have had some research shots of the location but in all fairness we did manage. We got the shots we envisioned, trying to film shots that told the audience who Hunter was as a person by filming shots like his trophies, military trinkets and beer around the room. Looking back at it now I should have been more forceful on getting more shots. I could tell we didn’t have enough shots but we had to keep going with the film day. We had to go shoot the Interview now.

When arriving at the hill there were R.A.F stealth jets training above us we thought this would be good to put Hunter in the mindset of the military but I became more of an issue as it interfered with the audio quite a bit. The overall interview was fun, I felt the answers Hunter gave were informative and interesting. It was annoying we couldn’t get him training because of his injury but in the long run it saved us the pain of cutting the edit down to under 5 minutes. We kept getting interrupted by dog walkers and a girl with a bicycle and (I’m very sorry about that Alex) we had 40 minutes between the interview where Hunter just chatted with some random lady.

The Interview was very insightful. I found a good position to shoot him from. We got a really good look into who he was as a person and his history with the army. He was very welcoming and I’m happy with what he told us.

After the interview I filmed shots of the surrounding area and then we left to take him home and get lunch. That was the end of the documentary shoot.

In reflection, we should have filmed so much more. I wanted to return for a second day but Hunter was busy and it never came to fruition. I didn’t think we had enough of his room and the original plan of our “ending scene” couldn’t be effectively done because we didn’t spend enough time at the location. I should have been more vocal. Overall, I did enjoy the day, getting to work with Jack and Hunter was one of the best times I’ve had on set and next time we would definitely capture everything we intended to film.

Post Production -

The long and gruelling upload process was next. Alex had to receive “oodles” of footage to create his edit. This took a while to get across to him (In all fairness my internet is terrible) so we only had a week before the deadline.

Like a blessing from god though! There was a deadline extension. By the time the original deadline had come around, we had a rough edit. It was rough I do have to say but going from the first edit to what it turned out to I have to take my hat off for Alex cos he did a stellar job!

The first edit came in at 10 minutes. We had to scrap 5 minutes to get it under the required time. One thing I have to say is that it was really frustrating to see people hand in edits over 5 minutes. I'm probably losing it thinking there was a five minute rule and in actual fact it was just a suggestion, however, it was shocking to see that people didn’t get to the time.

In regards to sections of the doc. I’m a really big fan of the opening. Alex did a fantastic job with overlaying shots of his room with his interview from later on. What Hunter says is kind of haunting for me as it really does seem like his main goal in life.

Another problem we had was trying to get the audience enough information to understand the situation Hunter was in. So we developed captions for the audience to read to follow along. I admit, this is lazy but we believed it would be the quickest way to get across information to the audience so we could add more into the doc.

In reflection, I’m glad the teachers liked the use of the stereotypical “military font”. I do agree that it is pretty quick so if I could change things I would extend the length of the captions. We originally also had a typewriter sound effect and the writing would appear like it's being typed. This however, was way too slow and didn’t fit the overall tone of the film so we removed it and went with simple fading. Good, simple, fading :)

Reflection -

Just to quickly reflect on this documentary. I enjoyed working on it. It’s been tough, we found it difficult to find someone at the start, then come up with a style, then film enough footage and then get an edit we were happy with. However, I’ve enjoyed myself. Everyone has worked very hard and the documentary has come out well. The question is: “Will I be wanting to make another documentary?”... Probably not ((BUT)) possibly… I’m not sure. I enjoyed it but I prefer making movies. If I find something I’m interested in documenting then yes but then mainly no.

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marsaxlokkheritage · 3 years

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Our story

On Friday, April 5, 2019, I was invited to present a TV documentary about Marsaxlokk. This documentary was the beginning of a series of filming documentaries on Marsaxlokk that were broadcasted on Maltese Television (TVM2). I have to say it ended to be a really professional presentation where I presented all the research I had done in the last twenty years. Being the researcher and writer who constantly writes about the village I was born in, the thirteen programmes awaiting for the final touch of the editing, finally resulted with the production being launched. As a President of the new Association that bears the name of Marsaxlokk Heritage this came with an invitation to all the people interested in Marsaxlokk’s history. This evening was opened by the Minister of culture Onor. Owen Bonnici in a venue given as free event for the night. This was the opportunity to share with the locals what is needed to set up a cultural association. I wanted to express my experience. and share with the future readers of this Website my experience about the process and what is practically necessary for a person to set up a cultural association that protects the heritage of the village or town. where one lives in.

How to start a Non-Governmental Organisation?

The idea of thinking about a non-governmental organisation is not something by chance. Only thought can be ingrained in the mind of the individual and because he has a motivated character aimed at something in particular that he likes or believes in, he leads himself to give it great importance in his life. But that is only the beginning of a will to come and understand others who think like him, enough, where they ultimately form a committee with the same purpose and view. Many attempts are often made to give birth to an organisation and many disappointments and failures as well. I dare say that although one knows about the purpose and initiatives of the union, one must also keep up with the times and adapt to the use of information technology so as not to cut back where communication and dissemination of need is needed. Information on what the organization believes in.Thus the first step will be the appointment of a Committee.

Appointment of committee

In order to make a request to the Non-Governmental Organisations Authority, at the first meeting there must be a minimum of five people to form an administrative committee with the people being appointed to positions among them according to their abilities. This is also with the aim of continuing to work together and get their voluntary organisation approved by the authorities. Together they draw up a statute so that whoever joins the organisation later will have guidelines on what to do. An exercise that is often repeated even in the long run and with the aim of making everyone understand the main goals of embracing the same union. When the statute is completed and signed by the chairman and secretary of the new administrative committee there may be a discussion about agreeing on the appropriate name of the organisation if it has not already been planned. Money is collected from the cost of completing the application and the names of all those on the committee are entered in special forms. Other documents will be signed by the president and secretary only. Copies of the identity card are taken and a plan sketch is made, showing how the administration of the new organisation is distributed. So we move on to the first meeting.

First meeting

Another important topic that the first committee may discuss at that same first meeting, could be the preparation for recruiting new members in an activity and also for some fundraising format. The logo of the association and the format of letters to other politicians and organisation can also be discussed both locally and nationally or internationally. Then begins the process for an organisation to be officially recognised. Often the process for the organisation to be approved by the authorities can take about six to eight weeks. During this same period members will have the chance to plan a variety of ideas that can translate into progress as they are recognised. In this waiting interval it is also of great importance that each individual in the committee is determined and motivated enough to verbally encourage other people to think they can contribute to the same Society.

I would add that these same people should be encouraged and kept in touch so that while the whole committee is informed about them, they will also be invited to the next meeting - the one when the secretary or chair receives the a letter of approval from the authorities.

When one thinks carefully about something like this, one must also understand that the road is not at all easy and it must be the continual determination that leads to overcoming every obstacle especially so early. The committee must be united in thinking and focused on the agenda it draws up. The weeks go by quickly and if one has any idea that the likelihood of a response from the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary organisation could easily be yes, then the plans can be considered in advance. Carefully the posts of officials merge together, at a time when goals and intentions are remote in order to build a solid foundation for the strong organisation to work in the common interest with all who believe in it. Even if it is not an easy start, it can still be overcome wisely and with clear goals. Only then will the way forward be happier.

As a founder of the NGO, the resigns of some members from the first tentative committee almost blew my mind, but my determination was to safeguard the interest of Marsaxlokk and everything about it. I kept looking for people, especially youths to join with the aim to continue this unique experience. Then when everything started to get in order with young new faces, the world started having issues with the Health pandemic Covid-19 which stopped our run in trying and look-out for member even though we continued to meet online and discuss other matters. The statue was adapted to keep the same administrative committee in office for 5 years and make sure we get on with our aims.

Marsaxlokk Heritage is a non-governmental Voluntary Association. Our beginning was like that, and now we have taken the road where we hope to continue for the good of the heritage inside our village. With the aim that together with other associations and the Local Council, we increase more knowledge, amongst them about the history of our village and all the heritage spread in the Marsaxlokk boundaries.

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