#he’s not the main character in paris texas though. i love that movie a lot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lusthurts · 10 months

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**SPOILER WARNING FOR THE RED WHITE AND ROYAL BLUE MOVIE**

This movie was very entertaining. It hit all the beats of a great rom-com. I personally enjoyed the music a lot, even if it was at times very different from the music in the book. Nicholas Galitzine was a standout of the main cast for me - he really made me feel Henry’s angst just like the book did, and I think this is a character that the film truly did justice. My personal favorite character from the movie though was Zahra - Sarah Shahi was absolutely incredible. She had fantastic comedic timing and her dynamic with Alex, Henry, Shaan, and Ellen. I really enjoyed Bea, Nora, & Pez as well, although I think they were severely underused and I kinda hated how the Nora/Pez dynamic worked without June. I think the romance was beautiful - I particularly enjoyed the polo scene, the karaoke scene, the Texas stuff, and the V&A museum.

I also laughed out loud a ton during the movie. Zahra’s scenes were hilarious, and the royal wedding/cake debacle was handled perfectly. I miss June here a bit, but I generally was very satisfied with how it all went down. Also, despite many fans early fears of a lack of chemistry between Nick and Taylor, I thought their chemistry was fantastic. Maybe not the best I’ve ever seen, but it was definitely believable, entertaining, and one of the most compelling parts of the story.

I also liked that we got more of Henry’s POV than we did in the book. It didn’t add a ton in my opinion, but I do think it allowed Nicholas Galitzine to show off his acting chops. I think the heart of the book remains, and after the press/everything I’d heard about the movie going into it, I was pleasantly surprised with how the political stuff was handled. Alex’s arc with Texas in particular was beautiful, and I think the end of the movie left me with a similar feeling to the book.

As for things I didn’t love, and I will say there were kind of a lot of small things, I’ve made a list that I’m sure no one cares much to read.

I missed June a lot. I identify a lot with her character, and although I totally understand why she was cut out (I do think in the book she serves less plot purpose than Nora), I actually think the choice to exclude her made even less sense after seeing the movie than before seeing it. Nora and Alex’s relationship felt very underdeveloped in the movie, and none of the romantic elements that I thought made their relationship important to the book ended up mattering at all in the movie. He kisses a different girl on New Year’s, there’s no mention of a sexual history between them, there’s no fake dating setup to detract from Alex/Henry, and Nora’s just generally absent. I feel like June would’ve served that purpose fine if not better.

The romance felt kind of rushed. The whole Christmas phone call that imo is so crucial to Henry & Alex’s relationship and character development doesn’t happen at all (probably because his parents are still together), and I didn’t have like a timer or clock or anything but it felt like the 100 or so pages leading up to the NYE kiss was like less than 20 minutes.

I hated that Alex’s parents were happily married, and I think it massively takes away from his character development. His arc honestly fell very short for me which is disappointing since he’s a character I identify so closely with. I don’t feel like they do his like major anxiety justice, and I think he goes from kinda being an idealist, reckless dummy to being a heartfelt, romantic, ready for a big commitment guy in the span of a few minutes.

I honestly could’ve done without the sex scenes. They were good, and I could tell the intimacy coordinator slayed with this one, but they were more explicit than the book imo (especially the one in Paris), and while I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, I would’ve much rather had more fade to black so as to save screen time to develop the romance more at the beginning.

I didn’t enjoy the Miguel character at all. He has no character development, and I do not at all understand how this character is the Luna/Liam blend he was promoted as. He functions as a ruthless journalist who despite being queer himself decides to out Henry and Alex to the entire world, and we NEVER get an explanation for why. It’s alluded to that maybe Miguel had feelings for Alex and did it because he resented Alex for not feeling the same? But like, he literally outed two prominent figures to the entire world at risk of benefitting a homophobic predator running for office. And he never apologizes? Or faces any repercussions???? Like this is just kind of there?? And that is NOT AT ALL Rafael Luna or Liam who are both generally speaking positive forces in Alex’s life. I just don’t get it at all.

This is a personal issue I had that most probably don’t care about, but I’m from Minnesota, and seeing Minnesota red in the movie was infuriating. MN is not a swing state, never really has been, and was basically the only state in the upper midwest to stay blue in the 2016 election. I’m biased because this is my home state, but MN would NEVER vote red and I’m kinda just annoyed at the implication that it did instead of them just choosing to blame it on all the actual swing states.

Okay those are my thoughts. I doubt anyone cares that much, but I needed to get it out of my system. I will say I really enjoyed the movie, and I can see why the bulk of reviews are positive. I think anyone who didn’t read the book won’t feel like anything is missing, and fans of the book will for the most part still really enjoy it. I will definitely be rewatching when it comes out officially on Amazon Prime tomorrow, and I can see myself rewatching hundreds more times in the future. But it sort of needs to exist independent of the book for me, I guess. And that’s okay! I think everyone involved did a great job with the adaptation, and I look forward to watching it again.

#red white and royal blue #rwrb #firstprince #red white and royal blue movie #red white and royal blue review

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lushscreamqueen · 3 years

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THE KILLER SHREWS on the Schlocky Horror Picture Show

August 03, 2008

OPENING: Hello, good evening, and welcome to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. I'm your host, Nigel Honeybone. As the 1950's grew to a close so did the era of the giant radioactive beast. Spawned from the nuclear fears stemming from World War II, the movies saw dozens of animals super-sized due to one of the popular catch words of the time: Radiation! By decades end, just about every manner of giant beastie had been seen. Lizards, spiders, ants, grasshoppers, the list goes on. The major studios had lost the inclination to finance such projects, and gradually re-focused their attention on new trends like nudies, bikies and gothic horror. That is not to say that movies with ginogorous critters didn't exist. It's just that, more often than not, it was left to the little guy, the independent producer or filmmaking rookie to unleash such monsters. Witness tonight, if you dare, as a group of people trapped on an island during a storm must contend with a bunch of whippets in wigs, in the 1959 anti-classic, Attack Of The Killer Shrews! BREAK: Don't go away, we'll be right back with more dogs In drag, and then after the ads we'll get back to the movie. MIDDLE: Welcome back to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Attack Of The Killer Shrews, also known as just Killer Shrews, was the brainchild of Texas millionaire Gordon McLendon. Born in Paris, Texas in 1921 he would go on to win a nationwide political-essay contest, attend Yale University where he studied Far Eastern languages, work for the campus radio station, and served as business manager for the Yale Literary Magazine, all before the U.S. got involved in World War Two. After the war he bought an interest in a radio station and built up a following for his live baseball game broadcasts. Having built up quite a name for himself as a pioneer in the radio field, McLendon now turned his attention to film...a regrettable decision for producer and audience alike. He and his family owned several drive-ins and theatres. Like many drive-in owners discovered, their outlets for screening films were considered the bottom of the barrel by the pretentious lot in Hollywood and many in tinseltown tried their darndest to keep their films out of the drive-in chains. This only led to the drive-in owners taking the next logical step, they financed their own films. In 1959 McLendon financed three films: The Killer Shrews, The Giant Gila Monster, and My Dog Buddy, none of which are remembered as sterling examples of cinematic skill, if they're remembered at all. James Best, known far and wide as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on television's original Dukes of Hazzard, plays Thorne Sherman and captains his own ship. Sounds cool, but sadly it isn't any bigger than the SS Minnow, and the only person he has to boss around is Rook. He's a glorified gopher, delivering supplies out to Doctor Craigis on his island. Sherman is a man's man, which by 1950s terms means he drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, has an appreciative eye for the ladies and is ready for a fistfight on a moment's notice, the kind of simplistic brute we are gradually evolving away from, a little too slowly if you ask me. His Honour Judge Henry Dupree plays Rook Griswold and looks like he could have played the title role in that live action Fat Albert movie: Hey, hey, hey! He's Sherman's sole crewman, although the two seem to share a real friendship rather than just bossy Captain/abused crew dynamic. Poor Rook is the first person to bite it in The Killer Shrews, or more accurately, the first to get bitten. Repeatedly, as a matter of fact. In this way this film helped start the stereotype of the token black character becoming the first victim in horror films. You may think films like Night Of The Living Dead and Alien were breakthroughs for the token black character in American horror, but a pessimist might say they simply get more screen-time before being killed-off. Baruch Lumet plays Doctor Marlowe Craigis. He may not seem like much, but he fathered one of Hollywoods greatest producer/directors, Sidney Lumet, famous for

Twelve Angry Men, Failsafe, The Pawnbroker and Dog Day Afternoon. Speaking of dogs, he also directed the all-black musical The Wiz starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Nobody's perfect. Anyway, Craigis says he hails from Sweden, and has come to the island of The Killer Shrews to further his scientific work, but you and I both know it was to keep his sexy daughter out of the Swedish porn industry. Craigis wants to shrink people, or at least slow down our metabolisms so the Earth's resources will last longer when overpopulation becomes a big problem. I think a bigger problem might be smarmy foreign scientists who screw around with Mother Nature... Swedish-born Ingrid Goude, a former Miss Universe, plays Ann Craigis, Doctor Craigis sexy daughter. She claims to be a zoologist, which is about as convincing as Nicole Kidman playing a brain surgeon. Though to be honest, I wouldn't mind checking-out her knowledge of biology, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Ann serves no purpose here other than to scream on occasion, and to provide Captain Sherman with a new First Mate, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Ken Curtis, another famous redneck, plays Jerry Farrell, part of Doctor Craigis research team. Curtis was inducted into the Hall Of Great Western Performers in 1981 for his performance as Festus in almost 300 episodes of Gunsmoke. Jerry's vital role in the mission is whining, cowering, boozing it up and generally being a waste of skin. He despises Sherman from the start, probably because he recognises that Sherman is much more of a man than he ever will be. I wouldn't get attached to Jerry if I were you. Played by Gordon McLendon, the Texas millionaire responsible for this mess Doctor Radford Baines is another one of the scientists helping Doctor Craigis with his work. This guy is really devoted to his work. In fact, he can hardly think of anything else and walks around muttering things like "Hematoxic Syndrome." His last moments on Earth are spent in devotion to science and furthering the understanding of mankind, instead of doing something really important like trying to get laid or run away. Unknown Alfredo DeSoto plays Mario. Despite the Italian name, Mario is apparently Mexican. He's most likely a servant of some kind, though his main duty seems to be as a device to advance the plot. Whatever he does, it doesn't involve too much physical labor, as Mario's mid section is expanding faster than a balloon. He isn't around much. Just long enough to say things like "Si, senor," "No, senor" and "Aaaahhhh!". It also explains why the shrews ran out of food. Mario doesn't look like he was missing any meals... Attack Of The Killer Shrews gives real meaning to the phrase Low Budget. Filmed on a mere handful of sets and featuring scene after scene of people talking, often with their back to the camera, with little in the way of action, and one could easily dismiss this as pure manure. The fact that the giant shrews are played by dogs in drag when they're not being represented by clumsy puppets, and one could not be blamed for turning up their nose at this movie. If there is a saving grace, it's the short running time. So yes, there's lots of boring talk, but there is also enough monster action to satisfy fans of such schlocky goodness. Besides, I shouldn't have to explain how funny it is to watch somebody scream in terror at a Collie wearing carpet remnants, when the dog is rolling over on his back obviously expecting a belly rub! And it's with that thought in mind we now return you to the carnivorous canine creepiness that is Attack Of The Killer Shrews! CLOSING: It's alright, you can open your eyes now. How exactly do Killer Shrews assimilate poison into their systems, anyway? For instance, I love to drink Absinthe, and I do mean Absinthe, not that over-the-counter swill. I've consumed hundreds if not thousands of litres of it over the years, over three thousand litres just in the last fifteen years, but I still haven't started frothing with green poison yet. If I can't assimilate my own favourite

beverage after drinking thousands of bottles, how can the shrews do so with poison after just one sampling of it? Anyway, please join me next week so I can poke you in the eye with another frightful excursion to the backside of the Public Domain, filmed in glorious 2-D black & white Regularscope on...The Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Toodles!

by Lushscreamqueen

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phantasmagloria · 6 years

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All right now,

For all you boppers in the big city, this is the Soundtrack Special. Seems appropriate, as some really incredible music has been written for the big (and small) screen.

We kick it off with a retribution concept that’s dear to me, followed by the bombastic opening music to Preacher. I was thrilled when they announced that the amazing comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon would be taken to the screen, though I was initially a bit disappointed with the result. I was expecting something closer to the graphic novels, though I did eventually warm up to the series and I look forward to the next season. Cassidy for eva!

We also listen to something from the empowering cult movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! that made quite an impression on me when I saw it in high school. Another movie that really stuck with me was Sweet Bunch, by Nikos Nikolaidis, one of Greece’s greatest underground and experimental filmmakers. His whole filmography is deeply interesting and I highly recommend it. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could of course not be missing from this show – I’ve been a Gonzo fan for half my life, and the soundtrack to that movie is part of the fabric of the stories he tells, whether real or parts of an unwinding drug trip.

The Craft was also one of my favourite movies growing up (Fairuza Balk was my style icon!) and I always remember that scene where the mother says, “Since I was a little girl, I’ve always wanted in life a jukebox that played nothing but Connie Francis records.” How delightful. The proverbial adult apple didnt’t fall too far from the teenage entertainment tree, and now I indulge in Good Behavior, a show about a woman called Letty Raines and her poor choices. While I can relate to some of the storyline, I mostly watch it for the (mildly fucked up) relationship Letty shares with Javier. As with Weeds, the opening music of which we hear at the end of this show, I’m drawn to good-looking South American male characters.

If you’ve ever been to New York and not seen The Warriors, then what the hell are you doing with your life? The radio scene, with Lynee Thigpen’s face only visible from the nose down, is both weirdly sensual and also a highly appropriate way of showing the power of the radio. Familiar voices without a face, trusted company in dark or lonely times, and often a guide towards the light. Though we didn’t include the blind radio producer from the epic movie Vanishing Point, he alone is reason enough to prep a second soundtrack special in the future.

Of course we also check in with classic composers like John Carpenter, John Williams and Mark Snow (obviously I’m a massive horror, Star Wars, and X-Files fan), and though admittedly we don’t delve too deep into the soundtracks of cult Italian cinema from the ’60s and ’70s, we will be dedicating a whole show to the many great composers of that time (Morricone, Alessandroni, Umiliani, Piccioni, Ortolani, etc) as their scores deserves more attention.

We also pull some tracks from television, namely, the killer new show Stranger Things (a nod to the analog age, as evidently heard in the warm sound of the synths used in the theme music) and the equally addictive The Expanse, taking place in a future time of a colonized solar system and one of the few sci-fi shows that actually takes space physics into consideration (like different gravitational forces, time warping, vacuum pressure, etc). The song we hear is “de new banga, fresh outta Eros! … Hottest beats-maker on Tycho.” On that note, if you’re into string theory and/or the interaction of multiple dimensions, I recommend the movie Interstellar (with music by Hans Zimmer of course). Lastly, we couldn’t exclude Akira and The Ghost in the Shell, two Japanese anime movies that became famous for their stunning, detail-heavy animation and their gripping music scores.

We draw to a close with a couple tracks from The Nile Hilton Incident (an excellent 2017 Egyptian movie, a must-watch for noir fans), Only Lovers Left Alive (now a classic among Jarmusch and vampire lovers alike) and Baby Driver (an unexpectedly great movie with a sort of timeless aesthetic and well-picked soundtrack).

Of course there’s lots more to listen to, from Mulatu Astatke and Philip Glass to Goblin and T. Rex, so click that Play button for two hours of cinematic brilliance. This week and moving forward we return to one-hour shows (quality trumps quantity) and we’ve got a couple guest shows in the works in preparation of a special live show, hopefully coming to Athens in April – so boppers, stay tuned!

With love from outer space,

—Obsessionist

SS_34 TRACKLIST

ALAN FORD – Nemesis (Snatch) DAVE PORTER – Preacher main title theme TEO USUELLI – Alla Ricerca Del Piacere Seq. 3 IGOR KANTOR, BERT SHEFTER & PAUL SAWTELL – Mysterioso Minor (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) RIZ ORTOLANI – Theme from Fantasma D’amore ANGELO BADALAMENTI – Dinner Party Pool Music (Mulholland Drive) GIORGOS HATZINASIOS – Theme from Sweet Bunch JOHNNY DEPP & RAY COPPER – A Drug Score Part 1 (Acid Spill) (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) CONNIE FRANCIS – Fallin (The Craft) SEINABO SEY – Hard Time (Good Behavior) TEO USUELLI – Alla Ricerca Del Piacere Seq. 15 LYNNE THIGPEN – All You Boppers (The Warriors) BARRY DE VORZON – Theme from The Warriors ZOMBIE ZOMBIE – Halloween main theme) MICHAEL STEIN & KYLE DIXON – Stranger Things Theme (live at the ASCAP Screen Music Awards) MARK SNOW – I Want to Believe (UNKLE remix) JOHN CARPENTER – Theme from The Fog CLINTON SHORTER – Eros Song (The Expanse) TSUTOMU ŌHASHI – Kaneda’s Theme (Akira) KENJI KAWAI – Chant 1 – Making of Cyborg (The Ghost in the Shell) PHILIP GLASS – Mishima Closing (Mishima) GOBLIN – Suspiria (Celesta and Bells) KENJI KAWAI – Nightstalker (Ghost in the Shell) RY COODER – Theme from Paris, Texas T. REX – Cosmic Dancer (Billy Elliot) ARIEL PINK – Baby (I Do…Until I Don’t) LOVE – Always See Your Face (High Fidelity) NICO – These Days (The Royal Tenenbaums) THE VENUS IN FURS – 2HB (Velvet Goldmine) LOUD REED – This Magic Moment (Lost Highway) ANGELS & PETER SKELLERN – One More Kiss Dear (Blade Runner) ANGELO BADALAMENTI – Rita Walks – Sunset Boulevard – Auth Ruth (Mulholland Drive) BONNIE BEECHER – Come Wander With Me (The Twilight Zone) MELINA MERKOURI – Agapi Pou Gines Dikopo Macheri (Stella) IBTIHAL EL SERETY – Gina’s Song (The Nile Hilton Incident) YASMINE HAMDAN – Hal (Only Lovers Left Alive) MULATU ASTATKE – Gubèlyé (Broken Flowers) DAVID MCCALLUM – The Edge (Baby Driver) JOHN WILLIAMS – Binary Sunset (Star Wars IV: A New Hope) MALVINA REYNOLDS – Little Boxes (Weeds)

Listen back to Storm Stereo 34: Soundtrack Special, featuring music from sci-fi, cult and indie films, plus TV show themes, Japanese anime, and much more. All right now, For all you boppers in the big city, this is the Soundtrack Special. Seems appropriate, as some really incredible music has been written for the big (and small) screen.

#cult movies #japanese anime #OST #soundtrack music #soundtrack special #Storm Stereo

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