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bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 3 years

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Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige

“The thing I love about being an actor is to fully work with someone and try so hard to be at every level with them, chasing whatever it is you need or want from them.”

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Studio Photoshoots > 2021 > Session 008 Magazine Scans > 2021 > Backstage (August 19)

Backstage: Elizabeth Olsen grins widely over video chat when recalling many such moments on set with her co-stars. Yet, she can’t bring herself to divorce such a lofty vision of film acting from the technical multitasking it requires. The camera sees all.

“But then you move your hair, and you’re in your brain, like: OK, remember that! Because I don’t want to edit myself out of a shot. I know some actors are like, ‘Continuity, shmontinuity!’ But the good thing about continuity is, if you remember it, you’re actually providing yourself with more options for the edit.”

That need to balance being both inside the scene and outside of it, fully living it and yet constantly visualizing it on a screen, feels particularly apt in light of Olsen’s most recent project, “WandaVision.”

The mysteries at the heart of the show grow with every episode, each fast-forwarding to a different decade: Could this 1950s, black-and-white, “filmed in front of a studio audience” newlyweds bit be a grief-stricken dream? Might this ’70s spoof be a powerful spell gone awry? Could this meta take on mockumentary comedies be proof that the multiverse is finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

The series’ structure, which branches out to include government agents intent on finding out why Westview has seemingly disappeared, calls for the entire cast to play with a mix of genres, balancing a shape-shifting tone that culminates in an epic, MCU-style conclusion. What’s key—and why the show struck a chord with audiences during its nine-episode run—is the miniseries’ commitment to grounding its initial kooky setups and its later special effects-driven spectacle in heartbreaking emotional truths. It’s no small feat, though it’s one that can often be taken for granted.

“I was thinking how hard it would have been to have shot the first ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” Olsen muses. “Like, you’re putting all these actors [into the frame] later and at all these different levels. All the eyelines are completely unnatural. And yet the performances are fantastic! And technically, they are so hard. People forget sometimes that these things are really technically hard to shoot. And if you are moved by their performance, that took a lot of multitasking.”

As someone who has learned plenty about harnesses, wirework, fight choreography, and green screens (she’s starred in four Marvel movies, including the box office megahit “Avengers: Endgame,” after all), Olsen knows how hard it can be to wrap one’s brain around the work needed to pull off those big, splashy scenes.

“If you think about it, it’s, like, the biggest stakes in the entire world—every time. And that feels silly to act over and over again, especially when people are in silly costumes and the love of your life is purple and sparkly, and every time you kiss them, you have to worry about getting it on your hands. Those things are ridiculous. You feel ridiculous. So there is a part of your brain that has to shovel that away and just look into someone’s eyeballs—and sometimes, they don’t even have eyeballs!”

The ability to spend so much time with Wanda, albeit in the guise of sitcom parodies, was a welcome opportunity for Olsen. Not only did it allow the actor to really wrestle with the traumatic backstory that has long defined the character in the MCU, but having the chance to calibrate a performance that functions on so many different levels was a thrilling challenge.

“It was such an amazing work experience,” she says. “Kathryn [Hahn] uses the word ‘profound’—which is so sweet, because it is Marvel, and people, you know, don’t think of those experiences as profound when they watch them. But it really was such a special crew that [director] Matt Shakman and [creator] Jac Schaeffer created. It was a really healthy working environment.”

Related‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance ‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance Considering that the miniseries spans several sitcom iterations, various layers of televisual reality, and a number of character reveals that needed to feel truthful and impactful in equal measure, Shakman’s decision to work closely with his actors ahead of shooting was key.

“We truly had a gorgeous amount of time together before we started filming,” Olsen remembers. “Our goal was—which is controversial in TV land—that if you wanted to change [anything], like dialogue in a scene, you had to give those notes a week before we even got there. Because sometimes you get to set, and someone had a brilliant idea while they were sleeping, and you’re like, ‘We don’t have an hour to talk about this. We have seven pages to shoot.’ And so, we were all on the same page with one another, knowing what we were shooting ahead of time.

“Matt just treated us like a troupe of actors who were about to do some regional theater shit,” she adds with a smile.

That spirit of camaraderie was, not coincidentally, at the heart of Olsen’s breakout project, Sean Durkin’s 2011 indie sensation “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” As an introduction to the process of filmmaking to a young stage-trained actor, Durkin’s quietly devastating drama was a dream—and an invaluable learning opportunity.

“It was truly just a bunch of people who loved the script, who just were doing the work. I didn’t understand lenses, so I just did the same thing all the time. I never knew if the camera would be on me or not. There was just so much purity in that experience, and you only have that once.”

The film announced Olsen as a talent to watch: a keen-eyed performer capable of deploying a stilted physicality and clipped delivery, which she used to conjure up a wounded girl learning how to shake off her time spent in a cult in upstate New York. But Olsen admits that it took her a while to figure out how to navigate her career choices afterward. In the years following “Martha,” she felt compelled to try on everything: a horror flick here, a high-profile remake there, a period piece here, an action movie there. It wasn’t until she starred in neo-Western thriller “Wind River” (alongside fellow Marvel regular Jeremy Renner) and the dark comedy “Ingrid Goes West” (opposite a deliciously deranged Aubrey Plaza) that Olsen found her groove.

“It was at that point, when I was five years into working, where I was like, Ah, I know how I want it. I know what I need from these people—from who’s involved, from producers, from directors, from the character, from the script—in order to trust that it’s going to be a fruitful experience.”

As Olsen looks back on her first decade as a working actor, she points out how far removed she is from that young girl who broke out in “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

“I feel like a totally different person. I don’t know if everyone who’s in their early 30s feels like their early 20s self is a totally different human. But when I think about that version of myself, it feels like a long time ago; there’s a lot learned in a decade.”

Those early years were marked by a self-effacing humility that often led Olsen to defer to others when it came to key decisions about the characters she was playing. But she now feels emboldened to not only stand up for herself and her choices but for others on her sets as well.

“[Facebook Watch series] ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ I got to produce, and I really found my voice in a collaborative leadership way. And with ‘WandaVision,’ Paul [Bettany] and I really took on that feeling, as well—especially since we were introducing new characters to Marvel and wanted [those actors] to feel protected and helped,” she says. “They could ask questions and make sure they felt like they had all the things they needed because sometimes you don’t even know what you need to ask.”

It’s a lesson she learned working with filmmaker Marc Abraham on the Hank Williams biopic “I Saw the Light,” and she’s carried it with her ever since. “I really want it to feel like we’re all in this together, as a team,” Olsen says. “That was part of ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ and it was part of ‘WandaVision,’ and I hope to continue that kind of energy because those have been some of the healthiest work experiences I’ve had.”

If Olsen sounds particularly zealous about the importance of a comfortable, working set, it is because she’s well aware that therein lies an integral part of the work and the process. As an actor, she wants to feel protected and nurtured by those around her, whether she’s reacting to a telling, quiet line of dialogue about grief or donning her iconic Scarlet Witch outfit during a magic-filled mid-air action sequence.

“Sometimes you’re going to be foolish, you know? And [you need to] feel brave to be foolish. Sometimes people feel embarrassed on set and snap. But if you’re in a place where people feel like they’re allowed to be an idiot,” she says, “you’re going to feel better about being an idiot.”

This story originally appeared in the Aug. 19 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.

Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #WandaVision #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Wanda Maximoff #Sorry For Your Loss #Avengers Infinity War #Avengers Age of Ultron #Captain America Civil War #Ingrid Goes West #Godzilla #Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness #Marvel #MCU #Candy Montgomery #Love and Death #Avengers Endgame

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theparanormalperiodical · 3 years

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Top 10 Controversial Horror Films That Are Famous For All The Wrong Reasons *gags* *cries*

At the beating heart of horror is offence.

From that undeniable sense of something not being quite right, to the CGI-blood-spurtin’-adrenaline-fuelled scenes that leave us shaking in our boots, horror pivots on the knife edge of controversy.

It’s used to drive plots. It’s used to drive hype. And at the end of the month, it drives studio executives to the bank.

Horror films can be traumatic enough. But there are some films that bear the cross of controversy more than others. There are some films that have been branded as so damaging to their potential viewers that merely circulating copies of the film is illegal.

And yet their infamy has forged cult viewership. What was once shielded from us has now become ‘must see’.

Today we are going to be counting down horror’s most controversial films and what made them quite so topical.

*I’m going to star the ones that you can actually watch without getting traumatised. Some are controversial not because of their content but because some religious or political groups disagreed with them*

#10 - The Blair Witch Project (1999)*

Let’s ease in with a classic - a classic you can watch without sleeping with the light on.

In this found-footage flick we see a team of film students as they explore a local urban legend. But what they find leads them to unknown and ungodly territory.

The problem with this film is that it was marketed as a true story. No, not based on a true story, a true story. Yep, they claimed what we were seeing was real, found footage of some teens going mad as they forage deeper into mysterious woods.

IMBd went so far as to report that the actors were dead. Then, the movie studio super-charged their efforts to confirm to the public that not only was this film 100% real, the three main actors were still missing. The parents of the actors then started receiving sympathy cards.

There’s even a mocked up website that perpetuates these claims.

#9 - Night Of The Living Dead (1968)*

Time for another not-too-disturbing film.

This is the original zombie apocalypse film saw a group of Americans attempt to survive an incoming attack of the undead while trapped in a rural farmhouse.

But the Motion Picture Association of America wasn’t too happy about it. The film rating system was yet to be in place, allowing children to also show up for an afternoon screening and be greeted by a 97 minute montage of extreme violence.

“The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying”

#8 - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

In this psychological film, we watch a random crime spree take place at the hands of a couple serial killers. Loosely based on real murderers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, its controversial reputation was founded on the gore ‘n’ guts screened in the movie.

Whilst it didn’t receive much attention from the public, various classification boards across the world ensured new versions edited with certain scenes - often involving sexual assault and necrophilia - removed for viewers.

In 2003, the BBFC (the UK classification board) finally allowed the uncut version to be released and Australia followed suit in 2005.

#7 - I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

It’s the original rape-revenge flick. And it managed to piss everyone off.

Originally titled Day of the Woman, it tells the story of a fiction writer who exacts revenge on a group of four men who gang rape her.

Despite its pro-women claim-to-fame, the 30 minute rape scene begs to differ. Furious debate surrounds its feminist label as a film that forces the audience to endure rape from a female perspective and long-winded violence against men (something which is often reserved for women in horror). Regardless, the graphic violence earned it a steady ban in Ireland, Norway, Iceland, and West Germany.

#6 - Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)*

You don’t get many controversial Christmas films. They typically stick to a cookie-cutter plot ‘n’ purpose every holiday season. But there are no strong women who need to rediscover the meaning of Christmas here.

Instead, we see a child traumatised by seeing his parents murdered on Christmas Eve go on a seasonal rampage as an adult.

A week after its release in the early 80s, it was pulled from theatres due to backlash. Marketing was focused on a Santa Claus killer with adverts often airing during family-friendly TV programmes and meant numerous children developed a phobia of Father Christmas. Large crowds protested cinemas with one notable protest involving angry families singing carols at the Interboro Quad Theater in The Bronx.

It was only in 2009 - 25 years after its original release - that a DVD of the film was first made available for purchase in the UK.

#5 - Psycho (1960)*

This legendary film follows the disappearance of a young woman after her encounter with a strange man called Norman Bates, one of horror’s most iconic figures. The controversy that would engulf this fim lay not in the violent attack on an innocent woman or even the disturbing content of the film.

Oh, no. It was because of what the leading lady was wearing.

In the opening scene of the film, we see Janet Leigh wearing nothing but a bra.

*gasp*

This racy attire was emblazoned across promotional material, meeting Hitchcock’s high standards of creating controversy around the movie. There was a no late admission policy for movie theaters, and the posters told viewers “Do not reveal the surprises!” to maintain a mysterious aura around the plot twist.

#4 - The Human Centipede (2009) (all of ‘em)

I’ve watched a lot of horror films, in case you couldn’t tell.

I’m used to watching a scary movie, shaking off the anxiety, and moving on with my life. But there are some that stayed with me. I only watched the trailer for the first movie, and it legitimately traumatised me. It gave me quite a severe, sudden bout of a depression for a solid month when I was 13.

Throughout horror’s goriest franchise, we see an evil doctor and amateur mad scientist attempt to sow several people together into a centipede-like chain from mouth to anus.

*retches*

At the heart of promoting the franchise was controversy. Tom Six, the director, forced a narrative that claimed from the first film that this was "100% medically accurate". He even alleged a Dutch doctor helped inspire the film, confirming that with an IV drip, this was entirely possible.

Although it didn’t receive furore that amounted to serious censorship or long-term banning, it was infamous for having its viewers vomiting in the cinema aisles.

The second film, however, was subject to much more severe controversy and could not legally be supplied in the UK until 2011 due to its heavy focus on sexual abuse, more graphic violence than the original film, and it’s pretty vile depiction of a murderer that was intellectually disabled.

Audiences were used to the graphic nature of the franchise by the third and final release. As the least-controversial and least-enjoyable film according to critics, it barely made a dent in the horror community.

Good riddance, I guess?

#3 - Faces Of Death (1978)

I’m not sure I’d recommend this one per se - but I will give it credit for being an interesting project.

This documentary-style film is a montage of footage of people dying in different ways. As a result of its very graphic and very real content, it was banned and censored in many countries. Only in 2003 was it released on DVD in the UK after a scene was cut featuring dogs fighting and a monkey being beaten to death.

Germany, Australia, and New Zealand followed suit, reversing their bans and releasing edited versions.

However, 7 years after its release, the media revamped its interest in the film after a maths teacher showed it to his class at a Californian high school. Two of his students claimed they were so traumatised they received a costly settlement to reimburse their emotional distress. Things took a darker turn a year later, when a 14 year old bludgeoned a classmate to death with a baseball bat; he claimed he wanted to see what it would be like to actually kill someone after watching Faces of Death.

#2 - Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

This Italian film’s title alone hints towards two frightening things: flesh-eating humans and genocide. In this found-footage movie we see an anthropologist lead a rescue team into the Amazon rainforest to find a group of filmmakers that went missing.

The rampant graphic content including sexual assault and animal cruelty showcased in the film (7 animals were killed during filming in some pretty horrific ways) led to it being banned in 50 countries.

Some also alleged that a handful of deaths seen in the film were real, as were the missing film crew. In fact, the actors portraying the documentarians signed contracts that stopped them appearing in motion pictures for an entire year to maintain the illusion of reality.

And only 10 days after its premiere, the director was charged with obscenity and the film confiscated. All copies were to be turned over to the authorities. There are currently a range of versions that have been edited to varying degrees and are allowed for circulation.

#1 - A Serbian Film (2010)

No.

Nope.

Don’t do it. Don’t watch this film.

A Serbian Film follows a retired porn star who agrees to feature in an “art film” for some cash. Little does he know this film will include rape, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia…

Just don’t watch it.

It is still banned in South Korea, New Zealand, Australia. It is supposedly a parody of politically correct films made in Serbia that are funded by foreign groups and allegedly speaks openly about post-war society and the struggle for survival.

*shakes head*

Off to have a 3 hour shower, brb.

If you, uhhh, liked this post please like and reblog.

And if you want to hear more about horror and the supernatural every week hit follow!

#horror #Horror Movies #horror films #best horror movies #scary movies #banned films #video nasty #a serbian film #human centipede #the blair witch project #cannibal holocaust #faces of death #banned movies #censorship #night of the living dea #controversy #controversial films

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abigailnussbaum · 4 years

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Legends of Tomorrow, Season 5

I was going to write weekly reviews of this season, and then with one thing and another ended up dropping it in the spring (hey, remember when there was so much weekly TV that you couldn’t keep up with all your shows? Wonder how long it’ll be before that happens again). I caught up with the entire season this weekend, and honestly, that feels like a better standpoint from which to write about it - I think if I’d stuck with weekly reviews, I would have ended up saying the same thing week after week.

A couple of years ago, Emily VanDerWerff suggested that there is a standard lifecycle for high-concept, large ensemble, off-the-wall genre shows:

Season 1: still figuring this whole thing out

Season 2: now we’re cooking with oil

Season 3: we can do anything!

Season 4: whoops, no, we’ve gotten a bit over our skis here

Season 5: ???

Legends, I think, encapsulates this progression to a T. The show’s second and third seasons were some of the best and most exciting genre storytelling on television, but last year was a bit of a mess. That’s not entirely the writers’ fault - Nick Zano’s limited availability due to family obligations forced them to beef up the Time Bureau’s role in the season, and their desire to keep Maisie Richardson-Sellers on board even after Amaya’s story had wrapped up led them to create a character, Charlie, who had no real reason for being on the Waverider. But a lot of it was self-inflicted. The cast was too unwieldy, the Time Bureau story seemed designed to expose the thin spots in the show’s self-presentation as irreverent but fundamentally compassionate (it certainly didn’t help that the decision to rewrite Nate Sr. into a good guy was made almost at the last minute, requiring the entirely unconvincing argument that forcing magical creatures to perform in a circus act is somehow morally superior to forcing them to be secret agents), and some of the character choices felt entirely parachuted in (Zari/Nate, anyone?).

Season five, therefore, had a lot of clean up work to do, while also demonstrating that the Legends formula had more life in it than just those two transcendent early seasons. And while this is undeniably a more successful, more enjoyable season than the one preceding it (which also does a great deal to address some of the show’s structural issues, chiefly the overlarge cast), I also can’t help but notice that instead of finding new places for the show to go, what the fifth season delivers instead is a hodgepodge of story elements from seasons two and three. So we’ve got a mystical object that can rewrite reality (The Loom of Fate vs. season two′s The Spear of Destiny); a token hunt across time and space in which the Legends face off against the estranged relatives of one of their members (the totems in season three vs. the search for the pieces of the loom, Amaya’s evil granddaughter vs. Charlie’s evil sisters); a late season loss that forces our characters into a nightmarish alternate reality in which they don’t even remember who they are (the Legion of Evil rewriting the Legends’ lives to make them ordinary and unsatisfying vs. being stuck in TV shows in a world run by the Fates); which comes about because of a betrayal by a member of the team (Charlie in season five, Mick in season two) whose eventual return to the fold enables to Legends to win in the end. There’s even an abandoned, abused girl who has turned evil, and has to be won back to the side of good through the offer of true companionship and understanding (Nora Darhk vs. Astra Logue).

This isn’t exactly a bad thing - a lot of these storytelling beats cut to the very core of what Legends is and what makes it work, so it’s not necessarily wrong for the show to repeat them. And even if the basic structure is the same, Legends just keeps getting more adventurous in how it delivers that structure. I’ve already written about how well done the season’s mockumentary episode was, and the same can be said for the 80s slasher movie riff, the Mr. Rogers parody, and of course, “The One Where We’re Trapped on TV”. Like the multiple universe episode in season four, these are things the show couldn’t have done when it was just a few seasons old, and they’re proof that whatever other issues it has, Legends is constantly pushing the envelope in terms of the kind of tropes and genres it can graft onto a superhero template. That said, there’s a very real possibility that this is all the show will ever be - a standard story template, enlivened by increasingly gonzo riffs on existing tropes.

Some more thoughts on where the season worked and where it didn’t below.

THE GOOD:

I really hated the decision to make Nora a fairy godmother in season four, not least because it felt like yet another way of infantilizing her (it certainly didn’t help that it was a choice she was forced into, and that she spent the remainder of the season catering to the every whim of Gary, a character I still have very mixed feelings towards). But season five really reclaims that choice. Having Nora embrace the fairy godmother life as a way of both helping children and working through her own issues makes a lot of sense, and the character feels happier and more confident than we’ve ever seen her (certainly a step up from how gloomy she was last season). I even like the wardrobe change - once the fairy godmother dress was ditched except for specific occasions, having Nora dress all in teal is a nice touch, and certainly an improvement over her rather boring season four wardrobe. I still think Legends missed a lot in how it handled Nora last season (I will never stop being annoyed that she and Sara didn’t develop a deeper friendship, given how similar their life trajectories have been), but this was a good way of righting the ship, even in a very limited timeframe.

I already mentioned this in the episode review, but watching the rest of the season really cemented my admiration for how quickly the show embeds Behrad into the crew, and makes it feel as if he’s always been there. That’s all the more impressive given that Behrad doesn’t really get an arc in season five. Most of that storytelling energy goes to establish Zari 2.0, and Behrad is, of course, absent for much of the latter half of the season. And yet he feels almost instantly like a fully-rounded character who is integral to the show, so much so that you’re heartbroken by his death (and convinced that it will be rolled back, even though Zari could easily take over his superpower). That’s really excellent work by both the writers and Shayan Sobhian.

I was a bit nervous when Zari 2.0 was introduced, because replacing a heroic, cool-girl-coded, nobly self-sacrificing character with a version of herself who is extremely femme-coded and obsessed with things like fashion and social media is the sort of move that is ripe for easy misogynistic point-scoring in the guise of feminism - of course the Zari who is good with machines and eats donuts is superior to the one who has a perfume line and spends hours in the bathroom every morning! But the show very quickly established that Zari, though certainly not without her flaws, is awesome in any guise, and it did so without trying to change her into “our” Zari, eventually even establishing that they are two completely different people, each with a right to exist (though not simultaneously, unfortunately). I get why the show didn’t keep both Zaris around - it would be asking a lot of Tala Ashe to play two characters, much of the time against herself, not to mention a production nightmare - but I appreciate that it didn’t decide that Zari 2.0 was the lesser version. (Also a nice touch: Behrad, though obviously fond of Zari 1.0, doesn’t think of her as “his” sister, even though to us she’s the “real” version of the character.)

Similarly, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when Ava moved to the Waverider full time - obviously, it would be an improvement on her playing a tinpot fascist at the Time Bureau while the show pretended that this wouldn’t really bother Sara, but at the same time Sara and Ava are both so similar in their functions and abilities that I worried they’d step on each other’s shoes. Instead, the show leaned into their differences and made the season about Ava finding her place as captain of the Waverider, a role she fills in very different ways than Sara while still doing a good job at it. It also allowed her to expand her point of view a little - bonding with Zari 2.0, or reaching out to Astra, both things that would have been outside of her comfort zone in the past. Obviously, this is setup for Ava taking over as captain in season six now that Sara has been abducted (though I hope not for very long - Legends isn’t Legends without Sara), but good on the show for taking the time to bring Ava to a point where she’s ready for this, and in a different way from Sara.

And speaking of looking ahead, the show takes the wise step of thinning out its cast. Personally, I would have kept Ray, Nora, and Mona and written off Constantine and Nate (and possibly also Gary), but either way, it’s good that the writers realized their cast was getting unwieldy. I was concerned, for example, that the show figuring out what to do with Charlie and giving her an elaborate backstory was a sign that she would stay on, but instead she leaves once that story is resolved. And I think that in an earlier season, Astra would have been positioned to stay on the Waverider after the end of the season, but instead she’s clearly a one-off character, who goes off to live her own life once the show has brought her story to a satisfying conclusion. (This also, however, means that Legends has written off two black women in a single season, not to mention Mona, and in fact has only one WOC main character remaining; I hope that’s something season six addresses.)

THE BAD:

I realize that I am very much in the minority on this, but I’m sorry: John Constantine does not belong on Legends of Tomorrow, and certainly not as a main character. Season five feels, in fact, like a perfect demonstration of this simple truth. The early parts of the season feel like two different shows, the Legends show and the Constantine show, that happen to have some points of intersection and shared characters. And even once those storylines converge, it’s notable how John’s quest for the Loom of Fate very quickly becomes Astra’s quest for it, and then Charlie’s, and how they both feel more grounded in that story and more affected by it than he was. What it comes down to, once again, is that John Constantine is a character who can’t change, and putting him on a show that is all about change and growth can’t help but feel unsatisfying for both the character and the show. Season five tries to suggest that change is possible for him - he finally comes clean with Astra and make a real apology to her; he admits that his pursuit of magic has cost him relationships and a chance at happiness; he reaches out to his friends when he thinks his life is about to end; he even quits smoking. But the character just doesn’t have that much give in it. To be John Constantine, he has to be the cynical, arrogant, self-destructive fuck-up we’ve always known. On a show like Legends of Tomorrow, that can work in small doses, but not as the main character that Constantine has been positioned as.

Though I’m glad that the show figured out something to do with Charlie before writing her off, the similarities between her story and Mick’s can’t help but shed a light on how poorly thought out this character has been, and how much her season five story is parachuted in. When Mick betrays the team at the end of season two, it’s barely a season after they’d put him off the ship for being perennially untrustworthy, leading to him becoming their nemesis. They only take him back out of pity for the decades of torture he suffered, and sympathy for the loss of his only friend, Captain Cold. His betrayal is a direct outcome of those cracks in the relationship - he does it because he wants to live in a world where he hasn’t been hurt or hurt others, and where his friend is still alive. When he changes his mind at the end of the season, it’s a culmination of two seasons of character growth, the realization that holding on to the pain in his life is worth it if it means he gets to keep the friendships he formed on the Waverider, and to continue to grow as a person - as expressed by his choice to put Snart back in his timeline, where he will become a better person (and eventually inspire Mick to do the same) but will also die. Charlie’s very similar storyline just doesn’t have this kind of depth. Neither her heel turn nor her face turn feel particularly earned, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that it took the writers so long to figure out who this character even was.

For a season of Legends, this was an awfully heteronormative stretch of episodes. Sure, Sara and Ava are still center stage, and that’s fantastic. But every other romantic relationship in the season, and there are quite a few of them, is a straight one. You might blame this on the fact that season five is a housecleaning season, wrapping up dangling storylines like Ray/Nora or Nate/Zari. But even the new characters like Behrad or Lita express only opposite-sex attraction (I guess Astra never demonstrates a preference). I mean, if you give John Constantine two different love interests in a single season and they’re both women, surely something has gone terribly wrong?

And speaking of John Constantine’s love interests, is putting him together with Zari meant to make the old her’s romance with Nate look organic and true to the characters in comparison? Because I can’t think of another reason for it. Do not want.

THE UGLY:

Words cannot express how much I hate the Damien Darhk episode. Not all of it, obviously - the Mr. Rogers riff, as I said, is pretty good (and pays off handsomely later in the season), and pretty much all the Ray/Nora stuff, especially the moment where she realizes she’s not going to lie to her father about the man she loves and the life she’s chosen, are golden. But it is simply mind-boggling that after two seasons in which Nora was firmly established as the survivor of a lifetime of abuse, Legends takes an entire hour to not only rehabilitate Damien, but pretend that he was always a loving father who just made some mistakes. For crying out loud, the man fed his daughter to a demon in order to gain power for himself. It was always an interesting wrinkle in his character that he clearly saw himself as a loving, protective parent, and was even capable of some level of self-sacrifice on Nora’s behalf, but I had assumed that the show realized this was at least partly a self-serving lie. To discover that we’re actually meant to think that one act of sacrifice cancels out a lifetime of abuse is nauseating. I wanted Nora to stand up to her father, but as a victim calling out her abuser, not a loving daughter trying to renegotiate a relationship with an overprotective parent. It certainly doesn’t help that the episode features inexplicably popular wedding story tropes, such as the groom asking the bride’s father for permission to marry her, or the father trying to keep the couple from physical intimacy before the wedding, which are gross in any context but especially so here. I suppose in the end it’s all worth it to be rid of Damien once and for all, but I was squirming with discomfort and rage throughout the entire episode.

#legends of tomorrow

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roxannepolice · 5 years

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You know, talking in general and not just SW, I think that sometimes the audience surrogate can be a double bladed sword done the wrong way. But there is also this percent of the fandom that thinks that if you don't love the audience surrogate or the other Relatable Character™ you are X thing. (1/2)

It has happened to me with the DW fandom and some people asking me why I like the Eleventh Doctor more than the Acceptable™ Twelfth Doctor. Because you you, the former is a more darker, possessive and selfish character and the later is kinder and all. And I am like... Not my fault if I found one more fascinating than the other because he is a bastard (2/2)

You know, this really carries me back in time to when Philosopher’s Stone was first released on dvd and among extras there was a sorting hat test/minigame and I went positively hysterical when upon first time spontaneous answers I got sorted into Slytherin. It took quite a long time for me to embrace my Slytherclaw self and if the hat had a problem between these two houses I would totally ask for classy underwater mess of a common room now. And I mention that as an introduction to how today grown up, intelligent people are worriedly sideyeing me when I say I'd fancy a Slytherin scarf.

It appears to me that the not-exactly-ostracism-at-least-outside-tumblr towards identifying with villains or even simply not completely cinnamon rolly characters has a couple of deeper rationales. One is that overtly morally unclear characters that are also intentionally identifiable with are a relatively new phenomenon in popculture. Villains could have been sympathetic but not really anything else until quite recently. They could have a point but wallow in how evilly they act on this point. They could even be likeable or awe-inspiring. But there always had to be a clear wall between them and audience, as well as the hero. RotJ Vader is in fact a great example of a villain who is sympathetic but not identifiable with, he exists in a simple paradigm of well he's Luke's dad and he believes there's good in him and he sounds miserable sometimes but otherwise yeah he offers to rule the galaxy because that's what villains do. He's also coded as the parent generation rather than the one the target audience would identify with. And of course, full body armour and mask complete the picture of unapproachability. OT Vader doesn't have motivation, past, psyche or really anything else other than he's Luke's dad, it took 20 years to change that. And now? Now we get good organisations being controlled by baddies, heroes having different opinions on their own ethical status, villains mirroring their motivations... On the one hand it's an interesting breath of fresh air in texts which were slowly becoming their own parodies, on the other there needs to be a balance between these problematic(TM) notions and unproblematic(TM) resolutions and frankly not all creators find this balance as I sometimes worry will be the case with the sequels. And mass audience straight doesn't know how to handle this in discourse, not because they're too dumb only because a tacit understanding even only theoretically present in discussions of more high-brow culture simply hasn't formed there yet. It's a widely accepted fact that some of the most discussed, desirable and given to best actors Shakespeare roles are the likes of Richard III, Lady Macbeth or Iago and there's no need explaining that fascination with them doesn't stem from condoning murder only confronting us with the darker but oh so human aspects of our nature. MCU, SW and BBC discussions have yet to get this memo.

And then there’s the matter of lifestyle commodification, which I think finds its echo even in something as trivial as popularity of online which character are you tests. There is something of a phenomenon of subjecting many elements of our lives to some one hobby or life choice, which sounds obvious until we look at shops trying to sell special coffee only for physically active people - because it’s speculated that it really all boils down to profit being bigger from selling a full lifestyle set (clothes, food, furniture) of some archetypal physically active person (or bookworm, fan or even activist) than y’know, just good shoes and some gear. So the point is that we are tought to think in full lifestyle sort of way rather than dissecting things and taking out only what we want. Ergo, you can’t like, let alone identify with, some aspects of a character and not everything about them - so if the character is morally gray/villainous you need to make it clear you don’t condone murder.

Then there is an old matter which gained new power lately - the moral panic over the influence of media. There’s no denying there exists a relationship between the culture we take in and our psyche, but pratically no serious researcher still believes in the “sponge” model where audience just sucks in whatever the text pours at them (fanfiction is in fact frequently pointed at as an example of actively recreative audience). Can exposition to lots of trivialized violence in tv make us numb to real world violence? Yes, research shows it can. But there’s a difference between sitting all day in front of tv mindlessly watching hours of sex, drugs and violence and engaging in problematic(TM) characters. As it’s frequently repeated, if you go on a killing spree inspired by a video game, there’s probably something wrong with you and not the game played by thousands of other people. Then again, we musn’t forget that part of history when committing a suicide while cosplaying Werther was all the rage among young european men.

And I think this also ties with how everything in contemporary popculture needs to mean something, or even in fact be some aspect of social reality. This is hardly the freshest phenomenon (Roland Barthes claimed already back in the 60s that popularity of aliens, martians more specifically, was due to mental association of red planet with Soviet Union during the cold war), but now it’s become a popular knowledge and, as abstract ideas tend to in mass interpretation, it got simplified to the level where FO aren’t simply visually inspired by pretty much every totalitatian system ever only are neo-nazis. As such it becomes one’s moral duty to waste emotional energy on righteously hating fictional characters in a kids’ movie or else you support nazism. Hence also all the school shooter, creepy stalker, spoiled brat etc. readings of Kylo Ben and all the mess going on around 11 (which really makes me think that new Who audience badly needs to learn what sh*t classic Doctors would pull).

In general I’d say there’s a slightly disturbing blurring of lines between reality and fiction going on before our eyes. It’s almost as if we couldn’t just chill out and let ourselves be transported to Oz without questioning the influence of ruby slippers on munchkin economy anymore. Or return to Kansas without demanding a yellow brick road.

#asks #star wars #dr who #villain discourse #not 100% cinnamon roll discourse #culture ramblings #slytherclaw 4 life

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the-uptake · 5 years

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Something-Something Full Empty

The Uptake, The world was beginning to fluoresce into wounds. Book 2, Chapter 3. Go to previous. I never said ‘Choly was a rational creature. TWs: Poisoning, attempted lust suicide, symphorophilia minutiae, hard emeto, joint trauma.

_________________________________

Leaving Cecil to sleep, 'Choly rolled off the mattress into the floor, and stood again. With damp hair, he walked on his knees over to the microwave perched on a cardboard box. From one of the food boxes in the floor, he pulled a food-meal bar. In his horridly over-loved armchair, he peeled down the wrapper and ate quietly, washing down the pebbly, vaguely flavored junk with the rest of his room temperature vodka coffee from earlier. His face soured. Neither the bar nor the coffee revolted him individually--but those of more frail constitutions should not consume them together. But, he persisted toward polishing off the easy-access, high-protein substance that would help soak up a bit of his encroaching hangover without waking his boyfriend.

While he snacked with the reader in his lap, legs up with his feet up in the seat with him, he continued browsing for more Wolfrin information. He’d most likely find Wolfrin in the Quarter somewhere on Level 1, since Levels 2 and 3 saw less chemical dumping and more solids. And he could most likely slip past EPA’s barricades near where the buildings functioned as support columns for the downtown off ramp from the Bayonne Bridge.

A morsel fell off the bar down his tank top, and he fished it out and ate it absently.

Drafting a mental laundry list trapped him in a loop of thought for a spell. No matter how much either of them wished it, ‘Choly genuinely had almost zero experience with chasing verbot--or truffling, for that matter--and this whole thing smacked of ridiculous parody. He tossed the bar wrapper in the waste bin under the TV tray. It had crushed him in a very real way that night, to finally admit his financial infirmities to Cecil, and despite Cecil’s supportive response to the confession, in this forming illicit act existed an opportunity to prove that 'Choly deserved his admiration.

His peculiar spontaneity had attracted Cecil, hadn’t it? The dreg glanced down at the fresh tattoo on his right forearm, a simple clean monochrome style, a triangular sigil divided by an inverted ray of swords. He took another drink, and sighed. Ink excited his boyfriend, an indicative tongue of rebellious fire which imparted its language upon the skin. He’d gotten the design at encountering Cecil’s enthusiasm (the librarian himself porting two intricate tattoo sleeves), and had come close to touching up his dye job. It felt so... fake, as though he couldn’t trust his identity to hold up to scrutiny should it meet any. He’d lived his life surrounded by verbot, but he wasn’t really a chaser.

But he could chase. Couldn’t he? Certainly a sorter could wander off the cadre floor in pursuit of the black market lifelines that pulsed out from it. That’s how he found the hard drive in the first place, after all. Sorter 101: test all data technologies for improper disc wipes. But, to step out of the cadre and into the yards... That was another creature entirely.

He checked his messaging service one more time for Revenant. When he still found his friend offline, he hovered over the username to see he’d last logged in thirteen days ago. Rev usually stayed logged on, bare minimum away or idle, and ‘Choly took notice just how long it had been since his friend had last logged on. He reassured himself with the affirmation that if Rev couldn’t be raised to join in the fun, that he’d just have to play catch-up later. But...

You’d never really do that.

‘Choly shifted to slouch to one side in the chair, then immediately to the other. He bit at his centred labret ring. The thing is, he would really do that. Abandon help him, should he ever locate any of the Geek’s... elephant’s feet he described in coitus not an hour before. In the past, only the barrier of reality and proximity had ever stopped him from acting on any of these impulses. Substances which could transfigure someone beyond the human condition simply had not existed, and now they existed, and they existed in his city. A twisting radiochemical kismet had manifested a new and unexplored realm of potential metagenesis, and he couldn’t deny her.

There was a chance he could, in the attempt to mod the system, brick it. But, the risks that came with unprecedented payout only heightened the appeal. Everything about the attempt, he calculated beforehand, arcane and obscene in its own right. Every article, every action, held in it a certain power over him. In that moment of machination, the fantasy-becoming-reality seized him to his core.

He outright lacked compunction for any real safety in the endeavor--only ritual and circumstance had a home in him tonight. The only industrial gear he owned was his BLT, likely his most expensive belonging. Inlaid with backlighting and translucent digital display, the curved clear acrylic full-face visor-tech provided its wearer a customized vision aid and variably hands-free Web access. Sorters predominantly had them for jotting invoice notes, and some models even had edges outfitted with inline respirator film which could filter e-waste dust particulate. His visor and cutout work gloves would suffice to brave the hazardous waste quarantine. Not that any of that mattered once he got to the prize.

A subtle rummage through the pile of clothing beside the bed netted him a black t-shirt, his hybrid denim skinnies, and a pair of socks. Donning the change of clothes, he swallowed his nerves, then slicked down his bangtails to either side of his face and put on his BLT halo over them and pulled down the glass. Cecil had not yet stirred a bit, and as the pale chartreuse visor calibrated to his prescription, ‘Choly smiled to himself in a distant ache that crawled into anticipation.

With the visor running, he could then strap on his black work boots and confirm the contents of his clear sidebag: his glasses, in the off chance the visor acted up, and chapstick, wallet of cardkeys and cred, and his reader. A variety of smuggling vessels had graced his fantasies, but carried off-site in a see-through bag, no success seemed so viable as with his tippling cane. He shivered as he put on his slim knee-length coat just thinking about following through with it, and grabbing his cane from the umbrella stand, slipped out of the apartment unnoticed.

Not many buses ran this late at night going down from Level 5, and he appreciated the bone conduction nodes in the halo of his BLT to burn the good next half hour waiting at the bus stop with music. Favoring the organic shoegaze loaded in his reader with cubes, he resisted the compulsion to stream music to save bandwidth. Once his ride arrived, the lonely transit passed quickly with no stops along the way, and he continued scheming and re-scheming the exact minutiae of his task uninterrupted.

He got off on Level 3. After a certain hour, the free public lifts charged a third-cred per level, and he happily resigned to waving his toll pass upon entry to the empty lift to fork over the full cred it would cost. Upon stepping foot off the lift at Level 1, he turned off his music and focused fully on his errand.

The residential sector of the Quarter came alive at sunset with the typical ambient discord of various yelling. It struck an unusual chord in the stalker, to descend to ground level by lift to find the stalking yards themselves so eerily silent, accompanied only by the sound of his limp gait. Bustling traffic aped distantly above him against the solipsistic dimensions of the area. Passing by some blocks, he heard the occasional dripping, or the echo of vehicles in reverse. Subconsciously, he knew the latter meant more waste dumping belied the quarantine, for its inhabitants to discover come morning.

‘Choly savored entering a space the federal officials had declared unsafe, and that his low-grade BLT filtration would likely only do so much. No accounting for air quality in a place like this, after all. Stalkers had reasons they didn’t even eat in their own homes, and only dined in the commercial district abutting it. Yet, federal bullying had instated this quarantine, this exclusion zone. The stalkers hadn’t asked for this. They’d never asked for any of this. Even just a year ago, he’d have met no resistance venturing where he did now; but tonight, he remained vigilant for EPA employees who might try to stop him.

First, the government had to deny him the right to grafting by banning the splicing drug Vekarix before medicine had advanced far enough to permit more than just mammal, marsupial, and reptile compatibility. Bullshit insect politics. He still sometimes regretted trying to be patient, now that he couldn’t even settle on something lesser. But now, with the Wolfrin, the government sought to deny him the right to knot up his genetics like some kind of saccharine, fractal klein bottle. They were his genes, and he wouldn’t have it to let them tell him what he could and couldn’t do with them.

The dreg did his best to skirt a different path, anytime he noticed generator spotlights or vehicles that stood out as non-native. At a dead end just Southwest of the residential area fashioned from abandoned factory buildings, he glanced out over the waterfront reflecting the lights of higher levels, and steeled himself. The loose quarantine of all three lowest Levels started at 87th Street and extended just past 99th down through the foundations of the Bayonne Bridge, from the shores of Newark Bay to the West all the way East to Route 440. Almost the entire Quarter, but not quite. He embarked across the street, and with buildings only to one side, not even the sound of his cane accompanied him, replaced by the waterfront current. A yard cordoned off with caution tape greeted him. Unlike the typical chemical dumping yard, rather than scattered unceremoniously, hundreds of drums had been arranged neatly, as though sorted by contents. Two figures in white hazmat suits guarded the locked fence, so he wandered the perimeter until he found a point at which the rust of fluctuating water levels had peeled the chain-link wires from the support pipe. He could not feasibly scale the fence, so through the narrow gap in it he went.

He had a lot of reasons to avoid truffling.

Only limited but effective use of generator spotlights illuminated this particular yard, set on key haystacks of drums. He looked side to side in awe. A combination of water and a saturation of leaking chemicals thickened the damp soil, which possessed an ungodly industrial stench that cut through even the BLT filters and thrilled ‘Choly wild. The elements had rusted off the labels of many of the drums, their contents now unknown without cracking them open. These contents, for many of them, had trickled from cracks and crusted upon their exteriors. He licked his lips eagerly with a knitted brow, at the thought of the technicolor landscape this must have been by broad daylight.

Distracted by near-synesthesia, his cane sank in too deep in the slurried soil and compromised his footing. He stumbled and planted face-first in the noxious mud, and his cane resounded against a drum. The two on-duty EPA workers immediately approached to investigate the potential for an intruder, and he panicked at hearing the gates open. The muck smearing his visor blinded him, and though he grappled for his cane and kicked at the mud in vain, attempts to stand only successfully doused himself further in noxious muck. Tears streaking hot, he planted a filthy gloved palm flush to his mouth under his BLT at the awareness he’d hyperextended his knee in the fall. Adrenaline propelled him to a hiding place in the middle of an arrangement of drums. A stink that reminded of battery acid enveloped him. Deer-eyed, he raked mud from his visor and crouched in a mixture of agony and intensity, and watched as the beams of two flashlights cased the area. One guard ultimately informed the other that the sound must have been a drum giving into chemical pressure, and that they’d investigate more thoroughly once they had the daylight, and then they returned to their post outside the gate.

Once alone again, ‘Choly tried to stand back up, this time forced to rely on his cane with a fully bad-off leg. He unzipped his coat a bit and took a mouthful of fabric between his teeth from the shoulder of his shirt, and bore down hard on the leg to reset it. Stifling a scream into a viscous nasal sputter, he ended up biting through the garment. He only consciously ignored the taste of mud, shock-induced drooling joining the mess of substances splattered and smeared on him. Vacuously he wiped his mouth with the back of his glove, and continued onward.

He stopped at one cordoned off haystack of drums, eyeing how the leakage glowed a furious antifreeze green in the moonlight. Though the precise and biting stench of rotten flowers, he couldn’t pinpoint the metallic odor. He stood there for some time in slack disbelief how easily he had arrived here. Surely this substance had caused all the media chaos. Trembling, he held up the tape with his cane and skimmed the faces of the drums for what little details remained. He squinted at faded white ink on glossy black surfaces. 1,4-dimethyl-2,3-fluoro-dieldrin. Before tonight, he’d known it only by a handful of trade names. Drinaflux. Wolfrin. Fluxeldrin. Though it did not appear notably caustic, the drums leaked from bluish iridescent crystalline scabs. He couldn’t read the warning diamond save the 4 on the blue health field.

He whet his lips and in both hands gripped the lever-locked ring poorly securing the lid to the open-head drum. He nearly doubled over it, enraptured by proximity, and licked at his teeth with a sneering, ragged breath. He hinged up his visor in favor of leaving as little between him and the experience of the prize, and he wafted readily of the nauseous and overwhelmingly metallic bouquet of the corrosion-halo. The stuff pooled around his uneven footprints from other adjacent drums. He frowned to unstick himself from the soft shoreline sediment so he could begin his work with surer footing.

‘Choly unscrewed the handle of his cane and tucked it in one coat side pocket, then carefully shook out all four glass vials it could carry and deposited them in the opposite pocket. He did not think to bring mechanical tools with him, and no amount of prying dislodged the lever of the corroded lid-ring. The attempt did, however, coax a crack to leak more readily, and he hurriedly unscrewed a vial to catch the liquid serendipity as it dripped out. Once filled, he slid the resealed vial into the cane, then followed with another.

Caught up in the delirium of success and fumes, he lost reality long enough not to recognize the workers approached on another perimeter scouting. Frantic at the wet smack of their heavy footsteps, he cried in desperation that the chemical wouldn’t pour any faster. He couldn’t leave without a full empty--he couldn’t. The two guards grabbed him and dragged him back as he shakily reaffixed the handle of his cane.

“You punk! Abandon you doin’ in here?”

“I--”

“This place’s giftwrapped with yellow tape for a reason, kid.”

“I-- I’m not--” He modulated his breathing. “I had t’see for myself the slag’s goin’ on. That’s the stuff, yeah? That’s what’s makin’ everybody sick as sin.” He tried to wag a finger at the haystack, but met silence as each guard hooked one of his arms in one of theirs, insisting his exit. “Hh-- hey! Answer me!”

The two workers tossed him out into the street. His cane clattered to the pavement and his bag crunched beneath him. He curled into himself after impact, and stared at his cane as dead-still as he could from where he lay coddling his knee and seething through his teeth.

“Abandon’s wrong with that kid.” The two of them returned inside the fence and locked it. “Obviously got health problems. The cane and all. Still climbing all over a yard like this. In the dark.”

“That’s a Stalker for you, man.” The other scoffed at ‘Choly, but after that their conversation fell too distant to overhear.

He sniffed away the mucus and twitched, aching all over and encrusted in chemical-saturated mud. Once he’d recovered enough from the fall, he reclaimed his prize. Disbelief stole his breath, of what he’d managed, his eyes thrown wide with delight. Holy slagging shit. It worked.

With bated breath, he sat up and pulled into his lap his cane, and his bag from under him. Unzipping the bag, he inspected the reader with relief, only to learn the crunch had been his glasses. A detached grope at his BLT pulled the visor back down with lighthearted resignation. He stood again to limp away before the workers had second thoughts about just letting him walk away. If the glasses were the only loss tonight, he’d succeeded in spades.

As he shambled along the dilapidated block, ‘Choly gawked at the cane he carried rather than used, in too much shock from his stupid success to ease his horrendous limp. He slipped into an alleyway once outside the quarantine proper, and leaned against a brick wall to catch his breath and rest his bad leg. If he ever slagged up a knee, it was the left one, wasn’t it. The sheer rush of the experience alone dampened the pain--but without fail, he’d more than feel it come morning.

He slid down the wall and sat. The impact of hitting the concrete might have shattered any of the flasks, and he scrambled to unscrew the handle back off to expose its contents. This expedited consequence agitated his aches to the surface at last. He shook out the vials one at a time, and set them in his lap with each confirmed in tact. Most of the chemical’s bizarre glow had faded, the stuff now more resembling the glaze of antifreeze on pavement. He gritted his teeth with a ragged breath and sniffed what had escaped the threads of the cap, to a gag reflex. The bouquet of rotten cut flowers had only intensified. He put the cautious tip of his tongue to the edge of the cap, and recoiled in a delighted revulsion at the mere taste.

Here and now, ‘Choly had to follow this idiotic series of bad ideas through to completion. He couldn’t take it home, to partake in private. Cecil would try to talk him out of it.

The copper cast of the nearest street light lay too far away from him for benefit. In the dark, he pulled out his reader and initialized his flashlight again to survey the site of his metagenesis. At this point he realized his battery had sunk to a sliver--he’d written for some time before coming down here. Too, he’d inadvertently left on his data all the while he’d researched his crown-stuffs--checking his usage statistics, he’d run out of non-Web data altogether, including minutes. He’d soon have no artificial light in the privacy of the alley, and if this went badly, he couldn’t call for help. He hadn’t even told anyone where he’d gone. Not that he had any reception from where he sat in the dank space between the two once-warehouses. The possibility he’d be helpless to the chemical’s aftermath only excited him further. It would have full control over him until it finished with him.

He swallowed hard, the oiliness of the glass tube an entirely too-pleasant sensation. It felt bitter. The chemical adopted that strange characteristic glow again, presumably from the temperature of skin contact. He emptied his splints and gloves into his bag along with his reader, allowing the dim glow of the metagen in his lap to light his endeavor.

Metagen. His mind reeled with the thought of his body wrecked asunder and rebuilt in another design. He wondered how instantaneous metagenesis might be, what method most fast-acting. From the start he hadn’t planned on having enough of the stuff to go with skin contact, so he proceeded with ingestion. He’d be the first to undergo metagenesis by drinking Wolfrin. Would he turn out as well, or even better than, the Geek? How many metahumans had this stuff even created? He’d soon join them. He unscrewed a flask and pocketed the cap, locked in metaskepsis, then let his nostrils drink deep of Wolfrin’s suppurate stink. He held it to his lips, and licked what the wet threads had transferred onto them, and he choked a bit on the potency of the rotten, metallic taste of the stuff, even more biting than the smell. His nose crinkled at the initial experience to steel himself, and he went bottoms-up.

Reflexively, he flung the flask across the alley. It shattered on the concrete. His hands shot to his mouth, eyes and nostrils watering as he immediately choked on vomit. His writhing echoed in the empty space, and he grew delirious on potential consequences. The entire length of his throat burned. He barely managed to down a second flask. The Wolfrin now coated his stomach lining. Another attempt at upheaval seized him up, and a moan shook deep in his lungs. Rhetoric only spurred him further, and he blindly grasped to cup himself through tears, his grip so weak between infirmity, illness, and exhaustion. Stifling a third dry heave, he drained the third flask, and the fourth chased quickly after. He blacked out as the toxins took hold, the delirious onset of an Erebus of nightmares. He dreamed himself melting to all abandon to soak into the asphalt, that he dissolved in entirety before reduced to atoms then recompiled by the catalytic substance he’d imbibed.

The city awoke before he did. After daybreak he sat up, shaky, and rubbed his head scruff with a groan. Clammy all over, he shuddered from a coating of morning mist and dust. He eventually noticed the blood splatter on the ground beside where he’d laid, and automatically wiped his nose and mouth. He didn’t pair the observation to the action until he saw the back of his hand, and snapped awake in arousal. Though his head reverberated with a lead-deep ache, his entire body throbbed to its tempo, and he writhed.

He knew Cecil would be livid with him for this--but he’d acclimate to having a meta around, wouldn’t he? The notion had him face-down in his blood spill in an instant, running his fingertips through its dark, still-damp stain.

“Oh slag--” he ground even more insistently against the ground, “--his meta. Gonna be-- hiS META--”

Nausea overwhelmed him again, and he coughed a spatter of blood. The clamminess, he realized, came more from a sick sweat, but this only aroused him further. The last thing he imagined before passing out again was his body in wretched, retching upheaval as it rejected everything it had rendered obsolete.

#biopunk #cyberpunk #dystopian #toxic waste #symphorophilia #the world was beginning to fluoresce into wounds #the uptake #melanochro kara #something something full empty #metaskepsis. the prurient cousin of omphaloskepsis

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 19 Review: Panic on the Streets of Springfield

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This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 19

The Simpsons Season 32, episode 19, ” Panic on the Streets of Springfield,” is one of the most pointed parodies the series has crafted in a while. It takes on pre-teen angst with the dry iced wit of an 80s anti-Brit-pop band. But it also follows a slow, sad slide into anguished irony.

I was looking for a laugh, then I found a laugh, and heaven knows I’m miserable now. My head hangs heavy with the pain of laughter. Not only does the episode strip Lisa of what appears to be perfectly suitable accompaniment for a life of lonely elitism, it also makes us all rethink Slapify. It may offer Millennial rock at Baby Boomer prices, but it teaches Lisa good taste is a curse.

The spiky haired, middle child is very picky about her music. After hating everything she hears, Slapify suggests music for people who hate everything, and the top artist is Quilloughby and his band The Snuffs. This is a stand-in for Morrissey, lead vocalist and lyricist for the Smiths, very thinly veiled behind a shroud of the Cure and Joy Division. The Snuffs’ shows have been called “A three-hour dance party in a freshly dug grave.” They made depression hummable for alienated teenagers in the 1980s. With hits like “How Late Is Then,” “What Difference Do I Make?” “Simon has a birthmark,” and “Everyone is horrid except me and possibly you,” they made parents wonder if their kids would ever get out of therapy.

The band’s sardonic brand of radical vegetarianism turned “The flesh that comes with cheese is proof of your moral disease” into an anthem. Lisa falls in love with “Hamburger Homicide,” and her descent is expertly choreographed. The lyrics are inspired sub-genre satire. “Every day I draw my bath and pray I will drown,” Quilloughby sings, and the audience gleefully wishes him the utmost success. The songs were co-written by the episode’s writer Tim Long, and Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords.

Benedict Cumberbatch is sublime as Quilloughby. He brings out the true ennui behind the lyrical content. He sees Springfield as very much like his own town, “dismal, and nothing good will ever come from it.” Cumberbatch and Yeardley Smith deliver devious comic chemistry. Ralph establishes the innate self-involved, exclusivity in the brightest kid in his class. “Lisa doesn’t like it when other people talk,” he notes. So, when Quilloughby dropkicks Ned Flanders’ pileous affectations into the pews with “facial hair is not a substitute for personality,” they bond like two Sideshow Bobs.

Lisa’s lines take on the bite of an eight-year-old, “Every day you wave your wand, but nothing magical happens,” she tells the Springfield Elementary School band conductor. This pleases the nihilistic phantasm, “I enjoyed that and I enjoy nothing,” but doesn’t play well with the administration. Skinner calls in Homer and Marge over concerns Lisa has become “poetically world-weary.” This is a very Simpsons kind of observation. It cuts to the quick with a finely skewered edge of self-awareness.

The principal’s seen this before, which means he’s had an opportunity to misjudge it in the past. Skinner recognizes Lisa’s black booties as an emo cry, which he blames the current popularity of music of the past. Music is an easy scapegoat on The Simpsons. “Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel,” Bart observed in the “Homerpalooza” episode from 1996.

Bart is having his own problems with Lisa’s new friend, though he is clueless, a perennial problem he usually skateboards around. Bart believes he’s “the drumstick in the chicken bucket” he calls his friends and therein lies his destruction. Nelson plays right into it: of course he stays up night thinking of how fresh Bart keeps those old tired pranks.

The Simpsons Acknowledges Continuity Watchdogs with an Online Easter Egg

By Tony Sokol

The school bully gets in quite a few good lines, which push the narrative. He dismisses the lunch special tacos’ meatless replacement because “mushrooms are chairs for frogs.” When he hears there are little pieces of bacon between the Shiitake, he almost tearfully exclaims “this taco had a mom.” This perfectly encapsulates Lisa’s dilemma. The entire school laughs as Lisa, even Miss Hoover, who has probably been waiting for this moment.

Dr. Hibbert is now voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson, who has been playing smaller roles since 2009. Tonight, the affable physician ladles out bad news to Homer. His sugar is up, and his testosterone is down. Homer now has to face harsh realities. Something he has historically run away from, usually shrieking. He will never get to be an NFL quarterback who is really an international superspy. Hibbert prescribes a drug, but Homer gets hooked on the commercial he has to sit through before listening to instructions. There are only two things the real men of Springfield believe can boost manliness: weapons and trucks, and guns don’t come with ultimate torque. The triple XL 550 won’t be found in any medical journals, but reading journals is one of the leading causes of lowered testosterone.

Marge is a different person this episode. She’s not out of character, and reacts wholly within the defined role, but she is uncharacteristically hard-lined. This is the first time she is not an enabler. She has zero tolerance for the triple XL 550. One of best visual sequences is when we see Marge banging her head against the wall in its infrared. Not only does she force Homer to accept she’s more a truck guy than he’ll ever be, spouting the definition of torque, but tells him she’s “dealing with an actual problem.” Marge also makes Lisa swallow her bitter pill in a very familiar way. One of the earliest episodes dealt with sadness and music, and the saddest kid in grade two fought for her right to sorrow then too.

Though Quilloughby is credited as the product of Lisa’s fractured psyche, he’s really more like Jojo Rabbit’s imaginary friend slumming on Evergreen Terrace. In his lifelong quest to disconnect with society, Morrissey went from the Socialist Red Wedge to the Great Replacement Theory. Watching Lisa lose her idealized relationship slowly dissemble actually softens the blow we should get from the reveal. She’d already begged Quilloughby “don’t ruin it,” so I won’t spoil the ending, but it would have been more devastating to have Winston Churchill surrender without warning.

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I know there is nothing more tiresome than gratitude, but “Panic on the Streets of Springfield” appreciably defies expectations. The Simpsons is on a roll this season, mixing light comedy with deeper character developments. Arcs have sunk into darker areas, and the conclusions consistently temper the sweetness with subversive ambiguity. Tonight, Lisa learns she should listen to people, one out of five times, and her mother will always be waiting on the other end of her slammed door. Marge lets Homer keep truckin’. The episode is surprisingly warm, and almost depressingly funny.

The post The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 19 Review: Panic on the Streets of Springfield appeared first on Den of Geek.

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sleepykittypaws · 3 years

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24 Hours of Made-for-TV Christmas Movies

Kacey Bange of Made-for-TV Christmas put together her ideal day of made-for-TV Christmas movies, and I thought that was a fun thought experiment, so following the criteria Bange laid out, here’s what the first 24 hours of the fully fictional Sleepy Kitty Paws Christmas Movie Channel would look like…

6-8 PM: Hallmark's A Family Thanksgiving (2010) - Since I presume this marathon starts in October, like they all do now, we'll ease into Christmas by focusing first on Thanksgiving. Something the actual networks no longer do.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s available OnDemand and on the Hallmark Channel Everywhere website and app.

8-10 PM: Hallmark Hall of Fame CBS movie A Season for Miracles (1999) - Bange designated this primetime slot for a quintessential made-for-TV Christmas movie, and this from the days when Hallmark movies were serious, and on network TV, is that. Not a rom-com, this is a holiday movie of the heart-tugging family variety.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s in the 2020 rotation on Hallmark Drama, with its next showing set for tomorrow (Dec. 21) and is available on DVD

10 PM-12 AM: Freeform's (when it was ABC Family) Holiday in Handcuffs (2007) - This wild Melissa Joan Hart-Mario Lopez comedy is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to see as prime-time transitions into late night.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s on Hulu, and still in Freeform’s annual 25 Days of Christmas rotation, and is on DVD

12-2 AM: Lifetime's Holiday Switch (2007) - Now that it’s starting to get really late, you need something to keep you up, and the bonkers premise of Holiday Switch, where a woman crawls through her dryer into an alternate reality, is definitely an eye-opener.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s now available on Amazon Prime under this, and its alternate title, A Christmas Wish.

2-4 AM: Netflix's Christmas on the Square (2020) - Bange designated this the Dolly Parton slot, and while I also like her pick of Smokey Mountain Christmas, this year's absolutely unhinged Netflix musical—which I loved—might make more sense when watched at 2 AM.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s a Netflix original, so available exclusively on the streamer.

4-6 AM: A&E's Karroll's Christmas (2004) - Not that this actually quite good riff on A Christmas Carol deserves to be in such a little-seen position, but that's about the only time slot it aired in, before they just stopped airing it all.

Where you can actually watch it: As mentioned above, that’s the rub. Never released on physical media, and not available legally via DVD or digital anywhere, it pops up in full on YouTube from time to time. Someone release Karroll's Christmas or stream it, please!

6-8 AM: Lifetime's Christmas Perfection (2018) - This made-for-TV Christmas movie that is also kind of a parody of made-for-TV Christmas movies isn't too crazy for early morning viewing, but is just fun enough to make you laugh before you're fully awake.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s on Hulu

8-10 AM: ABC Family's The Christmas List (1997) - Bange designated this slot for a movie with kid appeal, so I'll pick this wacky Mimi Rogers movie about a magic department store mailbox.

Where you can actually watch it: distressingly difficult to find. Never officially released in physical or digital format, nor airing anywhere in the last decade or so, it pops up on YouTube and there are people selling bootleg DVD copies.

10 AM-12 PM: ABC Family's Snow (2004) - This is the same movie Bange put in this slot, and if we're still trying to keep kids interested, it's a great pick and on my all-time favorites list, too. It's definitely Ashley Williams' best Christmas movie.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s on Hulu, and still in Freeform’s annual 25 Days of Christmas rotation, along with its sequel.

12-2 PM: ABC Family's Snowglobe (2007) - This magic snow globe movie starring the lumnious Christina Milianshould should hold on to older kids, and gets the grown-ups involved, too.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s on Disney+, and still in Freeform’s annual 25 Days of Christmas rotation.

2-4 PM: ABC Family's Christmas Do-Over (2006) - This has a cross-generational appeal, and feels like the sort of thing tweens might not hate, and grandpa can fall asleep to on the sofa after a big meal.

Where you can actually watch it: It’s still in Freeform’s annual 25 Days of Christmas rotation, and available On Demand and in Freeform’s app.

4-6 PM: ABC Family’s Three Days (2001) - Another of the more serious, and unexpected, holiday movies. A love story, but not a rom-com, that's perfect for late afternoon, curl-up-on-the-couch viewing.

Where you can actually watch it: Really hard to find for a long time, it’s now on Disney+

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tube-thoughts-blog · 6 years

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tube thoughts vol. 8

zero stars - terrible, 1/2 a star - dull, 1 star - folly, 1 1/2 stars - lacking, 2 stars - fair, 2 1/2 stars - decent, 3 stars - terrific

Kroll Show: Gigolo H-O-R-S-E *"Horse not whores."* 2 1/2 stars

Cinematic Titanic: "The Wasp Woman" a Roger Corman flick *"Anaphylactic schlock."* close to 3 stars with riffing 2 stars without

Max Headroom: Grossberg's Return *MTV Rocks the Vote for Hillary Clinton by getting its viewers to tune out and tune in to The Jersey Shore / Real World.* 2 1/2 stars

Blind Date (Deluxe Edition) *Raunchy reality show uncensored material and bloopers from the early 2000s. It's strange to see just how much the fashions have changed. That California douchebag & slut 'look' is a real time capsule (1998? - 2004?) of guilty pleasure to gawk at.* 2 1/2 stars

Swamp Thing: The Watcher *Redneck androids and a test tube Alice in Wonderland un-birthday.* 3 stars

Branson Famous: The Brangelina of Branson *In a town that's stuck in a rhinestone americana timewarp, a family of big haired and big belt buckle entertainers step all over each other in pointy boots in order to be the shining star in a fading industry of entertaining a dwindling crowd of retiree tourists.* 2 stars

==== My Big Redneck Family: Redneck Wedding

*Tater salad turned bad, but the "Shamepain" still tastes good, I guess.

Tom Arnold is giddy to host a reality show that's structured and shot like a sitcom similar to Modern Family.

The presentation isn't half bad, but it's the same lowest common denominator behavior for the camera and those tired, cliche confessionals that all reality shows are required to have.

At least Branson Famous is original in its confessionals which are tacky singing confessionals that turn into sing offs.

Also, I want to know how theme weddings like 'Redneck Weddings' are still considered to be traditional.

Sorry, queers, ya'll are weird, but cut off shorts, beer cans on the front row, and written vows about picking up tighty whiteys covered in trail marks so that the wife doesn't have to is considered a sacred ceremony.* sodomy or skidmarks I vote skid

2 stars

=============================================================

Newsreaders: How Sausage Is Made *A sausage making factory is turned into one of those pretentious millenials start up companies with a hilariously loose atmosphere, and it's visited and documented by a parody of one of those hipster nerd website's sexy cosplay chick who's one of those tries way too hard to be all about nerd culture wannabes. Also, Stevie, from Eastbound & Down, plays a lottery winner whose newly overly rich lifestyle makes him easy to despise.* 2 stars

X Files: Genderbender *The close knit community of Aphrodite and androgyne.* 3 stars

Hippies: Sexy Hippies *"I'm free. Nothin' worryin' me." Except for the fact that being a male, I think about sex every six seconds.* close to 3 stars

Impractical Jokers: Welcome to Miami *Beached Mer-man struggles in the sand for jelly donuts and an alligator is forced to wear a backpack.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Jonny Quest: The Calcutta Adventure *Jolly Jolly Hadji* 3 stars

Son of the Beach: Fanny and the Professor *"Touch my mouth, Louise!" Heatwave haywire.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Rinse Dream presents "Party Doll A Go-GO #2" (1991) *Jungle boogie sock-it-to-me shin-dig squeal flick.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Freddy's Nightmares: Love Stinks --------------

*Nookie with no strings attached because Freddy cut them.* 3 stars

*Re-Animator as a yuppie pizza shop cannibal.* 3 stars

----------------------------------------------

"Meatballs Part 2" (1985) *PG rated sex comedy with E.T. and Pee Wee Herman.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Tales from the Crypt: The Man Who Was Death *After his state overturns the death penalty, unemployed electric chair technician William Sadler takes his executioner's blues to the street.* 3 stars

Morton Downey Jr.: Child Abuse *Mort shows off his devilishly red socks and lets people pour their hearts out about that once dirty secret of the family that has come more to light in recent years as something not to hide.* 3 stars

"The Town That Dreaded Sundown" (2014) *Three different time periods entwined into a true crime homage to drive-in slasher movies like Friday the 13th part 2. It's not perfect, but it's prettier than a postcard with red eye gravy spilled over it. Did I say postcard? I meant porkchop. A porkchop with red eye gravy spilled over it. Well, maybe not that pretty. Porkchop, mmm.* close to 3 stars

From Dusk Till Dawn, the series: Pilot Episode *Aztecs, snakes, Geckos, demons, Texas Rangers, Mexican cartels, and last of all 21 year old white chicks (how and why did they escape so easy? makes little sense.).* between 2 and 2 1/2 and stars

Rifftrax presents "Terror At Tenkiller" *"More like timefiller at Tenkiller." Pointless small talk, routine walking and driving, mundane lake activity, creepy jerks, generic background music, plus slight instances of side-boob.* 3 stars with riffing 1 1/2 stars without

Tim & Eric - Bedtime Stories: Baby *The true horror is seeing Tim & Eric amuse themselves by getting odd looking middle-aged men to perform absurd fetish acts. Dr. Steve Brule's manchild cousin Jordan gets scammed by Tim & Eric, and Roseanne's Laurie Metcalf makes a show stealing cameo.* 2 stars

Finding Bigfoot: Paranormal Squatchtivity *Bobo, Ranae, and the other two dingbats travel to some isolated farms and woods in Pennsylvania that look straight out of Night of the Living Dead. They're searching not just for bigfoot, this time, but boo bumps in the night. They also make a sacrificial offer to the bigfoot by dumping bloody guts and powdered donut dust on a rock.* 1 star for the spook and squatch stuff 2 1/2 stars for the natural lighting, non-nightvision, picturesque shots of rural Pennsylvania

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Lonely Ghost *An early 90s mallrat Tiffany look-a-like bullies her "zeeb" cousin and nanny and meangirls clique until an encounter with a ghost girl from a mirror world.* 3 stars

Gargoyles: Long Way To Morning *gumption versus grouse* 3 stars

Farscape: A Human Reaction *Chricton returns home and finds out he no longer has one.* 3 stars minus maybe 1/2 a star for the twist

Wizards and Warriors: The Kidnap *Black magic and royal blood should never mix.* 3 stars

Friday the 13th, the series: Root Of All Evil *Exchanging currency for blood.* 3 stars

"The Granny" a film by Luca Bercovici (1995) *Stinking rich Stella Stevens has one foot on a banana peel and is pushed into the grave by the greedy inheritors of her wealthy will. An elixir, with a set of instructions similar to the handling of Gremlins, turns her into an Evil Dead inspired demon bitch. It's up to her mousey granddaughter, played by Shannon Whirry (who struggles to hide how sexy she typically is), to send her back to Hell.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Hill Street Blues: Up In Arms *Citizens against crime. Battlefield lovers. Troublemakers on the 6 o'clock news. Criminal turned Christian. Nude model and her ferocious dog of a man. Corrupt cop killed by razor wielding hooker.* 3 stars

------- Black History Month -- Non-Wayans Scary Movie -------------------

"Tales from the Hood" (1995)

*Welcome to my Mortuary: Some homeboys make a pick up of alleyway discovered drugs at a spooky funeral home ran by an eccentric mortician.* 2 1/2 stars

*Rogue Cop Revelation: Wings Hauser and some other pig cops go Rodney King on a political agitator while Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" plays as the soundtrack. Exactly one year later, the zombified martyr gets revenge.* 3 stars

*Boys Do Get Bruised: David Alan Grier as an extremely convincing and scary abusive stepfather.* close to 3 stars

*KKK Comeuppance: Voodoo dolls terrorize a racist politician at a cursed plantation. I couldn't help but laugh thinking of those Lil' Penny Hardaway doll commercials from the 90s.* 2 1/2 stars

*Hard Core Convert: A murderous gangbanger won't repent when a Maya Angelou type puts him through Clockwork Orange style therapy torture to get him to see he's killing his own kind in the same way white society lynched his ancestors. It does pose the question of whether it's strictly his fault, but I'm not sure if Spike Lee and others involved aren't suggesting that young black men should use violence on whites instead. There's a lot of venom and hatred and propaganda in this piece. Maybe rightfully so, maybe not.* either zero stars or close to 3 stars

*Mr. Simms: A Mexican standoff Day of the Dead style between the homeboys and the mortician who turns out to be Satan. Welcome to 90's terrible CGI hell, muthafuckas!* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

-------------------------------

Red Shoe Diaries: Just Like That *A cute receptionist, who likes to love it up in an elevator, tries to have it both ways with a rich French guy and a pre-Friends slumming it on softcore late night cable Matt LeBlanc.* close to 3 stars

Hannibal: Ceuf *"Norman Rockwell with a bullet." Hannibal Lecter with a daughter. Molly Shannon with a screw loose (not much of a stretch).* 3 stars

--- Duck Dynasty: Bathroom Baloney

*Outhouse racing, because "SOUTHERN!"

We used to not have indoor plumbing, ya'll.

It's pathetic what A & E will go to in order to justify an hour of tv filled with the stupid nonsense these jerks say.

It's all about those advertising dollars, and we morons who give them views.

They're supposed to be down to earth folk and manly men, but the one called Willie acts like he's never used a grill or stove, like most of his audience would have had to in their lives, when he burns his fingers and squeals like a girl as he ineptly cooks balogna.

Balogna, a cheap and overly processed lunchmeat that has been a part of the diet of that America that they're so quick to latch onto, but most of this millionaire family turns their nose up at the idea of having to eat.

Duck Dynasty, a brand and a family that sell their garbage merchandise at a company (Wal-Mart) that ripped the heart, balls, and innards (all that would go into balogna) out of American smalltown business folk and replaced it with cheap Chinese manufactured goods and sent jobs overseas so that Duck Dynasty's main audience would have to be poor and eat balogna.

Sing it with me, for the land of the freeee and we used to live in caves...*

running from zero to 1 star

==================================================================

Weird Science: Airball Kings *Gary got game.* 3 stars

15 Storeys High: Ice Queen *God gave us gas.* close to 3 stars

Game of Thrones: season 3 episode 8 *Lambs seeing the dagger.* 3 stars

"Here Comes The Devil" (2012) *The Kids Aren't Alright after a truckstop Picnic At Hanging Rock.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars or 1 1/2 stars for the awkward and amateurish dubbing. The English speaking voice actors are so bland that they drain the passion out of the Spanish actors' performances.

American Horror Story: Asylum "The Name Game" *Rare birds Roche limit.* 3 stars or 1 star for the Glee style musical number

American Horror Story: Coven "The Axeman Cometh" *Ouija (weegee) and all that j-a-z-z.* 3 stars

"House of Dreams" an adult film by Andrew Blake (1990) *Splooge on the foot of a model wearing expensive high heels in one of those new age architectured Malibu beach mansions captured by an expensive perfume high-art pretentious photographer while a Pure Moods cd plays on a thousand dollar plus stereo system.* 2 1/2 stars

----- Black History Month -- Genre Crossover Bad Movie ------------

Cinematic Titanic presents "East Meets Watts" *"Fact: drugs IS comin' into the ghett-toe." but so IS "Rock 'em sock 'em mofos." And "You can tell by the clothes that they're wearing, that it's a fine line between Kung Fu & Disco."* 3 stars with riffing between 1 1/2 and 2 stars without

-----------------------

The Prisoner: Many Happy Returns *Number 6 becomes The Omega Man, Castaway, Bourne, The Fugitive, Top Gun, and then Total Recall'd.* 3 stars

Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" (2001) *"Let's have a *in quotes* Holy Moment."* either close to 2 1/2 stars if you're open to interesting thinking about life or 1 star if you're annoyed by pretentious people talking out of their ass about philosophy...

Bob and Margaret: Love's Labours Lost *Bob pines over his snotty secretary.* close to 3 stars

Northern Exposure: Soapy Sanderson *"Singing your own song," even if it's a murder ballad.* 3 stars

Fargo: A Muddy Road *Orthodox spiders.* 3 stars

X Files: Lazarus *Scully's old flame is shot and smolders out, at the same time as his Clyde Barrow type suspect suffers the same fate. The suspect's spirit snakes into Scully's flame's body and goes on the hunt for his Bonnie.* close to 3 stars

"The Taking Of Deborah Logan" (2014) *The Exorcism of Martha Stewart. Wow, a found footage flick with mostly sympathetic characters, an actual story, creepy scares, and somewhat decent editing.* close to 3 stars minus 1/2 a star for the vomit vision shaking cam finale. I don't know why this generation has such a hard-on for found footage. It doesn't make fiction more realistic, it just makes it more painful to try to watch.

Stephen King's "Kingdom Hospital": season 1 episode 8 *We didn't start the fire.* 3 stars

"Inferno" a film by Dario Argento (1980) *Like a cat on hot bricks.* 2 1/2 stars

Manimal: Night of the Scorpion *Caper in the Caribbean.* 3 stars

Rifftrax presents "R.O.T.O.R." *Imagine Alex Murphy replaced by Jeff Foxworthy.* 3 stars with riffing 2 stars without

Thundarr the Barbarian: City of Evil *Civilization ends in 1994, and a world of sci fi and fantasy emerges. So, it's like Mike Judge meets Jack Kirby.* 3 stars

The Outer Limits: The Voice Of Reason *A paranoid paranormal conspiracy theorist gets a closed door intelligence session with govt officials, where he shows off alien events from the first season of the new outer limits.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Son of the Beach: Eat My Muffin *Luke Skywalker as "Divine" Rod.* 3 stars

Everything Is Terrible -------------------

2 Minute Slaughterhouse Rock: "Death ain't shit. Impress me." - 2 1/2 stars

3 Minute Mankillers: "Ladies, and I use that term loosely." Acting, and I use that term loosely. - 3 stars

Pregnant Men!: "I rolled over and went back to sleep." - 3 stars

Out of the Wild: Teddy bears and Werner Herzog. - close to 3 stars

Ninja Magic Dragon Kid!: "Do you know Don 'The Dragon' Wilson?" Well, he's barely in this, but there's this 12 year old who does karate... - 3 stars

-----------------------

The Ben Stiller Show: season 1 episode 1 *Bono for breakfast. Judd Apatow, Bob Odenkirk, and others help make this one of the best, and sadly forgotten, sketch shows of all time.* 3 stars

--- Black History Month -- Social Justice zombie classic with commentary ----

Rifftrax presents George Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead" *Apocalypse and Arby's.* 3 plus stars with riffing 3 stars without

---------------------

American Gothic: Meet the Beetles *Sheriff Buck versus Bruce Campbell.* 3 stars

The Greatest American Hero: Here's Looking At You, Kid *Vanishing act with top secret space age equipment. Vanishing act, when it comes time to meet the girlfriend's parents.* close to 3 stars

---- Black History Month --- Social Satire movie ---

"CSA - The Confederate States of America" *Slavery, for an economically strong and stable society.* either zero stars or 3 stars

----------

American Horror Story: Freakshow "Show Stoppers" *Cooped up rage.* 2 1/2 stars

American Horror Story: Freakshow "Curtain Call" *This series whimpers to a close like a sad gypsy's fart or a tired hobo's bugle.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Forever Knight: Dark Knight part 1 & 2 *Highlander meets the dawn of Seattle grunge meets Kolchak, the Night Stalker meets MTV's The Maxx.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Tales from the Crypt: Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone *"Dying for dollars." A death defying Houdini act where death isn't actually defied.* 3 stars

"Bad Girls" (1994) *Casserole western. At least Geena Davis isn't the lead.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

--- Everything Is Terrible ----

Camel Club Network: Joe Camel in tha nightclub. - 3 stars

You're A Hypocrite!: Grumpy theology getting off point and no fun. - 1 star

Watch the Jello Wiggle!: Thirty somethings determine the Teen Set. - 3 stars

Y'Know: No, I don't know, evangelical and or motivational white lady. - 2 1/2 stars

Truth or Dare: A deadly game for unstable yuppies.* 3 stars

--------

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice *Canadian junior high kids go "goth" over a Babylonian snake god.* 2 1/2 stars

--- Black History Month -- Prejudice Philosophy flick ---

Sam Fuller's "White Dog" (1982) *"Cure or kill the sickness."* either zero or 3 stars

---------

Morton Downey Jr.: Communism *Loudmouths, intelligence agents, government (U.S. & the U.S.S.R.) sponsored military groups in 3rd world hot-spots, and last of all "TRAITORS!"* 1 star

12:01 Beyond: Illegal Aliens ---------

*A man and his dog, living alone in the desert, are abducted by a ufo. that or the dog is an alien or becomes an alien?* close to 3 stars

*VHS quality trailer for the new War of the Worlds (not Spielberg / Cruise).* 3 stars

*TV rip promo for CBS showing of Sigourney Weaver in ALIENS.* 3 stars

*Mr. Lobo rambles about ancient alien conspiracy theories while an alien fires a electricity blaster behind him.* 3 stars

*Famous Studios' Superman in "Showdown": Superman framed with impostor.* 3 stars

*VHS quality rip trailer for the movie Hangar 18.* 3 stars

*TV quality rip for "Magic" 92 FM radio "The Superstar Space Cruiser" of radio stations playing classic rock albums.* 3 stars

*'The Tony Tomato Show' presents Heil Hipster performing in a Weezer 'Buddy Holly' esque music video.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

*VHS quality rip trailer for "Moon Trap." Killer lunar robots and Bruce Campbell.* 3 stars

*TV quality rip for an 1980s NYC Manhattan comic convention featuring a lot of classic Sci-Fi alien comic books.* 3 stars

*Ninja the Mission Force - Citizen Ninja: No rest for the Ninja. Not even a playground picnic.* close to 3 stars

*TV / VHS quality neon lazer graphics advertisement for Rochester's 95FM BBF.* 3 stars

*TV/VHS quality rip for an old 80s DR. Pepper commercial where a cowboy walks into a space bar cantina filled with alien puppetry creatures and orders a tall one. That is a Dr. Pepper.* 3 stars

*The "Saint of Insomniacs" Mr. Lobo sits by a Tesla type machine and greets a scary looking alien creature who is into probing.* 3 stars

*(feature movie) Cannon films presents - "Alien Contamination": Explosive xenomorph eggs, and a cyclops tentacle creature, in an exploitation flick.* 2 1/2 stars

*Vintage UHF tv advertisement for channel 6 XETV promoting 5, count 'em 5, classic episodes of the original Star Trek tv series.* 3 stars

*Vintage Fox tv affiliate WPGH channel 53 and its promotion of Alien Nation, the series' upcoming episode.* 3 star

*Vintage tv commercial for the OMNI sci fi "fact and fiction" magazine.* 3 stars

*Republic Pictures serial The Crimson Ghost in The Laughing Skull: Heavy water has leaks.* 2 1/2 stars

*Mr. Lobo may have been probed and payed 20 dollars for it.* 2 1/2 stars

*Grindhouse trailer for the flying frisbee alien leeches flick "It Came Without Warning."* 3 stars

*TV/VHS rip quality commercial for Diet Dr. Pepper featuring a Will Forte look alike living in a Raising Arizona / Joe Bob Briggs style trailer park with his sweetie and having a close encounter.* close to 3 stars

*Zolar X - Timeless (music video): The Ramones meets Mork & Mindy.* 2 1/2 stars

*Thumb Snatchers from the Moon Coccoon: Stop motion short about opposable thumb hatin' robot aliens and a Texas cow munching cowboy sheriff squaring off.* close to 3 stars

------------------

Cinematic Titanic: The Alien Factor *"Pissing Skittles."* 2 1/2 stars with riffing 1 star without

Everything is Terrible ----

*The Stinger: Pontiac feels that modern car concepts should be "wacky," "funky," filled with useless gadgets, and cost 2 million dollars to create.* close to 3 stars

*The Old New Age!: Puffy clouds and PBS philosophy / aesthetics / tunes.* 3 stars

*That Doll Looks Like Your Daughter!: Wholesome, loving, lifeless, and that uncanny valley...* 3 stars

*Reppies Agenda Revealed: Let's make a rainbow and do the electric slide, all for the glory of our New World Order overlords.* 2 1/2 stars

*Bully Bustin': "Sometimes, you gotta smack somebody."* 3 stars

-----------

USA Up All Night with host Rhonda Shear presents "Porky's 2" ----

*Win a piece of Rhonda's horrible (looks fingerpainted) artwork. Ha.* 3 stars

*Rhonda laments the flow of her particular pink piece of artwork.* close to 3 stars

*An operatic Korbel champagne commercial showing picturesque American life. yeah, maybe if you're drunk on Korbel.* 2 stars

*Turtle Wax magic and science to help shine your convertible using "science and magic." Available at K-Mart.* 2 1/2 stars

*Hurry to Sears for a 3 day paint sale.* 2 stars

*1 800 Collect will help you save on collect calls and it somehow helps a generic fake Yankee baseball player rob a homerun "Whatta save!"* close to 2 1/2 stars

*"Before Arnold, before Stallone, there was Skywalker." USA is showing the original Star Wars 8 / 7 central.* 3 stars

*Rhonda daydreams about 1950s romantic lifestyles and compares it to the 90s where she can't get a date, because all the guys are on dates with each other. Then, she reads fan mail about how much sexual energy she puts into her paintings, then she gives that painting away to said horny fan.* 3 stars

*Rhonda makes fun of male pushups in Porky's 2 as being "safe sex" and she shows off a horribly drawn portrait of her house with dog poop on the lawn.* 3 stars

*Rhonda cools off with a Snapple in a cheaply produced Snapple promo.* 2 1/2 stars

*Bluesy 90s slickly produced Greyhound bus travel commercial. I've taken a Greyhound bus trip. It's nowhere near this glamorous. It stinks, actually.* 2 1/2 stars

*The host of MTV Sports (whose name escapes me) is with Arnold in a Burger King BK TeeVee advertisement for the Summer of 93's biggest blockbuster "Last Action Hero."* close to 3 stars

*While a mom does some home repair, a toddler has a horrible gasoline accident and is shown in the hospital burn unit covered in bandages in one of those awful scary as shit PSA announcements from back in the day.* 3 stars

*GNC the authority on getting musclehead gym rats hooked on supplement taking pill addictions.* 2 star

*"Ever been curious about Hollywood girls?" Well, these babes dance luridly on the hosed down concrete floor of a large suburban downtown flat while dressed in leather and 60s biker hats in this phone sex 1 900 950 WILD commercial.* 3 stars

*Next is yet another phone sex commercial with girls looking straight out of Beverly Hills 90210. Wowza.* 3 stars

*Rhonda shows a classic "cut scene" from the Wizard of Oz "Suck my wand!" that just happens to have made it into Porky's 2. And Rhonda reads another fan letter in it which she continues to win over the hearts and views of fans for her offbeat sense of humor.* 3 stars

*Rhonda makes fishy faces with her self portrait.* close to 3 stars

*Then a hypnotic bumper with Rhonda twirling against a starlit background while wearing a one piece swimsuit / aerobics outfits. Wowza.* 3 stars

*never park your car without the CLUB anti-auto-theft device, especially if you live in a Texas Mexico bordertown. Ha. Whatever happened to those? I guess thieves figured out a way around the device.* 2 1/2 stars

*Beautiful, portrait pretty mornings begin at 8, that is Super 8 motel, and that is also if you're a yuppie business man driving around the backcountry (what business is there out there?) with a cup of steaming hot coffee on top of your Ford Taurus rental car.* 2 1/2 stars

*Murphy Brown is smart, right? I mean... she does have her own witty tv sitcom... and she is spokeswomanperson for SPRINT long distance in this big budget commercial with 90s quirky aesthetics featuring the tops of bald mens' heads with cartoon floating graphics and a thinktank lab with a huge brain in a robotic device... huh?* 2 1/2 stars

*"What could be worse than the cost of a yeast infection? How about the cost of curing it?" Femcare for the cheap lady with downstairs troubles. Wow, did women really skip feminine healthcare because of high cost? Glad I was too young to experience the joys of a woman back then.* 2 1/2 stars for weirdness

*A leading zooologist explains the difference between sparkling polar bears (ones who ice skate in a skirt) and sparkling rootbeer cream soda A & W rootbeer.* 3 stars

*After a terrorist strikes... Silk Stalkings on USA.* close to 3 stars

*Sean Connery is a space cowboy... high noon in outerspace... Outland on USA.* 3 stars

*Rhonda's factoid of the week: close to 3 million gallons of oil produced in America, almost enough to style Jerry Lewis's hair.* 2 stars

*No touch tire care in a can really frustrates blue collar motorheads.* 2 stars

*"There's nothing worse than a foul smelling pair of shoes?" Wait, what about yeast infections? Odor Eaters knocks the skunk right out (literally) of a pair of old men's dress shoes.* 3 stars

*Tri Star pictures presents Weekend at Bernies 2, starting July 9th, 1993.* 3 stars

*"Even the best need attention, know what I mean?" So says a blonde skank on a cheap looking phone sex advertisement.* 2 1/2 stars

*Sluts "love sharing secrets" on another phone sex ad. Now, they just share selfies and butt in mirror photos on twitter / instagram and it doesn't cost 3 dollars a minute.* 2 1/2 stars

*Patty and her orangutan pal Roger try little Caesar's pizza and spaghetti.* 3 stars

*Tough actin' Tinactin for CGI fungal fires on the feet of jocks.* 2 stars

*"America's hot new number, 1 800 Collect." they've even replaced the Hollywood sign with a 1 800 Collect Sign. Boy, will they feel dumb, when they realize no one uses collect calls anymore. Everyone has a wireless plan. Dumb, 1993, get with the times, already.* 2 stars

*Rhonda gives away a foot sculpture to a female fan wanting it for her husband's office. I guess her husband, Al, has a foot fetish.* 2 stars

*Live & Loud Ozzy's new album straight from his 92 tour available at Record Town and Tape World.* 2 1/2 stars

*30 something moms in party cowboy hats use Suave miracle anti-perspirant to survive their rowdy munchkin kids' birthday parties.* 2 1/2 stars

*Nintendo's Kirby comes from Dreamland to the real world to prove that he's "One Tough Cream Puff" in an awesomely animated into live action commercial.* 3 stars

*"It's never too late for an intimate phone adventure." So, dude, bro, pick up your oversized cordless house phone with the extra long antenna and dial up some horny chicks for only 3 bucks a minute, man.* 3 stars

*Rhonda hangs out with her Bart Simpson doll and shows off her "Bart art".* 3 stars

*Models, on a beach, have lips that need protection from the sun's harsh rays. So, they use Blistex. But, they probably should get out of the sun, because they all look so dark that they probably have skin cancer already.* 2 stars

*"Continuous Action Formula!" soft & dri super solid lady deoderant will have the fellas fawning over any high class city chick.* 3 stars

*A sign language lady uses conceal and heal wart remover.* 2 1/2 stars

*"If you use gasoline the wrong way, your dreams will go up and smoke." Your kids will die as it's put in another scary gasoline fire PSA. Was there this huge problem with misuse of gasoline back in the 80s and 90s? Sheesh!* 3 STARS

*A soft saxophone, a tropical window scene with flowing curtains in the wind, and a creepy narrator on camera, in a white tuxedo, let's us know about Eve and her need to forget, which she can't do, on EDEN coming to USA....* close to 3 stars

*Rhonda is sad to say that Robert DeNiro isn't in Porky's.* 2 stars

*Rhonda really doesn't like Porky's 2 and recommends that if you wanna watch Porky's 3, then rent Porky's 1 and change the number.* 2 1/2 stars

*And finally to get to the actual film presentation... for this chopped and censored to the point of little coherency comedy...* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

---------------

Son of the Beach: Miso Honei *Pink beam at Point Break.* 2 1/2 stars

--- Black History Month -- Inter-racial Adult Art Film --

Dark Bros. presents "Black Throat" *A dumbass honky, a new-wave negro pimp, and a trash-talkin' plastic rat go on the hunt for an expert fellatio hoe named "Madame Mambo."* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

--------

From Dusk Till Dawn: Blood Runs Thick *The original was a good movie, but it could have used a 14 year old girl's i-phone conversation with her boyfriend, an unintentionally funny fist fight between the Gecko brothers, rice-milk refreshment breaks, and cute pink bunny accessories to remind one of just how sweet having a daughter can be... oh, also Fez, from That 70s Show, dressed up like Kool Moe D in Wild Wild West.* 2 stars

Kung Fu: An Eye For An Eye *A woman's right to choose death. Honestly, however, a thoughtful commentary on revenge.* 3 stars

The Walking Dead: What Happened.... *Swing low, sweet chariot.* 3 stars

Everything is Terrible -----

*Aerobic Self Defense: Don't be a victim, attack from the rear.* 3 stars

*Time to get it on, T. Bone: Sidney Party Yeah Uh... or however you spell and pronounce Sidney Pottier.* close to 3 stars

*Tax Day!: I'm not sayin' that we should be anarchists, I'm just sayin' we should commit anarchy.* 3 stars

*Oldies vs. Hippies!: The early bird gets stoned.* close to 3 stars

*Mark of the beast: Government is evil, ignore the patriotic background music. Worldly goods are fleeting, seek salvation, and send us your money.* 3 stars

---------

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Painted Hills *Chewin' the scenery with Lassie.* 3 stars with riffing 2 stars without

--- Black History Month -- Black Cowboy Cinema ---

Fred Williamson in "Joshua" (1976) *Who is Joshua? to quote Joshua, "I'm my mother's son." Some bandits make the mistake of shooting his mama, in the back, before Joshua can reunite with her after the Civil War.* 2 1/2 stars

--------------

William Friedkin's "Sorcerer" (1977) *No futuro without risk.* 3 stars

"Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992) *Close the deal, you expletive-expletive-expletive...* 3 stars

X Files: Young At Heart *The curious case of Spooky Mulder.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

The Ben Stiller Show: Season 1 episode 2 *20 so years later, and Nick Kroll has almost the exact same show.* 2 1/2 stars

Everything is Terrible ----

*Learn to Fly: self levitate the expert way.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Hunks Hunks Hunks!: "Smell the protein in this room."* either 1 star or close to 3 stars

*Here's How!: to be a show off.* 2 stars

*Greatest Song Ever Sung: Kathie Lee cares about the kids of genocide. Well, just kids in general, they sure are cute. Fuck adults in need, they're not as cute. Jesus was a kid too ya know. He was cute, too. "Like one of us," as a kid, but way cuter.* either zero stars or 2 1/2 stars

*4 Minute - The Alien Agenda - Endangered Species: Vote for Pedro for president of the X Files fan club.* 3 stars

----------

Viper: Ghosts *Reformed criminals, the paralyzed, holograms, and future cars -more than meets the eye.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

"John Wick" (2014) *"Everything has a price," but good action / fight choreography and a dead wife's puppy are priceless.* 3 stars

Hannibal: Coquilles *About as much fun as a tumor.* zero stars

American Horror Story: Coven "The Dead" *Satisfaction.* 2 1/2 stars

Black Sails: Season 1 episode 3 *Ship without a captain.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Magic Voyage of Sinbad *"There goes a stupid, stupid man." Fake Sinbad, the father of modern socialism.* close to 2 stars with riffing between 1/2 and 1 star without

Rinse Dream presents "Cafe Flesh" (1982) *"A tableau of desire in decline." The perfect mindfuck Dear John paranoid love letter from the dawn of the AIDS-HIV era to the end of the 'Free Love' era.* 3 stars

True Detective: Who Goes There? *She done gone. Tyrone. Drugged out, deep cover.* 3 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Reality TV No Survivors *"They fall in love in a hot tub, just like us."* 3 stars

Channel 4 in the U.K. presents Ban This Filth: episode 1 *Prudish, old ladies -the purveyors and "haters" (a term that I despise) of perverted behavior.* close to 3 stars

David Fincher's "Gone Girl" (2014) *An ode to the psychotic climate of hysteria caused by media jackals like Nancy Grace.* 3 stars

The Ben Stiller Show: season 1 episode 3 *To boldly go where Bruce Springsteen has never gone before.* 2 1/2 stars

Justified: season 1 episode 3 *"Seems like everyone here is from someplace else."* close to 3 stars

Swamp Thing: The Hunt *A rolling stone gathers some moss.* close to 2 1/2 stars

"Johnny Dangerously" *An exciting age of criminality.* 3 stars

Everything is Terrible ----

*Dana Carvey Is Rolling Over In His Grave: Have mercy, Church Lady.* 2 1/2 stars

*Creep Scientist Fantasy Karaoke: "It's nice to remember." Just don't make it weird.* close to 3 stars

*Cookin' Up Profits!: Elderly ladies are pie baking and financial experts.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

*Christian Puppets Are Selfish: Share everything, including yourself, with stuffed animal puppets of the faith.* 2 1/2 stars

*BEV!: "She'll kill us." during our middle aged lady step aerobic workout.* 3 stars

---------

Thundarr the Barbarian: Last Train To Doomsday *Can't keep a Gemini wizard under wraps. Plus, 1960s Marvel comic books become an instructional handbook for sorcery weirdos of the post-apocalypse.* 3 stars

Weird Science: Party High USA *School curriculum for those willing to stay stupid or hoping to become scumbags.* 2 1/2 stars

Max Headroom: Dream Thieves *In an age where people trade their dreams for dreams, Swamp Thing's Arcane is also an old friend / rival of Edison Carter.* 3 stars

"A Scanner Darkly" (2006) *We're all trying to escape, and we're all unknowingly being observed while trying. That's when we're unwittingly put to uses.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Night Stand with Dick Dietrick--- (1996)

*Fashion VIctims - Lowering High Fashion Standards: Getting heavy with emaciated models.* close to 2 1/2 stars for the topic's performance 3 stars for Timothy Stack's jokes

*Secret Lives... Exposing Ourselves: Hot For Teacher - A teacher moonlights as a porn star. "Say it loud, I'm practically black and I'm proud." - A light skinned black man is shocked to discover that he's half black and not Italian. The Perfect Mom & Dad turn out to be Dad & Mom* close to 3 stars

-------

Mortal Kombat - Legacy: Jax, Sonya, and Kano *TEST YOUR MIGHT at the Ace Chemicals / Skynet factory.* 3 stars

Freddy's Nightmares: Safe Sex ----

*A picky dweeb's Satanic attraction and death by wet dream.* 3 stars

*An outcast chick's obsession with Freddy goes too far.* 3 stars

------

American Horror Story: Murder House "Smoldering Children" *Familial putridity.* close to 3 stars

X Files: E.B.E. *Piss up an Idian rope trick. There's an 18 wheeler causing alien confusion as it travels a shadowy path across America.* 3 stars

From Dusk Till Dawn, the series: Mistress *Harbingers, whore offerings, and head-shrinking.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Banshee: season 1 episode 1 *A raccoon running from a rabbit. A -just out of prison- thief steals the identity of a deceased new sheriff to a Walking Tall type backwoods corrupt town.* 3 stars

American Horror Story: Coven "The Sacred Taking" *Thrill rides, terminal goodbyes, two way roads, and tingles of the cooch.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Red Shoe Diaries: Another Woman's Lipstick *Girl in guy drag and a David Lynch inspired striptease.* 3 stars

---- Valentine's Three Way Movie Feature ---

John Cassavetes in "Incubus" (1982) *Try a little tenderness. Try a little cursed bestiality.* 3 stars

Paul Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct" (1992) *Torrid 90s trash revisited.* either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars

Michael Ninn's "Fade to Blue" *Get 'yer kicks on Route 66. It's a stylized xxx religious experience.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

-----------

Werner Herzog's "Lessons of Darkness" (1992) *Scorched earth war disgrace, the Book of Revelation, and fossil fuel drudgery, danger, madness -all from an alien perspective.* 3 stars

Stephen King's "Storm of the Century" (mini-series) *Born in sin, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore, come on in.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Fargo: Eating the Blame *Greenbacks, grasshoppers, gospel, and the gristle of a riddle.* 3 stars

"Winter People" (1988) *Milk, honey, and time a flowin.' Kurt Russell plays against type as a gentle clockmaker / Ichabod Crane type in a Hatfields & McCoys style hillbilly period piece.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Cinematic Titanic: Legacy of Blood *"Tijuana snuff films are more wholesome."* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars with riffing close to 2 stars without riffing

Son of the Beach: South of Her Border *Labia & Johnson. Erik Estrada & Marsha Brady.* close to 3 stars (despite all the stale bean fart jokes, it manages to be funny)

Northern Exposure: Dreams, Schemes, and Putting Greens *"Wine 'em, dine 'em, stick 'em with the tab." ... or leave 'em standing in the rain at the 18th hole... or leave 'em standing at the altar singing showtunes.* 3 stars

Everything Is Terrible ----

Freedom Song: Show us yer tits fer freedom.* 3 stars

Fiddlin' With My...: Would you rather be in Branson with Shoji or would you rather be a mule?* 3 stars

Dreaming of Foxy Boxing: That cloud looks like a cat fight.* close to 3 stars

Dinner With The Abortionists!: "Ask your wife." quoting a slimeball abortion performing doctor.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

The Lottery Guru!: Hint, hint, you'll never win the lottery. Hint, hint, invest in firearms.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

------

Night Stand with Dick Dietrick ---

Illegal Aliens Star Search: Immigrant talent show for the prize of a green card.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars (3 plus stars for the Phil Hartman cameo)

Hooked on Hookers: Sexy Social Outrage.* close to 3 stars

------

Crossballs, the debate show: American Driving, Carmageddon *Defensive drivers on the defensive against aggressive comedians.* 3 stars

"Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man" (1991) *"Come on and take a free ride." - John the Baptist $T.M.$ If they make this movie for the millenial generation, it will be called 'Rob Dyrdek and the Starbucks Person,' and it will pack a limp wristed punch.* 2 1/2 stars

Hill Street Blues: Your Kind, My Kind, Humankind *Being true to one's self and the team.* 3 stars

The Walking Dead: Them *A deathdream last episode and now this episode has an exhaustion zombie fight, a pack of wild dogs, worm eating & dog eating, mysterious note and a gift of water at the point of dehydration, a backroad tornado out of nowhere, solace in a shack in the middle of nowhere, and a zombie siege on the shack that seemed to spell the end of everyone in the group (which turns out to be a dream? or did they all just die?). This second half of the season is taking a turn into surreal southern gothic.* 3 stars

"In Cold Blood" (1967) *The point in modern America where we all took a dreaded detour into a conscience of indifferent malice that we've been driving on ever since.* 3 stars

"Nightcrawler" (2014) *Hollywood really wants us to sympathize with their paparazzi plight. A success driven psycho is nihilistic about bringing skid row sensationalism to the Southern California suburban news market.* close to 3 stars

The Ben Stiller Show: Season 1 Episode 4 *Melrose changes people. Ben finds out this when Andy Dick turns into a hipster bitch on the back of a biker dyke's harley.* 3 stars

--- Black History Month --- Cultural Cliches Comedy ----

Melvin and Mario Van Peebles present "Identity Crisis" (1989) *Gianni Versace is my homeboy. Rest in peace, my gay nigga.* close to 2 stars

------

Ban This Filth: episode 2 *"I would rather live in a vast, treeless desert without filth."* 2 1/2 stars

Hippies: Hippy Dippy Hippies *"Painting the house of ideas, shit brown," like a pig would.* 3 stars

"The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue" a Gerard Damiano xxx film (1980) *In the future, in the ruins of a space age commune, survivors hump, day & night, like bunny astronauts. They have this calculator connected to the future internet, and surprise the internet is mostly for sex, where they can dial up and beam up "satisfiers" to fulfill their every sexual need. But is it enough?* 2 1/2 stars

Farscape: Through The Looking Glass *3, 5, prime. Red, yellow, blue. Dizzy, loud, and funny too.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Wizards and Warriors: The Rescue *"I wouldn't want to fight a dragon that I could see, let alone an invisible dragon." Yeah, that's right, an invisible dragon.* 3 stars

Cinematic Titanic: Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks *"It's like Clint Howard and Gentle Ben had a kid, and he's choking me!" It's also like Eegah! meets The Sinful Dwarf.* 3 stars with riffing between 2 and 2 1/2 stars without

American Horror Story: Asylum "Spilt Milk" *Nursing a grudge.* close to 3 stars

"The Babysitter's Club Video #1 Mary Anne and the Brunettes" (1990) *Scholastic and craptastic. Mommy / gossip / relationship training for young chicks who can't even get their darn ears pierced. Weird to see so many kids and zero adults in this Charlie Brown / Children of the Corn town.* 1 star

Jr. Christian Science Vol. 1 *One of Tim & Eric's weirdo friends hosts an early 90s public access educational children's show. A chore to sit through, but almost worth it for the moments where he loses his cool when the production doesn't go exactly his way, and it features some of the most awkward singing and puppetry ever combined.* 1 star

Mortal Kombat - Legacy: Johnny Cage *True Hollywood story, death of the action star.* 2 1/2 stars

"Constantine" (2005) *Keanu Reeves as a wanker. Shy LePoof as a hardnosed cabbie sidekick. Tilda Swinton in guy drag. Hollywood knows what comic fans want. They want their beloved characters americanized and the movie version to be filled with techno music and cgi in every single shot.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

From Dusk Till Dawn, the series: Let's Get Ramblin' *Soul cleansing, soul redeeming, power in the blood.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Forever Knight: for I have Sinned *and sat in judgement.* close to 3 stars

"Exorcist 2: The Heretic" (1977) *Plight of the white wing dove. Not enough mood or scares, and too much of all of the following: pseudo science astral projection / mental flashbacks, jazz tap dance, big over the top special fx, traversing the globe, and Linda Blair vanity project / poor acting. James Earl Jones, Louise Fletcher, and Richard BUrton are great, though.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

Hannibal: Entree *"A bunch of psychopaths helping each other out."* 3 stars

American Horror Story: Coven "Head" *Proudly marching to the guillotine of perdition.* 3 stars

"Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror" (1981) *Eye-Talian style maggot-filled weapon-wielding zombies laying siege on a gothic mansion. Gore filled disembowling deaths, shot gun blasts to zombie skulls, smashing / chopping zombies / people to bits, and titty chewing. Gloriously over the top dubbing. And lastly a "child" or dwarf(?) actor that makes Bud Cort look normal.* 3 stars

Tales from the Crypt: Only Sin Deep *Pretty woman on loan from the pawn shop.* 3 stars

The Walking Dead: The Distance *Rick Grimes, the most justifiably paranoid man on the planet of the undead, will watch gay love, from the shadows, just to make sure someone's intentions are legit.* close to 3 stars

"Sticks and Stones" (1996) *Another of those generic mid-1990s coming of age / the dangers of handguns in a family home / absentee parents (too busy being a doctor more than a mom Kirstie Alley) / abusive white trash parents (father of the main bully) / dealing with school bullies and also brothers who are bullies too (Zack from Saved by the Bell. *barf* on both accounts) and the bullied (a young and pudgy Seth Rogen, you would think but the kid's name is Max Goldblatt along with his bully tackling overprotective daddy played by Gary Busey), complete with that wholesome Americana past-time of baseball as a connecting theme for this sentimental tripe.* either 1/2 a star or close to 2 stars

--- Black History Month --- Bon Voyage Film Feature ---

"Trippin" (1996) *A young brutha and perpetual slacker, during his senior year in highschool, is constantly escaping reality into his fantasies that often feature fly booty honeys.* 2 1/2 stars

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packernet · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://www.packernet.com/blog/2019/06/23/a-chicagoan-describes-to-packers-nation-what-the-rivalry-means-to-chicago/

A Chicagoan Describes to Packers Nation What the Rivalry Means to Chicago

(from a friend of Packernet)

Occasionally, when I’m playing at my favorite online casino, Grande Vegas online casino, I wish that someone would create a game that fully described the long-standing rivalry between my hometown Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. I am not like many Bears fans who hate the Packers. I just want the Bears to win every game against them and to always be much better than the Packers.

Two Shining Moments

Since the 1963 season where the Bears finished first in the Western Conference, thanks in large part to the suspension of the Golden Boy, Paul Hornung, for gambling, the Bears have had far more hard times than good times.

The Bears won the Super Bowl in the famed 1985 season with what may have been the best single season defense in NFL history. The Bears next made it to the Super Bowl in 2006 behind their first true gunslinger quarterback, Rex Grossman, who proved to be far less successful as a gunslinger than the Packers’ own “mad Bomber”, Brett Favre.

Between 1963 and 1985 there was nothing but heartbreak and misery. From 1985, there has also been little to brag about. Then last year, Aaron Rodgers lead a furious second half rally to steal game one of the season and every Bears fan said “here we go again”.

However, 2018 ended on a far happier note despite the double doink field goal miss that cost the Bears the wild card game.

Green Bay Packers kicker Chester Marcol runs after picking up a blocked field goal against the Chicago Bears in 1980.

The Nature of the Rivalry

From the standpoint of Bears fans, the rivalry with the Packers is something unique in Chicago sports. Chicago has five pro sports teams, the Cubs and White Sox in baseball, the Bulls in basketball, the Blackhawks in hockey and the Bears.

The Cubs

Cubs fans are used to the team losing in lovable fashion. The Cubs play in the most beautiful baseball stadium in the world and fans still love going to Wrigley Field just to hang out, soak in some sun, and maybe watch the game a bit. This is a bit harder to do in the era of high-prices and night games but here is a story of what the Cubs really mean to Chicago.

In the mid-1970’s, on the second day of the season, the weather was an amazingly balmy 70°. At game time, there were a few thousand people in attendance but within one half hour the entire park filled up with men and women in suits. The weather was great for April, the game beckoned, so thousands of Chicagoans decided to chuck the afternoon in the office and came to the game!

The Cubs are like a family picnic!

The White Sox

The team that brings out the overwhelming hatred of Sox fans is the Yankees. If the Sox aren’t good, which is most of the time, at least the Yankees should be bad too and if the Yankees are good, Sox fans can easily ignore baseball because it’s summer and there are many other things to do.

Bulls and Blackhawks

It’s nice when they win and it’s okay if they lose.

Bears

Before we describe the deep importance of the Bears to Chicago, here are two great Bears-Packers stories.

Irv Kupcinet was a long-term gossip columnist and television talk show host in Chicago. Before he became a newspaperman and a tv “star” he played on the offensive line for the Bears in the 1930’s. His career ended quickly and he became an NFL referee. One Sunday, when Kupcinek was working the game as a ref, the Packers were in Chicago to face the Bears and had a fourth down and inches. They went for it and failed to pick up the first down.

Losing himself, Kupcinet jumped up and down yelling, “It’s our ball. It’s our ball.”

Frank Cornish

This young man was a promising defensive tackle in the late 1960’s but came to camp way overweight in 1969. That year, the Bears went 1-13. The most memorable event of the year was when, on a rainy Sunday at home, Frank Cornish was spun around at the line of scrimmage and fell splat face first in the mud.

A highlight of the season and a symbol of the Bears over the years.

The Bears and Chicago

So, if any of the other professional teams aren’t good Chicago fans can shrug it off. When the Bears aren’t good, it feels like the entire city is going 1-13 and falling splat face first in the mud.

Bears and Packers

No other city has the history with the Bears that the Packers have. The rivalry is one of wanting to at least be better than the Pack even if the Bears can’t be better than anyone else.

Bears Fight Song

In that same 1-13 season, on the last ignominious day of the season, with the temperature a warm 10° and falling three forlorn vendors sat shivering waiting for the fans to come so they could start selling their food items.

They wrote a parody to the legendary Bears fight song that still rings true even though Bears fans have high hopes for the upcoming season.

The actual fight song goes like this:

Bear down, Chicago Bears,

Make every play clear the way to victory.

Bear down, Chicago Bears,

Put up a fight with a might so fearlessly,

We’ll never forget the way you thrilled the nation,

With your t-formation

Bear down, Chicago Bears

And let them know why you’re wearing the crown.

You’re the pride and joy of Illinois,

Chicago Bears, bear down!

The Revised Version

Here is the remake those woe begotten vendors came up with in the cold and howling wind one December day in 1969.

Give up, Chicago Bears,

It’s always best to face reality,

Give up, Chicago Bears,

Make every play lead the way to as safety,

We’ll never forget the way you fooled the nation,

With your team imitation,

Give up, Chicago Bears,

You’re number one in being bums,

You’re the pride and joy of the Halas boys

Chicago Bears, give up!

The Future

This year Bears Nation has its hopes high but its expectations low as usual. The Bears’ schedule is hard. The division is improved all around. And the Packers still have the proven Aaron Rodgers while the Bears have the unproven Mitch Trubisky.

At least the Bears quarterback has a Chicago-sounding name!

The greatest rivalry in professional sports will kick off in only three months. Rev your engines, ready, set, go, the heart and soul of one of America’s most dynamic cities ride on beating the Packers!

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theliterateape · 4 years

Text

On Birthday 41 and the Things I’ve Learned

By David Himmel

Chicago, May 26, 2020, 3:26 a.m.

One of my favorite birthdays was my Jesus Birthday, the year I turned thirty-three. I’m not talking about the entire year, although, it was a great one with some pretty big moments, most impactfully, meeting my wife and harnessing my messianic powers—granted to all who turn thirty-three for the entirety of that year. (In 2012, there wasn’t a cave anywhere in the world that could hold me.) I’m talking about the actual day, May 26, 2012. I don’t remember the whole day, but I remember what must be the most important part.

I woke up early. Pre-dawn. I sat down at the keyboard in the office of the apartment I shared with no one else and I wrote for a few hours. On that day, the song “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen was spraying glittery rainbows all over the airwaves, and stomping through YouTube with its almost endless parodies, amateur dance party videos, and covers. I had just downloaded the tune and that early birthday morning, I listened to “Call Me Maybe” on repeat for four hours straight. That means I listened to that song nearly seventy-three times in a row. By the time the sun was up, I still wasn’t tired of it.

Here’s why that birthday was so great: It was near perfect. I was productive on the keyboard, I was up early, and I was listening to the most incredible sugary earworm I have probably ever heard. But I had long known that those three things make me a happy boy. And that’s why I find myself doing something similar today. Eight years later.

Some things don’t change. We are creatures of habit. But we’re also creatures of evolution, and while basking in the happiness that familiarity brings, we also find ourselves on our birthdays with a heart and a brain full of things learned. So, taking my inspiration from a Don Hall tradition of recounting those things leaned in the past year, here’s the short list of what my forty-first trip around the Sun has revealed to me.

Forty wasn’t scary, but inching past it is We make a big deal of turning forty. It’s over the hill. It’s when our bodies start to lean into their decline. Turning forty didn’t scare me. Just a few weeks shy of my thirty-fifth birthday, I underwent surgery on my face to remove skin cancer. I was dating the woman who would become my wife then. We rented a small Wisconsin lake house for the birthday weekend and on the morning of May 26, I woke up early—as I’m wont to do—and stared long and hard at my freshly scarred face in the mirror. I came to terms with my age and mortality there. I think most people have that quiet conversation with themselves at forty. For me, turning forty was a breeze. It was only slightly more remarkable than any other birthday. But as I crept closer to forty-one this year, I learned that aging past forty is scary.

And now I’m here. And I feel fine. But, inching past forty is, from my perspective, means no longer heading toward opportunity, but to memory. There’s a pretty good chance that the majority of my dangerous, envelope pushing, law bending adventures are behind me. I’m no longer a full tank of gas with the open road laid out before me. I’ve got half a tank and pretty soon, I’ll need to start looking for a place to pull off and ditch this old hunk junk. But I still have a lot of places to go, things to see, stuff to do before that needle hits E and my maker calls me into his office.

I’m more afraid than I used to be I’m afraid of good health failing. Not just mine, but that of my wife, my son, my dog, my parents, my in-laws, my brothers and their wives, my friends… None of this health fear is related to COVID-19. That, while a major concern, is the least of them. This is the worry of a man who appreciates all that is good.

I’m afraid of being mediocre. Of being unimpactful and ineffective. Have I impressed all I will impress? Have I done my best work? Am I out of ideas and the energy to come up with new ones? Do I still have time to impress myself? This has always been a concern, but I’ve never been afraid of it becoming a reality. Until now.

I’m afraid of being depressed. Not because I’m afraid of being sad. We all know depression is more than sadness. I’m afraid that the brain numbing and lethargy that comes with depression will become unshakable. Sadness passes, lethargy is a big, fat, couch-hogging motherfucker that can be almost impossible to get out of the house. It always claims squatter’s rights, and over forty, I’m at risk of pulling or breaking something by trying to push it out.

I am not as strong as I thought I was I don’t know if this has as much to do with age as it does with cockiness. I thought I could hop up after twentysomething years of not running long distance and—boom—run a marathon. It wasn’t easy, which I didn’t think it would be, but I also didn’t think that my body would be so ill prepared that I’d end up breaking my leg just two weeks before Race Day. Do I need to take it easy? No. I need to take training seriously and never forget that practice is incremental and paramount.

Quiet solitude is a need to have, not a nice to have No TV. No scrolling through the phone. Not even any music. That includes Carly Rae. I need to take time to be quiet, calm, still. What is that Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “Be quiet, be calm, say nothing…” Yeah, he was talking himself out of having a psychedelic meltdown, but the advice is good for those of us whose brains are easily overwhelmed with the everyday. For those of us whose ideas bound about like bunny rabbits on cocaine searching for a spilled can of Red Bull to lap up.

When I was younger, before I had cable TV and a phone with Facebook, the internet, and solitaire, I could easily sit down with myself, sometimes with a pen and notebook, and just be. Think. Tune out the world and let my mind go wherever. It’s a form of meditation. I learned the importance of seizing quiet solitude way back in my late teens, but this year has shown me how absolutely imperative it is.

Speaking of…

I really miss being a kid Or really, I miss being around me as a kid. This has been a theme for a little over a year. It’s been discussed at length on The Literate ApeCast and I’ve been working on a book dealing with time and nostalgia. But it’s more than just nostalgia for me. Watching my son grow, it’s hard not to think about what things were like for me and my wife at that age. How can we be great parents based on what we learn from history? We talk to our parents about it a lot. At least, I do.

In many ways, we miss out on our own lives because we’re only getting one half of that experience. So, I don’t want to be a kid again as much as I want to spend time with myself as a kid. Ages twenty-one on down to one. I want to know what I was like back then, what it was like to know me. If I could do that, I don’t think I’d be so scared, as mentioned above, because I’d have a clearer picture of things. And it’s always better to venture ahead when you know where you came from.

But since this is an impossible feat, I’ll have to make a point to go back and read all my old writings. I’ve been teased for my record keeping, but it just might save my forties.

I can live in filth The best part about living alone is that every mess is yours. The only person who can dirty up the kitchen you just cleaned is you. The only shoes you have to pick up are yours. The only ass you have to wipe is yours. Since moving in with Katie, and the dog, and having the kid, my worst fear have come to light: my home is in a constant state of dusty disarray. I tried to keep up, even stay ahead of the untidiness, but, I gave in. I no longer do a deep clean of every room and surface weekly. The only object with more dust on it than the TV stand is the vacuum. Does it bother me? Of course. Should I make better attempts to stay on top of things? Yes. Should I hate myself and be angry at the wife, dog, and kid when I don’t scrub and organize on a weekly basis? No. Because I’ll be fine. I’ll live. Not as well as I’d like to, but I’ll live. And if skipping the deep clean means I can spend more time playing with my son and that the dog doesn’t lose her goddamn mind barking at the vacuum, then that’s just fine. For now.

If I had been born a girl, my parents would have named me Katherine Funny because that’s my wife’s name. My mom told me this just a few days ago. It warmed my heart when she said, “But, in a way, we got a Katherine after all.”

I can grow a beard Thank God for this quarantine. I never would have let the thing go without the safety of Zoom and FaceTime calls. They allowed me to grow through the patchy and settle on whatever this is. It’s not the best beard, but I’ve seen worse. It took a good two and a half months to get to the point where I could start saying, “I have a beard.” If I were a Guess Who character, and the question was, “Does your person have a beard?” one would be required to answer, “Yes.” There’s no denying it. I really never thought I could, and I probably wouldn’t have ever attempted. But these computer cameras seem to make all of our physical imperfections disappear. Not sure how long I’ll keep it. Not sure I don’t look like a 1980s action movie uncredited terrorist. Not sure I don’t look extra Jewish now. No matter. These are unprecedented times and this is an unprecedented beard.

The past year has had its hardships and its big wins. I won’t complain. The year was full of life, which is all I’ve ever wanted out of my years.

#Birthday #birthday wisdom #Happy Birthday to You #birthdays #May 26 Birthdays #Call Me Maybe #Carly Rae Jepsen #Skin cancer #Basal Cell Carcinoma #Nostalgia

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