#sasha review

[phykios]

Review: "We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium"; "I Plunge to my Death"; "A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers"

Hey y'all! I'm back. It took a while to write this review, and not just because I had a busy holiday season. The more I tried to consider episodes 3 and 4, the more I realized that a lot of my critiques of them were things I had already touched on in the last two–poor exposition, bad lighting, rushed plot, etc–and so it felt a little redundant to say the same thing all over again. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how annoying you find me), episode 5 was such a cut above over the rest of the season, I finally have new things to say! With that in mind, the format of this review will be a little different, as I will compare the episodes side by side, rather than consider each one individually. 

For a brief, brief recap, the three episodes follow fairly similar plot beats: the trio travels a little, meets a mythological being that tries to mess with their heads, then they all try to sacrifice themselves for the good of the quest before figuring out an alternate way to win. This isn’t a criticism, by the way–the book chapters have similar formats, and repetitive framing is a great way of demonstrating character growth. And of course, there’s no better way to spruce up a travel montage with a little lore dump. 

What makes for effective exposition? It’s a delicate balancing act between making sure that the information you need to get across gets to the viewer, but not letting them know that you’ve done it. “Show, don’t tell” is the most common expository technique, and for good reason–information is better retained and more effective when it’s not delivered to you like someone reading off cue cards. And it’s most effective when it’s withheld until just the right moment. PJO TV is not… great at this. It’s mostly little things, one-off little lines, like Luke saying “I’m the best swordsman” or “Annabeth is the smartest,” but there are some more egregious examples, mostly with Chiron explaining the world to Percy. This, I get, and it’s not like Riordan did it that much more elegantly in the books. But I’m more annoyed about Luke info-dumping than anybody else.  

I was re-reading The Lightning Thief for several reasons, and one of the things about Luke is that he keeps things very close to the chest. It’s partly to conceal his villainy, but it also makes sense from a psychological standpoint, hiding his emotions not only to keep everyone from finding out the truth about him, but also to recruit kids for the upcoming war. Luke only opens up about what happened to him and Thalia once: at the very end of the book, just before he tries to kill Percy. It’s a powerful moment–the specter of Thalia haunts Percy throughout the book, the ideal of a hero he’s afraid he’ll never be able to measure up to, and we find out that she’s been haunting Luke as well, but for very different reasons. (She haunts the TV show as well, which I like very much–I just hope it pays off!) We are shown hints of his darker side earlier, but withholding the heel turn until now, and pairing it with the first time we see him actually talk about himself, is part of what makes this scene so good and so heinous at the same time. The first time we get glimpses of Luke’s true self, his motivations and what drives him, is the same moment where he crosses the line. And in the meantime, TV!Luke just lets it all hang out. 

Consider: 

Before camp, I was on the road. Me and a forbidden kid I met along the way. Her name was Thalia… A long time ago, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades agreed their children were becoming too powerful, so they made a pact not to father any more. And it held for a long time, until Zeus broke that pact. Until Thalia. A forbidden kid attracts trouble. Monsters everywhere, it's just a constant battle to stay alive. One day, we, uh, find this little girl hiding in an alley. Annabeth. We were worried about taking her in, exposing her to all that danger. Then we saw her fight. Thalia didn't make it. But Annabeth and me... we did. And we've been family ever since… Annabeth is the strongest warrior in camp. The only way left to prove herself is to go on a quest. [S1E2, “I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom”]

Why is he saying all this? Is it for Percy’s benefit, or the audience’s? What does this reveal about Luke’s character? What about this monologue reveals what Luke actually thinks about the pact, or Thalia’s death, or even Annabeth? We’re told he sees her like family, but what does he do to show us? 

For contrast, here’s Ares’ lore dump a few episodes later:

You're new to the family, young one, so let me fill you in on how we work. See, years before I was born, my grandpa Kronos ate my aunts and uncles. Yeah. Then my dad made him puke them back up, then chopped him into a million pieces and chucked 'em into a bottomless pit, so that kinda set the tone right outta the gate. Olympians fight. We betray. We backstab. We will push anyone down a flight of stairs to get ahead. And that's why I love my family so much. My dad knows he's not getting this bolt back with quests or goose chases. He knows there's a war coming. And in reality, I think he's okay with that. I think he feels it's just time for a war, so we're gonna have a war. Isn't that great? [S1E5, “A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers”]

What does this reveal about Ares’ character? That he loves violence, and that the threat of war is exciting. That he doesn’t exactly hold his family in high regard. That this is something that is central to who the gods are. All of this is supported by Adam Copeland’s performance, which is flippant, funny, and immature. The details work in concert to show us who Ares is and what he wants, all without ever having him say it out loud. 

For all of its clumsiness, though, I actually really like Grover’s little monologue about the nature of questing as we follow the kids into New York City in episode 3. It has a very Fellowship of the Ring vibe (which I’m pretty sure is deliberate) which fits on a meta-level too, with Percy Jackson in conversation with epic stories of the past.

But you know what wasn’t in conversation with the past? The shortest Medusa battle ever recorded. 

I’m being a little hyperbolic for comedy’s sake, but genuinely I hated the Medusa fight. Not the Medusa backstory–sidestepping the sexual assault in a middle-grade book was the correct choice, and it’s not like a post-#MeToo Medusa is a shocking or novel idea–but not only should the fight have been at least twice as long, it was missing a full fourth of the mythological ingredients. The mythical Perseus has four gifts: the sword, the mirror shield, the helm of invisibility, and the winged sandals. The book reinterprets the shield as a glass ball. And the show doesn’t use it at all. Is this a nitpicky critique? Maybe. But some of Percy Jackson’s strongest moments are the reinterpretation of mythological scenes, and for those to work, you should incorporate the key details. 

Also, again, cannot stress this enough, it was way too short. At least the Echidna fight scene had some blocking involved. And acting. 

Speaking of acting, I will say that it’s very consistently well done. I think the kids are more than holding their own against the adults, and they walk the line between playing maturity and still being young very well, which is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, rarely is the acting ever a problem. Because, once again, it’s the writing that makes it fall short. 

Let’s do another comparison: Percy sending off Medusa’s head and Percy and Annabeth with Hephaestus’ chair. One is from the books, and one is new. Both are given the appropriate amount of weight in the episode’s runtime. Both are well-acted, well-blocked, well-scored. But the new scene feels out of place to me. Part of the problem is that, being a scene lifted from the books, Percy sending off Medusa’s head feels earned and supported by the material of the last few episodes. He’s pissed at his dad for ignoring him, and pissed that the gods are forcing him to do all this nonsense for reasons he only barely understands. Of course he’s going to foist a magical WMD on them. 

But the chair scene doesn’t have that prior support. Consider: 

Eat or be eaten. Power and glory and nothing else matters. Ares is that way, Zeus is that way, my mother is that way. He isn't that way. He's better than that. Maybe I was that way once. But I don't wanna be that way anymore. I won't be like all of you. I just won't. [S1E5, “A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers”]

In a vacuum, this would be a great scene. Walker’s fear is palpable and real, and Leah delivers a heartfelt performance in anguish at her friend’s supposed fate. That’s all well and good, except that these characters have known each other for… what, three days? A week? And for all her talk of glory, Annabeth dispensed with that idea pretty much right out the gate, as she killed a Fury rather than hand Percy over to Alecto. She tries to sacrifice herself for the quest all the time. What power and glory is she seeking? 

This is an excellent scene that unfortunately doesn’t belong in this season. This scene, as my dear @frenchswissborder pointed out, does not belong after the Thrill Ride of Love (before the Zoo Truck scene as well!) but instead feels like it should be in the Battle of the Labyrinth’s Mt. St Helen confession scene. Putting it there at least would build on three years of friendship, rather than a handful of days of not annoying each other. 

I don’t mind new scenes. I want new scenes. If I wanted a one-to-one adaptation, I’d just read the books again. But the new scenes have to matter. They have to bring something new to the table. Let me put it this way: when The Lightning Thief musical said, “Fuck it, Cerberus is a DJ,” it was both leaning into its own medium as musical theater and riffing on the idea of the underworld being under a recording studio. When PJO TV says, “Fuck it, exposition time,” it feels like they’re reading off Mythomagic card stats. 

What makes an adaptation great, in my opinion, is how well it speaks to the subtext of the original work. The musical is excellent at this, in particular how it uses the conventions of musical theater to highlight the parallels between Percy and Luke by giving them variations on the same “I Want” song. Where PJO TV shines is how it speaks to the subtext of abusive adults. Abuse of children is sadly not always so obvious, and I like how the Mist lets Alecto, Echidna, and Ares act pretty much with impunity. They are predators, and they are able to move without fear of detection. This even applies to Medusa, too, having her pretend to offer Percy a way out, when she really is only interested in herself and her needs. 

But, as the show tends to do, this only causes the story to kneecap itself by neutering Gabe as an abusive figure. I understand why it is this way, as book Sally, for all her kind and loving nature, wasn’t exactly written with a backbone. Part of this, I assume, is just that The Lightning Thief was published in 2005, and that a) the conversation around intimate partner abuse simply was not in the mainstream, and b) Riordan just got better at female characters over time. So the trade-off is that by making Sally a more formidable, dynamic character in the show, they had to dial down Gabe’s uglier, abusive nature–which is going to be really awkward in a few episodes when Sally kills him just for the crime of being annoying. 

Stray thoughts: 

Just taking a moment here to say that I think the set design has been really gorgeous so far. Shout out in particular to the attic in the Big House!

I’m only just noticing this now, but the trunk of Thalia’s pine tree looks like there’s a human in there–bent knee, arms outstretched, head bowed–and I think that’s awesome. 

The idea of monsters sensing a demigod’s weakness and responding to that is so good, and I’m taking it. 

Earlier versions of this review had a long and annoying rant about Medusa’s origins, so allow me to tl;dr: there is no original Medusa myth. Ovid’s Medusa myth in Metamorphoses comes about 800 years after Hesiod’s Theogony, which comes after Homer’s Iliad. It’s not a question of Ovid against Hesiod against Homer, it’s a question of these authors plus thousands of pieces of pottery depicting hundreds of variations on the Medusa myth, and we cannot definitively say which one is the source of the myth. That said, I don’t dislike a #MeToo Medusa, I just mostly hate the discourse around it.

It’s nice to see some architecture nerd Annabeth, but between the way the show glosses over it, and the lack of crippling arachnophobia, her character is being reduced too much to “prideful” for my tastes. It’s not that Annabeth isn’t prideful, obviously, it’s just that she has more dimension to her than the show is currently presenting. 

Annabeth and Grover throwing water on Percy like a beached whale is very funny, but it did make me realize that they haven’t introduced nectar/ambrosia in the show. Maybe they’re saving it for the finale? 

Ares calling them all cousins makes me extremely happy. This was something that Riordan did in the early books, but he kind of petered off, presumably so as not to imply weird pseudo-incestuous things once Percabeth started, but I always loved it.

I’m saving the Percy and Annabeth relationship breakdown until after the season, but it is coming! (But I am sad that “seaweed brain” came out of nowhere :( we just rolled right over it!)

The lighting is really bad, especially in the dark, and I am learning to live with it, but I am not happy about it. 

Aryan is the breakout actor of the trio, in my opinion. Playing awkward is so, so easy to overdo, but he brings a sincerity and a quickwittedness to Grover that I absolutely adore–he’s a sweet kid, and he’s clearly scared, but he knows when to summon his courage and do the brave thing for him and his friends. 

Also here are some screencaps that I like. They don’t have anything to do with the review, I just think they’re neat :3 (IDs/thots in the alt)

#pjo tv #pjo spoilers #pjo tv spoilers #sasha review #this is a long one lads!

[we-dont-talk-about-potato-nonono]

miss the trio and this show. good times!

#i ​miss the theories the reviews the memes the general positivity 😌 #to this day sometimes i go back and see those old theory from YT cartoon review channel for bit of a nostalgia boost<3 #my art #art by me #ibispaintx #amphibia #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #sasha waybright #disney #doodle #drawing #fandom #fanart

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really That Bad?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt like the universe actively conspired against something until I witnessed the production of The Flash.

Since 1991 there have been quite a few proposals for Flash movies, but they never really got off the ground for whatever reason. Following Barry’s debut in Justice League, a movie finally was announced before multiple delays due to rewrites, in particular to cut Ray Fisher’s Cyborg from the story after he went public about the awful shit he had to deal with under Joss Whedon. Things seemed hopeless until It director Andy Muschietti came onboard, at which point production on the film finally started to go smoothly. Sure, there were rumblings about Ezra Miller having episodes on set, but that’s just typical actor nonsense, right? Surely it couldn’t get any worse!

Look, I’m here to review a movie so I’ll keep this brief: Miller committed crimes. Lots of crimes. So many, in fact, you’d think they were method acting for the role of Reverse-Flash. The thing is, despite all of this, Miller was basically given a slap on the wrist by the studio, being forbidden from doing promos and press tours (oh no! The horror!). And as if the situation wasn’t already a fucking mess, while Miller’s crime spree was ongoing WB canned the nearly-complete Batgirl movie that featured Michael Keaton and Academy Award-winning actor Brendan Fraser while simultaneously inflating The Flash’s budget to nearly $300 million with reshoots. It seems baffling to cancel a movie that was nearly done and that people were marginally interested in for the sake of a movie that people were losing interest in quickly due to its star’s erratic behavior, but remember: Leslie Grace isn’t white, while Ezra Miller is. WB is never beating those racism allegations at this rate.

With a normal movie, this is where the nonsense ends. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

This film was meant to smooth out the clusterfuck continuity of the “Snyderverse” with a soft reboot, with Henry Cavill filming a end-of-movie cameo alongside Miller, Gal Gadot, Keaton, and Supergirl’s actress Sasha Calle to establish the new direction of DC going forward. Unfortunately, the hierarchy of power at DC changed, and Gunn shot that down. While this meant the ending would probably not get people confused with regards to upcoming projects, it also meant the movie wasn’t going to really have any closure for the old universe. Affleck, Cavill, and who knows who else are just gone, and the future is just a big old question mark. At least Aquaman is safe, maybe?

Literally none of this news was very reassuring to fans. Nothing above is any good for a film’s perception to audiences under normal circumstances, but here we have all this news coming to a fanbase that genuinely did not want this fucking movie. The DCEU was already divisive when the film was announced, and Miller’s portrayal of Barry doubly so; the fact it was adapting Flashpoint was seen as lazy and uninspired, not to mention its not really a story that lets Flash stand on his own merits, making it seem more like this movie was just an excuse to reboot; it was a multiverse story in a day and age with an abundance of such stories, and it was releasing around the same time as Across the Spider-Verse to boot; and Gunn’s reboot plans meant this story was likely a narrative dead end. This movie had an uphill battle the likes of which haven’t been seen since Sisyphus.

But much like that mythological figure, the boulder came crashing right back down when the numbers came in. The movie would likely need to gross $500 million at minimum to break even after factoring in the reshoots and advertising, and it only managed half of that with a pitiful opening weekend followed by a massive 73% drop. It now sits alongside films like The Lone Ranger and Mortal Engines as one of the most expensive bombs in history, to the point where WB would have saved more money by cancelling it like they did with Batgirl. And despite glowing praise from the likes of Tom Cruise and Stephen King, it received middling reviews from mainstream critics.

Audiences haven’t been any less mixed, but considering most people weren’t particularly excited or invested in this film’s existence this is basically a miracle. Sure, there’s plenty of people out there saying this is the “worst comic book movie ever” like they do every time a new superhero movie drops, but even more people are saying they enjoyed the film… although even they tend to have some severe criticisms.

Even though I knew most of what was going to happen in the movie going in, I wasn’t really sure what to expect given everything surrounding the movie. But you know me, I’m willing to give almost any movie a chance, and bombs this big don’t happen every day, so even before it was voted on I was trying to make time to check it out. So sit down, microwave yourself a snack—

—and watch as I try and determine if The Flash is really that bad.

THE GOOD

The biggest shock of this film is that Ezra Miller is actually really good here.

Their Barry is still a bit of a goofball, but he’s clearly matured as a character since his precious appearances. They managed to make him much more charming and likable than he ever was, and this gets compounded when he interacts with the younger Barry and gets confronted with how annoying he was before. I think young Barry could have come off as really insufferable, but the fact he annoys everyone around him and also ends up maturing makes him a lot more endearing.

Miller really kills it with the emotional moments, particularly the ending encounter with Barry’s mom and the scene where old Barry snaps at young Barry. The film is really carried by the dramatic, emotional moments far more than any of the superheroics, and Miller manages to sell a lot of it very well. It was to the point where I started thinking, “I really wouldn’t mind if they stick around.” Then a scene where Barry says the Justice League has no real psychiatric help or where his younger self ends up repeatedly exposing himself in public by accident happens, and then I remembered, “Oh yeah, aren’t they a mentally unwell criminal?”

Unsurprisingly, Michael Keaton absolutely kills it in his role as Batman, but much more shockingly is that Ben Affleck's brief return as Bruce is pretty great as well. I always thought Affleck, much like Henry Cavill, was desperately trying to give a great performance while weighed down by bad writing; here, he gets an actual poignant scene where he talks to Barry about how dwelling on tragedies isn't the way to do things, and you should try and move forward instead. It shows he really could have been great if given better material to work with.

Okay, enough being nice to Affleck, I wanna talk about Keaton again. As much as the marketing hyped him up and as much as he is obviously the most blatant fanservice possible, it's still so cool to see him in the suit again. I am not immune to nostalgia pandering, and as corny as it could have been from anyone else, the zoom into his face when he says The Line really is a highlight of the movie. Keaton has a great deal of charisma, and while there are issues with Batman they aren't his fault at all. Most impressively, he doesn't steal the show away from Miller like I thought he would; he enhances the scenes he's in without stealing the spotlight completely from their performance. I feel like this is a problem in a lot of movies like this, where the lead gets overshadowed by a hyped up character, but somehow The Flash of all things managed to avoid this.

And as bad as the cameos could get, this movie gave two of the greatest cameos ever put to film with the return of the GOAT George Clooney Batman and, best of all, Nicolas Cage Superman from the unmade Superman Lives, fighting a giant spider to the death just as God intended. I am not immune to the charms of Nicolas Cage.

Overall, this movie presents us with a solid story, plenty of fun moments, great character dynamics, and more... for the first two acts, anyway.

THE BAD

Once this movie hits the third act, it basically just loses any and all focus and becomes a big dumb video game-esque battle against Zod and his forces in a bland desert landscape. While both Barrys admittedly get some pretty cool moments sprinkled in and Keaton’s Batman’s second death is actually a well done emotional moment, Supergirl ends up being completely wasted, with her sole role being to angrily scream and then die repeatedly.

This actually highlights the problem with Kara in this movie: She’s basically nothing but a plot device and has zero personality, and a good 80% of her dialogue is just angry screaming. As hot as Sasha Calle is and how much she obviously wants to make Kara compelling, she is given so little to work with that her efforts end up being fruitless. She does nothing of consequence after helping Barry get his powers back, and could be replaced or written out of the story and it would still make perfect sense.

Zod’s inclusion is pretty baffling as well, especially since they chose to water down one of the only good things from Man of Steel into a boring, generic doomsday villain. You can really feel that poor Michael Shannon would rather be doing anything else, and his bored performance just highlights how poorly implemented Zod is in the plot. Like, the Fladh has some of the best and most colorful DC villains in his rogues gallery, one’s that are often overlooked because Batman’s villains sell more toys. Why not highlight some of them instead of taking a Superman villain and stripping him of all personality to the point the actor clearly has no passion for the role? Cutting Zod would make cutting Supergirl even easier, and then two of the biggest problems with the movie are gone!

The third act does manage to mostly rerail itself once it goes back to Barry trying to unfuck the timeline, with only a disgustingly egregious bit of fanservice that I’ll discuss in the next section hampering it. But at the end, despite the incredibly based George Clooney cameo, there’s just so many unresolved and unanswered questions, with the biggest one being who killed Barry’s mom? Considering her death is what kickstarted the whole plot, you’d think this might come up, but it never does. A lot of other things come up and get dropped too, like whatever was going on with Batman in the opening, but maybe I’m just crazy for wanting elements introduced in a plot to have significance beyond just being there to be cool.

Even beyond that, there’s the fact that Supergirl and Keaton!Batman’s final fates are never really resolved, something that apparently wasn’t a problem in early versions of the film since they showed up alive in the final scene. As much as I loved seeing Clooney, I think trading him for getting some closure for Keaton and Calle would have been more satisfying.

Everyone harps on how bad the CGI is—and it absolutely is, don’t get me wrong—but for the most part I found it endearingly bad. Like the opening with the CGI babies? That’s too goofy for me to hate. But once the movie revolves into bland grey and black CGI bad guys and creepy deepfake celebrity cameos, I stop being quite so forgiving.

Oh, and on the subject of cameos, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one as pointless and unfunny as Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman showing up out of nowhere (complete with theme music) to make Bruce and Barry look like dumb assholes. Imagine thinking this was a good idea.

THE UGLY

The biggest point of contention surrounding this movie is the CGI necromancy used in the aforementioned cameo clusterfuck from the climax, which gives us George Reeve, Christopher Reeves, and Adam West posthumously reprising their DC roles in non-speaking appearances (there’s archived audio from West, but his cameo isn't really focused on to the point you can barely tell it's him) where they just stand there before the camera swoops around like in that Saul Goodman gif.

I think this is one of the very few times where I actually think the outrage is mostly justified. To be clear, I’m not getting mad on behalf of dead celebrities I never knew, and as long as the filmmakers went through the proper channels and the estates of these stars were properly compensated, I don’t have any legal objections. All of my distaste is coming from a subjective, moral standpoint.

I have never liked this CGI necromancy ever since Rogue One popularized it. I find it really gross and distasteful, and in most cases I think finding a lookalike actor would be preferable than playing Weekend at Bernie’s with a computer generated facsimile of a dead person. In The Flash, I understand having lookalikes would diminish the wow factor of the crossover, but there was an extremely easy workaround to this: Have cameos from all the living DC stars.

Was Brandon Routh not available to put on the Superman tights? Would it have been so bad to let Grant Gustin pop in for a cameo? They acknowledge Helen Slater, so why not Melissa Benoist? Hell, if you want to reference bad, campy movies, have Shaq show up as Steel or Josh Brolin pop in as Jonah Hex! Or even Ryan Reynolds, I’d bet he’d be down to return if you gave him a real suit this time!

Like there’s just no excuse for ghoulishly parading around dead guys when there’s so many alive guys you could use instead. People can complain all they want about the fanservice and cameos in the past few Spider-Man films, but at least they only had returning characters played by living actors. And when this movie already has the niche, out-there Nic Cage Superman cameo, proving they were down to do things as out there and inoffensively creative as reference unmade movies, it’s really just inexcusable. It doesn’t ruin the movie for me, but it makes me lose a bit of respect for the people who okayed this over less offensive cameo ideas.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

To my surprise, this film actually turned out to be pretty good. Not “great,” not “the best superhero movie ever,” but genuinely mostly good and enjoyable.

My opinion is that the movie is good in spite of itself. The third act is truly a hot mess, the stupid desert battle against Zod is awful and boring, Supergirl is depressingly pointless, so many plot points are just dropped or otherwise forgotten, and the CGI necromancy is nothing short of ghoulish. But the rest of the movie is truly a lot of fun. Barry and his younger self have a fun dynamic, Keaton really manages to take what little he’s given and show that he’s still got it as Batman, the Clooney and Cage cameos were delightful, and most importantly the emotional moments are actually effective.

I think with a bit more polish this film could have actually lived up to the hype around it. There is a great movie in here being suffocated by fanservice and CGI but still managing to get a few gasps of air regardless. I think if they’d kept the conflict more grounded or made Reverse-Flash the primary antagonist, things might have turned out better.

I think its score is pretty fair. My friend @huyh172 described this as “the worst good DC movie,” and it’s an assessment I fully agree with. It’s not as good as Aquaman, Wonder Woman, The Suicide Squad, the Snyder Cut, or Shazam!, and it’s definitely not as bad as stuff like Wonder Woman 1984 or Josstice League. It’s also a bit too enjoyable to be mid. It’s just a really solid movie held back from true greatness by some damning flaws… and really, that makes it the perfect capstone to the "Snyderverse," a cinematic universe that had some solid movies but was held back from greatness by incredibly bad ones.

#Is It Really that bad? #IIRTB #review #movie review #The Flash #The Flash 2023 #Ezra Miller #andy muschietti #DC #DCEU #Snyderverse #Michael Keaton #Batman #Sasha Calle #Supergirl #Barry Allen #superhero movie

[supercantaloupe]

The Rent Post™

aka, a lengthy screed on how rent the musical goes about adapting la boheme, where it fails, and what can be done about it

so i’m admittedly a reformed Theater Kid™. and tbh i still very much am a Theater Person, even a Musical Theater Person, i’m just in my 20s now and my taste has shifted away from what’s mainstream on broadway right now and closer to the world of opera. but there absolutely was a time in my early teens when i was Really Into Rent, as many Theater Kids™ were…and there was also a time in my later teens when i thought about it and realized that rent was not only just not my thing, but that there were some significant Problems with it, as its own work and as an adaptation. now, having finally seen boheme for myself, i feel like i’m really in a place to piece together how the two works compare to one another, and why/how i think rent falls short of success (as a piece of theater anyway. obviously rent is not lacking in commercial and popular audience success, for better or worse).

i knew years ago that rent is a direct adaptation of la boheme, but wow, only after seeing the opera did i come to realize just how closely rent follows boheme: in plot beats, in character names, even borrowing a couple of lyrics and musical motifs here and there. 

but it also changes things from the original opera -- namely, it adds things -- and i think this is the first place where rent runs into trouble. now i am by no means such a purist that i think no work should ever be adapted unchanged (more on this later...what’s the point of adaptation if not to change things to make the work resonate with a new audience anyway?). however, any and every change made to an existing work in adaptation should be thoughtfully made and motivated, because every single change has an effect on the whole product in some way, and many small changes can add up to create a rather different final product than a creator might realize. 

(and this goes both ways, i think -- both in a work where a more flawed source material is adapted into something new and better, and when a superior original work is adapted into a worse new creation.)

definitely some of the changes made in rent while adapting la boheme are due to the change in medium. opera and musicals are both theater, sure, and more similar in many ways to each other than either is to straight play or film perhaps, but it’s still like a spanish speaker and an italian speaker trying to have a conversation with one another. the languages are similar and there might even be a bit of crossover in mutual intelligibility but they are still ultimately two different languages with different grammars and vocabulary. opera in general tends to have slower pacing than book musicals, fewer plot threads of equal importance. that rent is specifically a musical adaptation of la boheme, rather than a true rock opera, demonstrates this well. the mimi/rodolfo relationship is still front and center (americanized of course as mimi and roger), with marcello and musetta close behind (though expanded in rent as more of a love triangle among mark, maureen, and joanne, the latter being an invented character for the musical who i think embodies the original marcello as much as mark does). but rent adds a lot of stage time and focus to a new couple, collins and angel, who are directly lifted from colline and schaunard, who are essentially secondary comic relief characters, whereas collins/angel are arguably as important plot wise to mimi/roger and mark/maureen/joanne. 

(and i’m not gonna get into the level of #problematic there is to the depiction of maureen as an overly promiscuous bisexual or discuss why colline and schaunard can’t have been a gay couple the whole time or whatever because. wow i do not care. there are more important things to complain about here c’mon)

first big addition to rent that wasn’t original to boheme is that increased stage presence/focus for collins and angel. it's not inherently a bad addition, and for its time the open depiction of multiple queer romances onstage was still kind of groundbreaking. and yes, rent having a longer runtime than boheme should give it the opportunity to flesh this relationship out more as well as the other two to make sure they all have an equal chance to develop and end in a satisfying way. hell, they don’t even all have to be equal in stage presence/focus/importance to be a positive addition to the show (and how can it be when angel dies halfway through act ii? then again, the character dying doesn’t exactly mean the relationship loses its importance in the plot…) but despite the extra runtime and faster storytelling pace, rent doesn’t actually develop angel and collins all that much, especially not before angel dies. this isn’t an issue with colline and schaunard, of course, cause it’s obvious they’re not important characters in boheme. but collins and angel are arguably more important in rent than even mark/maureen/joanne. and angel dies halfway through act ii…meanwhile, mimi survives the end of rent, when she very pointedly does not in boheme.

and…oh, mimi. she is probably the biggest and most problematic adaptational change in rent as compared to la boheme. on the surface she (and roger/rodolfo) seems the least changed of all the opera’s characters, her name not even undergoing the same americanization treatment as the others. but there are just so many small details that add up and up until she’s a fundamentally different character in rent. i don’t even begrudge the change in occupation: her becoming a stripper/exotic dancer/possible sex worker(?) rather than a seamstress does bring with it some cultural baggage, but i am not personally interested in reading any morality into her choice of occupation, and i choose not to read her line of work as having any implications for her “innocence” or moral value as a character. nor will i read her addiction or disease as being moral qualities either. however: there is a big difference between tuberculosis in the 1840s and both AIDS and drug addiction in the 1980s. neither boheme’s mimi nor rent’s are morally responsible for their illnesses. but there is absolutely nothing mimi could do about her tuberculosis in boheme except die, because it was france in the 1840s and nobody knew what an antibiotic was. in new york in 1989, there were rehab clinics and there were medications for HIV. these things were expensive and hard to access, yes, but rent really goes out of its way to show us that mimi had the resources to access these things -- she is able to afford AZT in act i on her own (and the fact that she’s on AZT is used as shorthand for her HIV+ status, as opposed to other characters about whom we are told outright)...

… and her relationship with benny (the much-expanded counterpart to boheme’s benoit the landlord character) in act ii, who verbally offers to pay for her admittance to a rehab program.

yet the next time we see or hear anything of her, her loving mother is calling to ask where she is as she’s presumably gone missing…

…and then discover she has been living on the street, dying from exposure/disease/addiction. 

did she do this willingly? did benny refuse to continue supporting her? we don’t really get an answer to any of this; rent isn’t really concerned with why mimi is in the position she’s in, but is rather entirely preoccupied with staying true to boheme -- up until mimi’s death, anyway. because mimi doesn’t die in rent, she is saved, and says that angel told her to keep on living (as though it were a choice). why? we can only speculate. really, if any character embodies the same “dying tragically in a world too cruel for them to survive” theme as mimi in boheme does, it’s angel. and her death is honestly used as a tool throughout the rest of the show: a purpose for kindness, community, life.

is this a bad “bury your gays” kind of thing? i don’t really know, i’m inclined to believe not. but i do think angel’s death is more thematically akin to mimi’s death in boheme than the actual (near-)death of mimi in rent. 

and this is the biggest difference between rent and boheme: boheme is not about hope. boheme is a tragic romance about how important relationships are among people in disadvantaged communities/situations, but it does not say that love will transcend or materially improve those conditions. rent, by contrast, does. rent suggests that the love of partners and community (even if filled with complications and tensions) is lifesaving. 

(and i know rent’s stated thesis is “no day but today,” i.e. live and enjoy every day as though it could be your last, but i think thematically all the characters and their interactions overall suggest a theme of community just as if not more strongly, whereas “no day but today” is more limited to the HIV+ characters and has little to do with the mark/maureen/joanne subplot. mimi's outlook on "no day but today" changes when she chooses to stay alive on the urging of angel from the other side.) 

now i don’t think this is altogether a bad moral to have in your theater piece. especially in one of the first major pieces of theater centered on marginalized queer characters. i will not deny how important and cathartic it can be, both now and especially thirty years ago when rent premiered, to end on a hopeful note rather than a tragic one. but i have a couple of issues with how rent goes about making this its central theme. for one thing, mimi has frankly too many Things affecting her health in the end for her survival to be realistic, and absolutely nothing up to this point in the show has suggested a setting of magical realism or pseudofantasy; everything has been as grounded in real life as possible, until finale b, when mimi suddenly and near-inexplicably survives. it feels like it comes out of nowhere tonally and thus isn’t very satisfying an ending when put to scrutiny. for another, angel has already died, and angel is, compared to mimi, a much more beloved and uncomplicatedly positive force in their community and relationships. angel’s entire stage presence (while she’s alive and when her character is invoked or referenced after her death) is a positive one: caring for collins when he’s injured, providing food and funds to the group, placating arguments, etc.

and the fact that angel has no concerned parents leaving her voicemails, unlike mark, roger, and mimi, underscores that she has no one else to lean on for support except her community of bohemians. and we’re not given a reason to believe one way or the other about her home life or financial stability outside of today 4 u when she got a sudden windfall for killing a dog (whatever; schaunard did the same thing to the parrot in boheme). in contrast to mimi, roger, and especially mark, who are clearly shown to have family who care about them and want to support them, yet they choose to live in romanticized poverty anyway. mark even gets a good job in filming and still finds a way to complain about it.

really, except for angel (and arguably collins, too), it’s difficult to totally sympathize with the characters in rent and care fully about their plight because they’re just…not depicted as particularly likable people. maureen is an unfaithful and kind of manipulative partner, and her approach to “protest” is really just bad self-absorbed performance art. roger just kind of sucks at songwriting (how is your eyes the song that he’s spent the whole show writing? it’s the worst number in the musical lol), and he’s quick to anger…his decision to leave mimi makes even less sense here than rodolfo’s decision to leave her in boheme, where at least he did so out of genuine concern for her health (also why does he leave mark? rodolfo embraces marcello as a friend still after mimi leaves in boheme...act iii of boheme is the least closely adapted in rent by far.). wheras in rent roger seems to be both genuinely jealous of mimi interacting with other men and upset by her continued drug use. although this last one i don’t begrudge him for, since it’s made clear he’s a recovering addict himself…although it does make mimi’s relationship with him all the worse, considering that mimi’s take on the whole “no day but today” theme is to throw caution to the wind with her actions and not worry about the future at all, and her interacting with roger is directly tempting him back into addiction which he clearly does not want. (and roger’s rejection of her in another day is framed as him being in the wrong with mimi being backed up by the life support chorus…)

while mimi as we’ve seen is reckless and throws her life away even when people try to help her (very very different from boheme’s mimi, who makes no particularly reckless choices, and accepts help when it's offered). and mark is entitled and uses his film as an excuse to disengage with the real world, even exploit it (see: the way he films the life support meeting without permission, or the homeless woman, which is never really confronted elsewhere in the show…)

the inclusion of a homelessness subplot in rent is particularly strange to me. it shows up a lot, especially in act i: the threat of homelessness for the main characters should they not pay their rent or come to some kind of agreement with their landlord; the vague future threat of benny’s “cyberarts studio” getting built which is implied would evict those living in tents on the lot; mimi being found living on the street in the finale; and the chorus/ensemble who show up periodically, as above. homelessness is an ever present element of set dressing/conflict in rent but it’s never really addressed, no points are ever made about it, which is in my opinion kind of wild and very unsatisfying. the above scene especially, considering how direct of a callout it is towards the show’s own characters and writing, yet it is never addressed afterwards, and this conflict is never really resolved. 

one could take similar issue with the choice to swap tuberculosis in boheme with AIDS in rent. though in my opinion i think addiction is as much as if not more rent’s analogue to boheme’s TB, since that is a much more acutely seen disease for mimi and only mimi while there are multiple characters (main and chorus) living with HIV…then again, angel is the character who gets the real tragic death analogous to mimi’s in boheme, and angel dies of complications from AIDS, so i suppose it’s open to debate. regardless, there’s a significant contextual difference between TB in the 1840s and HIV and addiction in the 1980s: there was no system, political, social, or medical, that could truly heal someone of tuberculosis in boheme’s setting. but there very much was a medical and social system in place to help people with HIV and addiction in the 1980s; systems which were aggressively denied to those who were suffering by the political system. and for as much as the characters in rent like to sing about revolution, protest, and activism, not a single one actually challenges the powers that be or call out by name those responsible for the systematic denial of healthcare to the marginalized. activism and artistic revolution is hollow and meaningless in rent, they never name a real enemy, just a vague sense of “the man.” but it’s a story set in a real and still recent historical time period, the effects of which we still deal with today (and i’m sure even more acutely so back in 1996); it just feels disrespectful to me to use those crises as such important set dressing for your musical which positions itself as a “fuck the man” revolutionary kind of piece of theater and yet do or say absolutely nothing about the real world issues it is appropriating. for more information i highly recommend checking out lindsay ellis’ video on the topic. 

so is all this to say i think rent is an irredeemable, fundamentally broken work? actually, no; i think it has a decent foundation and some solid music. i understand the reasoning behind and appeal of updating an old work to a new time period/setting for a new audience, and i think trading 1840s paris for 1980s nyc is an interesting and workable substitution. but when i look at rent as it is now, i just do not see a finished product. 

and i think this is the most frustrating and disappointing thing about rent to me: rent is, quite literally, an unfinished show. its composer and librettist, jonathan larson, died suddenly the day of its first preview performance. and for so many developing (off-)broadway shows, previews are when the actual finished product is crafted, as the show is revised based on audience reactions. of course audience and critical reception to rent from the very beginning was positive, but i can’t help but speculate how much of that is influenced by the mere fact of its creator’s untimely death. and i wonder what changes larson would have made to his show if he had lived, and been able to hear the audience’s reactions, and revise the show accordingly. i wonder if he would have thought it worked. i wonder if he would have seen the same cracks that i see in it. i don’t think rent is inherently unsalvageable, but it is so far unsalvaged. 

and frankly i don’t know that it ever will be salvaged; not for many years, at least. not until copyright and licensing in musical theater changes, and not until broadway audiences get more comfortable with the idea of altering beloved and familiar classics (the 2019 revival of oklahoma! was, in my opinion, a work of genius, but i’m well aware my opinion is not universal, and especially during its national tour the show’s entire concept has been extremely controversial). do to rent what bartlett sher and aaron sorkin are doing to camelot right now: keep the heart and soul of the piece intact, but rewrite what doesn’t work. or do something even more drastic, cut subplots and change character traits, i don’t know. maybe mimi should die; maybe it really is important that she survive! maybe rent shouldn’t have been based on boheme at all; hell, what would rent look like if it was based on la traviata instead? (well the answer to this one is “a different show entirely,” most likely, but if you want to write a poignant and tragic love story based on a romantic opera and set in 1980s nyc featuring queer and/or HIV+ characters, well…it could work and i’ll leave it there.) maybe that’s going too far, i don’t know, but the point is, i want to see directors and writers have the freedom to try that stuff out. because i don’t think rent is unsalvageable; i think it’s unfinished. 

but rent is far too popular and beloved for anyone to dare touch its libretto with new ink. the memory of jonathan larson is held far too preciously for anyone to allow such debasement of his work. when searching online for libretti to reference when writing this essay, i found one transcribed script with this at its heading:

and i think that about sums it up for me. “may he be friggen worshiped!” him and all his creations, holy and untouchable.  it’d be tantamount to theater sacrilege at this point to try and change it. how dare you sully larson’s good name by thinking you could “fix” his masterpiece…the masterpiece no one wants to admit he never got to actually finish. well, i don’t know, maybe it’s me being jewish and sentimental here, but if i have enough respect for a piece of work i want to be able to engage with it and question it and interpret it as i think it best ought to be. (jonathan larson was also jewish. would he agree with me? i don’t know. but i think he’d want to see the best of his work, just like i do.) live theater is inherently participatory and dialectical. and it ought to be alive, not carved into stone. neither immovable nor under threat of utter annihilation should someone come too close with a chisel. rent has potential. la boheme is still as affecting today as it was a hundred thirty years ago (did you know rent premiered almost exactly a hundred years after la boheme?). rent could be the same. and it does have emotionality behind it as it is now, credit where credit’s due. but it could be more than just that. if we could just let someone finish the thing already, even if larson himself couldn’t.

#sasha reviews #rent #<- afraid of putting this in the tag. rent fans please be cool. just scroll past this if you don't wanna see me being critical ;; #la boheme #this took so long to write. please enjoy #tldr; rent isn't irredeemable or unworkable but it is unfinished #i think it ought to either just let itself be closer to boheme (the 'keep it simple stupid' approach) #or let itself stray from that source material more and give each of its subplots the full attention it deserves (and needs) #(and maybe cut one or two of them...) #and be more of its own thing already #i don't know. who knows what would work best? no one does. cause no one's tried it yet. that's the bottom line i guess

[artemisandhersilverbow]

jfc Olivie Blake’s writing shatters me every. single. time.

#olivie blake #one for my enemy #Sasha antonova #lev fedorov #book review

[freaky-flawless]

Yikes... I was a huge Pretty N' Punk Sasha defender but now that I actually have her doll...😬

People were right about her screening not matching the other girls. Which I suppose isn't a huge deal, but they could have at least given her darker make-up. And I love that they gave her curly hair, but they should have done something a little different, and made the color a bit darker. I like her outfits a whole lot, aside from the weird suspenders they put on her pants (cut those off first thing) but the silver boots are odd. Idk, all the other girls have black boots, and black suitcases, but Sasha's for some reason are different.

The worst thing, though, is that they lightened her skin tone. I did notice it in her stock photos that she looked a bit paler, but thought it was maybe just weird lighting. But nope, her skin is definitely lighter than her other dolls that have been released since the revival. Was really hoping MGA would have smartened about about that, but I suppose I was putting too much faith in them.

When I noticed that her doll was cheaper than the others, it brought me back to being a kid and seeing reduced prices on the Sasha dolls because she was less popular. But in this instance...it seems pretty justified.

#bratz #bratz dolls #bratz sasha #sasha bratz #pretty n punk #dolls #doll collecting #not mh #im disappointed to say the least #i like the web series but her skin tone looks off in that too #keep in mind that this is the first original play line doll that they've released since the come back #there's more to come im pretty sure but thats kinda a big deal...and yet they flopped #she was supposed to be in the original release back in the day but they dropped her for whatever reason #but she did have a design and people were wondering why they didnt just go for that #im curious what that would have looked like #aside from the quality i think the fact that she wasnt a reproduction is also why she was cheaper #text post #doll review #i guess #i still want jade bad #all the other girls looks are very out there and sasha's is just super tame #cloe has orange hair lol #and they all have dark lips #im def repainting her lips #they are a really pretty color tho so im gonna regret it a little bit

[starr-angelofnarnia]

OK OK I have to talk about Barbie!

I went and saw the Barbie movie on Friday. I don't typically go to movies when they are in theaters because my adhd doesn't handle sitting quietly still for an extended period of time. But marketing for this movie was on point and I had to go see it.

In short, with no spoilers, I loved it. There were a few bits of the story that could have better, but overall, it was a wonderful movie. So I want to discuss it but I'm hiding the rest under the cut because there are spoilers.

Also, I have to say that the criticism that the movie is inappropriate for children though it was marketed to young children is hilarious. It was not marketed to children; it was marketed to the millennial women who grew up with Barbie at its most controversial. Not once did I see a marketing campaign and think, "this is perfect for children!"

I digress...

Didn't Like: Ruth and Barbie's Conversation to the Last Joke

Getting out of the way what I didn't like: basically the ending. I appreciate the point that was trying to be made, that ideas live on, that humans live on through what they put into the world. But I personally don't feel it was done effectively. The scene where Barbie talks with Ruth is weird and doesn't flow with the previous scene. And the gynecologist joke that closed the film took away from this message. Read somewhere that the end came to Gerwig in a dream, and it honestly looks like it (but not in a good way).

Liked: References to Discontinued Dolls

All the jabs at discontinued Barbies (would have been cool if they would have had a scene of Midge giving birth like they had with growing up Skipper) were hilarious. I appreciate that Mattel didn't shy away from the cringier dolls in the collection. And I personally think that's a sign of strength, being able to learn from your mistakes. I did find an article about other dolls that could have been included, which I'll link below.

Liked: Sasha's Criticism of Barbie Being Anti-Feminist

Sasha's speech about how Barbie has set women back because it's a valid argument that many people have made. I grew up with concerns that Barbie was giving girls body image issues, that she gave men unrealistic expectations for women, and that her portrayal isn't even biologically possible. And for a bit, I fell into this line of thinking. Though it was never Barbie giving me unrealistic expectations for my body, it was images of celebrities that did. But acknowledging this criticism makes the film far more powerful than if they'd ignored it completely.

Loved: Barbie Encourages Ken to Find an Identity Outside of Her

One of the criticisms I've heard was how pathetic Ken is as a character. But I think that's the point. For one, this is how women are often portrayed in films centered around men. For once, the man was the damsel in distress. Second, after the Kendom falls, Barbie encourages Ken to create an identity for himself outside of being "with Barbie". The Barbies aren't trying to put the men down in restoring Barbie Land (a common criticism) but encourage the Kens to be more than Barbie's companion. (Side note: the word patriarchy was used too much; it became a cringey buzzword after a while.) Finally, Ken didn't get the girl so to speak. Women should be free to have men as friends without it becoming a romantic relationship. Barbie loves Ken platonically and that doesn't change.

Loved: Barbie's Emotional Confession and Gloria's Response

I've seen tons of praise for Gloria's monologue about the complexities of being a girl. And this was definitely a highlight of the movie. But I haven't seen as much praise for the events that led to this: Barbie's grief about not being good enough. I cried during this part of the movie because it was so relatable. I constantly feel this way, that I'm not good enough. This was such an emotional scene and it really resonated with me.

Final Thoughts:

I hope that this shows men some of the struggles of women that they often overlook.

I love that Greta Gerwig was able to support trans people without taking away from what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. (Part of what the gyno joke was)

The soundtrack is fire. The only thing that could have made it better is a song from queen Taylor Swift. Also don't know why Ken's cover of Push couldn't have been included

BTW, links where I got my information and pictures

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT88cVS2U/

https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/greta-gerwigs-barbie-features-discontinued-dolls-like-allan/amp/

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/did-barbie-shade-bratz-in-the-new-movie-trailer-2159598/

https://www.ok.co.uk/lifestyle/fashion/kenough-tie-dye-hoodie-barbie-30545994

#barbie #barbie movie #margot robbie #ryan gosling #america ferrera #ken #barbieland #greta gerwig #kendom #feminism #patriarchy #opinions #review #Gloria #sasha #bratz reference #discontinued #mattel #midge #allan #i'm a barbie girl #what was i made for #barbie dreams #pink #choose your fighter #barbie world #push #just ken #dance the night #do you ever think about dying

[azazel-dreams]

Escape to Lilacwell by Sasha Morgan

Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

#Escape to Lilacwell #Sasha Morgan #books #book reviews #book recommendations

[merylodrama]

I Am… Sasha Fierce

Beyoncé — 2008

★★★½☆

Sasha Fierce is a very polarising record. On one hand it has some the Beyoncé's most beautiful pop tracks and on the other it has some of her most outdated sounding productions which tarnish her discography.

Production on tracks like Ego or Sweet Dreams (and especially not rated bonus track Why Don't You Love Me) sound like a nice prequel to her next album 4, and tracks like Disappear or That's Why You're Beautiful also have a B'Day touch to them. But tracks that unapologetically sound like Sasha Fierce are outdated and not very worth it anymore (Radio!). If I Were A Boy being the exception.

As much as she delivers incredible vocals here and as always, this project has always felt odd and out of place. She wanted a taste of being a main pop girl, and it worked at the time. But looking back, I'm glad Beyoncé followed her need for new sounds and let herself experiment on future projects. This is the record I had the least fun re-listening to and I'm convinced it won't change.

Smash into You — 9,6

Scared Of Lonely — 9,6

If I Were a Boy — 9,4

Sweet Dreams — 9,1

Ego — 8,8

Halo — 8,0

Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) — 7,4

Hello — 7,3

That's Why You're Beautiful — 7,1

Disappear — 6,9

Satellites — 6,1

Broken-Hearted Girl — 5,6

Diva — 5,6

Video Phone — 5,3

Radio — 5,0

Ave Maria — 4,3 Total : 7,2/10

#Beyoncé #I Am… Sasha Fierce #sasha fierce #music #review #album review #album #pop #throwback #2008

[su4vz]

“but if I can only have you as a fire, Sasha, as a flame of what you are, then I want you to burn for me. ”

-Lev Fedorov

#ok hold up u can’t convince love like this actually exists irl #lev fedorova #one for my enemy #Sasha Antonova #romeo and juliet #core #love #books #book review #bibliophile #authors #books and reading #booklr #books & libraries #i love books #book tropes #book quote #lev is such a gentleman

[phykios]

Review: "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher"

It was a long wait for the Black Sails reunion tour–but it was worth it!

Jokes aside, I first started to really get excited for Percy Jackson 2023 once I saw the news that Jonathan Steinberg had been tapped as showrunner. (This is the first weekly plug to go watch Black Sails if you haven’t, btw.) Despite a rough and rocky start, Black Sails surpassed the usual limits of a “boobs, blood and sex” costume drama and pivoted into some seriously excellent character-driven drama, and I’m hopeful that Percy Jackson can do the same. Awkward preamble completed, allow me to jump right into the good, the bad, and the as-yet-unquantifiable: 

(Because I know this fandom has a tendency to get, uh, wacky, let me preface this by saying that these are my opinions, and they are just opinions. Any comments on acting, writing, directing, etc., are not attacks on the people behind them, and should not be treated as such. I firmly believe critique is an act of love, and that the best reviews don’t change minds, but treat readers to another point of view instead.)

Percy Jackson opens in a dream. Slowly, against the backdrop of thunder and french horns, our hero emerges from the storm, walking slowly to the foreground. This dreamlike quality continues as we are treated to a minute and a half of flashback, the diegetic noises of the world muted in favor of Percy’s narration, and further into the beginnings of the adapted book content. Percy is, of course, immediately drawn to the statue of his namesake, but it’s a motivation more deeply underpinned by Sally, played by the frankly phenomenal Virginia Krull, before the warm, golden memory is rudely interrupted by the present, and the first real glimpse of the mythological world.

As Percy force-shoves Nancy Bobofit into a fountain (the CGI is pretty bad, honestly. But CGI has been bad everywhere, so I’ll let it slide), Megan Mullally’s Mrs. Dodds makes her grand, 30-second appearance. This little encounter–it feels like an overstatement to call it a “fight”–is over almost before it begins. I would have liked this scene to have a little more weight to it, given that it is the first encounter with the mythological world… but at the same time, I think the understated nature works in two ways: first, I am so, so glad to see something other than bog standard action flick fight, and second, the way she moves through the crowd without them noticing her adds to the feelings of isolation and “brokenness” that Percy struggles with. No one else even notices the monster making her way towards him. I think it’s a direction that speaks on multiple levels, recalling particularly the underlying theme of useless/abusive adults in the books. 

Which makes it all the sadder when Grover briefly turns on Percy and gets him expelled. I have to commend Aryan here for this scene–he’s clearly struggling with the decision to get Percy out of there, keeping him safe at the expense of their friendship. I really like how Aryan plays Grover’s more anxious side, but also as someone who can step up and push down his fear in order to do his job. It would have really been easy to play him as a one-note, terrified sidekick, and I’m glad Grover has some spine. 

And speaking of one note–Gabe. I understand why they downplay some of his more blatantly abusive aspects, and I think they make up for it with the surrounding shots, especially Percy sighing in the hallway as he hears him yelling, and Eddie the plumber apologizing for putting him in a mood, but I’m not sure I’m sold on it, yet. Right now, he doesn’t come off as someone who deserves death-by-Medusa-head, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they dial him up later on. 

Also, Virginia Krull is incredible. She was, far and away, my favorite performance of the premiere, particularly in the scene at Montauk. Krull’s Sally has the toughness that the books always implied, at least in the early days, but never really demonstrated until much later in the series, layered beneath an easy sweetness that makes it really, really easy to forgive her for keeping secrets. Ironically, Krull’s performance makes Gabe somewhat more palatable, as it seems like she can go toe-to-toe with him, instead of acting like a more stereotypically “docile” battered spouse. 

The Montauk scene is easily an episode highlight. Whether it’s Sally forcing out her unbelievable truth, or visibly crying while Percy pours his heart out to her about being broken, Walker and Krull are fantastic together, even in an exposition-heavy scene like this. 

I’m going to gloss over the drive and the Minotaur fight scene, because otherwise I’d just be repeating stuff I’ve already said, namely that Aryan and Krull are great actors, and the CGI is pretty ugly. Instead, I’ll just briefly touch on the fight–very well directed, and I appreciated that they were able to have both the visual of the sword with all its associated gravitas, and also the more visceral stabbing from the book–and point out that we end where we begin, in a hazy, dreamlike state, with the mysterious, shadowed figures of Chiron and the gang welcoming him to camp. 

This series feels different than a lot of TV. It definitely has a more cinematic feel, and the tone is much, much less jokey than I had feared. The books have a lot of humor to them, but ironically, the show leaning into the more “magical realism” which Riordan almost studiously avoids in the books helps to keep it balanced and un-cartoonish. Visually, I think the lighting is really emotionally effective, but only for the daytime, and suffers from the same “can’t light night”-ism that plagues modern television. Compare in particular Percy before and after Grover, Percy with his mother at the Met, and then the three of them running from the Minotaur at night. 

All in all, a really solid premiere. A little exposition-heavy, which is unfortunately something that carries over into the next one, but when it’s delivered with some excellent performances, it’s easy to overlook. 

Stray thoughts:

I need more Mythomagic. I need more Mythomagic

The marble statues are pretty ugly imo, but that might just be because I am currently spoiled for marble statues in my day-to-day

Percy and Grover swap sandwich fillings 🥺 Percy takes Grover’s lunchmeat

Sally bullfighting with Percy’s red coat… so good

Thalia’s tree with lightning crashing overhead!

Hopefully I can get the next review up tomorrow? And I’ll talk more about Walker in that one, along with some other thoughts on costume, set design, and other more technical stuff

#pjo tv #pjo spoilers #pjo tv spoilers #sasha review #the review no one cares about mwah

[bookishlyvintage]

meet my 100th read this year: The Witch Hunt (The Witch Haven #2)

#book review #the witch hunt #the witch haven #sasha peyton smith #witches #duology #ya fantasy #fantasy duology #fantasy #love triangle #childhood friends to lovers #enemies to lovers #rivals to lovers #paris #1920s #bookblr #booklr #bookstagram #bookish #flat lay #cozy reads #sweater weather #atmospheric

[puroresu-musings]

NJPW WRETLE KINGDOM 17 in Tokyo Dome REVIEW (Jan 4th, 2023)

Ryohei Oiwa vs. Oleg Boltin  N/R

King Of Pro-Wrestling Title 2023 Right To Challenge New Japan Rambo

  **1/2

Antonio Inoki Tribute Match - Tatsumi Fujinami, Minoru Suzuki & Tiger Mask vs. Togi Makabe, Yuji Nagata & Satoshi Kojima  **1/2

IWGP Jr. Tag Championship - TJP & Francesco Akira (c) vs. YOH & Lio Rush  ****

IWGP Women's Championship - KAIRI (c) vs. Tam Nakano  ***3/4

IWGP Tag Team Championship - FTR (c) vs. Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI  ****1/4

NJPW World TV Championship Tournament Final - Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ren Narita  ****

NEVER Openweight Championship - Karl Anderson (c) vs. Tama Tonga  ***1/4

Keiji Muto NJPW FINAL MATCH - Muto, Tanahashi & Umino vs. Naito, SANADA & BUSHI  ***

IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship 4-Way - Taiji Ishimori (c) vs. El Desperado vs. Hiromu Takahashi vs. Master Wato  ****

IWGP United States Championship - Will Ospreay (c) vs. Kenny Omega  *****

IWGP World Heavyweight Championship - Jay White (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada  ****1/4+

Photos.

Happy New Year one and all! Well, my first review on here in years is of the first New Japan show in years that actually felt like New Japan! This was a tremendous show that, despite its 6 hour runtime, was a breeze to watch. Pretty much every match was a sprint until the Double Main Event, and it was full of great to outstanding action. As well as being the first Wrestle Kingdom since 2020 to have actual cheering and a hot crowd. Which created quite the environment.

The pre-show section was fine, but nothing special really. It kicked off with a 3 minute exhibition match Young Lions Oiwa, and the debuting Olympian, Oleg Boltin. This was solid stuff, but much too brief to take anything away from, other than both guys looked really good. Oleg got a near fall with a big slam as the 3:00 time limit expired. Next up was the warm January 4th comfort blanket that is the New Japan Rambo. This was a fun but unspectacular battle royal, much like we’ve come to expect. There weren’t any surprises, and it came to an end at 30:37, when Shingo and SHO (who entered 1st) lastly eliminated El Phantasmo. The final four all “win” and go through to KOPW Title Decision Match at New Year’s Dash tomorrow. The other two winners were Toru Yano (to the surprise of no one), and Great-O-Khan (ditto). Then it was time for the Inoki Tribute Match, as 69 year old living legend Tatsumi Fujinami, who’s impossible good for his age, teamed with Minoru Suzuki and Tiger Mask IV, in a losing effort to historic NJ Dojo graduates, Makabe (who I haven’t seen wrestle in forever), and the still great duo of Kojima and Nagata. This was decent enough for what it was, though it did feature some dodgy looking old dude action, but it was a nice, feel-good nostalgia fest, and I’m not complaining that we got to see any of these guys on the show. Everyone came out in the patented Inoki red towel. The finish fell apart though as Tiger tried (and failed) to do a jumping victory roll on Makabe, time stood still for a minute, then Togi effectively just sat on him and got the win for his team in 9:10. Fujinami did the Inoki “Ichi, Ni, San, DAAAAAH!” catchphrase in the post match.

The main show kicked off in grand fashion as Catch 2/2 defended their IWGP Jr Tag Titles against YOH and Lio Rush in a great little opener. This kicked off a theme of this show, which is matches clocking in at 10 minutes or under, and generally being super fun sprints. This started off hot with YOH wiping the champs out with a topé as they made their entrance, but the champions retaliated by taking Rush out with an elevated facebuster on the ramp, which busted him open. Lots of hot back and forth action culminated in the challengers hitting TJP with the 3K, but Akira broke it up. From there, YOH went for the Direct Drive, but TJP turned it into a small package to reatin the belts at the 10:29 mark. KAIRI’s first defence of the IWGP Women’s Title was next, as she took on Tam Nakano in a really good little sprint. Let’s get the negative out of the way first; this only went around 6 minutes. But, it was a s good a 6 minute match as you’ll ever see! It was all-action, they exchanged strikes, Tam hit a big dive to the floor and scored a great near fall with the Violet Screwdriver. KAIRI came back with a near fall of her own after a Cutlas spinning back fast. She hit another Cutlas, followed by the Insane Elbow to retain her title. The post match is what will make the most news, however, as the former Sasha Banks, now going by Mercedes Moné made her way to the ring, sporting a bit of a different look. She also had some badass, The Chronic era vibe entrance music. After a staredown, she laid KAIRI out with... some move, declared herself the “CEO of the women’s divison”, then challenged her to a title match in San Jose in February. Moné very much came across as a star here.

More tag gold was on the line next, as Heavyweight champs FTR defended against Bishamon. This was an excellent match, and even only going 10:10, was a fast-paced hard-hitter, that managed to be better than I anticipated. Wheeler hit big dives to the floor, and the champions scored great near falls with a Power Plex and Spike Piledriver. After an exciting closing stretch, the challengers hit Shoto on Harwood, and YH scored the win and the titles for his team. I know there’s a lot of speculation about FTR’s future at the moment, but they’ve been nothing short of fantastic in the last year, and I personally feel there’s still a lot more for them to do in Japan. The inaugural NJPW World TV Champion was crowned next as a newly blonde ZSJ faced off against The Son Of Strong Style, Ren Narita in, you guessed it, another great sprint. These 15 minute time limit matches really are a ton of fun, and this was no different; a compelling combination of hard strikes and submission grappling. Zack worked over Narita’s arm throughout to prevent the Overhead Suplex, which payed off as during a grappling exchange he caught him in a Jujigatame, and Ren quickly tapped to give Sabre Jr. the title in 10:32. The post match saw Shane Haste and Mikey Nicholls come out, who were ZSJ’s old mates in NOAH. They handed Zack a TMDK shirt, which he put on and appeared to declare himself the leader. It’s worth pointing out that during his entrance, Zack demanded that “dickhead” Rishi Sunak pay nurses fairly, and quite frankly I couldn’t agree more! But back to wrestling...

Tama Tonga rescued the NEVER title from Sports Entertainment oblivion in the next match, as he defeated WWE Superstar Karl Anderson in a fun match. To his credit, The Machine Gun put in some actual rare effort here, and Tama took some nasty bumps early, including a Bernard Driver on the ramp. The finish saw Tonga get near falls with a big splash and second rope Gun Stun, before scoring the win at 9:36 with another Gun Stun (which Anderson botched the bump for, but whatever). This benefitted from me having absolutely zero expectations going in, so I was pleasantly surprised here. Next was the final match in NJPW of one of the all-time greats, as the on-the-retirement-run Keiji Muto teamed with standout student Hiroshi Tanahashi, and potential “future ace” Shota Umino, to take on the LIJ Muto Fan Club of Naito, SANADA and BUSHI. From an in-ring perspective, this was likely the weakest match on the card, as nobody really did anything (except SANADA hitting the Moonsault on Muto in the early going to get a really close nearfall), but the crowd were super hot for Muto, and it helped the match greatly. This finishing stretch saw Tanahashi hit BUSHI with Sling Blade, the Natural Born Master followed up with a Shining Wizard, and Umino put the masked man away at 9:20 with the Death Rider. They all posed and left to Muto’s entrance theme in the post match. The IWGP Jr. Title was on the line next in a 4-way. This was something of a disappointment I feel, but still a great match. It was certainly all-action, but I don’t know, something just wasn’t clicking for me in this for a while. They all worked hard and hit the crazy multiman spots throughout, and Hiromu and Despy had a really great exchange later on. Things really picked up at the end, when Wato went on a tear, scoring numerous believable near falls with his Recietemente Crucifix Bomb, and had the 26,085 in the Dome believing he could pull off the miracle here. He scored another brilliant near fall when he hit a massive Everest German on Hiromu, but the miracle wasn’t to be as Takahashi escaped a Dragon Tiger Suplex, and hit Time Bomb II on Wato to regain his beloved Belt-San in 16:43. During this match it was announced that Naito and the LIJ guys got into a heated exchange backstage with Kenoh’s KONGO faction from NOAH, which is super interesting.

Things were kicked up a notch in the next match, and it finally felt like a classic Wrestle Kingdom show, as Will Ospreay defended his US Title against Kenny Omega in a dream match. This was just outstanding, and ended up being a completely different style to what I’d anticipated. This was a heated, super stiff, bloody war. Omega (complete with added Don Callis) returned to NJPW for the first time in 4 years, to take out the man who “took his spot”, and Ospreay, who came out as the Ariel Assassin of old, was there to beat the hell out of the guy who abandoned the company 4 years ago. This was a classic grudge match, and featured some insane action that was sometimes hard to watch. There were moments I actually feared someone was going to get seriously hurt, but thankfully that didn’t happen. Omega, who worked totally as the heel here, worked over Ospreay’s famously injured neck and back, including landing a double stomp off the apron onto Ospreay’s back whilst a table was draped over it, which culminated in him bleeding from the back. Ospreay fought back with stiff punches which caused omega’s right eye to swell shut, hitting a brainbuster on the upturned table, and then a big Skytwister Press to the floor. Kenny removed the corner pad, exposing the buckles, which both guys took bumps into. Things got crazy as Will went for a Spanish Fly, but Omega countered it into a top rope DDT onto the exposed buckle, which was insane, and Ospreay juiced heavily from the head. After teasing a countout, Kenny hit the Terminator Dive and a Cactus Jack Piledriver in the ring for a near fall. Omega began obliterating him with Snap Dragon’s and V-Triggers, before hitting a horrifying Croyt’s Wrath from the top. Ospreay hit a couple of stiff looking Hidden Blade’s to put Omega down, and scored a great near fall with a Springboard Oscutter. After a Styles Clash, Ospreay got another near fall with another Hidden Blade. However, Kenny escaped a Storm Breaker, hit a Tanahashi straigh jacket suplex, then followed that up with Kamigoye after a defiant Ospreay spat at him. Omega then hit the One Winged Angel to win the US Belt for a second time, and end this classic war at 34:38. Fantastic stuff, and I certainly hope there’s more to come here.

Then it was time for the second half of the Double Main Event. Rare is the day that I think to myself “Okada’s going to have a tough time following that”, but today was that day. Realistically, it was never going to happen, and as much as I love both White and Okada, the build to this match did nothing for me, and I’ve just seen enough of them. Regardless, this was still an excellent match, complete with all the intricate counters and big spots we’ve come to expect from an Okada main event. But I must admit it took a long time getting there. Okada, who was wearing Inoki inspired garb, broke out a huge senton atomico off the top to the floor on both Jay and Gedo, the big dropkick, and hit the sit-out Tombstone, followed by a Rainmaker, but Jay caught him in a Blade Runner, which is exactly how he beat Okada for the World Title at Dominion, but this time Okada kicked out to a big pop. This ultimately was White’s downfall, as the story was that he started to lose it after Okada kicked out of his finish. Jay tried a Rainmaker-inspired Blade Runner, however the challenger countered and hit a big Rainmaker, but the champion got a shoulder up at 2.99. After a dramatic forearm exchange, Okada connected with a ripcord Enzugiri, hit the champion with his own Blade Runner, then followed up with Tiger Flowsion, and a definitive Rainmaker to regain the World Championship at the 33:03 mark.

The post match saw an interesting moment where White at first refused to give up the belt, then they had a brief staredown, before Jay was dragged for the Dome despondent by Gedo. Shingo Takagi then came out, rightly pointing out that he never did a rematch after losing the belt a year ago, and threw his proverbial hat in the ring as Okada’s first challenger, which was accepted. And in an ultimately fitting move, a show that was dedicated to the late Antonio Inoki ended with the modern day Inoki victorious, and sending everyone home happy with the “Ichi, Ni, San, Daaaah!” catchphrase. All in all, this was easily the best Dome show since 2020, and it very much felt like a return to greatness for New Japan. A must watch.

NDT

#njpw #wrestle kingdom 17 #review #wk17 #will ospreay #kenny omega #kazuchika okada #jay white #antonio inoki #new japan pro wrestling #reviews #puroresu #wrestling #wrestling reviews #wwe #aew #stardom #sasha banks #mercedes mone

[supercantaloupe]

oh new development in my periodic, slightly obsessive research on wolf trap don giovanni. dug up a digital program guide and found this

confirming my interpretation of the three mysterious cloaked figures as fates (vindication!) as well as, curiously, giving them names

#sasha speaks #don giovanni #this post dedicated to that one weirdly angry reviewer who was like #'and what the hell was with those three random hooded figures who just showed up and did nothing every so often? bad!' #get on my level loser i figured this shit out during the overture #anyway i've probably dug up most of the information on this performance now that i can #but i'm still holding out hope they'll announce it for streaming next year. and so i shall return to the wolf trap opera webpage again

[creativedifferencespodcast]

If you’re going to a comic book movie, chances are you have to expect a certain amount of absurd. And one thing The Flash does is lean all the way into that. So shout out to Christina Hodson for standin’ 10 toes down in the silliness.

#creative differences #podcast #movie review #the flash #andy muschietti #christina hodson #ezra miller #sasha calle #michael keaton #michael shannon #kiersey clemons #barry allen #batman #supergirl

[jaynedolluk]

BOOKS OF 2022

Yes, you read correctly. I'm a ninny and forgot to post this last year so I'm posting it now so I can get all caught up. (2023's list is coming soon)

I got books on Inside No. 9 and Blake’s 7 (two of my favourite TV shows) plus a book about Alice in Wonderland (inspired by the V & A exhibition) and one about how Disney was inspired by rococo art (based on the exhibition that I think was held at the Wellcome but I could be wrong).

Also read Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s book, More More More which examined the art of maximalist interiors and Runway Bird by Irina Lazareanu which was sort of a style guide to being a rockstar’s girlfriend. I read Growing Up. Sex in the Sixties which looked at sex in society/popular culture at this time and Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall. I read Zoe Howe’s guide to witchcraft, Witchful Thinking plus Lisa Kroger + Melanie R. Anderson’s 2nd book, Toil and Trouble, which looks at notable women in the occult in America. Plus Dress Code by Veronique Hyland

Also managed to bag a copy of the book of Velour (the drag magazine) when I went to see Sasha Velour perform. I read And the Category Is by Ricky Tucker which examines the ballroom drag culture + voguing plus How You Get Famous by Nicole Pasulka which looked at the rise of some of the drag queens from the Brooklyn scene + the impact of Drag Race.

Read The Queer Bible which has various LGBT+ celebrities talking about the different people who inspired them and a couple of books which looked at the rise of lesbian popular culture in the early 2000s – The 2000s Made Me Gay by Grace Perry and Girls Can Kiss Now by Jill Gujowitz.

I don’t tend to read that many novels but I did read some really good ones this year – My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Yinka Where’s Your Husband? How to Kill Your Family and The Albion Initiative (the final part of the Newbury & Hobbes series of steampunk detective novels with an occult twist). And I finally managed to get round to reading Shuggie Bain (which I loved) as well as tracking down copies of The Elementals (Southern Gothic horror novel) and Interfictions (which contains the story about Nancy Spungen called Rats).

I read memoirs by Joan Collins + Esme Young (from Great British Sewing Bee) as well as an excellent biography on Jayne Mansfield called The Girl Couldn’t Help It and an oral history about Antony Bourdain called Bourdain.

I do tend to read a lot of music books. I read memoirs by Kid Congo Powers and Miki Berenyi plus Bodies by Ian Winwood (which looked at how the music industry affects mental health mixed in with his own story) and Exit Stage Left by Nick Duerden (which looked at what happened to a variety of stars after their fame dwindled). Also read Southend on Zine by Graham Burnett which was a history of fanzines in the Southend area which included interviews with a lot of the zine makers + touched on the history of alternative music/culture in the area.

One of my favourite books this year was Millenium Gothic by Dorian Bridges (known as of herbs and altars on YouTube) which deals with her growing up as a goth in the 00s but also deals with her mental health issues including anorexia and self harm. Another couple of favourite authors returned with second memoirs, Emma Forrest with Busy Being Free and Amy Liptrot with The Instant. Also Ione Gamble (who does the Polyester website + zine) wrote a brilliant book of essays called Poor Little Sick Girls which I highly recommend.

#book review #book reviews #my reviews #end of year #joan collins #esme young #jayne mansfield #anthony bourdain #kid congo powers #miki berenyi #fanzines #emma forrest #amy liptrot #ione gamble #polyester zine #sasha velour #rupaul's drag race #inside no. 9 #blake's 7 #alice in wonderland