oneofmymoods

[oneofmymoods]

How come u guys never told me about Welcome to Nightvale? You know i like scary stories and surreal nonsense. I had to discover it completely randomly, like a commoner. My feelings are hurt.

[oneofmymoods]

[oneofmymoods]

this is so wrong.

[oneofmymoods]

Seriously, Walking Dead is about cheap manipulation, not storytelling. Is he? Isn’t he? Watch every week to find out. We’ll take our time to let you know but don’t worry, the answer will totally underwhelm you.

[oneofmymoods]

I'm very behind on my TV watching.

[oneofmymoods]

So I was all ready to write a bit of a mea culpa after watching last week’s episode of The Walking Dead (Here’s Not Here), because that was really good TV. Well acted, well written, well put together. That episode dared, at least to some extent, to inquire about the morality of violence in a world gone mad, and then to answer that question with something other than “any act is justified in the service of survival” which seems to be the philosophy of the show more generally. The actor who plays Morgan is charismatic and interesting to watch. The writers, for once, went with a “less is more” attitude (although the way everything got wrapped up with a bow at the end was unnecessary, in my opinion, and detracted from the overall quality of the storytelling).

Then I watched this week’s episode and got back to wondering why I even bother with this show. Instead of dialog we got speech after stilted speech, rendered by all these uninteresting townsfolk, on topics the show has gone over again and again ad nauseam. And also it seems to me disrespectful of the audience to insert these ridiculous filler type episodes. Is Glenn dead or not? One has a feeling this is a question the show is going to drag out for a long-ass time, because that’s what this show does. But all their “is he or isn’t he” bullshit outside the confines of the text of the show itself is really annoying - I don’t want to have to watch that Talking Dead nonsense to develop the story okay? Since when do showrunners release statements on whether a story arc will be resolved? By doing so, saying “it will be resolved,” it seems like they’re excusing a lot of crappy boring eventless episodes that will bridge some half-assed journey to that resolution. A resolution that will actually take all of one episode to tell, once they feel like getting to the point. But we the audience will hang around watching crap, on the off chance the writers feel like throwing us a bone. 

Watching tonight’s episode I kind of felt like I would after clicking on a link titled “46 Things You Never Knew About Zombies that will Amaze You: Number 29 Will Shock You!!” That is, I knew it was going to be a bunch of crap before I even clicked, clicked anyway, read the whole stupid list, and then felt dirty, dumb, and manipulated afterwards. Like I fell for their trick, even though I knew it was a trick. Wait, this wasn’t supposed to be a post about my relationship history… :)

[oneofmymoods]

We're never "American." I know of very few Asian American characters where their "Asian-ness" is uncommented upon. Linda Park in season 1 of Fargo I guess, and Stephen Yuen in Walking Dead. You often see other POC playing characters where their race isn't part of the story, but that seems unusual for Asian American characters, and that's a little annoying. Nerds, hypersexualized females, or desexualized males. That's what Hollywood thinks sells, if you look Asian.

Oh, but I forgot about making fun of accents. Can anyone imagine how Ken Jeong's character in The Hangover would be received if he'd been an equally stereotyped African American or Latino guy? That character is a straight up minstrel show, and I don't get why no one seems to give a shit. I'm not accusing the actor of anything, because his other work mostly seems less exploitive, but I really hate how many people think it's okay to tell me how funny they find that character.

[oneofmymoods]

I speak Korean like a kid, and my mom speaks English even more poorly. She speaks Spanish pretty well I'm told (I don't speak it at all), but sometimes she confuses it with English and she'll say a sentence with three languages in it. Communication between us gets interesting...

[oneofmymoods]

Honestly I never even considered like 80% of this. Crumbs??????

People without big boobs: OMG I WISH IHAD BIG BOOBS

People with big boobs:

can’t run

over sexualized

cant wear tank tops without being inappropriate

cant sleep on stomach

no bathing suit fits

BACK PAIN

people staring down shirt

creepy jokes

people grab them

no cute bras

no sports

three+ sports bras

no bra HA GOOD LUCK

can’t take any kind of selfie with cleavage because “YOU’RE DOING IT FOR BOOBS”

shirts dont fit

if the boob bit does the stomach doesn’t

DID I MENTION OVER SEXUALIZED

mocked by the media if your stomach isn’t flat but your boobs are huge

leaning over to drink from water fountain, boobs in fountain

no suspenders

crumbs are gone forever

boobs hang out of bra and everyone can see the lines

people automatically think you’re more sexual if you have big boobs?

no button up shirts, buttons pop off or constantly open

have fun with a vest for work

things smash your boobs flat and make you have a weird puffy flat chest

people constantly talk about them

dont bend over, they fall out of bra

can’t war pajamas with no bra

people think touching them is okay

people ask if they’re fake

people saying big boobs dont count unless you’re thin

people who think you’re stupid because of boob size

people who wont take you seriously because of boob size

finding costumes is impossible

nothing if you want anything in asian sizes

most bra stores dont go past DD

people you don’t know ask their size

if you have long hair, it gets stuck in your boobs

OVER SEXUALIZATION

no artistic nudes allowed because you have big not “artistic boobs”

there are more

[oneofmymoods]

Sorry, for those (two) of you who wondered, the kiri kiri kiri ask and response was related to my avatar which is Eihi Shiina in Takashi Miike’s film from about 15 years ago, called Audition. One of my favorite ever horror movies. If you guys haven’t seen it you probably should. It kinda gets a bad rap as “torture porn” but I actually don’t believe that is fair at all, because it is more than just a sadistic gore fest (and it isn’t really that gory even). The characters, even the villain, have motivations that seem real, even if they are pretty disgusting (which goes for the presumed protagonist as well), which makes it even scarier. You guys should see it if you haven’t. 

This trailer, below, is moderately spoilery, as was my previous post, so if you think you might want to see it, I’d go ahead and avoid watching it.

[oneofmymoods]

Kiri kiri kiri kiri

[oneofmymoods]

I love the look on her face. I watched this episode again the other day and this scene totally made me laugh even more the second time. Until it stopped being funny...

[oneofmymoods]

I saw Sicario over the weekend. To be honest I was at first underwhelmed. I thought the writing was a bit hokey, especially Benicio Del Toro’s character (though I loved the good job Benicio did in the portrayal), and the lack of agency in Emily Blunt’s character (though that impotence was obviously part of the point). But the more I reflect, the more I liked the film. The story is still nothing to get excited about (unless maybe you’re in a Donald Trump panic about tunnels under the border and stuff). In lesser hands this could devolve into a shitty 80′s style action movie, because the screenplay itself doesn’t give you much to go on. Lots of men with guns, blah blah blah. However, it turns out that rather shallow script was in very good hands instead, and so what we got was a much better film than what might have been. 

The director, Denis Villeneuve and the cinematographer, Roger Deakins, do a great job of ratcheting up the tension in every scene. Early in the film a convoy of SUVs and police trucks speeds into and out of Juarez. It is the kind of thing many would just give short shrift to, a few establishing shots. But Villeneuve lingers on the twists and turns as the vehicles move smoothly through the town. Nothing is really remiss, but there is this building sense of danger as Deakins’s camera looks down from above, and switches to periodic views out from the interior of the cars. You get a strong sense of Emily Blunt’s fear - not so much because of her performance (which was good, don’t get me wrong), but because the audience feels something approaching a similar fear. 

In other scenes the camera is wedged into tight spaces with the characters. There is a sense of claustrophobia at times, but not in the “I can’t breathe” sense but the “I cannot escape” sense. Blunt, the audience proxy, often has no idea what is going on, but only that she is in danger of one kind or another. That makes the confined spaces even more uncomfortable, because if the shit starts the characters have nowhere to go, and the dread this causes is compounded by Blunt’s (and the audience’s) general confusion as to just what the fuck is even going on.

Don’t go see this movie for resolution to the moral/ethical questions it poses. I didn’t find those very interesting or even well fleshed out, though the screenplay surely wishes you would weigh these issues. Instead go see it for the way the director crafted it, the way the actors played it (particularly Blunt, Del Toro and Brolin) and especially the way the cinematographer shot it. Together they build suspense and tension that makes this really entertaining, and a good document on how to build a tight thriller. 

[oneofmymoods]

I love this scene.

[oneofmymoods]

One thing I really like in both seasons of the Fargo TV show, and in the movie, is the humanity of the police officers. They aren’t simply tough guys (or often even guys), but fully rounded people. When they encounter something tragic it affects them. When they face danger they are shaken, sometimes for life, as we saw in old Lou from season one.

Some of the cops are competent, like Marge in the movie or Molly in the show. Others are just collecting their paycheck, like Bob Odenkirk’s Bill in season one, or the North Dakota detective from tonight’s episode (I really liked that guy but didn’t catch his name). 

So often in cop shows, the police are drawn kind of crudely. Characterization might include “alcoholic” or something, but often they aren’t well fleshed out. Even a great show like The Wire is guilty of this two-dimensionality to some extent, in my opinion. But look at the way Hank and Lou seemed saddened by the crime scene in episode one, or the way Hank exhaled that breath of relief from fear after his run-in with Mike Milligan and the Kitchen Brothers in episode two (great scene, really well played by Ted Danson), or Lou clearly having been affected by his own high noon moment with Milligan. I think this is probably how real cops react to such encounters, and I really appreciate that Fargo makes them characters first, and their profession second. That’s how real people are.

[oneofmymoods]

It occurred to me during the “coming soon” clips after tonight’s episode of Fargo that this guy:

...and this guy:

...might be essentially the same character.

I should probably mention, fwiw, that I don’t really understand The Big Lebowski. It is a very good, funny movie (which I only just saw very recently), but I don’t quite understand the insane love it gets. Still, from Offerman’s character’s insane-level conspiracy theories last week, and from what appears may be some tough guy stuff from the same next week, these seem like similar guys. Which I only bring up, of course, because Coen brothers, etc.

[oneofmymoods]

and yet, i continue to watch....