#Carpet

[cileklipalet]

[texaschainsawmascara]

ruggy_waggy on ig

[artist-issues]

Hi! How do you think the Aladdin live action remake compares to the animated film? I'm interested to hear criticisms but I also found it to be one of the more fun-to-watch remakes.

Okay

Here’s the thing

This is not your fault. I work with students on the weekends and several of them from different walks of life and grades have told me that they like the Live Action Aladdin better than the original and not just that they like it, they love it, for some of them it’s their favorite. Movie.

And I just feel like I’m living in the Twilight Zone. So any overzealousness in responding to this ask is not directed at you, I think you have good taste and a good head on your shoulders.

But their favorite? Their favorite movie? LA Aladdin is so bad. Objectively. Like, from a movie-making standpoint, if you didn’t even compare it to the original. I’m thinking, pacing-wise, first and foremost. Why does it feel like “One Jump” was so poorly choreographed that the people in it couldn’t move in-time with the tempo, so the editor had to fast forward their motions to fit the lyrics? Didn’t even try to cover that up? Why does all the costumes look like costumes, like we’re in a really elaborate high-budget high school production?

Secondly, acting. The guy who played Aladdin at no point convinced me that he was in love with Jasmine, afraid for his life, or insecure. At no point. And those are all very important to the plot. And he’s the lead. Even Will Smith feels like he’s trying to put himself in the head of his character in high-emotion situations but he can’t quite get there. Feels forced. The bad CGI doesn’t help.

Thirdly, likability of characters.

LA Aladdin—the character—is handsome. And that’s it. Other than that, he’s a dipstick crossed with a complete jerk. He falls backward out of windows and fumbles around in front of girls and clings to a lie at the cost of his new best friend’s eternal freedom just because he starts to believe that lie, himself, and get a big head?

Genie is preachy, not funny. He has no believable stake in the game—because they removed all reference to him caring about his own freedom to make him seem more flawless. Why? Why did they do that? The original Genie gets sarcastic and even bratty, out of genuine hurt, when, after all he’s done for him, Aladdin turns back on his promise and refuses to set him free. Why does he act bratty and hurt? BECAUSE HE IS HURT. Because for ten thousand years that’s been his fondest dream, and because he started to think Aladdin was his real genuine friend, but in this all the emphasis is placed on painting Aladdin as a scummy punk who won’t listen to reason so that the new Genie and the girl-power Princess can look better by comparison.

So Genie can’t say, “after all, you’ve lied to everyone else, I was beginning to feel left out. If you’ll excuse me—Master.”

Because that would be him showing a lack of grace. Bitterness. Might make Genie, himself, look a little flawed—RELATABLE AND HUMAN, and it might underline the fact that he meant it when he said he wanted freedom. Oh, no, we can’t have that. Just have him say, all noble, “oh, you’re gonna drink from that cup. You’re breaking my heart.”

Please.

Who cares that Genie is set free when Genie didn’t seem to be all that trapped or broken-up about his captivity beforehand? Leave him in the lamp, he’s happy as a benevolent fairy godfather, doling out wisdom and one-liners for all eternity to ungrateful brats. 🙄 That’s how any competent audience member feels when they changed Genie’s characterization around.

And again, they made those changes so that Genie would look wiser and more gracious in that moment. Gee I wonder why they needed to make Genie seem more flawless this time around. I wonder what’s different about this Genie versus the original Genie.

And not only that, but they changed Jasmine’s character to make her more flawless and perfect, too. Because “women empowerment.” So now she’s not a real human girl who wants to be treated like a human being and get to be normal. No way, that’s too “simple naive girl” of her. We gotta make her strongggg and wiiiiise and a better leader than her father. Now she’s a political dreamer!

EUGH.

That’s not Jasmine. The whole point of the original Jasmine is that she wanted to be free, to be treated like a human, not a prized pet or a trophy, and she wanted a real friend. She never wanted to be Sultan. Never never never. She was the type of character who was trusting enough to assume a shopkeeper would happily give an apple away to a starving child—trusting enough to still love Prince Ali even though he turned out to be a liar not once but twice,—trusting enough to teach HIM TRUST.

Trust that he’s not going to be cast off just because he’s a street-rat! Trust that he can let other people know who he is, without having to be all money-and-status obsessed—

—no, listen, listen,

Aladdin’s whole character—and this movie is supposed to be about Aladdin—is that he’s insecure about who he is.

He thinks that because he’s poor and lives on the streets nobody will love him and he’ll always have problems that he’s trapped in. What does he think the solution to those problems are?

Wealth. Royalty.

And is that true? Are wealth and royalties also the guarantee of problems going away? No. But he’s never had those things before, so how would he know that?

I’ll tell you how.

Jasmine shows him.

When they’re in his hovel in the city, he is so excited to show her his view of the palace, and it’s the first thing that takes his eyes off of her for the scene—and she immediately turns away, dispirited, sits down, and sarcastically pops his daydream-bubble of how nice it must be to live in the palace. She is the reason his idea of having “no problems in the palace” stops being his dream. And they both bond over feeling trapped.

If Princess Jasmine wants to be Sultan, instead of wanting to be normal and free, then Aladdin is less able to connect with and relate to her. Their romance is less impactful. And she has less of an impact on him, on changing the way he sees the world. Because they go from “real people” to “strong-female-character and her supportive-male-trophy-boyfriend.”

And. Furthermore. He doesn’t even have to face the pressure of being offered the position of “Sultan.” Because Jasmine wants to be Sultan. So the LA movie just quietly eliminates the part where Sultan offers that to Aladdin, and fear and doubt cross over his face, and his big character flaw of insecurity makes a comeback. They just eliminate that part. So that Jasmine can want to be Sultan, and Aladdin can remain mildly supportive.

That is awful.

Because then, in this scene, which is the unraveling of all three main characters:

Aladdin has no real reason not to set Genie free. Absolutely none. They just came from a meeting where his future as a prince is guaranteed, and the villain seems to be gone. And, Aladdin feels no fear. Because he doesn’t have to be Sultan. He can just be a pampered prince on the arm of Jasmine. He clings to the lie—even though he starts this scene by saying it’s not a lie. He tells Genie he can’t do it on his own—but then he says he’s changed, “Aladdin is gone,” so which is it? Is he lying and he therefore needs Genie to keep it up, or is he no-longer-Aladdin so it’s not a lie and therefore he doesn’t need Genie anymore? Either way, his reasons for keeping Genie around are nonsensical. Cruel. Self-centered. Mind numbingly stupid. The scene is written terribly because they’re having to play TWISTER around the character motivations they’ve been slicing to pieces. So Aladdin is no longer sadly but relatably affirming that he’s still insecure, and needs the lie to keep the woman he loves: “Without you, I’m just Aladdin.” Instead, he’s a self-righteous double-talking punk. So that his girlfriend can look empowered and his genie can look wise.

Genie preaches and sermonizes and talks-down-to instead of honestly and emotionally reacting to the fact that his friend is betraying him and refusing the one dream he’s ever had. Will Smith’s face doesn’t move when he says ���you’re breaking my heart.” He says it like an emotionally-manipulative school teacher, who knows the phrase sounds impactful but has no real vulnerable emotion to attach to the tone he says it in. It’s bad acting, is what I’m saying. And no wonder, because nothing about this is compelling. If Genie doesn’t care much about being free, then what’s the big deal, in this conversation? Why are they even arguing? Because Genie is disappointed in his new best friend’s moral fiber? None of that stopped him from helping Aladdin with the lie up until now. So now both characters look stupid and duplicitous, but Genie has the disadvantage of looking unsympathetic, too. Who cares if he’s free at the end of the movie—he “doesn’t care nothing about that wish.”

Jasmine isn’t in this scene but as I’ve said a hundred times, she cannot want to be Sultan. That cannot be her dream. Because if it is, 1) she’s not Jasmine. Shes not the girl who sics her tiger on princes and lets birds out of their palace cages and most importantly runs away. When they give her a new Girl Power dream, they have to go with the much-lamer version of the story where she’s not leaving behind everything she knew and boldly, if naively, trying to start a new life when she meets Aladdin. She doesn’t get to show that she’s willing to throw all that away and walk back into her gilded cage to save his life when her adventure gets him captured by palace guards. Instead, she’s just sneaking out to get to know her people for a quick little jaunt in the marketplace, and he’s caught later by himself in a less-emotionally impactful way like a bumbling cat-burglar in the palace, while she lies like we’re in a romcom. 2) she can’t want to be Sultan because it means she has an end-date to feeling “trapped” on the calendar, and that’s when her father dies and her dream automatically comes true. Regardless of who she’s married to. So there again, no reason to really connect with Aladdin. 3) Jasmine’s whole character is that she wants to be treated like a human. Being the Suktanwould be the exact opposite of that, for her. She’s already lived that. I’m so fed up with what they did to Jasmine. She was the perfect Princess for the lesson “the truth will set you free” and in this remake they made her the focal point of “positions of power will set you free.”

I’m not even going to go into Jafar.

This movie is terrible.

[cranolo-2]

Animal Crossing (New Leaf) Fish Set Furniture

Prizes from submitting an above average-sized fish in the (New Leaf) Fishing Tourney.

Crab Clock

Dab Table

Flounder Table

Football-fish Lamp

Jellyfish Lamp

Octopus Chair

Pufferfish TV

Red Snapper Chair

Sea Anemone Bed

Squid Chair

Marine Pop Wall

Marine Pop Floor

From Nookipedia wiki

[zegalba]

Edward James, patron of the surrealists, was so besotted with his wife, the dancer Tilly Losch, that when he saw the trail of wet footprints she left up the stairs after her bath at Monkton House, he had them woven into the carpet.

[miccolo67]

Sexy hairy man posing on the carpet of his bedroom

[webdiggerxxx]

ೃ༄ੈ✩‧₊˚

[timesacircle]

The Pazyryk Carpet is the oldest known carpet on earth woven 2500 years ago (5th Century B.C.). It was discovered in the tomb of a Scythian prince in the Pazyryk Valley of Siberia by Ukrainian archaeologist Sergei Rudenko in the late 1940s.

[cronehoney]

[godwantsit]

[huecycles]

check it out, i'm deltarune

[cileklipalet]

onarılmaz bir şey yaptım, bir bağ kurdum. bu günübirlik dünyada.

[brutalistinteriors]

University of Technology Sydney, Kuringgai campus. David Turner. Now repurposed and like most remodels (sadly) not quite as colorful.

[royaa]

[koredzas]

Andrea Previtali - The Annunciation. Detail. 1508