#an impossible silence

[51kas81]

John M. Jackson in Beauty and the Beast S01E11 - An Impossible Silence (1987) #2

[eggplantgifs]

Marjorie Lajoie & Zachary Lagha: The Sound of Silence » 2024 Cup of China

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: dismemberment / ]

I think a lot about how Leo’s rescue could have easily ended in him losing a leg as the portal snaps shut on the Krang still clutching the limb, or, alternatively, only having Leo’s right arm make it out, still held dearly in his brother’s hand as the rest of Leo is left behind. (The latter hits even harder, as it directly parallels his future self in the worst of ways.)

I think a lot about how so many things could have gone wrong during the course of the movie with even a little bit of a change, but it really is harrowing how much of a coin-flip the entirety of the Prison Dimension rescue was.

[kcsplace]

Benji's lack of response to Ilsa's offer to Ethan to run away together is evidence of when he got nabbed.

If he'd been around to hear his husband propositioned, there would have been commentary. He was gone well before the comms squealed.

[ivanttakethis]

Every time I see this art of Ivan I have to physically keep myself from acting up

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

The only thing that makes me really unhappy coming from you is silence. Do you understand now? There's a part of your thoughts you don't talk to me about, and it seems impossible to me that you would never stop. I think you avoid them to spare me and you don't know yet that this is the only way you have to torture me or to upset me.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, February 15, 1950 [#195]

[dadrielle]

For the first time in a long time, there is a restful silence that comes across your mind.

[theater-goul]

My live reaction to Black Monday s2 ep8

[yeetyoteartz]

I don’t want a fic where starscream gets redeemed(I do) I want a fic that expands on starscream’s betrayal rather than having a half assed flashback saying “all decepticons are evil bleh bleh bleh”

[crownedwille]

Are there still Crown Prince!Wilhelm stans out there despite S3 turning it into the number one problem? Please report, we need to unite and no, that doesn't mean that I don't support Wille's mental health and happiness and that I love the monarchy, some people out there must get it

[51kas81]

John M. Jackson in Beauty and the Beast S01E11 - An Impossible Silence (1987) #1

[thecreatorfromgallifrey]

How about we bring that back ?

[anghraine]

Today's unhinged "good God I hate how much extreme generosity I'm expected to extend to the Peter Jackson films by people who make wildly bad faith arguments about things I like" rant:

I am very deeply tired of people insisting with zero evidence that of course the LOTR films are imperfect, but the difficulties of adapting LOTR are such that it wasn't possible for them to be better than they were—in, apparently, any respect. They just couldn't be done better, at all, because it was so hard to make something watchable at all.

This is always just like ... really? Really?? Just what prevented them from making better decisions about anything? What exactly made casting every actor of color as barely differentiated villainous hordes in the twenty-first century so necessary and unavoidable? The glamorization and vast expansions of battle scenes and insertion of "heroic" war crimes was the highest film as a medium could aspire to in the early 2000s because of what insuperable force?

What made it impossible to give Arwen a coherent character arc? The films could not have been made without the underlying assumption that most of the cast are NPCs who will only do the right thing, when they will, if prodded or manipulated or influenced by main characters? In what way is this an inevitability of adaptation or film that simply couldn't have been conceptualized differently, much less better?

There is zero explanation or justification for why any of this stuff (or the myriad other flaws) had to be that way and couldn't have been done better in any way at any point. It's just stated that the films that exist must be the best films that could have existed because they're the ones that do exist and are popular. QED.

That doesn't make any sense, though, and it doesn't convince anyone who doesn't already agree. The idea that they could not have been better in any way (including their worst quality, which again, is the extremely racist casting), that some force was preventing not only the actual filmmakers but any filmmakers that could possibly exist from doing anything better just seems patently absurd.

You can like them and respect what they did achieve without demanding that everyone buy into a baseless and irrational argument that their pop culture success means nothing about them could possibly have been done any better. Look, I was in my mid to late teens at the time. I remember the early 2000s quite well. It wasn't now, but we are not talking about an age so divorced from our own that any of these things were somehow fundamental to the media landscape.

There are ways in which the LOTR films were very good that were essential to their popularity then and now. This does not require anyone to accept that it was literally impossible for them to be better than they are or that some defense is required against every criticism of them ever.

I am not, incidentally, talking about removing Bombadil, an entirely understandable and defensible decision that the film defenders in my notes somehow always feel the need to bring up. I know that changes had to be made, that adaptation is not a word for word transcription, that it would always be a difficult text to adapt, that structurally minor elements had to go, that they are cinematically beautiful films that a lot of work and love went into. I know this. EVERYONE knows this, because for the last 20 years it's been impossible to criticize anything about them without being reminded. Their accomplishments, and their existence, do not mean that any choice made by the filmmakers must definitionally have been the right call and could not possibly have been better in any way.

[sunshineonashelf]

scariest doctor who episodes are the among us episodes where they're trapped already on their way to death and then slowly realize that people on the ship are possessed/infected and sabotaging them

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

Speaking is impossible, but so too would be silence or absence or a refusal to share one’s sadness.

Jacques Derrida, The Works of Mourning

[shugthedug]

and here’s the cracked: I sent the Barthes wrestling essay to my partner to read before we watched all the mission impossibles before mi7 came out so that he would understand the role I think Tom Cruise The Movie Star has as their thematic and emotional centre. The escalation of physical stunts and their prominence in the MI movies and the leaning into the narrative of ‘the audience and me against the world’ is a change in Tom Cruises career that was intentional (if forced) and his method of filmmaking evolved to account for it. It has led to a type of performance that is incredibly self aware and effective (culminating at its most powerful, I think, in top gun maverick) where his presence is the signifier of an entire body of meaning and myth onscreen. His recent films have built themselves around this understanding and the audience is a part of this construction. We trust him to embody the characteristics of the myth we have built with him, the stunts hold emotional weight because we need him to do the impossible: he is the reconciling element of the spectacle as well as being the spectacle itself. At its most simple and reductive: there’s something of wile e. coyote in Ethan Hunt (you cannot believe how complimentary I mean that to be) and the movies work because they know this is implicit in our understanding of them and tom cruise never creates a discord by chafing against it. We access the deepest human experiences through actors because they make them manageable for us, and I think tom cruise performs this in a very classic sense that has been drifted from since the 70s - in that way he is the last true movie star. His recent performances certainly align themselves closer to silent film and the golden age of Hollywood, where constructing a ‘realistic’ character was less important than an audience being able to rely on an actor to fulfil the unspoken code of their presence. I love that he embraces this and works with it, because in doing that he’s building something separate and new, and he might be the only figure who can.