#either it will rewrite cinema history

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "A.I. Filmmaking Is Not The Future. It's a Grift." by Patrick (H) Willems

[originally posted august 22 2023]

I worry that young aspiring filmmakers will see these [AI-generated film trailer parodies] and choose to use AI instead of actually going outside and putting their hands on a camera. That, to me, is just depressing as hell.

i have an on-again off-again relationship with the video essays of Patrick Willems. he's one of the very last video creators consistently carrying forward the internet-critic tradition of framing criticism with fictional elements as if the review is occurring in a story, and he's been unwavering in his commitment to the bit for damn near seven years now if not longer. unlike a fair few who've utilized this device in the past, however, Willems is himself an experienced filmmaker with a stable of consistent collaborators helping both behind and in front of the camera. this means his videos are, generally speaking, well-edited and pretty nice to look at. this experience also factors heavily into his criticism, leading to work that is consistently appreciative of and empathetic towards the innumerable material challenges faced during any given production. he is well-versed in film history and cares deeply about the art-- so he uses his criticism as an opportunity to play with cinema instead of simply commenting upon it. as a film school graduate who worked grip/electric for a few years and now makes video essays myself, i think that's pretty cool.

unfortunately, i sometimes find the finished work a little… lackluster. there are a couple videos i really, vehemently disagreed with (looking at you Rewriting The Matrix Sequels), but most of the time it just leaves me a little nonplussed. to be clear: his stuff is never bad, and i've actually found his recent work to be a marked improvement (that Bollywood video is the kind of thing i DREAM of making!), but overall i guess i'm maybe a little too familiar with the specific knowledge pool he's drawing from to get as much out of his stuff as i'd like. relatedly, while i admire his use of the fictional framing device and have nothing but enthusiasm for its continued use… i just, uh, also, kind of, don't really get a whole hell of a lot out of it when he does it most of the time. it's low budget amateur film-making, the quality of which is all over the place. but i am also someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the video essay's capacity to fuse art with criticism, so i can be probably unfairly harsh when i feel it's not "properly" utilized. the fictional framing device at its best complements the criticism either literally or symbolically, and i find that in Willems' work they're often more distracting than complementary.

actually, before i explain why any of this commentary is relevant to the video at hand, i want to go on something of a tangent. one of my favorite single-video uses of the fictional framing narrative is Hbomberguy's Ctrl+Alt+Del essay, but my gold standard for its multi-video use is in RedLetterMedia's film review series Half In The Bag. the latter Plinkett Star Wars Prequel reviews arguably set the mold here (for better and worse), which RLM carried forward through at least the first two or three years of HITB. basically, every review is framed as two VCR repair guys not repairing VCRs and instead talking about the movies they just saw, then charging Mr Plinkett for that time as billable hours. i like their implementation because while the framing devices are in-character, the facade is completely dropped the instant they get into review territory. Willems is similar in this respect, which i think is good. too much fiction in the body of the criticism risks breaking the back of the whole essay.

in those first years, HITB did a pretty admirable job of using the fiction to comment on their subject. one of my favorite examples from this era is their review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, where they spend the bulk of the review talking about the empty excesses of Michael Bay's frenetic, messy action setpieces, full of tonally inconsistent and sophomoric humor… only to end their review with an excessive, sophomoric, disgusting five minute setpiece where two adult men roll around in fake diarrhea and vomit all over themselves. you really just have to see it for yourself, it's a masterpiece of gross-out humor done for a good reason. as the years wore on they eased up on that fictional framing device, until covid happened and it suddenly came roaring back to great effect. they've eased up on it again since then, which i think is good. you can tell when these things are perfunctory. the fictional frame is at its best when it's as playful as it is purposeful.

okay, so what the fuck does any of this have to do with Patrick Willems' video on AI film-making? the short version is, it's got me rethinking how harshly i judge this specific variety of amateur film-making.

to summarize, Willems here is discussing viral AI-generated parody trailers of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Avatar in the style of Wes Anderson, released by a company called Curious Refuge. this one's clearly coming from a personal place for him, and not just because he made a parody trailer for Wes Anderson's X-Men back in 2015. he has a lot to say about every AI-booster's fabulous yarn about how they're "democratizing" art creation, specifically that it's bullshit nonsense. i've gotten in trouble for expressing similar sentiments on twitter (which i can't link to because my account was permanently suspended over """death threats""" and honestly? good fucking riddance), particularly the insistence that LLMs and image generation algorithms make art accessible to some vaguely defined disabled population. it's an offensive notion on a number of levels-- it relies on an ableist assumption that art-making is somehow inaccessible to disabled people, as if specialty tools do not exist, as if the paralyzed have never painted, as if the blind have never written books. it assumes that art is somehow a secreted and gatekept skill, and not the single most common human compulsion outside of our basest needs. but even if these were nonfactors, there is simply no amount of accessibility gained by these technologies that outweighs the industrial-scale plagiarism, automated labor-discipline, massive carbon footprint, and generalized annihilation of the entire internet's usability they represent. these tools are not without their legitimate uses, but until they are vehemently and inescapably regulated on an international scale there is simply no case to be made for them as they currently exist.

Democratizing storytelling is what affordable film-making equipment did. It's what, like, iPhones did, it's what the internet did. Those things gave people outside of traditional structures without huge budgets and resources, the tools to create films and a free platform with which to reach a wide audience. Arguing for AI film-making is saying that people no longer need talent or skill. By this logic, why would you learn to play the violin when you can use AI to create a fake violin recording of the piece of music that you want to play?

it's easy to be against this AI grey goo crap, and still fall into obvious rhetorical traps meant to cede ground to the worst people on planet earth. Patrick Willems deftly avoids these pitfalls and calls it exactly what it is: laziness and plagiarism. the examples he focuses on are especially egregious because the guy who made them didn't even come up with the idea himself-- he asked chatgpt to make him a list of videos that would go viral on youtube, then had some algorithms whip them up. he did no work. no work went into the creation of these things. their supposed "quality" is composted from the unattributed and uncompensated labor those models were trained on. it is a function of what my girlfriend has been referring to as "the age of the executive auteur," describing this moment in history where talentless executives want to remove artists from the art-making process for pure algorithmic profit that goes directly and solely into their own pockets. ghoulish CEOs and tech boosters who want to be revered the way artists often are, without having to put any of the work in, and without having to listen to criticism. they don't just want to own everything, they want to be loved for it too.

it reminds me of Maggie Mae Fish's video about off-grid youtubers, a crowd of independently wealthy failsons who like to crow about their amazing self-sufficient housing projects that they did all by themselves… except for the parts they didn't. she makes a fantastic observation in that video that i've found myself coming back to often-- that for rich people, paying someone else to do work for you is ontologically indistinguishable from doing that work yourself. the exchange of capital comes with an exchange of credit. it is the base assumption that underpins every capitalist boss's relationship with their workforce, and we see it on full display among the guileless herd animals of silicon valley. AI art is only and exclusively a mechanism for doing to art production what the ruling class have long since done to industrial labor, annihilating the worker's claim to its value, disintegrating the jobs held by artists to disempower and destabilize them so that they will accept worse pay for more work. it is precisely the kind of horseplay that's got damn near all of Hollywood on strike. the actual technology itself sucks, obviously, and it will always suck no matter how much better it gets. the quality of the end product is immaterial-- it's about wage theft, man. it's about greed and labor discipline. same old story, different day.

They love the idea of using AI for film-making because they don't actually have any talent or skill. For them, AI is like a cheat code that allows them to seem like actual artists without doing any actual work.

but let's get back to Willems. he does a great job deconstructing how these supposed parodies don't even really embody anything meaningful about Wes Anderson's style, pointing out that anyone who thinks they're emotionless, stoic, austere films clearly hasn't watched any. the dude makes comedies about broken people struggling to find meaning in their lives, for crying out loud! the popularity of this algorithmic trash is an extension of pop culture's long-standing illiteracy when it comes to Wes Anderson. something about a director with a distinctive visual style short circuits the brain when you haven't watched any movies made before the new millennium, i guess. how pretentious to be all having your own vision or whatever lol lmao

what really hits home for me, though, is how he compares these parodies to his own Wes Anderson's X-Men trailer. he talks about spending time watching all of Anderson's films to date in pre-production, taking notes not just on style but on substance, on theme. he treated the project as an exercise in understanding a film-maker's approach to their craft, then got his friends together and spent a couple weeks running around New York filming the thing. the resulting short film is, let's be real, kind of sloppy and cheap-looking. but so what? in the making-of for it, Willems talks about the specific logic of the composition of this X-Men team and the inspiration behind the costumes. here we catch a glimpse of the layers of labor which go into the production of even the simplest amateur work-- research, writing, self-analysis, location scouting, costume design, props, lighting, camera work, and on, and on, and on. sure, it looks cheap. but it was made by hand with love and care, it embraces what it is and doesn't try to be more. i speak from experience with these kinds of projects when i say, the finished work is almost superfluous, except as proof of labor. the real value comes from the experience of making the thing, and the lessons you learn along the way. collaborating on even the silliest and cheapest of short films can be a transcendent and life-changing experience.

Artistic influence is Wes Anderson taking his love of Hal Ashby, Francois Truffaut, and Jacques Demy, and processing them into a unique approach that expresses his own view of the world. AI art is just a machine for plagiarizing existing art.

this is sort of a perfect illustration of what AI art simply cannot replicate. under the proposed normal of those boosting a post-LLM world, there is no barrier between the having of an idea and the realization of that idea. it's a world where ideas guys finally get the credit they insist they've always deserved. what they fail to understand is that everything which makes art special comes in the phase between having the idea, and finishing the work that idea inspired. they refuse to acknowledge that art is work, and work takes time, and that people who draw and write didn't just wake up with this ability by magic divine endowment. they aren't "hoarding" their skill. if i'm a good writer today it's because i spent the last 14 years and change being a really bad one. all this talk of accessibility and democratization sounds suspiciously similar to the "telling me to read is ableist" line of thinking, where we equate the simple and undeniable fact that getting better at anything requires Hard Work with a pilfered and ill-defined language of oppression adopted by bad-faith actors to justify why they never have to change or learn or improve in any meaningful way, to justify why criticizing them for their actions is actually a sort of hate crime.

Willems ends this video teasing a second part focused exclusively on the idea of "content," the way so many artists and entertainers today frame the fruits of their labor as if it is no different from paste in a tube. like Willems, i've long despised "content" as a descriptor and think its widespread adoption is nothing short of corporate-fueled stochastic terrorism against any creator who dares to presume that what they make has any value without the platform. it's like i said in my video about Netflix in 2018-- the only thing platforms have to sell is the platform. the ongoing grey goo-ification of the internet has renewed my conviction that "content" is the enemy (or at least an enemy), because its success relies on a baseline assumption that all things are reducible to their predictable financial valuation. this moment is not just about copyright law or labor exploitation; it's a come to jesus moment for our entire culture, forcing us to confront the only logical endpoint of art under capitalism. it is time for us to decide for ourselves what we value.

AI is getting better all the time, but at its very best you will only ever get serviceable imitations of mediocre products.

with Matt Mercer playing Ganondorf in the american localization of Tears of the Kingdom, i decided to revisit the 2009 online miniseries There Will Be Brawl where he also plays Ganondorf. this series was incredibly ambitious, an attempt to make a dark and gritty film noir playing on the full-cast absurdity Super Smash Bros Brawl. i'm not going to pretend that it's better than it is, because i haven't been able to sit through the whole thing since it aired. it's very much of its time, and boy was that time problematic. but in the same way that films i once would've thought of as mid have skyrocketed up my rankings simply by virtue of having real sets and props and costumes and lights that are actually turned on, i find TWBB's excess of paper-mache props and dollar store wigs immensely charming in hindsight. it looks cheap, and the performances aren't always great, but so what? this is something that no algorithm could ever produce. it's a fanwork that took countless hours of labor, and while the finished project has no shortage of flaws, it may well have been an essential starting point for dozens of careers. it is an audacious idea that was executed to its conclusion, a feat that vanishingly few projects of its ilk have accomplished.

this kind of thing used to be youtube's bread and butter. i still quote The Legend of Neil all the time ("hello, uh- old man?" "you may call me… old man"), and my sense of humor is eternally linked to the forgotten pivot-to-video creations once hosted on The Escapist, Cracked, College Humor, and countless other long-dead platforms. these kinds of parodies fell out of fashion because they tend to be cheap and silly-looking. the rise of Marvel came at the apex of the 2000s hyperrealism fetish in genre media (Spielberg's Minority Report ruined science fiction cinema for at least twenty years), so everything had to be grounded and look photorealistic. we want immersion, man-- we don't want to see the zipper on the rubber monster suit. i think this is an unspoken motivation behind the AI hype cycle. what's the point of even attempting a genre parody if you can't make it look exactly as good as its Hollywood equivalent? we don't want to see a cardboard imitation, we want to see the perfect thing we can imagine in our heads brought flawlessly into reality!

i share Patrick Willems' sentiment that this is depressing as hell.

Willems shook something loose in my head with this video, because i came away from it completely rethinking my relationship to his fictional bridging material, and the generally low production value of most anything high-concept on youtube or other video platforms. there is something to be treasured in even the most slapdash of amateur films, when the work is done with love. there is inherent value to human endeavor in the attempt, even a failed one, to bring an idea into reality. it's the work, the experience, the memories, the chemistry of it all that matters. i want to live in and encourage a culture where people are allowed to make shit that sucks and not have it ruin their lives, so that they can keep making shit until they're good at it. art is not a machine, it is not algorithmic, it is not statistically predictable. like all things truly human, it is an act of defiance against entropy by a soul in transit.

anyway it's a good video, go give it a watch

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Less-Than-Sweet TRUE Stories That Inspired Candyman (1992), And The Other 5 Scariest Urban Legends That Are Still Haunting The USA

In 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy was found dead in her apartment.

As a mentally-unstable resident of the ABLA housing project - one of the most violent on the Chicago south side - her death is far from the only one to have taken place there. But her death is one of the most well documented.

So well documented, in fact, it’s legacy stretches back to the present day.

McCoy first reported strange occurrences taking place in her apartment when returning from the psychiatric unit at Mount Sinai Hospital. She claimed someone had threatened her life to a fellow passenger in the van next to her.

They urged her to seek help, but she chose to take shelter in her fear.

In April, the local police received a phone call from a frightened woman from the ABLA housing project who was claiming someone was trying to come through her bathroom cabinet. When the police finally entered the apartment, they discovered her on the floor of her bedroom with 4 gunshot wounds peppering her torso.

Her death would be just one of the threads that weaved the horror film icon, Candyman (1992).

Today we unpick the fabric, from the twisted history of the Jim Crow South, to America’s darkest urban legends.

Clive Barker never intended to create one of the most iconic Black horror films of all time.

In fact, Barker didn’t even create the feature length film that would change the face of cinema in 1992. What he did, however, was pen a short story about life on the breadline in Liverpool.

The Forbidden (1984) followed a graduate student in the UK who was studying graffiti. Among the garish curse words splashed on the walls of the run-down council estate she investigated, Helen discovered references to an urban legend that have been sprayed onto the concrete.

A legend called the Candyman.

As explained by the later films, Candyman is a pretty standard urban legend: you say his name into a mirror 5 times, and before you would appear a man sticky with sweet honey and with a hook for a hand.

Helen followed the trail back to reports and rumours mutilations and murders in the local area, failing to get any information out of the locals. She then became a victim of the Candyman himself.

Despite the short story closely mirroring the plotline of the film we know and love cower away from today, there is one crucial difference aside from the setting:

In the 1992 film, and in the upcoming 2021 reboot, the Candyman is African-american. Helen’s original encounter with the urban legend in Liverpool, however, was with a pale, waxy figure bearing all the traits of a dead white man.

When Clive Barker first conjured the Candyman from his imagination, he wanted to explore the theme of class in 1980s Britain. Bernard Rose, the director of the 1992 rendition of the tale, on the other hand, wanted to explore the theme of race in America, rewriting the characters on the other side of the pond and deepening the dark story Barker first put before horror fans.

Most importantly, he focused on developing the character of the Candyman.

Where he came from, what he did, and how he did it informed the entire plot, and would span 2 sequels shortly after.

The Candyman Of Cabrini-Green

Rose set the 1990 films in the Cabrini-Green public housing projects in Chicago’s North Side. Originally built in 1942 to home thousands of African-americans fleeing the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration, the housing project captured a snapshot of racial divides in America.

It doesn’t take a historian to understand that racism fuelled the neglect of the housing, and by the time the movie hit the theatres in the early 90s, only 9% living there were actually employed.

But Candyman didn’t just capture the poverty and racism inherent in American society; it pulled us through the mirror, and showed the viewers just one of the many origins fuelling the complex and corrupted history of the USA.

So Who Was The Candyman Based On?

Tony Todd was a pretty important part of the film.

Ok, aside from being one of the few black actors that managed to score a role in a horror movie that didn’t die in the opening credits, and yeah, as well as donning a prosthetic hook, he actually developed the character of the Candyman.

But most notably, he developed the backstory for the urban legend.

And the story starts in the 19th century.

Daniel Robitaille - an established painter - was commissioned to paint the portrait of a white woman. From there began an interracial relationship that was not accepted in this era.

When she fell pregnant, a lynch mob sought out Robitaille to make him pay for his alleged crime. They severed off his hand for touching a white woman, and covered him in honey, leaving him to die by being stung by bees.

What’s really striking of this tragic and terrifying image, however, is that this did happen.

Interracial relationships were scarce in the 19th and early 20th centuries in America and typically featured white men marrying black women (and consequently freeing them if they were slaves), and fed into deep-rooted racism that still haunts the country. One of the pillars of historic American racism and Western Imperial ideas of race was the ‘protection’ of white women from the ‘lustful’, ‘violent, and ‘savage’ black man.

In fact, marriage and politics were both considered the most important arguments supporting segregation, linking the freeing of slaves and interracial relations.

This fear became especially prevalent in the US after the Civil War; the influx of freed slaves would result in an increase in the forbidden relationships, bringing us back to the era Daniel Robitaille’s life was set in.

This timeline is made ever more accurate by the manner of his death: lynch mob activity peaked in the 1830s, 40s and 50s, proving that Robitaille’s story is unfortunately far too common. Although being stung to by bees and insects probably was used as a form of torture and murder, I can only trace a form of this execution method to Persia (approx. 6BC).

But what’s really quite striking is the transformation of Daniel Robitaille, an innocent and very much alive black man, to the Candyman, an urban legend who is seeking vengeance for his murder.

It’s the racial terrorism committed against Robitaille which make him so terrifying. The crimes committed against the innocent black man still tailor him into the image of a ‘scary black man’, the image that we are still haunted by today.

Urban legends are so petrifying because of the outlandish, outrageous monsters at the centre of the story that appear in ordinary places. And that’s exactly what we find here. But here’s the twist: the Candyman charted the original racism that founded the Cabrini-Green housing projects, and the racism still inherent in it.

In fact, that’s the sub-plot of the movie: Helen Lyle discovers more of the everyday realities of being African-american in the US throughout the movie, witnessing poverty and police brutality as well as the garish image of a hooked man smothered in honey.

We, the viewer, are given brief snapshots of black history and the black present, even if only through a bathroom mirror.

And it’s horrifying.

So Daniel Robitaille Was Based On History - But What Was The Candyman Legend Inspired By?

To summon the Candyman - if you dare - you simply need to say his name into a mirror 5 times. This less-than-innovative manner of conjuring the Candyman is obviously based on Bloody Mary and the act of saying her name into a bathroom mirror a certain amount of times that no one actually agrees on.

It is said she will then appear to either show you the face of your future hubby, scratch your face off, or kill you. You can find out more about this legend here.

But she isn’t the only legendary beast weaved into this horror hit.

His Hook Hand is obviously an aesthetic inspiration:

A couple were busy being horror-movie-villian-bait and making out in a car when the radio suddenly blared out an emergency broadcast.

A serial killer (*gasp*) had escaped from the local mental institution (*eye-roll*) and he had a hook for a hand.

One of them heard something scrape on the car so they drove off. Believing it to be merely a tree branch they take a look and discover a hook in the side of the car.

(Their insurance premiums! Oh the horror!)

The final urban legend explicitly linked to Candyman is La Llorona, possibly the second most famous urban legend after Bloody Mary herself.

This hispanic urban legend is tragic but fiercely popular: a woman had two sons and a loving husband. However, after being convinced her partner was cheating on her or loved her children more, she drowned them. She then drowned herself in grief.

It is said she still roams Latin America, looking for her deceased children and taking those who aren’t hers before drowning them when she realises they are not her sons.

To summon her (not sure why you’d want to) all you have to do is light some red candles in a room full of mirrors and yell out her name.

Candyman is thus clearly inspired by these classic american urban legends that have struck fear into gullible children and drunk teenagers for decades. But they aren’t the only stories that gave inspiration to such a film. And they certainly aren’t the scariest.

So What Are The Scariest American Urban Legends?

*clicks torch on*

#1 - The Alaska Triangle

Did you know this frosty American state is home to something scarier than Sarah Palin?

Also known as Alaska’s Bermuda Triangle, this is an area of untouched wilderness stretching from Anchorage and Juneau to Barrow. It’s earned such a reputation as this is where a lot of people go missing.

Okay, fine, an unknown area of woodland where people go missing - this isn’t a mystery, this is a tragedy. But the thing is, it's the sheer volume of people that go missing here which is so concerning.

It started in October 1972, when US House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, a congressman, and a political aide went missing while flying to Juneau. 90 aircrafts and dozens of boats scaled the area to no avail. No trace of the boat, no evidence of human life - or death. It was truly a mystery.

When more planes went missing, when more hikers didn’t return from their adventures, and when more tourists failed to return to their budget hotels, fears grew. Since 1988, 16,000 have disappeared. The rate of missing people here is more than twice the national average.

The disappearances have been traced back to a number of theories including aliens, energy vortexes, and a Tlingit Native American demon known as Kushtaka. The most popular case, however, is for the swirling vortexes of energy which can cause audio and visual hallucinations and health problems. And this isn’t the only location that allegedly homes them.

Search and rescue workers often report the physical feelings associated with vortexes with magnetic anomalies spiking in certain locations.

Could these missing people be lost in the ferocious wilderness of Alaska? Or is something else at play?

#2 - Turnbull Canyon

We now turn to a sunny California, and the 4 mile loop in the Puente Hills reserve. Aside from being known for the majestic views of the Hsi Lai temple and the Rose Hills Memorial Park, it’s been home to a number of paranormal forces.

But the most interesting thing about this location is that it's been considered an evil location for centuries. Local Native American tribes called it Hutukgna, ‘the dark place’. It was forbidden ground, and they didn’t set foot there. So, when Spanish missionaries came to convert them to Christianity, they did it here.

“Now we are without hope. Now we remain for as long as the sun rises and sets in the sky”

To this day locals and tourists report feeling as if they are being watched, and legend has it Native Americans that were killed there remain as spirits, waiting for the final sunset.

The urban legend amassed a new reputation during the Great Depression. Large groups of men and women in dark robes would partake in strange rituals at night which few witnesses have seen.

One witness claims they saw a young boy strapped to a cross. He was surrounded by a circle of people who danced and chanted in unknown languages. The robed group then flipped the cross until it was upside down, and proceeded to beat the child until he was close to death. He was then taken away. We don’t know what became of the child. But we do know a flurry of disappearances and kidnappings haunted the area throughout the early 20th century.

And then it gets even worse.

In the 1930s, an insane asylum was built there. It mysteriously burnt to the ground 10 years later.

Psychic mediums and visitors report feeling unbearable at the location, from reporting classic paranormal activity such as the feeling of being watched or seeing orbs, to feeling as if someone is rummaging about in your own brain.

#3 - Vampire Comte de Saint Germain

New Orleans already has a paranormal reputation. Jacques Saint Germain only blended seamlessly with this historic location. But the thing is, it is said he would have witnessed most of the history for himself.

Throughout history a man of similar stature and personality has been reported.

He was at a notable wedding in Cana where Jesus turned water into wine, he was an alchemist in the 1600s, and he was in high-society in 1742.

It was an encounter in 1760 with one Countess von Gregory which was really interesting: the Countess was convinced she knew him as the son of a man in 1710 - but he hadn’t aged a single day.

He joked, as he often did, that he was over 100 years old.

Fluent in 6 languages, his incredible abilities and knowledge made him an enviable man - and an impossible one, too.

We do know, however, that he came to New Orleans in 1902 from France and invited the elites for a special feast. He didn’t eat a single bite, but did drink dark, red ‘wine’. He then confirmed rumours of when he kidnapped a local woman, held her down, and bit into her neck.

When the police turned up to investigate, they found the room covered in blood stains. But Jacques was nowhere to be seen.

#4 - Nash Road

Like most titles of urban legends, the Three-Legged Lady gives away the story. But this tale fares just as tragic as the other legends that shape this list:

Just outside of Columbus, Mississippi is Nash Road.

Legend has it if you stop on the road, turn off the headlights, and honk the horn one, two, three times, she will appear. She will knock on the roof of your car to alert you of her presence, and race your car to the end of the road. She will slam her body - 3 legs n’ all - against the car the entire time.

There are many alleged origins of the three-legged lady. Some believe she killed a lover, severed off the leg and attached it to her body, whilst others believe she is holding what’s left of her daughter’s corpse. Alternate versions of the legend even claim she is the spirit of a human sacrifice of a nearby satanic cult.

#5 - The Watcher

The first letter was sent in the summer of 2015.

A family had just moved into a grand mansion in Westfield when they started receiving letters from a person who claimed to be watching over the house. They were eerie, they were menacing, and they were signed by someone only known as ‘The Watcher’.

Numerous former owners have all received other letters from the same person with the same sentiment.

“Who has the bedrooms facing the street?”

“Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested?”

“Did 657 Boulevard call to you with its force within?”

The Watcher often refers to the house as if it is an entity, even warning one unsuspecting family not to destroy the house when they brought in contractors.

There are many more details to this story, but what I find most intriguing is a paragraph from a letter welcoming a new family:

“657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out.”

The stalking is still under investigation.

***

I’ve written about enough ghosts, ghouls, and long-forgotten legends for just over a year now to know what true fear is.

And real life is always scarier.

If you liked this post and want to hear more then go on and hit follow!

Can’t wait to hear more real ghost stories? Check out the Peoples’ Paranormal Archive, the online ghost story collection that is chock-ful of real evidence of the supernatural just waiting to traumatise you.

[aion-rsa]

What Went Wrong With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze?

https://ift.tt/3cey4oF

The story of how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went from underground comic book to the highest grossing independent film of all time is the stuff of Hollywood legend. But ask producer Tom Gray about the sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, and you are likely to hear an altogether different tale. One of a frantically rushed production, censorship backlash and a change of director and direction. Actors were replaced, there were clashes with the comic book creators and a series of strange and unusual characters were added to the mix – including Vanilla Ice.  

Gray was head of production at Golden Harvest, the Hong Kong studio behind martial arts classics like Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon, when comedian-turned screenwriter Bobby Herbeck first approached him about a live-action film adaptation of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s cult comics.  

It’s fair to say he took some convincing.  

“I hated the idea. I thought it was stupid,” Gray tells Den of Geek. Undeterred, Herbeck pestered Gray for months until the Golden Harvest chief had a sudden change of heart.   

“I had an epiphany and thought we could just put stunt guys in turtle suits and make all our money in Japan. That was why I was interested; making it low budget. It escalated when Steve Barron came onboard.”   

Barron had made his name with groundbreaking music videos for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and A-Ha’s “Take on Me” and sold Gray and TMNT creators Eastman and Laird on his vision for the movie.   

More importantly, he enlisted the late Jim Henson and his legendary Creature Shop to bring the Turtles to life using state-of-the-art animatronics, which came at no small expense.   

Even so, Gray found the project was a hard sell when it came to finding a major studio willing to distribute the movie.   

“George Lucas’s Howard the Duck had just come out and bombed,” he recalls. “When I went around people would say ‘oh no I’m not going to put my name on the next Howard the Duck. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, how absurd.’ Nobody wanted to step up in the major studios.”   

Undaunted by the mass rejection (“Hollywood is always the last to know”) Gray eventually secured a deal with New Line Cinema, then best known for A Nightmare on Elm Street. 

The rest, as they say, is history.  

That first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came from nowhere in the spring of 1990 to make an astonishing $135 million, becoming a cultural phenomenon in the process. A sequel was inevitable but the results were anything but.   

“It was rushed,” Gray says when asked for his overriding feelings about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.  “Once the first film opened, we figured we had to get another one out as quickly as possible because this whole thing could fade away very quickly if we didn’t come back.”   

Incredibly, a release date for the sequel was set for almost exactly a year on from the original. That seems crazy to think now, in the era where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is carefully plotted out years in advance, but this was 1990 and New Line Cinema. At this point the production company which was working on its sixth Nightmare on Elm Street Movie in the space of just seven years. The quality of those films had varied wildly but one thing had remained consistent: the quick turnaround.  

“New Line wanted it out on pretty much the same date, maybe a week earlier in fact. So, we rushed into the production, got a script together. The overarching thing was speed. We had to get it out,” Gray remembers. “I think that’s probably the reason why it doesn’t top many people’s list of the best Turtles movies.”   

A Change in Tone

One of the first challenges facing Gray was a tonal one. While the first TMNT film had garnered praise for maintaining the dark and dangerous feel of the original comics, not everyone was happy.   

“We started getting some pressure from parental groups. They felt it was a little too dark and a little too frightening for children,” Gray says.  

In the US, there were reports of Turtles toys and merchandise being banned in schools over worries they encouraged aggressive behavior in kids. In the UK, the characters were even rebranded the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles amid concern among censors that the word “ninja” promoted violence. Michelangelo’s nunchucks were also banned. It wasn’t just the censors who expressed concern either.   

“The toy company was also telling us that maybe we shouldn’t be too dark,” Gray said. “And then, of course, then there was Jim Henson himself, who died while we were making the first film. His whole thing from the beginning was that he didn’t want to make a really dark film. Steve [Barron] was able to convince him it was the way to go even though it was different from the Muppets and everything he had done before. They had a great relationship. Jim trusted Steve.”   

The decision was made to approach the material with a lighter tone, with Todd Langen’s original script undergoing a major rewrite to address the change. Despite the change Gray insists an attempt was made to retain some of the darker elements.   

“We tried to get somewhere in between but probably didn’t succeed.”   

Ultimately, however, the looming deadline left little room for nuance.    

“If you sit down and think about this thing too much, you’re never going to get underway,” he reasons.

A New Director  

In another notable shift that fans have questioned down the years, Barron did not return for the sequel.  

The Irish filmmaker told Flickering Myth that the shift in sensibilities was the deciding factor.   

“[It was] lighter, and all the instructions that had gone on from the first film were coming from the producers about keeping the color and lightness and getting away from the dark edge in number two,” he said. “For me it was poppy, and that wasn’t my sensibility.” 

Gray tells Den of Geek Barron didn’t come back “for reasons that I won’t go into” but during the interview paints a picture of difficulties during their work together on the first film.   

“I fought with the crew every single day but they did a hell of a job. Budgets were not adhered to but I’ve always given them credit because of their vision,” Gray says.   

The producer also revealed that the first film was re-edited from Barron’s original version after his bosses were left unhappy with the director’s cut.  

“The studio did edit the film in the end to come up with a different version.  It was felt it was cut so you didn’t get to see the roundhouse kicks and fighting which was the hallmark of Golden Harvest. When the bosses saw it in Hong Kong, they complained that they couldn’t tell what the turtles were doing. They wanted to see these guys kicking and fighting. Steve’s style was good but we wanted another look.”   

Despite Gray’s diplomatic tone, it’s not difficult to imagine such developments might have created tension. In Barron’s place came American filmmaker Michael Pressman, who Gray knew from his days at United Artists.    

“What I liked about Michael was that he was a disciplined director. Having gone through the problems with the first picture I wanted someone who shot fast and stayed on budget. That was my main motivation,” the producer says.    

A capable director who has gone on to enjoy a long and varied career in television, little of the blame for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2’s failing can fall at Pressman’s feet though it’s undeniable that some of the creative spark of the first film was lost with Barron’s exit.   

So was much of the original’s violence, with the Turtles rarely shown using their weapons in the finished film while the action set pieces were also significantly watered down.  

Eastman and Laird

Despite the criticism levelled at the sequel for failing to retain the tone of the comics, all of what went into the movie was greenlit by the TMNT creators. Part of the deal inked by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman saw them retain final approval on anything in the film. But that created other issues both at script and production level, as Gray recalls.  

“Kevin was certainly more malleable with going along with things because of the budget but Peter was very difficult to get things by because he would say ‘Oh, well Michelangelo would never say that’. So, it was very hard from the point of view of the writer trying to figure it all out.”   

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With Barron no longer around to mediate and sell them on the plans and with time ticking on, the pair’s reluctance to sign off on ideas led to increased tensions.  

“We argued a little bit,” Gray says. “These things are never sweet or nice. It gets down to what we can do and, in the time provided. It’s about compromise. In the end they approved Langren’s changed script.  Maybe it was reluctantly but we weren’t going to meet the demand and get this out if they kept changing things.”   

Tokka and Rahzar

One of the most noted criticisms of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 concerned the decision to introduce two new sidekicks alongside returning villain Shredder, rather than draw on the wild array of mutant animals that had featured in the comics and TV series. 

Many fans had expected to see Bebop and Rocksteady, the mutant warthog and rhinoceros supervillains made famous in the cartoon, feature. However, that cartoon outing proved both a blessing and a curse. 

“I didn’t want them in any of the movies,” Laird later revealed on his personal blog. “It’s not so much that I disliked the characters so intensely, but more that I found their constant one-note shtick in the first animated series to be extremely annoying and silly to the point of being stupid.”  

Gray’s version of events differs slightly.   

“We wanted new villains because we would get a piece of the royalty, which we didn’t have with the first movie. We figured if we created something they didn’t come up with we would get a piece of the pie. It was a business decision.”   

Together with the creatives at Henson’s Creature Shop, they “threw together” Tokka and Rahzar, a mutant Alligator Snapping Turtle and wolf respectively, based on pretty much whatever was available. 

“Those things were basically the Henson Creature Shop’s ideas, because they had to figure out, technically, what they could do, how big they were going to be and how they could move,” Gray says. “They had to design all this stuff, put someone in the suit and then wire them up or get the animatronics going to make it work. So, we just went to them and said we need a couple of villains.” 

Indeed, the resulting animatronics proved less complex and less compelling than the heroes in a half shell – and it showed on screen.   

“They were just big models,” Gray admits. “We cut corners, there’s no question about it.”   

Sweaty and Claustrophobic

Meanwhile, the turtle suits themselves had undergone little in the way of upgrades since the first film, when the actors playing the four leads experienced any number of issues. Not the least of which being the claustrophobia and sweating that comes with wearing up to 70lbs worth of turtle suit.  

The animatronics also, despite being state-of-the-art, continued to suffer their fair share of glitches.  

“We knew what the difficulties were and they were unbelievable,” Gray says. “There were days when we couldn’t even get these things set up.  We were filming right near the Wilmington Airport. We set up a shot and when it came time for action the Turtles would not speak. We realized they were on the same frequency as the airport.”    

Gray blames the lack of a major upgrade, in part, on the lack of additional budget.    

“The budget didn’t exponentially go through the roof, because of the speed,” he explains. “I have read things saying it was $20 million. It wasn’t, it was $16.5 million.”  

A New April O’Neil

Away from the animatronic issues, the human cast of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 proved a mixed bag.  Corey Feldman didn’t return to voice Donatello after pleading no contest to a drug possession charge while, more notably still, Judith Hoag was replaced by Paige Turco as April O’Neil.  

Hoag later told Variety she was never approached about the sequel, claiming her omission was a result of the fact she complained about the level of violence in the first movie and the six-days-a-week shooting schedule.  

“Everybody was beating everybody up,” Hoag said. “I thought the movie suffered because of that. It was something I spoke to the producers about, I think they thought I was too demanding, and moved on.” 

Not that Gray felt the production suffered as a result of either changes.  

“No, not at all,” he says. “Certainly not with Corey Feldman because it’s a voice. Remember when you play that movie around the world it will be in 40 or 50 different languages and subtitled anyway. It makes no difference and nobody overseas even knew Corey Feldman was doing a voice…With Judith, we thought it might be of concern but then again it’s all about the Turtles. People aren’t showing up for Judith – though she did a fabulous job – it was really all about the Turtles.”   

Elias Koteas also failed to return as the ice hockey stick-wielding vigilante and ally Casey Jones – though that was more down to the film’s shift away from adult themes and one of the more violent human characters.   

“Casey was discussed but the reason he dropped out – and I don’t think this was a major issue – was the direction we wanted to take the film,” Gray says. “We wanted to go lighter. That was part of cleaning up the act.”   

In his place came Ernie Reyes Jr, a rising martial arts star who had served as a stuntman on the first film and was introduced as Keno, a pizza delivery boy who befriends the turtles. It was a stark departure from Koteas’s character but, once again, it was one Gray says came with the backing of the TMNT hierarchy.   

“If Peter and Kevin had wanted Elias back, he would have been back. So, either we were able to convince them that we wanted to go with Ernie and they went along with it.”   

Vanilla Ice

Quite how they were convinced to include rapper Vanilla Ice in the proceedings is anyone’s guess, with the rapper turning up in a mid-film nightclub scene to perform new single “Ninja Rap.” His cameo continues to delight and horrify fans to this day. Few will be surprised by the commercially-minded circumstances that led to his appearance.   

“SBK the record label producing the soundtrack album said ‘You gotta have Vanilla Ice in this, he’s hot’ so we put him in…We had a good album out of it. Sometimes you don’t make the movie for the reason of art you make it because the thing could go away in a heartbeat. I’ve always been fairly honest and upfront about our motives. It is a business.”     

While others might disagree, Gray stands by the inclusion of Vanilla Ice in the film.  

“He actually did a very good job. He’s a very cool operative and he loved doing it.”   

Shredder or Krang?   

Looking back on the sequel, as much as anything, the most disappointing aspect was the decision to resurrect Shredder rather than explore different villains in the way other comic book franchises have.  

While Shredder has always been the main antagonist, as with Bebop and Rocksteady, there remained a plethora of colorful villain characters that could have been plucked from the pages of the original comic or the animated series. But the decision to stick with Shredder was not one takem lightly by anyone, and others were discussed.  

“We went through the whole catalogue of villains and certainly Krang and all these other characters were in play,” Gray says. “We thought of them but we stayed with what works and that’s what you do in these situations. Don’t try and get too clever.”   

As much as anything he blames the Hollywood system and a refusal to take risks. New Line too, would have no doubt been happy to press ahead with a Shredder-oriented sequel, seeing him as the TMNT’s very own Freddy Kreuger of sorts.  

“Nobody trusts their instincts,” Gray says. “You go with what worked before and try to modify it a little bit. If it works [and the plethora of Freddy sequels suggests it did] then you are justified in using the same thing over and over again.”  

Once again though the decision to stick with Shredder and avoid the kind of time and expense required to create something like Krang, a brain-shaped alien carried around in the waist of a robot man, was influenced by that release date.  

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze opened in theaters on March 22, 1991, less than a year on from the original. It went on to make over $78 million to become the second most successful independent film of all time.   

Despite turning a profit, the film garnered mixed reviews and left Gray and others disappointed.  

“It didn’t deliver on what we had hoped because there was this race against time to get it out one year after the first one. When you do that, you really have to compromise.”  

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III 

After the rush to make a second film, it was decided that they would take more time over the third one.  

But anyone hoping for a return to form was left disappointed by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in TIme, which saw the gang head to 17th century Japan.  

“With number three, we were aiming something at the Japanese market, which was the number one market for foreign films,” Gray explains. “That’s why we had the time travel storyline with the samurais. That was definitely one of the motivations.”  

There was just one problem though.  

“We hoped it would get the film released in Japan. To this day, it has not been released in Japan.”  

Though Gray returned to produce an animated fourth film in the 2000s box office returns diminished with every film. By the time Michael Bay got involved in the franchise, Gray was long gone. He now considers himself “out of the turtle game” with this being one of the last interviews on the subject. But despite the highs and lows endured on the second film, Gray remains proud of what was achieved. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“These movies were made by committee. It’s amazing they turned out so well.”  

The post What Went Wrong With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[percentmagazine]

Matrix Pill 2020

The Matrix has you…

The cultural overview over "The Matrix Trilogy" and how it foresaw the social trends.

"The Matrix" trilogy by the Wachowski brothers is the most iconic and groundbreaking movie trilogies in cinema history. Terms like "The red pill", "Dessert of the real", "There is no spoon", "Follow the white rabbit", "Why, Mr. Anderson? Why?" and many other phrases from the film became the golden quotes of the new millennium, shaping the entire culture of the "generation Y"… also known as "the millennials". "The bullet time" effect with fancy acrobatic moves and bullet waves turned into the most quoted gimmick for decades in action films, parodies and video games. The slow motion has never been so cool and slick, as it was after "The Matrix", not to mention sunglasses at night and dark looks with fashionable black leather tailored coats.

Its been 21 years since the theatrical release of the first "The Matrix" film. It came out in November of 1999 (the most revolutionary year in cinema history, since it is the release year of such groundbreaking hit titles like "Star Wars: Episode I. The Phantom Menace" by George Lucas, "Fight Club" by David Fincher, and "The Matrix", of course, by the Wachowski brothers). Four years after the great success of the film, "The Matrix" was reloaded with two worthy sequels: "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions" — turning a movie franchise into a full-time trilogy. There was also "The Animatrix" — an anthology of animated short films set in "The Matrix Universe" directed by highly acclaimed Japanese animators, and a video-game "Enter the Matrix" which told a story that went parallel to the story of sequels, explaining some of the unanswered questions in the films. Thus "The Matrix" franchise has become one of the first inter-media franchises where all available storytelling formats told one epic story from different angles and points of view. And unlike other attempts of creating such inter-media franchise around movies (like it was with "Star Wars Expended Universe" or "The Terminator" franchise) it wasn't just pure merchandising and cash-grabbing schemes with questionable product quality having a famous brand logo on it… no, '"The Matrix" franchise was one well thought out project and story from the very beginning, created and curated by the Wachowski brothers. Nothing more or less.

In the year of 2020 "The Matrix" is being reloaded once again with its new instalment being in production. Internet is filled with shaky mobile phone behind the scenes footage of "The Matrix 4". We see Neo, played by actor Keanu Reeves and his stunt double, jumping of high buildings and riding fancy motorcycle with Trinity, played by Carrie Ann-Moss, while the streets of San-Francisco are being turned into a chaotic war zone with explosions, car chases, extras running all over the streets and helicopters flying.

Usually such big blockbuster film productions are being held in secret in order to prevent unnecessary leaks and story spoilers… most of the extras and crew members don't even know what movie they are filming up until the very end. During such big productions fake movie titles are made. But this time, as it seams, filmmakers don't really care about production secrecy, as actor Keanu Reeves and film director Lana Wachowski keep on hanging out with random people on a street during the filmmaking process. What is it? A new viral social media format of film advertising? Or the new way of entire filmmaking approach? Or maybe both?

Either way — Lana Wachowski is the visionary artist that is going to bring something fresh and unexpected into the cinema format and into the new "Generation Z" culture. The Wachowski brothers have foreseen the future with "The Matrix" film almost in every way possible… and I'm pretty sure they are going to do so again. They spoke of cyber-crimes, data privacy and internet control long before Edward Snowden incident, WikiLeaks, Anonymous group, social medias and etc. They showed aircraft controlled by so called "terrorists" hitting skyscrapers years before 9/11. "The Matrix" also tried to warn us about the dangers of virtual realities, and here we are 20 years later using VR systems and spending our lives in endless MMO RPG games (by the way, "The Matrix" franchise even had its own MMO RPG video game "The Matrix Online"). The virtual values have become much more valuable that the material ones. Bitcoins and Facebook likes are considered to be much more precious then real money and even gold by many. Instagram pages are viewed as the only true portraits of their users, however bright filters, happy faces, flattering camera lenses and photoshop have nothing to do with reality. It is merely a "Residual self-image", as it was named in the film, "A mental projection of your digital self". The person sees himself whom he wants him to be, not whom he really is.

And I think that this topic is the most overlooked topic by critics and contemporary culture scholars.

Just think about it — the Wachowski brothers are the physical manifestation of their own concept of "Residual self-image", as both of them saw themselves as someone different. Both brothers were men, but they considered themselves to be women. Their physical reality didn't match with their mental projection of virtual self. Thus they had to do surgeries and go through sex change procedures. The Wachowski brothers are officially sisters. Nowadays in 2020 it is a common practice that can't surprise anyone, however in 1990s during the production of the first "The Matrix" film it was a big deal… so big that Wachowski brothers had to rewrite the screenplay. In the earlier drafts of the script there was a fully flashed out transgender character. She is still present in the final film, but her role and concept has been reduced. Character Switch — portrayed by Belinda McClory — was a transgender, and her name "Switch" meant too illustrate her constant transitions from one form into another, as she was a female in the real world, but in the Matrix her personal "Residual self-image" switched her into a masculine male. For Wachowski brothers it was a very important topic to explore, since both of them dedicated their lives to transgender worldview, but in 1990's the film studio and producers thought that such concepts would be too confusing for average film viewers and difficult to follow, thus it was all cut out during pre-production. Even their first film "Bound" that featured lesbian love story was met with numerous misunderstandings during pre-production, during its filming and, of course, during its release, since such themes were considered too risky… almost taboo, as they could easily put off many unprepared audiences.

But now… look how the world and culture has changed?! In 21 years everything is upside down. It is almost impossible to find a big blockbuster film or franchise or T.V. series or even a video-game that has no lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, pansexual or any other "something"-sexual character. It is true for both "rated R" and "rated M" media and for media oriented for children. Disney's life adaptation of animated classic "Beauty and the Beast" is the prime example… not to mention more.

I must say that unorthodox sexual orientation of characters were always present in cinema, they were never the subject of prohibition and never will be, however before "Wachowski era" their orientation always played some sort of narrative purpose. No character was supposed to be gay or transexual just for that sake of being such. But nowadays we see LGBT characters all over visual media… and the fact of their orientation rarely enhance the story or add anything to it. For the most part it is just being there for no reason other then being there. No wonder we have so many poorly written stories today. "Chekhov's gun" is the key to good storytelling, isn't it? If you put something into a story, it must heave a purpose, because without purpose it's just a filler, a white noise… this means it shouldn't be there at all. And here I'd like to quote Agent Smith from "The Matrix" films:

"But, as you well know, appearances can be deceiving…" — even here Wachowski brothers point out the previous "Residual self-image" topic. "…which brings me back to the reason why we're here. We're not here because we're free. We're here because we're not free. There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist."

Curious… Wachowski brothers were pioneers in LGBT mass-media, yet even they were smart enough to exclude these themes from "The Matrix trilogy", even having a total creative freedom over the sequels, as they knew that it would serve no purpose in their story. Yet they used much more sophisticated tricks to pinpoint their agenda and worldview. Get ready for some hard drugs! Wachowski brothers urged the protagonist and film viewers to take "The red pill" and "Free our minds". They also urged us to fight against all rules and stereotypes, and young generation loved it. In the film it simply meant "rage against the machines", but in our world where this film was "The red pill" for young people, this fight against the established order had much deeper purpose.

Upon the quick view on the lives of the Wachowski brothers over these two decades we can tell that their "red pill" they were giving us, was simply a androgyne hormone for transgenders and their main "Matrix" they were fighting against, was the sexual orientation stereotypes. They succeeded in their revolution, as LGBT themes are no longer taboo in mass-media. But there were also other important cultural topics Wachowski brothers presented with their trilogy: multiculturalism, racial diversity, feminism and even "toxic masculinity" and war against white men and patriarchy… long before these themes became mainstream in pop-culture.

"The Matrix" franchise had always a diverse cast, didn't it? It also has strong and independent female characters right from the start. And it wasn't just a copycat trend to appeal some social minorities, as it happens today. It was the personal philosophy of the authors. However, despite all their diversity and equality, one social group was shown deliberately one-sided. Just think about it. All evil characters in all three films were male and white. Agents are white middle aged men, Cypher — white middle aged man, Merovingian — white middle aged man, Architect — white man, Bane — white middle aged man, etc. Some can argue on this topic, since white men where also on the side of good guys. True, "but, as you well know, appearances can be deceiving…" says Smith. All white men on the good side of the story are… well, questionable. Whom can we name? Councillor Hamann — played by Anthony Zerbe — is a white man… a father figure in Zion, however he is shown to be an irrational and rhetorical weak old man. Comparing him to other leaders of Zion we can easily see his incompetence. Even Neo makes fun of him, pointing out on a fact that Hamann's solid age doesn't make him wiser (and it is the only time in the whole trilogy when the main protagonist ever trolls anyone). Then there is the Kid — played by Clayton Watson — another white man good guy, but he is just an immature naive boy… in "The Animatrix" he in the moment of danger finds no better way out then a suicide… a very questionable role model, don't you think? Who's next? Mouse — portrayed by Matt Doran — once again a young teenager full of sexual hormones and nothing more. There is also Captain Roland — played by David Roberts — and his ship crew, but a single black woman Niobe — played by Jada Pinkett Smith — turns out to be wiser and much more competent then any of them. Meanwhile all non-white and non-male characters are shown in the positive light. Wait… but what about Neo — the one himself — played by Keanu Reeves — he is a white man — the hero of the trilogy. True. However originally "The Matrix" creators wanted to cast Will Smith for the role of Neo, but Will Smith declined the role and chose to act in "Wild Wild West".

In other words Wachowski brothers brought up anti-white men SJW themes in their films long before such topics became mainstream and part of pop-culture. Thus they weren't even noticed by the time of film release. But it is worth mentioning that Wachowski brothers were depicting anti-white men subplots not because they were following some kind of fashion or social agenda like mass-media does today, but because brothers WERE white and men, and they wanted to do something about it. And they did. For real.

However next generation of filmmakers and artists took the Wachowski brothers' personal issues and turned it into a viral trend, changing the culture forever. It can be even said that the modern SJW and LGBT hysteria is the Matrix, created by Wachowski brothers. I wonder, will their new "The Matrix" film change the world once again?.. and how?

Text: Jurii Kirnev

Omnifinery Editorial: Article 003

[nmcconnellportfolio]

Saving Marion Crane: Women in Horror and Fanfiction as a Revolutionary Act of Reclamation for Women Writers

A Research Paper on women in the horror genre and the creation of the literary zine The Story of a Beautiful Dead Woman

Everyone knows the story of Marion Crane; a young woman who skips town after stealing a large sum of money, so she can help her lover divorce his wife, only to find a motel and met her end through gaining the attention of one of the most famous horror villains in cinematic history: Norman Bates. Marion Crane, whose famous moment of dying in the acclaimed psychological horror film Psycho (1960) was the embryo to one of the constant tropes that make up the horror genre; the death of a beautiful, sexual woman. Marion Crane, who was designed to merely act as the false protagonist, written to die so the real story of Psycho – the story of Norman Bates and his beloved mother - could be told. With the creation of Bates Motel in 2013, the genre of horror has evolved and grown between the fifty-three years that separates the texts. In between this stretch of time, we have seen the horror genre (especially the genre of slasher horror) – be characterised with horrific acts of violence (both physical and sexual) against female characters. And interestingly, during the fifty-three years, the internet was born and the wide-accessibility to reproduce and recreate and retell texts from mainstream culture, to recreate these texts as fanfiction, was born. Fanfiction, in particular, which is predominantly created by women to fulfil desires that are not given acknowledgement or satisfaction by mainstream popular culture. Fanfiction which allows readers to become creators and engage critically with horror texts, as so to remediate them into narratives that fulfil the audience’s desires better.

Women (and Female Sexuality) in Horror.

Looking at the wide range of the literary and academic sources regarding the representations of women in the horror genre, the majority of academic sources have noted the underlining theme of misogyny and gendered violence within horror – Psycho (1960) only being one example amongst many. What’s notable is that like fanfiction, the slasher horror genre has been ignored and considered lesser deserving of academic attention – on the basis that it was exploitative, that the domain of the horror genre belonged to low-brow culture (Trencansky, 1990, pp. 64). This is especially relevant since the literary zine I focused on is a retelling (transformative text/fanfiction piece) about one famous film, Psycho (1960), which in particular is considered to be the cinematic piece that birthed a specific branch of horror cinema, known as the slasher film; where the violent deaths of female characters are a common aspect of the genre. In a survey that examined over 57 slasher films, Gloria Cowan and Margaret O’Brien noted that female sexuality often leads to death in slasher films – that women portrayed as sexually active were more likely become victims of the killer than chaste women or men in general (Cowan and O’Brien, 1990, pp. 194). Andrew Welsh followed up with another survey in 2010, noting that while sexuality in general was a factor of death in slasher films, female characters depicted as sexual were more likely to die and were depicted with longer death scenes as punishment for that sexuality (Welsh, 2010, pp. 770). With the passage of twenty years, it’s illustrated that the brutal deaths of women in horror is still a common aspect to horror cinema.

Another aspect that interlinks with the punishment of female sexuality is the punishment and Othering of non-traditional masculinity. Referring back to Men, Women and Chainsaws, Clover had proposed that male audiences are forced to identify with the surviving female victim, named the ‘Final Girl’, as she kills the villain – even through while the thought of female protagonists being supported is progressive,  it should be noted that the Final Girl is often presented as chaste and often presents herself as more masculine in comparison to the female victims (Clover, 2015, pp. 40) This is especially important to understand in the dynamic of whom she has to survive and ultimately kill. In a study focusing on the presentation of masculinity in horror cinema, Rieser noted that famous villains – such as the famous Norman Bates from Psycho (1960)– may be presented as monstrous because they do not fulfil their roles as men; that they may be virginial (Michael Meyers from Halloween and other examples) or non-gender conforming (i.e. Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs) or convinced that they are a woman – as in Norman Bates and his persona, Mother (Rieser, 2001, pp. 374). So even with the theory of women successfully fighting back against their killers, the subtext of negativity about the feminine – that only masculine means of power can be considered powerful, that feminine men are monsters – still exists in horror.

Fanfiction and Women.

Fanfiction, when the research is not properly done, is characterised as either shallow and badly-written sexual fantasies written by teenage girls or acts of copyright violations that disrespect the texts creators and devalues the text itself. However, I would make the argument that if art is a conversation between the consumer and the creator, fanfiction is the response to when culture does not fulfil the desires of an audience. The principle of fanfiction, as discussed by culture theorist Henry Jenkins, is that ‘once television characters enter into a broader circulation, intrude into our living rooms, pervade the fabric of our society, they belong to their audience and not simply to the artists who originated them’ (Jenkins, 2012, pp. 333). And one particularly interesting aspect to fanfiction is how the majority of fanfiction participants are female audiences that become women-writers, one study proposing that fanfiction could be the ‘result of the need of the female audience for fictional narratives that expand the boundary of the official source products’ (Peeples, Yen and Weigle, 2018, pp. 258). This is especially important when you consider that there are female audiences who watch and consume horror films and may even be paradoxically felt to be spoken to by the text (Trencansky, 1990, pp. 64).

Fanfiction, an activity that is about the circulation and active critique of original texts amongst communities of fans (Jenkins, 2012, pp. 331, is all about being able to indulge in desires and fantasies that mainstream society cannot fulfil, all under anonymous identities that separate the writer’s real life from their writing (Peeples, Yen and Weigle, 2018, pp. 259). But at its heart, fanfiction is seen as a form of participatory culture, a culture that has flourished with the birth of the internet which allows for creators that may be gatekept out of traditional spaces (i.e. the exclusion of female and minority creators in Hollywood or traditional publishing) to write texts that defy the narratives upheld in popular culture – even (and perhaps, particularly) about the narratives of gender and sexuality in horror. Fanfiction, as Henry Jenkins famously said in a New York Times interview, is a ‘a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk’ (Harmon, 1997).

Case Study: A Fanfiction.

To look at how fanfiction can act as an act of remediating and reclaiming male-focused horror stories for female creators and female audiences, it’s important to now focus on the praxis of fanfiction by examining three fanfiction pieces posted on Archive of Our Own – a website and server space created by the Transformative Works. By examining the two transformative texts in their relation to their original texts, we can see how fanfiction is a method of participating in the creation and recreation of culture. The first text, “so close (just the two of us)” (Espeones, 2018), the fanfiction rewrites the Halloween series with Michael Meyers (the masked villain of Halloween) being depicted as the victim of stalking to Laurie Strode, the final girl of Halloween now depicted as a killer and stalker. By inverting the violence once put upon Laurie, by rewriting the original story into a story of female-perpetrated violence against a male victim, the story could be calling to Clover’s idea that ‘gender is less a wall than a permeable membrane’ when it comes to the presentation and dynamics of gender in storytelling (Clover, 2015, pp. 46). This switching of moral roles between antagonist and protagonist within, falls under one of the ten categories of how fans rewrite original texts, known as moral realignment, where such fanfictions deliberately ‘blur the original narrative's more rigid boundaries between good and evil’ (Jenkins, 2012, pp. 221).

The second text, “A Deal’s a Deal – Freddy Kreuger x Reader” (summerdayghost, 2018), is a fanfiction where the reader is encouraged to insert themselves as an insert into the story, where they gain the romantic interest of Freddy Kreuger, who helps the reader gain revenge on the people who bully them. This sort of fanfiction, self-insert fanfiction, is the most controversial within fandom – falling under the category of personalization – which is about fulfilling the desires of both writers/readers to embed themselves directly into the story rather than identify with another character (Jenkins, 2012, pp. 227). However, this fanfiction could theoretically be considered a form of escapism and also a rebuttal against Rieser’s theory of feminine men as monsters. Personalization fanfiction texts asks readers to rehearse unconscious ideas about romance and courtship, askes the readers to give themselves permission to feel desire and fantasise in a safe space through identification of a fictional stand-in (Knobel and Lankshear, 2007, pp. 160). More particular, instead of the text identifying feminine desires as deserving of punishment and having female characters act in passive ways and also identifying Freddie Kreuger as a monster, the fanfiction places the reader in the position of loving the monster and aiding him in the crime – and having the monster love you back, without hurting you. These two fanfiction pieces merely being two amongst many ways of rewriting horror texts to ‘better speak to the audience's cultural interests and more fully address their desires.’ (Jenkins, 2012, pp. 333).

Conclusion/Discussion.

While the representations of women and female sexuality in the horror genre, we see that the horror genre – and cinema and television, in general, has a long way to go. If the horror genre does not punish women for sexuality or force them to abandon femininity to survive – the same way that Lady McBeth of Shakespeare was forced to cast away for womanhood for power, it makes monsters out of men that do possess femininity. Which is why the rise of fanfiction is so important – to claim these texts as our own, women-writers have the freedom to reclaim outdated narratives to tell new stories. Even in mainstream cinema, the 2010s have being subject to a renaissance of horror cinematic pieces such as The VVitch (2015), the Babadook (2014) or Hereditary (2018); The VVitch about a Puritan woman caught in the paranoia of a witchhunt and whom becomes a witch herself, The Babadook being a fable where the monster acts as an allegory for grief and the terrors of motherhood and Hereditary being the story of mental illness and familial trauma through the perspective of a family falling apart. All capitalised by the creation of Bates Motel, a television adaptation of Psycho (1960) where the text is transformed to have Marion Crane – the woman whose death gave birth to slasher horror – survive and leave the hotel unharmed. All these texts show the direction of horror bending towards feminist storytelling, towards perspectives once erased in cinema and actively celebrated in fanfiction communities.

References

Clover, C. (2015). Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (pp. 21-64). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Cowan, G., & O'Brien, M. (1990). Gender and survival vs. death in slasher films: A content analysis. Sex Roles, 23(3-4), 187-196. doi: 10.1007/bf00289865

Espeones. (2018). A Deal's a Deal - Freddy Krueger x Reader. Retrieved from https://archiveofourown.org/works/15385824

Harmon, A. (1997). In TV's Dull Summer Days, Plots Take Wing on the Net. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/18/business/in-tv-s-dull-summer-days-plots-take-wing-on-the-net.html

Jenkins, H. (2012). Textual Poachers: Televison Fans and Participatory Culture (Updated Twentieth Anniversary Edition) (pp. 215-229, 330-340). Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). A New Literacies Sampler (pp. 137-165). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Peeples, D., Yen, J., & Weigle, P. (2018). Geeks, Fandoms, and Social Engagement. Child And Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics Of North America, 27(2), 247-267. doi: 10.1016/j.chc.2017.11.008

Rieser, K. (2001). Masculinity and Monstrosity: Characterization and Identification in the Slasher Film. Men And Masculinities, 3(4), 370-392. doi: 10.1177/1097184x01003004002

summerdayghost. (2018). so close (just the two of us). Retrieved from https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605782

Trencansky, S. (2001). Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror. Journal Of Popular Film And Television, 29(2), 63-73. doi: 10.1080/01956050109601010

Welsh, A. (2010). On the Perils of Living Dangerously in the Slasher Horror Film: Gender Differences in the Association Between Sexual Activity and Survival. Sex Roles, 62(11-12), 762-773. doi: 10.1007/s11199-010-9762-x

[gavinhalm]

Out of Time: Atemporal Machines in the Garden-- Contemplating the “West” in two films by Andre de Toth and Robert Aldrich

“…(T)he essential impurity of cinema…this thesis has signified above all that the passage of an idea in a film presupposes a complex summoning forth and displacement of the other arts (theatre, the novel, music, painting…), and that as such ‘pure cinema’ does not exist…” - Alain Badiou, Philosophy and Cinema in Infinite Thought; Truth and the Return to Philosophy

“The pastoral ideal has been used to define the meaning of America ever since the age of discovery, and it has not lost its hold upon the native imagination…here was a virgin continent! Inevitably the European mind was dazzled by the prospect…(i)t was embodied in various utopian schemes for making America the site of a new beginning for Western Society” - Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden; Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America

Those who led the ‘march of civilization’ from the 18th century on were inclined to be contemptuous of the countryside, the home of the backward farmers, shaggy yokels, or pleasure-seeking aristocrats living on their feudal rents, not on profits wrung from trade and manufacture…” - Lewis Mumford, “Suburbia-and Beyond” in The City in History; Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

We have here, on the one side, as if in the form of brackets (let us say), a vision of America stretching as far back as the 15th century, and a bit later during the age when Shakespeare wrote his New World play, The Tempest, where rugged, New Europeans tested their mettle against God and Nature starting in the Florida, Massachusetts and Virginia forests and then, some two centuries later after the Louisiana Purchase, forced their way past the Mississippi River and into the plains and foothills; the avant-garde of these settlers pushing deep into the land and space of the imagination, further westward, but also northward, into the Wyoming mountains. These people constitute the eastern, right-hand side of these conceptual brackets that make up the idea of the West.

On the other side, far away from the mountainous peaks of Wyoming, lay the land of California (along with that almost eschatologically-absolute body of water, the Pacific Ocean), which was to become, if not the formative space and land of the imagination, describing what America is as a whole, then at least its most rugged and constitutive metonymic representative; California as the United States.

Between the right-hand bracket of the Wyoming mountains and the left-hand bracket of California and the Pacific is where much of our nation’s imagination has oscillated back and forth, throughout half of our history, between an individualistic view of nature and land as something to be tamed and controlled, and a view in which the land is envisioned as a cornucopia of plenty, given to all those who live in it, free of charge. A “laissez-faire” Elysium Field where we write our most holy myths of life, youth and infinitude…“God’s country”, as perhaps that most paradigmatic of Western individualists, the actor Ronald Regan, might say.

--

Both the movies by Andre de Toth, Day of the Outlaw, and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, can be seen as engaging with these conflicting yet intertwined views of the American West. De Toth’s movie renders the Wyoming landscape as brutal and difficult, yet it can be seen as an idyllic representation of the Pastoral Ideal (1), where individuals race against Nature to carve out their own identities and senses of belonging, ultimately finding success after harsh trials and tribulations. On the other hand, Aldrich’s movie sets upon the stage, in a future over a century later and within the now overrun idyllic landscape, the machine of the city (2), which has rooted itself as an a-historical being that feeds upon older ideas of individuality along with contemporary “newness”, only to spit back a similar kind of loneliness and emptiness that the rugged West shot back at the original Pioneers.

Also, this is the case not just in the way the stories unfold (they are, in their narrative construction, typical Hollywood cinematic storytelling vehicles), but perhaps more significantly in the way each director, with his cinematographer, situated the camera and then chose the precise shot in the editing room. Both filmmakers would end up using very talented lensmen and editors (3) to execute their respective visions of the West--It is here, in the “Range of Light” (4), that the great conflict in conceptualizing the West is set in these films, a situation which one could argue continues to this day. 

Day of the Outlaw

If we look at de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw as a conflicted arena of forces pitting the idyllic concept against the realities of nature (whether physical, or even psychological), we can see it reflected most effectively in both the composition of the shots and some of the editorial decisions.

Right from the start, in the transition from the first scene to the second, evidence of this conflict is alluded to, as the main male protagonist Blaze finishes his conversation with a local townswoman (with whom he has a love interest), the editor performs an L-cut transition, letting the sound and dialogue from within the saloon’s interior carry over into a shot that shows the great expanse of mountains behind a portion of the town’s buildings. This strategy creates an excellent mood for mixing the interior world of humanity and the exterior world of nature, which can be viewed as being separate and antagonistic, yet combined, forming an unstable whole.

Likewise, the latter part of the second scene shows Blaze exiting the saloon by allowing his upper body to come into the right of the fame in close up, while the rest of the frame shows the mountains beyond, along with small figures of other townsmen walking on the dirt road that constitutes the main avenue in the town.

In these two examples, the mixing of far-off nature and in-close humanity is exactly the kind of visual trope that illuminates this film as a space of atemporal conflict of no resolution between nature itself and the local residents. Cerntainly, this is by no means unique to this particular film, but the manner in which de Toth and his cinematographer render it gives it an artistic weight that creates a dialog with other photographic renderings of the West (c.f., 4).

Another cinematographic technique in line with this idea, used a bit later on, is one in which the filmmakers panned the camera in an almost 180-degree arc, starting at the opening of the town’s road, pointing out to the peaks of the nearby range, and turning across the town’s few buildings nearly stopping at the other end of the road. The whole time, the gigantic range of mountains behind loom over the ramshackle buildings, de-scaling them into insignificance even though they take up most of the frame. This flattening of the picture plane meshes figure and ground relationships, yet, at the same time, puts into conflict the idyllic landscape and the humans trying to live in it.

A point in this film which is not only pivotal, but also an integration of outer and inner worlds, is a moment when the male protagonist is in his hotel room staring out his window at the mountain range that is to be his and so many other men’s fateful space of reckoning. After a moment, the camera tracks him from behind as he moves towards a mirror in his room and then stares into this alternate looking glass. Indeed, mirrors will prove pivotal at several moments in this movie serving as symbolic surrogate for either the interiority of the character or the outside world itself (5).

As the story continues, de Toth has the camera play these tricks of in-and-out compression of space (6) more voraciously. For instance, as the dance scene whirls the camera round and round, figured in the earlier, near 180-degree pan that showed us the town’s main street and looming mountain range, the director then, in an excellent effort to transition from one scene-space into the next, pulls the camera outside the bar to look in through the window as we view the whirling dancers. Then, a direct cut is performed that reveals the “docs” place, which leads to a cut to the exterior shot of the town and its main road finishing with a fade back into the bar.

Such complex maneuverings of camera and editorial decision-making are well thought out artistic choices that completely enclose the space of the town and its residents with their (unfriendly) visitors, yet at the same time open all of them into the surrounding environment. This is part and parcel the kind of technique that is often used in cinema of this genre to rewrite, time after time, the story of idyllic nature and “man’s” place in it as a completely conflicted being wrestling with both internal conflicts of various sorts and the mighty untamed bear of Nature (7).

The penultimate scene of this film is one that has Blaze surviving most of the antagonists on a desolate peak above his town. Here, he (predictably) defeats his remaining enemies by outlasting them in the cold. The most interesting feature of this scene is the space in which de Toth decided to shoot the “showdown”. In this space, there are several rock outcroppings in a fairly flat spot of ground that eerily mimic the mountain peaks as seen from down below in the town. It’s as if Blaze and his final two enemies have been transformed into allegorical giants hovering above the Lilliputian town, thrashing and outwitting each other in a final clash of titans, as this space can be viewed as the very edge of existence itself (8). Indeed, it is the eastern edge of the idyllic West, a space that had to be won and conquered from not only unwanted “Indians”, but by the very struggle of  “White Man’s” battles within himself��to define who he is and how this land may be conceptualized; either as magnificent place of plenty, or (no)place of resistance and fury.

So, we see that no matter where any of the characters turn, gaze, place themselves, consecrate as their home, love, or die, they are always battling between an individualistic view of nature as something to be tamed and controlled, and a view in which the land is envisioned as a nourishing blessing--De Toth’s camera is both a magnificent witness and constructor of this tangle of myth and Being.

Kiss Me Deadly

Though the vision of Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is of a different order both spatially and historically (the West has long been “won” and we are thrown into a metaphysical no-place that eats history up in the name of progress and finds the protagonist awash in an atemporal space much akin to Day of the Outlaw), the resulting experience of the West is (not so) strangely the same. That is, even in mid-twentieth century Los Angeles, the West has not changed much as a conflicted conceptual entity of combined myth equipped with an antagonistic view of nature.

In the beginning of Aldrich’s movie, a rhythmic repetition is established between the dividing-lines on a road, the running footsteps of our soon-to-die heroine and two different close-ups of her running towards the camera. This cinematic progression is repeated three times as cars pass on the road, ignoring her until the main male protagonist, Mike Hammer, stops and picks her up.

This action of repetition, though seemingly different from the ins-and-outs of de Toth’s camera, performs the same recombination of spatial features between character and “Nature” but in a tighter circle: less expansive outside of the character’s body (9), yet still rotating around them in a similar fashion. As we shall also see, this kind of spatially tight, enclosing repetition will find its way into the various decaying architectures that constitute the city of L.A. in the 1950’s. An L.A. that was quickly disappearing, from Bunker Hill to the Chavez Ravine; a victim of progress and various urban issues emanating from this era which would come to a head in the 1970’s (10).

Many of the shots in Kiss Me Deadly are tilted and/or at an angle, starting with the hospital exterior where the camera starts out below Hammer and then shows a shot above from the rooftop, looking down to the figures on sidewalk. This kind of back-and-forth is similar to the shots in Day of the Outlaw where the characters were combined with the idyllic landscape and mountains, but the main difference with Aldrich’s movie is that we see very little of what is beyond, and only view pieces of street intermixed with buildings.

The most significant scene where this kind of hermetically sealed camera work is in play, is the “shadowing” scene where Hammer is stalked at night by a crook armed with a switchblade. Here, the camera sets itself at various 30 to 45-degree angles to follow the characters as they play a short game of detective cat-and-mouse. The camera sets itself up to capture light, shadow, store fronts, close-ups of faces, back to angles of shops, close-ups of shoes, back to the faces now in profile, cigarette machines with mirrors…this whole cinematic, German Expressionistic menagerie ending with Hammer beating up the crook and sending him down a monstrous flight of stairs.

The back-and-forth, in-and-out action that the camera executes in Aldrich’s film is, again, similar to de Toth’s choice of movement. By keeping the camera’s cuts between the figure and its immediate surroundings locked together in a dance (11), Aldrich ends up stripping the idea of the landscape down to its bare minimum--Here in L.A., at the outer limits of the West, there is no landscape to speak of. Here, there is no grounding outside of a person’s immediate surroundings. It is indeed, a “silent land”. Ironically, this situation locks the characters into the very atemporal sense of time that the others experience in Day of the Outlaw. The West may now be a barren wasteland filled with decaying buildings, but it is still the purveyor of space qua space and only space.

The spaces within the architectures in Hammer’s city are just as self-referential in layout as they are in occupying the city grid. Each clue or potential source he finds (12) leads him to a stunning array of labyrinthian houses and hotels from the Victorian era. And, each of these architectures contain within themselves an almost Danielewski-like (13) set of staircases:

The first lead takes Hammer to a very old Victorian mansion possessing a large flight of stairs (the building is subdivided or turned into an apartment complex, like many large old houses in the area; an early hint that the domestic spaces of L.A. are voraciously fragmented). 

Hammer then helps an old mover lug a trunk into the building. Camera shoots from above, looking down, then looking up as they ascend. Old guy tells Hammer where Christina’s roommate moved. Hammer goes to where she supposedly lives and finds it also has a huge flight of stairs going up to her room. He climbs these stairs and we watch him from above, looking down through the maze of a rectilinear spiral staircase that goes upward to some unseen floors.

Later on, after a few other scenes, Hammer drives to another lead at a certain Hillcrest Hotel. Here we see him arriving in his car, driving underneath a pair of cable-car looking trolleys that pass overhead in opposite directions (This is the old Bunker Hill part of LA that has long since faded). Hammer gets out of his car and climbs the longest set of stairs so far, in order to get to the hotel only to have to climb another flight of stairs to access the room to meet his lead. 

All of these stairs lead to dead ends (or to themselves); none of them are truly passages to any place whatsoever, and the camera locks us, along with the characters, into the labyrinth that is L.A., and the West--Whether we are trapped in the great range of the Rocky Mountains, or some dank set of stairs that spiral into the darkness of reality itself, there is no (meta)physical escape “way out here”, and we are doomed to circle our own wagons in fear of a place without any sense of time or history.

But, this space of repeating stairs and soon-to-vanish Victorian architecture is not the most sublime “no-places” Aldrich builds for us. That discovery is reserved for the end of the film where we encounter the Malibu beach house in the final scene, placed as it is on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the very outer limit of the West. 

It is in this house that Christina’s (supposed) roommate takes control of an object that is the primary source of mystery in the story, now given as an anti-matter, anti-MacGuffin Pandora’s Box (and she as Lot’s daughter who is to open the box, which results in her–all of our?–death via nuclear detonation). 

What the viewer ultimately finds in this box is the limit of the Western conception of Nature and “man’s” place in it--The absolute expression of which is the atomic bomb. This is the eschatological warning and “clue” for humanity in Aldrich’s film, as we cower like the two figures in this closing scene, stuck in the no-place between the beach’s shore and the Pacific Ocean, our backs to the infinite darkness, with the fiery winds of history, and the future, howling all around us.

NOTES:

(1) The Machine in the Garden; Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Leo Marx, Oxford University Press, 1964 and 2000.

In this magnificent and very influential book, Marx writes about the long-standing contradictory views we as Americans have built up concerning technology and progress and its effect upon the landscape. It may seem an obvious observation that there are those that would see the land as mainly a source of profit and those that would see it as a paradise to protect, but Marx delves deep into the American cultural psyche, as well as older European origins, to thoroughly illuminate the deep rift in our cultural vision concerning this vast body of land that we call home. I am deeply indebted to his book for the general thrust of my thesis.

(2) The City in History; Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. Lewis Mumford, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961, 1989.

Los Angeles is, of course, one of America’s largest cities. However, due to the automobile (especially through the influence of the Firestone company and family in the 1930’s), L.A. as a whole is more of a mass form of suburban sprawl. Therefore, I am tending to conceptually treat the whole city as such in this essay. For an excellent historical survey of how suburbia became such a powerful American urban form, Mumford’s book is an excellent point in which to start any research on the matter. The section I have in mind is “Suburbia–and Beyond”, pgs. 482-524. Please note that his research covers historical developments through 1960.

(3) Both of these movies have some of the best Hollywood cinematographers and editors available as crew. Day of the Outlaw boasts cinematographer Russell Harlan, a six-time Oscar nominee who also lensed To Kill a Mockingbird, and editor Robert Lawrence, also an Oscar nominee, who cut films such as Spartacus. Also, it should be mentioned that for sound, the great Alexander Courage, (nominated for two Oscars and winner of an Emmy) of Star Trek theme song fame (as well as all of the Trek movies up until his death last year), composed the music. He was also responsible for the theme song from Lost in Space and was lead composer/sound designer for Audrey Hepburn’s classic, My Fair Lady.

Though the film is chock-full of formal and post-production errors (bad V.O. over-dubs, inconsistent match-on-action cuts, etc.), Kiss Me Deadly has an equal class of lensmen and editors. Cinematographer Ernest Laszlo is an Oscar winning cameraman who also shot Stalag 17. Editor Michael Luciano (nominated four times for an Oscar) was also responsible for cutting The Dirty Dozen, The Grissom Gang and The Longest Yard.

(4) What I am referencing here is Ansel Adams’ great photographic “essay” Yosemite and the Range of Light which engages not only the Yosemite, but much of the surrounding and nearby lands that compose the Rocky Mountain range (‘Range of Light’ was Adams’ term for this particular geographical region). But, aside from Adams, Edward Weston, Carleton Watkins, and a number of other West Coast photographers (some, not 20 years earlier) had gone on to photographically capture (or project) something of this concept of nature in the West, whether they were consciously after it or not. All of these master artists’ work photographing the West is something that has embedded itself into our national psyche, and one can fairly postulate that the cinematographer for the film had seen at least some of these men’s work, and perhaps absorbed their influence.

(5) There is the mirror in Blaze’s hotel room that he consults, and then there is also the mirror in the saloon. This mirror eventually gets broken by the outlaws when one of them throws a fit because they can’t drink or rape the townswomen as they are wont to do. It is certainly the pivotal axis point in the movie when this mirror gets smashed. Afterwards, the plot starts rolling towards its inevitable conclusion and is situated exactly mid-point in the film, almost as if it were a textbook example of Aristotelian poetics that has a story build up into a high, mountainous and climatic point, and then roll back down to its eventual conclusion.

(6) There is always compression or reconstitution of space in both of these films, but there is little temporal configuration. As a matter of fact, there is little sense of time outside of the one we physically experience while watching these movies (i.e. we sense the passage of time because we are watching a movie, not because of the movie and its narrative). These films are almost entirely spatial entities. There is no History associated with the lands shown in either of these films, whether it’s the vast open mountain ranges of Wyoming, or the urban wasteland of Los Angeles. We are trapped, scene-by-scene, in an atemporal machine that only re-circulates the space around itself.

(7) It is interesting to note that this particular Western (and many others in the genre) shows no other animals aside from the horses. The wilderness is replete with frightening giants like the Grizzly and lesser-sized, but no less fierce, beasts such as the wolf. Perhaps it is just a matter of money available for the use of trained animals in a production, but one would think that if a Western truly wanted to show what it is like for “man” to wrestle with the great outdoors, they could throw in a wolf or a bear, for good measure, into the plot.

(8) The only dialogue between Blaze and the Cheyenne Indian:

C.I., “You see anything?”

Blaze, “Not much.”

C.I., “There’s nothing to see…”

This is perhaps the most lucid and significant dialogue in the movie. At the very top of the mountain, one reaches a limiting edge (of the concept) of the West; there is nowhere else to go. Later on, we will experience another, similar physical limit upon both the concept and the space that constitutes the West in Kiss Me Deadly.

(9) A very interesting discussion for unifying the body and the earth in both a cultural and physical manner can be found in Wendell Berry’s book The Unsettling of America; Culture & Agriculture. This is an excellent small volume that concerns itself with farming and sustaining the land for use in an agricultural sense. 

(10) For an excellent glance into the issues of environmental, economic, and population studies that were to overwhelm the American city by the 1970’s, please reference The Prospective City, edited by Arthur P. Solomon. The issues brought up in this book were just starting to be sensed in the 1950’s when Kiss Me Deadly was filmed: intra-metro population distribution of African-Americans (not to mention Hispanics); the changing roles of city centers; industrial locations in relation to populated urban areas; transportation issues. All of these matters are an integral part of the perception we now have of our cities, but we can sense their presence within the fragmented urban space of the Los Angeles as portrayed in this movie.

(11) An interesting parallel between cinematic movement and urban planning can be found in Wayne Attoe and Donn Logan’s book, American Urban Architecture; Catalysts in the Design of Cities. In their book, Attoe and Logan propose the concept of “catalysts” to both describe what goes on in downtown redevelopments, as well as use it to help model potential sites of change that could be targeted for efficient redevelopment. 

The tie with cinematography is in the way singular urban spaces (such as a particular business, or park, etc.) link to others by becoming economic/social moving agent/forces (catalysts) which direct their own growth, as well as the (now) connected spaces. It’s almost like looking at a combined map and shot list for moving though a scene/city during a film. 

(12) Hammer’s “need to know” takes on epic and mythical proportions well beyond a typical detective’s drive to find clues in a story. For instance, there is a scene when he is in his girlfriend/secretary’s apartment and she whispers in his ear, “Va Va Voom says your Greek name would be “Mikela Sulfuris’…” What is so interesting about this is that in the Christian Bible, burning sulfur is referred to as “brimstone”, or, more to the point, fire and brimstone (this word will appear in the dialogue, again, at the apocalyptic end of the movie). Subjects for such sermons were “eternal damnation”, and the like. Hammer must find out all there is to know, even at the risk of experiencing eternal damnation himself…

Taking the director’s cue in attaching mythical significance to a character, one could conceivably view Va Va Voom as a figuration of tekne; the Greek word for artisanship, craftsmanship, or even (like the philosopher Martin Heidegger interprets it) technology itself. He is, after all, a mechanic with craftsman-like skills.

(13) The House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski, Pantheon, 2000.

This book has perhaps one of the most frightening staircases ever conceived in the history of literature. It resides behind some walls in a sweet, 1930’s Palmer-like suburban house on some street in Anytown, U.S.A. (thoughmuch of the novel is focused within Los Angeles). This staircase not only lives, breathes and growls, it grows and shrinks to epic proportions, all underground... Growing from being only a couple stories deep, it becomes several thousands of miles deep (at one point I believe it is theorized that it goes further in depth than the circumference of the earth). Basically, it is a spatial demon one can walk through, and, some of the staircases in Kiss Me Deadly must be the early relatives of this later monster.

[imaghostwriter]

11/11/11 (or more like 44/11/11)

Rules: Answer 11 Questions, Ask Eleven Questions, Tag Eleven People!

alright, so i had a lot of people tagging me in this one and i was really happy about every single one! but to sum things up a little (and also so that i wouldn’t have to come up with 44 questions myself) i decided to put it all in one post. i will tag 11 people with 11 questions of my own and answer all 44 questions i received under the cut.

thanks to the wonderful @thewritingsofart, @i-rove-rock-n-roll, @writingsonesdreams and @waywordwriter for being awesome and for tagging me! xx

now, here are my 11 questions:

1. if you had to rewrite the earliest work you remember writing, what would you change?

2. have you ever written fanfiction? if so, what was your first fic about?

3. do you have any foolproof methods against writer’s block?

4. have you ever thought about quitting writing?

5. is there an author who you feel influences you as a writer?

6. would you like to have fanfiction written about your works?

7. what is the nicest compliment you’ve ever received on one of your works?

8. have you ever cried over one of your own stories?

9. do you draw about your own stories?

10. have you ever written an au about one of your own stories?

11. have you ever written something creative in another language than english? if so, which one was it? and which language do you prefer?

sooo, those were my 11 questions. now my 11 victims are: @storyteller-kaelo, @metaphors-and-melodrama, @wasted-hymn, @authorified, @writingnosefreak, @quilloftheclouds, @bookenders, @vhum, @madammuffins, @catgirlwarrior, @blueinkblot

and for those who are interested, here are my answers:

@thewritingsofart 

1. In what other format do you enjoy reading a novel? Script, Poem, Diary, Illustrated, etc.

i love stories of all kinds, the format doesn't really matter

2. What POV do you prefer reading from? Writing from?

third person, both reading and writing. it doesn't matter if the narrator is omniscent or stays up close and personal with the protagonist

3. Do you remember what your first creative writing piece was?

i remember the first one i created outside of school lmao it was awful but i've also grown a lot since then and i still remember my first work fondly. and tbh i still like the idea so i gottagive little me probs for that. it was about a girl who wakes up with no memories, in a world where everyone believes to have a certain destiny and thus doesn't question what happens to them bc they accept everything to be part of a greater scheme and she starts rebelling against that bc she doesn't want to accept that she was supposed to forget everything about her life and then tons of stuff happens

4. What are you working on now?

a fantasy novel which is a collab with a writer friend that i still know from school and a drama novel, set in the 1960's

5. How do you get in the mood to write?

usually i just reread what i've already written and that does the trick for me but if not then go back to my outline and work a little on that which reminds me of all the cool stuff that i wanna write that's yet to come

6. What in your daily life inspires you to write?

everything and anything. inspiration doesn't come from a certain place from me, it's compeltely random. i just hear or see or read something and it sparks an idea and then i'm stuck with it

7. Do you have a favorite writing snack(s)?

i don't snack much whilst writing tbh bc then i need my hands to write. but i snack a lot to procrastinate and then any snack will do

8. Who do you go to first when you want someone to read/look over your writing?

the friend i do my fantasy collab with is the only friend whom i'm entrusted with almost everything i've written in the last three years and i've even shared some of my older stories with her

9. What got you started in writing for pleasure?

i can't remember if there was a specific reason that got me started. i always liked the creative writing tasks that we got in class so one day i wanted to try writing a book. that was pretty much it

10. How do you create your characters? Do you use a character sheet or another method?

my characters are usually the first thing that come to me so i don't actually use any specific method to create them. they all serve the plot and are built for necessity around my protagonist to create the most believable and most fun dynamic that ultimately leads my main oc to where they need to be

11. If you could have one famous person, from today or history, to read your best piece of writing, who would it be? This includes authors

jane austen probably bc i think she could give me good advice on character dynamics and would smack me on the head for making a man the pov character in my drama novel. but i also think she would be super nice and encouraging in her advice. also she's one of my favourite authors so there's that

@waywordwriter

Heels or flats? flats! i can't walk in heels properly

What’s your favorite Starbucks drink? i don't go to starbucks. if i go to any café i usually get tea if i stay in or coffee if it's to go

Winter or summer both are very uncomfortable, temperature-wise. but i'll go with summer bc it's nice to be too hot for once when you're usually always too cold

Do you write short stories? heck yeah i do!

Favorite author? jane austen bc i always feel good when reading her books

3 words to describe your protagonist(s) going only with daniel from my drama novel: repressed, oblivious, gay

3 words to describe your antagonist(s) well, in my drama novel there is no clear antagonist as in it's not a person and in my fantasy novel the protagonists are kind of the bad guys so i don't really know how to answer this. capitalism? prejudice? believing you know what's best for the people you love and acting on it until your behaviour is downright abusive? none of these are three words but i'm rolling with it

Favorite school subject? constantly changed. when i graduated it was english, german, spanish, art and philosophy

Favorite book(s)? also ever-changing but since i picked jane austen as my favourite author i'm going with pride and prejudice

Favorite music genre? don't have one, it all depends on the song but atm i listen to a lot of old rock

How was your day today? veryyy stressful and emotionally exhausting but i also got to see a good friend of mine that i hadn't seen in some time now and that was nice!

@i-rove-rock-n-roll

1. What part of worldbuilding do you like the least? i'm a sucker for worldbuilding to the point where i procrastinate writing bc i worldbuild too much. there is no part that i don't like

2. Do you write in your own language? If not, why? i do! but i also write in english. at first bc it forced me to simplify my sentences due to a lack of vocabulary but now bc i like it and it gives me the possibiliy to share my work with a wider audience!

3. How many of your characters are orphans or have absent parents? not too many, actually. i think it's mostly a thing in my drama novel where it's 2.5/5 (one being an orphan, the other having abusive parents and one case where i'm not even sure if it's just a very complicated relationship or if it counts as downright abusive but the story doesn't dive too deply into it either). in my fantasy novel it's just 2/6!

4. Do you have any happily married couples in your story? uhhh... now that i think about it.. i don't. wow. never realized that, you really got me there!

5. What kind of visual arts (cinema, sculpture, painting…) inspires you and your stories? all.

6. Did you ever go somewhere and think “this is exactly my story’s setting”? not really. but certain places do sometimes inspire me to set my story somewhere similar. my trip to cambodia led to an outline for a pirate story that has yet to be written

7. If you take public transports, do you ever look at the people around you and imagine their story? yesss, i am 100% that creep that is constantly observing and analysing other people

8. What is the last book you read (or are currently reading)? Would you recommend it? it was "the death of mrs. westaway" and i definetely recommend it! it was a good read. even though i guessed the ending it was still thrilling and it didn't chip away any of the suspense bc the author always kept me questioning myself and always had me asking "but what if i'm wrong?"

9. When was the last time you read fanfiction and what was it about? maybe about two weeks ago? i can't remember what it was about bc it was just small bits of fluff but i do remember that it was a merthur fanfic

10. What is the first thing that came to you for your WIP? Was it a scene, a character, or something else? going with my drama novel: it started out with the idea to write something where the story couldn't stand the way it does if a single sentence where to be taken out. to have something written so minimalistically that only what is absolutely necessary remains but still have it be interesting, engaging and compelling. so i started writing something from the pov of someone who is just the most oblivious rhabbarb the world has ever seen. the rest evolved around it

11. Is there a genre or writing format you’d like to try in the future? not currently. these things tend to come to me with time and as soon as they do i try them out at once bc i can't wait haha

@writingonesdreams

1. How much of your writing is influenced by your daily life? Like does what happened during the day affect what and how you write? not intentionally but when it happens (and i notice it happening, usually) then it influences mostly my characters. their aspirations, their internal conflicts. the reason why daniel is struggling with the expectations of others is bc it's something i experience myself, although maybe not as strongly as he does. but then again, that's kind of a universal experience so it's not that noticable

2. How much of you is inside your characters? every single one of them has something from me but i always make sure to never make them too similar to me and whenever i see myself too much in them i start changing them around until i can distance myself enough from them to be able to write about someone else's experiences instead of my own

3. Do you start writing from the beginning or somewhere else? yes, i usually do

4. What is the most difficult for you about writing? connecting scenes. i never know when to write something out or to sum it up in one sentence and just dive into the next scene. it confuses me to no end

5. What is the hardest part about creating characters for you? my characters tend to come very naturally to me. they're born out of necessity for the plot and thus are fitted to it. i guess what is most difficult for me is reminding myself of the fact that all my charas have a live outside of the plot, except for my protagonist and usually have more than just that one (1) friend

6. What are the themes of your wip and what do they mean to you? both my wips deal with questions of morality, loyalty and autonomy and those are all themes that i spend a lot of my free time thinking about and/or that are very important personally. especially autonomy was always something that i was taught to value as a child and that my parents value a lot as well, even more than most germans which is saying something.

7. What books/movies/series whatever inspired or influenced your current wip the most? i honestly don't know. they're both not consciously inspired by specific media although i don't doubt that i was influenced by a lot of different works

8. What would be the biggest appreciation of your work for you? if someone loved it. if someone would read it not just once but then again just bc they felt like it and wanted to insert themselves into the world again. if someone would love the characters and bond with them. if my work meant something personal to someone.

9. Why did you choose to write this wip and not something else? What’s so special about it? my fantasy novel: i wanted to do a collab with a friend of mine whom i've known for a while now and she only writes fantasy so i thought it would be a good excuse to try myself out in the genre my drama novel: i honestly don't know. i can't even remember how the idea came to me but suddenly i was heads deep in a 1960's period drama about a gay dude and social pressure. i guess it was the way i write it, as minimal as possible, that appealed most to me

10. What kind of scenes do you not want to write/don’t enjoys writing but can’t get around them? scenes where i don't know what's going to happen plotwise but only the feeling that i want to get across

11. What part of the writing process is your favourite? (Coming up with the idea, thinking, outlining, researching, writing itself, editing, reading what you have written, etc) worldbuilding and creating characters bc i get to enjoy the creative process without worrying too much about perfection and editing bc it's meditative and bc i feel proud for completing my draft and don't have to worry about still having to write anything out. but i also love reading what i’ve already written! i guess in the end i have fun with all the parts lmao

[x5red]

The lost Supergirl

To its detractors the 1984 Helen Slater Supergirl is an underwhelming, disjointed, and self-contradictory attempt to profit from the Superman franchise beyond the Man of Steel. To its supporters the 1984 Supergirl is a much misunderstood blending of super-heroics and fairy-tales, creating a magical story of adventure and courage. But no matter what your take on this movie, no one can deny that it failed to meet box office expectations and did not garner anything like the same reputation as Chris Reeve’s first two iconic Superman outings.

But with the passing of time comicbook fans seem to have slowly mellowed towards Slater’s Supergirl. Sure, it may never be considered a classic, but many fans now acknowledge that Helen Slater’s time in the red cape has a lot of charming qualities, qualities that are sadly lacking in many of DC’s modern offerings.

So, what caused this shift in attitudes?

Well, thanks to the internet, today’s fans have a greater awareness of the intentions of director Jeannot Szwarc, who (we now recognise) was pitching at a younger audience than the Superman movies -- hence the looser fairy-tale quality of the plot. But, more importantly, there’s also a growing awareness that many of the movie’s weaknesses were made far more glaring by the distributor’s brutal editing for US markets.

As more and more of the cutting room floor footage has been seen, so criticism has softened. Although still far from perfect, 2000′s extended 138 minute cut is generally recognised as a more balanced and coherent experience than 1984′s US theatrical version of just 105 minutes. But fans have speculated that yet more footage is still to be found. Rumours circulate on the far flung reaches of the internet concerning a possible 150 minute edit, smoothing over even more of the disjointed elements of the story.

In this article I want to first attempt a fact-packed recap of the editing history of the Supergirl movie, noting when and why its numerous cuts were created; then I want to briefly speculate on what might be in the still-missing 12 minutes (if indeed they exist), by pulling together the various rumours and looking at their evidence.

So, let’s begin...

From silver screen to small screen

Supergirl got its debut in London on Thursday 19th July 1984, as part of a Royal Charity Premiere screening attended by Princess Michael of Kent (whose husband is the current Queen’s first cousin, as I’m sure everyone knows(!)) This UK version was distributed by Columbia-EMI-Warner and ran at 124 minutes. Initial critical reaction was mixed, leaning more towards underwhelmed.

As US fans waited for the Maid of Might to fly onto their cinema screens, the movie began to open around the world. Ireland and Japan got Supergirl just days after the UK, then August saw Supergirl open in the Philippines, Australia, and Spain. In October it was the turn of France and Canada. Meanwhile Kara Zor-El fans in her (adopted) home country had no choice but to wait... and wait... and wait... The delay in the US release was caused by Warner Bros. dropping out of negotiations to promote and distribute the film in US theatres midway through production. As the movie was in post production, and overseas distribution deals were being struck, the Salkind family (the producers) scrambled to find an alternative distributor for their biggest market.

Finally, on Wednesday 21st November 1984, the Maid of Might launched onto US screens thanks to TriStar Pictures, but the switch in distributor had not been without major consequences. American Supergirl fans were treated to an experience that had been cut down to just 105 minutes, removing key exposition scenes from a movie that was already criticised for struggling with plot coherence. Supergirl grossed $5.7m on its opening weekend, and went on bring in $13.6m in the US market. On an estimated production budget of $35m, it was not considered a success.

At the same time as the US theatrical release, a 125 minute LaserDisc version appeared in Japan, marking the first time fans could watch the Girl of Steel in the comfort of their own Fortress of Solitude. The advertised 125 minute running time likely represents a rounding error rather than 1 minute of new material. Although not sold into US markets, some copies apparently did cross the Pacific. The LaserDisc version was likely a pan-and-scan copy (no documentation suggests widescreen), with Supergirl’s wide cinematic 2.35:1 image cropped drastically to fit television’s nearly square 4:3 ratio.

Pan-and-scan would also have been done to the initial VHS release into US markets by U.S.A. Home Video in 1985, which used the 105 minute cut that had appeared in US cinemas the year before. In 1987 a second pan-and-scan edit was created by TriStar for HBO‘s cable tv screenings, which was then used by the ABC Network when it broadcast a brutal 92 minute cut in February 1987. (It was common practice for ad-supported tv to heavily edit movies, making space for commercials without stretching the running time too far.) This super-slimline cut was later thrown together with other Superman movies into a tv syndication package by Viacom. The Internet Movie Database suggests that there was also a VHS cut that ran to just 89 minutes -- this may have been either the Avid Home Video release (1991) catalogued on the same site, or it may refer to an unknown overseas VHS release.

Lurking in the depths of the vaults

By the late 1990s the full 124 minute cut of Supergirl had still never been legitimately made available in the US. The rights to the Supergirl movie had subsequently been snapped up as part of a bundle of films by Canal + Distribution in France, and they allowed Anchor Bay Entertainment to release the two hour so-called International Cut on VHS. Many Supergirl fans now thought that they, at last(!), had copies of the most complete version of the film. But rumours quickly started to circulate that this was far from the case.

Not long after the International Cut’s release, speculation began that Canal + had found something interesting lurking amidst the dusty film cans they’d acquired as part of their rights acquisitions. A previously unknown 138 minute cut of Supergirl featuring a mono soundtrack had been unearthed, which quickly acquired the moniker of the Director’s Cut.

(Note: one citation-free internet comment suggests that the Director’s Cut was actually discovered at Pinewood Studios, in a box marked “do not use”. Although the early Superman / Supergirl movies were filmed at London’s Pinewood soundstages, it seems odd that a finished edit of the film, complete with soundtrack, would be discovered there.)

In mid-2000 Anchor Bay Entertainment released a two disc DVD set featuring both the 124 minute International Cut, and the new 138 minute Director’s Cut, both in widescreen format (2.35:1 letter-boxed to widescreen tv’s 16:9 ratio.)

So, thought fans, surely this is the definitive Helen Slater Supergirl... right..!?

Well, apparently, no..!

The rumours didn’t end with the Director’s Cut. Some evidence suggested that there were still scenes shot at Pinewood that didn’t make it into the 138 minute edit. Speculation was that somewhere in a rusting film can there might lie yet another 12 minutes of unseen footage, bringing the total running time of the film to a whopping 150 minutes -- that’s almost 50% more Supergirl than was seen by the original US theatrical audiences in November 1984.

So, what’s missing..?

First, let us rule out what we can say with certainty is not in any potential missing footage.

The original script for Supergirl, penned by David Odell, made heavy use of Christopher Reeve’s Superman. According to director, Jeannot Szwarc, the main plot device always revolved around the recovery of the Omegahedron, but in early drafts Superman was to encounter Supergirl in space, and the pair were to share a heartwarming scene in which he teaches his cousin how to fly, involving dancing together in mid-air. At a later point in the script Supergirl was to rescue Superman from a prison, where he languished as an old man having lost his immorality.

Regrettably, the producer’s hopes of securing Chris Reeve fell apart not long before shooting began. Without Reeve, Odell’s script (which, Szwarc claims, had already suffered numerous rewrites at the behest of the Salkinds and/or original distributors Warner Bros.) underwent yet another a major overhaul. As such, we can say with absolute certainty that none of the possible missing footage includes Christopher Reeve’s Superman.

So what might it contain?

A draft of the movie’s script, dated Monday 17th January 1983, is available online, and it seems to mention scenes that never appeared in any publicly available cut of the film, including the Director’s Cut. The draft’s date is just a few weeks away from the alleged filming dates: Monday 18th April 1983 to Thursday 11th August 1983. The script does follow the story line of the finished movie, although it is apparent that some action segments have been reworked and some of the dialogue is only vaguely similar to the filmed version.

A second source of information comes from an apparently test audience viewing in the US, with online accounts of this screening at sites like IMDB seeming to bear out the rumours that some of the elements in the draft script may have been filmed and included in this screening.

Speculation suggests that a number of clips featuring Selena are still lost. These include more material with Selena and the Omegahedron, and a clip during Selena’s takeover of Midvale in which the angry townspeople are cowered (except Lucy) by Selena when she uses an ice spell to kill a woman.

There’s also speculation that two short interactions with Linda at school are absent. The first involves Nigel quizzing Linda about her plans for the weekend (this happens immediately before the scene, 50 minutes in, with Linda sitting outside the school as other girls leave with their parents, when Lucy invites Linda to join her later in Midvale.) The second is a chat between Linda and Lucy about clothes and fitting in on Earth.

One interaction that always seemed a bit odd in the movie takes place immediately after the shower sequence (when Kara uses her heat vision to punish the two school bullies.) Entering their shared dorm room, Linda asks Lucy to comment on her new hairdo -- Lucy replies that it looks the same as before. In the script however (and in accounts of the advance screening) there is a segment with Supergirl using heat vision and a bathroom mirror to cut her blonde hair, but she forgets that she has reverted to Linda’s brunette wig when Lucy offers her critique. The second half of this interaction appears in the movie (albeit with different dialogue to the script), so fans have speculated that the laser haircut footage may exist too.

The January 1983 script also does a better job of tidying up the story’s loose ends. For example, rather than have Linda Lee just vanish without explanation, school principal (Fred?) Danvers uncovers Linda’s secret identity after she fights the energy monster, explaining why he won’t be frantically searching for her once Supergirl returns to Argo City. No accounts, rumoured or otherwise, suggest that these segments were filmed, however.

Conclusion

Even at 150 miniutes, Supergirl would still be a flawed movie. But then perhaps, as Jeannot Szwarc has noted, its intentions were never properly understood or promoted. The film isn’t trying to be the Christopher Reeve Superman, but rather a children’s fairy-tale in which the hero uses Kryptonian superpowers instead of magic. One internet commentator noted that Slater’s Supergirl is best enjoyed as a series of unconnected vignettes -- forget that the overall plot doesn’t make sense and just enjoy each scene on its own. I think there might be some truth in that analysis.

Despite its flaws, the 1984 Supergirl movie has amassed a loyal fanbase. The special effects are superb (even Richard Donner apparently admitted that the technique Szwarc used to make his Girl of Steel fly was superior to the zooming-lenses trick pioneered on Superman), the story is unapologetically lighthearted, and Helen Slater’s endearing portrayal as the Maid of Might is still considered by many to be the definitive live-action Supergirl.

Restoring the extra footage won’t overturn the movie’s shortcomings, but it will further soothe some of its inconsistencies, while sprinkling just a little more magic dust onto what its loyal fans already consider to be a charming and bewitching cinematic experience.

The movie’s heroine succeeds in her quest to find the Omegahedron and restore Argo City to its former glory -- we can but hope that one day her fans will find any missing footage, and restore her movie to its fullest length.

Timeline:

124 min (2h 04m) international theatrical release, July 1984.

105 min (1h 45m) US theatrical release, November 1984.

125 min (2h 05m) Japanese LaserDisc, late 1984.

105 min (1h 45m) initial US VHS release, 1985.

92 min (1h 32m) HBO / ABC television cut, 1987.

89 min (1h 29m) VHS release, unknown date (1991 perhaps?)

124 min (1h 04m) Anchor Bay VHS release, 1998.

138 min (2 hrs 18 mins) Director’s Cut DVD release, Summer 2000.

150 min (2 hrs 30 mins) speculated original cut, as yet undiscovered.

Sources:

imdb.com : Supergirl main page.

imdb.com : Supergirl alternative footage.

movie-censorship.com : Supergirl International vs Director’s Cut.

supermancinema.co.uk :  List of VHS and tv cuts.

maidofmight.net : Director Jeannot Szwarc interview.

Thanks to Corrine, aka supergirldiaries, for the initial inspiration.

[queensweasley]

Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald - Review

Okay so yeah, post got some likes so I’m doing it.

I am one of the lucky people who was able to see Crimes of Grindelwald already. It’s been released today here in France but since my cinema had a premiere yesterday night, I have been able to see it one day prior.

First of all, if you want PSA, you can find them here : [link]

So, let’s start with :

NON-SPOILER PART

Overall, I didn’t dislike the movie. I didn’t really like it either. I feel like there is too much information, too much plots at the same time, and in the end you don’t really care about any of them. The movie is a complete train wreck, tbh. Too many things happening and it’s all crashing together into some kinda alphabet soup where you can see the letters but can’t really form words.

The first scene is one of the best in my opinion, and yet also one of the worst. Nothing makes sense in it. You totally get what is going on, but you don’t understand how it could happen. It clearly summarize the movie, I’d say. It shows an action, done following a plan, but some element are just coming out of nowhere. This scene doesn’t look right at the beginning of Crimes of Grindelwald. It should have been the ending of Where to Find Them.

At that is, in my opinion, one of the movie’s biggest problem. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a good movie, but a bad introduction to a 5-movies-long saga. Most of the element that seem forced in COG could and SHOULD have been introduced in WTFT. Mostly characters, tbh. I’m mostly thinking Leta. Okay, technically she has been introduced back then, but I think we should have had more than just a photograph and a mention of being New’s ex. Tbh, I don’t even understand why she’s Newt’s ex but that might got too spoiler-y so we’ll talk about that later.

Other characters, in the contrary, are largely underused. They are clearly there to serve later in the movie saga, but in that case they have too much screen time and importance. I’m not only talking about then being too present in the movie, I’m talking about them being too present in the press tour, ads and everything. Part of the marketing of the movie has been done around them, all that for them not being a huge part of the movie. And I’m not talking Dumbledore here, well, not only Dumbledore at least.

Characters treatment, meanwhile, is one of the most inconsistent things. While some like Newt, Jacob, Grindelwald or to some extent Tina are faithful to what we saw in the first movie, others like Queenie, Credence or to so extent Tina seem kind of OOC. (Yes Tina is in both cases). I’m not saying how they are different, but while it didn’t displease me too much for Credence, it sure makes me want to start #justiceforqueenie. This leads to the relationships going from really great for most of them to a complete trainwreck in others and, in one case, abusive.

While I’m clearly saying mostly negative things, the movie isn’t all bad. As I’ve said, some characters are great, most jokes are great too and while some complain about the visual effects I wasn’t too choked by them. The music is discreet but immersive and that’s all I ask of a soundtrack tbh. It’s just mostly been through the WB effect. To quote Deadpool : “So dark and broody, are you sure you’re not part of the DCEU ?” It is a good story, just not rendered in a good way. You know, one of those story you like almost all elements but not how they’re treated and you just want to rewrite them yourself to fix it. That’s at least how I feel about it, I’m ready to kick J.K. out and write in her place.

Now this might be a bit confused but I don’t want to say too much. So if you don’t care about them, we can now enter into :

HEAVY SPOILER PART

They are, quite obviously, to be found under the cut. 

I have a lot to say about it so I’m going to organize them into categories. I might forget some things but hey, I’m no professional. So, let’s start.

Scamanders and Lestrange - I find the trio to have a really good alchemy. The brothers are not depicted as the old-as-time “the successful asshole vs the weirdo angel” trope. Theseus, although successful indeed, never use it to compare himself with Newt. I don’t even think he compared himself with Newt. He’s successful, wants to help his brother the best he can and fuck, he’s a hugger and it’s refreshing to see brothers hug. (I’m saying that as someone whose sister has never hugged her, so I might be totally partial here). The relationship Newt has with Leta is also pretty good. You can sense that there’s history and it’s clearly not a case of the girl now being a bitch. Problem is, I have no idea why they split up in the first place. They seem to still go along, they seem to still care, if not feel love, for the other… And in the contrary, I don’t see why Theseus and Leta are engaged. Outside of “we need to bring Leta into the story”. They seem to go along pretty well, and clearly they care about one another but I don’t sense love. And it’s got nothing to do with the actor’s chemistry. They do have chemistry during interviews and all. No, it’s clearly lazy plotting. I think things would have been better if Leta had been engaged to Newt from movie 1 and a friend (maybe colleague) of Theseus.

The Lestrange lineage - Now you will not make me say one single good thing about that crap. The movie has indeed some good things but this is not one. First of all, it’s a mess. We don’t care about it for most of the movie and the moment we start caring, we learn that it’s not even really related to our story. Also, it’s quite the horrible story and it’s not treated in a good way at all. It’s also highly problematic, like a white man casting imperius to rape a black woman clearly sends some messages, but it’s not even used. There is no moral to this story. Lestrange is not depicted as bad because he raped the woman, he’s seen as bad because he never loved anyone besides Corvus, made Leta hate herself because she’s born of a rape and inspired revenge in the family of the woman he raped. And not only is there no moral to it, but it’s just a plot device. It’s just here to grow some artificial suspense as to the origin of Credence and only to reveal that it’s not even the real origin of Credence. And you know how it could have been avoided ? By saying that Youssouf is not the half-brother but the cousin of Leta. Leta is the daughter of arranged marriage, as is the custom with pureblood, and her father remarried to have Corvus. Now you can present him as being an asshole for not loving his wives and daughter. And Youssouf is not here for revenge but because he thinks he’s found his cousin’s brother and want to reunite them.  Here. How to create your fake suspense without adding rape and racism.

Nagini the maledictus - She could have been removed from the movie. Really, she’s useless so far and I’m hoping she’ll have more use later. She’s got too much screen time and I’m sure she had to be connected to Credence somehow but then they should have been more warm to one another because so far all she’s done is stand silently behind him.

Queenie and the treatment of mental health - I love Queenie. She’s been my favorite for along time in the first movie, after a few rewatching got her replaced by her sister. She’s still a character I loved a lot and I was always defending her when a friend who doesn’t like her at all was talking bad about her. Now… Well… I get that she’s not mentally alright. And I suppose that someone like me who doesn’t have any mental health issue, I’m not the best judge of that. I actually find very interesting that she suffers from her legilimency, and the fact that it gives her panic attack, all alone in this city she doesn’t know, hearing thought she can’t even understand (French people think in French after all, at least most of us do) is a really interesting thing that deserves to be treated better.What I struggle with is how abusive they made her relationship with Jacob, and the conclusion that is given of her mental state. Queenie is a legiliment more powerful than most others, able to read thoughts without much efforts, and who never revealed her nature to any ministry member because she didn’t want to be used like a tool, an object. Yet she manipulate Jacob like a toy, taking his consent away as a mean to finally get engaged. She’ basically doing to him what the first movie established she didn’t want done to her. And when it’s revealed that she’s just struggling with her identity, her difference,there is only one conclusion. “You’re mad.” Or “You’re crazy” idk I saw the movie with french dub. At first it’s just a thought. Jacob has been manipulated by the woman he loves, he’s confused. And he regrets it immediately. But by the end of the movie, Queenie who’s been suffering, who seem to have found a solution, hears it again and this time it’s not a lost thought. It’s an affirmation. “You’re mad.” That’s all she’s gonna get from the people she counted on. Between a man who condamns her mental health and a man who offers to help, I can understand she choose the latter. But this still doesn’t make sense.If she’s such a powerful mindreader she should have known that Grindelwald is manipulating her. You know what I think ? I think Jacob should have turned.

The reference to WWII - One of the things I loved was that mention. Grindelwald show the future and it’s not a great one. Jacob, who has been in the first war, is shook to see that. It was strong. In France (and maybe elsewhere I don’t know), WWI has a nickname. “La der des der”. Basically, the last of the last (war). Seeing the violence of the war, the soldier who fought in it believed it to be the war who would put an end to all the wars. Never could another be worst, be more violent. History proved that it wasn’t the case. But at the time, they delieved it to the core. Jacob believes it to the core. And then, this man who has fought, this man who is of polish origin (if not a polish immigrant, i’m not sure if it’s been specified), sees the war, the violence, the people in line in a concentration camp. And tbh, I think this might have been a turning point for him. He’s seen what the human race has done worst, and then he sees that it’s not even the worst, and that the worst is to come. Many would just want to stop that, that’s what Grindelwald is proposing. While him not turning is a good thing, the contrary would have been interesting as fuck.

Paris yes, but not in France - Okay so this is totally coming from me being a French girl. I didn’t see Paris, I didn’t see France, in that movie. I saw it with French dubbing so idk if there was some french dialogue but if there was that’s the only clue we have that we’re in France. We could have been in another country, I wouldn’t have had a clue. I don’t see what the point was. Why settle the plot in Paris, exactly ? There was to use of France’s culture, history or anything. Nothing justified being in Paris. I mean sure the ministry was pretty. But yeah that’s all. You know, I think about it because I’ve just rambled about WWI and II but it would have been a nice thing.If Jacob was to be tempted by his PTSD, one thing that could have been nice to show are the “gueules cassées”. Gueules cassées literally means “broken faces”. It designates the soldiers that survived WWI but came back with huge disabilities and/or deformities. The movietakes place in 1927. Before 1930, disabled people struggled more than ever to find a job, most couldn’t find any at all. THIS is a huge part of French history and THIS goes in accordance with the message of Grindelwald that muggles are dangerous, destructives.

Grindelwald himself - He was… not that bad, actually. Maybe I was expecting too much bad things from him. Depp isn’t that terrible, I found that lately he’d been under-acting ? Don’t know if that makes sense. But he seemed to be at least invested. His plan wasn’t that great though, overly complicated for nothing and all. But overall, while not a great villain, not a bad one. I wish he was more manipulative, because right now it seems just saying “Hi” makes people join him like wtf. Also… “I hate Paris”. Yes dear, like every french people, get over it. :)

The Strange Case of Aurelius Dumbledore - Okay, two possibilities. One, Grindelwald is lying to Credence about his real identity, in order to give him a target. He’s just making him a weapon against Albus. Two, Grindelwald is telling the truth and Credence is actually a long lost Dumbledore brother. This would make no sense. Dumbledore is, at least 18 years older than Credence is. The younger Dumbledore is supposed to be Ariana, and she is only 5 years younger than Albus. (She was 14 when her mother died and Albus had just left Hogwarts so 17). It’s written black on white in the book that she was attacked when she was six years old. Their father was imprisoned the same year. Three years before Credence was born, his alleged father was imprisoned for life in Azkaban. Somehow, I doubt there are conjugal visits. This is totally messing the timeline up tbh. I really hope Grindelwald is actually lying.

So… I might have forgotten a few things. Don’t hesitate to message me if you want to discuss about these things or some I might have forgotten.

[angryfiregardener]

Film making in Covid times

Inside the ancient caves of the prehistoric era lie the secrets of a trance unmatched, the trance that has survived for centuries and continues to thrive, the trance of story-telling.  From the paintings carved on the walls by the first humans to the magic of live theatre manifested by Shakespeare, over the decades, the art form of story-telling has travelled through a plethora of mediums. However, by the end of the 19th century, the world witnessed a legendary transformation with the advent of film-making. Ever since then it has continued to stay as the most capable and exquisite form of expression.

The beauty of this medium resides in the fact that it beholds the power to transcend one into the mind of the storyteller and make the viewer experience a world that doesn't exist in the first place. Cinema is synonymous with a time-capsule for it captures the crux of society and its traditions into a motion that is bound to live for ages as a universe where varieties co-exist like the pieces of a puzzle. Be it the intricacies of the Parallel Cinema or the subtle nuances of surrealism, through the magic of film-making and media one can always recite the thoughts as seamlessly as the songs of the dawn.

 To understand the deeper roots of film-making, it is important to acknowledge that it in itself is a learning-experience which flows into any given vessel and creates a different shape and identity for an individual. That's the glory of film-making, it knows no rules and aspires for none. Silent films, colourless films, talkies, non-fiction and a thousand other forms and styles have emerged due to this process and each has thrived in the hearts of different sets of audience.

The process of film-making in itself is a nail-biting yet a soothing journey that throws the makers into the roller coaster of emotions and forces them into a place of paradox where they constantly fight with their ideas, philosophies and struggles. However when we look over the past year, the most dreadful one in the history of centuries, there's no math required to conclude that each one of us has become a hostage of our emotions.

The dreary confinement in a mysterious way, brought us closer to the parts of ourselves that we had left undiscovered under the noise of our mundane routines. Our beings have been forced to discover a freedom that can only breathe between the four walls of our homes.

As much as we appreciate the breakthrough of ideas during this period it is also privy for us to ask the bigger question considering practicality, "What is the future of film-making in the wake of Covid?" Needless to say, making movies is going to be more difficult than ever. Now there exist unavoidable limitations but there is hope. "Limitations can be a key to innovation", says Wesley Joseph, a British film-maker and producer based in London. In fact, according to Joseph, we might witness a rise in the number of films owing to the flourishing and never-seen-before technology that will allow people to film stories inside their homes.

   Let's talk about Siddhartha Bedi, an aspiring film-maker from the capital who righteously stole the hearts of the people online with a One Plus camera phone, his younger sister and a will to create something bigger than ourselves. "My sister and Hand-Me-Downs" shot during this pandemic is a short film that explores the weird aspects of a sibling relationship. Like Bedi, there emerged hundreds of film-makers who turned this pathetic time into a bearable one through the lenses of their cameras that peeked into the kaleidoscope of their minds and brought on our screens the most heart-wrenching and beautifully shot short-films and stories. Films like "Aavaz", "Listen to Her", "Home  Stories" have stood-out and brought out the untold secrets and struggles of the pandemic. The renowned faces from the Bengali cinema gave us the beautiful, "Jhor themey jabe ek din", a short film directed by Arindam Sil wherein the actors sent their shots through iPhones.

 "Is making a film THAT easy?" you might ask yourself as you watch these masterpieces on your screen. The answer to that, in all its honesty, is quite ambiguous. Making a movie can be a mammoth task, however, as a beginner, it isn't quite impossible. As long as you carry the basic equipment by yourself, you'll just be a pinch of discipline, a few sleepless nights and platter of creativity away from producing the best film!

We at Devi Prasad Goenka Management College, believe in this idea of self-sufficiency and therefore our Film Club is back again with the fourth edition of CINEVOYAGE, a three-day virtual film festival which is a platform for all the film connoisseurs and amateurs alike looking for recognition of their work, ideas and opinions. 

Being a media and communication college, we understand the importance of creating an environment that can motivate the beginners to share their short-films and learn immensely through direct interaction with the industry professionals originating from the top media colleges across the country. Here lies your chance to make your own webisode/short-film and steal the centre stage with your talent. But before you participate, our patrons at DGMC have shared a few valuable insights on how you can ensure a well-shot content:

1. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO MAKE

This one is obvious, we know. However, it is equally important. Before you begin, you need to have a precise picture of the genre. Visualize the feeling that you wish to give to your audience and then explore your theme from various perspectives. Remember that there are limitations on the location and therefore choose a storyline that matches with your home/neighbourhood.

 2. SCREENPLAY TIME!

It is important to build an outline of the story that you wish to convey. Writing a script becomes much easier when you know your approach towards the story. Spend an ample amount of time here and keep rewriting and editing the script until you are satisfied with the flow of the direction.

3. WHAT EQUIPMENT DO I NEED?

This one's a tough nut to crack but fret not! As a first-time filmmaker, don’t hesitate to use your smartphone if it’s the best camera available.

Lighting is another important aspect that needs to be taken care of. If you do not have the lighting gear available to you, the natural light captured from the right angles can lend a lot of sense to your scenes.

Unavailability of audio equipment won't be a problem either if you try to capture the best sound possible. Recording in a quiet environment and keeping your in-built mic closer to the speaker can suffice.

4. ALL SET?

You're almost there. All you now need to do is gather your cast and start filming. When shooting a movie, you should set your camera to 24 frames per second. Shoot from multiple locations so that you have more to edit from in the post-production stage.

5. EDIT AND DONE!

Bring all the shots together, trim them into the sequence with the help of a gazillion video editing software available on the internet. Under the concepts and rules of colour, grading to make your film visually appealing.

Like we mentioned before, making a movie can be tough but this process brings with itself great experiences so get up, take your camera and start TODAY! While you're at it, do not forget to submit your work and participate in CINEVOYAGE. 

Click on the link below to know more details.

http://www.dgmc.org.in/cinevoyage/

[dauntlesssubconscious]

The Last Jedi and the resolving of Gray

We’re on the home stretch, yo! The Last Jedi is opening in cinemas in little over a month and I’ve wanted to make this post for a while, as a sort of conclusion for the last two years of waiting and theorizing.

I’m not a fan of taking things for granted, especially when discussing someone else’s creative process (Lucasfilm, in this case); but now that all the trailers are out and taking into account the tidbits of information we’ve been given throughout these two years, the bigger picture has become clearer and cemented some beliefs/theories for me. So, without further ado…

The starting point: day and night

Star Wars has explored the concept of the Force time and time again; we’ve seen Darkness and Light playout in different combinations. Makes sense, since the Force is the stuff of legends in a saga that leans heavily on myth in its storytelling and an intrinsic trait in the Skywalker family. The Force isn’t all there is to Star Wars, but it is a main component and lead thread, and arguably, the rest of the subplots march at its beat.

The Prequel Trilogy begins with a democracy---the Old Republic now---and a Jedi Order acting as its protector. Both institutions had been around for millennia and they seemed steady at face value, which wasn’t the case as we later learn. This trilogy focuses on the corruption of the government, the lack of foresight, the complacency of the Jedi, and how they fail when faced with the Dark Side. The Original Trilogy follows the same basic structure: the change in the established regime is brought down by a relatively small group that gains momentum as the movies go, but in this case, the Empire the Sith had built is the one to crumble and the Light wins the day in the end.

Pretty neat.

And then Disney came along and the question surfaced: where is this new trilogy going to go?

Alan Dean Foster, writer of the The Force Awakens novelization, starts the book with a quote of the Journal of the Whills. This journal appears as a plot device in George Lucas’ first drafts of Star Wars (the Whills were basically scribes and they would serve as narrators as they compiled the story of the Skywalkers), an idea that was later replaced by the concept of the Force in subsequent rewritings, and that our dear ADF made canon when he included it in the first novelization of the ST, the jump start of this trilogy.

@and-then-bam-cassiopeia wrote an extensive meta analysis on the evolution of the Journal and how it lived in and out of canon throughout Star Wars’ history. You can find it here.

First comes the day,

then comes the night.

After the darkness

shines through the light.

The difference, they say,

is only made right

by the resolving of Gray

through refined Jedi sight.

---Journal of the Whills (7:477)

I love this quote (even though I’m not an ADF fan, sorry); I found it fitting to start this new trilogy, and perhaps a new path as well.

We’ve seen the day in the Old Republic and the night in the Empire; Luke Skywalker’s light shone through the darkness of the Sith.

So what’s next? Well, the difference needs to be made right, resolving the Gray through refined Jedi sight.

The ST begins with only one Jedi left and he is missing. The opening crawl establishes right off the bat that the representation of the Light is nowhere to be found. We do have a very much present Dark Side in Snoke, Kylo and the Knights of Ren, but they aren’t Siths (Pablo Hidalgo confirmed that ages ago via Twitter).

Throughout TFA, the Dark Side seems to take the lead, but in the end, Rey defeats Kylo Ren and finds the hidden Jedi. A case of “almost, but not quite”.

There’s no established regime either: the New Republic gets blown out of the sky by the end of the first hour of the movie, well before the third act. The First Order gains the upper hand, but only until the Resistance in turn wrecks the Starkiller base.

When we compare TFA to episodes I or IV, the difference becomes obvious. Episode VII ends and we don’t know who comes on top. “But TFA is a copy of ANH!”. True, there are a lot of callbacks and parallels, but at the end of ANH you know the Empire is still ruling, even without the Death Star. Tell me, who’s ruling the galaxy after TFA?

We don’t know.

By the end of TFA, we’re left wondering who controls what in the political map of the galaxy; the ST tells us right away that the distribution of power and the rise and fall of the Darkness and Light won’t follow the pattern the previous two trilogies did. We’re not on the same starting point, and in consequence, we’re headed into a new direction and thank the salt gods for that.

Unsurprisingly, the protagonists share the nuances of the main plot, they start black and white and stay anything but. Finn shows us that there’s more to a Stormtrooper than their armor and terrible aim, that beneath the plastoid there’s a person with feelings and choices to be made. Rey, the ultimate loner and survivor, learns there’s more to life that counting the days in portions and braves her way through danger to find a belonging that won’t find her. Kylo isn’t the plain, uber-villain that descends from that gorgeous shuttle in Jakku; he’s conflicted, torn apart and it’s painfully obvious once the mask comes off.

The Force Awakens develops towards a place of ambiguity, of political and moral uncertainty; and this is where The Last Jedi picks up.

The Balance and two sides of a protagonist

The Last Jedi teaser was a dream come true. I’ve spoken about it in this post, but I’d like to revisit the general idea of it: the balance. What is balance and what does it mean for Star Wars as a whole?

If the first two trilogies show us something, it’s that extremes won’t do the trick; and while on the political aspect of the story the writers may go towards another democracy because it is portrayed as the lesser evil among the forms of government; I think that the Force and its plot will follow another path. The middle ground will be found in the Force, the literal mortar that binds the galaxy together.

Flawed as it is, something The Force Awakens did very well was introducing the new characters, establishing interesting dynamics without giving away much of how future interactions between them might develop.

I will focus on Rey and Kylo here, since they are the new generation of Force users. As the ladies of @starwarsconnection mention in their video about The Last Jedi first trailer, it seems Finn will find his niche as an undercover agent of the Resistance during this episode and I agree.

While I’d have loved if Finn turned out to be a Force sensitive, now that there’s no evidence that will be the case, I’m actually glad that Finn will have his own arc instead of being Rey’s sidekick. The journey the hero undertakes in their path to self-discovery must be done on their own at some point. I think TLJ will nail it on that aspect both for Rey and Finn, hopefully for Kylo too.

Kylo Ren is the darkness in the story, an unhinged guy with selective memory when it comes to his family legacy and that has committed many crimes in his path to the Dark Side, patricide included.

Rey’s past is, on purpose, left almost untouched. We only learn what we need to in order to understand her motivations. She’s a great character, too; a girl that on the face of adversity managed to survive without losing her hope and her compassion.

At first glance, they are as different as two characters can be, but as TFA advances, the parallels between the two appear. It all comes to head during their battle in the Starkiller: at that moment they are counterparts, equals and not only in strength. They are two lonely Force users in a galaxy where their kind is rare, both casted away from their families, seeking belonging.

We know there’s light in Kylo as there’s darkness in Rey and The Last Jedi is going to blur their duality even further; the conflict will deepen before they achieve a cathartic moment.

We see Kylo destroying his helmet, and while some may argue that it’s his way of fully embracing the Dark Side, the Kylo I saw in the trailers didn’t strike me as a man that has finally gotten rid of his doubts, so much so that doesn’t need his shield anymore.

Kylo’s helmet is a representation of his persona, the Master of the Knights of Ren capable of holding a blaster bolt for a full conversation without so much as a blink. It’s made to hide what his over-expressive face can’t, the remnants of Ben Solo. Kylo also knows by now that the Dark Side isn’t the answer: if killing his father didn’t manage to do the trick, he must wonder what will and how far is he willing to go.

Rey has no training with the Force, it all comes by instinct to her. Reactions based on instinct are fueled by emotions like fear or anger. It’s how she survived this long, so she trusts it.

Training someone like Rey---set on her ways and with such huge potential---has to be a challenge. Add to the equation a teacher with a bad record when it comes to gifted students and of course Luke is going to backtrack, leaving Rey without knowing where she fits or if she does at all.

The trailer infers that they both have that “raw power” that Luke has learnt to fear and Snoke covets. It has been discussed ad nauseam if Snoke is talking about Kylo or Rey, if Luke refers to Kylo or someone else… It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it could be either of them, that they are equals.

The difference made right: the refined Jedi sight and resolving the Gray

“It’s time for the Jedi to end,” Luke says in the TLJ teaser. Sounds like a man who has seen and been through a lot, only to realize something must change in order to move forward.

There was a lot of talk in the fandom about the Gray Jedi, a concept that used to be canon in the old EU, but Lucasfilm has already stated that they wouldn’t revive that idea. I think there will be no explicit mention of Gray Jedi, but that the new generation of Force users will aim for balance, for a more integrated take on the Force.

In any case, I believe the Gray refers to something else: it’s the difference that needs to be settled, the huge inbetween in the Force not the Jedi nor the Sith care to acknowledge.

To resolve means to convert or transform by any process; it means to settle, to reach a conclusion. When we talk about something refined, we refer to something in its pure state or that has been purified.

Resolving the Gray through refined Jedi sight could then be to settle the question of where does the balance lie through a purified view of the Force itself, to end the partiality of the extremes through a new, wholesome understanding of it.

Final thoughts

There’s a lot of fans out there already complaining on how The Last Jedi will be a copy of Empire Strikes Back. There will be callbacks; we will see Rey training, the FO will fight the Resistance… This is Star Wars, after all, and there are heroes’ journeys to be told.

Personally, I’m not worried that The Last Jedi is going to be a rehash of Empire. Why? Because the main characters aren’t plain hero vs. antagonist. Because we have, in Rian Johnson’s words, two halves of a protagonist placed on opposite sides. I wouldn’t call Luke on Empire Vader’s equal. Would you?

After hearing the actors speaking on how character driven this movie is, I will be walking into that cinema confident that Rian Johnson has done right by the saga, that he took JJ Abrams’ introduction and had the guts to tone up the ambiguity, forcing us to reevaluate what we know about the characters. Hopefully, we will also get to revisit topics that had always been centric to the saga, such as forgiveness, compassion and redemption.

I’m sure that all of this sounds familiar for the Reylo community, we’ve been discussing and theorizing over these aspects---and many others---since December 2015. Having two sides of the same coin, Rey (the light with a bit of darkness) and Kylo (the darkness with a bit of light) makes a blatant representation of the YinYang, the ultimate symbol for balance.

By now, it seems a little too much on the nose; but then again, The Force Awakens hinted that there was way more in Kylo and Rey’s dynamic than a simple hero/villain connection and still wasn’t enough for many people to see it. Maybe the general audience needed blatant.

All I can say by now is that if the ST doesn’t seek the middle ground, the balance of the Force through Rey and Kylo, then I will be vastly surprised and perhaps I should stop watching trailers or analyzing the myths and tropes behind the movies I see.

Only forty days to go!

[holy-mountaineering]

To be clear, I included that screenshot to show how old this post is. I wrote this during the first big uptick in my, what, 13 year involvement in or around Ordo Templi Orientis. I no longer associate myself with the OTO, because I cannot support an institution claiming to be about the Law of Light, Life, Love, and Liberty while protecting literal fascists, racists, Anti-LGBTQ2SI+ bigots and the like, along with sexual predators and just every stripe of scum. The National Leadership would rather keep the OTO a boring goth club for aging white men who've never accomplished much of note (unless it directly involves the OTO or the legacy of Aleister Crowley) instead of an amazing and diverse group of artists, intellectuals, and Free Peoples at the forefront of all movements worthy of the historical greatness those who push our most dangerous Freedom could be involved in. Now, that may sound like hot air to those who don't know what Thelemites Truly Finding their True Will have accomplished for humanity, but other than changing the very nature of humanity by creating the groundwork for the fuel that took humans to another physical world in the SOLar System, we've changed the whole of painting, cinema, music, poetry, and many other Arts and Sciences the World over and beyond. Now we squabble over charters, paperwork and meaningless questions of race, gender, and sexuality long answered by the Clarion Call of Liber AL vel Legis and other Great Works of Thelemites who were that more than in name only. I want to also say, this isn't about your local OTO body, hell, I LOVE (most) of my former Fraternal siblings at Blazing Star Oasis. Rather, this is about the National leadership of the OTO and their consistent choice to protect abusers, racists, and scum of all stripes that wouldn't know the Law of the Strong and the Joy of the World if it jumped up and kicked them in their peckerwood necks, which is the treatment I WILL GIVE TO ANY SO-CALLED THELEMITE WHO WANTS TO COME WITH FASCIST/RACIST/BIGOTED BULLSHIT, Pax Templi no longer applies to me, I'll fuck yer ass up and if you don't believe me, I encourage you to ask around. Even my enemies and detractors know I'm down and all that literalist Chapter 3 shit the wanna-be thelemic fash like to talk ain't figurative for me either, and unlike those fuckin' Nazi roll playing nerds I've rolled with ARA and AFA since I was a fuckin' teenager. I don't debate those who seek to entrap or ensnare me with their weak wills, as the Good (or Bad) Book says, I destroy them utterly. OM, HA, as far as I'm concerned, the OTO is already dead, long live the True Order of the Templars of the East and may something of more value to Humanity as a whole rise from its ashes. The bigots and bastards may wish to rewrite history in their image, but We of Thelema, us Thelemites have a gloried and uncomfortably awful past which no Man, Crowley, Wasserman, or anyone else can tarnish. Well, more than we have ourselves.

Love is the Law, LOVE Under WILL. LVX->N0X IA0 -Frater N0VGHT

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,

It worries me to see Thelema and many orders therein being safe havens for racists, homophobes,and bigots of all stripes. “The right to deny rights for others” has no place in the life, light, love, and liberty of Thelema. It is not a right to deny rights to a people based on how they were born or how they choose to live their personal life in their particular orbit.

However, to say that, for example, the racist is just “making a personal choice that has no bearing on others” is naive at best and an accomplice to bigotry at worst. Bigotry is an operating system that places one kind of person over another. if someone believes that one race is inferior, they will act on this. And to say a Thelemite doesn’t act on their convictions is to say you’re not talking about a Thelemite.

This is not the “make no difference between any one thing and any other” and it is not light, love, or liberty that pervades Thelemic thought. This is materialistic, simple, fear. Fear of those who do not look or act as we do because their experience and lives are different is NOT a Thelemic trait. Fear not at all; fear neither men nor Fates, nor gods, nor anything.

In short a sucker is born every minute, try not to make it on your time.

In life, light, love, and liberty,

Frater Nought

Love is the law, love under will

[yeahiwasintheshit]

star wars the last jedi spoilers review

star wars the last jedi spoilers review

spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers

so they fucking killed off luke. the fuckers did it and im pissed the fuck off. like blindingly angry and that really over shadows any review of the movie, because there is no review without being outraged at lukes stupid death. it is such bullshit. i dont buy the whole bullshit line, this jagoff rian johnson is giving that they are making way for the new characters to flourish blah blah blah. why do they need to kill off these beloved characters just to spotlight the new ones? you can have both. it makes no sense. they can have them all in the movies. i mean they didnt even have luke in the first movie! like at all, he wasnt dead. and also they didnt have to kill him off in such a stupid fucking way either. (ill get to that)

mark hamill warned us, when he said he ‘fundamentally disagreed with every decision they made about luke’. like i would have been fine with whatever decision they wanted to make esp a story that went against expectation. thats actually encouraged. i didnt like epi 7 because it was so similar to epi 4. and in a way this new movie is a new story. but in lukes story, they did do something new and different and unexpected but went against everything that is core to his character. clearly, everyone thought, at least after tfa, that hed willingly train rey, yada yada. and they broke convention, and luke didnt really do that willingly. he was a grizzled old shell of a man. drinkin monster titty milk and fishing im fine with that part of it. he wanted nothing to do with the jedi or the force after kylo destroyed the temple, and that does make sense. ok fine. what really irritates me is that they didnt stay true to lukes character. in rotj, he was willing to give his life to save his father from the dark side. a man he didnt know his whole life... that he just met. luke actually volunteered to meet the devil himself to bargain for his fathers soul. and against all odds he won! and now this new story is going to try and tell me that a man like luke, with his background and history is willing to kill his nephew, (even for a split second) who hes known from birth, and is his twin sisters child, and basically became a surrogate father to. its not only bullshit, but such a rewriting of the fundamentals of his character. and it just doesnt work. it doesnt make sense. and is an assassination of his character. ugh. so unforgivable. but ok. even if that reason why was good (which is wasnt) why the fuck did they kill him off? why didnt they at least give him a redemption he would deserve for making or attempting to make a choice like that. one answer. character assassination. this prick johnson is destroying a beloved icon in cinema without even second thought. its shit.

and then to kill him off so stupidly. like i didnt have a problem with the force projection thing. i thought that was pretty cool. the whole old west showdown between luke and kylo in front of the walkers was good. him emerging from the cloud of red dust was great. sweeping off the dust from his shoulder was cool. all of that was great. fits with the character. but what was the purpose of it? a distraction!?!?!? all luke is, is a distraction now? 30 years of build up to see what happens with this legendary hero, a movie icon for over 40 years like luke skywalker and his last act is to just distract. what the fuck kind of shit is that!! its such a betrayal of luke’s story arc. and now carrie fisher is dead. so whats gonna happen? theres not going to be any live characters from the original trilogy in #9. they could have easily NOT killed him or at least left a cliffhanger on whether or not he died. but thats it. hes gone. presumably hes a force ghost now? ok. why even kill him then if youre bringin him back as a ghost? the inconsistency of lukes arc and last act just felt like it was this dickhead director/writer who just wanted to make a splash by doing something bold. and its just so transparent that thats what it was because he had a whole year after carries death to just not kill him. but rian johnson decided to do it anyway. not because it was good for the character, but cause it was good for himself. bullshit.

and then just stupid plot holes in that last act. if lukes only goal in the movies last act was to be a distraction (which is unforgivable) how would luke even know there was an exit that the crystal critters would shepherd the remaining rebels thru. there literally is no exit. rey had to make one by removing boulders. i mean, does having the force gives you some kind of geologic mapping vision? lol. ugh. i know im nitpicking, i get it, but it kind of fundamentally doesnt even make sense in the logic of the movie itself. so if he doesnt know that then it doesnt make sense that luke would know that his distraction would buy the rest of the rebels time to escape, so why is he there then?!?!? the whole thing falls apart quick. and then they kill him off?!? what? why? like even if i were to accept lukes death in any of the movies, which i wouldnt (but i get that thats my problem). but even if i did. why wouldnt he go out in some kind of redeeming heroic way? why didnt he actually come to the planet and actually fight and die there. i thought they showed us his xwing cause he was gonna show up on the planet and take out a few walkers with him. he could have done some amazing force shit and killed off most if not all of them, and then died in a blaze of glory wounding kylo and the first order as kylo fled. and then luke could have died of exhaustion or whatever the fuck. at least that would have been true to his character, and would have redeemed his momentary urge to kill kylo (which i think is bullshit anyway). its like in the mind of this shit writer/director the urge to do something unexpected trumps doing something that is cinematic and character building and redeeming. fuck you rian johnson.

anyway, after they killed off han in epi 7, there was this sense that they were just going to kill one of the main 3 in each of the movies, and that pissed me off, i was not ok with that because theres literally no reason for it. but they seem stuck on this fuckin point that they need to bring these new characters in and sweep the old ones out. it was like on e of the talking point in all the interviews. but i dont get why the fuck you would want to do that. ok han sure, cause basically harrison ford said im out. i dont want to do anymore. kill him off. fine. but mark seems happy to do all of them. carrie, before her death seemed happy to do them all too. if the idea was to kill luke off in 8 and leia in 9. then after carries death why not just flip them. kill off carrie in 8 somehow. and let luke come back in 9 and let him redeem himself. so irritated.

anyway, its hard to move past lukes death. but besides that there were just a bunch of other problems with the movie.

too much stupid humor that didnt land

superman space leia

the whole casino world storyline really put the brakes on the pace of the movie

didnt care about rose and finn at all. just a distraction from the pace of the plot.

superman space leia

the whole rebels are oj’s white bronco slow speed chase down the 405 thing

the bitch death of phasma

the whole benicio del toro character was trying so hard but just didnt matter at all

justin theroux in like 5 secs of the movie?

superman space leia

the bash you over the head, way too on the nose preachy social issues like slavery and animal abuse and the upper class. like ok fine. but it just felt so forced into the story, and out of place. like this is a movie about the rebels escaping imminent destruction and we are now staring at this creepy horse thing with a human face abomination. it just didnt work in the movie.

kylo and rey love story? what? did i read into that or is that really there?

they killed off admiral ackbar so terribly and in such a disrespectful way

evil bb8? big fuckin eye roll. he has to have a fucking enemy? give me a break.

bb8 saving the day one too many times. i mean talk about a fuckin mary sue 

they broke anakins light saber!!! (more a disappointment)

superman space leia

superman space leia

superman space leia

superman space leia

but ok ok ok ...tbh, if they didnt kill of luke, i would have thought it was better than the force awakens. there were plenty parts of this movie i did like

mark fuckin hamill. so great in this

snokes death. yes it was jarring and didnt make sense that someone with his powers didnt know what kylo was going to do, but i liked that they just got rid of him like that. fuck this guy. i would have liked a little more back story on him, but fuck him. i was surprised and shocked in a good way

holdos death and sacrifice. awesome idea. executed really well! tho, just by introducing that idea, it does sort of discredit the other movies. like if all you need to do is jump thru light speed into something to destroy it, the death star isnt so scary anymore. wtf rebels of ep 4-6 why didnt you just do that.

poe. everything about his character was awesome. loved his mistakes and his arc. loved his interactions with leia and holdo. everything was great about him

yoda was awesome. his apparently new force ghost abilities were cool. sort of on the fence about them using the muppet yoda. i had no problem with digital yoda from the prequels. this is fine too. doesnt really matter to me.

reys parents were drunken junkers. if that true, and kylo isnt trying to fool her then thats great! not everything needs to connect back to her

rey and kylo fighting the guards. awesome action. looked amazing. i bought it all. even if its still iffy that rey can take on all these guards after so little training. i still bought it in the moment. im fine with it.

luke emerging from the red dust cloud was great! (i didnt notice his just for men beard, i bought the whole thing hook line and sinker)

luke and leias embrace

leia shooting poe

the look of the red dust planet was really cool

i thought they were going to overdo the porgs, and yes there were in a few scene more than i wanted, but really not as bad as i expected.

the jedi kid at the end. proof that there are other force users. which we all knew, but good to see they didnt just throw that bit of info away

there was some good moments. i would have been fine with the whole plot. the rebels (now they are calling themselves rebels again which is weird) escaping the first order was fine, adequate. the main problem like i first said is killing luke, but moreso just the bad moments overtook the good ones. i do plan on seeing it again just to see if it sits better a second time, but that my first impressions.

anway, these opinions are subject to change based on what happens in 9. i mean there is a possibility that they can fix the bad decisions rian johnson made. but since its jj abrams i doubt it.

[dweemeister]

Sissi (1955, Austria)

Germany’s annexation of Austria in World War II devastated Austria’s domestic film industry. Either its best directors, producers, and writers fled to neutral or Allied nations or they were absorbed into a centralized, Nazi-run film company named Wien-Film (”Wien” is German for Vienna). Wien-Film rarely distributed propaganda, but its light comedies had anti-Semitic and Fascist undertones. Following Axis defeat, Austria’s film industry – unlike Italy’s neorealists, Poland’s directors examining national identity, or French New Wave directors advocating innovation – looked backward with period pieces and musical comedies as the Austrian public sought escapism, not reminders of their daily struggles. Some writers and historians of cinema might dismiss this demand for escapism as resulting in unchallenging films. But just because Sissi – the first of a trilogy based on the early life of Empress Elisabeth (”Sissi”; pronounced “SEE-see” not like the word “sissy”) of Austria – is not a thematically or cinematically complicated piece, does not mean its initial and enduring popularity is worthless.

Think of Sissi as a delectable, artisanal box of chocolates. Think of Ingmar Bergman movies as broccoli – Swedish broccoli. The latter is healthy and you may just like it (I certainly do); the former may do no favors for your health, but is it not enjoyable?

By 1955, Austria was still in the throes of economic recovery with the Marshall Plan’s assistance. Still occupied by Allied forces, Austria reestablished its sovereignty on July 27, 1955. Five months later, Ernst Marischka’s Sissi was released, becoming one of the most successful German-language movies of all time. Sissi and the two movies following it – which will receive write-ups after this – have since become Christmas staples in German-speaking countries and Hungary. All of that enjoyment begins in the first installment. For Austrians prideful of their history and national identity, it is a romanticized, sanitized yuletide treat. For everyone else, Sissi begins the story of a sumptuous royal drama with the sense of humor of a live-action ‘50s/’60s Disney film (without the juvenile intentions), the production quality as beautiful as any Western film in these difficult years for Europe.

It is the mid-1850s in Bavaria (at the time part of the ineffective German Confederation with close ties with the Austrian Empire, also a member of the Confederation). Princess Elisabeth (Romy Schneider; henceforth referred to as “Sissi”) is the second-oldest daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph (Gustav Knuth; “Max”) and Duchess Ludovika (Magda Schneider, Romy’s mother). Sissi is sixteen years old, running about her parents’ lakeside estate among the forests and green mountains, living through a wondrous childhood. One day, eldest sister Helene (Uta Franz; “Nené”) travels with their mother, Ludovika, to Bad Ischl, a summer retreat of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I (Karlheinz Böhm). Nené is to be engaged to Franz Joseph, an arrangement engineered long ago by his mother, Archduchess Sophie (Vilma Degischer; Sophie is Ludovika’s elder sister). Despite not being invited to court due to her tomboyish ways, Sissi joins her mother and elder sister out of curiosity for new sights and experiences. While wandering the forest, Sissi accidentally encounters Franz Joseph, beginning a succession of events that sees them falling in love, the audience reeling in secondhand embarrassment for Nené especially, and ending with Sissi’s marriage and crowning as Empress on April 24, 1854.

Other important characters include Franz Joseph’s father Archduke Franz Karl (Erich Nikowitz) and Franz Joseph’s brother Archduke Karl Ludwig (Peter Weck). Serving as comic relief are two fictional creations: the overly presumptuous Gendarmerie-Major Böckl (Josef Meinrad; whose character appears in the two successive Sissi films) and the Postmaster of Ischl (Richard Eybner).

There are some historical inaccuracies for those wanting to compile a definitive list of such things: Sissi was actually the fourth child of Max and Ludovika, not the second. Also, there was never any clandestine mountainous flirtation between Franz Joseph and Sissi; instead, he just happened to find Sissi more attractive than Nené (if Nené had a nicer temperament, then his motivations might be suspect). Of all the Sissi films, this first installment – the entire trilogy was written by Marischka – is the one rewriting history the most. The narrative contrivances to extend the romantic drama are too convenient and too silly to be believed anyways. This fits with the tenor Sissi is attempting but is ultimately as clichéd as any romance could be.

However, depending on how enjoyable and charming a piece of narrative art is, even the most generic of storylines and developments get an occasional (or frequent) pass. The opening half-hour of Sissi sees the titular princess and her siblings frolic like the spoiled countryside urchins they are – think “Do-Re-Mi” from another film allowing audiences a glimpse of beautiful Austrian backdrops. For all of the traditional stiffness that Archduchess Sophie attempts to enforce, the gleeful spontaneity of Sissi’s family (and Sissi herself) provides a light-hearted juxtaposition that, in the two subsequent films, becomes the center of personal dramas. The 1955 Sissi is hinting at the disappointment and sadness that is to come, but there is nothing like a first love for people to forget life’s difficulties, and what must be endured and tolerated as years pass. The audience can sense the tension between Sissi’s dedication to Franz Joseph and her fear of the trappings – and traps – of the imperial duties she must perform.

Throughout this trilogy, Romy Schneider takes the part of Sissi and allows us to see the Empress’ generosity, forbearance, and endurance. By the time the final Sissi film was released in 1957, Schneider would occasionally be referred to as, “Sissi” in German-language media. All this for good reason – Schneider becomes Sissi on the first try. Her warmth, derived from her too-perfect parents and too-perfect family, is here in abundance, even in times where her character faces the obstruction of royal ways and Archduchess Sophie’s initial coldness toward her. As Franz Josef, Karlheinz Böhm – ten years Schneider’s elder, the two became great friends during production – is less charismatic here, but his better performances will come as political intrigue strikes in the upcoming movies.

Elsewhere, Vilma Degischer plays Archduchess Sophie as a stickler for tradition, almost offended by her son’s indiscretions – Sophie convinced her husband to abdicate the throne in 1848 to Franz Josef, positioning herself as arguably the most important person in the Austrian Empire. Degischer is unmoving, calculating, but never acting against her son’s or the Empire’s interests. Degischer allows audiences to understand Sophie’s intentions – a lesser actress might have interpreted Sophie as too antagonistic. A subplot where Gendarmerie-Major Böckl believes Sissi to be a nefarious individual before her first encounter with Franz Joseph is an overstretched punchline, but at least Josef Meinrad’s energy and comic timing is excellent.

The first Sissi film is, thematically, the least interesting in the entire series despite being the least flawed overall. All of the conflicts – political, personal, familial – that make this series worthwhile are all developing in the background, to be fully articulated once Sissi understand the imperial experience of being a public leader. This film is most like the stereotypical conception of a Disney princess movie, with romance that is flighty, and drama that is, in some sense, smiled away.

Unless written otherwise, many of the craftspersons about to be mentioned served for the entire Sissi trilogy because they were Ernst Marischka regulars around this time. Everyone mentioned here contributes astounding work.

Cinematographer Bruno Mondi (co-cinematographer on Fritz Lang’s 1921 film Destiny) shoots much of this film outdoors, as the first Sissi is more dependent on exteriors and on-location footage than the others.  Thankfully for Mondi, the on-location exteriors lend to this film’s (and the trilogy’s) epic, postcard-picture-perfect scope. Seeking out locations Princess (later Empress) Elisabeth lived in her youth, Marischka wanted to shoot at the family estate of Possenhofen Castle on Lake Starnberg. However, the castle was in such disrepair at the time that shooting moved to Fuschlee Castle in Salzburg instead. Other locations include the Tyrolean mountains, Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna (Franz Joseph’s summer residence; Schönbrunn will be prevalent later) and St. Michael's Church in Vienna.

In other technical areas, the costume design by Leo Bei (Marischka’s 1954 film The Story of Vickie, various 1960s Disney productions set in Austria), Gerdago (The Story of Vickie), and Franz Szivats (Szivats is the only credited costume designer who did not work on the third film) is magnificent. Alternating between simpler – but upper-class – casual attire to the courtly gowns and suits found in the ball scenes, the amount of costumes needed for Sissi alone is incredible to see. Art director/production designer Fritz Jüptner-Jonstorff has obviously completed extensive research to implement as many details as he can to Sissi’s family’s lakeside home as well as the royal residences.

The music score by Anton Profes (The Story of Vickie) concentrates around Sissi’s theme, which appears across the trilogy typically as transitional music. The motif never tires itself, and Profes knows to arrange the theme slightly depending on the situational contexts of the previous or upcoming scenes. Otherwise, if one despises Viennese waltzes, be warned that Johann Strauss II’s Roses from the South waltz might be stuck in your head once completing any of the Sissi films (as is a recurring theme in this write-up, there will be more waltz music and musical interest in the sequels; know what you are getting into in all facets of the filmmaking before committing). Oh, and for you history sticklers, Roses from the South is an anachronism; Strauss composed the piece in 1880.

Not only did Sissi become an instant cultural phenomenon in Austria, a sort of reclamation of a glorious past through cinema. But it also proved popular in an unexpected place. For Chinese mainlanders who lived through the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the film’s appearance on mainland Chinese television spurred Chinese interest in Austria. The first Sissi – I have no independent confirmation about the popularity of the entire trilogy – needed no censorship because of its lack of politics and fluffy romance. On China’s equivalent of the IMDb, Douban, Sissi is very well-rated and popular for a 1950s Western movie (China, for various reasons including the government’s censoring prickliness, does not have as strong a cinematic tradition that values classic movie fandom as many Western nations).

In North America, Sissi is relatively unknown, as is the name Romy Schneider –  Schneider later appeared in a handful of Hollywood productions, but felt most at home in Europe. All three Sissi films are now available on Blu-ray thanks to New York-based Film Movement. Film Movement is an organization that distributes non-English language and independent films (theatrically and monthly on home media) that have been ignored by North American audiences. On Halloween this year, Film Movement released the box set of the entire trilogy with a new 2K restoration. These are the versions that aired on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) on October 18, and on which this review (and the two later pieces I will write to complete the trilogy) is based on.

Sissi has all the sweetness of the most heartwarming fairy tales and is deserving of its status as a cultural touchstone. Along with some liberties in the storytelling, the craftswork and the performances enliven these historical individuals and moments described in books, depicted in portraits, regarded by the Austrian people.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

Also in the Sissi trilogy: Sissi: The Young Empress (1956) and Sissi: Fateful Years of an Empress (1957)

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Robert Daniels on 812 Film Reviews: 812filmreviews Best Documentaries of 2019

Last week, I released my list of the 25 Best Feature films of 2019. There, I explained that I typically do a separate rundown for documentaries. I have found that most who choose to include both forms of filmmaking in their end of the year lists tend to only include two or three entries for docs. The rest are naturally shortchanged in lieu of narrative features. Rather than make such a grave error, I made another rundown solely for documentaries.

And for good reason. 2019 witnessed stories covering a soul legend, space explorers, a honey maker, sexual predators, an ambulance chasing family, and a tragic death. I couldn’t imagine not highlighting every single one of these singular films. Here, are the Best Documentaries of 2019.

Amazing Grace

In 1972, Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa and Tootsie) was enlisted for a once in a lifetime opportunity. Accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir, the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin recorded her live album Amazing Grace at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Pollack came to record the event for a later concert film. However, technical errors caused the audio to separate from its images. Much as he tried, the famed director couldn’t rectify his mistake. It took decades before editor Jeff Buchanan to retool the footage. The result, transports us back into time to witness an artist at the height of her powers, and for us to shout “praise be.”

Where to watch: Hulu

Apollo 11

I caught Apollo 11 at the tail end of Sundance 2019. By that point, the festival was ablaze with excitement for the film. Usually I chalk up such enthusiasm as festival hype, but Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11 is far more. Another instance of salvaging and restoring footage, the 70mm film follows Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins on their journey from earth to the moon. Without interviews or recreations, the editing by Miller makes for an exhilarating journey and a triptych portrait of a time gone by: from fashions to hopes, to unbridled confidence.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime ($3.99)

Black Mother

With 2015’s Field Niggas, Khalik Allah seemed to rewrite the rules of cinema in a poetic rendering of Harlem street life. However, his follow-up Black Mother confirms the director as a visionary in the medium. Set in Jamaica, the highly personal film (Allah is of Jamaican descent) is as much an ode to the people of the island, than as an individual’s search for identity, and an immersive examination of the country’s history. Lyrical and spiritual, Black Mothers wanders through the travails of Jamaica’s Black women—some of them sex workers, as they negotiate prices and receive ultrasounds. Allah’s filmic essay documents a struggle against arduous economic circumstances, along with a deeply moving religiosity, which communes with gorgeous shots of the Jamaican landscape for an evocative yet powerful reconstruction of Black existence.

Where to watch: Criterion Channel

The Black Godfather

Kingmakers are rare today. Before partisan political maps, 24/7 news coverage, and the internet, influencers could raise unknowns to grand political and artistic heights. One of the rare remaining examples is Clarence Avant—founder of Sussex and Taboo records, concert promoter for Michael Jackson, and fund-raiser for Democratic politicians. In The Black Godfather, Reginald Hudlin follows the straight-talking expletive-spitting “Godfather of Black music” as he recounts his life and witnesses his influence. More than a profile of a behind the scenes legend, the film demonstrates the continual need and joy that comes from Black men and women raising each other up.

Where to watch: Netflix

The Cave

At AFI Fest, I declared the Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad (Last Men in Aleppo) the most important documentarian of his generation. With America interested in the region yet disinterested in its people, Fayyad has consistently provided one of the few eyewitness testimonials of a silent tragedy. This time, he profiles Amani Ballor —a female doctor and head of a hospital in Ghouta. With medicine in short supply, and constant air raids from Russia, Amani must also contend with a still-sexist and religious definition of a woman’s role. Her strength and devotion to her patients, doctors, and nurses forces her to make the most of what’s available. To these ends, the hospital also operates in a makeshift cave. The result shows courageous men and women trying to help those in the most dire of needs even as the world doesn’t seem to be listening.

For Sama

Like The Cave, Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts’ For Sama is a brutal unflinching look inside the Syrian War. An intimate documentary, Waad dutifully films herself over the course of five years: from marriage to the birth of her daughter, during the siege of Aleppo. A tale of resiliency, Waad captures moments of pure disrepair: the death of a child on an operating table, and instances of hope—the belief in a cause. She also documents a burgeoning revolution, passionate protests for freedom, and the final embers of its fire snuffed out through betrayal. Determined, touching, and sobering Waad elucidates how a country descends into horror—and the multiple ways its citizens try to hold their lives and their nation together.

Honeyland

In a remote village of North Macedonia exists Hatidze Muratova, a beekeeper living in another era. Between the ruins of homes, she lives with her 85-year old bedridden mother. Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov’s Honeyland sees Muratova’s way of life threatened as outsiders begin to encroach upon her tiny village. Human greed, loss, and an apathetic mother nature nearly break Muratova in this poignant film about surviving through perseverance—even when the honey turns sour.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime ($5.99)

Leaving Neverland

Revered as the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson lived a life that seemed outside the bounds of reality. Wildly famous, incredibly rich, and extremely guarded, any peak into his existence felt performative. In this regard, there was no greater nor more horrifying stage than Neverland Ranch, a theme park and compound that espoused all of Jackson’s cruelly ironic fantasies. Even so, his secrets unraveled when he twice went through sexual molestation trials (1994 and 2005). Dan Reed through the testimonies of Wade Robson and James Safechuck exposes Jackson’s acts of grooming, manipulation, and statutory rape with two young boys in a two-part documentary that serves as an uneasy study of a sexual predator that’ll make you never want to listen to another Michael Jackson song again.

Where to watch: HBO Go

Love, Antosha

On June 19, 2016, Anton Yelchin’s jeep rolled down his driveway and unsuspectingly pinned him against a pillar resulting in the end of his life. While it might sound vacuous to say loss and grief are never easy, when tragedy strikes at 27 the statement rings devastatingly true. In this regard, Garret Price’s Love, Antosha is a thoughtful memorial to the young performer. Featuring interviews with friends and co-stars, the film recounts the actor’s struggles with cystic fibrosis as he crafted his promising career. While Price mines personal stories that reflect the unique and brilliant individual Yelchin was, the most poignant moments arrive through interviewing the performer’s still heartbroken parents. Love, Antosha isn’t just a film about a talented actor’s untimely death, it’s about the grief that accompanies the loss of a son and a friend.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime ($3.99)

Midnight Family

In Mexico City, there are many independent ambulance drivers, all racing to the next accident. If they’re lucky enough to find someone in need, they can take them to an independent hospital where they receive a reward. I had worried that Midnight Family would be forgotten after Sundance 2019. Thankfully, the Academy Awards shortlisted Luke Lorentzen’s harrowing but conflicting portrait of a family operating a private ambulance in the heart of Mexico City for their Best Documentary Feature category. The Ochoas are the perfection subjects for the film because they’re uniquely aware of how their precarious financial situation and business might be dangerous to their patients too. But in an economically desperate environment, which offers few alternatives, they work to survive to the next day. Heroes and profiteers at once, Lorentzen documents the difficult results of economic disparity through the Ochoas in an incredible moralistic crucible.

Where to watch: In Theaters January 8th

One Child Nation

From 1979 to 2015, in an effort to curb rampant population growth, China instituted the one-child policy. For fear of forced-sterilization by the government, families who conceived more than one child would either need to abandon or abort them. In a defiance of censorship and government intimidation with One Child Nation Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang interview family members, former-party officials, and parents affected by the decree. Graphic and distressing, Wang discovers lost generations hidden in the policy’s victims, for a startling picture of state-sanctioned murder.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime (with subscription)

Surviving R. Kelly

Leaving Neverland wasn’t the only film that exposed a molester. Like Jackson, R. Kelly’s history of grooming and statuary rape (in this case of underage women) was widely known. In 2002, the singer was charged with multiple counts of child pornography but it 2008 was acquitted on every charged. Moreover, in 2017 there were allegations of Kelly running a sex cult. It wasn’t until Nigel Bellis and Astral Finnie’s 6-part Lifetime docuseries that walls caved in on the singer. Multiple survivors spoke on record about Kelly’s abuses in a harrowing take down of a sexual predator. A flash point, Surviving R. Kelly demonstrates the power of a documentary to institute change,

Where to watch: Netflix

That’s it for my 2019 lists. Once again, thank you for following along. From here on out, it’ll only be 2020 movies. Look out for my Sundance coverage coming soon!

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[sleepykittypaws]

Last Christmas

Original Release Date: November 8, 2019 (theatrical) Where to Watch?: For now, only your local cinema

My favorite Christmas movie is Love, Actually. It is a film that engenders relatively strong opinions, and is loathed by as many as it’s loved. I admit it contains multiple manifestly disturbing and/or ridiculous elements, but, despite all that, and the fact I’ve seen it, roughly, 999 times, I still cry like a baby every single time.

I’ve never seen Game of Thrones (yep, we’re the ones), but I absolutely adore Henry Golding, believe he’s one of the most charming actors working today, and think A Simple Favor is egregiously under-rated. Plus, Emma Thompson is my imaginary celebrity BFF—the one I know I’d love in real life, were we ever to meet. 

I say all this as a preface to note how in the tank for Last Christmas I was, going in. And this was even after I saw the trailer in August and (as it turns out) correctly sussed out the movie’s twist, down to the last detail. Even with that, I was 100% on board with this British Christmas rom-com.

Now, I’ve seen it and…While I didn’t hate it, I didn’t so much enjoy it either. If, unlike me, you haven’t seen the movie, or already figured out the twist, be aware, there are spoilers ahead.

For a movie about a dashing ghost, featuring two incredibly charming actors with a great deal of chemistry, plus at least three ladies I’d consider legends (Thompson, Michelle Yeoh, and a brief Patti LuPone cameo), this was really boring. I felt like I just kept waiting for this story to get going.

Longing looks between Emilia Clarke and Golding can only get you so far—and it’s to their credit, really, that this is watchable at all. There’s so much time with these two spent staring into each other’s eyes, and that’s fine and all, but elements integral to movie’s plot are breezed over in a second, while Clarke walking through London in a fitted elf costume consumes a good 80% of the screen time.

And, for God’s sake, have your graphics department bother to do a Google, because Yugoslavia didn’t exist in 1999, despite this movie’s opening title card insisting otherwise. You can say Croatia. Or Serbia. Or Bosnia and Herzegovina. Or one of the four other countries the nation split into after it dissolved in 1992. Or, just say the name of the city. Even, simply, “Former Yugoslavia 1999,” would have worked. But you can’t say “Yugoslavia” seven years after the nation ceased to exist. 

That this infuriating gaffe opened the film did not give me great hope. Guessing they thought their audience might not get where they were talking about if they only listed an Eastern European city, or newly-founded (and at that point in recent history, frequently changing) nation. Which was really this film’s major flaw: it never trusted its audience to get it.

In the end, I would have liked to see more about the sister’s home life, and how she had to be the good one, while Clarke’s talent and illness garnered all the attention. The family dinner table scene, where Clarke’s character outs her sister in a spiteful snit, would have been a lot more impactful if we’d already known she’d been pretending her girlfriend was simply a roommate or, heck, even that, that character existed at all. Instead, we’re just as surprised as the parents who, in the end, don’t exactly seem like they have much of a problem with it. While we’re at it, I’d have liked a lot more time with the parents, too. 

While I’m not sure the very British Clarke, with her perfect posh accent, was completely plausible as an immigrant, the storyline about holding that status in today’s world held promise. Her insistence on using an Anglicized version of her name, the bus scene, and her conversation with her mom on the couch were all well done, with a killer kicker joke from Thompson in the latter. But the scene explicitly calling out, and even briefly explaining Brexit, couldn’t have been more annoying. We know. We live in the world.

The same can be said of the, mostly unsurprising, reveal that Golding’s Tom has been a ghost all along. The revelation in his apartment (ignoring the implausibility of reasonably-priced walkable housing staying empty in central London for a year) that he was her heart donor was decently done, but the extra scenes showing she was the only one who could see him were wildly unnecessary. We’ve all seen The Sixth Sense. Even those that haven’t, like my 12-year-old, are aware of it culturally (as I learned recently).

But the film can’t let that stand. Like I said, they didn’t trust their audience, and there’s little more off-putting as a movie goer. And that’s not even getting into the clunky, oh-so-literal take on the song that inspired the film. I mean, “Last Christmas I gave you my heart.” Are you kidding me with that? Anyone but Thompson (the film’s co-writer) would have been laughed out of the building at the pitch meeting, if not sooner. Not since the American finale of Life on Mars, have I seen such an absolutely gobsmackingly lazy ending.

I went into this movie with so much affection and genuine excitement, and left feeling…flat. I teared up at the twist, even though I saw it coming six months ago. (Did I mention what a sap I am?) The ending hit the emotionally manipulative Christmas beats that worked for me, George Michael’s catalog is firmly in my middle-aged-mom wheelhouse, and watching Golding dance and twirl through holiday-lit London streets can carry this Christmas-loving Anglophile quite a ways towards merry. But if this movie had been set in any other season, with any other stars, I think I might have hated it.

As is, I’ve spent the 12 hours since my viewing rewriting and reediting it in my head to make it the movie I wanted it to be. Almost wishing I’d only seen the effervescent trailer and could dream it was everything I’d hoped.

Final Judgement: Three generous paws up, but only cause it’s Christmas