#gonna be making more gifsets for sp

[lady-deadlight]

South Park: The Fractured But Whole

Toolshed & Call Girl Ultimates → Full Bore & Flash Mob

[janiedean]

Ok I need to know your thoughts about this Green Book mess

... pray for me anon XD

anyway, never mind that my general thought is that I’m really sad the mule didn’t compete this round because then it’d have deserved all the awards hands down........

tldr: the fact that people are outraged is the proof that tumblr at large can’t recognize classism when it hits you in the face.

in longer words: 95% of the hot takes I’m reading are Patently False And It Shoes People Haven’t Seen That Movie.

in much longer words: counting that I haven’t seen all the nominees but I did see both blakkk/lansman (which from now will be BKKK) and blackpanther and green book (and borap but that one wasn’t gonna win best movie anyway so) and I guess that is where the crux is, so, in order.

bkkk was obviously the best movie of the lot quality speaking. in an ideal world, it would have one. except that bkkk is a movie that’s heavily political and if y’all think that the oscars would give a prize to the heavily political movie that directly criticizes the administration in power then y’all missed the part where that’s not what happens at the oscars. last time it happened it was 1978 and the deer hunter won and I still don’t know wtf was the jury’s state of grace at that point, but in 1980 they had apocalypse now in the list and kramer vs kramer won. like. guys. if you have APOCALYPSE NOW on the list and anything else wins in the major categories then you’re a joke. and tbh it surprises me that spike l/ee is still hoping he might snag a major win that’s not for screenplay with these parameters - they’re not gonna go there. hasn’t happened since ‘78. come on;

bp was not a best movie flick. like, guys: it’s not even the best mcu film around as far as I’m concerned and while it most likely deserved the technical awards..... seriously? like. if neither GB nor bkkk won then any other movie on the list had better shots than bp. I can’t even think people seriously assume it was best movie material or ON PAR WITH BKKK as in, ‘if bkkk doesn’t win then THAT ONE should have won’. like, no;

now: green book was a *safe* pick in the sense that it wasn’t as heavy-handed as bkkk when it came to be political so it was the perfect choice if they wanted to go like ‘oh hey see we gave the award to the movie about racism without giving it to the one raising the middle finger to donald trump’, but differently from moon/light (which according to me was the most political political win of the last ten years like guys sorry that movie was nowhere near as good as people said back then and I found it incredibly overrated, and before you tell me that it’s because I didn’t understand it: exactly the point. the wire is one of my fave shows ever and it tacked all the things moon/light tried to except that it did it vastly better and I actually got it for how well it was written, moon/light completely failed in that sense and I’m glad if it was a good movie for the people it was directed to but it didn’t engage beyond that target imvho but never mind that) it actually tackled very well a series of issues I never see discussed in US cinema when it comes to *racism-themed* movies and I thought it was a really well-made movie that nailed a lot of things especially when it came to how classism and racism interject themselves in the discourse and how you don’t get out of discarding one of them so easily.

specifically, with SPOILERS FROM THE MOVIE under the cut SO GO AHEAD AT WILL OR NOT:

now: all the posts ‘this is the usual movie about the white guy who gets the black friend’ already are obviously from people who haven’t seen it because they missed the basic point, as in: that the white guy is poor and uneducated and isn’t *racist* because he’s a terrible person, he is out of ignorance and not knowing any better BUT at the same time he’s not so narrow-minded that he doesn’t have fairly forward opinions on other -isms (see THAT REVEAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOVIE after which he goes like ‘I’ve been a bouncer in most of new york’s night clubs do you think I mind that thing’ which is a thing the audience wouldn’t have thought since italian-american men from the 50s/60s notoriously came from a fairly -PHOBIC culture in that specific sense), and that the guy being italian-american ie a *white* category that back then did not have *white privilege* put him in a lower class position than the black guy;

on the other side, it was spelled that the black guy’s issue was the contrary in the sense that he’s rich, he’s cultured, he speaks five languages, he’s not a stereotype and since people want stereotypes or expect them, he can’t seem to please either side and feels alienated from both, which I think is a discourse that should be way more relevant in a website where people talk all the time about people of color not being stereotypes and so on;

like the entire fucking point of that movie is that white guy overcomes his racism unlearning his ignorance and black guy has a few realizations about how classism works and reconnects with his heritage throughout the entire thing;

and the fact that it was the black guy explaining the white guy how to write the poetic love letters without grammar mistakes and got him to appreciate finer things in life while the white guy helped him get down to earth (which he plot-wise definitely needed - he was unhappy af before XD) *and* at the same time the movie never fucking forgot that skin color > money when it comes to systematical racism in the south (ie the scene where they get stopped by the southern policeman and white guy punches him bc he basically told him that being italian-american was being half-the-n-word and black guy tells him ‘yeah well I handled that my entire life you could deal with it once’ was FAIRLY DAMNED OBVIOUS even if it also showed that it’s Not How Things Should Go) was imvo a very good narrative choice/balancing;

also, I was really appreciating that scene where don asks tony (a guy who has no idea who orpheus is and thinks orpheus and eurydice is about orphans) to shorten his name because vallelunga is too difficult to pronounce and tony’s like ‘if the people you play for are so cultured they can learn to pronounce my name properly’ because like guys that’s a thing that happens with all non-anglophone names and seeing it come from someone who hasn’t had an education but doesn’t want to be *made better* because that doesn’t make them unworthy and then only accepts help when he wants it and doesn’t come from a position of ‘you need to look more presentable’ but from ‘I want to make your life better’ was really fucking nice excuse me, because it *did* make a point about how not being formally educated means that people are considered lesser when they shouldn’t have to fight for it, and I thought that the class-switch in there was a really great idea;

anyway nvm my specific opinions about specific scenes, the point is: green book is not heavy-handed and admittedly is a lot more sugary than BKKK and has the feel-good ending that makes it palatable for easy wins, but the content is fucking everything but sugary or devoid of discussing Serious Issues that I almost never see tackled in this kind of US movie and if people actually wanted to watch a movie that sees the subject counting that class relations exist, that some -isms are culturally learned and can be overcome, that money counts when we’re discussing how people are treated in the US, the *earned whiteness* concept (because tony is *white* but hasn’t *earned whiteness* and it’s plenty damned obvious) and that class relations are not automatically clear-cut *especially in the US* then green book is an absolutely valid choice. and like...... it wasn’t white saviorism in the sense that WHITE GUY GETS REDEEMED AND BECOMES UN-RACIST, it’s about two people growing and learning from each other and the fact that tony’s racism is tied to a) upbringing while being poor b) not literally knowing any better but that it doesn’t really take that much for him to see that his opinions are wrong when usually it’s poor black person vs rich white person, and actually that’s why I thought calling it reverse driving miss daisy was reaaaally not getting the point, so if people actually saw the damned movie before deciding it’s terrible that’d be nice;

I also think sp/ike lee was beyond rude in his, er, reactions to GB’s win, but then again... listen guys I love the man’s movies but since that time he went like ‘clint eastwood can’t make movies about charlie parker’ (??) and dismissed the italian partisans’s associations complains about what he did in miracle in st. anna (a movie I did actually really like but they were right about him villainizing the resistence when he could have not) with basically I DON’T CARE THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE ISSUES WITH HOW I, AN AMERICAN, DEPICTED A FAIRLY IMPORTANT PIECE OF ITALIAN HISTORY... like he needs to chill and to realize that there’s a thing called losing with grace and he’s not doing it.

tldr: bkkk imvo deserved to win way more and tbqh if I was spike I’d complain about bp having gotten more awards than his movie when bp really is the safest choice ever if we wanna talk about politics win, and I can agree that GB was a political choice, but it was not a bad political choice nor a racist one and actually it raised a lot of issues that I’d like to see explored more in movies because they usually aren’t. on top of that I thought mahershala ali’s performance in gb was fucking stellar and definitely was miles better than his part in moonlight (but like... bc he was in moonlight for TWENTY MINUTES, he was co-lead here) and I’m honestly baffled that when he won for moonlight there were gifsets everywhere and here there aren’t when this role was WAY better and more nuanced and with more to chew, never mind that again, he deserved it just for the speech under the rain I was discussing before. but like..... of course we’re all ignoring it??

also: I’m really laughing that tumblr as a whole is crying about GB winning when until two days ago bkkk was the worst thing ever because adam dr/iver starred in it and OMG OF COURSE HE WAS CHOSEN TO PLAY THE KKK MEMBER BECAUSE HE REALLY IS RACIST [lmao as if spike l/ee would work with a really racist person] and no one on this website gave a single fuck about it when it came out except for adam dr/iver fan blogs but now everyone is like OMG WHY DIDN’T BKKK WIN???!!!!! like guys you didn’t care about BKKK until a day ago and now I’m supposed to think you were rooting for it all along? when you all hated it because omg how dare they cast ky/lo ren in something where he’s not a bad guy? like we serious? come the fuck on, no one on here cared. and the fact that if blackpanther had won no one would say BKKK not winning = UTTERMOST CRIME just says all about how a film’s quality is judged around here. bye, I said my piece.

[jlf23tumble]

Okay, I just finished X Factor episode 6, and my notes are a nightmare, but this is for @newleafover more than anyone else, and they seem to appreciate it, so :P to everyone else! I’ll do this somewhat in order:

* Simon’s weird, smug-ass face when Louis says early on that he “wants the girls” meaning as the group of people he’s mentoring (and he does it in this positive, “yeah, I’m comfortable with women, we’re gonna kick all of your asses” way), but you can tell Simon’s trying to make it sexual? And it is so fucking WEIRD and just all kinds of terrible, but also lolllll because literally nobody gives a shit (I feel like most of this season so far is Simon trying to “no homo” himself out of ~situations that Louis clearly doesn’t mind being in, and Simon has this “you’re the cool guy at school so I adore you” vibe, but he’s also so hyper aware about his own sexuality reading as gay, and it is FASCINATING)

* You can kind of tell from the editing that “they” are all in with Bella (sp?), the blonde girl from Essex, but Louis’s feedback is fucking SPOT ON (contrived)...it makes what happens with Shan at the end all that much more amusing

* The way that Louis and Ayda jump out of their seats to give Dalton from Jamaica hugs after his emotional performance hits you right in the feels

* Me as Louis giving standing ovations to any black girl who comes on and sings her heart out (and mild applause/critiques to the white blonde girls the show seems to be rooting for)

* I have to believe that Louis spends most of his time talking to Ayda (their rapport, when it’s shown, is so easy and comfortable and I wanna know more about what those two talk about because I bet it’s hilarious, I’m here for their snack breaks), but the editing focuses on the five times he talks to Simon

* There’s a whole b-roll devoted to the “freaks,” and I’m HERE for Louis casually eating snacks from Ayda’s snack bowl and saying he really wants to tap into the awkward/quirky while Simon makes the most judgey old white man face ever

* Related: the guy with the blue lips comes out and does a TERRIBLE job singing, but that’s all Louis cares about (how bad the singing is, not about his appearance, which you can tell Simon/the edit wants to mock) * Oh, man, Nathan, the Proclaimers-looking dude in the floral jacket, Louis's endeared...gives him the scronch, talks a LOT about recording, how great his tone will sound on track, I mean, he's fucking thinking about this shit beyond this show, and how now he really wants to get the boys to mentor because Nathan has excited him so much (he actually fights Simon about Nathan’s personality; both Ayda and Louis love how awkward he is, and Simon CLEARLY looks to Louis on this one, so Nathan sails through, and then Louis chases him down to tell him to tap into the quirky and the awkward, gives him a massive hug and tells him not to let him down, he loves his voice, etc., the gifsets DO NOT do this justice)...Louis celebrates with Cheetos from Ayda’s snack bowl, and godddd, do I love them

* Some bullshit with Simon’s son that’s low-key hilarious because of a) how fake it is and b) how Louis seemingly “can’t relate” to how ground-breaking it is to have a child because they make you see the world or whatever (he’s literally the guy talking to a coworker who had a kid, and it was life-changing, but that hasn’t happened to him yet, but he loves kids as a concept, so he’s, like, oh, yeah?)

* Shan! Louis is absolutely smitten with her from the get go, and then when she’s done, just goes on and on about her riffs, her voice, how easy a yes it is for him, so of course, Simon jumps on that train to the point where he makes a big deal about chasing her down at the end with Dermot and his arms (rip me) to give her a hug and do all this hasty post-editing about what a star in the making she is (like, where’s all the preamble with HER like there was with that white chick at the beginning, you dick)

[the-real-xmonster]

A bunch of Yuzu asks

Anonymous said:

Could you tell us a little about what happened in the 2012-2013 National? I know that Yuzu won, some people did not like it and something made him very upset, but I only know that. I tried to look for some information in the GS but I did not find anything.

I think you summed up the chain of events pretty comprehensively there. It was the first Japanese National title for Yuzu, which did not go down well with some people. Most of those unhappy folks were supporters of Daisuke Takahashi, who was at the time the top male skater in Japan and a very, very popular figure with lots and lots of fans. I did not witness it firsthand, but I heard that those disgruntled fans took it upon themselves to make a ruckus during the medal ceremony. Plus after that there was plenty of talk circulating about how Yuzu’s win was undeserved. All of which, of course, made Yuzu quite depressed. I think I read somewhere that the backlash extended further when he didn’t medal at Worlds that year. His performance at London was affected greatly by his injury, and his comeback free skate was, by all accounts, an extraordinary effort, but well, die-hard fans just can’t be reasoned with.

Anonymous said:

Do you remember your reaction to the cup of china 2014?

Oh my lord, yes, only all too well. I’m actually having the shivers just from typing this. I remember being confused at first and then worried and then full-blown panicked and hysterical as Yuzu kept lying there on the ice and no help seemed to be coming. I remember thinking that it was at the same time one of the bravest and the most foolish things I’ve ever seen when he insisted on skating his program. I remember biting my nails and practically hyperventilating every time he went for a jump. I remember feeling, I don’t know how to describe it, emotionally overloaded, I guess, when I watched him break down in tears at the K&C. 

I remember vividly that it was the day I decided that this incredibly brave and foolish kid is my most beloved athlete on the face of Earth and that I would forever support him in whatever he does.

Even now I still get the anxiety whenever I see him in warm-up. Why did you do this to me, anon, why?

Anonymous said:

yuzu's 4S is the scariest thing, like you never know when he's gonna land it, and when he does, it's so insanely beautiful?? I was rewatching seimei at aci and his 4S combo was so fast his quad looked like a triple???? this isn't a gif request or anything but I just wanna share my admiration at his speed in the air and I know you'll get it

I totally agree with every of your points, have gone ahead and make a gifset for it, and have gushed my heart out about it too in a lengthy and largely redundant love letter to His Majesty :D If there’s any positive takeaway from that disastrous free skate at SCAC, I’d say it’s the confidence he seems to have gained on his quad Salchow, or as I like to joke:

that awkward moment when you fell on your best jump popped your second best jump and nailed your least reliable quad 

#just yuzuru things 

Anonymous said:

i feel like yuzu sometimes changes his biellman to an a spin if he's not doing well in the program? does the biellman take effort apart from flexibility? or does the a spin allow him to think like, oh what should i yolo later   

The Biellmann position is quite taxing on his back and shoulder and Yuzu doesn’t really need it to hit level 4 on his free skate combination spin, so yes, when he doesn’t feel well enough he will skip it. Like at 4CC this year, he said he was feeling a bit stiff, so he didn’t do a Biellmann in either his free skate or the gala after. Another advantage of switching to an A-spin is that it's an easier position to hold, so it would allow Yuzu to slow down or speed up accordingly to bring his choreography back in sync with the music, in case he missed a beat or two earlier due to a flubbed jump :)

Anonymous said:

I know you mentioned you're currently working on skating skills/spinning tech posts, so if you kind of cover my question in those, please ignore this ask!! there seems to be a varied consensus on yuzuru's spins - some say he's the best in the field at the moment, and I wanted to know if you agree/disagree/other, and if you think his technique has worsened at all in recent years? (thanks for all the magnificent posts btw, i live for them <3)

I wouldn’t say Yuzu is the absolute best spinner in the men’s field right now. He’s one of the best though, that’s for sure :) In a post which has been in my draft since dinosaurs walked the earth, I’m comparing his spins to Jason Brown’s and when I eventually post it (hopefully later today if I manage to make all the gifs I want to make to go with it), you’ll see that my position (no pun intended) is that they’re on the same level.

As to the development of Yuzu’s spin technique over time, I’d like to recycle these gifs:

SP Étude in D-sharp minor, 2011-2012 season:  

SP Let’s Go Crazy, 2016-1017 season:

Doesn’t look like his spin is becoming any rustier with time: flexibility, control, balance, musicality, everything is still there. If anything, he’s been getting better at gaining speed, especially during sit spins, plus both his flying entries and jumps within spins are becoming a lot more stable:

(appreciate also that smooth transition out of the Biellmann - it’s a new feature developed just last season, you know)