#i really enjoy dissecting both good and bad movies and find enjoyable things in both

[haveyouseenmyhonor]

Blink Twice

4.6 out of 5

Acting was amazing. Set design was lovely. The shots were both beautiful and fascinating. Context changed for several scenes throughout movie, not just at the end, and not just the old 'ooOooO it was there the whole tiiimmeee'

Genuinely fascinating character growth and character work done by all of the cast. Smart women being smart.

Semi spoiler?? I guess below

I went in expected women brutality and abuse and was heavily pleased with what was given. The scenes with attacks in it either end prior to any assault or are framed to only allow us to know its happened. We do not watch women be beaten and choked. Genuinely, most of the brutual attacks and gore were all done to men. It was refreshing while also not being preachy (looking at you Wicker Man with my boy Nic)

Anyway; I loved it

[evco-productions]

Revisiting “Sahara” (2005) (Repost from Quora)

Today, I want to talk about the 2005 action-adventure movie Sahara. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s based on a novel by Clive Cussler, and it’s from a series following this suave explorer guy named Dirk Pitt, which totally sounds like a real person’s name.

I’ve never read the book, but I once heard it described as an “airport novel,” meaning it’s a book you might pick up at the airport for seven bucks, read on your flight, be casually entertained, and then forget about. And I remembered that and thought to myself, “Wait a minute, that’s exactly the kind of movie I want to champion on this blog.”

Honestly, at this point, there’s not many movies I think I’ve seen more times than Sahara. Not even because I set out to rewatch it so many times, it’s just the go-to lazy Saturday afternoon movie for me when I can’t find anything else I feel like watching.

What makes this movie the kind of movie Just Admit It was made for? Well, what doesn’t? Its budget was 130 million dollars, but it only made 119 million dollars worldwide. Very few professional critics had anything good to say about it. But in spite of all that…it’s good.

The main stars are Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, and Penelope Cruz. Some good character actors also have supporting roles—Rainn Wilson, Delroy Lindo, William H. Macy. But it’s McConaughey and Zahn that bring this home. Their chemistry is great. I listen to them banter and I think, “I totally buy that these guys have been friends for most of their lives.”

And I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, McConaughey’s obviously a great actor, and I don’t watch as many movies as EvCo Productions does, but I’m sure this Steve Zahn fella has good comedic timing. So, what’s the big deal?”

Well, that kinda leads me into the major point I want to make with this movie. I have this theory that the only people who care about things like cinematography are the filmmakers themselves and cinephiles. And I’m sure you’re thinking “Well, yeah, duh,” but really think about that for a second.

There’s so many hundreds of people who want to dissect movies and go “Oh, this shot was so masterful because yada-yada-yada,” but you know what? The average audience member doesn’t think like that. All they want is to be entertained. Now obviously, you have to have at least acceptable writing and cinematography to be entertained, but at the end of the day, what does your average audience member connect with?

Two things: one, actors. People love actors. They love seeing familiar faces, they love faces that emote well. Human beings are largely sympathetic creatures. If an actor is good at their job, we will watch a movie that we otherwise wouldn’t watch.

Two, soundtracks. Nothing connects with the human soul like music. This is a technique every movie uses; the music in any given scene is meant to help bring out a certain reaction in the audience. However, a lot of movies turn this technique into a trick. If you put into your movie an instantly familiar or at least a very likable song, that song has the potential to win the audience over for the rest of the movie. There’s a reason the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack is ten times more popular than the actual movie. This trick works. And even though it is a trick, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad trick. Some movies totally overuse it (*cough* Suicide Squad *cough*) but in the right dosage, I think it’s a reasonable method.

The point is, Sahara has both of these things. It’s got great actors and great music. These are the things that elevate it, that make it enjoyable and for me, memorable. The actors and music choices are so good, in fact, that I can enjoy this movie even though there are a couple of really bad editing choices. Like there’s this one part where Steve Zahn’s character is getting shot at by this guy, and he hits the deck, and then it just cuts to the shooter going, “Where’d he go?” and Steve Zahn just apparates behind him and takes him out. How did he do that?!

But then for every dumb part like that there’s a part that has the makings of an iconic action-adventure sequence like the “We need to pull a Panama!” scene.

In a lot of ways, Sahara really stands for what I believe movies were meant to be all about. It’s this big treasure hunt adventure with a bad guy who has an evil lair made out of solar panels and they blow up a helicopter with a 200-year-old cannonball. Does it make sense when you take the time to think about it, no, but so what? Whoever said movies have to be realistic was wrong. Realism isn’t fun, this movie is fun.

Needless to say, I rate Sahara a W for Watch, and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. See you next time.

[libertys-lovers]

Candyman, Saw and Scream for Dr. Stein!

Oh hey, welcome OP!!! Thank you so much for the ask!! Let’s delve into my lil lad’s psychology 😈🙏

(Shout-Out to Animeclipx_ on YouTube for posting this clip! Good Stein clips are so hard to come across ✋😭)

🐝 - Candyman - How romantic is Stein, and what’s his main love language?

I would say that he’s decently romantic, just not in the traditional sense! He finds the overly dramatic lovey-dovey stuff to be overbearing at times, especially if he’s expected to act that way. Luckily, he’s not expected to, and he wouldn’t act that way even if he was expected to! However, when it comes to silent forms of romance (like chill quality time or working on projects together), I’d say he’s rather romantic. He shows his affections quite a bit, it’s just usually subtle or by teasing Marie and I ✋🙄. Speaking of that, Quality Time would be his main love language, both as the love language he gives and the love language he craves!

⚙️ - Saw - How judgemental is Stein, and what are his morals?

Oooooohhhhh, now this is the intricate part~ / pos

Considering how judgemental one could be towards a person, I’d say he’s not that judgemental. He’d mainly judge if you’re harming others, (which you could say is hypocritical). His main gripe is against those who harm kids, or in general are ignorant of the world around them. His personal morals are a bit tricky to navigate though, even for me. Violence wise, he seems to be ✨mainly✨ against it, unless it’s self defense or for the pursuit of science. He has enough awareness to realize that harming others (even for science) isn’t great though, and for that reason he tries to hide his sadistic curiosity… unless nearly-extinct animals are brought up apparently. Many fans will be quick to mention how he almost had his class dissect an endangered species so they could study it before it vanished. Interpret that how you will, but rest assured that he’s not going out harming every animal he sees! In any case, even if he’s not actively experimenting on people, he’s not past making people think he still does. You can NOT put elaborately-scary pranks past this man; people’s fight and flight responses are a joke to him / lh. On the more tame side of things though, honesty is a huge part of his morals! To him, lying is cringe and it’s best to just be direct with things. I think the best way to describe his morals is like this: His personal morals are disconnected from societal opinion. However, he acknowledges that he’s an outlier, and values the lives of others enough that he abides (loosely) by their morals, purely for their benefit.

☎️ - Scream - Does Stein like horror movies? If so, which one’s his favorite?

Oh this goober LOVES horror movies; I think it’s his way of satisfying his morbid curiosities in a harmless way, but the suspense is also fun to watch! Though, he does get annoyed by the poor choices the characters make in movies, and also gets annoyed by wasted potential. I think he’d like any Frankenstein themed film purely because he can point at Frankenstein (or his monster) and say “oh look that’s me-“. In terms of genuine enjoyment, I think he’d enjoy the Saw franchise, mainly because of all the neat traps in them! Though, he also likes them because he gets to tease me everytime I flinch from said traps 😔. These movies are a really bad influence though, because Stein wants to recreate Billy the Puppet, and I fear for the day when that plan comes to fruition lmao.

~ 🍀 Lucky 🍀

[hecallsmehischild]

Recent Media Consumed

Books

Half-Bad by Sally Green. Man, this is grim. It’s good fantasy, and the writers breaks certain writing conventions to convey the story better, which is fascinating. But it’s so grim. There’s two more books in the series and I want to get ahold of those before I say more.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Did I say Half-Bad was grim? This is grim. Grimdark to the max. But also a fascinating premise, that the crime of murder and its accompanying guilt manifests an animal companion that marks you for the rest of your (shortened) life? If you can stomach some of the imagery and if you do well with being plunged into unknown terminology and figuring it out on the go from context, this is a good read.

Dropped titles: Pursuing God’s Will Together by Ruth Haley Barton and How Should We Then Live by Francis Shaeffer. One was a recommendation, one was semi-assigned reading because I’m a non-voting member of a ministry board. In both cases I got about halfway through. I have the gist of both books and I’m enjoying neither. At all. I started to avoid Audible altogether. The moment I gave myself permission to stop listening to them and pick up the next Thomas Sowell book on my list, I was right back on reading, because I’m actually interested in what Sowell has to say. Note to self: it’s ok to drop books that you find uninteresting. (this preceded a Sowell binge reading session)

Dismantling America (and other controversial essays) by Thomas Sowell. I was surprised at how much more of an edge Sowell has in this book, but the appearance of the edge here makes a certain amount of sense. This is the first collection of newspaper columns I’ve read by him, and he has way less time to make his point in a column than he has in a book. With that in mind, his points have much less groundwork than I’m used to reading from him when he spends a whole book on a topic (though I’d guess that each point he makes probably has a crapton of citations in the printed book, like the rest of his work. He’s quite thorough about his research). This is probably not the best title of his to pick as a first read, but it’s good and interesting. My main take-away point from this book is that politicians look out for politicians, and expecting them to do anything else is naive. And, in fact, many things attributed to a politician’s “stupidity” is far from stupid, in fact they are brilliant within their set of incentives and constraints. It just rarely aligns with the general public’s best interest. Thinking about it again, it MIGHT be a good first book. It sums up a lot of his views into bite-sized digests. It just doesn’t substantiate each and every claim as thoroughly as some of his other books do. That’s my grain of salt.

Compassion Versus Guilt by Thomas Sowell. More of the same, a collection of essays by Sowell. Different ones, on a different theme. A couple that sound like they could have been written by the authors of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, his satire is on point.

Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell. This was a fascinating read for me. This book traces 8 groups of ethnic migrations to America. I descend from Scottish, Irish, and Russian Jewish immigrants, and seeing what the different groups had to content with over the years was very enlightening. A few things that stood out to me were; each immigrant group seems to have very different cultural strengths and foibles, inter-group violence is not new (but not always in the directions modern people would think), almost every group has its own upper class that disdains and reviles its lower class, and each ethnic group is far more variable and differentiated than the general category (“the Irish” or “the blacks” or “the Jews”) makes them out to be. More and more I’m coming to mistrust the general racial category as referenced by either political party because it seems to be a linguistic expediency that sacrifices the truth of a situation for a fast rallying point.

Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? by Thomas Sowell. I’m not even sure what to say about this book. It’s short and punchy and gives me a lot to think about. Sowell definitely has zero sacred cows. Toward the end of this book he addresses some of his critics who piled onto Ethnic America, which was interesting. Also, while reading this, I have begun to realize how much of a disadvantage I am at in analyzing arguments because I’m unable to understand how people slice numbers into statistics to make their point. I’m at the mercy of the conclusion they draw at the end of the statistics because, until they summarize their findings, I really don’t understand what the raw numbers are saying. I’ve had this feeling for a while, but in this book, Sowell dissects some of the foundational studies and statistics that buttressed later civil rights cases, and I realized that if I just read the statistics and data from those cases and the statistical rebuttals that Sowell has side by side, I would not understand what was being argued at all. I can only rely on the end conclusions put into words at this point, but the written conclusion is not the proof, the numbers are. This gap in my understanding is disheartening, but I hope to continue sponging up knowledge in the hopes that I will be able to think more critically in future years.

Maverick, a Biography of Thomas Sowell by Jason L. Riley. My parents pre-ordered this for my birthday a few months ago and it arrived a few days ago. I have torn through it. I think I got a more cohesive overview of Sowell’s progression through his body of work and added several titles to my wishlist. The biography is fairly minimalist on Sowell’s personal life and focuses more on his ideological clashes with… well, everyone, left and right, people he disdained and people he admired. Maverick, alright. Also Riley takes a look at how each of Sowell’s books (or grouping of books) came about, for what reasons, and what was going on at the time.

People of the Book edited by Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace. This is a compilation of Jewish sci-fi and fantasy short stories and can probably be summed up best by this paragraph in the introduction: “These stories allow us to identify with, although briefly, so many different characters and places, they entertain us and they give us comfort. And yet, the tales in this anthology often have a melancholic tinge, similar in tone to the minor keys of our musical liturgy. We don’t want to be too comfortable, too happy. Because that might bring some bad luck onto us, might tempt the evil eye.” I also sensed a whole lot of anger in the undercurrent of these stories, and that saddened me.

On deck/currently reading: The Brothers Karamazov, The Rational Bible: Genesis, re-read of Basic Economics, and War Nerd.

Shows

Dropped series: Hilda. The first season was lovely on so many counts. The second season’s antagonist… bothers me. So does Hilda’s behavior. And given how much time I spent on Star and its accompanying disappointment, I’m not really interested in continuing Hilda any further. I’m shelving it at this point. There are other things I’d like to watch.

Infinity Train Season 4: Now retitled “The Wormhole Judgment Line” I believe, lol. It’s hard to top season 3, but it was a solid story. Good. Interesting. The resolution with the villains int he last episode felt kind of out of nowhere and I’m really not okay with Morgan’s behavior even if the plot wants me to feel sorry for her, but those things aside, it was enjoyable. I hope Infinity Train is picked up again, I’d love to see more.

On Deck: The Mandalorian or Wandavision

Movies

Jiang Ziya. Okay whatever this studio produces in this line of movies, I will be watching it. I definitely don’t understand all the significance of what I’m seeing but it’s creative along COMPLETELY DIFFERENT lines than US animation and it’s an absolute joy to behold.

Raya and the Last Dragon. Suffice it to say, it would take an intensive blog post (or a movie review of the style I used to do as one half of The Storytrollers) to cover all the things that bothered me about this movie. I will take the thing that bothered me the most and be brief: I find the moral to be terrible. I take major issue with the idea that repeated blind trust in the face of repeated betrayal will reshape the world, given that I extended blind trust to people who never changed for many years. I take issue with the worldbuilding, I take issue with some of the designs, and I take issue with the moral. I was exceedingly disappointed in this movie.

Profile. Now THIS was a good movie. I would not be averse to seeing more movies shot like this, using the computer desktop as both film set and character. In addition this was an interesting topic, though I was tense for the whole movie, afraid the main character was going to slip up. Very good, very tense movie to sit through.

Mighty Ira. So, this is a documentary about one of the great leaders of the ACLU. It was interesting to see this, especially since it shed more light on the whole Skokie situation than I’d heard of before. Good watch. Informative.

[thefloatingstone]

remember Nostalgia Critic's reviews on the Care Bear movies?

(shit tumblr ate part of the ask)

I remember the Nostalgia Critic’s review of the Care Bears movies, but I don’t really watch him any more, and not only because of the BS that’s come to light recently regarding Channel Awesome. I just don’t find NC’s reviews to be all that compelling any more, and I think I’ve really outgrown his form of video essays, having moved on to other youtuber’s reviews which I find much more enriching.

I’ve become an enormous fan of Super Eyepatch Wolf, both when he criticizes something but usually I enjoy his videos where he enjoys the subject matter the most. But some of my most favourite videos of his, is when he seems stuck between loving the thing he is covering in a video, while also feeling frustrated with its shortcomings. Which ends up in reviews where there is no final verdict of something being “shit” or “the best thing ever”

And then as I’ve mentioned numerous times, I love “Red Letter Media” who almost exclusively watch shitty straight-to-video movies on their channel, but will do while videos discussing cult and pulp films they see as worthwhile, even if they’re conflicted on whether the film is actually good or not.

And then I enjoy MauLer’s academic breakdowns on why certain films are just fundamentally broken, although I feel MauLer as a person is kind of an asshole who I would not like. But unlike most youtubers his videos, being so academically focused, do not allow for him to play up his own personality. So even the fact that I think as a person he’s kind of a dick, I can watch his videos without feeling any annoyance or animosity towards him because his arguments and understanding of the subject material is well researched, worded, and his ability to craft a solid argument means I highly enjoy his work and his personality as a person is simply not important to the videos he creates.

He’s about 2 parts of 2 and a half hours each into a massive break down of why the Force Awakens is a poor story which I highly recommend, but if you’re not someone like me who can listen to one person dissect one film for 5+ hours, I recommend his recent videos where he was basically just blowing off steam after being furious with GOT’s last season (and I am someone who has only seen 2 episodes of GOT as a whole and has no interest in watching the show)

I very very recently subscribed to a channel called “Good Bad or Bad Bad?” which is exactly what it sounds like. 2 guys who work in the film industry going into movies they know beforehand are going to be terrible, watch the films and then discuss it for a little over an hour together before giving a verdict if they found the movie “Good Bad” as in “This movie is so fucking terrible it’s awesome please watch it!” or “Bad Bad” as in “This is a miserable sit avoid this film at all costs”. It’s a great channel because ALL the films they watch are objectively terrible. I recommend their reviews of literally ANY of the Niel Breen movies which are as close to an Out of Body experience as you’ll get from a film.

And finally, which I’m sure surprises NO-ONE, I enjoy YourMovieSucks a whole lot (although I find Adum’s friends pretty insufferable when they do a video together). Adum knows his film stuff and although I have completely disagreed with him on a film or two, I still find his break downs and arguments on why a film is bad (or sometimes great) to be very compelling. I’m not gonna link him though because tumblr only allows for 5 video links and I’d rather link the next person who is

RalphtheMovieMaker. Who I have been watching for about 2 years now. Ralph is a fascinating individual to me, he was I think 18 or 19 when I started watching him and he was 16 when he started his youtube channel, but if you listen to how he talks about film there’s not a single part of what he says which reflects his age. Not only because I find his arguments compelling, but also in his ability to recognise every single part that makes up a film in ways that I am not skilled enough to notice when watching a film. He not only notices and discussing acting, music or cinematography, which I’m good at identifying for the most part, but also editing, lighting especially which is a favourite of his, and things like sound mixing. He has the ability to grasp all layers of a film when he discusses it, and unsurprisingly, has made 2 or 3 indie films himself that are a little above just “youtuber makes a movie with his parent’s camera” and I know he’s won and independent film award for at least one movie.

He use to indulge yelling at shitty movies, or as he put it “I don’t review movies, I review corporate products”, often focusing on big franchise movies like DC or Marvel or something like that, but he has recently decided he no longer finds enjoyment in talking about bad film, and instead is making more videos discussing good movies he wants to give more attention to in a series he’s called “Ralph Recommends”. And just like his bad movie reviews, his actual film making style is creeping more and more into his reviews with vignettes, editing, music choices, and how he chooses to add his text.

Anyway, highly recommend this guy. Go back and watch his bad movie reviews too. This guy knows his stuff.

Anyway, my long winded point is; although the NC did indeed lay a foundation (in part) to my enjoyment if video essays and movie critique, I have now grown where simply yelling about nonsense in a mediocre film is no longer a satisfying experience for me, and these days I need more in a review than making jokes about how the timeline in the second Care bears movie doesn’t make any sense. I remember the review, and I remember certain gags like how he’s pronounce the name “Dark Heart” and the aforementioned confusion on how the second movie’s timeline makes no sense, but I haven’t really retained any of his criticism of the film.

So like…. I remember NC had a review of the Care Bears movie, and I remember watching them and a few jokes, but as a whole? I don’t really remember the NC’s Care Bear reviews that well.

(also I kinda just wanted to recommend some more cool youtubers and videos I like and I seize any opportunity to do so)

☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️

[kamakiddos]

Us, Film Review.

Jordan Peele’s latest film, Us, while not perfect in every regard and still flawed, manages to be something wholly unforgettable and a delightful new work of modern horror. In all honesty, I can’t wait to see the film again and dissect it a bit more, but I’m fairly confident in what I have to say as is. I also have to say how wonderful it is to see how much of a buzz this film has caused both in regards of fan discussion, as there is much to unpack and analyze within it, and how much money it seems to be generating at the Box Office. Originality has been something severely lacking in many of the bigger budgeted films of late, so I hope that this film’s success sends an important message to the rest of the filmmaking world. Now onto the review itself the first parts of the film I would like to discuss are its more technical ones. This including cinematography, score, sets, costumes, props, and performances.

Visually this film is quite wonderful and filled with some genuinely great shots, especially later in the film as it seemed to gain some more confidence in itself in regards to its presentation. I especially liked a shot used during the film’s opening credits, in which a slow zoom is used to show a rabbit in a cage amongst many others as one of the best tracks from the film’s score swells. While I offer much praise to its visuals, I have to acknowledge that the same deliberate style and visual creativity isn’t kept throughout the whole film as there are plenty of moments where it becomes quite mediocre. However, these less interesting shots never took too much away from my enjoyment as they were always soon followed by another far better one. Compared to Get Out’s visuals this is an obvious step up and a welcome one. I hope that in Peele’s future works this use of visual creativity continues. Special shoutout the film’s director of photography Mike Gioulakis who’s done some amazing work on films like It Follows and Split.

In regards to the film’s score, it is rather hit or miss, as some tracks are far better than others. Three tracks from Micheal Abels’ work here called Anthem, Immolation, and Beach Walk really stand out not only in the originality of their composition and vocal work but also through how effectively they enhance the mood of the moment. They are unnerving and quite powerful, giving each moment they are placed in great strength. Sadly, much like with the film’s visuals, there are moments where it falters and becomes something rather conventional and altogether forgettable. At times it even cued in at inappropriate moments that would have been much better on their own, for example, at about the middle of the film a remix of “I’ve Got 5 On It” begins to play just after one of the film’s most outwardly violent sequences and winds up being quite distracting. At the core of this soundtrack is something really spectacular, but since the same originality present in the three tracks I mentioned earlier doesn’t flow through all of it, it winds up becoming a sort of missed opportunity. Like with the others I’ve mentioned here I am excited to see where Micheal Abels goes from here and I hope he utilizes the truly wonderful sound he is capable of creating much more in the future.

The sets, props, and costumes in the film were all pretty great. The film wasn’t a necessarily set heavy one, so it never got a chance to shine too much, but later in the film where the antagonists’ dwellings are revealed it gets a chance to really shine. I will say I loved the way the cosiness or idealistic nature of some of the interiors contrast with the horror of the film. The props in the film were pretty cool actually, especially in regards to the scissors used by this film’s antagonists. Costumes in the film never really had to be anything too spectacular and do a good job at feeling very naturalistic. I especially liked Adelaide’s (Lupita Nyong’o’s character) leisure wear that she wore for most of the film’s duration. It already looked nice on its own and when it got covered in blood later in the film wound up looking fairly awesome. Like the props, the costumes really got their chance to shine with the antagonists. Their blood red jumpsuits, bare feet, and single gloved looks are fantastic and lends them a truly intimidating presence.

Performance wise this movie is incredibly strong and most of that is due to Lupita Nyong’o’s absolutely jaw dropping work here. The way she so perfectly inhabited two vastly different and distinct characters was absolutely fantastic. Her performance was effortless, powerful, and gave so much to the film overall. It is undeniable that she is one of the best parts of this film. The other performances in the film range from very good to just okay. Not even the worst performances were able to fully break my immersion which is a very good thing. I was especially impressed with the film’s child actors. Upon seeing that they were there I was a bit nervous, so it was wonderful to see how well they did. The side characters were all fine as well. I also loved to see another fairly great performance by Elisabeth Moss and an extremely funny one from Tim Heidecker.

As I move into discussing the film’s story elements, I am sad to say that this is where a lot of the film’s issues lay. But I would like to first discuss the parts of it enjoyed. Upon seeing the trailer for this film and viewing some of the promotional material I began to construct my own idea of what the movie would be like. How the story would unfold and how it’s antagonists would function, and I’m so happy that the film completely subverted each of these. The origin of the antagonists and the ways in which they function are so greatly original and refreshing to see. The way the story unfolded and presented itself was also quite surprising. I left the theater feeling greatly refreshed over this and pleased over the fact that so much money was given to such a ludicrously fun idea. It was just a lot of fun to see unfold. However, as Peele built this world he seemingly forgot to fully figure how it would function. Now if the antagonists had been presented a bit differently, possibly more symbolically or allegorically, these plot holes could be overlooked. It’s not as though these issues are ones that are particularly hard to figure either, as even the most simple of filmgoers I spoke to raised numerous questions about how these antagonists and the world here would properly function. Now at first I was completely willing to overlook these inconsistencies, but Peele decided to introduce a big plot twist at the end of the film. This twist is cool at first, but the way in which it is presented to the audience and the weak evidence raised to support cause it to fall apart fairly quickly. The inclusion of this also harms a lot of the believability of these antagonists as a whole.

Another issue that plagued the film throughout its duration was the inclusion of light comedic elements. The same issue was present in Get Out, but their inclusion in that film felt far more natural and effective. The detriment they had was far less than with this film. The jokes to me weren���t that funny and didn’t add much to the film at all. A few moments left me laughing quite a bit, but many of them fell a bit short. Peele said that he would be remedying the “genre-confusion” many people felt with Get Out with this film, but it seemed as though he just did the same thing again and in a less smashing way. I feel as though this film would have benefited quite a bit from having a far more serious tone and using the time it took to set up such jokes developing its characters instead. One thing that bothered me about the family in this film was that their relationship felt a bit vacant. We knew they were a family because the film told us rather than showed us. This issue wasn’t so bad between Adelaide and her children as there is a sufficient amount of interaction between them, but when it came to her and her husband their was little to no chemistry at all.

All in all I really enjoyed Us and despite these issues I’ve mentioned I still loved it and can’t wait to see it again. Jordan Peele, despite a few stumbles, is proving to be a new and wonderfully fresh voice in the world of horror. As a lover of the genre myself I find a special sort of pride and joy in finally seeing black people, my people, properly represented. For so long we have been nothing but jokes or ways to get cheap kills, so to see someone so committed to the idea of representing us is so heartening. If I had to assign a grade to this film it would rest somewhere between a 75 or an 82% out of a 100 and a definite recommendation to check out for yourself. The grade would be higher if either all the technical elements had been nailed which would have made it a 85-86, or if all the story flaws had been fixed maybe a 93. The film isn’t perfect, but those flaws didn’t stop me from having a good time. I hope to see more from Jordan Peele as he grows as a filmmaker.

[dukeofriven]

There's a distinction to be made here. Like, you're right that the writing isn't good here. The writing in the Kingdom Hearts series is frequently terrible, especially when it comes to awkwardly inserting Sora & crew into Disney movies. The question, though, is whether or not you're enjoying it regardless. I can't currently tell if you are.

This is such a wonderful question and I love it so much. (The way to a writer’s heart is to ask them questions about themselves, because we are all mad egoists)The short answer is that I don’t write 2500 words on something I don’t think is worth exploring, and I certainly don’t spend six hours dissecting a two-minute scene if I didn’t derive any pleasure from it. The long answer: it is not “enjoyment” in the sense of ‘relaxing.’ I am not ‘enjoying it’ in the sense that I can zone out while watching it, or necessarily find delight in the viewing experience - which is not to say those are bad things, I just find that really, really hard to do. My brain works differently. I do find that sometimes ‘critique’ is conflated with ‘criticism,’ and that there is a prima facie tendency to presume that anyone critiquing anything has had a negative experience. There are very few things I love that I don’t find reason to critique (off the top of my head, Labyrinth and A Muppet Christmas Carol are the only two the jump to mind, and you can tell that one of their defining features is Childhood Love.Also Muppets.)But to say that I am not enjoying it would be untrue: when I don’t enjoy something I might write a lengthy piece on why, but I wouldn’t keep returning, day in and day out, to make the same complaints. (Except Mass Effect 3, because fuuuuck Mass Effect 3.) This liveblog gives me structure, first of all - something my life desperately needs to retain any kind of stability. I am in a bad depressive way right now, and those six hours I spent hyper=focussed on writing that perhaps absurd position paper on Tinkerbell was six hours I didn’t go to 7/11 and spend ungodly amounts of cash on enough taquitos and pseudo-meat to put me into septic shock. My day job is - or, rather, was until a week ago and I was essentially made redundant - writing terribly dry content for a market research firm on the praxis of sales analysis - ah, the glamorous life of a freelancer. When I write this liveblog, especially long-form posts, both for this and several other essays I’ve done over the years, what enjoyment I have! The ebb and flow of words, the simple joys in register and tone: I don’t focus as much on euphony as I might when writing prose, but simply glance through it and you can see how often I like playing around with modality. It is never not funny to me to write incredibly flowery phrases and counter-point with FUCK THIS or MOVIE BAD and vice versa. The act of writing is its own reward. Whether anyone else enjoys it, or finds it pretentious, or lowbrow, or simply boring, might matter to my ego, but the enjoyment of the act - that is entirely internal.But that all rather sidesteps the questions of ‘do I enjoy anything about Kingdom Hearts,’ so let me say this. In April of 2005 - almost fifteen years ago - I sat on my friend’s bed and watching him play this new game called Kingdom Hearts II, a sequel to a game I didn’t care about and had never played - but this KHII game? It transfixed me, at least for the time I got to spend at his house watching it. By the time he’d gotten into something called a gummi ship and was buzzing around a bad space sim with some Disney jerks I’d lost interest - but that prologue? Those first hours? They starred a kid named Roxas, and boy did I love him. I wouldn’t have said ‘love’ at the time, but that’s probably what is was. Roxas lived the ultimate imposter syndrome in a world built entirely for the benefit of someone else, doomed to be subsumed by somebody with bigger hair and bigger shoes. He had friends who didn’t really know him, and glitches bedevilled his steps, and there was a crushing weight of melancholy that pressed down upon him. Roxas was so, so sad - and he didn’t know why, he couldn’t even express why, and when he tried all he could come up with was banal platitudes about the end of summer, but that wasn’t quite right, that wasn’t really the issue, and he knew it wasn’t right. A countdown timer was tick tick ticking away in some grand cosmic joke that he could sense but could not confront. And there was this girl. There were two girls, really, both in dreams, one in fragments, the other who smiled at him with the saddest smile and eyes that knew the truth - that neither of them were real, and the dreamworld in which they all lived was as ephemeral as he had always feared.There’s an angering absurdity to Roxas, especially now that I’ve seen so much of Kingdom Hearts 1. We are told he is only half of Sora, or half his heart, something along those lines: he is Sora’s teleologic shadow. This is nonsense. Sora is barely a person, and Roxas is hauntingly familiar, painfully real - a kindred spirit to a long vanished 14 year old who even then was starting to grapple with the hollowness that rang in his ears, the disquiet that followed his soul. Half of Sora? Sora is a nobody . - Roxas is the true person. If there was justice in the world, than Roxas, Prufrock and I would take a long trip into the country in search of meaning and stability of being.“Why am I doing this?” you might ask. “Why do this when you don’t seem to like Kingdom Hearts.” Of course I like Kingdom Hearts - I love it. It gave me Roxas, and eight hours of a surreal and wistful summer’s end. Perhaps a bit too narrow focus for real enjoyment, and yet here we are. I am here for Roxas - no more, no less. If I must fight through dross and narrative gossamer to reach him again, so be it.The shortest answer: I said the game was poorly written; I never said I wasn’t enjoying it. 

[offworldcolony]

Tenet, 2020 - ★★★

Top Spot of cinema this film aint. But how do I review you Tenet? How did I feel about you? Did I like you as much as I did simply because I hadn't been to the cinema in 9 months? Is it because, in the cinema, I was able to streth my legs and be two full seats away from the public whilst also having amazing seats? My dream-cinema-going experience?

Let's find out.

First off this film is Prime Nolan, it is a quintessential, distillation of Nolan. If you squeezed him, Tenet would fall out. It certainly has one hand firmly gripping the origins of Nolan's love of the cinema format; one which moves inexorably, like time, forwards, and can change speed and be moved around or edited, like memory. This forged, early in his career something like Memento. But Tenet also has its foot firmly stamped on the expensive and loud and thrilling big-budget blockbuster, where 200 million dollars can be used to tackle complex (if a little arid and cerebral) subjects not unlike his more recent endeavours such as Inception.

Inaccurate comparisons to Bond (although this is much more like a Mission Impossible film) and to Inception aren't unwarranted, they're just slightly off. Tenet is a counterpoint, a reflection and an anti-Inception, which may, in some way, have been Nolan's intention, knowing that he calculates and enjoys building a fourth-wall shattering element to all of his movies.

What does that mean? Well, whereas Inception was a very simple puzzle told awkwardly and in a convoluted way, Tenet is an awkward and convoluted puzzle told very simply, if at all. Where Inception prided itself on the over-explanation and exposition dumps inherent in genres such as the heist-film, Tenet tells you almost nothing, (in fact when it does, I'm looking at you Shipping Container scene, it's incredibly out of place and unwanted) it wants you to play catch up, and the Hitchcockian lines between what a protagonist (cheekily called The Protagonist here) and what the audience knows are blurred, which does actually feed directly into the plot of the film. So he's using the medium here to enhance or back up the story he is telling, as usual, and that is certainly clever and welcome.

The first two-thirds (despite Nolan's usual confounding and blisteringly loud opening sequences he favours) is a genuine riot, I loved being taken on a ride without ever knowing where it was going to end up. I enjoyed pieces of the puzzle slotting into place slowly, I enjoyed Robert Pattinson very much and John David Washington who was simply exquisite.

John David Washington was a charming, steely, human actor with the poise of knowing something well, but being slightly out of his depth, which I imagine was him channelling his part on the film with Nolan as the architect from "the future" mirrored in the film, and he, the Protagonist. A bit too clever for its own good this one? yeah, maybe. But Washington cements himself as one of my favourite actors by doing very little here but doing it exceedingly well. He the most is watchable of all Nolan's protagonists so far, and I'm sure the enjoyment I had in the film hung at every turn on his ability to act like a smart, fun, deep character, completely out of his depth (or out of his time??!!??!!) Hah.

The standout fight of the movie (incidentally I would love to see if it takes place both times at the same point of the movie's runtime mirrored, just a thought) is a really cleverly conceived and executed one, it's half-Matrix, half-Jedi powered and it's a much more exciting idea than a rotating hallway. It has the potential to really start a kind of genre of it's own; it may even be the bullet-time of this generation except the scope of it is limited to films that actually have time travel as a conceit which is a shame, but Nolan could really utilise this technique many more times in a myriad of exciting ways, if he wanted to make a sequel.

Which leads me to one of my gripes I suppose, and, like this film, it's a strange fourth-wall kind of one. Because Nolan has such a singular (and wearing thin?) vision and style, doubled-down instead of evolved, over his filmography, his films have been cutting-edge and completely of their time. Unlike another artist-filmmaker like Wes Anderson who, with Grand Budapest, let himself become immersed in his own style and went full-Anderson, he was ahead of his time, and so his style has settled into be likeable and welcome now. Nolan, on the absolute precipice of now, means his style, revolutionary in the mid-late 00's, is still stuck there. His imitators have been and gone and even they have changed their styles and their films. But Nolan's style is still stuck in 2010.

Because so much of his IP is controlled by him, there's little hope for a Tenet sequel, and even less-so, one handled by a different auteur. Whereas something like The Matrix should be handled by the underground, sub-culture Wachowskis to bring a vision to it that we can't expect, nor should we, a 'franchise' like Tenet would be amazing to see handled by a different director; the conceits of a future war, inverted entropy etc. (not wanting to give too much away!) have so much scope, and yet this one and done, half-baked film will be all we ever have. Nolan needs a protege; not unlike Peter Berg to Michael Mann, DJ Caruso to Spielberg (yes both of those filmmakers aren't exactly stellar) but some young buck with ideas of their one to be taken under Nolan's wing to be able to play around within his framework. Whether we ever see Incenet or Tenception, I'd still like to see a Ryan Coogler, or a Benh Zeitlin, or a J. C. Chandor or Ava Duvernay or Damien Chazelle or even Shane Carruth take on board this franchise with the same kind of budget. With John David Washington in the Lead again, of course.

This would lead to a slightly altered tone. For example, does Nolan know how silly some of these things appear when delivered po-faced? The almost child-like gesture for Tenet, the embarrassing spy-code-phrases, the bulldozer clunkiness of a handful of the very end sequences' dialogue, these things threaten to undermine the movie in ways that for some viewers, it may never recover from. Does he know that talking about time-travel in a movie has been done the same way for 30 years? He did that in Interstellar, if an explanation of something has been done in 1990, try and find a better way to explain it in your movie! He makes reference a few times to the awkwardness of the movie's premise and plotlines, but it's not enough and Branagh's villain is a key piece to that also, he's almost an unnecessary component to the movie and one that a better writer and another draft might have even excised.

But Nolan has to hang is emotional hat and stakes on something. So, in his typical way, instead of making it, you know, actually emotional, and using the vehicle of cinema, celluloid, editing, photography etc. to bolster and energise the emotionality, he just puts in a child and some blindingly stupid lines about Motherhood and another abused and erratic Female 'Lead'. In many ways I feel like the plot (and runtime) of his movies would do better to excise the emotionality completely, either make something genuinely resonant and impactful to me, or just make something epic and clever and spend the runtime exploring and wringing out of that concept, as much as you can. Especially if you're unlikely to ever make a sequel to it.

If you're talking Nolan, you have to talk about sound. His mixes have been getting progressively unusual; exposition delivered through masks or by non-native speakers, I get it when he says it's to get you to lean in and listen, I even defended it when Bane was next to unintelligible because I liked the concept of it, it was bold and creative. But now I'm exhausted. Does he have bad hearing? Does he enjoy bombarding people with a wall of sound? Michael Mann is another filmmaker with a terrible mix but at least his can be attributed to his new avant-garde, voyeuristic style. At least Zimmer is off this one as composer, the music, while still satisfying that Nolan blast of noise, was pumping and electronic, sometimes simpering in the background with backwards-sounding instruments, but I felt like it sat there nicely most of the while instead of overpowering or overbearing like Zimmer's past collabs with Nolan.

The budget of Tenet is silly for what it is, I'd love to see where it all actually went; when a movie's climax isn't as blistering and creative as the Fifth Transformers movie and on a bigger budget, some questions about accounting or at least on creative veracity in big set-pieces may be needed. The balance of explaining, found not lacking in Inception, but lacking here, is no-more emblematic than in its final battle; Blue-Team backwards, Red-Team forwards, is not enough to get invested in the mechanics and allow either for the turning off of one's brain or the engagement in the puzzle of it all. It's just a mess that doesn’t just seem hard to follow on first watch, but also seems unlikely to be something interesting to dissect or enjoy on subsequent watches, unlike some of the puzzles of Inception that were.

But it's not all bad, like I said, I really enjoyed the experience of watching it in the cinema, which is essentially Nolan's primary goal. Like his previous films, I acknowledge, accept and subsume its flaws into the overall experience of what I'm getting. I found the notion of the abused party having to actually keep the abuser alive rather than kill them a tremendously clever twist on the idea (although completely underbaked in execution) and a time travel movie using entropy and inversion is a monumentally cinematic twist on it. Some of the moments and scenes I do completely want to watch again, there's so much detail and life and character in some of the sets and some of the time and palindrome related easter eggs are intriguing, (the less obvious stuff and not the fact that a character is called Arepo and for the entire movie I was expecting that to have some kind of significance beyond just being Opera backwards!) and the moments of the film shown as the very early teasers were really cool when they actually surfaced in the film proper.

I found, much more than many movies I've seen, the videogame influences in this one; from the lead character simply being A Protagonist, to the Call of Duty multiplayer locations (warehouse, yacht, airport, destroyed crater), to the sterile and industrial hallways, to the way the action was shot, to the set-pieces and even the time-reversed mechanic felt like it could have been instigated by a button press. It reminded me of a Max Payne game or another PlayStation 2-era third-person shooter. I was reminded of the more recent game Control also; shadowy agencies and conspiracies, the fusion of brutalism and science-fiction, the villain.

So I guess this is why I liked it; It was an experience. And therefore it did it’s job. I want to watch it again, soon. Which is not always the case. It lives inside its own constructed world, tenet, I enjoy when these films come along with a narrow focus and it's own set of rules, I find that appealing, but alienating at the same time. I wanted to make a review that had some kind of mirrored structure to it, but the best you're gonna get is a palindrome for the start and the end. The most interesting thing about Tenet is, I'm still thinking about it, and the world it so finely crafted, which is separate and parallel to our own, is a world I'd happily step back into given the chance.

Nolan's worst film? Maybe not, despite being far from the Nolan oeuvre Top Spot.

source https://letterboxd.com/offworldcolony/film/tenet/

[alimonytony]

This is a repost from my rant forum on my site and since I'm interested only in it being read, rather than advertising or shilling it out for hits, I'm going to just repost it here. Before I do let me give you a quick introduction.

I finally registered on the SA forums a week or so ago having been a loyal reader for a couple of years. I don't like the new design of the site, I want to kill it with fire, I liked my good-old Web1.0 scrolly site, give it back please.

I'm posting this here because you lot are smart, and as such, I have no issues with you telling me that you think I'm wrong with this pseudo-rant. This may also be preaching to the choir a bit and for that I sincerely apologize. I hope at least you get some enjoyment out of this. If you're one of those fellows who likes to Digg, the article also has a Digg page, do with it as you see fit - http://digg.com/general_sciences/At...you_intelligent

With that said and done, here goes.

"It's novello time, and it's about religion, so unless you're ready to deal with some views you may not agree with, switch off now. In the words of Illidan "You are not prepared".

Let's get this out here right now. I'm a 23 year old law graduate with an IQ of 155. My political beliefs are liberal and leftist, I listen to Metal and I enjoy violent movies, books and videogames, and I've been a Christian since birth. Baptised, confirmed of my own free will, son of a priest (who are pretty notorious for rebelling against their father's religious beliefs just for the sake of it). I'm part of the Anglican Church of England, which is pretty much the result of Henry the 8th getting pissed off with the catholics not allowing him to divorce his wife(s). We're the state religion of the UK, if you could even say the UK has one, we're pretty liberal about most things, women priests, gay priests, homosexuals in general, sex before marriage, contraception, we take the modern, reasonable way of looking at all of them. At the end of the day, the Bible taught us about forgiveness and being excellent to one another. It had a bit of a round-about way of doing it but what do you expect for a 2000 year old book written entirely by clerical males? It's gonna be a bit out of date, you've gotta read it in context.

I have no problems with anyone's beliefs. Be whatever you want, as long as you believe (or don't believe) for a good reason. But here's what I really don't like, trend-atheism/trend-theism (also referred to as e-atheism, since it seems to be most prevelant in the domain of anonymous blogspammers and Digg-users).

In my late teens, I spent a long time thinking. Yeah, just sitting around and thinking, thinking about faith. Thinking about what it is that I believe in. Rationalizing the various conflicts and contradictions that faith presents us with, looking at the viewpoints of other faiths, or those with no faith at all, taking into account the new things we discover every day and factoring in the influence of science. Some people would claim that, if I had indeed done that, I'd have come to the conclusion, as an intellectual, rational thinker, that God does not exist. They would of course, be wrong.

My beliefs center around several factors. Firstly, it is important for us as human-beings to realize our own limits, and the limits of our understanding. Centuries ago we believed the world was flat. "The Bible told us so!", would be the first cry. Wrong, it really didn't. In the Old Testament, Job 26:7 explains that the earth is suspended in space, the obvious comparison being with the spherical sun and moon. The Old Testament, you remember that one? The one with the fiery bushes, the pillar's of salt, the cool plagues and such? Even that managed to get it right. There's a few more references as well to the 'round' earth (and before you say anything, flat is not a shape, it could have been a flat octagon for all they knew) but I'm not going to go into that yet. We've had computers for less than a century, powered flight for just over a century and of course our amazing horseless carriages. Genetics, electricity, nuclear-bombs, toaster-strudel, the world is in the palm of our hands! And it didn't take us too long did it?

Reality-check, we're still primitives. In the great scheme of things this technology is a mere blip on the historical radar. We've got an awful long way to go before we're able to dissect and understand the mysteries of the universe. We haven't even put a man on Mars yet, let alone left our solar system to find out what exactly is out there. How can it be that we have suddenly, so recently, become so arrogant as to believe we know more than we really do? The Laws of Science are written by man, based on our understanding of how things work. They are theories that, while prove true today, may be debunked by another amazing discovery tomorrow. Which leads onto my next point.

Name this quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Arthur C Clarke, physicist and author, smart fellow. It also hilights the point I'm making. Our understanding of the universe is peerless only amongst ourselves. We are not as smart as we think we are. Just as fire wowed the neanderthals, what would it take to wow us? What would make our jaws drop and our minds boggle? Well, any sufficiently advanced technology of course. And what is technology after-all? Man-made machines. The concept of technology is a human concept, a concept that may, in other parts of the universe, not even exist, replaced by something even more advanced than that, so advanced that we cannot comprehend it. Not surprising really as we mammals only use 10% of our brains.

So where am I going with this? Simple really, take yourself off of your high-horse, you, and the human race, is not as smart as it thinks it is. Now, open your mind a little, and let's explore some possibilities.

The definition of a God. Let us turn to the good book.

Wikipedia.

"God most commonly refers to the deity worshipped by followers of monotheistic and monolatrist religions, whom they believe to be the creator and ruler of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the various conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent"

Hmm, a tall order one might think. Could such a being exist? Some argue that logically, he could not, however, there is very little logic in denying the possibility that a being or beings of such power and advancement exist that they could indeed, be considered 'God' within our definition. That's not to say that God is a small green alien with a flying saucer and a phaser though that would give some of the overzealous fundamentalists something to sweat over, much to our amusement. But what is this God? A creator? Sure, we create. We create technology, we're getting to the stage of being able to create life in one form or another, using the basic building blocks of nature. Could it not be surmised therefore that it is entirely within the realms of possibility that someone or something created those building blocks? Like a programmer creates a new program, someone must have also created the coding language in which he created it. We scramble for answers. We come up with theories. Some believe in the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. Some believe a man in the sky created it everything in 6 days and then mooched around on the 7th. Which is valid?

Neither, and both. They attempt to apply meaning to something where meaning may, or may not exist. Creationism and the Big Bang are in that sense, as bad as each other. They are both merely attempts for us to explain the unexplainable. The Big Bang contradicts our laws of physics (something most catalyse an explosion, therefore something must have been there in the first place, where did that come from, at which point your brain melts). The Creation Story contradicts our laws of physics (Same reasons, who created God after all?). Everything we've so far managed to come up with, from the sublime to the ridiculous, the complex to the simplistic, it's an exercise in desperate straw-clutching. At the end of the day, we don't know jack.

And that's ok. Someone once said that the journey matters more than the destination, it's not the winning, it's the taking part, at least ya tried sport. These explanations of where it all comes from, be they ancient or modern all boil down to the same need. To know. Who'd have thunk it, we've got brains for a reason, and they rather like being used. Those neurons like to be fired, the little grey matter likes a little exercise every once in a while. Just as the Creation Story was a way to explain an unexplainable concept, so is the Big Bang theory. If one were to compare the human mind to a computer, try feeding the Big Bang theory to the medieval man, and it's like trying to shove Bioshock into a Commodore Vic20. Good luck. And what will our children's children's children's grandchildren's children think of our Big Bang theory? My money's on exactly the same thing.

So what am I trying to tell you, stop asking questions, stop looking for answers and just believe whatever the hell suits ya? Absolutely not. Believe whatever suits you, but question it, never stop thinking, never stop asking or learning. In this day and age it seems people are way too willing to believe, or not believe. Belief, or non-belief should be a life-long arduous process and it should end involuntarily, when you fall over dead. Someone (there's a lot of talkative someone's aren't there?) once said 'Never stop believing', I say, "Never stop asking yourself what you believe, and why".

It's time to criticize, so let me load port and starboard cannon and fire a volley at both atheists and theists alike. Believing, or not believing, does not make you intelligent. Smart people do not come to a conclusion on the basis of insubstantial evidence. Smart people do not mindlessly attack other people's beliefs just because they don't conform to their own. Smart people do not assume that their own rigid, poorly formed definitions of logic and faith, reason and belief are mutually exclusive and that if one exists, the other cannot. Smart people think outside the box, not pick fights with those poor souls trapped in it.

What makes you intelligent, is knowing why you believe what you believe. Knowing that you are but one mind, and knowing that at any time you could be proven wrong, only for that person to be proven wrong ad infinitum as we as a race advance.

I suppose you're waiting for my personal beliefs, waiting for this to be some kind of sermon, preaching why my God is better than your God, or non-God. You'll be waiting a long time, because it's not coming. My personal beliefs are just that, personal, they're mine, they belong to me. You cannot take them away from me, only I can. What I can give you though, are my opinions.

Right now shots are being fired. They're not physical shots, they're bullets and shells of ignorance and bigottry. And it's no one-sided battle let me tell you that much. Factionalized camps everywhere you can imagine. Atheists, Theists, Satanists, Christians, Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, Communists, every group you can imagine, all shouting 'Your God/Non-God sucks, mine is better!'. These days, the internet's become their battleground. So much for sharing knowledge, we're sharing ignorance.

The bigottry and the condemnation has to stop. The sad thing is, I'm having to condemn the condemners. Isn't it lowsy how you generally have to be a hypocrite in order to make a point these days? Food for thought. We can look at the extremes and see the simplistic, secular vs sacred, trend-atheists vs fundamentalist evangelical christians, the most common stereotypes. But in reality, it's so much more complicated than that. It's this stereotyping and narrow-minded attitude that prevents us as a race from achieving the greatness we can. I could make as many decrees as I wanted till I was blue in the face, and I'm going to just to let off a little steam mind you,

"Trend-atheist Digg users, shove your agendas where the sun don't shine, refusing the possibility of a supreme-being does not make you a genius or a radical thinker, it makes you a bloody sheep hiding behind a cloak of anonymity"

"Evangelical Fundamentalist morons, get your overly simplistic, judgmental, dogmatic Crayola God out of my face, you have about as much understanding of the universe as a wet lettuce. That does not make you holy, pure, or guaranteed a private booth at the big game in the sky, it makes you a bloody sheep hiding behind a cloak of propaganda that you only believe because you're told to"

Wow, that feels good, I can understand why you internet-bound condemners like it so much. Gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling doesn't it? What, I'm not allowed to indulge in such a guilty pleasure every once in a while? Play fair Wink

Where's my conclusion? Hell if I know. Did you have the mistaken impression this was some carefully constructed plea for tolerance? Absolutely not, it's an angry slap in the face to my peers. Wake the hell up and use your brain, because my God/Non-god/Explosion/Man-in-the-sky/Vic20 gave you it for a reason.

TB.

[comicreliefmorlock]

QUESTIONS ABOUT BOOKS

1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?

...oh lord... I have so many. I'd have to say Ender's Game because I've ALWAYS had a copy of it. I don't even remember when I first read it; my mother threw it at my brother and I both when we were smols and it's been a yearly read ever since.

2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?

Let's see... I won't count all the rereads I've done because I reread a LOT of books. The current read is "Sideshow U.S.A" (nonfiction) and my most recent read is "The Last Wish" (fiction). The upcoming read is "The Prince of Darkness" (nonfiction) and I haven't gotten anything set up after that.

3. Which book does everyone like and you hated?

...

Fuck you, Patricia Cornwell. Fuck you.

{"Portrait of a Killer" and I will ALWAYS cover it up when I find it in bookstores.}

4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you’ll read, but you probably won’t?

"The House of the Seven Gables" has been my Mt. Everest for nearly twenty-five years. I just canNOT get past that opening chapter, my GODS.

5. Which book are you saving for “retirement?”

None. If I have a book, I'm going to read it. If I hear about a book that interests me, I am going to read it. I do NOT put off books. Reading is LIFE.

6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?

I wait until the end. To be fair, I read very, very quickly, so it's not much of a "wait" for me to reach that last page. Plus it's fun to make guesses and collect evidence to see if I'm right or wrong at the end!

7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?

Interesting asides! I always glance through the acknowledgements to see who was influential to the author, who they thought of when they finished penning that last word and who the book wouldn't be in my hands without.

8. Which book character would you switch places with?

...oh gods it's so hard... >.< Ummmm... either Kassafeh or Dunziel from "Tales from the Flat Earth" and yes, it's entirely because I'd HAPPILY take Night's Master or Death's Master as my eternal lover, thank you very much.

9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?

So very many... SO MANY.

"Alanna: the First Adventure" literally reminds me of my first period because I read it shortly before and oh boy, when that time of the month first came, I reread that scene with Alanna many times. It was surprisingly helpful for coping with the whole "wait what do you mean this happens forever and I'm now a 'woman' excuse you???"

All of my White Wolf rulebooks remind me of my college years when I'd read them at my ex-boyfriend's house. "Rose Red" reminds me of my second ex-boyfriend's house because it was the only book I'd left there, so I read it a LOT. "The Blue Sword" reminds me of my mother--she told me to read it, said I'd like it and she was SO right. "The Tales of Peter Rabbit" makes me think of my maternal grandmother's house. The Dragonlance Trilogy reminds me of my brother, as does the Sword of Truth series--we have dissected and discussed those books for YEARS.

Even though I've read it once and haven't really read it since, "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad will ALWAYS remind me of when @tlbodine and I met. (She knows why. :D) And rereading the play "Hamlet" is always guaranteed to make me grin because of that shared Shakespeare class and the tangent about fruit.

...I read a lot. A LOT. So I make a lot of associations to books. :D

10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.

-ahem- I hope I can't get in legal trouble for this now, but... >.>

I have a book called "Superstitions" that I found in the middle school library when I worked there. I fell in LOVE with it; it was my first introduction to folklore research and the details involved. I was never able to FIND a copy of the damn thing.

...so when I graduated high school, I went BACK to the middle school during the summer and... quite frankly, I stole the damn thing. :D (I know, I'm a horrible person.) It's still on my shelf and is consulted quite regularly.

11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?

Ask @tlbodine about the shiny new copy of Les Miserables I got her. :D Books, to me, are always a viable gift. I've bought and shipped copies of Tanith Lee (my goddess) books to people; I read one about the French Revolution and sent a copy to @house-leours because she is a History Buff™. And there was a book on dollmaking that my mother and I spent MONTHS hunting down via a rare book finder for my paternal grandmother.

12. Which book has been with you to the most places?

Considering how many books I have and how often I drag them all over the place, I don't think any ONE book has been with me to a ton of places. Except maybe my copy of "Paradise Lost" because I used to care about looking 'smart' and I'd read it in public places.

13. Any “required reading” you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?

"Romeo & Juliet" drove me nuts because EVERY FUCKING YEAR involved reading or analyzing it. I don't mind it so much now, but I still kind of wrinkle my nose when I pick it up. (I don't read it often.)

14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?

A voucher for a D&D book given as a prize at a convention from 1987--it's still in a book on my shelf somewhere.

15. Used or brand new?

If the book is in my face and I want it, I'll buy it. Thriftbooks.com owns my soul, Amazon knows me intimately and the library book sale can hear me coming a mile away. Anywhere books are to be found, I will buy. I do like used bookstores better because I get MORE BOOKS for the same amount of money.

16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?

I wouldn't call Master King a "literary genius." What I would call him is a damn good storyteller who creates PEOPLE, not characters. Even if I don't always find his books frightening, I find them enjoyable to read. {But that line in "The Green Mile" about "I can hear them screaming" will for-fucking-ever give me chills.}

17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?

Jurassic Park. (@tlbodine  --I TOLD YOU.) And Jaws. Those books were soOO tedious.

18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?

My personal feelings on this may have little bearing to do with what others enjoy, but "The Legend of the Seeker" (it was a TV show that SURPRISE didn't last) was the worst mistake of all time. And Ender's Game just pissed me the hell off because it missed sO MUCH of what made the book a staple of my life.

19. Have you ever read a book that’s made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?

"Personal Darkness" by Tanith Lee. I canNOT read that book without eating something, gawd. EVERY TIME.

20. Who is the person whose book advice you’ll always take?

@tlbodine because she knows what I like. I'll always listen to my mother about science fiction (even if I don't dare confess to her that I didn't find "Rendevouz with Rama" riveting...) and my brother knows my book tastes very well, too.