#it felt fair to do so lol

[all-souls-matinee]

Quick-bite reviews: Lady in White (1988) dir. Frank LaLoggia

Writer Frankie Scarlatti reflects on his idyllic 1960s childhood, which changed the Halloween night he witnessed a ghost reenact her own murder, and was nearly killed himself.

This is one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen. I was going to compare it to Spielberg in that it handles dark topics through the lens of something very saccharine and nostalgic, but halfway through realized a more apt comparison is Stephen King. I don't want to give the impression that LaLoggia doesn't have a unique voice (you don't get 'weird' without that), but King is all over individual story beats and character relationships; elements being autobiographical and its being based on a local legend only add to that. I do think the funniest difference is that while King imbues his writing with a christian system of morality and spirituality he's extremely critical of the church, whereas LaLoggia adheres to that same system but is extremely Italian Catholic.

(fig.1- sure.)

I mention Spielberg and King, maybe the most popular living American filmmaker and writer, to give an idea of the tone and stress that this is a well-crafted, commercially-minded movie. The weirdness rears its head in two ways:

It's violent in a way I've never seen before. Not something at odds with the movie's goals, but other artists working in this subgenre would probably shy away from actually showing children be stalked, harmed, or killed, and here it's done in a way that lingers and feels uncomfortably real. Most would also probably shy away from the civil rights subplot that goes nowhere and ends with a graphic hate crime. I'm guessing it was a topic on LaLoggia's mind (understandably so growing up in NY in the 60s and working there in the 80s), but it causes trouble in that it starts to call attention to African American absence and systemic racism within the movie's warm depictions of American life, and then doesn't follow through on that attention. I'm honestly still trying to parse it and I wonder if LaLoggia was too; it seems like he realized it was more suited for a central conflict than a subplot so tries to quietly drop it altogether.

It's a mystery that's not on a schedule. To focus on atmosphere over plot gives it the feeling of an indie drama,* which is fine, but the driving force is two concurrent mysteries, so we get scenes where a character will discover a vital piece of information and then instead of following up on it they go to have fun outside with whimsical autumnal music (there's even an early scene that feels so oddly placed it immediately comes to mind as a clue.) Whereas the violence confused me in a negative way this confused me in a very positive one; I kind of loved it. I don't think the solution to either mystery is bad, and I like that the guy wrote a bittersweet coming-of-age novel that's fighting for its life to be an HBO serial killer miniseries.

I mostly just appreciated that Lady in White is so memorable. No idea if it's 'good,' jury's still out, but it has a concrete sense of place and purpose, and that does a lot of heavy lifting in storytelling.

Buy a ticket? I think you have to already like 80s movies and be willing to put up with a lot of bullshit (not mutually exclusive), but if that's the case then yes.

*It was the first and only occasion that a single, feature film was financed [through a penny stock offering.]!

[tezzbot]

I really like the headcanon that a very select amount of people are allowed to actually call Tails 'Miles' and Shadow is on that list, it's very cute to me ^_^

[bleue-flora]

i need ur opinion on angel cdream

I’ve literally had this for weeks and this is still all I got…

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Our Lady Of Mysterious Ailments & The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle

books 2 & 3 in the Edinburgh Nights series

paranormal mystery set in a climate-ravaged future Scotland, plagued by ghosts and magic

follows a 15yo Black girl who’s finally gotten an in to learn scientific magic properly - but it turns out to be an unpaid internship, so she has to take more jobs delivering ghost messages and investigating mysteries to take care of her gran and little sister

in book 2 she’s investigating a strange illness centred on a magic school for boys

and in book 3 she’s attending a global magician conference held in a creepy castle - when someone’s murdered, and they’re locked in until she figures out the culprit

Zimbabwean magic, friendship, disabled characters, no romance (so far)

[vaguely-concerned]

few things bring me as much joy as my rook's expressive capacity for sudden withering disdain. (he's looking at illario here, of course lmao.) he's so hey i'm just a little guy...🥺 coded most of the time and then someone says something dumb enough that the mask cracks for a moment and every line of him says 'that is the stupidest fucking thing anyone has ever said to me and I'm aggrieved to even have had to hear it'. rye is mostly very kind but there IS a bastard lurking in his head waiting to be let out as well. not just solas but solas too I suppose. two bastards in rye ingellvar's head they keep each other company and are trying to strangle each other as we speak 😌.

(vs. him looking over at lucanis a moment later during the same line delivery. since lucanis was actively into viago once I cannot imagine that getting to watch rye crack and be kind of mean to people who've earned it when too sorely tried is like. entirely without allure to him fhskjadf. witnessing illario pulling the old ingratiating 'rooook reason with him would you~ I'm the cousin with the charisma stats' routine and This being rook's response probably opened some as of yet ill-understood '...I think I hauve covid' corners of lucanis' soul. tfw your buddy has your back so completely (dawning erotic implications))

[quarks-pussy]

[Images description: Twelve pictures of Star Trek actors. The phrase "thank you for being both amazing actors and amazing people" is written across most of the images one word at a time, except for the two images in the middle. The middle images are of William Shatner, reading "not you!" and Robert Beltran, reading "or you for that matter". The actors in the other images are George Takei, René Auberjonois, DeForest Kelley, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Kate Mulgrew, Patrick Stewart, Siddig El Fadil (aka Alexander Siddig), Nichelle Nichols and Leonard Nimoy. End image description.]

Non exhaustive list of course. Many more such cases, in fact feel free to add

(insp)

[cacw]

saturday no plans so i get to do this all night

[sysig]

Laptop, now available for 500 pet-tickets (Patreon)

[borealopelta]

adding another chapter to the roommate lore tonight. maybe !

[opalsiren]

the rage i am experiencing rn i actually should be sequestered in a lab

[lususnatura]

anyhow, my visual for y'all for today is your muse only finding out that blamore's an excellent gymnast because it performed a move called the ricna (which requires a lot of strength and precision) on a bar they had at a fair to beat someone in a strength competition + it did it while it was as drunk as a skunk too, and not letting your muse ever forget that he DID that. though not to brag or anything on his part, of course, lmaooo

[phagodyke]

in a hilarious turn of events my flatmate didn't even know I use any pronouns....

[s2pdoktopus]

Artfight stuff I did this week!

@becachu's Splat

And one more. I got the permission to post it but they don't have a Tumblr so I don't feel like it's fair to post it here. I dunno.

[arctic-hands]

The subject came up today and I can't decide so I'm throwing it out there because I don't give a fuck and also having survived all of this kinda makes me sound like a badass

[orcelito]

Also I got my essay exam back today. Full points!!! Which was a surprise bc my 4th essay was definitely lower quality than the other three (bc I rushed it), but still good enough to get full points!!!!

Makes me wonder what that other one I spied being a 1 was like 🤔🤔🤔 bro was NOT good at writing I guess.

[napping-sapphic]

I think the worst part of this lingering cough is how fucking poorly it mixes with my chronic nosebleeds smh shit has me in these awful feedback loops where all the coughing triggers a nosebleed and then the lack of breathing from the nosebleed makes the coughing worse which makes the nosebleed worse and so on and so on