#lia on film

[legallysilly]

smithsonian museum of american art

[eliatopia]

　　　　　　　　　🐚 ✧ ⁺˳ .🎀 ࿐

[britney-rosberg06]

two siblings btw

[esqueletosgays]

THE LODGE (2019)

Directors: Veronika Franz & Severin Fial Cinematography: Thimios Bakatakis

[angelstills]

Tully (2018)

[abirdie]

Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna attend a special screening of La Máquina in London, September 2024, photographed by Lia Toby

[drilanime]

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Eternals (2021, Chloé Zhao)

13/05/2024

[mattsbrattdoll]

favorite film. ⋆౨ৎ ₊˚ 🦢・₊✧

[tinnchan]

TO SIR WITH LOVE (2022)

For @stuckonacliff

[legallysilly]

georgetown, washington, dc shot on 35mm film

[the-apprentice-lia]

i just watched hunger games 1 after rereading the books and i have some… thoughts.

so everyone goes on about how the movies are so inaccurate to the books, but (and i say this as an avid bookworm) i don’t think they really are. the biggest inaccuracies i noted were as follows:

a) rue and katniss don’t talk about their different districts — however, i do think this wasn’t terrible as they had to amend the plot at several points since we didn’t have katniss as a narrator, like when caesar explains what tracker jackers are.

b) the one that stood out the most to me: the mutts are just… dogs. not tributes, children, that have had their eyes gouged out and their bodies twisted and warped to be another pawn for the games, even in death. children whose families, to our knowledge, do not even receive their babies’ bodies. and this was such a big detail to overlook since this is precisely the reason katniss is so horrified, and precisely the reason the brutality of the games is made so clear to us, the viewers: because these children will always be nothing but pieces on a game board to the people in power. things to be used, warped, destroyed, and then discarded. because when katniss looks into glimmer’s (or her mutt’s) eyes, it finally hits her how insignificant the capitol views the tributes. how even when you’re winning, there’s something to be used against you. she even sees rue, the girl she saved, the little twelve year old she buried, rabid and frothing at the mouth with hate. and this is when she sees, in perfect clarity, the grotesquerie of the games.

c) key details were omitted, like when haymitch fell off the stage, when madge gave katniss the pin, when peeta threw haymitch’s glass against the wall in the train car, how katniss threw peeta into the vase after the interviews and peeta’s hands were lacerated, how the soup from the parachute was actually broth and not the infamous lamb soup with plums that katniss loves (and subsequently, the ice-breaker in caesar’s interview being different), and of course, the infamous black buttercup. i mean, all in all, these were quite annoying— but not to the point where they changed the main message of the movie: the corrupting nature of power and how this breeds cruelty and uncompassion for human life. i think they stayed true to this, and that’s why i believe the films are a worthy tribute to the books!

furthermore, to compensate for the loss of katniss’ inner narrative spelling out key details for us in the books, the film does actually come up with pretty clever ways to work around this. like, as previously mentioned, when caesar explains on live television, to a capitol audience, what tracker jackers are and why they’re so deadly, which is key to the scene where katniss cuts the nest down. or, when the parachutes come with little notes; since we can’t see katniss putting together that a good kiss = a reward, we are actually told by the note in the soup parachute. “you call that a kiss, sweetheart?” we also have further insight into seneca crane’s death, which is so breathtakingly poetic, and symbolic, in my opinion. well, at least as poetic as a death can be. in addition, even though the books do mention it, we see in real time how haymitch flatters and strokes and fights for sponsors for katniss and peeta. this is so significant, as a man who has been forced to mentor years and years of tributes, to watch them die over and over again, and to gradually lose all hope that they’ll survive— this man is the one that is fighting so hard for katniss and peeta. we can see that better in the film. so the inconsistencies, in my opinion, can be overlooked as we will never truly have a film that is 100% loyal to the books. (unless it’s lord of the rings but shhh)

but what really sealed it home for me was something that the books actually didn’t do: we have the sense as viewers, a lot of the time, that we are intruding upon a profoundly personal moment. like with katniss and peeta in the cave. but that’s exactly what the film is trying to drive home. and that’s what makes it so fantastic. because we are intruding. we shouldn’t be watching such a deeply personal and vulnerable moment for katniss, who never shows her feelings if she can’t help it, and peeta, who shows his like an open book. it’s wrong on both accounts because in addition to these children being forced to fight brutally and bloodily to the death, they have to put on a pantomime as they do! i mean, what could be more unjust than a girl who’s being put to death being forced to give everyone a show on the way out? when the camera is just a bit too close, when there is no soothing filler music, when we can see them, raw and real, two kids afraid to die in an unfamiliar forest far away from their home, we feel uncomfortable. because why should we get to see this? how can this be fair? surely, they can have just this one thing. but that’s the whole point. they can’t. and we— watching from the same perspective as the capitol audience, i would like to emphasise— feel complicit in robbing these two kids of a brief moment of respite. that is what the film tries, and succeeds brilliantly, to convey.

i’m sure there’s still more to cover, but this is just what i noticed and felt the need to write about from my first time watching ‘the hunger games’. in conclusion: the film was actually fantastic if you don’t nitpick the small details. i think it’s a raw and real and fantastic tribute to the books, and should be treated as such.

[weirdlookindog]

Bela Lugosi and Lia Torá in The Veiled Woman (1929)

[gossamerorigins]

Tour of the Alchemy of Souls set as the Blue Flower lyric video…. It’s amazing how it feels like I know it. “Oh, that’s the restaurant!” “That’s the bridge Mudeok was standing on when Jang Uk went back to Songrim!”

Korean caption is basically “remembering Mudeok in every corner of Daeho through Jang Uk’s eyes” 😭

[rsier]

[angelstills]

Tully (2018)