#lindy lou

[ambiguouslady42]

And should it rain, I'll hold the parasol And call the raindrops falling stars

[eclogues]

tagged by @twutch for the first 5 songs on shuffle

another one bites the dust - queen

mah lindy lou - burl ives

i'm in love with my car - queen again wtf

we are the boys - pulp

bubblegum bitch - marina

i just want to say i dont claim any of this necessarily as i have 14k liked songs on spotify

i tag @cruiserweightcoke @fleshmess @hmpygssy idfk

[girlwhodoeskratom]

@manholetohell tagged me to list the first 10 songs on my spotify on repeat playlist thing, i already did this a couple nights ago, so i'm going to list the NEXT 10 songs on the playlist <3 thank uuuu! i wont tag anyone bc i already did before but if anyone wants to do it just say i tag u....

All You Ever Do Is Walk Away - Magnetic Fields

Mr. Watson - Cruel Youth

Sugarbaby - Morningwood

Is It Possible / Sleep Song - Frankie Cosmos

Give Me Back My Dreams - The 6ths, Sally Timms

God Made Me - The Sundays

Kiss Me Like You Mean it - Magnetic Fields

Hatefuck - Cruel Youth

Lindy-Lou - The 6ths, Miho Hatori

My Husband's Pied-a-Terre - Magnetic Fields

[bitchinbarzal]

And I bet Ivy even tries to get Ryder (who probably isn’t even a year old) to try to talk to Mat about going back to work

She’s convincing everyone to get him back to work 😭

She’s calling up Beau “Come tell him to go back there!” And he’s in Vancouver!!

She’s calling her grandma.

She’s asking for Lou’s number

She even goes to work with Mama one day and says to Lindy on the bench “My daddy’s not working you want him to play here?”

[stereax]

seems like other teams have started their off season moves early. *coughsinleafsimplodingtheirFO*

what’s your hope for the devils? a top 5: either signing, trade, free agent acquisition, and a wild card (something unexpected)

Hmmm. I mean, I'm just waiting for what Fitz does. I trust that man. but let's go through signing, trades, wildcards, and the current prospects. I think that's what you want, yes? (Also, glad we're keeping Lindy, at least for another year or two. Not the time to fuck with that.) Or did you want top 5 most important things that need to happen? I'll put them in Devils red for you.

I've said many times that this offseason is CRUCIAL for the future of the Devils. We mess this up and our contention window can be screwed. We get this right and we could win it all next year.

I. RFA resignings

Bratt: Bratt seems to want 8M AAV. Fitz probably is more around 7M AAV. Whatever happens there, happens. If they can't agree on a deal, flip Bratt's RFA rights. Obviously you want to keep him, though, and it seems he might want to be kept too, so that's a good sign.

Meier: Get it done. Offer plastic surgery for the nose. Whatever, just do it. I think Timo's staying, especially because he seems so happy around his Swiss buddies and the team at large. Just figure out the contract and sign it.

Sharangovich: Shango is good at things, like the penalty kill and defensive play. Problem is, he's very streaky. We can get him a decent deal and bridge him into UFA or trade him. Either is honestly fine by me. We have a MASSIVE pipeline of rookies. I think he stays another year or two. We'll see.

McLeod & Bastian: I'm going to get so much flack for putting these two in red (these two, because we know they're inseparable), but honestly, after the playoffs, Mikey's shown EXACTLY why he needs to be here, whether it's 3C or 4C. I like him on 4C if only to keep Nate on his wing (as I don't see him going 3RW with our current pool of players), but either is fine tbh. Nate, for his part, is a crucial "glue guy" - just look at the Bastian Effect stats (where we had an over 80% points percentage with him on the ice versus 55% without him). I'd love to see them with matching like, 3-4x1.420M contracts (get it, because their jersey numbers- I'll shut up now). I'm sure this will happen, so it's not something I'm worried about.

Boqvist: Cheap and solid team-controlled bottom-sixer. Keep him but for cheap.

Bahl: You can keep him for like 900K or so, I think. DO THAT. Man has blossomed slowly into a solid defenseman.

Blackwood: Blackwood is not a bad goalie. When he's good, he's GOOD. The problem is, as some of my friends say, "he lacks the most important ability - availability". There is no goalie in the NHL better than Mac... at getting on the injured list. I think after the Caps game where Akira stole his net and turned the game around, and then the playoffs where Akira showed he's probably our top goalie going forward, Blackwood is done.

II. UFA resignings

Tatar: I love him but he's generally a nonfactor in the playoffs. And expensive. Unless he takes a pay cut I think he's out, and I think he knows he's out.

Wood: Unless he loves NJ so much he'll come back for a 1M-ish deal, he's on the move. Maybe the Isles. Meet Lou again.

Haula: RESIGN THIS MAN ASAP. It's not a Meier/Bratt thing where one can set a price for the other. Do it, Fitz. 3x2M. Figure it out.

Severson: Old Man Sevo :') He loves us and we love him. I suspect it's the end of the road for him soon. He might get extended - maybe like 4 years at 6M or something - and traded in a year or two, that's totally possible. As an RD though and one of the top D-men hitting the free agency market, it feels like he'll get a better deal from someone else that we won't be able to match. Again, though, prospects out the wazoo. It'll suck to see him go but if that's how it goes, that's how it goes.

Graves: I love him but even he seems to know he's gone :( But I don't trust any other team with this man!!! Can he stay? Just for emotional support? (Also, Gravy has this thing where he tends to clutch the fuck up at the most necessary moments, like scoring the 1.4 seconds left goal against the Blue Jackets that kept Bedard out of the East. For that, if nothing else, keep him, pretty please?)

Bernier: He's on LTIRetirement. Possible he sticks around the organization, though, a lot of people seem to like him.

III. Trades and Acquisitions

Honestly, I don't see too many trades happening. We have prospects. Prospects will fill whatever spots we lose. Blackwood should be traded if possible to a team that wants to take that risk.

Hellebuyck: I see the rumors. I don't think so, though. You'd have to basically ship Vitek, Mac, and a bunch of other stuff for one year of Hellebuyck. Would be great, if we were the Bruins and this was the LAST year of our window (push all the chips in kind of deal). I genuinely think Schmid can be our long-term future in net, barring injury (see: Schneider, Blackwood). I don't see why we need to get Hellebuyck.

Clifton: Connor Clifton is usually mentioned only because he's FROM NJ. We have WAY too many d-men. Nah.

I don't really know too much about what's available on the market, but if there are trades, they're probably going to be low-key like the Lazar acquisition. If there are any trades or UFAs you're thinking of, let me know, and I'll think about them.

IV. The Rookies

Filmon and Gritsyuk: I think they both get a year in Utica at least, unless they impress at training camp.

Foote: Fitz mentioned Foote a LOT in his exit interview. Fully possible we see him on the fourth line - could be Foote-Lazar-Bastian or Foote-McLeod-Bastian. Seems to be the Wood Replacement by now.

Geertsen: I only mention him because we all love him. Obviously a career Comet at this point. But like. Keep him pls.

Holtz: 23-24 is his last shot. If he doesn't work his ass off and prove at camp that he deserves the fourth top-6 winger spot (Mercer, Meier, Bratt are the other three), he's not going to make it in our system and should be traded while he still has the possibility to crack an NHL roster in another team. Hell, with Haula often on Hughes's wing... Holtz REALLY needs to improve (especially skating, and I think ice vision is big too) if he wants to stay here. Otherwise, he's done in Jersey. He's a 7OA, we shouldn't resign him to career AHLing.

Nemec: He'll be a training-camp decision, I think. But also, I think that Sevo's resigning or lack thereof will say a lot. Sevo gets resigned, Nemec is DEFINITELY staying in Utica another season. (You're not scratching Dougie, Marino, or Sevo.) Sevo doesn't get resigned, Nemec likely hits the NHL. Only likely, because...

Walsh: Reilly Walsh also exists. And if he impresses at training camp, we could see him instead of Nemec for next year. I don't know a lot about him, but he sounds NHL-ready? At least for a third pair, like - Siegs/Dougie, Luke/Marino, Bahl/Walsh could slap. This also lets Nemec develop more in Utica.

Daws: Will be the third-string goalie, going to the NHL level if/when Schmid or Vanecek get hurt. I see him tandeming with Schmid after Vitek's contract is up. Fuck, our net will be SOLID if so.

V. Wildcards

Mercer and Schmid: Both Mercer and Schmid come off their ELCs in 24-25. The earlier especially Mercer is extended, the cheaper he'll be. Akira will probably want to see how the 23-24 season goes before a deal is inked. (Also, I want to see if Akira sticks with number 40 or goes to 93, which he used in Utica.)

Vanecek: TANDEM HIM WITH SCHMID. Vitek can get a 30-win season but he's not built to be a starter a la Sorokin or Shesterkin. VV's confidence is DESTROYED after the playoffs; I hope for his sake that the team can get him a sports psychologist or something to help with the mental aspect of the game.

---

Is this what you wanted, anon? Let me know :)

(this is the stuff I do instead of focusing on my finals :') )

[anibakersvanityproject]

photo by Laura Taylor

makeup by Lindi Taylor

hair & styling by me

this was from the very first time Laura asked to shoot with me. i was so excited. it was laura's photography and the way she expressed her own beauty that inspired me to tune into and make friends with my own. for a time, laura and her sister lindi had their own photo studio in echo park. what could be dreamier? lindi did my makeup in a tall chair and we took photos in the bathroom, in the parking lot, by the lemon tree, swinging on the gate.

i was a full time teacher for students with special needs when this was taken and in my free time i was writing and trying to get people to let me interview them on camera. i was working through self loathing and had no self worth. i felt like the least experienced, least valuable person in the city. i put everyone i met above me and bashed myself about everything all of the time. i emptied myself for others full time. so when Laura and Lou expressed interest in shooting with me, i said yes but did not understand. these first moments in front of the camera, especially, were huge for me. i was engaging in an activity that required me to literally center myself. i panicked over what my christian friends would think, what my mom would think, what my students would think. i asked myself who i thought i was in my mom's voice.

i'm punching through ten layers of trauma in this photo. i wonder if you can tell.

[moonstruckwytch]

★ 15 Questions ★

tagged by @skeptiquewrites 💜

Nickname: Cor! Wytch if you're feeling brave (?)

Height: 5'3

Last thing googled: hours for my local library

Song stuck in my head: underneath the tree by kelly clarkson (it's like half a line and i'm gonna lose it)

followers: no clue, in the hundred-ish range?

Amount of sleep: 9? I was up for ~36 hours to try and reset my schedule and then this happened?

Dream job: something in museum collections where I get to be a gremlin who hides among the things, but can be paraded out to teach children about objects. Or a historic sites tourguide fulltime but that's not a feasible fulltime position under capitalism.

Wearing: black joggers, grey sweatshirt

Movie/book that summarises you: hmmmmmm, nonfiction: Stiff by Mary Roach, fiction: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Favourite song currently: GROWING UP IS __ by Ruel

Aesthetic: Goth/punk/vulture culture witch

Favourite authors: Mary Roach, Caitlin Doughty, Douglas Adams, Lindy West, Anthony Bourdain, Edgar Allen Poe. if we're talking plays then Tony Kushner, Tectonic Theatre Project, Rajiv Joseph, Oscar Wilde

Random fact: there's a species of jellyfish that's functionally immortal - when injured it returns to a previous stage of its lifecycle and grows a new medusa. scientists don't know how many times it can do this / how long it can do it for - source

i'm tagging @secretartlair, @vukovich, @corvuscrowned, @helle-bored, @softlystarstruck, and @lou-isfake. no pressure, but i'd love to see your answers 🖤

[pin-striped-soup]

A sheet music cover image of “By the Watermelon Vine Lindy Lou” by Thos S. Allen; Boston, Massachusetts, 1904. Sheridan Libraries/Levy/Gado/Getty Images

[xtruss]

Certified as an aviator only two decades after the Wright brothers' first flight, Earhart used her fame to promote air travel and equal opportunities for women. Photograph By Sarah Leen, National Geographic Image Collection

Why Does Amelia Earhart Still Fascinate Us? The Missing Aviator Embraced The Modern World—In Technology, Women's Rights, and Celebrity Culture.

— By Rachel Hartigan | October 17, 2019

Alex Mandel first encountered Amelia Earhart on a summer afternoon while reading his father’s old magazines in the backyard of his childhood home in Odessa, Ukraine. “It was just a brief biography of her and a story of how she disappeared,” he said. That was enough.

For more than 30 years, Mandel has described himself as “an admirer of Amelia Earhart.” He met a fellow admirer and soulmate through what he calls the “Amelia community.” With her, he made a pilgrimage to all the important sites in Earhart’s life. These days he plans vacations around the Amelia Earhart Festival in Atchison, Kansas—where aficionados gather to savor all things Earhart in the town where she was born and locals come to enjoy the airshow and fireworks.

During the event last July, the mustached Ukrainian in suspenders could be found sharing his considerable knowledge with visitors to Earhart’s birthplace museum. When asked why the aviator has held his attention for so long, his answer is simple: “She was an inspiration.”

Fireworks explode during the Amelia Earhart Festival in Atchison, Kansas, while spectators watch from the lawn in front of Earhart's childhood home. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett’s, National Geographic

Although the distance that Mandel has traveled to feed his fandom is unusual, his fascination with Earhart is not. The aviator has managed to hold our collective attention for nearly a century—from 1928 when she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger (a death-defying feat at the time) through last August when Robert Ballard led a high-tech search for her lost plane.

Yet Earhart wasn’t the only daredevil female pilot breaking records during the early days of aviation. Ruth Nichols flew faster. Louise Thaden flew higher. Why is Earhart the one who still captures our imagination?

In some ways, she was groomed for it. That first flight across the Atlantic—on a plane dubbed the Friendship—was funded by Amy Phipps Guest, a wealthy woman whose family begged her not to make the flight herself. Instead, Guest hired publisher George Putnam to find a suitable female passenger. “There were other female pilots at the time, probably some that were better pilots than Amelia,” says Cynthia Putnam, George’s granddaughter. “But she fit the bill. She looked the part.” (George Putnam and Amelia Earhart married in 1931.)

Tall, lanky, and Midwestern, Earhart resembled Charles Lindbergh, the first aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic. “She is photographed before that first flight with lighting and from an angle that was very self-consciously stylized to resemble the way Charles Lindbergh had been photographed,” says Tracey Jean Boisseau, a historian at Purdue University. “They developed the name Lady Lindy, which she did not appreciate.”

When the Friendship landed in the United Kingdom in 1928, Amelia Earhart (center) captured the public's attention, although she'd only been a passenger on the trans-Atlantic flight. From left to right: Amy Guest sponsored the journey, Lou Gordon was the plane's mechanic, Wilmer Stultz piloted the plane, and Mrs. Foster Welch was the mayor of Southampton. Photograph By Bettmann, Getty Imagines

When the Friendship landed in London, the plane’s pilot and navigator were ignored by the crowds. Although Earhart had been merely a passenger or, as she put it, “a sack of potatoes,” she received all the accolades. She capitalized on the experience by writing a book and going on to become a public face for the new field of aviation.

But Earhart was determined to earn her adulation and prove—to men and women—that women could accomplish what men could. The more aviation feats performed by women, she wrote, “the more forcefully it is demonstrated that they can and do fly.” Four years after the flight of the Friendship, she flew solo across the Atlantic, becoming only the second person to do so.

Earhart landed near Derry, Northern Ireland, where her arrival left a mark that was felt beyond aviation, according to the city’s Amelia Earhart Legacy Association. “Women didn’t drive then, but Amelia arrived in a plane,” explained Nicole McElhinney, a group member who spoke at last summer’s Amelia Earhart Festival. “Women didn’t wear trousers, yet she was wearing a flying suit.” (Indeed, the farmers who first encountered her thought she was a boy.) Instead, at a time when women’s suffrage was still new, she demonstrated what women could do.

In 1932, Amelia Earhart made a solo flight across the Atlantic, becoming only the second person to do so after Charles Lindbergh. She landed in a field near the city of Derry in Northern Ireland. Photograph By Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo, Alamy

“She wanted equal marriages and she wanted equal opportunity in all occupations and she wanted equal pay for equal work,” says Amy Kleppner, who accepted an award at the festival on behalf of her mother Muriel, Earhart’s younger sister.

That may be why she seems so modern. She was a pioneer—in the fight for women’s equality, in the world-changing development of aviation, and in crafting a public image during a new era of celebrity culture. And she did it all with an aw-shucks modesty that suggested that anyone could accomplish what she did, as long as they were doing it for “the fun of it.”

“She embodied many good values for people in general and Americans in particular,” says Mandel.

But perhaps the reason Amelia Earhart is still with us as an icon is that she vanished without a trace just short of a historic achievement. “She doesn’t die of old age, she doesn’t die of disease, she doesn’t die in front of our eyes even in an explosion,” says Boisseau. “She dies in the way most conducive to legend building—out of sight and somewhat mysteriously.”

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while attempting to become the first aviators to circumnavigate the globe at the equator. They were aiming for Howland Island, a speck in the Pacific, and couldn’t find it. They only had two more legs of their record-breaking journey to go.

A painting of the plane that Amelia Earhart called the "little red bus"—the Lockheed Vega 5B that carried her across the Atlantic—is displayed at the aviator's birthplace museum in Atchison, Kansas. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic

Generations have puzzled over what really happened to her. Did she crash the plane and sink to the bottom of the ocean? Did she land on a deserted island and die a castaway? Was she captured by the Japanese? They’ve searched underwater and on deserted islands, in colonial archives and the New Jersey suburbs, and even in the basement of her childhood home for clues to the fate of the missing aviator—so far without any definitive answers.

“The mystery is part of why, anytime you talk about important women, she’s always in the conversation,” says Jacque Pregont, who coordinates the festival in Atchison. “I hope they never find her.”

[stmaryslibraryios]

The Rose Garden by Tracy Rees

The Rose Garden by Tracy Rees (Historical romance fiction)

Recommended to me by Lesley Jones.

Set in & around Hampstead London 1895.   Teenager Mabs disguises as a boy so she can work on the canals earning a pitiful wage to support her dad & siblings.  She has to disguise herself as females aren't allowed to do this work.  Her mum had died nearly a year ago leaving 7 children & a grieving husband who all live in squalor in a small tenement room.  Her dad is depressed & likes his drink so it falls to Mabs, the eldest, to support them.

Mabs friend Lou hears about a job which would suit Mabs perfectly - a companion to Mrs Finch who has a mysterious illness.  The Finch family have recently moved to London from Durham leaving behind scandal.  Mabs is uneducated, can’t read or write, so doesn't think she stands a chance of being successful but to her surprise she is offered the position with a decent wage, lovely room & free food.  However, she soon realises that things aren't all they seem in this household full of secrets & lies.

Olive Westallen lives nearby in a big house with her very wealthy & influential parents.  She is in her late 20’s, radical in her ideas, unmarried and a great believer in education & liberation for women.   As the paths of Mabs, Olive & 12yr old Otty Finch cross they become unlikely friends helping each other through the dramas to come.  The story behind Clover, Olives adopted daughter, seemed rather unfinished though.

This is not my normal ‘cup of tea’, it was an easy, twee, predictive read where everything works out just perfect for all.  Although it did keep me reading, there was not enough drama or suspense for it to be in my favourites but for those who like predictable, well written historical romance I’m sure they would enjoy it.  Ps if ever it is televised I could imagine Miranda Hart As Olive.

Review by Lindy

[10oclockdot]

True/False 2017 Festival Report, part 2:

in which I give capsule reviews of films that I viewed on March 4 and 5, the last two days of this year's True/False, in order of best to worst. Part 1 here.

The War Show (Andreas Dalsgaard, Obaidah Zytoon, 2016) Imagine Five Broken Cameras, but in Syria. Mix in a deeply wise coming-of-age story that tragically spirals into a tale of existential perdition with poetic voice-over to rival The House is Black and ending with the most clear-throated call for piece I've heard in ages. That's The War Show, and that description doesn't do justice to this rich, multi-modal, and severely underappreciated film. It all begins with Obaidah Zytoon, a young woman who liked shooting home movies with her friends (and who became the film's director), playing forbidden music as a DJ on a Syrian radio station. "Going on air was like dancing in a mine field," she recalls. As the anti-Assad protests begin, she films the people marching with her. "I'm doing it to breathe," says a kid named Nawarah. A bevy of catchy chants fill the air with the bracing spirit of revolution. And so we meet her exuberant friends -- Houssam, her lover, Lulu, a friend who removes her hijab for the first time, Hisham, Lulu's boyfriend and a poet, and more. But even as their spirits remain high and the crowds swell, "demonstrations turned into funerals," she tells us. Journalists are targeted, the country's "senses polluted" by the ensuing flow of disinformation. "No one raised in Syria can define freedom," says one of her comrades. Dozens of locals show off scars left by torture at the hands of the Assad regime. The friends take one final trip, and then, out of nowhere, they start to be arrested, kidnapped, houses destroyed, one is even killed, the halcyon opening smashed. As the film goes on and the madness of the conflict spirals ever farther away from believability, I found myself lost -- I didn't know where we were, when we were, or what to believe. Intelligently, the film doesn't attempt an encyclopedic or journalistic account of the conflict -- it would be impossible as yet anyway -- so what we're left with are fragments that we can barely situate or hold onto. Scenes of destruction, of protests and counter-protests between those wanting democracy and those wanting a caliphate, children playing with unsafed rifles, and, of course, an inside look into how a revolution gets co-opted by warlords and arms dealers, each staging some unreality for YouTube to further their financial cause. "There was a place for everyone in the war show," Obaidah explains, "except for the people." Many moments of brilliance follow after this, but it culminates in the very final scene of the film, just as a felt most poetically and tragically lost (which, of course, is the point). After years of prison, a disappeared friend returns unexpectedly, reconciling the lives of the few friends who remain. "Syria as we know it is gone," she intones, but kneels over a clay pot, gathering soil and planting seeds, and she says of the Syrian people, "We will plant the seed of peace around the planet." And there it is: the powerful, beautiful, perfect message of The War Show -- that the Syrian diaspora is, contrary to what every xenophobic isolationist asshole has ever said, the greatest peace movement of the 21st Century. Because the Syrian people, each scarred by the madness of their country's war, will carry the scars of that war their entire lives, scars that will always speak to the necessity of peace, wherever they live and as long as they live. It's an essential message and an essential film.

Brimstone and Glory (Viktor Jakovleski, 2017) I guess that in the back of my mind, I knew that documentary could be pure spectacle -- what, after all, are IMAX documentaries? -- but I never imagined I'd spend fully half of a feature length documentary leaning forward, mouth agape, absolutely in awe of the visceral madness taking place in front of me. Brimstone and Glory is a documentary about fireworks -- specifically the absolutely bonkers annual fireworks festival in Tultepec, Mexico, where half the buildings in town are labeled "Peligro" (they build the fireworks there, year-round), where they erect hundred-foot-high towers of fireworks (castles of fire, they call them) and where they build sculptures of bulls the size of buses and run them through downtown, shooting fireworks off of them into crowds of thrill-seeking and oft-injured spectators. Director Viktor Jakovleski spent went three years in a row, shooting with drone cameras, an arsenal of Go-Pro's, and cinematographers covered head-to-toe in protective gear diving headlong into the middle of the mayhem. Add to that eruptive sound design, sharp editing, and a driving original score co-written by Behn Zeitlin (the guy who directed and wrote the music for Beasts of the Southern Wild), and you've got one of the best adrenaline rushes you can get sitting still in a seat. Best moment: as they're setting up the castles of fire, lightning strikes one of them, setting it alight. Cut to the perspective of a Go-Pro mounted on a man's head whose job it is to rapidly scale the wooden tower without a safety harness and put things in order. Damn.

Manifesto (Julian Rosefeldt, 2017) Extreme close-up, shallow-focus, ultra-slow-motion: a fuse burns across the screen, sending sparks in all directions while Cate Blanchett quotes some delicious gobbledegook from Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto, culminating with, "I am neither for nor against and I do not explain because I hate common sense." Thus began a film that refused common sense and did not explain itself. Cut to old women shooting off fireworks over some abandoned Eastern bloc factory or weather station. As a drone camera flies over the tumbledown complex, we find Cate Blanchett, dressed as a shabby character that recalls Denis Lavant's Monsieur Merde, dragging a suitcase through the ruins and quoting Marx. In a flash, the opening credits are a barrage: huge white block letters on a black background, the names of artists and thinkers who wrote manifestos, each on screen for about a third of a second, like a stripped-down Enter the Void. The ensuing 90-minute film follows Blanchett as she dons a dozen different disguises in a dozen different environments -- from a puppet shop to a garbage processing facility to an anechoic chamber, all brilliantly photographed -- and speaks excerpts from a few dozen manifestos from across the last century and a half. To be clear, this is not a documentary. In fact, it began as a 13-channel video installation that editor Bobby Good transformed into a feature. Though most of the audience was probably befuddled and confused about the origin of these words (the film does not caption the quotations), they were generally amused by the absurdity of deterritorializing the tone of the manifesto into more quotidian environments (a highlight: Blanchett as a news anchor conversing with Blanchett as a field reporter in a rainstorm). I enjoyed the handsome cinematography and the Nils Frahm score, but I had the most fun whenever I recognized the origin of the words: Maciunas, Lewitt, Jarmusch, Brakhage, and a few others. As for the words I didn't recognize ("Equal rights for all materials," "One dies as a hero or an idiot, which is the same thing," "Elephants are very big and cars go very fast, but so what?"), I looked a bunch of them up and learned something. A nice provocation of a film. Perfect for screening the last week of a class on avant-garde art history.

Distant Constellation (Shevaun Mizrahi, 2017) A lovely, slow-moving film made of lovely slow-moving and somewhat haunting images. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts, making it a film that's not especially worth seeking out, but a few of the images will probably stick with me. In Istanbul, languid shots of a building under construction intercut with languider scenes of life in a retirement home. It all seems to take place neither in the past, nor the present, nor the future, but a place disconnected from time, where the overworked young build a future that won't happen while the un-visited old disappear from a past equally unreachable. Two old men ride up and down on an elevator in order to have a private conversation with each other. A very old woman who insists on being known by a pseudonym (Selma) falls asleep in the middle of an interview. One old codger, not without some charm, recounts the sexual exploits of his youth before proposing marriage to the director, saying she'll surely outlive him, which would make the marriage to her advantage. A stopped clock labeled USSR sits next to a working Western one. An old woman complains that now she walks too slowly to make it all the way across the street while the walk sign is on. The rhythms of the modern world aren't kind to everyone, but as tales of the Armenian genocide reveal, perhaps the world was never all that kind. So this constellation drifts on, and fades away.

Still Tomorrow (Fan Jian, 2016) A woman with cerebral palsy living in a remote Chinese village writes a poem that gets shared a million times on Chinese Facebook and scores her a book deal. That sounds like a good hook for a documentary, but the film lacks a clear shape or direction. For the most part, Yu Xiuhua spends the film not charismatically soaking up her newfound fame (though there's a bit of that, and it's really fun), but rather fighting with and divorcing a husband she's never loved. That focus feels strange until you notice that the poetry isn't really the object of investigation here, but rather the abuse which lower-class disabled people suffer in exchange for a caregiver. Sadly, this theme receives scant development. Still, there's plenty of her lovely poetry on display. "Silent wheat in the moonlight / the frictions between them / are the trembling of all the things of the earth." Here the image shows a wheatfield near her home. It's a choice not entirely without grace, but when a documentary's images cannot stand alongside its subject's words, the project falters.

Lindy Lou, Juror #2 (Florent Vassault, 2017) I desperately wanted to like this film. Lindy Lou served on a jury two decades ago that sent a murderer to death row. There's no doubt the man was guilty, but in the intervening years Lindy Lou has come to deeply regret this decision. So she and the documentarian travel around Mississippi tracking down her fellow jurors and finding out whether any of them changed their minds. It's a clear spine with clear motivation and all, but the structure ends up deeply limiting the film, since many of the people she goes to talk to aren't all that interesting people to talk to. The film was at its best when one of the jurors who'd also felt pangs of guilt years later suggests that their ought to be a state-funded counseling service for jurors who have to do such work. In the Q&A after the film, Lindy Lou, who was there in person, suggested that the trauma experienced by jurors on such cases was a bit like the trauma experienced by soldiers -- and she ought to know, she's a veteran herself. But she made the mistake of mentioning the film American Sniper to the fairly liberal crowd at T/F, which drew a couple of muted snarls from people seated near me. And in that moment I realized that even if Lindy Lou's on the right side of the death penalty debate, the Confederate flag flying on her property and her husband's gun enthusiasm (both depicted in the film) put her in such a different world from many of the folks in the audience that effective bipartisan collaboration might be impossible. I rarely learn more from the Q&A than from the film, but that was the case here.

[cruisinfdr]

[ttexed2-blog]

[homospinster]

you know what? i support her. warhol can suck it.

ps. Lindy Lou Who

[no-reply95]

“It was Mimi’s first real encounter with Beatles fans, and her enduring opinion of their collective character was based on the visitors this spring Sunday afternoon. When, in 1977, she wrote ‘There is a big difference in intelligence and lively outlook in the girls who like John and those who go for the other Beatles - this has long been clear to me from the very beginning’, she was (a) being typically snobbish; (b) broadly correct; and (c) thinking of Lindy and Lou”

Mark Lewisohn, Tune In

[awardseason]

23rd Costume Designers Guild Awards — Film Winners

EXCELLENCE IN PERIOD FILM Emma. – Alexandra Byrne Judas and the Black Messiah – Charlese Antoinette Jones Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – Ann Roth — WINNER Mank – Trish Summerville One Night in Miami – Francine Jamison-Tanchuck

EXCELLENCE IN SCI-FI/FANTASY FILM Dolittle – Jenny Beavan Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey – Michael Wilkinson Mulan – Bina Daigeler — WINNER Pinocchio – Massimo Cantini Parrini Wonder Woman 1984 – Lindy Hemming

EXCELLENCE IN CONTEMPORARY FILM Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar – Trayce Gigi Field Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) – Erin Benach Da 5 Bloods – Donna Berwick Promising Young Woman – Nancy Steiner — WINNER The Prom – Lou Eyrich