#mina watches iwtv

[jewishdainix]

France exists to teach us all a very important listen: do not date blond men

[icarus-suraki]

1, 7, and 9 for the movie ask!

It occurs to me that I could just answer Goncharov (1972) for all of these…

Movie Questions Ask Bait!

->what is your favorite film of all time? Very possibly Mad Max: Fury Road. That movie rewired my brain. That movie scraped the rust off my soul. That movie sneaked up behind me and stole my spine. And it was great.

I literally went to see it in the theater seven (7) times. Seven. If you dig back in my blog here to June 2015, you'll see that this place was full of Fury Road. Stills, gifs, music, meta, fic, shitposts, all of it. All of it.

Sidebar: I think my absolute love of Fury Road is what's keeping me from wanting to see the new Furiosa prequel: Fury Road didn't explain everything to death so we, the fandom, had a great time imagining explanations or making things up. We dissected that movie and we also left it alone. I don't want to know too much. I like that world being left a partial mystery. We, like Max, get thrown into it and we're both figuring out how it works as the story progresses. I love that.

I can't exactly explain why I love it so much. The colors, the action, the fight scenes, the music (holy shit the music), the characters, the weirdness, the story itself, the callbacks and parallels, the newness and the oldness of it (it really is a train robbery movie at its core), the sense (ultimately) of hope, the presences of women (old women even!) in action roles… Something about it, maybe everything about it, were just perfect for me at that time and in that place.

Yeah. Favorite movie ever.

->name a movie you’re emotionally attached to? There's so many ways I could take this. Positive attachment? Negative attachment? Very Strange Time in My Life attachment?

Like, I know I can never watch L'Illusionniste, Les Triplettes de Belleville, or Grave of the Fireflies again because I cried just too fucking hard at each of them, which I think is an emotional attachment.

Or I could say the Lord of the Rings movies (all of them). They came out when I was in college and a handful of us were counting down the days to the premiere, watching this miniscule clip of video taken by a fan from a train that showed a glimpse of the Minas Tirith set endlessly, gobbling up any news or leak or rumor about production on Livejournal, engaging in the fandom of that era (which was a whole thing in and of itself), even going to midnight local premiers. So while I'm not a huge fan of the movies, they certainly were a constant presence in my undergrad days.

Or it could be the other movies that rewired my brain: Mad Max: Fury Road (see above), Princess Mononoke (baby's first Studio Ghibli film in 1999 at the local art house theater), Star Wars (only episodes 4, 5, and 6 though; I kind of deny that any others exist), Kiki's Delivery Service (which I had on VHS in college and would watch when I was stressed and depressed because I love the city), Voices of a Distant Star (the concept really got me)…

Or it could be the kids' movies from my own childhood, you know? Robin Hood (1973) is very near and dear to my heart. And Panda and the Magic Serpent is what started me down the weaboo road way back when I was 6 years old.

There's so many possible answers here. But that's a few movies I have emotional attachments to. How's that?

->guilty pleasure movie? Do I have to? Okay, okay, okay: I like a good cheesy, gory giallo movie, red tempra paint blood and all. Spaghetti westerns are amazing with their half-understandings or misunderstandings of USAmerican history to the point that it becomes something different, something bigger and more epic (I love The Good, The Bad and the Ugly so much). Martial arts movies full of dramatic scenes and wire-fu are so much fun (and I get to practice my Mandarin or my Japanese). Gothic drama, especially from the 1990s, is great like the original IwtV, Crimson Peak, The Crow…

But I paid actual, real, hard-earned money for a (digital) copy of Bloodsport and it's so bad. It's so bad! But I love it--maybe as much for meta reasons as anything.

Like, the whole thing is based on this Canadian-American guy Frank Dux's memoirs about being trained in ninjutsu by a mysterious Senzo "Tiger" Tanaka (who probably didn't exist at all and has the same name as a character in You Only Live Twice) and then going on to compete in this international full-contact underground martial arts competition in Hong King (the "Kumite"). Oh and he was also in the military at the time, doing covert missions, so he had to go AWOL to fight in this competition of course. Which he does without being caught. And he keeps outsmarting the CID officers (one of whom is played by a young Forest Whitaker) when they chase him to Hong Kong, meanwhile picking up an April O'Neill-style beautiful American journalist ("reporter" because it's the 1980s).

The whole thing is so clearly ridiculous bullshit but it's marketed as being based on a true story because Frank Dux insisted his bullshit was true. And it was produced by Cannon Films, which is another can of worms entirely (I highly recommend the documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films for more backstory on the company; it is bonkers). And did I mention that Frank Dux is played by Jean-Claude van Damme? And yes he does do the most epic of splits.

And the whole thing is simultaneously so deep in meta layers (self-proclaimed martial arts masters, which ties into Count Dante and the dojo wars, Frank Dux's amazing bullshit and stolen valor, Cannon Films) and yet so incredibly shallow at the same time.

There's minimal plot, zero depth to the characters, massively long flashback sequences, even longer training montages, a totally ridiculous amalgamation of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures into just "Asian Culture," the dubbing in some scenes is practically criminal, there's minimal exploration of the location (Hong fucking Kong!!!) outside of a chase and a throwaway scene about bad restaurant food, and even the fight scenes during the tournament aren't really all that great.

But the Kowloon Walled City gets some screentime (except that it's just a set sometimes). And there are tons of locally-hired extras and bit players, along with a slew of international actors and/or actual martial artists, even if a lot of them have been cast as nationalities other than their own???--like Bernard Mariano, who is Filipino by descent but was born in Hong Kong, had no martial arts experience but got scouted while he was working out, was cast as a "Middle Eastern" fighter named Hossein, but used his pay from the movie for university classes to go on to be an English teacher in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Jean-Claude van Damme is busy taking his shirt off and wearing super tight spandex underwear (he snaps them in one scene; you're welcome). Leah Ayres is a "reporter," which is really "journalist" and one of the few adventurous jobs acceptable for women in 1980s movies to have, who maybe lives in Hong Kong or maybe doesn't but she's super cute and deserves better than she got in the script; she's The Girl (Leah Ayres is now into pseudoscience). And Donald Gibb is playing this American bar brawler who somehow got invited to this elite fighting tournament and he looks like Kurt Russell in The Thing if he were still infected by the Thing and living out on the ice alone.

Like, I could just keep going. I love this shit. There is so little that's "good" in terms of filmmaking, scriptwriting, cinematography, anything in this movie and yet it entertains the fuck out of me.

Hence: guilty pleasure film.

[meerawrites]

why do you like the vampire chronicles?

- a fellow fan

Ooh boy, this will probably be an essay blog post at some point, but, I shall endeavour to give the TLDR version to the best of my present ability. None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are and memory is a monster.

Do not ask me to recall my age, I am 20 now, though I often feel like Louis and Lestat, inhuman and haven't been human for 200 years. Plus the pandemic destroyed my sense of time.

Before the pandemic, a dear friend of mine introduced me to gothic literary vampires, I had just read Shelley's Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray of my own accord, and he cast me as Mina Murray-Harker in his production of Dracula (1897) opposite one of my best friends as Lucy Westenra himself as Jonathan and one of our aspiring villain actors as Count Dracula himself. I then got hooked on Dracula (the 1897 novel) and following that I wanted more vampires. We watched the 1994 IWTV Neil Jordan film together and I immediately took Lestat as my pathetic bi meow meow. I read the 1976 novel not that far after and started role-playing and cosplaying Lestat as soon as I understood him enough to make him my bi pathetic meow meow. I wouldn't pick up the chronicles again until catholic school and the move to Canada.

When I was in middle school I was a constant victim of bullying, mostly by the white rich kids for being brown, and vaguely gothic in inclinations and "witchy" and "other." My dad was also emotionally overbearing and expected a lot at an early age from me. He has since gotten better and I'm no longer anyone's victim, but, it's worthwhile to note I was victimized (past tense) for a long time. I've also had my fair share of misogyny + anti brown racism flung at me, and I am bi and genderqueer. For the record I forgive my middle school bullies, we were simply kids who didn't know better. Now, do better. I've also been the victim of emotional abuse and gaslighting, while it never escalated to physical that sort of violence even if emotional violence sticks with you. But as mentioned, victimized, in past tense.

I moved to Canada and suffered the indignity of the Catholic school system. I quit after a year and after their queerphobia made international news. But not before a brief run as a spiteful bi as fuck atheist and picking up The Vampire Lestat, finally.

Before the pandemic, I felt like Louis de Pointe du Lac and Mona Mayfair, during the pandemic and in catholic school I felt like Nicolas de Lenfent, following the pandemic and up til the present I aspire to be something of a Lestat de Lioncourt and Rowan Mayfair meaning less cynical, unlearning my shame, confident, clever at least intellectually but foolishly in love with the beauty of humanity. Now, we're here.

IWTV 1994 lost in adaptation

Vampire Reviews: IWTV 1994 ft @elisaintime

What Constitutes Evil?

Vampire Reviews: The Vampire Chronicles ft @elisaintime

Vampire Reviews: The Vampire Lestat ft @elisaintime

Late Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice remembered by trans woman she helped come out.

Tagging: @covenofthearticulate, @monstersinthecosmos, @elisaintime & @the-brat-prince-1760, @dontbesylly & @i-want-my-iwtv (no pressure to reply, I just thought y'all would appreciate this story).

[cature]

characters. susan pevensie, himari takakura, blair waldorf, clara oswald, odette (bluth animation), celia bowen, kirakishou, clara / the changeling (patho), mina harker, arabella strange, nicolas de lenfent, faith lehane, abigail hobbs, olivia dunham, river tam, wendy darling, lelouch vi britannia, xie lian, alice morgan.

listen. boygenius, carly rae jepsen, dashboard confessional, death cab for cutie, debussy, deco*27, ellie golding, fall out boy, fiona apple, frank turner, ghost quartet, green day, james morrison, loona, majiko, mayday parade, meg and dia, my chemical romance, natori, orla gartland, paramore, perfume, radwimps, regina spektor, slipknot, stormzy, taylor swift, the 1975, the decemberists, the used, the weepies, thriving ivory, yoh kamiyama, you me at six. [insane playlist here.]

play. 1bitheart, arkham asylum, caligula effect, corpse party, dgrp, dead space, death mark, deemo, fate extra, honkai impact, legend of zelda (ocarina), lobotomy corp, nanastars, outlast, oxenfree, pathologic, payday, persona, pixel horror, red candle, resident evil, rumu, silent hill, sims, skullgirls, transistor, undertale, until dawn, warhammer, we know the devil, yume nikki.

read. animorphs, cheese in the trap, clamp, cold comfort farm, discworld, dungeon meshi, fables, hooky, inso’s law, iwtv, jjk, live forever, lotr, more than human, morning glories, narnia, old kingdom, orange, pandora hearts, rubyquest, shinshi doumei cross, strange tales of oscar zahn, sweet home, the house on falling star hill, the night circus, the red country, tokyo ghoul, uglies, uzumaki, watership, wmmap, witch hat atelier, x-men, yumi’s cells.

watch. 28 days later, 30 days of night, ahs coven, baccano, btvs, code geass, critrole, death parade, doctor who (classic, big finish, new, novelizations) firefly, fringe, fdtd, got, ginger snaps, goblin, gossip girl, hellboy, i am in eskew, juni taisen, justified, kiznaiver, labyrinth, les mis, luther, magpod (s5 hater), motorcity, mxtx, netflix haunting, no. 6, penguindrum, precure, princess tutu, rozen maiden, the thick of it, tmfu film, yorimoi, zankyou no terror.

[aneonbullet]

For the movie ship: True Romance, the Harry Potter series, and Bram Stoker's Dracula. :-)

@maggiemitchellclark || xo

True Romance

( I haven’t watched this in a long, long time, so I might have to skip this one! )

——

Harry Potter

my all-time ultimate fave character: sirius black

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: voldemort

a character I used to like but now don’t: bellatrix

a character I’m indifferent about: ginny

a character who deserved better: snape

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: lucius / narcissa

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: remus / tonks

a cute, low-key ship: luna / neville

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: hermione / sirius

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: harry / ginny

my favourite storyline/moment: sirius asking harry to live with him / sirius telling harry they can be a proper family once everything is over and settled / or just everything involving sirius that doesn’t involve his death

a storyline that never should have been written: SIRIUS’ DEATH / snapes death / cedrics death / freds death / dobbys death / hedwigs death /

my first thoughts on the film (s): I watched them consecutively from the very first film that was released and it gave me something to look forward to. I think they were my favourite films then, and for a long while after, but the deaths and such, I never get over.

my thoughts now: as mentioned above, I love them very much, but the sadness does linger. I always feel a wave of nostalgia when watching them all again.

——

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

my all-time ultimate fave character: vlad

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: jonathan

a character I used to like but now don’t: renfield

a character I’m indifferent about: van helsing

a character who deserved better: VLAD / maybe lucy too

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: mina / jonathan

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: mina / vlad

a cute, low-key ship: jack / lucy

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: are there any unpopular ships??

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: same as above

my favourite storyline/moment: vlad finally finding mina, telling her who he really is and yet, she still confesses that she loves him, regardless

a storyline that never should have been written: ‘ mans deceipt ‘ just because I hate the fact that he lost elisabeta due to people telling her he’d died in battle

my first thoughts on the film: this was my second introduction to vampires after iwtv and vlad fast became my second favourite fictional vampire / I have major love for it and no one can really top gary’s performance in that role

my thoughts now: same as above, it holds a special place in my heart

[jewishdainix]

I wish daniel was my therapist man. And I know I know wishing he was my therapist is just loke wishing House was your doctor but what can I do? It's not my fault hes good at uncoveeing memories and would be perfect for the job

[jewishdainix]

See thisd never happen to me cause I would never fall for a blond guy

[jewishdainix]

EJKEKSJDJEJWKKE

[jewishdainix]

This is just like a slenderman musical by paul shapera

[jewishdainix]

Wait if this guy is named rashid whos the one named armand

[jewishdainix]

Oh my god theyre both french.... its meamt to be

[jewishdainix]

Claudia and madeline are going to be the bitchiest couple ever i am so here for it

[jewishdainix]

This show has so many les mis references in it

[jewishdainix]

THE SEWERS! WOO!

[jewishdainix]

I think he might be schizophrenic

[jewishdainix]

Whats crazy here that plays at this moment in the episode is the same note before the ai in frankenstein by the mechanisms tells frankenstein that it wants her to create another mind like its own