#poe johnson

[fanhackers]

Transformative Works and Culture journal new issue out!

The editorial reflects on the directions the journal intends to take. To us, Fanhackers, one sentence inmediately seems relevant.

(…) we continue to resist the tendency within fan studies’ spaces, both casual and academic, to speak about fandom as if it’s a contiguous whole rather than encompassing an enormous variety of people, cultures, practices—and conflicts.

Fanhackers’ own mission is to connect fandom studies that is casual with the one that’s academic. The journal’s focus falls not necessarily connecting these discussions but to expand what academic fandom studies can cover by

(speaking) with potential authors over the past year, including especially those who may not think of what they do as fitting into the field because of who and what they are studying

In the editorial, this expansion is related to an important statement.

It is not uncommon to hear or read words such as “fandom has a whiteness problem,” or “fandom has a race problem,” but neither of those statements are true. There are and have always been Black fandoms, and Indigenous fandoms, and Latinx fandoms, and Asian fandoms, and fandoms of and for people whose identities exist outside of Western-dominant racial formations. Fandom does not have a whiteness problem. White fandoms have a whiteness problem. 

I like, therefore, to say that it is white fandom studies that has a whiteness problem, oftentimes, though, discussion doesn’t name fandom studies as such and scholarship that doesn’t center whiteness the same way might not be included in histories of fandom studies. Then, this expansion needs not only to include new scholarship but by rethinking what our scholarship includes.

In this, the efforts of fandom and fandom studies should be connected.

[krypticcafe]

Mfs be like "oh he's my babygirl<3" or "he whimpers fr" or "submissive and breedable". And then the whole character tag is like FULL of that character being dominant and topping the reader. Ummm?? Excuse me, but I thought we were gonna be making them ride us until all that's left are pretty little tears, nonsensical babbling, constant begging, relentless whimpering, knees buckling, thighs trembling, hips twitching, frantic gripping, feverish sobbing, and loud moaning, all from a hot, needy mess desperate for release???

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Kitsunes in love

Neil Gaiman: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the kitsune in love Kij Johnson: oh this sounds great Lafcadio Hearn: AHEM Hearn: i'll be the judge of that Hearn: you baka gaijin Gaiman: this is a tale of that ineffable madness that seizes the young and emboldens the old, cruel in its kindness and kind in its cruelty Gaiman: beautiful in its ugliness and ugly in its beauty Gaiman: i speak, my friends Gaiman: of love Gaiman: simply love

Gaiman: i speak of love as a singular force spiraling through the cosmos, unemcumbered by modular time Gaiman: love which speaks in gentle tones but will not be denied Gaiman: so powerful as to make a pauper of a king and a king of a pauper

Gaiman: to understand my story, you must remember the feelings of love Gaiman: to feel in the depths of that frenzy, unable to breathe for feelings too big to contain Gaiman: do you understand? can you feel it? King: Poe: Barker: Lovecraft: Koontz: Gaiman: then i'll begin

Gaiman: so it came to pass in the mysterious cloudlands of the distant east that a kitsune and a badger made a bet- Hearn: IT'S NOT A BADGER YOU BAKA GAIJIN Hearn: IT'S CALLED A TANUKI Hearn: GET IT RIGHT! Hearn: GET IT RIGHT!!!

Yoshitaka Amano: hey i illustrated your story, what do you think? Gaiman: huh, good but Gaiman: could you make the figures more wan? Amano: which ones? Gaiman: oh you know Gaiman: all of them Amano: ok how's this Gaiman: no no Gaiman: more wan

[twixnmix]

Andy Warhol, Amos Poe, James Baldwin, Nicole Wisniak, Jodie Foster, and Jed Johnson at the Casino de Deauville during the Deauville American Film Festival, September 1977.

[djarinsphere]

no one can convince me the last jedi is a bad movie

[gunnrblze]

Ajax’s little picture on the wall of Rorkes kill list…your honor he’s adorable (;_;)

Additional thought; who are these two? Perhaps Torch and Grim, since they’re the only other Ghosts missing/dead?

[rowinablx]

We were supposed to actually get Rey and Poe but Rian Johnson forced Reylo in??!???

[dalekofchaos]

Context

Context for choice 3.

Here is what I mean about The New Republic and The First Order.

What happens after you win a war? How do you not make the same mistakes or become the thing you fought. What happens in a power vacuum? The New Republic should have been the dominant emerging power, and the Remnant should have been a small, secretive, unknown order, striking strategically from the Unknown Regions where they hid, and causing fear and panic to spread in the NR. After the Galactic Civil War, The New Republic commanders the Imperial Fleet and starts protecting systems who join the NR, all while chasing down and fighting any of the Remnants (Moffs, Warlords, Crime Lords, etc) who have grabbed power in the resulting vacuum. We could have seen an evolution of ships from Old Republic to Empire to NR ones. They could have renamed Star Destroyers into Star Defenders. Hell, they could have had a Republic of independent systems, each with their own sizable military, so that power isn’t centralized.

But no, instead of telling an interesting story, we are force fed the recycled poorly written rehashed Rebels vs Empire and the Rebels are made to be weaker than The First Order. The First Order are a terrorist movement, they should not be reigning after Hosnian Prime’s destruction, ESPECIALLY AFTER LOSING STARKILLER BASE!

Choice 4. Here is how I would give Kylo Ren motivation as to why Ben Solo fell and his main motivation as Kylo Ren.

Choice 6. I don't think there was absolutely no need for a Palpatine clone and eventually Palpatine himself(🙄) we all knew what was happening around the time this trilogy was being made. Trump. Base Snoke around the mango Mussolini and his lunatic fringe followers. An Alt-Right cult leader who cultivates the worst people imaginable. All The First Order needed to be was pointing out The New Republic brought the galaxy to an age of scum and villainy. A lawless state that usurped the rightful rulers that brought law and order. Basically "Make the Galaxy great again with Imperial Greatness"

You see, originally Lucas was going to make Palpatine JUST a politician and base him around Richard Nixon.

“George Lucas has spoken on various occasions of the way that the Nixon administration and the Vietnam war had an important influence on how he shaped the plot of the early films in the saga. The impact that these two events had an American in the 1970s started him thinking about the ways in which democracies can sale and how they deteriorating to dictatorships when corruption goes unchecked. He’s quoted as saying that Nixon - Who he viewed as having subverted the Senate and as acting an increasingly imperialistic way - what is the direct inspiration for Emperor Palpatine the supreme leader of the evil Empire in the first Star Wars trilogy”

So I don't see why they couldn't do something similar with the CLEAR FUCKING EVIL going on in the world at the time this trilogy was being made. No Sith master was needed.

In this scenario, I would call The First Order, The Imperium

Now you might have questions. What about the Stormtroopers and Kylo?

Stormtroopers? Don’t abduct kids, nationalize and recruit them willingly. Abducting children and training them to be Stormtroopers instantly made The First Order out to be cartoonishly evil from the start. So what do you do instead? Use propaganda. Nationalize them. Make them believe The Empire was right and convince them that the life of a Stormtrooper will help bring order in a chaotic galaxy. We’ve seen cults do something similar, Far Right Wing groups do it and we’ve seen Trump radicalize and nationalize white supremacists, so it’s not impossible for The First Order to do the logical thing.

Finn only leaves because he sees they are murdering unarmed civilians and chooses to leave. He is an example that it isn't too late to leave harmful fringe cult movements.

So how would Ben turn in this scenario? He's radicalized by Snoke. Ben starts hearing passionate speeches in the senate and Ben is moved. "I know he opposes my mother, but he's making a lot of sense" "He's right, we need to bring order to the galaxy" and Ben is radicalized by this Imperium movement and what he believes is Snoke's righteous cause. To Snoke, Ben represents everything great about the Empire. Snoke collects Sith Holocrons and uses the holocrons to turn Ben Solo into Kylo Ren.

In this scenario, I wouldn't redeem Ben. He is far too gone. He's committed atrocities in Snoke's name, for The Imperium and to bring order to the galaxy. While Finn represents those who could break away from Right Wing movements and Cults. Kylo Ren is far too gone, he's radicalized to the point where he's a die hard believer like Hux and Phasma and he's willing to fight and die for this indoctrination.

Choice 11. The Episode IX rewrite with Ben living and Reylo ending

Choice 12. The original plan for the Sequel Trilogy was to just get three young directors together to direct the Sequel Trilogy. It was supposed to be JJ, Rian and Colin Trevorrow, but Colin's IX was bad and his Jurassic World trilogy was terrible. So I would make either Matt Reves or Greta Gerwig as the director for Episode IX and ideally they would plan the trilogy out together instead of JJ setting up Mystery Boxes and expecting Rian and others open said mystery boxes and Rian subverting expectations.

[artist-issues]

Why do I have to keep waking up to a world where Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker exists and burns down all the potential that the Sequels had

[weirdlookindog]

Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox, and Noble Johnson in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

[reyturnofbensolo]

Connix, Hugs, C-3PO, BB-8, Poe, Paige, Holdo, Leia, Chewbacca, Finn, and Rose!!!

[broitsf-ckingfreezing]

Anyone who loves Portal 2 will absolutely shit themselves laughing at the lemon bit in The Fall of The House of Usher

[dweemeister]

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

For the bookworms reading this, fair warning: there have been almost no faithful film adaptations of an Edgar Allan Poe work. In the absence of any cinematic-literary faithfulness to Poe’s bibliography, there still remains a plethora of big-screen Poe adaptations that, from a cinematic standpoint, are simply mesmeric to watch. Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, starring Béla Lugosi one year after his career-defining role in Dracula (1931) and released by Universal, is one of the earliest such adaptations. Its atmospheric filmmaking reminiscent of the tangled geometries of German Expressionism and Lugosi’s creepy turn in a starring role may make Poe loyalists furious, but one hopes they can also see the remarkable craft of this film, too.

Though lesser known than both Dracula and Frankenstein (1931), Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue came about due to legacies of both those productions. Following the successful release of Dracula in February 1931, Universal considered Lugosi as their go-to star for horror films. Producer Carl Laemmle Jr. – the son of Universal’s chief executive and co-founder, Carl Laemmle – wanted Lugosi to play Frankenstein’s monster (often mistakenly called “Frankenstein”), and even had Lugosi play the monster in several minutes of test footage. That footage, now lost, is one of horror cinema’s greatest sights unseen. Sometime after that test shoot, Universal gave director James Whale a first-choice pick for his next project after the rousing critical and commercial success of Waterloo Bridge (1931). Whale chose Frankenstein, requested a screenplay rewrite, and cast the British actor Boris Karloff in the role. As consolation, Lammle Jr. gave the Hungarian American Lugosi the starring role in Murders in Rue Morgue.

In a Parisian carnival in 1845, we find ourselves in a sideshow tent. There, Dr. Mirakle (Lugosi; meer-AH-cull, not to be pronounced like “miracle”) provides a presentation that is anything but the freak show the attendees are anticipating. He unveils an ape, Erik (Charles Gemora – an actor in an ape suit; some close-up shots are of an actual ape), whom he claims he is able to understand and converse with – even though Erik is unable to speak any human language. In the audience, Mirakle spots a young lady, Camille L’Espanaye (Sidney Fox), and asks her to be his intrepid volunteer for a demonstration. The demonstration goes awry, to the ire of both Camille and her fiancé, Pierre Dupin (Leon Ames). As Camille and Pierre exit the carnival, Mirakle orders his assistant, Janos (Noble Johnson), to trail them. Thus sets in motion the film’s grisly plot.

The film also stars silent film comic actor Bert Roach as one of Camille and Pierre’s friends, Betsy Ross Clarke as Camille’s mother, character actor D’Arcy Corrigan as the morgue keeper, and Arlene Francis (best known as a regular panelist on the game show What’s My Line?) as a prostitute.

Murders in the Rue Morgue, with a screenplay by Tom Reed (1925’s The Phantom of the Opera, 1931’s Waterloo Bridge) and Dale Van Every (1937’s Captains Courageous, 1942’s The Talk of the Town), is one of the most violent pre-Code horror films from the early synchronized sound years. It was so violent, in fact, that Universal’s executives harbored trepidation throughout its entire production and demanded narrative and structural changes that ultimately harmed the film (including cutting grotesque and violent sequences, leaving behind the current 62-minute runtime). The best example of this damage comes from the film’s opening third. Unbeknownst to the carnival attendees, Mirakle has been performing horrifying experiments involving cross-species blood mixing and, through heavy implication by the filmmaking and Gemora’s performance, bestiality (hey, it’s a pre-Code movie!). Originally, Florey’s adaptation of Murders in the Rue Morgue began with Mirakle and Janos abducting Arlene Francis’ streetwalker and Mirakle’s torturing and experimentation on her. Only after that did the film transition to Mirakle’s sideshow presentation.

The reordering of these two scenes – in the final print, the sideshow opens the movie and the abduction and experimentation follows a turgid romantic scene between Camille and Pierre – makes the sideshow opening seem sillier than it should be. If the original order had been kept, Florey’s initial intention to instill dread during the sideshow only after the abduction and experimentation scene – as the audience would be well aware of what Mirakle is capable of – would have made the film’s exposition feel far less stage-bound and hokey than it does. The abduction and experimentation scene’s blood-curdling horror remains (the scene contains a boundary-pushing combination of bestial and religious allusions that some modern filmmakers might not even dare to push), but the romantic scene immediately preceding makes for a rough tonal transition. In comparison to later horror films from the Hollywood Studio System released after stricter implementation of the Hays Code in 1934, these scenes – in addition to a later investigation and the film’s finale – hold up wonderfully.

Crucially, Tom Reed and Dale Van Every’s screenplay alter genres from Edgar Allan Poe’s original short story. With the introduction of hobbyist detective C. Auguste Dupin, Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a foundational piece of early Western detective fiction. Or, in Poe’s words, Murders in the Rue Morgue is a “ratiocination tale” – a name that was never going to catch on in any century. Poe’s Dupin, a character who later influenced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, undergoes a name change in Reed and Van Every’s adaptation, and we do not see nearly as much deduction and investigating here as in the short story. Reed and Van Every’s screenplay, which delete all but two scenes from the Poe short story, also elevate one of their own creations – Dr. Mirakle – at the expense of Dupin. In addition, it is clear early on who is responsible for the violent acts within the narrative. And, unlike the Poe’s original short story in which Dupin and the unnamed narrator read about the violence in the newspaper, the film shows these acts explicitly or the lead-up to them. Director Robert Florey’s film is decidedly a horror film, not a mystery.

Having Béla Lugosi in the cast in his first film after Dracula is a surefire way to confirm that you are making/watching a horror film. Reed and Van Every’s clunky dialogue might not do Sidney Fox and Leon Ames any favors, but it is a gift for Lugosi. Lugosi’s heavily accented English typecast him later in his career to mad scientist and vampire roles. Nevertheless, who else could stand there – with a mangled tuft of a wig, a makeup department-applied thick unibrow that appears to barely move, menacing lighting from a low angle – and tell Fox’s Camille (after receiving a gawking from Erik, the ape), “Erik is only human, mademoiselle. He has an eye for beauty,” with incredible conviction? The opening minutes of the film at the sideshow, because of the reordering of the film, are heavily expository and contain the bumpiest writing of the entire film. But Lugosi, with his signature cadence (notice how and when Lugosi uses silence and varies the speed of his phrasing – very few native English speakers naturally speak like that) and his physical acting, presents himself perfectly as the societal outsider – remarkably intelligent, but perhaps mentally unhinged. Lugosi’s performance completely outshines all others in this film. Here, in a magnificent performance, he confirms that his acting ability on display in Dracula was no fluke.

Early Universal Horror of the late silent era and early sound era owes a sizable debt to German Expressionism – a mostly silent film-era movement in German cinema in which filmmakers used distorted and geometrically unrealistic sets to suggest mental tumult and dread. Working alongside editor Milton Carruth (1932’s The Mummy,1943’s Shadow of a Doubt) and production designer Charles D. Hall (1925’s The Phantom of the Opera, 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front), cinematographer Karl Freund (1924’s The Last Laugh, 1927’s Metropolis) found a team of filmmakers that he could work with to set an aesthetic that could do justice to Murders in the Rue Morgue’s macabre plot.

It also helped that director Robert Florey wanted to make something that looked closer to Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919, Germany) than Dracula. Together, Freund and Florey worked with Hall to achieve a set design that created long shadows and crooked buildings and tents more likely to appear in a nightmare than in nineteenth century Europe. The final chase scene across angular and rickety rooftops used leftover sets from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). All this endows Murders in the Rue Morgue with a gruesome atmosphere, oftentimes cloaked in dust and early morning mist.

For Freund and Florey, each saw in the other a kindred spirit in their appreciation of German Expressionism. If they could not achieve just the right shadow, they would instead paint it onto the set itself (painting shadows was commonplace in German Expressionism, but never in Hollywood movies). To achieve the ideal lighting for some of the rooftop or near-rooftop scenes, they shot outdoors, in chilly autumn weather, past midnight – most black-and-white Old Hollywood films, due to technical limitations at the time, shot nighttime scenes inside soundstages. In an era where cameras usually stayed frozen in one place, Freund invented the unchained camera technique, allowing cameras to creep forward into a set rather than relying on a cut to a close-up. Though the unchained camera is not as present here as in other movies involving Freund as cinematographer, it makes the viewer feel as if they are moving alongside the crowd at the carnival, as well as imbuing the audience with a terrible anticipation for what terror lurks around the corner. Freund and Florey’s collaboration was one of like-minded men, with similar influences and goals. In what was their only film together, the two achieve an artistry with few similarities across much of American film history.

Initial reception to Murders in the Rue Morgue was cold, in large part due to the film’s shocking violence and awkward acting. Despite finishing the film under budget, Robert Florey hit the apex of his career with Murders in the Rue Morgue. The disapproval from Universal executives took its toll, and given that Florey was on a one-film contract with the studio, he never returned. The French American director would bounce around studios over the next decade – from Paramount to Warner Bros. back to Paramount to Columbia and back to Warner Bros. – mostly working on inexpensive B-pictures, occasionally making a hit such as The Beast with Five Fingers (1946). Florey spent his later career with television anthologies: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Four Star Playhouse, and The Twilight Zone.

For Lugosi, Murders in the Rue Morgue was the true first step for the horror film typecasting that he sought to avoid. Once considered by Universal’s executives to be the successor to the late Lon Chaney (The Man of a Thousand Faces passed away in 1930), the failure of Murders in the Rue Morgue among audiences and critics gave Universal pause when it came to extending Lugosi’s original contract. But the early 1930s were Lugosi’s most productive period in films, and they contained his finest, most memorable performances.

In recent decades, the reputation of Murders in the Rue Morgue continues to gradually improve, as do many films that once caused a stir due to their content during the pre-Code years. Awkward supporting actors aside, when one has Béla Lugosi cloaked in the shadows of German Expressionism and the spirit (albeit not so much intentions of the original text) of Edgar Allan Poe, what results is a foreboding work, one worthy to carry Universal’s horror legacy.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog. Half-points are always rounded down.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[stylesmilky]

Rey Kenobi is obsessed with her favorite author, Ben Solo-Dameron. Who just newly published a book that opens up about his life. Rey wants to be apart of that and as she gets close to him. She will do anything to be with him.

Please Read Tags and Leave a Cute Comment Please!]

[djarinsphere]

i will never understand how the same people that say “star wars is too reliant on nostalgia nowadays” and “the force awakens is a copy of a new hope” can hate on the last jedi, skeleton crew or even andor.

it’s baffling to me how these people can scream about star wars never doing anything new (as seen in many tv shows relying entirely on its titular character), but new things have been attempted while still being undeniably star wars!! look at andor, the last jedi and skeleton crew! they are right there!

the last jedi for example is trying to tell a new story while still keeping the key narratives of the star wars franchise: hope, redemption, rebellion…

it’s not reliant on nostalgia and tells an actual compelling story. it even gives old characters new arcs (LUKE!!) and explores them in whole new ways.

[gunnrblze]

Thinking about how all the other Ghosts reacted to and coped with the insanity of sand viper, especially with Captain Gabriel “I’m actually fine, thanks” Rorke, who’s XP apparently only doubled upon experiencing the trauma.

I imagine they all had various degrees of post traumatic stress from the event, specifically Keegan, Ajax, and Merrick, who were all under the age of 20 at the time (I stillll cannot believe that’s realistic in any way, but canon age is canon age lmfao). But I wonder just how much they were all affected and how it all played out.

An almost 30 year old Lieutenant Walker, around the age we see Hesh in the game, who had two little boys (and maybe a wife still) at home. Do you think he thought about them after he fought for the civilians in that hospital? How did he feel being second in command during such an unprecedented, transformative event not only for his career, but for the world, really. Who wouldn’t idolize Rorke to the highest degree after leading such a team to victory?

How did a 19 year old navy seal Merrick cope with what was probably one of the first more major combat missions of his career? He’d only been a seal for two years up until this point. Did he imagine his father and grandfather, if they’d be proud of him for getting through unscathed? Both men were killed in their own military careers, but Merrick made it through, with this new team. He wasn’t even old enough to buy a drink yet, but he could help take on 500 enemy soldiers.

Keegan and Ajax were 16 and 17, literal children, who couldn’t have had any fucking clue what they were really doing. Until they did. They had to. Did they ever imagine themselves in a classroom instead? Hanging out with their friends instead of hiding under their deceased bloodied bodies in the desert sand? Did anybody ever tell them they deserved that life instead of this one?

If we knew more of Kick, Neptune, Torch and Grim, more could be said of how they might’ve handled it. But how does one really handle fighting until their gun runs out of ammo, until their knife blade dulls against enemy skin, until they’re left to fight with just their bare hands? How do you look at yourself in the mirror after becoming part of a force “so menacing and unbeatable, it can only be described as supernatural” over the course of just three days?

So how, pray tell, do you cope when your Captain only acts more level headed after the matter? All of the remaining soldiers were put under psychological evaluation, and Rorke went unaffected by it all.

How did they feel watching Rorke slip through the cracks and come out the other side more calm? Three days and nights of hell, and their commanding officer just goes “well…anyways” I’d personally go even more insane from that alone I think.

And additionally, what carbon fiber steel nervous system does Rorke have anyways? To not be outrightly traumatized by such an event in the first place is one thing, but to become better because of it? Sharper and clearer and focused, while his comrades were no doubt riddled with anxiety and nightmares at the least? It’s giving robot!