#sydney forrest

[wilsons-three-legged-siamese]

just sayinggg i faceclaim syd to look like young joost klein

ESPECIALLYYY THIS ONE

[ask-head-of-cardio]

gonna kill house..

[wilsons-three-legged-siamese]

DID AN INFO SHEET ON SYDNEYY

[ask-head-of-cardio]

woahh how are we, lads?

[dreaming-of-addie]

sydluca legally blonde the musical au where carmy is warner and marcus,tina, and sugar are syds greek chorus and claire is vivian and richie is paulette and kyle is jessica

SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE THIS I BEG

[ask-head-of-cardio]

im invested in mel and ilijas relationship..

[guardianreadersofthegalaxy]

It's time once again for the Lo-scars! My awards for the best films of 2023:

Best Director

Daniel Goldhaber – How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Dean Fleischer-Camp – Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

Hirokazu Kore-eda – Broker

Paul King – Wonka

Tina Satter – Reality

Best Actress in a leading role

Rosy McEwan – Blue Jean

Lee Ji-eun – Broker

Olivia Colman – Empire Of Light

Sydney Sweeney – Reality

Thomasin McKenzie – Eileen

Best Actor in a leading role

Harris Dickenson – Scrapper

Nicholas Braun – Cat Person

Song Kang Ho – Broker

Best Actress in a supporting role

Bae Doona – Broker

Marin Ireland – Eileen

Rachel McAdams – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Best Actor in a supporting role

Forest Goodluck – How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Josh Hamilton & Marchánt Davis – Reality

Simu Liu – Barbie

Best performance by a child or animal

Abby Ryder Fortson – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Im Seung-soo – Broker

Lola Campbell – Scrapper

The Pigeon – Empire Of Light

Seeza Saroj Mehta – Jawan

Best Original Score

Chris Roe – Blue Jean

Disasterpiece – Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

Gavin Brivik – How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Jung Jaeil – Broker

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Empire Of Light

Best Picture

Avatar: The Way Of Water

Broker

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Wonka

Worst Title:

Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania (just call it ‘quANTuMANia’!)

Eileen (because I get the Dexy’s Midnight Runners song in my head)

No One Will Save You (generic; nothing to do with the film)

Best Title:

Cat Person (because it works on two levels!)

Extraction 2 (for keeping it simple)

How To Blow Up A Pipeline (because I get a little thrill every time I google it)

Best running theme:

Cute little creatures who’ve lost their families – Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3; Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

FBI interrogations about security clearance – Oppenheimer; Reality

Getting a working vagina – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Barbie

Getting revenge on environmentally disastrous industries – How To Blow Up A Pipeline; Jawan

Home invasion – Accused; No One Will Save You

Korean adoption – Broker; Return To Seoul

Making a bomb – How To Blow Up A Pipeline; Oppenheimer

Moving to the coast with your mixed-race family – Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret; Avatar: The Way Of Water

Setting fire to rich people – The Menu; Nocebo

The Runtime of Shame:

Avatar: The Way Of Water (3hrs, 12mins)

The Golden Scissors Award for Shortest Runtime:

Fallen Leaves (1hr, 21mins)

…And The Best Movie Moment!

The final confrontation – Cat Person

“I’m a lesbian” – Blue Jean

No Sleep Til Brooklyn – Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

Possession montage – Talk To Me

Zinda Banda – Jawan

[teamseaslug]

Frank Ocean makes it clear if he's singing about a man or a woman in the first line of his songs usually and that's why he works so well

[jessiejamesdeckers]

jessiejamesdecker: Happy Father’s Day to @ericdecker the best daddy to our babies💙 and Happy Father’s Day to all the amazing dads in our family💙 We love you💙

[coolasakuhncumber]

Found this sneaky park between Forrest Lodge and a glebe to read in while waiting for a mate

[messinwitheddie]

Hoola what’s it like living with Lyric nd his family during your retirement? Learn anything knew?

Hoola "I was reluctant to move to urth at first, but Lyr begged me to move in with him and his mothers. I didn't have the heart or a valid enough excuse to refuse.

Life on Earth is a culture shock, I'm not going to lie. I still struggle to understand Lyric and most other humans in his "family". I used to criticize Zim for how little about human culture he understands, but having lived here, amongst you people, I get it wholeheartedly. Every day is a learning experience.

Apparently, there are several dialects of the "English" language. Half of Lyr's family speaks "American" English and the other half speaks "Australian" English and both rely on 60% idisims that escape the translating capabilities of my PAK. Just develope a universal Urth language and stick with it. Be more back-asswards, humanity! Sorry, sorry. That's insensitive, but it's... true. There are SO many languages and dialects for each language and idisims and slang for each language in each "country" within each region on each content, it's so hard for me to follow. Good Glord and her whole army, I'm trying. I'm really REALLY trying, but it's no use. Despite my higher educational training, I sound stupid when I speak in human languages.

I rarely leave the high end condominium or the city of Sydney Lyric and their mothers live in generaly, but when I do, I HAVE to to have one of my human roommates with me or I get completely lost. On Irk, in the areas underground and on the surface, the map is based on an easy to navigate, clearly numerically labeled grid. Same goes for Conventia, the Massive, Producia, Foodcourtia, Conventia, Devastis and 99.9% of the rest of the rken empire. Not so much on Earth... A lot of untamed forrests and rural areas. A lot of primitive cities in th upper- Americas, Europe, Australia and probably on the other continents too, but I haven't travelved to them yet. Lyr's co-mother, Gaz, is excited to take me to the "country" of Mexico in South America this summer. I hear the food is great, so I'm looking forward to the trip.

Maybe I should have stayed with Mad Madem Mem on her rogue planet. Her hive needed an experienced medic, but I've served the Irken Empire for SOOOooo many centuries. I REALLY needed a decade or so of low-pressure relaxation before my expiration timer clocks out. Lyr's uncle Dib keeps in regular contact with Zim and Mem, so if I am needed, I will gladly go back."

All-in-all, I am enjoying my stay... Hoop would have loved Earth, I know it. In a strange way, Lyr reminds me of him... There is something intriguing about human family clusters. Maybe Lyr is the smeet fate and biology denied Hoop and I... I'm grateful I can live the rest of my life with people who care about me and who went out of their way to include me in their family cluster. Their loyalty and love is incomparable even through a thick layer of dysfunction and human flaws. It took me a while, but I understand why Zim became so attatched to these monkeys.

[camcamino]

Here's a "few" (I couldn't decide LOL):

italics: the ones I recommend the most based on what you're looking for

Empire of light (Sam Mendes)

The whale (Darren Aronofsky)

At eternity's gate (Julian Schnabel)

Wonder (Stephen Chbosky)

Closer (Mike Nichols)

The notebook (Nick Cassavetes)

The hours (Stephen Daldry)

Little women (Greta Gerwig)

The way we were (Sydney Pollack)

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (Michel Gondry)

Roman Holiday (William Wyler)

Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore)

Hachi: a dog's tale (Lasse Hallstrom)

The Pursuit of Happyness (Gabriele Muccino)

Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis)

THANK YOU SO MUCHHHH💕💕

you unblocked a memory I didn't know I blocked with Hachi: a dog's tale because when I was a kid I always cried when I watched it and my brother laughed for no reason😭😭🙏

[wilsons-three-legged-siamese]

SCHOOL DOODLESS

[ask-head-of-cardio]

what do you think of dr. house?

oh of house? hes.. hes well a very talented man, but hes a bit of a prick to other people. hes taken a liking to me, i guess as hes known me since i was like 12.. but hes very talented, and i look up to him, honestly a lot. hes a great man, just a bit.. arrogant and anti social.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ian McDonald's "Hopeland"

Tonight (May 30) at 6:30PM, I’m at the NOTTINGHAM Waterstones with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Christian Reilly (MMT Podcast).

Tomorrow (May 31) at 6:30PM, I’m at the MANCHESTER Waterstones, hosted by Ian Forrester.

Then it’s London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

Have you ever read a novel that was so good you almost felt angry at it? I mean, maybe that’s just me, but there is one author who consistently triggers my literary pleasure centers so hard that I get spillover into all my other senses, and that’s Ian McDonald, who has a new novel out: Hopeland:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765375551/hopeland

Seriously what the fuck is this amazing, uncategorizable, unsummarizable, weird, sprawling, hairball of a novel? How the hell do you research — much less write — a novel this ambitious and wide-ranging? Why did I find myself weeping uncontrollably on a train yesterday as I finished it, literally squeezing my chest over my heart as it broke and sang at the same moment?

Hopeland is a climate novel, and it’s not McDonald’s first. Hearts, Hands and Voices (published in the US as The Broken Land) is a climate novel (that also happens to be about the Irish Troubles). So is his stunning debut, Desolation Road, which I picked up at a mall bookstore in 1988 and lost my mind over:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/07/02/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-mars-book-desolation-road-finally-back-in-print/

But those were climate novels written in the early stages of the discussion of the gravity of the anthropocene, and so climate change was more setting than anything else. In Hopeland, the climate is more of a character — not a protagonist, but also not a minor character.

The true stars of Hopeland are members of two ancient, secret societies. There’s Raisa Hopeland, who belongs to a globe-spanning, mystical “family,” that’s one part mutual aid, one part dance music subculture, and one part sorcerer (some Hopelanders are electromancers, making strange, powerful magic with Tesla coils).

We meet Raisa as she is racing across London in a bid to win a rare, open electromancer title. She is on the brink of losing, but then a passerby pitches in to help: Amon Brightborne, part of another mystical family whose stately, odd manor in the English countryside can only be reached by people who can work the “gateway,” which makes the road disappear and reappear. Amon is a composer and DJ who specializes in making music for very small groups of people — preferably just one person — that is so perfect for them that they are transformed by hearing it.

Amon’s intervention in Raisa’s bid for electromancy unites these two formerly disjoint families, entwining their destinies just as the world is forever changing, thanks to the decidedly un-magical buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. They have a romance, a breakup, a child. They are scattered to opposite ends of the Earth — Iceland and a tiny Polynesian island.

Their lives are electrified. Literally. On her passage to Iceland, Raisa confronts a ship-destroying megastorm, speaks its true name, and sends it away before it can sink the container ship — captained by a Hopelander who gives her free passage — that she is sailing on. In Iceland, she falls in with more Hopelanders, tapping a thermal vent to create a greenhouse cannabis farm, which begets a luxury salad greens business, then an electricity plant that attracts cryptocurrency weirdos like shit draws flies.

Amon, meanwhile, is sinking into drunken ruin on his island paradise, where he becomes a kind of mascot for the locals, who respect his musical prowess. The island is sinking, both figuratively and literally, as its offshore king, hiding in a luxury mansion in Sydney, drains its aquifers for the luxury bottled water market and loots its treasuries to fund his own high lifestyle.

McDonald takes a long time getting to this point. This is a 500 page novel, and the build to this setup takes nearly 300 of them. Every word of that setup is gold. McDonald’s prose often veers into poetry, or at least poesie, and he has this knack for seemingly superfluous vignettes and detours that present as self-indulgences but then snap into place later as critical pieces of a superbly turned narrative. How the fuck does he do it?

How does he do it? How does he deliver a sense of such vastness, a world peopled by vastly different polities and populations, distinctly different without ever being exoticized, each clearly the hero of their own story, whether they live on a tiny island or captain an American battleship?

I mean, cyberpunk — the tradition McDonald most obviously belongs to — was always about a post-American future, but no one ever managed it the way McDonald did. He delivered a superb, complex, Indian future in 2004’s River of Gods:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/06/12/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-new-novel-river-of-gods-bollywoodpunk/

And then did the same in Brazil with 2007’s Brasyl:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/04/30/ian-mcdonalds-brasyl-mind-altering-cyberpunk-carioca/

And Turkey in 2011’s Dervish House, a novel of mystical nanofuturism set in an Istanbul that is so vividly drawn that you feel like you can reach through the page and touch it:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/07/12/ian-mcdonalds-dervish-house-superb-novel-of-the-mystical-nano-future-of-istanbul/

Those were ambitious books, but Hopeland puts them to shame. It draws on so many threads — music and art, climate justice, mysticism, electrical engineering, economics, gender politics — and has such a huge cast of finely drawn characters. By all rights, it should collapse under its own weight. I mean, seriously — who can write multi-page passages describing imaginary music and make it riveting?

McDonald is just so damned good at writing love-letters to places that turn them into characters in their own right. The first third of Hopeland treats London that way, bringing it to gritty life in the manner of Michael de Larrabeiti’s classic Borribles trilogy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/16/the-borribles-are-back/

Or, for that matter, China Miéville’s debut novel King Rat, itself out in a fancy new Tor Essentials edition with an introduction by Tim Maughan, who absolutely bullseyes the appeal of Miéville’s novel of underground music, mystical societies and urbanism:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250862501/kingrat

(It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Miéville is a giant Borribles fan:)

https://www.tor.com/2014/03/13/the-borribles-excerpt-introduction-china-mieville/

I have loved Ian McDonald’s work since I picked up Desolation Road in that mall bookstore when I was 17. One of the absolute highlights of my writing career was writing an introduction for the 2014 reissue of Out On Blue Six, a book that mashes up David Byrne’s solo projects, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Dick’s Do Androids Dream in a madcap dystopian comedy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/20/out-on-blue-six-ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-novel-is-back/

I’ve read everything I could find about how he manages these giant, weird, intricately constructed novels, like this fascinating 2010 interview about his research process:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100726181934/http://www.cclapcenter.com/2010/07/an_interview_with_ian_mcdonald.html

But despite it all, I find myself continuously baffled by how manages it, but each book just stabs me. For one thing, he’s such a good remix artist. His three-volume, essential retelling of Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress starts with Luna: New Moon (2015):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/22/ian-mcdonalds-luna-new-moon-the-moon-is-a-much-much-harsher-mistress/

Which substantially out-Heinleins Heinlein, adding thickness and rigor to the tropes Heinlein tossed in as throwaways. Then, he topped himself with the sequel, Luna: Wolf Moon (2017):

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/03/28/ian-mcdonald-returns-to-the-harshest-mistress-in-luna-wolf-moon/

Before bringing it all in for a screaming landing that tied up the hundreds of threads he pulled on in the course of the previous two volumes with the conclusion, Luna: Moon Rising (2019):

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/05/16/luna-moon-rising-in-which-ian-mcdonald-brings-the-trilogy-to-an-astounding-intricate-exciting-and-satisfying-climax/

In each volume, McDonald proved — over and over — that he understood precisely what Heinlein was trying to do, then outdid him, and, in so doing, shredded Heinlein’s solipsitic, simplistic, seductive argument about a libertarian utopia.

Perhaps this is McDonald’s greatest gift: his ability to rework others’ ideas, tropes and tales, without ever trying to hide his influences, and then vastly outdoing them. That’s certainly what was going on with his wild-ass, deiselpunk YA trilogy, which started with 2011’s Planesrunner:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/12/06/planesrunner-ian-mcdonalds-ya-debut-is-full-of-action-packed-multidimensional-cool-airships-electropunk-and-quantum-physics/

One important McDonaldism: being deadly serious about his whimsy. The books are all very whimsical, but never frivolous. To get a sense of what I mean here, consider his 1992 graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, a deadly serious comic book about the Klu Klux Klan, told entirely through adorable teddybears in a noir cityscape, whose dialog is heavily salted with Tom Waits lyrics:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/24/ian-mcdonalds-kling-klang-klatch/

No, really. And it’s fantastic.

Back to Hopeland. It’s a climate novel, because what else could you write in this time of polycrisis? The book is vast enough to convey the scale of the crisis. The storms that ravage the world are both personified and realized, a terror to compare to any literary monster or Cthuhoid entity. But it’s called Hopeland for a reason, because it’s a book about hope, not nihilism, a book about confronting the crisis, a book about solidarity and love, about overcoming difference, about challenging the way things “just are.”

That’s why I was crying and holding my heart yesterday on the train. The hope. What a ride.

One of the reasons I was in such a hurry to read this novel now is that I’m appearing on a panel with McDonald this coming Saturday, June 3, at Edinburgh’s Cymera festival, along with Nina Allen, author of the new novel Conquest:

https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/connection-interrupted-with-nina-allan-cory-doctorow-and-ian-mcdonald

I’m so looking forward to it. I’ve written a couple dozen books since I read my first McDonald novel as a teenager, and while I still have no idea how McDonald does it, there’s something of his work in every one of my books.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Nottingham, Manchester, London, and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/30/electromancy/#the-grace

[Image ID: The cover for the Tor Books edition of 'Hopeland.']

[drago-01]

asd

                VIDEOLOGIAS

Las películas citadas a continuación abordan o rozan el tema comunicacional. Las sugerimos para reunirse a verlas, y discutir luego entre todos sobre ellas. No se refieren a una cátedra en especial, sino que abarcan temáticas inherentes a todos los que estudiamos la comunicación. Si alguno sabe de otras no incluidas, favor de avisarnos así la agregamos. Ya hay muchas sugeridas así.

RADIO

"NO ABRAS NUNCA ESA PUERTA" (Cristiensen, 1952)

"QUEDATE CONMIGO" (Rudolph, 1984)

"OBSESION FATAL" (Eastwood, 1974)

"CARRERA CONTRA LA MUERTE" (Sarafian, 1971)

"RADIO ON" (Petit, 1979)

"LOS GUERREROS" (Hill, 1979)

"RADIO SPEED" (Bellmunt, 1986)

"UN DIA MUY PARTICULAR" (Scola, 1977)

"FM" (Alonzo, 1978)

"DIAS DE RADIO" (Allen, 1987)

"SOLOS EN LA MADRUGADA" (Garcí, 1980)

"BUENOS DIAS VIETNAM ..." (Levinson, 1987)

"LA RADIO ATACA" (Stone, 1988)

"LA NIEBLA" (Carpenter, 1979)

"LA INVASION DE MARTE"

"POBRE MARIPOSA"

"PESCADOR DE ILUSIONES"

"SUBAN EL VOLUMEN"

"RÁFAGAS" de Andre Melancon

Historias de la radio (1955/José L.Sanchez de Heredia). Con Rafael Bardem y José Isbert. Ambientada en la España de los 50', relata tres historias cuyo hilo conductor es la radio y la programación en plena época franquista.

Punto límite (1971/Richard Sarafian). Con Barry Newman. Un disck jockey de una pequeña FM toma partido por un fugitivo que en un automóvil de gran cilindrada escapa de la policía que lo busca por un hecho delictivo. El film muestra el circo que arman radio, diarios y canales de televisión convirtiendo un hecho menor en una cobertura nacional. En la década del 90', Viggo Mortensen protagonizó una remake del film.

"El último show" (A prairie home companion); Robert Altman de 2007 

 Radio Favela (Uma onda no ar), de Helvecio Ratton y

Los 100 pasos  (I cento passi), de Marco Tulio Giordana.

RKO 281. Esta poco conocida pero muy interesante película que dirigió Benjamin Ross en 1999 trata, precisamente, de Ciudadano Kane y su difícil rodaje, en una época en que los férreos controles de la censura eran mucho más fuertes que ahora.

TELEVISION

"MEMORIAS Y OLVIDOS"

"DETRAS DE LAS NOTICIAS" (Brooks, 1987)

"NETWORK, PODER QUE MATA" (Sydney Lumet, 1976)

"INTERFERENCIAS" (Kotcheff, 1988)

"VIDEODROME" (Cronenberg)

"CARRERA CONTRA LA MUERTE"

"LAS AMAZONAS DE LA LUNA"

"LAS PATAS DE LA MENTIRA" (Arias, 1990)

"EL TESTAFERRO" (Ritt)

"LA IMAGEN" (HBO)

"BOLETIN ESPECIAL"

"EL PRECIO DEL PODER" (Lumet)

"TANNER 88" (Altmann)

"ADONDE VAN LOS YANQUIS?"

"EL HOMBRE DE MARMOL (Wajda, 1976)

"HEROE ACCIDENTAL" (Frears, 1992)

"THE HUDSUCKER PROXY"

"EL SINDROME DE CHINA" (Bridges, 1979)

"Desde el jardín", de Hal Ashby

"La muerte en directo" (Dead Watch) de Bertrand Tavernier

"Tacones lejanos" de Pedro Almódovar

"Urga" de Nikita Mijhalkov

"Stanno tutti bene" de Giusseppe Tornatore

"Gremlins II" (¿de Joe Dante o R.Zemeckis? no me acuerdo)

"Scream" de Wes Craven

"Forrest Gump" de Robert Zemeckis

"La voz de la luna" de Federico Fellini

"Una chica al rojo vivo" (con Gene Wilder, no recuerdo al director)

"Quiz Show" de Robert Redford

"El engaño de Panamá" de Barbara Trent

VIDEO

"Sexo, mentiras & video", de Steven Soderbergh

"Sliver" de Philip Noyce

"Hasta el fin del mundo" de Wim Wenders

"La tarea" (mexicana, no recuerdo al director)

FALSOS DOCUMENTALES (MOORCHIN)

“la era del Ñandú”, de Sorin

CINE DENTRO DEL CINE

Good morning Babilonia de Tavernier

El proyectorista de Buster Keaton

La película del Rey de Carlos Sorín

La noche americana de Francois Truffaut