#the other movie they’re talking about here is Blackfish

[justafilmfan]

August Movie Reviews

I haven’t been in the mood to do full reviews for a bit so here is a list of everything I’ve watched in August and what I thought!

Re-animator (1985) dir. Stuart Gordon: 5/5 ⭐️ this movie was so much fun! A really campy and beautifully done take on Frankenstein, two grad students (with homosexual undertones) brings people back to life with beautifully done practical effects. Will definitely be rewatching soon.

Bride of Re-animator (1990) dir. Brian Yuzna: 5/5 ⭐️ I can’t decide if which of these movies I enjoyed more, they were both so entertaining but personally the design of the undead bride is absolutely breathtaking and one of my favorite designs of all time. I can’t recommend this movie enough, such a fun watch.

The Truman Show (1998) dir. Peter Weir: 5/5 ⭐️ I am dumbfounded that this movie is classified as a comedy and not a horror comedy, the plot of this movie is genuinely one of the most terrifying things I can think of. (Heed caution watching this movie if you struggle with de-realization) This movie terrified me, made me cry, and had me clapping and cheering at the end. Fantastic movie.

The Return of the Living Dead (1985) dir. Dan O’Bannon: 5/5 ⭐️ As a huge lover of zombie movies I’ve got to classify this as my favorite zombie movie of all time. It’s super funny, the characters are awesome, and the zombie design is fantastic. The Tarman is my favorite zombie design ever and I LOVE how we get a reason for the brain eating from the actual zombies themselves. If you love campy 80’s horrors and zombies this is a must see.

The Evil Dead (1981) dir. Sam Raimi: 5/5 ⭐️ I am a huge evil dead fan so I am biased when I say I love all the evil dead movies. I love a gory horror movie that does not take itself serious at all. It’s so funny and campy and is just a fun watch if you can enjoy a movie without needing to dissect it. The gore and practical effects are so gross and awesome and the demons are a great time.

I Saw the Tv Glow (2024) dir. Jane Schoenbrun: 5/5⭐️ Everyone should watch this movie but if you are transgender you HAVE to see this movie. It portrays the horror, damage, and suffering that living your life in the closet can do to you. I could spend hours dissecting this movie and relating it to the trans experience but I guarantee if you relate to having grown up in any capacity as the wrong gender you will be bawling by the end of this movie. An absolute must watch.

Sleepaway Camp (1983) dir. Robert Hiltzik: 5/5 ⭐️ I love a fun slasher movie that takes place at a summer camp and this one does not disappoint. While trying not to give too much away if you haven’t seen it, some people believe this movie to be transphobic, and while I understand where they’re coming from I completely disagree. I consider this movie to be a trans allegory showing how dangerous it is to someone’s mental health to force them to be someone they’re not and the damage it can inflict to them and others. Great movie with a great ending.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) dir. Yorgos Lanthimos: 5/5 ⭐️It took me two watches to really appreciate this movie and I can’t fully talk about my thoughts without spoiling it, but this is a great psychological horror with such weird characters. If you’re watching this movie and wondering why every character is SO strange, talks weird, moves weird, and acts weird then just know that is absolutely intentional! Great watch and I recommend a few watches to really absorb the movie!

House of 1000 Corpses (2003) dir. Rob Zombie: 4.5/5 ⭐️ My boyfriend called this movie a love letter to horror and I have to agree. This is a fun campy horror that really has a lot of fun in its character designs and creative kills. It’s both very comedic while being disturbing and bizarre. (And Captain Spaulding is obviously queer coded, just how I like my favorite horror characters to be). A fun watch for any horror fan.

Blackfish (2013) dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite: 4/5 ⭐️ I know I am 11 years late to watching this movie, and although not the best documentary I’ve ever seen, it got its point across very well. I had known about a lot that was in this doc but I still learned a lot that I hadn’t known. A very heart wrenching story about animal abuse at Sea World but with must know information. Even though it brought change (sea world is no longer allowed to capture or breed Orcas) I’m still distraught that Sea World is still operational to this day.

Lisa Frankenstein (2024) dir. Zelda Williams: 5/5 ⭐️ this movie is absolutely fantastic. Campy, funny, aesthetic, and romantic all wrapped in one. The characters were written in such a fun and in your face way. If you were ever “the weird girl” this movie is absolutely made for you. I love Lisa’s character so much and I love how throughout the movie she worked to be herself despite everyone BUT a dead guy wishing she were “normal”. Cinema is so back, this is the kind of movie I want to see.

Edit* yes technically the truman show is classified as a comedy *I* don’t consider it a comedy but I didn’t make the movie lol (well i guess technically a psychological comedy drama but yeah)

[sesamestreep]

(idk if this counts as a prompt, but...) duo of your choosing, "Shatterdome"

“Okay, but here’s my issue,” Sloan says, as she side-steps to avoid colliding with another pedestrian. “‘Kaiju’ and ‘jaeger’ are actual, real words.”

Don tries to give her a searching look, but with his arm wrapped around her shoulders, the angles just don’t line up right. “Yes, I know,” he says, drily. “I was also paying attention at the beginning of the film, when they gave us that vocab lesson.”

“Right. Exactly!” Sloan says, gesturing emphatically. “So, what in the fuck is a ‘shatterdome’ then?”

“It’s like a military base, but for the, you know, jaegers.”

She scoffs in response. “But why not just say ‘military base’? Why invent a new word for only that?”

“This is really what stuck with you about ‘Pacific Rim’?” Don asks. “The terminology?”

Their plan for the evening had actually been to see that documentary about whales that no one at work can shut up about, but someone—Don isn’t naming names, of course—had misread the showtimes online—it was Sloan, but she insists that it was actually the website that was wrong, not her, and therefore none of this was her fault—and they’d shown up to buy tickets fifteen minutes after the film started. On impulse, he’d suggested they see whatever the next available movie was, which is how he and Sloan ended up seeing Pacific Rim on their date.

They’re walking home now—or rather, they’re walking with no particular destination in mind and eventually one of them is going to have to say something about it and then they’ll have to decide if they’re calling it a night now or if he’s going back to her place or she’s going back to his and what that entails exactly. But for right now, it’s simple and easy. It’s just the two of them walking through the Village, along with the press of everyone else out to dinner or drinks on a muggy, summer evening. Normally, crowds make Sloan nervous, on edge with the possibility of being recognized, so he keeps waiting for her to shake off the arm he has draped over her shoulders, but she hasn’t yet. When he casts a sidelong glance in her direction, she looks completely at ease, dressed casually in a white t-shirt and jeans. She looks happy, he thinks, and thank god for that. It’s only been a few weeks since Charlie’s funeral, and it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing so far with Mac at the helm of the news division. Don has every confidence things will get better eventually, once she bends Pruit to her indomitable will, but the transition period has been rough on everyone.

It’s why he’s secretly glad that they didn’t get to see the damn documentary about orca whales and instead got to watch two hours of giant CGI robots punching giant CGI aliens. It was exactly the bout of escapism he didn’t know he needed after yet another stressful week. He tightens his hold on Sloan, who puts an arm around his waist to pull herself in closer and rests her head on his shoulder. The soft smile she’s clearly trying to fight off suggests she probably feels the same way. There’s always going to be more opportunities to feel guilty about SeaWorld in the future; they can let themselves off the hook just this once.

“It doesn’t really bother me that much,” she says, after a moment.

“And yet you look so thoughtful.”

She laughs, and tries to bury her face in his shoulder. “I just can’t tell you what I’m actually thinking.”

“Well, now I have to know.”

Sloan sighs, as if this is a huge burden for her, but he can tell she’s also dying to tell someone her thoughts. “I’m thinking about how kaiju attacks would impact international trade routes.”

Don stops abruptly—normally a crime punishable by death on a New York City sidewalk, but luckily they’re right by a crosswalk—and turns Sloan to look at him. “Sorry, are you seriously worried about the theoretical impact of a fictional alien invasion on the global economy?” He asks.

“I wouldn’t say worried, exactly,” Sloan replies with a gentle eye roll. “I’m just thinking through the implications on various markets.”

Foot traffic starts to move around them, so Don pulls her into his side again so they can keep walking. “God,” he says, shaking his head, “I love the way your brain works.”

As soon as he hears the words out loud, he braces himself for things to get awkward, the way they always do when love or commitment or the future comes up between him and Sloan. It never happens, though; they just keep walking without missing a step, somehow. When he risks a look in her direction, she’s still got that small, pleased smile on her face. It might be even brighter now, he thinks, as her eyes meet his.

“Lucky me,” she says, so quietly he almost doesn’t catch it with all the noise on the streets around them. She tightens her hold on his waist as they continue on and she’s right, of course. Lucky is exactly the right word for them.

[janiedean]

Wait, you recasted JB in Mary Poppins? How!? Explain. I just saw Mary Poppins Returns today and I loved the sequel! You don't mind if I ask? What did you like about the movie? I'm just don't have anyone to fangirl about!

... I had XD

okay so, disclaimer: I don’t talk about it because who has the chance, but mary poppins used to be one of those movies I could rewatch for DAYS as a kid to the point where my aunt can’t look at it anymore without feeling sick ops and when the sequel came out I went like OMG SDLKGJSDKJLG NEED TO WATCH XD so, re the sequel: I realized it was a nostalgia operation but it was well-done, I really liked the take, I might have shed a few tears at the end and the fact that everyone wanted jane and jack to get together that was a++++, ADULT!MICHAEL ;________________; MY HEART ;_____; anyway I found it a really nice and enjoyable movie? not as good as the original but lovely anyway.

NOW, ON TO THE RECAST.

er.

basically the idea was... jaime being mary and brienne being bert just with switched personalities in the sense that OBVIOUSLY he’s way more chill and she’d be like WHAT THE FUCK WHY, but REWIND because I had come up with the srsly cracked backstory.

as in, the part about the original implied a prequel where the lannister kids were the ones actually getting the magical babysitter who happened to be *cough* the blackfish *cough* and we found out that all the tullys are actually in the magical nanny business right, and it’d happen when tyrion’s like six or seven and the other two are thirteen-fourteen-ish, obviously cersei stays who she is but having the external influence etc. etc. makes jaime put two and two together and he’s like damn but that sounds like a dream job I mean I do the same stuff with tyrion all the time surely can’t be too hard...?, and like tywin is too much of a terrible mess for anyone to fix so that doesn’t ever get fixed but before leaving they manage some arrangement I hadn’t thought in depth yet so that tyrion actually gets to have a nice life with jaime and not with his father or sister but at that point jaime goes to brynden like ‘hey you think that maybe there’s job offers where you come from’, brynden is like ‘hmmmmmm see you in a few years’. cue few years, jaime disappears somewhere and tyrion who at that point is a teen himself is like NO IDEA WHERE HE ENDED UP when he’s like the only person who knows where he ended up. oops.

CUE ACTUAL AU: years later, we have the actual movie setting with rhaegar/elia being mr/mrs banks and aegon/rhaenys being jane and michael with ADDED COMPLICATION THAT RHAEGAR HAS THE ILLEGITIMATE KID WITH LYANNA AND EVERYONE KNOWS BUT NO ONE WANTS TO BRING IT UP. cue rhaegar not being the nice person he was before blah blah and thinking too much about working in aerys’s bank the prophecy obviously they need the nanny and jaime shows up because he totally got the job (meanwhile he’s become besties with cat and edmure but shh) and he’s like oKAY WE NEED TO FIX THIS MESS, cue magical adventures in which he manages to do more or less what mary did in the original movie with just a lot more bad humor, managing to make sure rhaegar/elia/lyanna turn into a functional-ish ot3 with bonus extended stark family because WHY NOT, while the kids all wonder if the local chimneysweeper brienne with whom he seems like he has a history with is his girlfriend or not because DAMN IT WHAT’S IT BETWEEN THEM THERE’S UST! (spoilers: there is obviously and they met each other before either when they were kids or while jaime was doing the magical training but I had to decide on that lmao) brienne is not so keen to jump into moving murals on the ground but hey she apparently can’t deny jaime anything so WHY THE FUCK NOT. (obv. they make out like pros where no kids can see them.) anyway, after jaime finally manages to fix the ot3 and leaves again we do the time skip...

TO MOVIE TWO where we have grown up jon/aegon/possibly rhaenys - jon is the jane of the situation with ygritte being jack, aegon and rhaenys prob. share the house, one of them probably has oc kids from some crackship I’ll come up with or maybe they ended up with relatives’s kids on them idk that’s to be figured out, they’re about to lose the house and so on (while jon goes to organize union strikes lol), they obv. took from their father when it came to practicality (jon maybe less but he’s not the one living in the house ops), bam jaime comes back like GUYS YOU REALLY CAN’T HANDLE YOURSELVES CAN YOU, at this point I’d have probably had the tullys + tyrion show up, ofc he and brienne at that point are going steady and so on (EVERYONE AGES SLOWLY IT’S MAGICAL REALISM). cue plot for the second movie, there you go.

also if you want the extra casting I was def. gonna have stannis and davos as the admiral and the (platonic??) bf living in front of the banks’s, also fuck I knew I recast uncle albert too but who the fuck remembers could have been gerion?maybe? IDK I prob. should have written it down somewhere. anyway. ONE DAY MAYBE I’LL MANAGE TO WRITE IT. that said if you wanted to know ‘but was it an excuse to put jaime in a white and red dress with the pretty bonnet while he argued with penguins who were smitten with him’ the answer could have been: no but it was a good 30% of the reason why I decided it had to exist.

here you go anon XD

[oscopelabs]

3D, Part 2: How 3D Peaked At Its Valley by Vadim Rizov

I didn’t expect to spend Thanksgiving Weekend 2018 watching ten 3D movies: marathon viewing is not my favorite experience in general, and I haven’t spent years longing to see, say, Friday the 13th Part III, in 35mm. But a friend was visiting, from Toronto, to take advantage of this opportunity, an impressive level of dedication that seemed like something to emulate, and it’s not like I had anything better to do, so I tagged along. Said friend, Blake Williams, is an experimental filmmaker and 3D expert, a subject to which he’s devoted years of graduate research and the bulk of his movies (see Prototype if it comes to a city near you!); if I was going to choose the arbitrary age of 32 to finally take 3D seriously, I couldn’t have a better Virgil to explain what I was seeing on a technical level. My thanks to him (for getting me out there) and to the Quad Cinema for being my holiday weekend host; it was probably the best possible use of my time.

The 10-movie slate was an abridged encore presentation of this 19-film program, which I now feel like a dink for missing. What’s interesting in both is the curatorial emphasis on films from 3D’s second, theoretically most disreputable wave—‘80s movies with little to zero critical respect or profile. Noel Murray considered a good chunk of these on this site a few years ago, watching the films flat at home, noting that when viewed this way, “the plane-breaking seems all the more superfluous. (It’s also easy to spot when these moments are about to happen, because the overall image gets murkier and blurrier.)” This presumes that if you can perceive the moments where a 3D film expands its depth of field for a comin’-at-ya moment and mentally reconstruct what that would look like, that’s basically the same experience as actually seeing these effects.

Blake’s argument, which I wrestled with all weekend, is that these movies do indeed often look terrible in 2D, but 3D literally makes them better. As it turns out, this is true surprisingly often. Granted, all concerned have to know what they’re doing, otherwise the results will still be indifferent: it turns out that Friday the 13th Part III sucks no matter how you watch it, and 3D’s not a complete cure-all. This was also demonstrated by my first movie, 1995’s barely released Run For Cover, the kind of grade-Z library filler you’d expect to see sometime around 2 am on a syndicated channel. This is, ostensibly, a thriller, in which a TV news cameraman foils a terrorist plot against NYC. It features a lot of talking, scenes of Bondian villains eating Chinese takeout while plotting and/or torturing our ostensible hero, some running (non-Tom Cruise speed levels), and one The Room-caliber sex scene. Anyone who’s spent too much time mindlessly staring at the least promising option on TV has seen many movies like these. The 3D helps a little: an underdressed TV station set takes on heightened diorama qualities, making it interesting to contemplate as an inadvertent installation—the archetypal TV command room, with the bare minimum necessary signifiers in place and zero detail otherwise—rather than simply a bare-bones set. But often the camera is placed nowhere in particular, and the resulting images are negligible; in the absence of dramatic conviction or technical skill, what’s left is never close enough to camp to come back out the other side as inadvertently worthwhile. I’m glad I saw it for the sheer novelty of cameos from Ed Koch, Al Sharpton and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa—all doing their usual talking points, but in 3D! But it’s the kind of film that’s more fun to tell people about than actually watch.

But infamous punchlines Jaws 3-D and Amityville 3-D have their virtues when viewed in 3D. The former, especially, seems to be the default punching bag whenever someone wants to make the case that 3D has, and always will be, nothing but a limited gimmick upselling worthless movies. It was poorly reviewed when it came out, but the public dug it enough to make it, domestically, the 15th highest-grossing film of 1983 (between Never Say Never Again and Scarface) and justify Jaws: The Revenge. Of course I was skeptical; why wouldn’t I be? But I was sucked in by the opening credits, in which the familiar handheld-underwater-cam-as-shark POV gave way to a severed arm floating before a green “ocean.” Maybe flat it looks simply ludicrous, but the image has a compellingly Lynchian quality, as if the limb were detached from one of Twin Peaks: The Return’s more disgusting corpses, its artifice heightened and literally foregrounded, the equally artificial background setting it into greater relief.

The film’s prominent SeaWorld product placement is, theoretically, ill-advised, especially in the post-Blackfish era; in practice, it’s extremely productive. The opening stretches have a lot of water-skiing; in deep 3D, the water-skiers serve as lines tracing depth towards and away from the camera over a body of water whose horizon line stretches back infinitely, producing a greater awareness of space. It reminded me of the early days of the short-lived super-widescreen format Cinerama, as described by John Belton in his academic history book Widescreen Cinema (recommended). The very first film in the format, This is Cinerama, was a travelogue whose stops included Cypress Gardens, Florida’s first commercial tourist theme park (the site is now a Legoland), which has very similar images of waterskiiers. Cinerama was, per the publicist copy Belton quotes from the period, about an experience, not a story: “Plot is replaced by audience envelopment […] the medium forces you to concentrate on something bigger than people, for it has a range of vision and sound that no other medium offers.” Cinerama promised to immerse viewers, as literalized in this delightful publicity image; Belton argues that “unlike 3-D and CinemaScope, which stressed the dramatic content of their story material and the radical new means of technology employed in production, Cinerama used a saturation advertising campaign in the newspapers and on radio to promote the ‘excitement aspects’ of the new medium.” There’s a connection here with the earliest days of silent cinema, short snippets (“actualities”) of reality, before it was decided that medium’s primary purpose was to tell a story. It didn’t have to be like that; in those opening stretches, Jaws 3-D’s lackadaisical narrative, which might play inertly on TV, recalls the 1890s, when shots of bodies of water were popular subjects. This is something I learned from a recent presentation by silent film scholar Bryony Dixon, and her reasoning makes sense. The way water moves is inherently hypnotic, and for early audiences assimilating their very first moving images, water imagery was a favorite subject. It’s only with a few years under its belt that film started making its drift towards narrative as default; inadvertently or not, Jaws 3-D is very pure in its initial presentation of water as a spectacular, non-narrative event.

If this seems like a lot of cultural and historical weight to bring to bear upon Jaws 3-D, note that it wasn’t even my favorite of the more-scorned offerings I saw that weekend, merely one that makes it easiest for me to articulate what I found compelling about the 3D immersion experience. I haven’t described the plot of Jaws 3-D at all, which is indeed perfunctory (though it was nice to learn where Deep Blue Sea cribbed a bunch of its production design from). I won’t try to rehabilitate Amityville 3-D at similar length: set aside the moronic ending and Tony Roberts’ leading turn as one of cinema’s most annoyingly waspish, unearnedly whiny divorcees, and what’s left is a surprisingly melancholy movie about the frustrations, and constant necessary repairs, of home ownership. There’s very little music and a surprising amount of silence. The most effective moment is simply Roberts going upstairs to the bathroom, where steam is hissing out for no apparent reason and he has to fix the plumbing. The camera’s planted in the hallway, not moving for any kind of emphasis as the back wall moves closer to Roberts; it doesn’t kill him and nothing comes of it, it’s just another problem to deal with (the walls, as it were, are settling), made more effective by awareness of how a space whose rules and boundaries seemed fixed is being altered, pushing air at you.

Watching a bunch of these in sequence, some clear lessons emerge: if you want to generate compelling depth by default, find an alleyway and block off the other half of the frame with a wall to present two different depths, or force protagonists to crawl through ducts or tubes. This is a good chunk of Silent Madness, a reasonably effective slasher film that, within the confines of its cheap sets and functional plotting, keeps the eye moving. It’s an unlikely candidate for a deep-dive New York Times Magazine article from the time period, which is well worth reading in full. It’s mostly about B-movies and the actresses trying to make their way up through them, though it does have this money quote from director Simon Nuchtern about why, for Bs, it’s not worth paying more for a good lead actress: “If I had 10,000 extra dollars, I’d put it into lights. Not one person is going to say, ‘Go see that movie because Lynn Redgrave is in it.’ But if we don’t have enough lights and that 3-D doesn’t pop right out at you, people are going to say, ‘Don’t see that movie because the 3-D stinks.’” Meanwhile, nobody appears to have been thinking that hard while making Friday the 13th: Part III, which contains precisely one striking image: a pan, street morning, as future teen lambs-to-the-slaughter exit their van and walk over to a friend’s house. A lens flare hits frame left, making what’s behind it briefly impossible to see: this portion of the frame is now sealed off under impermeable 2D, in contrast to the rest of the frame’s now far-more-tangible depth. The remainder of the movie makes it easy to imagine watching it on TV and clocking every obvious, poorly framed and blocked 3D effect, from spears being thrown at the camera to the inevitable yo-yo descending at the lens. (This is my least favorite 3D effect because it’s just too obvious and counterproductively makes me think of the Smothers Brothers.)

Friday the 13th was the biggest slog of the 3D weekend, and the one most clearly emulating 1981’s Comin’ at Ya! I am not going to argue for that movie, either, which is generally credited with kicking off the second 3D craze; it’s a sludgy spaghetti western that delivers exactly as its title promises, using a limited number of effects repeatedly before showing them all again in a cut-together montage at the end, lest you missed one in its first iteration. It’s exhausting and oddly joyless, but was successful enough to generate a follow-up from the same creative team. Star Tony Anthony and director Ferdinando Baldi (both veterans of second-tier spaghetti westerns) re-teamed for 1983’s Treasure of the Four Crowns, the movie which (two screenings in) rewired my brain a little and convinced me I should hang around all weekend. This is not a well-respected film, then or now: judging by IMDb user comments, most people who remember seeing it recall it playing endlessly on HBO in the ‘80s, where it did not impress them unless they were very young (and even then, perhaps not). Janet Maslin admitted to walking out on it in her review; then again, she did the same with Dawn of the Dead, and everyone loves that.

An unabashed Indiana Jones copy, Treasure begins strong with a lengthy opening sequence of tomb raider J.T. Striker (Anthony) dropping into a cave, where he’s promptly confronted not only with a bunch of traps but, for a long stretch, a small menagerie’s worth of owls, dogs, and other wildlife. There are a lot of animals, and why not? They’re fun to look at, and having them trotted out, one after another, is another link back to silent cinema; besides water, babies and animals were also popular subjects. The whole sequence ends with Striker running away from the castle above the cave, artifact retrieved, in slow-motion as Ennio Morricone’s score blares. There is, inevitably and nonsensically, a fireball that consumes the set; it unfolds luxuriously in detailed depth, the camera placed on a grassy knoll that gives us a nice angle to contemplate it looking upwards, a nearly abstract testament to the pleasures of gasoline-fueled imagery. Shortly thereafter, Striker is in some European city to sell his wares, and in every shot the camera is placed for maximum depth: in front of a small city park’s mini-waterfall, views of streets boxed in by sidewalks that narrow towards each other, each position calibrated to create a spectacular travelogue out of what’s a fairly mundane location. There’s an expository sequence where Striker and friends drop into a diner to ask about the whereabouts of another member of the crew they need to round up. Here, with the camera on one side of a bar encircling a center counter, there are something like six layers of cleanly articulated space, starting with a plant’s leaves right in front of the lens on the side, proceeding to the counter, center area, back counter, back tables and walls of the establishment. Again, the location is mundane; seeing it filleted in space so neatly is what makes it special.

The climax finally convinced me I was watching forgotten greatness. This is an elaborate heist sequence in which, of course, the floor cannot be touched, necessitating that the team perform all kinds of rappelling foolishness. At this point I thought, “the only way I could respect this movie more is if it spent 10 minutes watching them get from one side of the room to another in real time.” First, the team has to gear up, which basically means untangling a bunch of ropes—clearly not the most exciting activity. The camera is looking up, placed below a team member as they uncoil and then drop a rope towards the lens. This is a better-framed variant of the comin’-at-ya principle, but what made it exciting to me was the leisurely way it was done: no more whizzing spears, but a moment of procedural mundanity as exciting as any ostensible danger. Basic narrative film grammar is being upended here: if a rope being dropped is just as exciting as a big, fake rip-off boulder chasing our hero down the cave, then all the rules about what constitutes narrative are off—narrative and non-narrative elements have the exact same weight, and even the most mundane, A-to-B connective shot is a spectacular event.

This isn’t how narrative cinema is supposed to work, and certainly not what James Cameron’s conception of good 3D proposed. The movie keeps going, building to a bizarrely grim climax involving a lot of face-melting, scored by Morricone’s oddly beatific score, which seems serenely indifferent to the grotesqueness of the images it’s accompanying. (This is a recurring trait in the composer’s ‘80s work; the score for White Dog often seems to bear no relation to the footage it’s accompanying.) That would make the movie oneiric and weirdly compelling even on a flat TV, but everything preceding convinced me: 3D can be great because it’s 3D, not because it serves a story. I’ve spent the last decade getting more angry about the format than anything, but that was a misunderstanding. Treasure of the Four Crowns is, yes, probably very unexceptional seen flat; seen in all three dimensions, it’s a demonstration of how 3D can turn banal connective tissue and routine coverage into an event. The spectacle of 3D might never have been its potential to make elaborate CG landscapes more immersive, something I still haven’t personally been convinced of; as those 19 non-CG shots in Avatar showed (undermining Cameron’s own argument!), 3D’s renderings of the real, material world and objects have yet to be fully explored. 3D’s ability to link film back to its earliest days is refreshing, in the way that any rediscovery of forgotten parts of film language can be, while also encouraging thought about all the things narrative visual language hasn’t yet explored, as if 3D could take us forwards and backwards simultaneously. In any case, I’m now won over—ten years after Avatar, but better late than never.

[elcorhamletlive]

fandom: MCU (Post-Thor: Ragnarok) ship: Thor/Bruce Banner, mentions of Steve Rogers/Tony Stark tags: Fluff/Humor/Pining summary: The thing, however, is that Thor does not pine. Pining is for the unworthy, those of frailer bodies and minds. Pining is for Stark and Rogers and their strange, unbearably slow human courtship. Pining is not for the son of Odin, the heir of Asgard, the god of thunder (and not of hammers). Pining is so beneath Thor he could honestly say he doesn’t know what the word means. Because he doesn’t! Really! He gets why it would seem like it, for lesser minds, but there’s just no way he’d ever…

“Thor?” Banner asks, his nice, huge eyes blinking in his direction, clueless and innocent and adorable.

Ok, maybe his friends’ weakness is rubbing off on him a little bit.

It starts out very simple: Banner has nice hands.

Which is, obviously, not a strange thing to notice on a friend. Hands are important in battle, to keep the weapons steady. Thor supposes they’re useful for science stuff, too, which he guesses is not bad either, and that’s where Banner comes in. When he’s working on some weird new research, his fingers pick up the tools very carefully, and Thor can see that they’re long and somewhat elegant. They’re calloused, though, no doubt consequence of all the times they turned green and smashed buildings to pieces. Still, Thor watches, and it kind of just pops on his mind – that, you know, Banner has nice hands. They’re nice to watch, and, before he knows it, Thor’s mind starts wandering, and he thinks they must be nice to touch, too.

That’s when it gets complicated.

Banner has nice eyes.

That comes up when they’re on Earth, Banner talking to Darryl, trying to convince him that there was indeed a purple maniac man who wanted to wipe out half of the universe and they stopped him. Darryl seems to have some trouble wrapping his mind around the idea, and Thor quickly forgets him to watch Banner talking. He has these big, brown eyes. Now that Thor knows what puppies are, he can’t help but see a similarity. But it’s bigger than that. There’s a warmth in Banner’s eyes, something beyond his intelligence and apparent frailty, and it burns right through Thor as he stares, and his mouth goes strangely dry.

That… Is kind of a strange thing to notice in a friend, Thor admits. He doesn’t know why it fascinates him so much, but it does, and he can’t help but notice the way Banner’s eyelashes curl above his eyes, giving the warmth a small touch of delicate beauty. Thor watches carefully, wishes to feel that look on him, and surprises himself thinking it wouldn’t be a big loss if those eyes never turned green again.

Banner has a nice mouth.

This one is a slow process. It starts with a simple curiosity, when Banner licks his lips quickly and nervously after a battle, and Thor can’t help but follow the movement with his eyes. Then, it turns into something slightly more intentional – Thor watches the way his lips curl and press when Banner is trying to hold back a laugh, the way they move when he speaks, the way they chew distractedly into a pen when Banner is working. At some point, Thor lifts his glass to drink and straight up misses the mark of his own mouth because he’s too distracted watching Banner’s, and, yeah, that is as strange as it gets.

“…And he has nice hands.”

“Uh,” Steve frowns. “Okay?”

Thor rolls his eyes, frustrated. Steve is supposed to be the Avenger he can count on to explain the intricacies of human behavior to him, mostly because anything Thor doesn’t know is something Steve just learned recently, too. “I’m calling you in dire need of help here, Rogers, okay? Is that all you’ve got to say to my troubles?”

“It doesn’t really sound as troubling as you seem to think.” Steve says, and there’s a glimpse of a smile on his face. “Frankly, it seems that you’re just pining.”

Thor laughs. Over the years he has found that, while Steve is undoubtedly the paragon of human virtue, he can have an unusual sense of humor. “That’s a good joke, friend, but I was hoping to get some real advice.”

Steve smiles fully this time. “Just be honest about it.”

“What?”

“You know, let him know how you feel. You can start by calling him by his first name, for example. Just, you know, some kind of… Courtship.”

Thor’s eyes widen. “Courtship? I don’t want to court Banner!”

Steve laughs. He is openly mocking Thor now. “It sounds like you do, though. And you’re awfully bad at hiding it.”

“I-What?”

“I’m just saying.” Steve shrugs, and Thor curses the fact that humans haven’t figured out a way to punch someone over video calls yet. “You can try spending more time with him, too. You can come to his lab…”

“And what? Create a war that drives apart all of our friends and makes us stop talking to each other until an insane Titan threatens to destroy everything we’ve ever known?”

There’s a moment of silence.

The paragon of human virtue flips Thor off and hangs up on him.

Thor is aware that that was not his finest moment. He sends out a raven with an apology, but gets no answer. Still, he can’t get those words out of his head.

The thing is, however, that Thor does not pine. Pining is for the unworthy, those of frailer bodies and minds. Pining is for Stark and Rogers and their strange, unbearably slow human courtship. Pining is not for the son of Odin, the heir of Asgard, the god of thunder (and not of hammers). Pining is so beyond Thor he could honestly say he doesn’t know what the word means. Because he doesn’t! Really! He gets why it would seem like it, for lesser minds, but there’s just no way he’d ever…

“Thor?” Banner asks, his nice, huge eyes blinking in his direction, clueless and innocent and adorable.

Ok, maybe his friends’ weakness is rubbing off on him a little bit.

“Uh, yes? What is it?” Thor asks back, suddenly forgetting where he usually puts his hands.

“I asked which movie you want to see tonight.”

Thor frowns. “Tonight is your night to choose.”

Banner grins a little, shyly, and Thor pretends he doesn’t suddenly feel warm inside. “Uh, yeah, it would be, but you and Darryl got really upset with The Cove last week.”

Thor shudders at the memory.

“Yeah, I get it, really.” Banner continues. “But I’m researching the life and preservation of marine species now, and the only other movie I can think of is Blackfish, which is, like, even worse. Uh, not from a movie perspective, I think, I hear it’s really great, but-“

“We’ll watch it.” Thor interrupts. “It’s your turn to choose, Bruce, so it’s only fair me and Darryl respect your choice, regardless of our feelings about the works displayed.”

Ban-Bruce’s eyes widen. “Well, ok, I guess.” He says, and he smiles – he’s got a strange, dorky smile, Thor notices. A nice smile.

Darryl passed on movie night, refusing to entertain what he called “Bruce’s masochist taste for documentaries”. Now, watching what can only be described as ninety minutes of the cruelest and ugliest side of humanity, Thor kind of gets his point.

Bruce is sitting right next to him on the couch, though, and he seems completely wrapped by the story. Thor tries to enjoy the movie, but the moment he hears the cry of the mother whale mourning her son, he feels tears welling up in his eyes.

“Thor?” Bruce asks. “Are you ok?”

It’s not shameful for a warrior to cry, Thor knows, but, if this is indeed a courtship, it wouldn’t be advisable, at least not by Asgardian standards. The initial part of courting someone involves impressing them through charming talk, often accompanied by boasting of your most badass feats in a recent battle. It most certainly does not involves weeping over baby whales at 1 a.m.

“I’m fine.” He says, dabbing his eyes slightly, doing his best to hold the tears back, but the mother whale cries again, and, Balder, how can humans call this entertainment? “I just… Just…”

“Oh, Thor.” Bruce says, and Thor wants to think the fondness in his voice is not his own imagination. He doesn’t get time to think about it, though, because, the next minute, Bruce is curling up next to him, hesitantly offering Thor his blanket and patting his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, buddy. I know it’s hard to watch.”

The use of the word “buddy’ makes Thor frown a little - because, no, definitely not how a courtship should work – but Bruce widens his eyes and takes his hand off his shoulder immediately, and Thor grabs his wrist nervously, attempting to reassure him. “No, no, I… I enjoy the comfort.” He says, lamely, but apparently, it’s enough to soothe Bruce, who, slowly but certainly, passes an arm over Thor’s shoulders, pulling him into a hug.

It’s… Slightly uncomfortable, Thor has to admit, because there’s no way of denying him being held by Bruce is not the most physically logical arrangement for either of them. He curls up in the couch, trying not to lay his full weight on Bruce’s chest, but the sound of Bruce’s heartbeat and the feel of his hands making soothing circles on Thor’s back is almost enough to make him forget it.

“There’s, uh… Laws against this type of thing now.” Bruce says, and there’s a pink streak on his cheeks, which, in Thor’s opinion, only compliments the warmth of his eyes. “It’s an ongoing battle, but captivity is becoming rarer by the day, thankfully. And this movie was a big deal when it came out, it really helped…”

Thor feels his eyes getting heavy at Bruce’s words, focusing on the sound of his voice and heartbeat. He dozes off in a few moments, and, fine, that’s not how any courtship is supposed to go, ever, but he doesn’t really mind it.

The next day, Darryl seems extra nervous during breakfast. Darryl is always nervous, Thor thinks, and especially in the mornings, right before he leaves to go to that weird typing chamber he calls a job, but today he taps the table with his fingers in an almost distracting manner.

“Is something troubling you, my friend?” Thor asks, genuinely concerned.

Darryl sighs. He does this a lot when talking to Thor.

“Thor,” He says, slowly, massaging his temples. That’s also something he does a lot. “You know I like Bruce, right?”

Thor raises his eyebrows. “What?”

“I mean, I like Bruce, he’s a nice guy to have around. He’s probably the friendliest of your, uh… Coworkers.” Darryl makes a face, and, ok, Thor has to admit maybe leading the introduction of his team with Valkyrie and Loki was not a good idea. “But, you know, there’s a certain degree of privacy people need to have, even between roommates. And I know, yesterday was just movie night, no big deal, you guys were actually cute when I woke up, but I just… Uh… Wanted to make sure you know, like, your room has a lock for a reason.”

Thor feels his face heating. “Are you suggesting-“

“I’m just saying, man, you’re kind of… Out there with your habits sometimes. And with Bruce, again, I like him, I’m happy for both of you, but I really don’t want to risk walking in on the two of you… Uh…”

“Darryl!” Thor exclaims. “Do you think me and Bruce are going to… On your couch?”

“That’s kind of what I was hoping to avoid, yeah.”

Thor thinks of saying something, but he kind of can’t, because now his head is filled with images of him and Bruce tangled around each other in the couch, Bruce’s nice hands on Thor’s naked chest, his nice mouth on Thor’s neck and…

Thor stands up, immediately, knowing he needs to either spar almost to death with Valkyrie or take a long, cold shower to get rid of the rush on his chest. Before he goes, though, he turns to Darryl, resting his hand quickly on his shoulder.

“Thank you for your advice, friend. I will think about it.”

He turns around and leaves.

“Uh, advice? Thor, you know that that wasn’t, like, an idea, right? That was, like, the opposite of an idea. I’m not trying to… Thor? Thor?!”

Thor spends the next two weeks looking for the perfect moment. Ideally, on an Asgardian courtship, that would be right after a battle, with the taste of victory and glory on both of their mouths as they delighted in each other’s bodies. But at this point he’s already accepted that human courtships are different, and, honestly, after a battle the only thing Bruce wants to delight in is a cup of tea. Maybe the Hulk would be down for it, but Thor doesn’t want to court him.

(Well… Ok, he hasn’t given the idea much thought yet, but still. He at least doesn’t want to court him without Bruce’s permission.)

So, unable to follow what would be his usual plan of action, Thor feels… A bit lost, honestly. He keeps having impulses of leaning forward and kissing Bruce, sometimes during truly random, inappropriate moments - Loki has kept true to his word about not trying to kill him again, but Thor suspects that would change if their team lost the weekly charades competition because Thor couldn’t stop thinking about Bruce’s lips.

Plus, Thor doesn’t know if just kissing him is the right idea. Bruce is a man of words, Thor knows, and he guesses he would enjoy a proper declaration, but Thor doesn’t even know how to start something like that. He tries to write something down, but the best thing he can come up with is a poor copy of a phrase of the beautiful book about the notebooks Darryl likes so much, and it doesn’t fit, honestly – Thor is not a common man and there are tons of monuments dedicated to him, after all.

It all comes down to the day when, in the middle of breakfast, a raven lands on the window, scratching the glass with its paws until Thor lets it in. A more careful examination reveals to Thor that it’s a red, mechanical bird. It doesn’t stay long, though, just dropping a letter on Thor’s hands before flying away.

“Oh, you got your invitation!” Bruce says, excited. He’s drinking a glass of warm chocolate, and Thor does his best not to think about how his mouth might taste right now.

“My invitation…?” Thor opens the envelope, admiring the elegant, seemingly handwritten letter, before starting to read: You are cordially invited to celebrate the wedding of Steven Grant Rogers and Anthony Edward Stark.

On the other side of the envelope, there’s just "SUCK IT, ASSHOLE" written in huge, black letters.

Thor drops his glass on the floor. “Rogers and Stark are together?”

“I know, right?” Bruce says, with that small, dorky laugh that makes Thor want to end the universe in a thunderstorm. “I mean, they’ve been circling each other for so long now, I guess they can afford to skip a few steps. Took the world almost ending and all, but it’s great, isn’t it?”

There’s a noble part of Thor’s mind that agrees completely, feeling glad for his friends and their mutual happiness.

There’s a not-so-noble part of Thor’s mind that can only think he just got beaten on the “doing something about your feelings” race by Rogers andStark, which is the equivalent of being beaten in a regular race by a legless turtle with a severe anxiety disorder. And, wow, that stings.

“We should get married.” Thor hears himself saying, and Bruce gapes at him while lowering his mug on the table.

“We-what?”

“Ok, no, scratch that. But we should… Get… Together. In some way.” Thor babbles, watching Bruce’s blinking eyes. He feels that same warmth he’s been feeling for weeks on his chest, and, fine, part of him wishes Hela would knock on the front door right now just so he can have an excuse to run from this conversation, but he knows he needs to say it. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Oh.” Bruce says. “Oh. …Wow.” He continues, and Thor curses the fact that he never really attempted to learn all the possible meanings of human onomatopoeias. “Are you serious?” Bruce asks, his cheeks flushing slightly, his eyes sparkling with something Thor wants to believe is happiness, but he can’t be sure.

“Like a heart attack.” Thor says, and he hopes he got the expression right, because the look on Bruce’s face is hard to read. “I have been wondering the… The best way to, hm, court you. Or, or flirt with you, I’m not sure which expression fits best, really, I’m working with Rogers’ advice here and I think we can both agree that isn’t really the best-“

Bruce cuts him off with a kiss – a soft, chaste kiss that makes Thor’s heart flutter. He pulls back after a moment, licking his lips nervously, barely containing a giggle. “I… I have been thinking about you too.” He says, and his hands are warm, calloused, and perfect, touching Thor’s face. “I don’t think I thought about courting, though? But I, I guess I wouldn’t mind calling it this way.” He grins. “If you want to.”

Thor smiles so hard his cheeks hurt. “I want to.”

Bruce beams at him, and Thor leans forward to kiss him again, longer and deeper, while steering both of them out of the kitchen and into the living room. He pulls back for a moment to take Bruce’s hand, sitting on the couch and pulling him into his lap.

“Oh, that’s, that’s a good idea.” Bruce says, between kisses, his voice low and shaky in a way that sends a shiver down Thor’s spine. He smiles lazily, more peaceful and happy than Thor has even seen him before. “A lot more comfortable than the kitchen.” He mutters, his breath warm against Thor’s neck, and, wow. Thor really needs to thank Darryl later.

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

Wait what's the story about half the boys in your grade getting your class kicked out of Disney world?

Okay, if anyone is going to read this story, you are legally required to listen to the song “Turbulence” first. Nothing will truly make sense without it. You sit your ass through the entire damn song, if you try to skimp out on it the Elder’s will find you. It’s completely vital to the full experience of this stupid ass story. This ENTIRE story exasperates me

Now, okay, so my high school senior class….was relatively a group of good kids. It was a larger grade then I was used to growing up, so I obviously didn’t know everyone in the school personally, but I could pretty much recognize everyone in my grade, and like okay, there were a lot of class clowns and trouble makers™, but for the most part, no one was really a dick and everyone was generally a Decent Person.

Then, for some ungodly reason, the song ‘turbulence’ gets released. 

Now, I think the song actually came out in like, 2011 or something, but it caused Notable Problems with my grade in particular. It was deemed our ‘CLASS SONG’, and every time it played at an event or someone just played it for fun on their phone or something, every single kid in my age group just unexplainably went crazy. You never really knew what was going to happen, and it got worse each and every year- making senior year the year of Worried Faculty, and not without reason. 

Senior Year alone, before this Disney incident happened, the song ‘turbulence’ lead directly to the slightly-violent concussion of an unwillingly crowd surfing teacher and a few freshmen at homecoming, and it was also being blasted on a blue tooth speaker when a couple of boys in my class Lowkey Very Politely High-Jacked The Plane We Were On, so, when we got to Disney World, the chaperones made sure to contact whoever was in charge of our party and told them under no circumstances was this song to be played.

Anyway.

So the school does a Disney trip for the seniors every year- they stay in a cheap hotel and shove four or five withering and hormonal teens in a room, they go to the parks during the day, one night they walk through Universal and see the Blue Man Group in concert, and one night they usually have a big dinner and dance party for the kids, usually held in Sea World. 

But, you know what came out when they were planning the Disney trip? Blackfish. So, the school board (and a lot of the students) were like “UMM-” and that left them scrambling to find a new location for the party. 

The Disney workers, being Disney workers, were super helpful when the school mentioned this issue when they called to make reservations, though. They were like, “Oh, this is great timing! Your school always brings such well-behaved kids every year, and we’ve been thinking about opening up our Fantasia Gardens golf course as a party location! You guys could be our first official party!” and the school was super flattered so they agreed. Disney was providing a dance floor, food, a DJ, and everything else, and it wasn’t going to really cost anything extra, so the faculty was like, Super Excited about it. They thought this was gonna be a great thing, they were the experiment to see if they would try this with other schools, it was an honor, and it meant that they had a great reputation in Disney’s opinion, so maybe they’d be open to providing the school with free/new stuff/opportunities in future years.

Now, let me tell you something- I was Kinda Fucking Miserable for most of this trip. The first day was fine, but the second day saw my friends abandoning me in Magic Kingdom with barely any explanation, so I spent all day roaming MK and Epicot alone, save for occasionally standing next to acquaintances and talking to my different-school friends in a group chat on my phone, and then later that night my friend since third grade like, got a school official and cried to her about how I had instigated a fight and that’s why I was alone all day, which is literally such bullshit and not what happened, it‘s been 3 years and I still cannot believe she actually pulled this fuckery, so even though we made up later in the week I was still pissed the fuck off for the rest of my life the trip. All of my roommates (the deserters) were walking on eggshells around me, except this one control-freak girl who tried to micromanage everything I did (even though literally none of it affected her)  and none of us realized how pissed off I was until I apparently physically threw her out of the bed while I was in a deep sleep, multiple times, and also stole her pillow. So the only person who I wasn’t Fully Done with was this tiny girl from a writing class, but she was potentially Half-Hamster, exclusively wore clothes made for seven year olds, couldn’t go on half of the rides because of her glass eye, and 99% of her conversation points was talking about all the plans she had to hang out with one of the other girls I was rooming with (who didn’t actually wanna hang out with her/got mad at me the third day there because the boy she liked was flirting with me), so like…she was sweet but I also wanna go on rides and not hear how great the girls I’m lowkey in a Blood Feud with are, you know? She wasn’t exactly prime hang out material here. So by the time we get to this party at Fantasia Gardens, we’re all lowkey pretending like everything’s fine but like. It wasn’t hard to tell there was fighting going on. And you could just look at all the other students around you and see there was also fighting going on. Shoving so many kids in hot rooms is never a good idea, like YIKE. 

Anyway, I needed something at this party to be fun. I needed to be released at this point. 

I walk into the place and immediately realize I’m a fucking outlier amongst the girls- every single girl had opted for a sundress, whilst I thought a black skirt and a nice blouse would be enough. This should not have been a problem, but hey. High School. What can ya do. (it just made me more stressed) At this point I was like, this is it, this is it, I hate literally everyone in my high school. There’s nothing holding me back. Graduation take me the fuck away. But I had to make it through this party and then one more day in Disney. 

The room was like, a barn, kind off? Or at the very least it had been decorated like one. There was barbecue food, a dance floor, a lake outside, and a mini-golf course that we were told we were allowed to use at any part of the night. The DJ was playing relatively normal dance/club music. After about an hour of strobe lights and watching people dancing, My Friend Who Hath Betrayed Me and I decided to head down to the mini-golf course. 

There were these two guys there, and I didn’t really know them but they were clearly those ‘All Our Classmates Are Beneath Us Because We’re Alternative And Like Anime And Heavy Metal Music’ types of guys. They took one look at my ass in a tight black mini-skirt and immediately started flirting with me, and on any other occasion I would have shot them down, but 1) They were both actively focused on me over my friend, who I was still mad at and 2) I was frustrated - so I started flirting back even though I wasn’t interested in the slightest (and I had petty reasoning, of course, but I was 18, it was a bad week, it was 100 degrees, give me a break. I promise 99% of the time I’m not Awful). So anyway, we get caught up in a game of mini-golf with these anti-establishment boys, who spend the entire time dissing our classmates for, like, dancing, and looking for excuses to show off in front of me/touch me. We missed like half the dance because of this. 

Right when we were finishing our game, we were contemplating going to the other golf course (I was looking for an excuse to head back to the party tbh we were literally the only four people outside it was starting to feel like the set up to a horror movie) when a girl came up and told us to head back in because the boys™ had busted out the alcohol and we only had a limited amount of time before the chaperones noticed. 

(They sold alcohol at our hotel, a bunch of people had fake id’s made before the trip for this very reason). Me and my friend didn’t actually feel like drinking but we took the excuse and the boys followed us back inside (we lost them on the dance floor and I only saw them once again that night). Anyway, we arrived to what we thought was Chaos, but was truly only the Beginning of Chaos. 

Right off the bat, I noticed the boys from my Gov class and the boys I knew from detention were huddled around each other, muttering under the music. That, I knew, was not gonna lead to anything good. They see me, and they’re like “Javert! Javert people trust you! Go request that the DJ play turbulence!” and I’m like. No. What are you fucking planning??? But they just keep pressing me. They would not drop it oh my God. One of my roommates overhears this, the one who’s mad at me because her crush she never talks to was slightly flirting with me earlier, and she’s in a petty™ mood so she asks why they want it to play but they still won’t tell her, just keep insisting that it has to happening. So she’s all, ‘I can get it to play’ and struts off to the DJ booth with an exaggerated ponytail snap. I’m left with these boys like. For fucks sake please don’t get anyone killed. 

A few boys break off to go tap people and let them know what’s going on. The smell of alcohol is strong. Boys are starting to discreetly take off their shoes and any valuables and hide them under the tables. The chaperones aren‘t noticing any of this. 

I broke away from the dance floor to get a soda, and one of the teachers sees me looking mildly distressed and asks if something’s wrong. And I know. I know that I have the power to kill whatever the hell is about to happen. I’m the sole person in this room that’s clued in who’s not whispering in excitement and waiting for the song to play. I still don’t even know what they’re all planning on doing, but I could end this so fast, just say the words ‘turbulence’ or ‘the boys’ or ‘senior prank’, and this would be nipped in the bud immediately. This could be over before it ever started, all because of me.

And then I reflect on how shitty my weeks been going, how I was frustrated with most of the people in the room, how I needed something fun to happen at this party to release me from hell. 

I tell the chaperone I’m fine, just getting a little tired, and they drop it and head back to the buffet line. 

I head back to the dance floor. Everyone is grinding with baited breath. 

The DJ’s voice comes over the microphone: “I hear it’s someone’s birthday tomorrow! Let’s play her favorite song!”

Turbulence begins to play.

The class goes wild, wilder than they’ve ever been before. The building may as well be shaking from all the noise and music. 

The teachers are trying to get the DJ’s attention to cut the song. He can’t hear them. 

The bass drops. 

Almost every boy on the dance floor screams, runs outside, rips off their shirts and jumps into the fucking lake. 

It was absolute PANDEMONIUM. This wasn’t even the funniest thing they could have come up with but everyone left on the dance floor was loosing their minds cracking up. The teachers and Disney workers were screaming at the top of their lungs and trying to haul boys back onto the land. 

Then the manager of Fantasia Gardens starts screaming that there are alligators in the fucking lake. 

Like. FUCKING. IT’S FLORIDA. HOW DID NO ONE THINK THERE WAS GONNA BE AN ALLIGATOR PROBLEM. F L O R I D A. 

THESE DUMBASS BOYS JUMPED INTO A FUCKING ALLIGATOR INFESTED LAKE.

A L L I G A T O R S. 

FUCK.

All the boys eventually make it back onto land- no one had been bitten or killed or anything, although a few apparently did see ‘shapes moving’ (it was late at night, so nothing clear), and one kid got kicked in the head and knocked out for a few moments and almost drowned, but everyone was intact. 

DISNEY WORLD WAS FURIOUS. 

And like, you can’t fucking blame them. I’m sure when they were making the principal sign liability papers, they didn’t think to include ‘late night gator attacks in a lake’ on the list, they could’ve been put in serious trouble if something had happened omfg. But there was a LOT of yelling/ranting/cursing. NEVER before have they seen such inappropriate behavior, the school would not be allowed to step foot in the Fantasia Gardens EVER again, yadayada, that sort of thing. The more boys I found soaking wet, the more ridiculous this got- I knew which of them had planned it of course, but this was most of the grade. There were like, geeks and nerds and Good Kids™ who I never expected to do something like wild like this standing around half naked looking torn between proud and about-to-cry omfg.

Every single boy who participated got suspended for three days, but they had to space out which boys were suspended which days because they didn’t trust them to not throw a giant party on the days they weren’t there. 

The school is still allowed in Disney World every year, but are banned from Fantasia Gardens and received a fine. 

‘Turbulence’ was absolutely banned from being played at senior prom. 

[lovelyirony]

Oh My God Don’t Ever Watch Crappy Movies Without Me

ok but like here me out--

Everyone has been recommending Steve the classic good movies. The ones with the iconic lines and passing glances and Cher. (That woman is a gift.) Sam shows him movies that are all about cool action and suave men. Natasha shows him a ton of foreign films, most of which leave him confused or reminding him about the easy way the French had of talking, or the rapid-fire Spanish that he could never really get the hang of in the war. Bruce shows him important movies that highlight social injustice, as well as Blackfish. (Listen, Bruce would be an absolute slut for showing people the injustice of sea world.) Thor joins in, and seems to like older movies from the seventies. (Steve doesn’t actually like those movies all too much.) Clint...Clint watches the sports movies and gritty movies that aren’t really Steve’s style. (Also, whenever Steve does something remotely dangerous Clint and Tony both go, at the same time, “jesus christ that’s Jason Bourne.” Steve is confusion.) 

But Tony? He tries movies with Steve. He grabs a copy from the local library and pops it in. “I’m not sure what this was, but it was an eighties animated children’s movie, so it’s either scarring or just okay.” 

Turns out it was scarring. 

Steve and Tony bond over trying new movies. They text each other titles to make sure that they haven’t seen it. They both go through Disney films. Steve is kind of surprised that Tony hasn’t seen them. (It involved growing up too fast, and the elder Stark had a falling out with the man behind the mouse.) 

They laugh their way through shitty romance films from the early 2000s, and both do not want to admit that they enjoyed the film Legally Blonde. (Tony can quote the movie, and now does so frequently.) They go to different rooms to watch after Nat and Clint make too many kissy faces when passing. Steve gets beet-red and tries to ignore them, subtly flipping them off as they pass. Tony just winks and murmurs a flirtatious remark that gets Steve tomato red. (Dammit.) 

Eventually, Steve tentatively shows Tony some crap noir films. Some films are silent, and Steve will talk through it with personal anecdotes; sometimes, Hollywood would have events in New York, and he and Bucky would take the train down to catch a glimpse of some starlet. Tony laughed as Steve waxed poetic about Rita Hayworth and her smile. 

Tony shows Steve some underground movies, which Steve likes. They go to the theater and watch some more movies, laughing through comedies and crying during children’s movies. (If you mention it Tony will sue you for about fifty bucks.) 

It becomes their “thing.” News stations wonder if they’re dating. Tony mentions Steve a lot more often, and talks about how messed up The Last Unicorn was. (That movie is terrifying, alright?) Steve bashfully says that he thought the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding was “real interesting.” he thought the part about being vegetarian was really funny. 

Eventually, they start noticing that they gravitate towards one another. During their movie night, Steve will let Tony stretch his legs out, a soft blanket covering them. They fall asleep on one another, and Steve can actually see how long Tony’s eyelashes are. (He has freckles!!! Small ones, but now Steve’s sketches are more complete!!) Tony notices that Steve’s eyes are purely blue; nothing else mixed in. They light up as he watches something inspiring or happy. They darken when he’s mad or frustrated. His smile would probably be another good power source for the arc reactor. (And the way his forehead creases go away immediately when he sets foot into an art studio really...it’s nice. Very nice.) 

They both ask each other out at the same time. Tony and Steve garble the words. 

“Um--”

“I mean if you want---”

“Do you want to talk first? I just--I feel like” 

“No, it’s okay, you can talk first Tones--” Steve looks down, smiling shyly. “I guess we’re both pretty bad at this, aren’t we?”

“Well, we couldn’t ever do improv,” Tony says with a shrug. “So, uh, you wanna go on, um, a date? You know? Like, for real?” Steve snorts. 

“As long it doesn’t end like Elle and Warner’s.” 

“oh god no, neither of us owns a dog named Bruce. And I’m not bringing him in a handbag.” Steve laughs; it’s exactly that nerdy, off-kilter sense of humor that he loves. 

Steve finally gets to experience a drive-in, and what the old-school kids called second-base. (Steve didn’t care about getting arrested, but Tony did.) 

[downloadersdiary]

A Downloader’s Diary: Orts from the 2016 Table

by Michael Tatum

While plugging away at 2017, I thought I might as well publish these two leftovers from 2016, especially since one of them provided a comment to Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll (attributed to Leonard Cohen rather rather than Will Toldeo, but that’s showbiz for you). See you “for reals” in a few weeks.

American Honey: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (UME) No mere rock critic would ever have conceived this wondrous treasure chest of rhinestone and pyrite -- no music nerd or A&R wonk either. Stitching together songs from genres that don't mesh, from artists you probably have avoided if you've heard of them at all, I'm not sure how these tracks work in the Andrea Arnold movie of the same name -- from lowbrow trap to wispy indie rock to cornball country to gauche electropop, can this mismatched tapestry really represent the southern youth subculture she imagines? Since the nearest art house theater is 25 miles from my current abode, I'm moved to ask: who cares? This works so much magic and mystery that I find myself even digging songs I couldn't stand on the radio, namely Lady Antebellum's "American Honey" (fuck you and your bullshit nostalgia, Hillary) and Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You" (they're called consonants, Hope). Wish I could tell you what makes this melding of chalk and cheese taste like champagne and caviar -- Lord knows it's not quality artists, of which you'll find here a grand total of one: Steve Earle, represented by the title track of Copperhead Road, his (first) arena rock move (it sounds dynamite). But I will say the sequencing, particularly in the nineteen track version that should be a physical pronto, runs so far left field Barry Bonds should make a dash for it and put his glove up -- you'll wonder for example where Arnold dug up the spritely opener from Quigley, a Soundcloud denizen so obscure she doesn't merit a Wikipedia page, yet provides Arnold with several key thematic threads (”This is the beginning?” "Truth is a socially constructed point of view?" You better believe it). Then there's the cornball closer from Razzy Bailey, who research tells me is a "C&W" singer of some sort, but sounds here like someone who flunked the audition for Hamilton, Frank, and Joe Renyolds -- yet his "I Hate Hate" is puerile as it is magnificent.  In short, “patriotism” at its most mellifluous -- the kind of country I wouldn’t mind visiting. Or for that matter, living in.  A PLUS  

Car Seat Headrest: Teens of Denial (Matador) Even if he only wants to be there “half the time,” all Will Toledo wants to do is go home. “Freaking out of his mind” in a house that’s not his, the first thing he wants to do when he stumbles to through his front door is wail to his mother about how he’s been “destroyed by hippie powers,” but unfortunately he’s not sober enough to convince that breathalyzer. So instead he splits from the party on foot, crying as he drags himself down the block, getting harassed by the cops. Talk about your metaphors being rammed, er, “home” – it’s there even in his mysterious reference to the 2013 documentary Blackfish, in which a former trainer points out that killer whales can’t be released into the wild because they don’t have the skills to survive there, while grudgingly admitting they might not be too crazy about being in captivity either. In other words, they can’t go home either, and they don’t exactly have the benison of fetching melodies and memorable guitar riffs to sing in their chains like the sea. Speaking as someone who’s spent the bulk of 2016 living a trailer behind his father’s house, I’m not sure I have much useful advice for Toledo – I’m old enough to be his father and I’m still lost. But I will say although I agree the self portrait of Van Gogh on the Wikipedia page for depression (he’s referring to 1890’s Sorrowing Old Man) is certainly powerful, I’d draw Will’s attention to 1889’s Irises, which is simply one of the most beautiful things ever made by mortal hands: green stalks reaching out of ruddy earth, blue-green blossoms bent but unmistakably reaching up toward the sunlight. He painted it in the Saint Remy insane asylum.  He couldn’t go home either – and what beauty he found in the most heartrending of places.  A

 Trash

De La Soul: De La Soul and the Anonymous Nobody (AOI) All De La albums deal thematically with the trio’s relationship to the current commercial climate, but when this began with Jill Scott melodramatically bemoaning the dearth of “love” in this world like she was Hattie McDaniel, I was a little disgusted when I realized she wasn’t referring to George Zimmerman or our current Führer-elect, but rather to a certain Long Island-based unit that is no longer either blowing up or going pop. Seems a little tacky to spend an album bemoaning a culture that no longer adores you when you surpass your initial $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal in less than ten hours, don’t you think? But this isn’t news – the old guard resents the young turks in any genre, and hip hop in particular is hardest on its elder statesmen (though jeez, at forty-seven, Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer is only two years older than your humble downloader). What really blows my mind is the failed hit single features none other than Snoop Dogg, who in 1994 represented their g-funk polar opposite, but two decades later is yet another fellow hip hop legend eking out a decent existence from middling records because he’s got his own vanity label. Although to be fair, Snoop’s records do put more time into the drum programming than the synth string sections.  B

[florafraser-blog]

OOC week: media & entertainment

Favourite band(s): as of right now, i’m really goddamn into the 1975!!! but i would be Remiss if i didn’t include one direction here because they literally owned me for like 4 years, and they still kind of Do own me rip. i also really like bastille, troye sivan, carley rae jepsen, and little mix.

Favourite song(s): at the moment, my favorite song is ‘caroline’ by animé or ‘perm’ by bruno mars.

Favourite book(s): i will be honest, i have not been the best about keeping up with reading since high school or college, like my attention span is really nonexistent so reading is Hard, but!! some of my all time favorites are the secret history by donna tartt, the song of achilles by madeline miller, and 1984 by george orwell.

Favourite quote: “Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” -margaret atwood. this quote literally fucks me up every time i read it.

Favourite movie(s): here we are…..here it is……so, my favorite director in the entire world is david fincher, and i have loved almost all of the movies he’s made except for the ones that he himself does not love (he shits on alien 3 and the game so often i feel like nobody ever needs to criticize him for making them bc he doe it himself). but my favorite fincher movie without a doubt is the girl with the dragon tattoo, with the social network coming in at a close second and fight club and gone girl consistently duking it out for third place. honestly, my favorite movies are literally just david fincher’s filmography. other movies i’ve enjoyed, for various reasons are: lion (2016), nerve (2016), y tu mama tambien (2001), skyfall (2012), the incredibles (2004), wet hot american summer (2001), rush (2013), blackfish (2013), magic mike: xxl (2015), alien (1979), the hunt (2012), weekend (2011), mr. and mrs. smith (2005), x-men: first class (2011), shame (2011), brokeback mountain (2005), and the riot club (2014)

Favourite tv shows: oh……lord okay, lost is my favorite goddamn TV show of all time, and i will never love anything the way i love lost. just need to put that out there as a disclaimer. but others are: queer as folk, buffy the vampire slayer, grey’s anatomy, sense8, unreal, black mirror, torchwood, house of cards, skins, hannibal, scandal.

Are you active in any fandoms right now? not really. everything i care about is either dead or irrelevant at this point, and i’m honestly very okay with the fact that i’m not in a fandom and can just sit in a corner and watch all of the fandom drama from the periphery.

What fandoms were you active in? my first ever fandom on tumblr was queer as folk, and it was so chill bc the show’s been Dead for years so there was literally nothing to fight about, bless. except for how some people??? like michael??? Gross. but anyways, i moved onto supernatural, doctor who, and sherlock (rip) and was there for a Good Long While, but i matured out of it honestly and moved onto game of thrones, where i stayed until louis tomlinson and harry styles walked into my life and everything i touched turned into one direction.

What tv shows or movies did you watch as a child that were fundamental to how you grew up? i think desperate housewives was the first show i ever binge watched??? so that led to like??? my entire fascination with TV, and it also led me to queer as folk which was basically the biggest help i could have ever had in figuring out that i was a Big Gay Baby. but also buffy was soooo influential because it was not only a fun genre piece that gave me my fantasy/sci-fi fix, it was also just like?? these bad ass women doing bad ass things. and also it was the first of many Gay Taras that would come to television :’)

What’s one thing you collect(ed): the brand of tea my mom drinks always used to come with these little ceramic figurines and i thought they were so fucking cute, and i have them all lined up on my chest of drawers back home in massachusetts??? they’re so silly, like they change depending on the month you bought the tea during so some of them are pumpkins for october or little cupids for february or snowmen for january. they’re so goddamn adorable.

Spotify or youtube? spotify 100%!!!!!!

Netflix or those sweet, sweet illegal downloads? netflix 100%!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever been to a concert? If so, whose? my first concert was when i was twelve, and i saw three days grace, breaking benjamin, and seether all at the same time. can u say Emo Extravaganza. but since then, i’ve seen one direction four times, troye sivan twice, halsey, green day, marina and the diamonds, and bastille! i’m also going to an ariana grande concert in march solely bc i want to see little mix, and they’re opening for her soooo :’)

OTP: listen……it is so RARE for me to ship the main pairing of a show especially when it is a STRAIGHT pairing, so the fact that i love jack and kate from lost as much as i do is a wild goddamn ride. but also brian and justin from queer as folk are…end all be all of OTPs….and more Recently, fitz and olivia from scandal literally own me. also shout out to the OG gays, achilles and patroclus.

NOTP: sorry but don’t even try 2 take 2 me about april and jackson or cristina and owen from grey’s cristina deserves to be w jackson bc he’s just as pretty as her and that one time they made out killed me, april needs to stop talking, and owen is an ass. also richard and catherine are no good because catherine could be a fun character but she isn’t. she’s just horrible.

Currently watching: i’m actually not watching any TV right now?? i’m in a slump rip. but i’m waiting for grey’s and scandal to come back in like 2 weeks and looking for something else to watch.

Currently reading: a biography of elizabeth bathory because i really really love her and am going to be writing a script about her this semester, and also crush by richard siken.

Currently listening to: 24k magic, bruno mars’ new album, i am so into it!!!!!!

If you could make everyone read one book (or script), which would it be? i added the script part bc tbh if i could make aaron sorkin’s the social network required reading for every human being on this planet, i think……i think i would be able to die happy. but book wise, i definitely want to say gone girl by gillian flynn. i haven’t finished the whole thing, but i know enough to know that everyone Should read it.