#this has tipped the effort scales just far enough off of joke sketch that it goes on the art blog

[mering]

he hates his job

[hoodievixen]

Here is the story of my forearm tattoo. I had wanted a tattoo of a sword for a handful of years, since before I was old enough to get a tattoo. At some point it gained the meaning of my struggle with mental health. It didn't start with any meaning, but it got it at some point.

Then just over a year ago I wanted to do something to annoy / shock my mom's family, cause far too much drama. I had enough money saved up, and decided to actually get the tattoo.

I designed it myself. The sword was cartoony, like you'd find in adventure time or old Disney flims, but that's sorta my style. The sword had an uneven blade, cause I've had a fight. I have terrible anxiety and at one point I couldn't go to school. I commonly got the critique of having "just a sword" as a tattoo, mainly by my tattoo - skeptic family. (My sister has one tattoo, and my parents don't mind Tatto as long as they don't get them, nor pay for them). So I decided to as a flower with the meaning of happiness. Now you can get many flower with that meaning, and yet find the same flowers with different meanings. So I decided on Lily of the Valley, which is a unique flower visually, as well as my favorite flower in minecraft. I made a joke that it's my minecraft tattoo.

I made one design I was happy with. I then showed it too my parents, who made some judgemental remarks on it. At the time my mental health still wasn't the best, so I went and made another design that I was not going to show them. I put a lot of work into these designs. I measured out my arm so I'd be drawing it to scale. There had to be like two entire days where I had flower references up on my computer. I put more effort into these than most projects I had in art school.

This is actually my second tattoo, my first is just some Nordic runes, but I still wanted to go to the same studio. Around where I live this studio is the most recommended place to go for tattoos. I decided I'd be fine with two of the artists at the location I wanted to go to. I based it off of other flower tattoos they had done. I just wanted line work, so I wasn't too picky.

I first scheduled a consultation, cause this was my first big thing, and I wanted to share my design. Like I knew the artist would probably change it a bit to make sure it look good as a tattoo, I accepted that. But I still wanted my design to be the heart of it.

Should have probably been suspicious when he tried suggesting a different flower than Lily of the Valley. But my anxiety make me a people pleasure, so I was like "I'd prefer lily of the valley". It had been a virtual consultantation, so he asked me to email him the sketches. I'd assume he'd send his versions when he'd make them, expecially if there was a large divination from my sketches.

The original day for the was only a couple weeks after. However my Dad gave me a bad cold, so I rescheduled to not spread the cold. The new date wasn't until the next month, which I originally wanted the tattoo before Christmas to piss of the extended family, but it probably wouldn't have done anything anyways.

So the day comes, I go in with that mixture of nerves and excitement. He shows me the design. Since he never got back to me, I assumed he stuck pretty close to mine. Nope, the only thing the same was the fact it was a sword and Lily of the Valley, at least he kept the flower the same. But what I drew as a thick broad sword one would hack enemies down with became a delicate saber that I swear I've seen on Pintrest before. I didn't care much about the flower placement, but I wanted that sword. That sword that I imagine in every book, draw on every knight, my thick nonfunctional sword.

But anxiety, I just agreed to it, and told myself I'll grow used to it. I have indeed grown used to it. Even the fact the tip is curved from how my arm was positioned when putting on the stencil. I still wish it was my design though. I'll just look for an artist alright doing the clients designs the next time I'm doing something like this.

Hindsight reveals a lot about the artist. This artist had also been the artist who had done my first tattoo. My friend and I wanted to get tattoos together, like I said mine were Nordic runes, and she wanted song lyrics. He took one look at my friends and said "I can't do that". Which he was an apprentice at the time, but the way he said it was rude.

Then during my session for my sword, of course there was a bit of small talk. I'm an introverted person, so I was on my phone for most of the time. The small talk ended up on videogames, and he wanted to know what kind I liked. Now I go off of graphic and vibe when deciding videogames, so I just told him I was currently playing Hollow Knight and Hades. And he was quick to call them dungeon crawlers, which neither are. I just agreed, cause I didn't care, but looking back seems sorta mansplainy to me.

If it was an option, I wouldn't go back to him. Luckily he recently quit.

[ethenell]

Best Films of 2017, Part I

10. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)

“... Now sink into the floor.”

Making the jump from sketch comedy to the big screen is a transition fraught with creative peril. The list of those who have tried and failed to navigate its intricacies is a list filled with a lot of talented people, and we can rest assured that not a one of them decided to cut their directorial teeth on a project as impossibly ambitious as a pseudo-satirical horror film that takes on racism in American society. But where so many others have failed, Jordan Peele has succeeded brilliantly, kicking off his directorial career with the latest in a growing string of Sundance-premiered, subtext-heavy horror masterpieces.

Blatantly confrontational in all the best ways, that Get Out emerged from the major studio ecosystem is a minor miracle in some senses, but really is a testament to the strength of Peele’s razor-sharp (and now, Oscar-winning) original script. Taking aim at the casual, insidious racism of liberal white America, Peele meticulously picks apart the ways that African American work and creativity is systemically marginalized, colonized, and exploited. The film’s pointed symbolism and fearless direction make it a frequently discomfiting watch, but Get Out is all the more essential for it. Jordan Peele is not here to comfort his white audience, he’s here to wake us the fuck up.

Despite it’s satirical underpinnings, Get Out is a horror film, through-and-through, and its brilliance lies in large part with its keen ability to indulge its more outlandish horror inclinations right up to the tipping point from horror to satire. Peele flirts with that line brilliantly, getting every last bit of mileage out of each genre conceit that he either exploits or subverts, before snapping us back into perspective with one simple reminder: if you think this is a joke, you’re missing the point ...

*Cough* Golden Globes ... *Cough* *Cough*

9. War for the Planet of the Apes (dir. Matt Reeves)

“Apes together strong.”

Looking back on the original Charlton Heston epic, it’s not exactly plain to see where Matt Reeves drew inspiration for his utterly brilliant Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy. Despite its esteemed status in the sci-fi pantheon, the original views now as little more than a campy 70s genre flick with an interesting premise and a great final twist. But from those bones (and conveniently ignoring an ill-advised early 2000’s remake) Reeves has crafted a franchise masterpiece. An unprecedented hybrid of muscular action filmmaking and art-house drama, and deftly borrowing elements of silent film, it’s difficult to overstate just how impressive the entire Planet of the Apes trilogy is. However, it’s final installment, War for the Planet of the Apes, stands as it’s greatest entry – a sweeping epic built with an uncanny feel for grandiose spectacle and an unmatched command of the jaw-dropping technical wizardry that makes its central performance possible.

Andy Serkis’ groundbreaking motion capture performance as Caesar, leader of the titular apes, is the film’s true foundation. You could make a convincing argument that Andy Serkis’ Caesar is the greatest hero of 21st century genre filmmaking, but it’s status as a monumental achievement in the marriage of acting craft and filmmaking technology is frankly unquestionable. That Serkis’ performance has been all but forgotten by major awards bodies throughout this remarkable three-film run will not be remembered kindly in the annals of film history – this performance is the stuff film history is made of. Reeves stages one brilliant, sprawling action set-piece after another, and the uncanny physicality of Serkis’ performance injects them with the dose of emotional resonance that elevates it well above traditional summer blockbuster fare. Honestly, filmmaking of this scale has rarely been better.

8. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

“When he looks at me, he does not know what I lack, or how I am incomplete … He sees me for what I am, as I am.”

The Shape of Water is everything you could want from a Guillermo del Toro film – fantastical, brutal, and ultimately hopeful; a beautiful modernist fairy tale with a definite moral compass. Del Toro himself has described The Shape of Water as his favorite film that he has ever made, and it’s easy to see why he’s so infatuated. A meditation on the lives of outsiders and the ways that love pushes across boundaries of convention, del Toro’s sincere affection for the characters onscreen is clear throughout, with each new wave of its strangely rapturous romance lending new evidence to the greatness that del Toro has so lovingly crafted.

A testament to his sterling reputation, del Toro assembled one of the year’s best casts to bring his sweeping vision to life. Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, and Michael Shannon are all impressive in their supporting turns, but make no mistake, this film belongs to Sally Hawkins. She turns in career-best work as a mute janitor at a secure government facility who forms a deep connection with an amphibious creature imprisoned there. Hawkins conveys more in a glance than an average performance can do with an entire script’s worth of dialogue. If there’s a better performance that’s been committed to film this year, I’ve yet to see it …

Guillermo del Toro is one of cinema’s most unique voices, and The Shape of Water is the kind of film only he could make. It moves in the span of a breath from bracing violence to endearing whimsy to magical sensuality. In the hands of another, it could easily have been ludicrous, but with del Toro’s otherworldly creativity, it’s simply lovely.

7. I, Tonya (dir. Craig Gillespie)

“There's no such thing as truth. It's bullshit. Everyone has their own truth, and life just does whatever the fuck it wants.”

Tonya Harding is one of the most infamous figures in American sports history, having been implicated in a plot to attack her biggest rival to improve her chances of making the Olympic figure skating team. Hers is a story stranger than fiction, and the electric biopic I, Tonya brings it to the big screen in  all of it’s bizarre glory. Far from a household name, despite having an award-winning indie (the stellar Lars and the Real Girl) and two warmly received major-studio pics under his belt, I, Tonya is director Craig Gillespie’s most dynamic film to date. Leaning into the scripts more out-of-the-box tendencies, Gillespie has made the most batshit biopic since Todd Haynes’ kaleidoscopic Bob Dylan exploration, I’m Not There. He breaks all the rules, and a lot of it has no business working. But work it does - a directorial feat for which Gillespie has not been properly recognized.

But without Margot Robbie’s electrifying lead performance, it all may have been for naught. Robbie is quickly claiming her place as one of her generation’s finest actresses, and her embodiment of Harding as a tragicomic figure undone by her own inability to accept responsibility is nothing short of fantastic. Robbie’s Harding is an internal battle between the fierce competitor and battered victim, and highlights the ways in which those dual realities eventually were inextricably interwoven. It’s impressive work that walks the tough line of bringing a publicly reviled figure a bit of deserved sympathy - but not too much.

The film sets out to contextualize Harding’s public life, grounding everything that leads up to “the incident” in the abusive nature of her home life, but never going so far as to excuse Harding entirely. The film’s brilliant fourth-wall-breaking narration - pulled form real-life interviews with Harding, her ex-husband (Sebastian Stan), and her mother (a brilliantly caustic Allison Janney) -  serves to highlight how frequently their accounts of the Kerrigan attack clash not only with each other’s, but with the plain reality of the situation. It’s a conceit that consistently sticks the landing, one darkly comedic beat after another, and makes for one of the most purely engrossing films of the year.

6. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)

“You know why this is my favorite tree?

Why?

Because it’s tipped over and it’s still growing.”

Sean Baker made serious waves at Sundance with his debut feature Tangerine. Not only did the film feature mostly non-professional actors, but Baker shot the whole thing on his iPhone – no small feat for a film deemed worthy of the biggest indie film festival in the world. Baker shrewdly leveraged that success into a budget that afforded him the use of an actual crew. While adapting his on-the-fly style to the inherent inertia of a larger on-set footprint wasn’t always smooth, the results of his efforts are undeniably superb. His sophomore effort, The Florida Project, is fresh independent filmmaking of the highest order.

Once again employing mostly first-time professional actors – with the notable exception of Willem Dafoe, who effortlessly turns in one of the finest supporting performances of the year – Baker endeavors to tell a story that’s built from bits and fragments of real-life that he’s simply lucky enough to observe.  What he sees pits the desperation of poverty against the buoyant idealism of childhood. The innate optimism of its child characters stands constantly at odds with the increasingly grim realities with which the adults in their orbit try (and often fail) to grapple. Few films can so deftly play as gritty realism and buoyant fantasy at once, but The Florida Project walks the line with tragic grace.

Now two-for-two, Baker is positioning himself alongside the likes of Andrea Arnold as a master of the realist style, with a keen eye for drawing pathos out of the real lives of those living in societies margins. Much of what you see on the screen may seem like little more than a snapshot, but it takes a special artist to paint such a vibrant portrait of a segment of American society that many would prefer to ignore. Very few filmmakers in the world could make a film anything like this one, and it’s entirely possible none of them could have made one this beautifully compassionate.