#to get out FULL JORDAN PEELE

[subtlesolitude-tailoredtaste]

I. Swear. To. God.

*taps gaudy box wireless mic*

Mooooddd.

[wizzard890]

WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK

from Variety

[unbearablylight]

the internet gaslit me into thinking Nope was Peele's best (or at least best since Get Out) but i was relieved to find the rotten tomatoes score agreed with me

[dr-spectre]

The discourse surrounding Sonic movie 3 is some of the most infuriating shit i've had to deal within the Sonic community for a long ass time. It is just... oh my god man.

The amount of anger that can be generated within the community over two egg fellas dancing is kinda nuts.

Now listen, as a man who loves Sonic and especially Adventure 2, I'm gonna be for real, i do not like this all that much. I just don't like the idea of the man who in his first appearance was him in chains ranting about how he is going to destroy the Earth and then later getting executed via firing squad, dancing around with his grand son and being incredibly goofy for the sake of it.

"But it's a kids movie!!" So? That excuse is bullshit and you fucking know it dude, you know what else is made for kids? Watership Down, guess what that movie has.

A blood soaked rabbit. Yeah. A kid's movie has that.

You know what else is a kid's movie? Pinocchio, guess what that movie has? Silly light hearted moments and CHILDREN TURNING INTO DONKEYS AND BEING SOLD INTO SLAVERY!!!!!!!!! But the movie is still a classic and fine for children to watch, cause it teaches them important fucking lessons and themes.

I saw someone say that The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of the darkest Disney movies ever made, a movie beloved by all, a movie with a baby almost being drowned, a mother being murdered near a church, a farm being burnt down, disturbing sexual themes, has the gargoyles and it's still a good movie. Yes, they have the gargoyles, BUT NO ONE LIKES THEM!!!!!!!!!!!! I'VE NEVER MET ANYONE WHO LIKES THEM! THEY ARE JUST THERE TO ENTERTAIN CHILDREN AND THAT'S IT!!!! THE MOVIE STILL HAS TONAL ISSUES!!!

I'm not asking for blood and guts in a Sonic movie, I'm not asking for Shadow to bust a cap in donut lord's ass. I'm asking for a story with more weight behind it. When you are tackling Shadow's backstory, Maria and Gerald fucking Robotnik, you gotta take that shit more seriously. You just have to dude. And if you make shit silly, make it actually... idk... FUNNY?!?!? FUNNY FOR EVERYONE?? NOT JUST 5 YEAR OLDS?!!?!

Serious movies are allowed to have comedic moments to ease the tension, but they must be handled well and fit the overall story and theme that the story is trying to go for. If they are gonna show Shadow's serious backstory and then follow it up with Eggman and his 110 year old grand father dancing, or vice versa, it's not gonna work. It just won't work in my opinion.

"But there might be a twist and Gerald actually goes full on crazy like in Adventure 2!" WE DON'T KNOW THAT YET!!! WE LITERALLY DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING!!!! If it is true that Gerald DOES eventually go crazy and that goofy act is a facade to manipulate Eggman, then guess what, I WOULD LIKE THAT!!! I WOULD BE FINE WITH THAT!! IT WOULD MAKE REPEAT WATCHES MORE INTERESTING!! BUT WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING YET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU CANNOT BE SO SURE!!!

"But it's Jim Carrey!! He's gonna act goofy!!"

Yes Jim Carrey is known for his comedic roles and him as Eggman is pretty good, but you know what else Jim is known for?

Like I'm just saying guys... he can do more emotional roles, he isn't just the "silly man" you guys think he is. Boiling him down to just one thing and that he can do ONLY one type of acting is so insulting and disrespectful to his acting skills.

Jordan Peele, a comedic actor, went on to direct horror movies like Get Out, Us and Nope, and those movies have some of the most craziest and most intense horror movie scenes I've ever seen in my life.

The same man who did this.

Directed this.

Stop boiling down creative people into just one role. It's so annoying.

"But the movie can balance seriousness and stillness!" THE MOVIE ISNT OUT YET! WE DON'T KNOW THAT YET!!!!!!!!!! THE TONE BALANCE COULD BE GOD AWFUL OR IT COULD BE ACTUALLY GOOD! Like how the most emotional and powerful scene of Spider-Man 2 leads into one of the funniest scenes of the movie, but it WORKS SO WELL!!! BECAUSE IT TIES INTO THE THEMES OF THE MOVIE ABOUT WANTING TO LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE VS GREAT POWER AND GREAT RESPONSIBILITY!!!!!!!!! SACRIFICING YOUR DREAMS IN ORDER TO DO THE RIGHT THING!!!

"But Sonic Adventure 2 and Unleashed are goofy and serious!!"

My brother in Christ... Adventure 2 is not fucking goofy. It doesn't throw out referential humor, it doesn't target children only. Sonic doesn't reference google maps and we don't see Eggman dancing IN HIS DAMN BASE IN THE PYRAMID! The goofiest shit Eggman did was scratch his ass for five frames. And then an hour later Eggman pulled a FUCKING GUN ON AMY ROSE AND WAS READY TO KILL HER! WHICH LEAD TO ONE OF THE COOLEST SCENES IN THIS DAMN FRANCHISE!! EGGMAN THOUGHT HE WON IN ADVENTURE 2!!!

The goofy shit from Adventure 2 is down to the delivery of the English voice cast and the translated script, i promise you, you WILL notice a difference between the original Japanese voice cast and the English cast.

Sonic Unleashed is not goofy, it is has funny moments but they are very few and far between. They do not destroy the tone of the story because Sonic Unleashed is not trying to be overly dark or overly lighthearted, it's somewhere in the middle but it leans more into the lighthearted side of going on an adventure and exploring new countries with Chip. That is the focus of the story, Sonic and Chip. The Dark Gaia stuff is just a motivator for the player to explore new areas.

The comedy of Unleashed is between Eggman and that early Orbot SA-55, the humor is SA-55 poking holes at Eggman's plan and ego and it's written really well. It doesn't feel like dumb jokes made for just kids.

The crazy Dark Gaia serious shit is saved AT THE FINALE AND OPENING OF THE GAME!!! But it works because the rest of the story isn't OVERLY jokey and super lighthearted. There's barely ANY jokes to speak of in Unleashed, aside from Eggman getting hit in the face with a rock, Eggman smacking SA-55, and telling him to "SHUT UPPPPPPP!!!" At the end of the game.

"But movie Sonic is different from game Sonic!!" Yes, i know that, movie Sonic is a different character from the game Sonic we know, yes the tone is more targeted towards children, yes Sonic in the previous two movies made referential humor and Eggman was dancing. But even back then, even as a younger person, i still found it fucking cringey when Sonic and Eggman flossed. I found it lame as hell that a Sonic movie would include a fart joke. If teen me found it unfunny then I don't know if modern day kids are gonna find Sonic doing dated dancing funny.

Hell the dancing scene in Sonic movie 1 was better executed because of Agent Stone popping up at the end and that sudden cut to him, followed up by Eggman's scream.

This shit is just funny to me idk why.

When you have trailers that includes serious looking shots and making the audience believe that they are gonna get something different from the previous two movies, but in the tv spots and music videos, we see shit like this.... It's just... I don't know man.

Sonic movie 1 and 2 sort of got away with being more jokey and childish because those movies don't tackle serious subject matter. Sonic movie 1 is just a basic kids CGI live action hybrid movie, Sonic movie 2 tries to go further into the Sonic lore from the games but it isn't explored TOO MUCH! Knuckles' backstory is used to connect with Sonic's and compare and contrast the two, you know, two sides of the same coin sort of deal.

But Sonic movie 3 is tackling stuff from Sonic Adventure 2, a story with government cover up, memory manipulation (call it brainwashing and I'm gonna stab you /j), attempted genocide of the Earth, a prototype ultimate lifeform that's in constant pain and fueled by the anger of Gerald, a child getting shot, an old man getting killed via firing squad, and yet... The tone is gonna be the exact same as Sonic movie 1 and 2? Why?

And Sonic is still the same old movie Sonic from movie 1 and 2. It feels like there is no growth to him. "But Sonic has a flat character arc!!" IN THE FUCKING GAMES! NOT IN THE MOVIES!!!!! Sonic went through an arc, he WANTED something more personal in movie 1 and 2, a family, he wanted to not feel lonely after the death of Longclaw, yet despite going through a character arc, he doesn't feel more mature.

Why is he saying shit like "Konichiwhaaaaaaa?" It's not funny, it just isn't I'm sorry. Fucking hell.

This is definitely a negative take from me compared to how overly positive everyone is. People are defending this with all of their heart and dismissing people who say "hey i don't like this."

I think that the Sonic community has a toxic positivity problem, i know that it brings back bad times when people criticize Sonic, i know, trust me i get it.

But people make criticisms to see improvements, we wanna see content from Sonic that can better target all Sonic fans from all ages, not just children. Sonic never targeted just kids, it has something for everyone. I love Sonic, i love the blue rat, i really do. But Movie 3 has me very conflicted.

I'm still really excited for the movie, but i don't wanna be blinded by the hype, i don't want to say that this movie is gonna be the best thing ever, because i don't think it will be. I'm just hoping for an 8/10 movie. Something fucking GREAT!!!!

If you personally don't mind the direction of the movie then guess what, THAT'S FINE!!! IT'S OKAY!!! Just don't fucking come down my neck about me not liking it, saying that I'm wrong or stupid for having a vastly different take than yours.

Sonic is in the best position he has been in so long, he feels mainstream and beloved again. We are free from the mid 2010s and how dry it was. I'm happy where the series is at!!

Even if movie 3 doesn't deliver what i wish to see, at least Shadow Generations and Dark Beginnings gave me what i was looking for. An emotional tale that felt true to the characters i grew up loving and pretending to be as a little kid. (I pretended to run around as Sonic and Shadow as a kid, no that's not a joke.)

Also, Run It is a mid as hell song. It sounds like an ai trying to replicate the songs from 2015 to 2016. It sounds incredibly dated and has NOTHING to do with Sonic aside from "RUN it." The other movie songs had barely anything to do with Sonic, but Run It is on a whole other level LMAO!

If this is the credits song after Shadow dies or something, I'm gonna be pissed off. Just make it a song for the beginning of the movie, PLEASE!

[technoxenoholic]

anyone who thinks horror is "lazy" and "bad" should go watch a jordan peele movie instead of judging the entire genre by its worst examples

Got to love all the people whining and bashing horror for being "low-hanging bad genre" yet none of them seem to be doing anything creative on their own.

Literally!

As though cheap lazy movies is unique to the horror genre, like there's not countless crappy romances or comedies or anything else.

[driftwooddestiel]

get to know me ‼️

thanks to @dear-space-cadet for the tag :-)

1. Do you make your bed? not really, but i do tidy up my bed a little

2. Favorite number? probably 7, i know its a popular favourite number but thog dont c aare its a good number

3. What's your job? don’t have one 💪 🔥 💯 i plan to apply to some like. shelf-stocking and similar type jobs soon when i get round to it

4. If you could back to school, would you? haven’t left it yet so i dont have much choice in the matter here lol

5. Can you parallel park? never tried but i doubt it considering i cant drive lmao

6. Do you think aliens are real? i believe theres bound to be other forms of life somewhere out there but idk if i believe in aliens in the traditional sense

7. Can you drive a manual car? once more i cannot drive any car

8. Guilty pleasure? watching true crime videos and then getting paranoid, getting into stupid arguments in youtube comment sections & getting way too invested in niche internet discourse

9. Tattoos? none atm and i dont think i plan to get any . but that could change

10. Favorite color? dull-ish blue (similar to the colour of my blog)

11. Favorite type of music? truly i cannot pick one

12. Do you like puzzles? jigsaw puzzles im ambivalent towards, logic puzzles i usually enjoy

13. Any phobias? no full-on phobias but i do kinda freak out at the idea of swimming with jellyfish

14. Favorite childhood sport? climbing!

15. Do you talk to yourself? all the time 👍

16. Tea or coffee? to be fully honest i drink neither but i’d have to say tea . ive had more tea than coffee in my life and i enjoy tea more generally

17. First thing you wanted to be growing up? when i was like 3-6 i would always say i wanted to be a dog (bc i did) and when i eventually came to terms with that not being a career option, i would usually say artist (but i also somewhat wanted to be a comedian from like ages 7 or 8 to age 10)

18. What movies do you adore? saw (2004) is my absolute fav, i also love donnie darko, american psycho, zoolander, ten inch hero & anything directed by jordan peele. + horror movies in general are my favs

im gonna actually continue a tag game for once SOOO. tags (no pressure ofc 👍): @nintendont2502 @gorillaxyz @s-ccaam-era-crepe @paranormalglass @dykesism

[see-arcane]

What horror movies would each of the crew enjoy? Who dislikes them?

Mina is at the front of the line for scary stories and horror movies alike. She's a bit of a classic ghost story fiend, so the original The Haunting and The Innocents would be her top picks. She'll also re-watch adaptations of M.R. James' ghost stories every December.

Jonathan may have a soft spot for Shakespeare's theatric scares, but straight horror is not for him. The closest he'll come is the type of 'horror' that really amounts to a romance with scary elements painted over it. He knows it doesn't count, but he quite likes The Shape of Water and, he will very hesitantly admit, Only Lovers Left Alive.

Lucy also doesn't consider herself a big horror fan, but will make exceptions for juicy character dramas dipped in corn syrup blood. She considers The Craft a favorite and--so long as she isn't watching it alone--Carrie.

Jack pretends Psycho is his favorite for Classic Cinema Appreciation cred. It's really Ex Machina. No comment.

Arthur is just Not a Fan of Horror. Full stop. His eyes water every time the pet inevitably gets killed off. He cries outright over sympathetic monster stories. Anything more harrowing than a stop-motion Henry Selick flick will have him hiding behind a pillow, and even then he needs to have someone's hand to hold. (The Rhino in James and the Giant Peach gave him nightmares for a week.)

Quincey isn't really a movie guy, period. He is sadly one of those types to hear rave reviews of such-and-such movie or series, swear he'll check it out, and then immediately forget or ignore it into oblivion. The one exception was Jordan Peele's Nope, which Jack and Arthur herded him into. They all thought it was just a sci-fi modern western-adventure movie. Jack staggered out of the theater afterward. Arthur just passed out. Quincey saw it two more times in the theater and now watches it at least once a month at home.

Van Helsing is also not much of a movie guy, but will watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and The Thing (1982) around Halloween. A bit of a masochistic selection, considering the subject matter, but the stories are too well-done to let the 'conscripting body horror' of it all overwhelm him.

Renfield is fond of telling Jack his favorite is Silence of the Lambs--no guesses why--but if he's being honest, he's a shameless sucker for the type of escapist monster media where the protagonist goes 'Oh no! I've been bitten/cursed/otherwise transformed into a supernatural super-powerful-cool monster who kills all their problems away! Oh nooo~' ...But then, he doesn't consider any of these horror movies. Honest answer? The Fly (1986). He'll never say why.

BONUS:

Dracula watches 30 Days of Night whenever he needs a laugh. He'll binge the entire Hannibal series in...other moods. His roommates know to avoid him when he brings out that particular box set and to pointedly Not Mention a certain soliciting someone for the duration.

The Weird Sisters watch fun old romps like Audition, Fatal Attraction, and both versions of Suspiria for a cozy evening. They only watch The Hunger (1983) when they're feeling maudlin.

[blazehedgehog]

Thoughts on this years Game Awards ceremony?

I want to like Geoff Keighley. Every year he gets on camera and the dude is practically radiant. He's beaming. He's living his best life and loves getting to be the host of that show. And I truly believe that. I don't think it's some gameshow host act, where the moment he steps off stage his expression goes dark. I think that dude is doing his dream job and his life cannot get better.

But there are so many problems with The Game Awards. Rushing through winners lists just so they can get to showing more trailers, visibly flashing "WRAP IT UP" warning signs to people who are tearfully eulogizing dead colleagues, while also giving extended time slots to Hollywood celebrities and people that are friends of Geoff just to say effectively nothing. Hideo Kojima and Jordan Peele spent eight full minutes on something that was effectively just a logo.

And, like did y'all catch that bit with Anthony Mackie? On stream we heard nothing but solid, constant applause as he walked out. But when he got to his mark I'm pretty sure he called out how the the real people in the theater all stopped clapping for him almost immediately save for one specific section of seats on stage right. Meaning all the cheering and clapping and people going "Ohhhhh!!" at exciting things happening on screen is fake. Nobody in the audience is actually doing that. It's the awards show equivalent of a live laugh track. Think of all the times they cut to a shot of the crowd and everybody appears to be sitting in silence.

Which is to say nothing of literally everything else happening around The Game Awards. They have something called "The Future Class" every year, a diverse selection of (international?) up and coming game developers, and a non-trivial percentage of the Future Class this year asked for The Game Awards to make a statement about ending the crisis in Gaza. They were ignored. Geoff couldn't even spare table scraps.

Increasingly longer and longer shadows are being cast on The Game Awards. It's starting to go beyond just being "a bad awards show." It's starting to feel like four hours of advertisements with the thinnest pretenses of "honoring our industry."

Keighley may be living his best life but it sure seems to be focused on making him not only look good, but making him a lot of money in the process. All while dodging responsibility for anything beyond those two goals. For something that probably puts literal millions of dollars into his pocket, he sure doesn't want to take it very seriously.

Bad taste.

[ser-zoras]

How POV Characters In ASOIAF Feel About Halloween

Ned - likes Halloween for the sake of the kids, but you cannot tell me this man wouldn't do a dramatic performance in which one of the direwolves eats him. Also for his children's benefit of course, but he enjoys it.

Cat - the mom who hands out healthy snacks. She probably has a very corny sweater with a ghost pun on it.

Dany - she is also an ugly Halloween sweater person. She also would have a matching costume with all of her dragons. Probably a bat.

Tyrion - he might take Tommen and Myrcella trick or treating, but that would be the extent of his involvement. Maybe he reads some Stephen King to get in the feeling of the season.

Jon - emulates the older brother in Hocus Pocus. He takes Arya around and as the cool emo brother, he's legally obligated to be miserable the whole time. He secretly loves it.

Bran - really good at freaking everybody out. A little too good.

Sansa - allegedly hates Halloween. She stays inside, yes, but because she is watching every single Jordan Peele movie and scaring herself shitless. She has seen Us twelve times. This has not made her any more normal about it.

Arya - is dressed as a werewolf. She insists on crawling on all fours the entire night. She also howls about every five minutes.

Melisandre - is literally that person who everyone compliments on their costume despite the total absence of a costume. She is doing witchery, but she will leave out a bowl of candy anyway.

Sam - using the occasion as an excuse to make a full cosplay. He won't be wearing it anywhere, but he enjoys the creative process.

Cersei - watching a Saw marathon and taking diligent notes.

Asha and Theon - Asha has convinced Theon to toilet paper someone's house. She will leave him there and call the cops herself. He will be bailed out three hours later, claiming that he's learned his lesson. This is the the third year in a row this has happened.

Brienne - let her carve a pumpkin PLEASE

[richincolor]

3 YA Black Horror Books for Spooky Season

Now that spooky season is in full swing all around me, it's time to turn to some spinechilling reads. It's been an amazing year for Black horror in YA, from an anthology (out October 17th!) to exciting new books that will keep you up all night long. Here are 3 YA horror books with Black protagonists for you to check out!

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea

There will be blood. Ace of Spades meets House of Hollow in this villain origin story. Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage.

To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood. The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom.

But even as undeniable as she is, Laure is not the only monster around. And her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is—monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first.

From debut author Jamison Shea comes I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me, a slow-burn horror that lifts a veil on the institutions that profit on exclusion and the toll of giving everything to a world that will never love you back.

You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron

At Camp Mirror Lake, terror is the name of the game . . . but can you survive the night? This heart-pounding slasher by New York Times bestselling author Kalynn Bayron is perfect for fans of Fear Street.

Charity Curtis has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business.

But the last weekend of the season, Charity's co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity's role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they'll need figure out what this killer is after. Is there is more to the story of Mirror Lake and its dangerous past than Charity ever suspected?

All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology by Circe Moskowitz (Anthology editor) -- Out on October 17th!

Welcome to the Dark. We are all familiar with tropes of the horror genre: slasher and victims, demon and the possessed. Bloody screams, haunted visions, and the peddler of wares we aren’t sure we can trust. In this young adult horror anthology, fans of Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country, and Horror Noire will get a little bit of everything they love—and a lot of what they fear—through a twisted blend of horror lenses, from the thoughtful to the terrifying.

From haunted, hungry Victorian mansions, temporal monster–infested asylums, and ravaging zombie apocalypses, to southern gothic hoodoo practitioners and cursed patriarchs in search of Black Excellence, All These Sunken Souls features the chilling creations of acclaimed bestsellers and hot new talents, with stories from Kalynn Bayron, Donyae Coles, Ryan Douglass, Sami Ellis, Brent Lambert, Ashia Monet, Circe Moskowitz, Joel Rochester, Liselle Sambury, and Joelle Wellington.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Justin C Key's "The World Wasn't Ready For You"

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. That night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

The World Wasn't Ready For You is Justin C Key's first book. It's a short story collection, from a major publisher. This is basically unheard of. Big publishers rarely publish collections, and when they do, it's almost always after a string of extremely successful novels:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-world-wasnt-ready-for-you-justin-c-key?variant=41016598036514

Yes, there are exceptions. Ted Chiang. Kelly Link.

And now, Justin C Key. To be in such company is, as they say, a big fucking deal.

I can't say I'm surprised. Key was my student at the Clarion West writing workshop – a year full of standout writers among whom Key was still a standout. I was immensely impressed with his work then, and when I found out that he was also an MD and a father, a young man juggling an unimaginably intense work and family schedule and still producing this polished, scary, precise work, I knew he could have great things ahead of him.

But to be honest, I wasn't sure he would write. Key was so obviously brilliant and competent, and had such an important dayjob, that I could easily have imagined him deciding that making up stories was fun, but that it was not nearly so rewarding as his other vocations.

I was wrong – and right. In the years since Clarion, Key's work has acquired a kind of medical precision. When Key stabs you, the knife slides right between your ribs and goes straight into the big arteries of your heart, slicing you so quickly that you hardly notice until you are slain.

These are all horror stories, though some of them are science fiction too, and more to the point, they'r Black horror stories. In his afterword, Key writes about his early fascination with horror, the catharsis he felt in watching nightmares unspool on screen or off the page. And then, he writes, came the dawning recognition that the Black characters in these stories were always there as cannon-fodder, often nameless, usually picked off early.

These stories represent Key's long rumination on the conjunction of Blackness and horror. Of course, that gets back to racism, in the way that, say, Jordan Peele's work does, or in the manner of NK Jemisin's post-Lovecraft Cthuloid tales:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-slow/#i-love-ny

But "Black horror" isn't merely parables about racism. In the deft hands of these writers – and now, Key – the stories are horror in which Blackness is a fact, sometimes a central one, and that fact is ever a complication, limiting how the characters move through space, interact with authority, and relate to one another.

The eight stories – mostly long – in The World Wasn't Ready For You deal with parenting, health, prison, corruption, and art – and they do so through hauntings and body horror and tension wound so tight you want to scream.

This is a brilliant and auspicious beginning from a brilliant and auspicious writer.

Key's book launches at LA's Book Soup on September 22, and I'll be there with him as interlocutor. I couldn't be more honored by this, and I hope you'll come out and see us:

https://www.booksoup.com/event/justin-c-key

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/19/justin-c-key/#clarion-west-2015

[lyledebeast]

Your post about seeing Scream for the first time and delighting in its clear target audience of horror nerds (affectionate) makes me keen to know what sparked your love of scary movies! What were some of your early favorite horror films?

This may come as a surprise, but I didn't start watching a lot of horror movies until fairly recently! I didn't watch them at all growing up; my mom was a gradeschool teacher and never had time to watch movies and my dad is a history guy. And I was traumatized by seeing Saving Private Ryan (1998) in the theater and was convince I couldn't handle the gore. The only horror movie I remember watching a lot in highschool/early college is Richard Donner's The Omen (1976), with very mild bloodshed in comparison to 90s and early 2000s horror.

The first horror movie I saw that made me want to investigate the genre more was Robert Eggers' The Vvitch (2015). All of the folk horror movies I've seen have been since then, and it's become my favorite subgenre. Naturally, I was obsessed with Midsommar when it came out in 2019, and it is my current favorite horror movie, though Hereditary (2018, also by Ari Aster) and Ti West's trilogy (X, Pearl, and Maxxxine) are close behind it. I think we're in an excellent era for horror movies right now with all these directors and, of course Jordan Peele. And I've noticed that the gore doesn't bother me as much as it did. What really drove this home was watching Peele's Get Out (2016) with a friend who is not into horror and telling her the violence was mild. She had occasion to point out how wrong I was several times!

Violence and gore are deeply subjective. I had no problem whatsoever with this year's Abigail (Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett), which features buckets of blood, but I still haven't seen the cliff-jumping scene from Midsommar in full. The particular kind of gore I can't handle is far more often found in war films than horror, but I have no interest in films like those in Damien Leone's Terrifier franchise where the gore and violence are the main point. There are still things I don't want to see, but I'm generally good enough at avoiding them that they're no longer a deterrent to my seeing the movies I want to see. Nearly every movie I've seen in theaters in the past few years has been a horror one, and all the ones I'll see this year are.

Obviously, I'm way behind on late 20th C horror since I hadn't even seen Scream, but I'm at work on amending that now!

[literaryspinster]

5 years earlier

Last night was fun, probably a little too much fun. Marie Moreau might be a grade grubbing, social climbing pain in the ass (pot meet kettle, they know), but she sure can dance, not to mention kiss. And she’s the sort of pretty that knocks them on their ass every time. Dancing with her at the club wasn’t the plan, the plan was to glare at her from across the floor while silently resenting Luke for inviting her along, but after a few too many drinks, and lines of coke and a shot of Molly for good measure, something weird happened.

Breathy and glistening from a straight half hour of sexy dancing with Cate, Marie came up to them, similarly loosy goosy from various substances that only Supes could safely metabolize. And she took their hand, her stacked silver rings clicking against theirs.

“Come on, do something spontaneous for once in your life, dance with the girl you hate.”

“I don’t hate you,” they said.

“Could have fooled me.” She said as she led them up from their chair and to the thumping, strobe lit heart of the club. She didn’t take no for an answer, but also, it wasn't certain that they actually said no in the first place. 

The DJ was playing Capsize, a song they liked a lot more without the dancehall bells and whistles, and yet, in the moment, it wasn’t so hard to be carried by it.They were hypnotized by the sounds and the constant motion around them, and by the girl in their arms oscillating like troubled water.

Up at night I'm awake cause it haunts me/That I never got to say what I wanted/Oh my God, oh my God/I’m not the same as I was with you/I would jump out my skin just to get you/Oh my God, oh my God

Her voice rose above the music, “You know, it makes me mad sometimes, how handsome you are.” 

“Excuse me?”

“I only mean because you’re such a dick.”

And they didn’t really know why, probably because they were both obliterated at the time, but Jordan laughed, a genuine, almost sweet laugh, because it wasn’t everyday someone called them a dick and it sounded like a term of endearment. Also, it wasn’t lost on them that handsome was another word she used. Being called handsome chafed sometimes, it only fit part of their story. But it was also the only part they chose to share with her, or anyone for that matter.

Jordan wasn’t much for dancing, on the occasions someone convinced them to get up and move to blaring EDM, they relied on guarded, understated moves, a head bop here, a shoulder sway there. But her closeness, and her scent and her big brown eyes looking right into theirs as her wrists rested against their neck, made them want to lose themselves in the machine beat, let their hips and their hands move more than a conservative amount.

I'm fine/Drop tears in the morning/Give in to the lonely/Here it comes with no warning/Capsize, I'm first in the water/Too close to the bottom/I'm right back where I started/Said I'm fine

“I don’t hate you either,” she leaned in to say into their ear. And before she could pull back, Jordan’s lips landed on hers, almost as if by accident, like they had a thought and acted on it before their common sense could catch up. They’d blame it on the drugs, they’d pretend in the morning that it meant nothing, because a kiss didn’t matter much at the end of the day, not even one as good as that. 

Something about the way she opened her mouth along with theirs made Jordan’s head float away, swallowed by the music and the feel of her soft curves under their hands, and before they knew what was happening they were sucking the space beneath her ear like a horny vampire, they were calling an uber, they were backing her into her her dorm room and untying the little laces on her top, they were laying her down on the blankets.

It was more than a fun night, it may have been the best night. But it’s over now, time to get up, get dressed, drink a full gallon of water and drag their ass to class…

…except this isn’t their dorm room, because when they peel their eyes open Marie is looking down at them, her preternaturally expressive face skewed in unmistakable confusion. They’re still in her room, and the Jordan she brought here is noticeably different from the Jordan she’s looking at right now.

Shit shit fuck. This is why they don’t fall asleep with people.

They launch up from the bed, wrapping the sheet around their chest, they would switch back but they aren’t sure if the fact that they can turn from a boy to a girl is more comforting than the possibility that a random woman sneaked into her room in the middle of the night.

“Jordan slow down, just tell me what’s going on. Is this not the first time this has happened?” 

She knows it’s them, maybe she saw them change while they were sleeping, maybe it’s because their jewelry is the same, or maybe she can sense it with her sweet ass powers, but she knows. Why are they still here? Why isn’t she freaking the fuck out and ordering them to leave right now? Sure she’s a supe, she knows that weirder things than this have happened, but as far as they know she’s never woken up next to those weirder things.

“I don’t know what happened, I’m never this careless. And I mean never.”

“Jordan, hey, come here, sit down.” 

After a few moments of hesitation, they obey. They aren’t really sure what else to do, they can’t exactly pretend this never happened, it’s not like they won’t see her in class in a few hours.

“So you mean this is just something you can do whenever you want?” She asks.

They shrug a shoulder in response, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“That’s fucking rad, why don’t you tell people?” It’s not the response they were expecting, and yet somehow, it is. After all, she knows exactly what it’s like to have an ability that people don’t understand.

“I want to be in The Seven,” Jordan explains. “I want that more than anything and no matter how much they try to act like the greatest superheroes are all special and different, the less special and different they are, the better.” 

Of course that’s what they tell themselves, and it’s mostly the truth. But that wasn’t exactly how all of this self doubt started. It started the night of the robbery. Marie doesn’t need to hear all of that though.

“But–

“Listen, this doesn’t have to be anything okay?” They say, and switch back before they can get too used to this. “We both got pretty trashed last night and some stuff happened. We don’t need to talk about our secrets and our feelings. It’s cool.”

She looks almost hurt, and Jordan wants to say something else to make that look go away, but they can’t. This is for the best.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she says, and Jordan stands up to leave, holding the sheet in place, gathering up their clothes and thinking this is the end of whatever the hell this is.

But it isn’t the end, because they won’t be able to stop thinking about her. And a week from now they’ll be back in this room, kissing her on the bed, touching her, letting her touch them. And there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Their fate was sealed on that dance floor.

~From How To Be Liars In Love ch. 6

[nabakovian]

films that are classics to me: part 1

just saw someone else do this but i'm making a running list of movies that are classics To Me (a mix of movies that are widely considered classics and movies that no one on god's green earth cares about except me)

full list on letterboxd

1. ghost world (dir. terry zweiger)

2. the long goodbye (dir. robert altman)

3. barbarella (dir. roger vadim)

4. terrifier 2 (dir. damien leone)

5. into the spiderverse (dir. peter ramsey)

6. scream 6 (dir. tyler gillett)

7. nope (dir. jordan peele)

8. crimes of the future (dir. david cronenberg)

9. aftersun (dir. charlotte wells)

10. bodies bodies bodies (dir. halina reijn)

11. everything everywhere all at once (dir. daniel kwan, daniel scheinert)

12. horror in the high desert (dir. dutch marich)

13. annabelle comes home (dir. gary dauberman)

14. parasite (dir. bong joon ho)

15. deadpool 2 (dir. david leitch)

16. the purge (dir. gerard mcmurray)

17. happy death day (dir. christopher landon)

18. would you rather? (dir. david guy levy)

19. lady bird (dir. greta gerwig)

20. revenge (dir. coralie fargeat)

21. call me by your name (dir. luca guadagnino)

22. get out (dir. jordan peele)

23. palm springs (dir. max barbakow)

24. pitch perfect (dir. elizabeth banks)

25. legally blonde (dir. robert luketic)

26. the house bunny (dir. fred wolf)

27. the house of the devil (dir. ti west)

28. fantastic planet (dir. rene laloux)

29. paris, texas (dir. wim wenders)

30. the grand budapest hotel (dir. wes anderson)

[brokehorrorfan]

Get Out and Us will be released together on Steelbook 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital on October 8 via Universal. Jordan Peele's first two films cemented him as a modern master of horror Jordan Peele.

2017's Get Out stars Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Lil Rel Howery, LaKeith Stanfield, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Catherine Keener, and Betty Gabriel.

2019's Us stars Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker.

Get Out is presented in 4K with HDR10, while Us is presented in 4K with Dolby Vision and HDR10. Special features are listed below, where you can see the full Steelbook layout.

Get Out special features:

Audio Commentary by Writer-Director Jordan Peele

Alternate Ending with Optional Commentary by Jordan Peele

Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Jordan Peele

Unveiling the Horror of Get Out

Q&A with Jordan Peele and the Cast

Us special features:

The Monsters Within Us

Tethered Together: Making Us Twice

Redefining a Genre: Jordan Peele's Brand of Horror

The Duality of Us

Becoming Red

Scene Explorations

Deleted Scenes

We're All Dying

As Above, So Below: Grand Pas de Deux

Pre-order Get Out / Us.

[kittyball23]

Maybe in trolls 4 is gonna be have "shrek 2 and get out 's Jordan peele" vibes and maybe we gonna see poppy's mother...as villain

Shrek 2 is awesome! I haven't seen Get Out, but I hear it's a very good thriller, so I think I would like to this Halloween season (usually when I watch my portion of scary movies for the year)

As far as the parent-antagonist plot (which, to my understanding, both movies share), it would be a shock to Poppy (and Viva for that matter) to learn that her mother has villainous intentions. Even if it is not full-blown villain (taking over the world, yadda yadda), just her being against Branch and his family would be a real kick to the gut for her :(