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honestlyfrance · 3 years ago

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SAMBUCKY BOOKMARKS

it’s fic yeah friday over at @fuckyeahsambucky so i wanna do a lil something something for the fandom :) check out my #fic rec tag for more!

enjoy the more than 50 fics listed here :) be careful of the tags!

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart by Lunar_Pull

Today is the day that Steve received an invitation to the love of his life’s wedding.

Philopatry by Areiton

"I want to be safe," he says. "But I'm not." "Then why come here? Why put me at risk?" Something flickers in his eyes, little boy lost and utterly cold, and it makes Sam want to give the dude a hug and also pull his sidearm. "I have no reason to hurt you," Winter says. "I don't want to hurt you," Bucky adds, earnestly.

farmhouse by Tazmaster

"You know, I think I'd want a farmhouse."

"A what?" Sam turns to look at him, slightly annoyed. This was the first thing Bucky has said in the past hour and a half they've been cramped in this god forsaken car. He had a knack for impulsively voicing his dumb thoughts at the worst times, but whenever you wanted to know what was actually going on in that head of his, he'd never say.

They were staking out the front gate of a large mansion, very much not a farmhouse. It was mind numbingly boring, being stuck in a beetle with absolutely nothing else to do than stare at the gaudy gates of some rich asshole.

"A farmhouse," Bucky repeats nonchalantly, "If we ever get out of this business, or you know, live long enough to retire maybe--- I want a farmhouse. With a lot of animals."

---

Bucky keeps talking about a farmhouse and it drives Sam crazy, that is until he finally asks why.

Employee Discount by bopeep for queenmab_scherzo

Sam Wilson doesn't love working in a store that makes him wear vanity-sized polos and breathe in clouds of men's cologne like the worst kind of GQ aromatherapy, but the view from his cash register across the mall to the Hot Topic and the sullen Dark Prince of Wallet Chains he loves to hate may just beat the minimum wage blues.

In warm water, swimming down by targaryen_melodrama

“Why are you hiding?””Tired.”Bucky raises an eyebrow. “So you decided to swim.”“So I decided to be alone.”Bucky’s quiet for a moment. “I can go, if you want.”It’s the last thing Sam wants.

I figured out what the slashes mean by Teaismycoffee

Sam, Steve and Bucky are all living together in a safe house. Bucky and Sam discover fan fiction written about them. Steve doesn't approve. Sam and Bucky are really into secretly reading fan fiction together, or maybe it isn't the fan fiction part they are really into.

Chicken Soup for the Soul by bioloyg

“S’not my bed time,�� Sam says as he buries his face in Bucky’s upper arm. Bucky laughs. “Tough. You’re sick.” Sam lets out a loan groan and says, “But my bed is cold. I was so warm, why’d you move me?” “Because your neck would’ve hated you if I didn’t.” He tries not to be so amused by how fussy Sam is when he’s both sick and half-asleep. It’s cute. ~ A fic wherein Bucky takes care of a sick Sam.

two nights in L.A. by CapnWinghead

Bucky kindly volunteered Sam to be a groomsman for Scott’s upcoming wedding. Of course, that meant Sam and Bucky had to go to the bachelor party.

at the end of the war (what's mine is yours) by notcaycepollard

They don't talk about it: that's how it works.

I'd Like That by honestlydarkprincess

Sam has been up for over 24 hours and has been dreaming about his Coffee Caramel Fudge non-dairy ice cream since about the 18-hour mark. When he gets to the store, there's only one carton of it left and, unfortunately for the guy innocently holding said carton, Sam's not leaving without it.

Or, the one where Sam is sleep deprived, yells at a cute guy, and gets both ice cream and a phone number out of it.

Ready, Set, Date! by bioloyg

Bucky wants to sleep, Natasha wants to find him a date for Steve's wedding (so he'll leave her alone), and Sam is the best thing about this whole speed dating disaster. But, Sam's not in the speed date rotations - he's at a different table weathering through dates just like Bucky is. ~ "Three dates in, Bucky decides he has made one of the worst decisions in all of his life by coming here. His first date had been an attractive enough man by the name of Greg. He introduces himself as “The Big G,” to which Sam laughs at in the middle of introducing himself to his own date. Greg likes to talk about cars a lot, which is fine. Bucky also likes cars. The only problem is that Greg’s love for cars borders on… erotic."

We'll rise up free and easy by Sarsaparilla, woofgender

Steve and Natasha are away on a mission when Sam receives intel about the Winter Soldier’s location. When he follows the lead, Sam finds something unexpected—but despite his initial impression, it’s certainly not all bad. (Post-CATWS, not AOU- or CACW-compliant.)

__________ "'Jesus Christ,' Sam said, 'Are you planning on fighting an entire army?'

Barnes looked up from examining the sights of a sniper rifle. '...no,' he said, a little guiltily, and adjusted one of the--five? Six? guns he’d already strapped to himself."

love is in the air (i smell coffee) by Flora_K, hermionesmydawg

Sam Wilson - graduate student, part-time barista, part-time salesman, and full-time father - doesn't have time to sleep, much less date. At least, that's what he tells himself.

Up at Night by bioloyg for lunaaltare

With Halloween nearing, Sam is feeling more in the mood for a scary movie than usual. He'd never watch one on his own though, so he invites his roommate to pick one out and join in on movie night. or Prompt fill for Samtember ~ "It’s quiet for a while after that. Like always, the two of them start on opposite sides of the queen sized bed with at least a foot of space between them. And, like always, they drift closer to one another as time passes, though whether it’s habitual or instinctual Sam would never dare delve into."

flowers in darkness, the moon above the sea by 27dis

Sam enjoyed his job, really.

But, not when a certain person came in.

A quick detour and a sudden arrival by iwillnotbecaged for heuradys

He found Wilson shivering in the snow, left for dead. Sloppy.

You couldn’t trust the elements to do your job for you. They were rarely so obliging.

A mission gone awry, unexpected help, and close quarters makes for an interesting couple of days.

Don't lock the door on me by TuskFM

Sam’s desperately trying to sleep when he gets a visit from the Winter Soldier at three a.m., bleeding and asking for help. Sam’s not the kind of guy who let someone bleed out on his front door, even if the said someone threw him off an helicarrier and stole his wheel.

and i run, further than before by hermionesmydawg

"What do they call you?" Bucky carefully pulls out an equal amount of caramel and cheese kernels of popcorn and pops them into his mouth. "Birdman?"

"No."

"Captain Canary?"

"Hell no."

"The Winged Avenger?"

"Falcon, dammit, and I am not an Avenger," Sam snaps, and now he's kinda pissed because yes, it's a bird name. He didn't sign up for this kind of ridicule from an amnesiac assassin.

***

Basically, the 5 times Sam actually found Bucky and the 1 time he tried to hide from him. Don't tell Steve.

Exquisite Flavor by enchantedlightningwrites for honestlyfrance

W&M's Grand Corner's growing to be one of the popular restaurants in New York, where Sam Wilson works as a chef for his sister. A wedding's in a few weeks and he has no idea on what to do about it. Notorious for his picky taste and blunt reviews, Bucky 'Winter Wolf' Barnes pays a visit. Little did he know, food could really win one's heart and lands on his stomach.

He's a Beta, You Hear That? by 27dis

Reasons why Sam didn’t realize Bucky was courting him this entire time: 1. He is a beta 2. He is oblivious 3. He thought Bucky is way out of his league 4. He is a beta for fuck’s sake

See? It’s hardly his fault for not noticing it. Why was Bucky flirting with him anyw—

Oh. Oh.

Or; Bucky swore flirting with someone was never this hard before.

stay where we belong by glittercake

He doesn't know what the hell he's doing when he turns around and shouts, "Yo! You know what—" and Barnes turns on his heel in a flash, "It's getting late, man. Looks like rain."

Sam motions to the grey sky above, and Barnes follows his eyes beyond the hanging Willow branches. "Yeah? What are you saying?"

He's got that terribly smug look on his face, the one Sam can't stand but kind of misses when it's not irritating him. But mostly, he can't stand it, "Nothing! Forget about it!"

Arms Spread Out Wide, Turn Falling Into Flight by irisesandlilies

It was easy, nothing has ever been easy for Bucky. Except this, and that terrifies him.

Years in the making by glittercake

Bucky and Sam meet as two young soldiers, but the time is never quite right to make it anything more. Until it eventually is.

Sam refuses to let himself fall in love while he's deployed. Bucky pines endlessly for years about the prettiest bird he’s ever seen. Sam’s no better.

If At First You Don't Succeed by SonnyD

Bucky finally gains the courage to tell Sam about his feelings. He comes up with a list of methods to woo him that were bound to succeed. He didn't account for each and every one of them failing in unexpected ways. The five times that Bucky attempts to woo Sam and the one time that Sam returns the favour.

if i could take us back, if i could just do that... by safelikespringtime

Bucky laughed, cheeks flushing red, “I’m glad you didn't. Don't know what I’d do without my wingman.” Sam groaned, poking Bucky’s side, “That was awful.” Bucky laughed. “You couldn’t survive without me. We both know it.”

How right he was.

***

Sam dies. Bucky mourns.

Strawberries and Cigarettes always taste like you by winterscaptsam

There’s a sweet agonizing simplicity in leaving behind your safe haven, like the thrill of adrenaline, reaching the top of Everest, allowed to admire its beautiful icy view but with the everlasting fear of not making it back down. Maybe that's why it was a natural instinct for Bucky to reach out for the closest thing that felt like home, slowly then all at once falling for the sweet warmth of mahogany eyes, what soon became his safe haven.

Baked With Love by Siancore

Bucky Barnes’ family owns a bakery in a small town. High school has long been over, and Bucky is dying to move to the city to pursue a musical career with his band. And his future looks promising, if he can just persuade his father to let him leave his job behind at their struggling family bakery.

It is no secret that Bucky used to love baking with his father, but things change. He just can’t fathom wasting his life away watching rising dough and hot ovens. With his mind made up to leave, Bucky convinces his father to advertise for a replacement. While interviewing candidates to fill the position he has vacated, Bucky meets Sam Wilson: An easy-going guy who is as eager about baking as Bucky is about leaving. They bond over baking and become close. Love looks like it is ready to bloom between them if Bucky, in his haste to escape, does not ruin it.

Beneath this Crown by winterscaptsam

Sam traces his fingers from James’ hairline, down to his jaw, resting the pad of his thumb on James lips. He will let himself relish in this feeling. Not even the sculptors, painters or poets could carve their words and materials to accurately describe this.

“Do you think the history books will remember us?” Sam had once asked. And James’ words were made of the purest of golds, “my love, we will be legends for the children yet to come.”

Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes' love story, one a prince and the other a knight.

make my body come alive (i've got a right to hurt inside) by notcaycepollard

The body is weak. The body is hungry and soft and human. He looks at himself in the mirror, the bones of his shoulders, his cheeks hollowed out from hunger, and he thinks, gentle, you didn’t deserve this.

safe like spring time by quidhitch

“I already told you it looks good. What more is there?”

“I don’t know, man, you’re gonna live here. I just wish I knew a little bit more about how that’s sitting with you.”

Sam knows Bucky feels fine. What Sam’s probably actually after is how he feels about the fact neither of them have anywhere else to go, not with Natasha dead and Steve wrinkly. Therapists. Even the good ones, always so circular.

“I like the terrace,” Bucky offers, mostly to appease him.

Airy Laundry by AmarieMelody

Sam watches what happens when Bucky buys a clothesline.

lucky by CapnWinghead

In retrospect, it took Bucky an embarrassingly long time to realize that everyone and Scott's mom thought he and Sam were dating.

not an end, but (the start of all things) by notcaycepollard

They keep driving, for lack of anything better to do. A mission, Sam had said, and maybe that's true; maybe wherever they're headed is the way out, the way up.

So You Run On Gasoline by 343EnderSpark, ABitNotGoodieBag, OriginalCeenote

Bucky may have bitten off more than he could chew with this job, he thinks, as he ambles along the sidewalk to the cafe after leaving campus. He is running off the fumes of exhaustion and hasn’t had more than 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep in the past week. Between his students and his thesis, he knows that it’s foolish to try so hard to hang on to his barista gig, but DC isn’t a cheap place to live and Bucky can’t live with other people.

Bucky is just trying his best, despite being a human disaster.

we could jump the state lines (we only get the one life) by notcaycepollard

It starts in Paris.

“You can’t steal things just because you like them,” Sam tells Bucky, feeling innately that this is a losing battle, and Bucky cocks his head to the side, considers Sam very thoughtfully.

“Really,” he says. “I’m stealing you, aren’t I?”

we were a fire with no smoke by notcaycepollard

Sam can’t help but roll his eyes. Take the boys out of New York but they’re still Brooklyn Catholics, that’s clear enough. Bucky catches the gesture, smirks hard enough Sam can see his eye teeth. It should be dangerous but he’s beautiful, pale and charming and recklessly easy.

“You wanna come in?” Sam asks, ignoring the noise Steve makes, and Bucky’s smile gets wider.

“Yeah,” he says. Steps up close to Sam. “I do.”

Peace Begins with a Smile by Siancore

Bucky just likes the way Sam smiles.

They're Good Drones, Brent by chase_acow

When Redwing becomes infected with an alien A.I., Sam has to balance the needs of the team with his own curiosity about his new partner. Redwing isn’t the only one acting strange, he also needs to get to the bottom of Bucky’s weirdness. It takes a training exercise gone wrong that Redwing and Sam might not survive for their secrets to be exposed.

Wet Asphalt (This Is What Love Is) by ObviouslyOtter

Soft words in the dark tell us all we need to know about love. Better when they come from the person you need to hear it from most. It's crueler when you don't realize it till afterward.

Sam and Bucky go out shopping for candles.

i'm gone by bi_marvel

After infiltrating a Hydra base, Sam and Bucky are sent to a safe house, and there's only one bed. Oh, golly, I wonder what will happen!

Covert Coffee & Flirtation Special by glittercake

The reporter says "—for Captain America to—"

And Bucky rolls his eyes. "Oh, here we go."

Sam looks at him then tips his head sideways, got a weird grin on his face. "Not a fan?"

"Not that. Just… the guy seems too good to be true, right? Wings and a shield? Come on."

"Uh, is that why your eyes are like glued to the screen whenever he's on?" Kate says. "Is that why you call him Captain Tight Ass?"

"He's a goddamn show-off, and you know it. Tight ass or not."

Just then Sam snorts, real loud, grabs his coffee and suffers a horribly controlled laugh on his way out the door.

The Starting Line by birdlight

A Series

Lone and Level Sands by quantum_consciousness

The almost-smile disappears off Sam’s face and he takes a step deeper into the water, and he starts unbuttoning his shirt as he wades further. One look over his shoulder and he chucks the shirt to shore, and Sam dives into the water. The ache in Bucky’s chest deepens as Sam swims. He supposes, Sam has lost a lot more, he supposes, sometimes Sam feels as lonely as he used to.

in which love doesn’t ruin us by joesnick

“Idiot,” Bucky said, so natural and deliberate that she couldn’t hear well but it was there. Relief and happiness under a small light. “Don’t do that to me again.”

“Hey, I’m here,” Sam said, before getting closer and pressing his forehead against Bucky’s. “I’m here.” They ran out of words. They didn’t need them, not at that moment. Their steadying breaths and their tenderness, saved only for each other and fed by each other, was all they needed.

Ride of Shared Melodies by enchantedlightningwrites for honestlyfrance

Two strangers, Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson meet in an unexpected encounter in the airplane. Over the course of the ride, they discover their mutual love for music and connect.

Let's Fly Away by Unclesteeb

"If I could fly, I could go anywhere. I could do anything.”

Sam’s mom gives his shoulder a gentle pat. “You can in your own way.”

“How?”

“Sammy, all you have to do to be as free as a bird is to just do the right thing.”

Sam furrows his brow. “What does that mean?”

“Well,” Sam's mom starts. “The right thing is doing nice things for people. It's treating everyone how you would want to be treated. It's going out of your way to help people and love them, even if they're not nice to you at first or at all. People deserve love, and I know you have plenty to give.” She leans down to give his cheek a kiss. “All you have to do to find your wings and fly free is to just do what you feel is right. You have a beautiful heart, Sam. I know you'll use it the right way. Then you'll fly.”

Been one of those days (can I lean on you?) by hazel_eyed_bi

Sam and Bucky wrap up an exhausting, weeks-long mission, only to go back to their mutual pining while forced to share a bed at a crappy motel. Also, Nat knows what's up.

Find your love and fight for it by winterscaptsam

Sam learns to love again, quiet and composed. Love letters stay in between walls and stolen kisses don’t leave his apartment. It's not that it's a secret, loving Bucky the way he does, lord knows he’d scream it from the rooftops, travel all the way to space to let any living life form know it as well. But that’s the problem, he just doesn’t know how and it aches him to his core to keep Bucky like a secret, like this love is something to be ashamed of.

Sam decides it's about time to come out.

Kings of Everything by glittercake

Twenty-five years after the events at a popular New York Bistro, Timothy DumDum Dugan tells the true story of infamous mobster Jimmy Buchanan and the man he gave it all up for.

arson we commit by winterscaptsam

Bucky seeks adventure, reaches out for an adrenaline rush whenever he can get it and he reckons this fellow will be the one to give it to him. All sweet smiled and dolled up figure showing off his attributes. Like he’s daring anyone to take the rush.

So, Bucky goes and gets what he wants.

“What’s your damage, doll?”

Bucky is the hitman and Sam is the target.

The Boys of Summer by Siancore for avintagekiss24

Sam Wilson returns home to the small town he grew up in to complete his med school residency. He hasn’t been back for an extended amount of time since he left for college. While he only consistently kept in touch with childhood friend, Steve Rogers, he was keen to see the people he had grown up with. With the exception of Bucky Barnes. They had a falling out the summer before Sam left for college. What happened between them? Can they move past it now that they’re adults?

Sam's Plan by OhHelloFandoms123

“I have a plan,” Sam said smugly, hands on his hips. “I have a three-step plan for you to marry me.” At first, he thought he was joking. Then, he saw Sam’s genuine smile.

Bucky groaned, “there is no way in HELL that I’m marrying YOU, Wilson.”

Wreck In the West by OhHelloFandoms123 for honestlyfrance

There’s just something about leaning on his chest as the sun goes down and the smell of tea whilst into the air feels so amazing. And he was a wreck because of it, it tore him apart and put himself back together because it was so blissful, he almost couldn’t breathe at first.

Gay cowboy proposal.

Belonging Season by OhHelloFandoms123

Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes have lived their most happy, married life for 70 years. Death won’t stop them today for living an eternity.

neverending; by glittercake

Sam passes away after a long and happy life with Bucky, but Bucky never ages and life keeps introducing him to Sam's reincarnates for the next 156 years.

Lighthouse by glittercake

This guy’s trouble. Bucky knows that in his bones. It’s not bad trouble, is the problem, it’s good. Sam is so goddamn inherently good and if Bucky even touches that with a ten foot pole—fuck if he even looks at it—it’ll turn to shit.

He can’t afford another move to yet another city because his colleagues started recognizing Brock’s fist prints on his face.

But Sam is a ridiculously bright glowing light, a beacon, and Bucky goes toward it like that idiotic moth to the flame.

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#onlysambucky #sambucky #fysbfriday #fysambuckyweek #winterfalcon #sam wilson #bucky barnes #france: fic rec #fic rec #sam x bucky #sam wilson x bucky barnes

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mostlymovieswithmax · 3 years ago

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Movies I watched in July

Once again I’m doing my monthly round-up of movies I’ve watched. This was a good month for the cinema getting back on track and seeing new releases including the new M. Night movie, Old and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Pretty sure Marvel put out a new movie also. I’m hoping that this list can help in guiding a decision about what to watch (or what to avoid) and introduce people to movies they may otherwise not have heard of or bothered to see. These short reviews are my own subjective opinions on each individual movie and maybe a more informal approach to movie criticism can help include others who are just passing through. Here is every film I watched from the 1st to the 31st of July.

Bridesmaids (2011) - 4/10

Off to a good start. I won’t say Bridesmaids is a terrible movie but I don’t think I’m exactly the target audience. As far as I know, this is a beloved comedy but I just can’t get on board with all the boring, juvenile humour; with Maya Rudolph shitting in the street, with Rose Byrne and Kristen Wiig trying to one-up each other at a toast that went on forever, with Melissa McCarthy shitting in a sink… the conflict is so done to death and makes the movie feel unspecial. I do understand the appeal of the film, especially for women in that before this movie the likelihood of seeing something like this, where women play up the more crass and gross side of comedy, was probably few and far between. But the story is very tired and while I did appreciate some moments, namely a couple of decent jokes and some of the more intimate scenes, for the most part it felt like they wanted to corner a more quiet type of line delivery in a way that was supposed to be understated but very funny so as to not rely on over the top body language or musical cues, and it ended up being super dull.

Spectre (2015) - 7/10

As far as I can tell, a lot of people don’t like this instalment of the James Bond franchise… but I really enjoyed it! I’ve really taken a shine to these Daniel Craig-era Bond movies and while I can’t say any of them are the most amazing thing, I have a lot of fun with them. The biggest problem I have with Spectre is the villain being utterly pointless and uninteresting in basically every way. The idea of every villain Bond has fought before being tied to this one organisation controlled by this one guy is ridiculous, and what makes it worse is that the villain is barely in it! There’s so much that doesn’t come together in this but as it goes, I still had a really good time. Daniel Craig holds the whole thing together; he is excellent as 007 and the main reason I’m up for each of these movies is because of him. Sam Mendes directs again after the previous instalment and for what it’s worth I do think he does a good job with some of the action set pieces and the locations. I’m so ready for No Time To Die.

Shazam (2019) - 7/10

Shazam is a genuinely fun superhero movie that doesn’t take itself seriously at all. I was having a great time throughout and while it could conform to some of the same tropes we’re used to with these kinds of movies, it still remained playful and used the character of Shazam to his fullest potential in a way that showed an understanding of just how silly the idea of a kid who can turn into an adult and shoot lightning out of his hands is.

High School Musical (2006) - 6/10

So as you may or may not know, I co-host a podcast: The Sunday Movie Marathon. It’s a film podcast and every week I get together with my other co-hosts and watch movies. For episode 38, we watched the High School Musical trilogy. This first movie blew me away. I was really surprised with just how much fun I had, and if you want to hear more of my thoughts on the film, please listen to episode 38 of the podcast.

High School Musical 2 (2007) - 4/10

We then jumped into the second and while it’s certainly not as good as its predecessor, there are still some brilliant songs that manage to top the last movie. Again, more of what I have to say can be heard on episode 38 of the podcast.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) - 3/10

Senior Year was pretty hard to get through. I don’t remember it being as bad as it was, but then I didn’t really remember it anyway. It did however have one redeeming quality, which you can discover on episode 38 of the podcast.

The Piano Teacher (2001) - 9/10

What the fuuuckkkk. The Piano Teacher is horrendously affecting and I was so upset when it ended, maybe not because it’s not what I wanted but because it’s just so fucking dour and unrelenting. This is the second Haneke movie I’ve seen (after the original Funny Games) and I’m so impressed with how well executed it is. Following a woman who teaches piano, we get a glimpse into the life she lives, how sheltered she is from living with her mother at an age where you’d reasonably expect a person to be living alone or with a partner or friends (even going so far as to be sleeping in the same bed as her), and how repressed she is sexually. It’s clear she’s never experienced any kind of sexual interaction or romantic love with another person, so she goes out of her way to take control and make that happen. The upsetting nature of it comes from just what she does in pursuit of it or as a result of her repression, and what is done to her. It is by no means a movie to recommend to your parents but The Piano Teacher offers so much in terms of the ideas it presents (and I’ll admit there seems to be a lot more going on than I think I picked up on a first go round) about women in modern society, and about the portrayal of sex and expectations of people when it comes to how that is represented in a person’s character depending on their gender. I really enjoyed this movie but it is not for the faint of heart.

Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure (2011) - 1/10

My podcast co-hosts decided it’d be a right laugh to add Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure to this episode and that might have been a fun idea for them because they got to watch it together, but I was just watching it alone. Just a 24-year-old man watching Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure alone and having a miserable time, I might add. But for a short and sweet ramble on what we all thought, please listen to episode 38 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

Dr. No (1962) - 6/10

A lot of very iffy parts of this movie. A lot of discomfort arising from how black people are portrayed that really didn’t sit right with me. As far as a Bond movie goes, this first instalment in the series is one I’ve seen before and it’s not wholly engaging but it plants the seeds for the rest, with Sean Connery breathing life into the role and making an otherwise lacklustre plot bearable.

Black Widow (2021) - 6/10

I think probably the best part about Black Widow is the experience I had while watching it. It was great being back in the cinema with a couple of friends in a packed theatre. The energy was high and I’m sure for a lot of people, this is the first time they’d been to the cinema since Endgame. For what it’s worth, I did have a lot of fun with Black Widow and I’ve explained more of what I thought about the movie in episode 39 of the podcast.

The Climb (2020) - 10/10

The Climb was added to Now TV recently and I already knew I loved it, having seen it in an empty cinema theatre last year, which I had an absolute blast with. The Climb details the years of a rocky friendship told over scenes filmed as one-shots. Not only is the presentation something to gawk at, but the performances by the two leads playing these friends with a terrifically dysfunctional dynamic is truly captivating. They’re both trying to figure out their own lives and where one can come across as being rather selfish, the opposite is true in his counterpart, whom everyone loves. This is a truly funny and heartwarming movie with a lot to say about how we choose to live our lives and who we choose to be with. It’s a shame the distributors of The Climb didn’t do a very good job because if not for it being available on Now TV, it would be near impossible to watch without forking out more money than is necessary to purchase a film.

From Russia With Love (1963) - 5/10

The second Bond movie. I thought perhaps I’d change my mind on it with another watch, having seen it for the first time maybe a year ago. But no, it’s still largely boring and it treats women like absolute garbage. From Russia With Love is one of those movies I forget as I watch it, and I was trying very hard (in the middle of the day!) not to fall asleep.

The Good, The Bart, and The Loki (2021) - 1/10

I don't usually talk about the short films I watch but for this I'll make an exception. As we all should know, Disney owns The Simpsons now, through their acquisition of Fox, so, coupled with another of their properties, that being Marvel, they decided to make a six-minute animated film wherein Marvel’s Loki is stranded in Springfield. This felt as though it was a minute long due to the horrendously jarring pacing; it is a movie that feels adamant that it needs to exist, while trying as hard as it can to be over as soon as possible. It serves only to stare the audience directly in the face and say “look, characters from The Simpsons are dressed as Avengers”, shit out three credit scenes, then end before you’ve even processed the atrocity you just bore witness to.

Russian Ark (2002) - 8/10

For this next episode of the podcast, we watched a few Russian movies, starting with Russian Ark, a film shot completely in one take as the camera moves about a luxurious museum in a first-person perspective as this main character watches what is happening around him, seeing people moving about the place but unable to interact with them, guided only by another man who seems to be just slightly out of his own perception of reality. This is a tremendous feat in filmmaking and more can be heard about what I have to say in episode 39 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

Ivan’s Childhood (1962) - 7/10

For my own pick of Russian movies to discuss on the podcast, I chose the debut feature from one of my favourite directors, Andrei Tarkovsky. It’s amazing that while this is not his best film by far, Ivan’s Childhood is still such a stellar debut, jumping around in its timeline as it details a child’s experience in the second world war. Again, I do go into more depth in episode 39 of the podcast, so be sure to check that out.

Outlaw (2019) - 1/10

The third movie chosen for this marathon is apparently the fourth Russian LGBTQ+ movie ever made. I’m unsure of the ultimate goal of this movie but what seems to be clear is that it hates the LGBTQ+ community. This is perhaps the worst film we’ve discussed on the podcast to date, so listen to episode 39 to understand exactly why it’s such trash.

Almost Famous (2000) - 7/10

I too love heavy music and also studied journalism so it stands to reason that a movie about a teenager who makes his way onto a band tour, following them through America and interviewing them as they hang out and play shows is going to be a premise that resonates with me. This certainly did. I enjoyed Almost Famous a lot; this kid is living the dream and I was so along for the ride, seeing a lot of myself in what was being portrayed. That said, the story itself is at times a bit by the numbers and I really would’ve been more on board if the visual component was more interesting. For what it is, technically it’s fine enough but nothing in that department ever jumped out at me.

Minari (2021) - 8/10

It’s crazy that this didn’t get a theatrical run where I live in the UK. It feels as though I complain about film distribution all the time but I really don’t understand the process by which a movie gets no cinematic release and yet, months later will pop up on the front shelf of hmv, taking pride of place. But of course I got the blu-ray straight away. Minari has a lot to say about the immigrant experience, specifically in America as a family comes over from Korea and tries to start a business and make something of themselves. You get to see a lot of what you might not think twice about when you think about immigration: the hardship of coming from a place where you know everyone to somewhere rural and sparsely populated, having to make friends with locals and integrate within the community; the strain it can put on a family and on a marriage where this idea is presented about the importance of making it on your own in order to live and not just survive, while also taking into account why you’re doing it in the first place and the value you place on being part of a family that you decided to make because that was more important than money, than economy, than proving you were good enough to make it in a place that gave you very little advantage from the offset. This concept of the promised land, of the American dream is a construct. There are times when it’s not pretty, when you have no running water, or you’re in debt, or a family member is dying and it just feels like you’ve been dealt as bad a hand as you can get. But it is better to know you’re not facing all that alone.

Roma (2018) - 10/10

This was my recommendation for the podcast episode on Alfonso Cuarón movies. Roma is as beautiful as it is heart-wrenching and I would recommend listening to episode 40 of the podcast to find out more about my thoughts.

An American Werewolf In London (1981) - 8/10

In all fairness, London is enough to make anyone a little crazy at the best of times. An American Werewolf in London showcases some fantastically grotesque effects, akin to something like Carpenter’s The Thing, in showing the dead brought back to life and a horrifically gory transformation scene. Although the film is from the perspective of an American protagonist, directed also by an American, the depiction of British culture and climate is something I’ve not seen many films pull off quite so well, and I was pleasantly surprised at the more comedic tone the film has overall, which is something that works more in its favour than straight horror would.

The Party’s Just Beginning (2018) - 6/10

Karen Gillan’s directorial debut is… pretty good! There are a lot of ideas I like in this movie: a woman living life and through convenient circumstances, is confronted with death in many ways. Gillan obviously knows her homeland as well as she can, imbuing the whole thing with an intensely Scottish vibe (though maybe not in the same vein as something like Trainspotting) that makes it a bit more unique than a more run of the mill movie of this ilk, backed up in no small part by her own main performance. The plot itself is no great diversion from the kind of story I’m used to with these smaller movies and for something that’s trying to include messaging about transgender issues and suicide, it probably could have been handled better or done in a different way.

Solaris (1972) - 9/10

Another Tarkovsky joint, one I thought I’d revisit to see if there was indeed more to get out of it a second time. Well, it’s no surprise that yes, there was certainly more to get out of it. Solaris is a crazy trip of a movie and I would liken it to Kubrick’s 2001 in terms of how grand the scale of it feels. Yet this is a film that comes across as deeply personal, choosing to focus on a specific character as he goes to a space station to help those on board who are experiencing some kind of emotional crises, only to feel the effects of the planet, Solaris invading his own mind as it has the crew. To many, I can see this lengthy Russian sci-fi being a tad slow but my personal experience is one of deep engagement. Solaris pulls its viewer in a lot of different directions and it is always doing something unexpected in terms of where its narrative goes. There’s a lot to think about with the movie and thankfully it’s no chore to watch again.

Y Tu Mamá También (2001) - 9/10

Another recommendation for the podcast episode on Alfonso Cuarón movies. This is a very relaxed experience, following three young people as they go on a road trip, visit different places and have sex. Listen to episode 40 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast for more of my thoughts.

Children of Men (2006) - 10/10

My favourite Cuarón movie, one that never stops being tense as its characters are constantly moving towards the end goal. Set in a future where humans are infertile, the oldest living person is 18, and London is the last city in the world that’s still keeping it together, somewhat. This is masterclass filmmaking. Listen to episode 40 of the podcast for more insights.

Minority Report (2002) - 5/10

I’m really not the biggest fan of Spielberg… Minority Report is an interesting movie in terms of its concept of stopping crimes before they happen by way of prediction, but I just didn’t connect with the heart of it. The colouring is way too overexposed in a way that’s supposed to be eliciting a futuristic vibe but instead feels so early-2000’s in the worst way. My biggest problem with Minority Report is just how long it is, clocking in at two hours and twenty-five minutes which allows for a lot of meandering, all while never quite developing characters enough for you to care about.

Caché (2005) - 9/10

Oh god! Another Michael Haneke movie! Here we see a couple periodically sent video tapes featuring hours of footage of the outside of their house. The anxiety ratchets up and the mystery gets deeper with every minute. There’s always at least one moment in any of his films that have so far made me realise just how out of my depth I am. Caché is no exception, and I won’t spoil anything here because I think it’s better just to watch the movie and see for yourself. He is a director that wants the audience to know something and that something is never what is explicitly shown at face value; it is pressed into the fabric of the film - plainly evident, yet hidden. Caché is so stupidly clever in displaying its themes and messaging - making reference to the Siene Massacre of 1961 as well as a deeper study of colonialism - and there’s no way to change a single detail of it without risking the Jenga tower crumbling to the ground. It all works in tandem. It is passion and fury and haunting.

Coco (2017) - 7/10

Pixar had a string of around seven forgettable movies before this point so thankfully Coco emerged to show the company still had something good in them. Coco deals a lot with themes of death and legacy, remembering those who are gone in order to preserve them and while its plotting is quite basic and there are certainly moments that either drag or cannot escape the same Pixar formula, most of what the movie has to offer is a lot of fun, with creative, colourful animation and emotional beats that resonate the way they’re supposed to.

Incredibles 2 (2018) - 5/10

Oh, they almost had it! There's a lot here that could have been explored in far more interesting ways. Setting Incredibles 2 directly after the events of the first movie was not a good idea. If it had taken place five or ten years after, the characters could have been in different places in life and it would feel as though they'd actually changed and developed. But instead of trying to be a film that actually cares about its characters and the journeys they go on, a lot of the film is wrestling with the idea that Bob isn't supportive of his wife and Jack-Jack has to fight a raccoon… They have to shoehorn in a villain that in no way compares to the genius of the original. The ending of the original introduces another antagonist that gets wrapped up within this film's first ten minutes, except they don't catch him and he's never mentioned again. It's a real shame because the animation is fantastic and the acting is superb and there are great ideas sprinkled throughout. It just doesn't come together.

Toy Story 4 (2019) - 6/10

I was rather reluctant to watch Toy Story 4 because from the get-go I’m not really here for sequels being made just for the sake of it. Everyone loves Toy Story and making another one is a sure fire way to make money. This is the first time I’ve seen Toy Story 4 and for what it’s worth, I did enjoy it. The animation is immaculate and that alone feels like a huge flex from Pixar who tend to step up the game when it comes to animation in film, despite not having the best track record for films generally at this point. While it was nice to see these characters again, I found a lot of them to be side-lined (namely Buzz) in favour of a story that focuses mainly or entirely on Woody, who I just don’t like as much as in the previous movies. Generally the movie is good and decent enough but there’s no real antagonist and the plot is quite loose… it doesn’t feel as though it needed to be made from a story point of view.

Onward (2020) - 6/10

And with that I have seen every Pixar movie. And Onward is a fine one to go out on. While I don’t think it compares to the likes of earlier Pixar it’s still pretty fun. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for a medieval setting filled with bright colours and magic! Speaking of which, the animation was super and the medieval quest element is something that hooked me with the film. Again, plot-wise it does feel very familiar and I don’t know, maybe I’m past the point now of expecting Pixar to mix it up where their formula for story-telling is concerned but the movie is quite predictable. Nonetheless, while I’m not rushing back to see Onward I would hardly turn it off or refuse if someone wanted to watch it.

Old (2021) - 3/10

Oh boy! New M. Night movie dropped and my word, was it fun! For more of my thoughts on this… masterpiece (?) of a movie, please direct your attention to episode 41 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

T2 Trainspotting (2017) - 5/10

Trainspotting is perhaps one of my favourite movies and I had never bothered with the sequel, 20 years on, because the ending of that first movie is so conclusive. T2 felt more an excuse for these guys to get together again and in that, I probably would have preferred a couple of pictures on Twitter of the main cast and director, Danny Boyle having dinner or something. This is a fine movie - very arty in its presentation but meandering and dull in its story that doesn’t offer much in the way of proof that it had to exist.

Taste of Cherry (1997) - 9/10

What makes life worth living? This is a central question and theme of Taste of Cherry, and one that leaves such interpretation not only up to its central character but to the viewer as well. This film got me thinking about times in my life when I truly have had no answer to hard questions. Because it’s hard to convince people of things they are so adamantly against and harder still to rationalise what you believe if you’re not even entirely sure why you believe it in the first place. We are all of us alive and in recognising that, does that make it precious? And if indeed living is not a happy thing, why then should we fight so hard to preserve it? I felt upset as I watched this movie because I’ve been asked these kinds of questions before and it makes me feel stupid when I’m unable to answer. But the only real answer I can give is, everything. And if you can’t see the point then you’re not looking hard enough. Taste of Cherry is beautiful in its exploration of these topics and in its overall presentation, offering some of the best visuals in any movie I’ve seen - fitting for a feature with so much to say about the beauty of life - and an ending that as much pulls the rug out from under you as it does pull you out of the dark and make you realise just how lonely you’ve felt.

Bones (2001) - 2/10

Snoop Dogg is Jimmy Bones! This film is super funny but I’m not sure it’s trying to be and I really didn’t love it overall. But I do talk more in depth about it in episode 41 of the podcast.

The Duchess (2008) - 5/10

Another recommendation for the podcast. The Duchess was pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be and there’s a lot to like about it but generally it’s a bit sparse. For more chat on the movie, listen to episode 41 of the podcast.

The Man With One Red Shoe (1985) - 1/10

This was another one for the podcast and man, was it awful. We had to watch it at 1.5x speed towards the end because it just wasn’t getting finished otherwise. To find out more, make sure to listen to episode 41 of the podcast.

The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) - 7/10

Pull the lever, Kronk! Haha! Slays me. I do quite miss this era of Disney, where the animation was hand-drawn and the stories were actually compelling and funny. The Emperor’s New Groove is vibrant, it’s got great characters and memorable moments that will forever be ingrained in the memory of culture. All in all, it’s just a solid flick that doesn’t waste time, developing the standard fall from glory type of arc but smoothly and in an entertaining way.

The Suicide Squad (2021) - 8/10

Oh, bloody hell! They actually made a good one! The Suicide Squad is not only better than the ‘Suicide Squad’ of 2016 in every way, it’s a genuinely great film! This time, James Gunn (director of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies) is at the helm and it seems clear that Warner Bros. basically let him do what he wanted with the movie, as it doesn’t seem to bog itself down with the restrictions of a more family-friendly rating. The result of this is a far cleaner, colourful film with a clearer vision that takes from early Vietnam movies and uses that style to craft a superhero/villain movie that differentiates itself among the copious amount of existing films of the genre. The Suicide Squad wastes very little time, introducing fun, crazy characters we’ve not seen on the big screen before and isn’t worried about killing a whole bunch of them, with standouts being Elba’s Bloodsport, Melchior’s Ratcatcher 2, Stallone’s King Shark (expertly rendered with fantastic visual effects), and Robbie’s returning interpretation of Harley Quinn. A lot of Gunn’s trademark sense of humour is laced throughout and more often than not, it hits. The audience at the cinema were truly loving this movie and I’ll admit, I was right there with them. This mix of the gritty, gory and absurd is not something that should work as well as it does but the basic premise of the film is already so silly (and boy, do they know it) that it just works! Certainly one of the best DC movies since The Dark Knight and one I’d be more than happy to watch again. This is what the modern comic book movie should be: just balls to the wall fun!

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Dope-A-Cabana Review (Commissioned by WeirdKev27)

Salduos Amigos! Since i’m covering a full series, i’d like to welcome any newcomers to the first part of the epic final stretch of THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS! For those of you just joining us, a few months back WeirdKev27, easily my biggest supporter as the only one who comissions any reviews from me, asked if I could do a big project for him: a comission of EVERY major american apperance of those three happy chappies in matching serapes. Give i’ve ALWAYS loved the boys ever since house of mouse and had been sitting on Legend of the Three Cablleros for far too long, more on that in a minute obviously, I happily agreed. Plus the rather nice influx of cash from the comissions was very welcome. If your intrested in comissioning your own, hit me up via my direct messages. It’s 5 dolalrs an episode, though I do do discounts on orders of 3 or more, and 10 for a movie, with again discounts for orders of more than one. And yes that plug was very shamless, but again I have no other job than this. Back to the point these reviews have taken me on a wonderful journey: I got to rewatch the movie and revel in the fun songs, acid trips and super horny Donald Duck, got to both revisit one of Don Rosa’s best story and read another all time classic from the man I hadn’t before, took a trip back to the house of mouse to hear some great songs and see some great cartoons.. and some not so great ones, took a small detour to Mickey and The Roadster Racers to be baffled and annoyed though I am proud to say it was my first review back after I came down with Cornovirus and lost a week of work time. And finally I covered the town where everyone was nice, and got to see the boys have a joyous reunion with Donald and be lushly animated while.. Dewey jackassed around in a B-Plot and Webby resisted the urge to throat chop him. It’s been a long ride and you can find all of it is so far RIGHT HERE IN THIS CONVIENT LINK ! CLICK IT NOW IF YOUR CURIOUS. Point is while this was well paid for.. it’s easily one of the projects i’ve been most proud of and while i’m sad to see it winding down, i’m proud of what i’ve done so far, and I just wanted to heartily thank Kevin for the ride and for being so generious as to fund the whole damn thing. Your a good dude man.

Which brings us here, to the grand finale. The Legend of the Three Caballeros! As the boys first starring roll as a group since the movie, there was really no other way this retrospective could end, and since I have a terrible problem with procastination and really hated this series version of daisy I just kept pushing back watching the series until now. I’m not proud of it but I am happy to correct it and hope you’ll all come along with me. Before we get started I could not find much background on the show. It was directred by Matt Danner who was the character designer for the utter classic Xiaoilin Showdown and currently works on the Muppet Babies reboot, so i’m happy he’s still getting work. Otherwise I couldn’t find much. The most I could was on tv tropes, claming the series was orignally meant for Netflix.. and while I have no proof and this could easily be conjecture.. i’m inclined to belivie it. The series was apparently done long before the Ducktales reboot, to the point Frank Angrones was only vaguely aware of it and it didn’t even remotely impact the series, with Panchito and Jose only debuting in Season 2 because the original idea for bringing them in was scrapped. So while I don’t have proof.. I’m inclined to belivie it since it makes sense: Disney DID have a healthy relationship with Netflix once, setting up the MCU shows and likely being happy there.. but eventually they wanted their own corner of the sky, and likely didn’t want one of their shows bolted to the network like all their marvel shows were. The problem this created though is Disney was CLEARLY left with a show they no longer had a place for. But even with that the show was still done, they COULD have put it on the Disney Now app or just aired it on the Disney Channel. See if there was any fan intrest in season 2 or throw one into production to at least beef up the episode count. I mean the Cabs have a built in fanbase, kids would likely love it... it’s the logical choice. But this is Disney. They’ve had to be drug kicking and screaming into representation, to the point they had to be fought for the gay romance subplot in owl house to happen, try to hide that the Sparkshort “Out” is about a gay man struggling with coming out despite having you know reams of content on the service with either gay subtext or out and out gay characters, and their attempts at doing representatoin to score points in other little ways.. have been pathetic, easily missable bits in movies that could , and have been, edited out in more homophobic countries. My point is yeah i’m still sore about how they and a LOT of the animation industry have to be dragged into doing the right thing over profit, and they often make very stupid decisions for seemingly no reason. They are a good company a good chunk of the time.. but Disney has done fucked up quite a bit. This is one of those times. Instead they dumped the show on the Disney Life app in the phillipines and slowly some other countries, basically the Disney Now equilvent over there, and then just sort of forgot about it until Disney Plus launched. And given how many shows they HAVEN’T put on the streamer for again, seemingly no reason, it is a nice suprise the show finally got a release on there in the US. But before that, and proving what a massive mistake just abandoing the show was, the show did gather a massive fanbase via people uploading the episodes online. So yeah the show was treated REALLY shittily for stupid reasons, but thankfully it still has a fanbase to this day and said shabby treatment, as it always does, just encouraged fans to support it harder. So naturally i’m more than happy to give the series some spotlight as fanbase or no, it badly needs it and Disney sure as hell dosen’t want to do it. So if somebody’s gotta do it, might as well be me. This is the Legend of the Three Cablleros. We open on some narration from Xandra, Goddess of Adventure. Granted she hasn’t been identified yet, and won’t be till next episode.. buuuut it’s easier on me to not have to dance around her name so your learning it now. But Xandra narrates that long ago there were epic battles against the good and the evil and all that by epic heroes, and it’s all cumilated in the Legend of the Three Cablleros. Post title drop we’re treated to the boys, in cool looking armor and with neat weapons, fighting a purple monster man as you do in an really beautiful and epic sequence As this scene illustrates the animation for this show is GORGEOUS, a lavish update of the standard disney style with nice use of shadows. It feels almost film quality in it’s work, and it’s an utter treat to watch and opening at the end was a good call: it both ratchets up excitement and allows the first ep to have some action since this one, as part of a two part premiere, is mostly setup. It’s eyecatching, exciting and makes you want to know what the hell is going on. And since Xandra realizes MAYBE starting the story at the climax was a bad idea, she takes us back a bit.

Okay maybe not that far. No we open properly at Donald’s house, where it’s his birthday! And like the movie, it’s Friday the 13th, an excellent call back. Donald’s making his breakfast, boliling some tea and.. talking with the weird foced warped refelection in the kettle who can apparently only say “right back at you handsome, wink”. Seriously I have so many questoins and all of them are about what this guy is, why is Donald so calm about all of this, and is he still alive after Donald destroys his tea kettle later. Donaldo gets a call from Daisy, whose visting to spend the day with him and is waiting patiently int he bad part of town. I didn’t know Duckburg had a bad part of town but given Glomgold has to get his sharks and bombs somewhere, i’m not surprised. Unless he special orders them, but even then what if he needs a shark or a bomb in a hurry? He’s gotta get them somewhere and now we know where. So there’s that. So all’s going well until Donald’s asshole boss calls and forces him to come in despite Donald having the fucking day off and it presumably being on the schedule. So Donald rushes to work, and we do get some great gags but as you’d expect for Donald it goes poorly and he botches a kid’s haircut despite the mother being very rude.. and also a female version of pete. LIke.. did he remarry after the divorce from peg or is that his sister? Does that mean PJ and PIstol have a cousin I never knew about? I want answers dammit.. and picutures of spider-man. Not for any slander job I just really like spider-man.

Eh it’ll do.As i’m doing a full series this time i’m stopping to talk about the main cast as we go soooo.... Tony Anselmo is naturally Donald, even pitching in to consult the crew on Donald’s characterization here, as really what better expert is there? He’s voiced Donald since the original Ducktales and has stuck with the roll since, only taking a break for Mickey and the Roadster racers and that’s likely because between finishing up this series and the Mickey Mouse shorts, and moving on to Ducktales 2017, he likely simply didn’t have the time for it. Granted given how little he was used in the first season of the show, he probably still could’ve done it but regardless, he’s a legend. Daisy is voiced by Tress Macneile, who not only has voiced the character since House of Mouse and is easily the best voice for her, but is also one of the most storied and legendary va’s in the buisness, having been at this since the 80′s with zero signs of stopping. Just to name a few of her more notable roles, in chronological order; Gadget Hackenwrench, Babs Bunny, Agnes Skinner, Charlotte Pickles, Dot Warner (Which as of last year she’s picked up again and will do the same for Babs, just in case you thought i was exagerating on the “zero signs of stopping” thing), Pookie from Hey Arnold, Mom, Hoodsey Bishop, and Queen Oona among MANY, MANY smaller rolls. I didn’t even realize Charlotte or Hodsey were here, she’s that talented and deserves all the praise.. and way better rolls as Daisy than this one but we’ll both get to that and thankfully much like with Tony, the reboot’s giving her character some depth to work with so she gets to reallys tretch her chops. The woman turns 70 here, will likely keep going until she dies, and is wonderful and deserves more respect.

So because this is Donald, life wont’ stop punching him in the face and it turns out his house burned down, the fire people are destroying everything because their assholes, seriously they destroy both a family heirloom and a picture of his parents despite not being on fire. I’d be genuinely suprised if their general strategy wasn’t scremaing “fire, fire fire” and then going “rock rock rock” while they throw rocks on it. Super brucey bonus prize for the first person who gets that refrence and comments on it. I’ll get back to this in a second but SOMEHOW, beisdes loosing his home, all his possesions and his job... it gets even WORSE and Daisy calls, refuses to listen to him despite him having VERY valid excuses and breaks up with him. Oh and then the fire fighters gladly talk about going home to their in tact houses and partners.

So yeah let’s talk about this. This first 6 or 7 minutes.. is why I didn’t return to the show for a while. My brain has a bad habit of glomming onto certain parts of things, so it remembered the rough to sit through and not very funny first act.. and not the rest of the episode which is very good and likely more indiciative about how good the series is. Thankfully it does get better but this first act .. frames things like it’s DONALD’S fault somehow. I mean yes he did burn his house down.. but even that really isn’t his fault. He was called away suddenly, wasn’t thinking and made a mistake. Hell he proabably woudl’ve had more left if the fire department hadn’t gone crazy with the axes. His being called into work? He took the day off, and his boss was just a dick. His screwing up at the job? he was genuinely trying his best and doing his best and the client was just wholly unresonable. Donald did nothing wrong but the episode WANTS to frame him like some sort of screwup.. which he is, it’s Donald.. but not in this case. It was just a string of uncomfortable to watch bad luck that cumilates in him having nothing left. It’s not funny, it’s jsust really sad and it’s REALLY hard to tell the tone their going for as they seem to awkwardly bounce from jokes to Donald being utterly devistated and alone.

And the worst of this.. is Daisy. Daisy is EASILY the most infamous part of the show, as their portryal.. is pretty bad and apparently gets worse. We’ll see as we go but yeah.. her screaming at and breaking up with her boyfriend without listneing to his side and giving the claim we only have HER word on that he’s always screwing up, ON HIS BIRTHDAY no less, when he’s done nothing wrong, does not make a good first impression nor the fact the show seems to AGREE WITH HER. And look Donald is a trainwreck, this is true.. but the show dosen’t remotely portray him as one until AFTER this scene. As I said nothing that happened was his fault. Donald isn’t irresponsible or a screwup or dating a high schooler or anything. He isn’t Scott Pilgrim. He just has really bad luck. Again, we do see some foibles in the scenes to come.. but we don’t see any that would justify her claims, especially since she seemed perfectly happy earlier with him. Now if she’d say brought up some screwups in the first scene, and gently at that, then this would’ve worked.. but as it stands she just comes off as MASSIVELY unsymapthetic.. especially since Donald later calls her nieces over for help, which is objectively weird not gonna lie.. so she now KNOWS he had to move to a new house and his likely burned down.. yet still apparently has nothing good to say about him.

It didn’t help this rubbed me the wrong way in a very special way. As i’ve made plain before I don’t like THIS version of Daisy, the nagging, selfish, vindictive asshole who will gladly try and cheat on donald, dump him at a moments notice and you know PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE. Which just in case you think i’m exagerating...

She fucking upercutted him..and like here for something that isn’t his fault. I mean this Daisy isn’t physically beating Donald.. but that’s a VERY low bar to clear. And emotional abuse is just as bad, so there. My point is too often in the comics when written poorly, Daisy is a pretty terrible person and I REALLY didn’t want a screen adaptation of this form of Daisy. It took a WHILE to recover from not liking daisy over this version, with help from remembering house of mouse, some good barks story with her and the AMAZING Ducktales version and the suprisingly good Quack Pack version.. I did. But yeah.. this is not a good sign of things to come for the character in this show.

So yeah Donald’s heart is in the basement and his week is at an all time low when a post man shows up and gives him a letter.. well puts it in the box for a good gag but semantics. But the letter turns around as his ancestor Clinton Coot left him an inhertance for his 3Xth birthday: a house of some kind in the swanky neighboring town of New Quackmore. And i’ll also say.. it’s REALLY nice that for once, we focus on the Duck side of Donald’s legacy, or rather the coot but semantics, instead of the McDuck part. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love the clanmcduck, always will and I love Ducktales exploration of it.. but it’s still nice to acknowledge Donald comes from two sides and while one of those may be humble farmers, they still accomplished a lot, including founding Duckburg in most continuities including presumably this one. It’s also a good way to seperate thigns from other properties including the reboot: focusing on a part of Donald’s lineage that isn’t usually touched on and making THEM just as badass as the other side.

So we get a quick montage as Donald takes a cab there and takes in the rich and fancy sights. It’s also a brilliant way to set up New Quackmore and it’s attached instutite as a fancy, upperclass place.. and thus perfectly clash it with Donald. Donald ends up getting dropped off at a big mansion.. which is not his , but belongs to the insittutes head, Baron Von Sheldgoose, played by WAYNE KNIGHT.

Hell. Yes. I freaking love Wayne Knight. In case you don’t know who the man above is, or at least don’t recognize his face, Wayne Knight is a very funny and talented actor and voice actor with a lengthy career primarily in side rolls, with the rolls that he broke out with being loveable asshole and Jerry’s enternal nemisis Newman on Seinfeld and Dennis Nedry, aka “that guy who got sprayed acid in his face by those horrifying frilled dinosaurs that will never not haunt my nightmares”. Seriously that scene fucked me up as a kid and I could not watch that part of the movie. For the most part he’s been a side character man but he has done a LOT of voice work, most notable Zurg in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Dojo for the aformentioned and excellent Xiaolin Showdown, and Mr. Blik for Catscratch and I wish he’d do more. He also recently voiced the penguin in Harley Quin so when I get to that you better belivie i’m looking forward to it. Point is while he may not always get the glory, and had to settle for starring in a mediocre tv land sitcom to get a steady paycheck once, the man is VERY talented, very funny and perfectly cast here.

So Donald makes himself home, finds out it’s not HIS home and gets thrown out by the snooty rich asshole’s bodyguards. As you’d expect. Donald does find HIS home, a run down cabana next door to the mansion with caution tape all over. Still Donald takes it best he can as it’s better than no home at all> What he doesn’t take well is finding out from the executor of the will that he’s not the only one inheriting the house... which is absolutley fair. The guy just had the worst day of his life, and this lady didn’t bother to put in the letter to any of them that they were sharing the house. The Sheldgoose thing was just an average Donald screw up. This is just this lady going...

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But yes we meet our boys.. and the introductions are naturally given this series is about them the best we’ve gotten so far: Jose is thrown off a bus, having ran out of fair, and having wooed all the ladies on board, and quickly charms the executor and is perfectly cordial to Donald, while Panchito parachutes out of a plane and marvels at how he went from nothing to having two new best friends, a run down shack and a sleezy lawyer! In short the two make a great first impression, helped by wonderful casting. Jose is voiced by Eric Bauza, a talented voice actor whose had WAY too many roles to list here, but two of the most notable are being the current voice of Bugs and Daffy, and his most notable role outside that recently has been playing Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But the guy is endlessly talented, seems really nice, and is easily one of my faviorite Jose’s so far after just one episode. He just.. gets the character perfectly and is thankfully NOT another white guy stepping into the role, so that’s nice. He easily oozes the charm and layabout nature Jose and was a natural in the role and i hope he gets to take it up again at some point. Speaking of naturals we have Jamie Camil as Panchito, who easily steps into the guys boundless energy and the sterotpical bits are swapped out for making him a cloud cuckoolander instead, which I genuinely love and fits the character perfectly. He’s best known for CW Soap Jane the Virgin, where his charcter Rodrigo just sounds like a delight, but has recently picked up a pretty good voice acting career, vocing Don Karnage in the Ducktales reboot, Globgor in Star vs the Forces of Evil and Todd’s Stepdad George in Bojack Horseman. I only hope he gets more voice work as he’s really damn great at it and it’s wonderful to get to see him in a role that’s not limited to a few episodes at best for a change.

So Donald’s less than happy about this, again it’s hard to really be that mad at him when he’s had a really, REALLY bad day and wasn’t told about this, but it’s kept to just the light level of grumpy as to not make him unlikeable. Granted after that intro it’d take a LOT to make him unsympathetic, but after their version of Daisy I really dont’ want to test this series. Our boys also find out they have a groundskeeper, ari, aka THE ARCUAN BIRD! He’s just a delight any time he pops up, doing his usual “ya ta ta ta” bit, and being adorable and hilarioius as always.. and also hilariously failing to fix the boys door. So Donald ends up just accepting he has roomates now, nothing he can do, and the three explore the house finding all sorts of cool old artifacts, feeling they’ve stumbled onto something specail. And you know what that means: YARD SALE! Seriously it feels like a bit out of Wet Hot American Summer or Stella, a series from the same creators you really should check out and that is high praise, trust me.

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I wish this series was streaming somewhere.. I mean we finally got Clone HIgh streaming Viacom, get on that. Anyways, it’s just.. fucking hilarious, and a LOT of this episode is once we walk back from the writers kicking donald in the junk and acting like it was his fault. Once Donald gets his inhertiance, the episode picks up immensley and we see the shows real charm and hilarirty fly, with jokes coming at a rapid and wonderful pace. The show really did impress me with the second half and made me utterly excited for tommrow.. or I guess today’s, look at the follow up. But we’re still in this episode and being a rich asshole, Sheldgoose isn’t happy about a yard sale, though given this series standards, we not only get some great deliveres from Knight of an outraged “A YARD SALE?!”... but a wonderful gag where Sheldgoose out to white guy it up and yell at them over this..accidently takes a wrong turn in his massive house, and turns around, not loosing how upset he is once. Meanwhile, we meet.. April, May and June. Yeah apparnetly Della isn’t dead or lost in this continuity, so the boys are MIA, and are instead replaced by Daisy’s Nieces, who I hope show up in the reboot before it ends. Especially since the show makes them WAY more tolerable than classic huey dewey and louie and instead enjoyable like Ducktales HDL. While not as indvidual as those three, the three are still idendtical outside of outfits, their voice actress Jessica DiCicco uses her consderiable talents and experince to give each one a unique voice, so while they all share a voice actress, none of them sound alike. And to round out our main cast for now, as our last members will be joining us fully next time, let’s talke about Jessica DiCicco. Jessica is a very talented and increasingly prolific voice actor and if you haven’t heard of her, and you probably have, you’ve defintely heard her voice. Starting out with Disney, hence why the probably called on her for this, she did the voices of Maggie for the Buzz on Maggie and Melina for Emperor’s New School before breaking out as Flame Princess on Adventure Time, whose both one of my faviorite characters from the show and one we’ll be digging into starting next month. And not one to rest easily she picked up a second set of iconic rolls vocing Lynn and Lucy Loud on The Loud HOuse, and funnily enough using those voices for two of the girls here. And along with Loud House she’s also currently starring in it’s Pony and is int he main cast of Close Enough as Candace. My point is she’s exceedingly talented.. as is this whole cast, as it’s a DAMN excellent cast and just further sells that this series deserves better. We’ll get into the girls more next time as they don’t do much here other than get called in by Donald for help, with what I saw of episode 2 fleshing them out more. Point is Sheldgoose offers a million dollars for the cabana and all it’s stuff and the boys are glad to sell.. they just have to find something Sheldgoose desperately wants, a mysterious golden atlas encrusted with Jewels. Our heroes head in to find it with Panchito finding it, and being very specific about it. We also get a nice call back to Ari destroying the door as Jose cleverly calls on him to destroy the lock. So our heroes open the book... and a goddess pops out and threatens to kill them all.

Final Thoughts: Dope-A-Cabana is a decent intro the series, but as i’ve said it’s heavily hampered by a weak and mean spirited first act. But once it gets going it REALLY gets going and as part 1 one of a two part pilot, it does it’s job well once it does get going: introducing our three boys and one of our antagonists well and setting up the side cast and preparing for our last to major additions Next Time: The Boys go on their first adventure, Sheldgoose finds a boss and the girls find their voice. Thanks for Reading, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.

#the legend of the three caballeros #The Three Caballeros #donald duck #Jose Carioca #panchito romero miguel junipero francisco quintero gonzalez #panchito pistoles #xandra #april duck #may duck #june duck #baron von sheldgoose #daisy duck #pete pete #disney plus #disney channel #animation #disney

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adultswim2021 · 3 years ago

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Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law #12: “Trio's Company” | April 18, 2004 - 11:30 PM | S02E02

I would say that Space Ghost's ending truly was the end of an era. I'm not sure how cognizant of it I was at the time, though. I can't remember if Space Ghost's season was plainly stated to be it's last or if it just felt that way or what. But if it did indeed seem like an ending at the time, then what a fucking insult giving us more Birdman to kick things off for phase 2. I mean, Jeuss Christ.

In “Trio's Company” we are treated to a barrage of empty zany jokes about Birdman trying and failing to get in GiGi's pants. She's a beautiful redhaired lady that is making out with every man in the office (and elsewhere) but him. She's based on Gravity Girl from the Galaxy Trio. Their relationship takes a turn when he asks her out and she agrees... to move in with him. Funny? I mean, it's not a bad concept, especially when she brings other dudes over with her (I think they're the dudes from the Galaxy Trio, but I'm so exhausted from looking up “Gravity Girl”, I simply can not bear it). But everything in Birdman's world has no gravity, which is pretty FUCKING ironic because [you get it already, I'll stop].

This is when I officially gave up on Birdman. I might have said that during the write-up for the last episode, but it's technically truer to say so here. I did actively watch “Blackwatch Plaid”, but any and all moaning about “I'M NEVER WATCHING THIS SHOW AGAIN” is basically meaningless for me, a person who will emptily make this threat and then wind up seeing a bad show to it’s conclusion anyway. Me giving up on Birdman has to happen in practice, which it did here when I did not watch this episode on television. I did not actually see this episode until I started this project.

Birdman plays it's comedy with the precision of that brief bit in The Animaniacs where it shows the writers “flipped”. I don't know if this is going to mean anything to any of you, but I’ll try and explain. Literally almost every time when I think about Birdman-- okay, you know how sometimes when you hear about something, like an object or a concept or a person, etc, your brain will sorta identify that thing to you by showing you a brief image of it? Like a flashcard? Does anyone else experience this? Like, somebody says “fishing pole!” and your brain just shows you a very brief picture of a fishing pole to you, so you'll continuing knowing what fishing poles are?

Well, when people mention shows or movies to me sometimes more than a flash card pops up, but instead it'll be like an animated gif, and for me when I think of Birdman I actually think about that brief scene in The Animaniacs theme song under the lyric “the writers' flipped” and it's just two writers with re-re arms bouncing around while they make goofy faces and springs are coming out of their heads. I probably can't convince anyone here that I'm right about thinking Birdman is unfunnily zany in a detestable way by urging you to google the theme song for Animaniacs and look at that short little animation. But I wish I could.

I've explained this before. But some of you like when I repeat stuff incessantly, so this is for you: I attempted this blog one other time. I started a thread called something like ADULT SWIM IN REVIEW or ADULT SWIM: REVIEWED where I just decided to go through every episode of every Adult Swim show in chronological order. I did it up to 2004 or so, kinda around where I am now (yikes!). I dashed it off initially, cuz it was just a message board thread and I was basically just using it as a way to keep track of it for myself, so I'd say stupid pithy things that usually involved some message-board specific shorthand (example: “puppets? compn must hate this one” “Frylock produces a list that would rival Lim da Skit’s!” like, the most inane-sounding inside shit ever). I started over because it’d been so long that picking up where I left off felt weird, and also those early entries really didn’t hold up. Anyway, here's a previously-unpublished write-up for this episode that remarkably says different stuff:

Historically speaking, I gave up on Harvey Birdman around this time. This was the first Birdman show that I intentionally missed. All these Birdman episodes from here on our are exciting and new to me!

So anyway, this episode is really terrible. Like, spectacularly so. I hate every character, I hate every joke, I hate how the story moves... man, I just hate everything about this one.

So okay, Inch High PI is fired for being short. See, his shortness interferes with his surveillance-photo-taking abilities. That's funny, right? Meanwhile, Birdman deals with a comically promiscuous personal trainer who moves into Birdman's apartment after Birdman asks her out on one date. She uses his apartment to fuck dudes in, while never fucking Birdman. Birdman thinks that he has a thread of a shot of a chance getting his cloacae stroked, so he puts up with it. While this all happens, Inch High PI is shown running in at the end of every scene trying to get Birdman's attention (he's small! so it's tough!). Reducto goes crazy at the sight of him (because he's small! Reducto is obsessed with stuff like that!). You get the idea.

The most frustrating thing about this episode is that basically nobody actually has a conversation. That's one of the main things that irks me about Birdman: the characters are crazy joke machines and pairing any two characters in a scene almost never results in a functional verbal interaction. It's like watching bad improv or something. Except, you know, it's a cartoon, where there are multiple stages in production where you have an opportunity to fix that problem. It doesn't strike me as a creative choice as much as just bad writing.

This episode bites and I don't care who knows it. Go away!

EPHEMERA CORNER

The Popeye Show #9: "The Hyp-Nut-Tist/Child Psykolojiky/Cartoons Ain't Human" (April 19, 2004 - 1:30 AM)

At 1:30AM, Adult Swim started airing The Popeye Show. I’m not sure they even promoted it. I think they just needed to fill that half hour suddenly and just decided to plug The Popeye Show on there. I liked The Popeye Show. They showed three uncut Popeye shorts and included little bumpers discussing certain historically significant Popeye facts. It was clearly aimed at adult classic animation fans and not kids. Really cool, honestly. Anyway dipshits who don’t understand that Popeye is great complained, because they thought it was kids cartoons polluting their block. Relax shithead. Popeye is good. It’s a cartoon about a gross guy that kills people for fun. It fits right in to your precious Adult Swim block. It’s okay. They’re going to take it off the schedule soon, anyway.

Swimpedia notes that it was Popeye’s 75th anniversary around this time which I guess means Adult Swim actually was acknowledging our boy Popeye at some capacity. Unfortunately I don’t remember this! But then again, this is around the time I started drifting away from Adult Swim as a regular viewer.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #harvey birdman attorney at law #sassy guy

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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NOTE: This is the second film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Wonder Woman 1984 at the Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinema’s drive-in operation in Laguna Niguel, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

It took decades for a female superhero movie to make a lasting cultural impact. The honor fell to Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman (2017) – no matter what you think of it, the film dispelled any perceptions that a female-driven superhero movie could never be a cinematic phenomenon. Jenkins returns, as does Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman and Chris Pine, in Wonder Woman 1984. This sequel is at its best when not proclaiming to the audience its self-importance – an aspect commonly found in and that plagues the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – and, unfortunately, its poor screenplay oscillates between a flighty romp and superheroic maximalism. For Patty Jenkins, whose filmography is regrettably small mostly due to the lack of opportunities afforded to women directors, she could not have envisioned Wonder Woman’s success, nor the impossible expectations put upon her to surpass the first film. As it is, WW84 is an entertaining, if troubled sophomore effort.

Seven decades after we saw her in the first film and after a prologue during her childhood on Themyscira, Diana Prince (Gadot; Lilly Aspell as young Diana) is working as a restorationist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. In her off hours, she performs the occasional heroic act as Wonder Woman. One of the newest hires is gemologist Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig). Diana and Barbara, from an FBI request, identify a stolen artifact as the Dreamstone – a gem that, according to legend, has the power to grant a person one wish. On accident, Diana wishes for her long-dead lover Steve Trevor (Pine) to come back to life; envious of Diana’s looks and wallowing in self-pity, Barbara off-handedly wishes to be like Diana. Both wishes come true, but in ways profaning the literal meanings of the respective wishes. For Barbara, this means a transformation into one of Wonder Woman’s archnemeses, Cheetah. Elsewhere in D.C., struggling television infomercial pitchman Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) wishes to procure the stone to revive his flagging business.

Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen are barely in the film as Antiope and Hippolyta, respectively. Lynda Carter, who played Diana on the ABC television series Wonder Woman from 1976-1979, has a self-aware moment which will delight fans.

1980s American culture is the nostalgic fixation at this moment in popular culture (with the march of time, each decade seems to be beholden to its own moment of nostalgic media cycles). Think of television shows like Stranger Things; movies like Adventureland (2009) and It (2017). The generation that came of age during Reagan’s America grew up in a time where the veneer of the Soviet-backed Eastern bloc was crumbling from within, and where Reaganomics spurred prevalent materialism and indulgence. Unadulterated greed and desire are in every corner of WW84 – from the terrible attempts at flirting with Diana and Barbara that easily qualifies as harassment, the difficulty in renouncing wishes on the Dreamstone, Max Lord’s inability to balance his business commitments in order to make time for his son, Alistair (Lucian Perez). WW84 captures this consumerist, entitled attitude throughout, and remarks on how corrosive this mindset is. Admittedly, it is simple messaging from the screenwriting team – Jenkins; Geoff Johns (a DC Comics writer and producer for comics, television, and film since 2000); and Dave Callaham (2014’s Godzilla, 2019’s Zombieland: Double Tap) – but they never contradict that central message.

WW84 progresses to its hackneyed, natural conclusion. But along the way, the screenplay is bogged down in the havoc that ensues from fulfilled wishes via the Dreamstone. The film’s impressive, animated start cannot build on its own momentum when – after the fulfillment of Barbara’s wish – it begins to clearly delineate its time between Diana/Steve, Barbara, and Max Lord. In their respective thirds of WW84, each character learns more about their granted wishes and the Dreamstone’s nature. The set-up for each third follows the same process: a monologue dripping with disappointment with their life directions, confusion in discovering their wish becoming true, and the exultation of their wild imagination defying all sense of reality. WW84 cannot help itself slathering on the foreshadowing and the repetitive narrative structure. The screenplay’s sins are compounded by the screenwriters’ inability to properly and consistently define the limitations of the Dreamstone’s powers – leading to expositional dumps occurring in the movie well past their welcome. As morbidly entertaining as watching humanity run amok with half-baked and ill-considered wishes is (credit to whoever choreographed the third act’s mass chaos), WW84’s unpolished storytelling leaves behind a somewhat befuddling mess.

The movie’s relative lightness in its opening two acts, though entertaining, throws away Diana’s characterization of a solitary, somewhat maternal protective figure in favor of a decades-long yearning for Steve. Are we really to believe that she has spent every waking moment since World War I pining – no pun intended – for someone she knew for probably less than a month? Whatever chemistry Gadot (whose performance as Diana remains at a laudable standard) and Pine had in the first film has evaporated into a labored dynamic in WW84, and she is too quickly is prepared to leave behind her life as museum preservationist by day/superhero-if-not-by-night-then-during-non-working-hours for him. Her behavior concerning Steve – and this is not even mentioning the ethically murky fact that Steve’s soul inhabits the body of a male stranger for the entirety of his resurrection – does not square with any notion of human growth, especially as most of the twentieth century has passed Diana by.

Putting aside the amusing transformation of Barbara from a bookish, clumsy gemologist to an unspectacled femme fatale, the emergence of not one, but two, villains weakens the characterizations, motivations, and portrayals of both. Thus, WW84 spends less time sympathizing with Barbara’s status as a social outcast, so too the relationship between Max Lord and his forgiving – at film’s end, at least – son (the only aspect of Lord’s life that exists outside work). The film’s divided attention between Barbara and Max Lord assures that their concluding actions become too cartoonish, depthless. It’s not that I am demanding that WW84 (or any superhero movie) should provide brooding, soliloquizing philosopher-poets for a villain. Far from it, especially when noting what the likes of Christopher Nolan and, more recently (and exasperatingly), Zack Snyder have offered in their interpretations of D.C. Comics characters’ mythos. Instead, Barbara and Max Lord become caricatures, rather than fully realized, flawed individuals who retain strands of their goodness even as their actions plunge them into villainy.

Though lacking a moment matching the brilliance of Wonder Woman’s entrance into No Man’s Land from the first film, WW84 contains its share of pulsating combat scenes. Cheetah’s debut during a confrontation at the White House is crisply edited by Richard Pearson (2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, 2006’s United 93) and shot by Matthew Jensen (Wonder Woman). The fight, unlike so many littering action movies nowadays, makes geometric sense of who is doing what and where. This collaboration of cinematographer and editor reaches its peak with a vehicular fight in Egypt that resembles something out of an Indiana Jones movie (minus the comedy that usually occurs during an Indiana Jones vehicular fight). It is a wonderfully choreographed scene, but one mired in its poor depiction of the Egyptians involved. WW84 concludes with a dud of a fight. This is not because of terrible CGI, or the revelation that their mothers share the same name. Instead, it is the lack of lighting that destroys this moment. The final fight between Wonder Woman and Cheetah is so poorly lit that the combat becomes an amalgam of flailing limbs and incomprehensible movement. Cheetah, who by this point appears as if she wandered off the set of Tom Hooper’s Cats (2019), appears to be nothing more than a ball of spotted fur. It is a disappointing end to an erratic sequel.

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Longtime readers know that I have pilloried composer Hans Zimmer again and again for dispensing with melodies and for relying too heavily on ostinatos, electronics, and musical texture on his recent film scores. I’m a simple person with certain biases: as a classically-trained amateur pianist-violinist, I prefer scores that have musical interest within and outside the context of a film (would I enjoy playing this score in an orchestra and listening to it in a concert setting?). The worst of his imitators and colleagues at Remote Control Productions are on a train to my musical shit list. His score to Wonder Woman 1984 is a rare bright spot (aside from maybe his work in the Kung Fu Panda series) in a decade marked by excess. The film opens with “Themyscira” – a synth-y prelude quoting Wonder Woman’s motif, but one that blossoms into orchestral triumphalism. This cue crescendos from 0:27 to 1:11 on the back of string ostinatos, regal brass, and chorus chanting pianissimo. The orchestra and chorus explode to life at 1:11 in a majestic, ascending melody celebrating the joys of Amazonian life on Themyscira. A hummable, singable melody in a 2020s Hans Zimmer score? Yes! Alongside Wonder Woman’s now-iconic electric cello motif, Zimmer has composed a secondary motif for her beginning at 1:53 in “Themyscira” (and which eclipses the electric cello motif in terms of appearances in the score). Another throwback occurs during the cue “1984”, a jubilant cycling of rhythmic melodies that could easily been in a 1980s film scored by Alan Silvestri, perhaps even younger Zimmer himself. Even when Zimmer is introducing villainous motifs or the motif for the Dreamstone, his contemporary obsession for droning synth is tempered by ostinatos in the strings and winds, rather than ear-splitting percussion.

Zimmer’s love theme for Diana and Steve is “Wish We Had More Time” – and I cannot recall the last time the composer brought forth such affecting romantic music. A languid melody led by strings speaks to Diana’s longing – however one may disapprove of it – in ways reminiscent, but still inferior to, of Italian movie scores during the 1980s and ‘90s (think: Luis Bacalov, Ennio Morricone, Nicola Piovani). One quibble: beginning at 1:13 until 2:12 in “Wish We Had More Time”, the second violin tremolos are much too loud, and are just as audible as the melodies by lower strings, first violins, and winds. Hans Zimmer’s score to WW84 is the most thematically fascinating he has composed over the last decade, and it – not Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, not Inception (2010), and sure as hell not the sonic assault that is Dunkirk (2017) – represents the best of what he can be as a film score composer.

The temptation to elevate the dramatic stakes for sequels is present among all the major Hollywood studios. WW84 is not immune to this temptation, but it, at times, resists it. Its ungainly conclusion and dreadful narrative structure reflect those expectations, but one could not classify it as grimdark, such as almost everything Zack Snyder has directed. This is not a Wonder Woman limping her way through apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic times. Patty Jenkins’ sequel, however flawed, unironically celebrates its own corniness and absurdity – one cannot say this about the MCU (which does so only via metatextual humor). Many of us can no longer experience for the first time Wonder Woman emerging from the Allied trenches of WWI, but Wonder Woman 1984 provides a vision of superhero movies particular to creator William Moulton Marston, director Patty Jenkins, and Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Diana Prince. It even allows for faint echoes of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series that would not have been appropriate in the first film. Flawed though this film is, its approach, after a decade or so of building cinematic universes of dramatic escalations, signifies a refreshing change of pace.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

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

Also in this series: Wonder Woman (2017)

#Wonder Woman 1984 #WW84 #Wonder Woman #Patty Jenkins #Gal Gadot #Chris Pine #Kristen Wiig #Pedro Pascal #Robin Wright #Connie Nielsen #Lynda Carter #Geoff Johns #Dave Callaham #Matthew Jensen #Hans Zimmer #My Movie Odyssey

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swan2swan · 5 years ago

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Previously on Tangled...

I learned that the movie was getting a show, and I saw the animation style and saw her hair and thought “Well, that’s curious, and looks cute, but it’s going to be for kids, clearly, so I probably won’t watch it. Still, it’s neat that they’re doing 2D-animated cartoons for their movies, especially if they’re getting the cast, that’s somewhat nostalgic.”

Then I saw pictures of Cassandra and went “Oh no” because I was worried they were going to lure me in with this dazzling swordfighter-friend who would probably be the subject of some slash-ship jokes before being paired off with some guy who didn’t deserve her...or might deserve her.

Then I saw some early reviews coming in that complained about how the show didn’t take trauma seriously, and how they didn’t like the way Rapunzel’s father was portrayed. I didn’t watch the show myself, but these reviews steered me away: “I’m not going to get involved,” I said. The most I did was explain to anyone who complained “But heR hAir wAS cuT oFF” and say “Yeah, the first preview addresses that, I’m sure there’s a reason.”

Then, I was down south at my grandmother’s house for Easter. I took a break and went upstairs while everyone else was socializing and just turned on the TV, checked the guide...and saw that “Tangled the Series” was on. So I went to see what was going on, and the episode was “Challenge of the Brave”. I watched and was excited to see Cassandra, and I grew frustrated as I saw Rapunzel effortlessly defeating her in the contest. I will always prefer hard work and practice to innate skill in my stories, so I was on the verge of brushing it off...but then Cassandra let loose with that speech. She unleashed frustration at Rapunzel because the privileged princess could afford to stroll down here and goof off while Cassandra was fighting to push ahead in life, and that stunned me. Here was this speech, in a children’s show.

Then came a preview for “Cassandra v. Eugene”, premiering next (I think), and so I decided to watch that episode. And I watched it, and I loved it because Rapunzel was hilarious and Cassandra and Eugene had to bond and she had a halberd, and I blinked at the “’Cobra-Man’? Haha, no...” line because was that deliberate, and hearing Ron Perlman back as the Stabbingtons was just great...and so I decided that I would have to watch the show from the start.

So I did. When I returned to my apartment in the north, I watched the show. Start to finish. And yeah, I made the jokes about Cass and Rapunzel--but the fact that she called her “Raps” just made the whole thing sweet. And I remember being frustrated for weeks because “Return of Strongbow” was the latest episode for ages. It might have just been a two-week deal, but you know, when you just caught up with a show and spent ten minutes at most between episodes, three days until the next premiere is a lifetime.

By then, I was wholly on board. Episode after episode, I watched them. And sometimes rewatched them. When “Under Raps” came out, I saw the preview and reasoned that Cass was probably threatening this new “boyfriend” she was promised--something that drove me and several other fans nuts, but hey, let’s get it over with--and then the episode just pulled the rug out from under me by bypassing the notion altogether, and from that moment onward, I viewed Cass--legitimately--as a lesbian character in a Disney cartoon. More about that later, and the disappointment that slowly built as, once again, censors and standards diminished the influence...but her existence is still there.

I read a novel where Cass and Raps bonded and got married. I spent my birthday crying over the death of a cartoon frog’s mother. I watched a happy holiday special turn into a horrific moral dilemma that ended with a villain’s origin story, and spent the rest of the season stressing about when the hammers would drop.

I saw shadowy figures step into the sunlight, saw the familiar trend of a Quality Animated Show being shoved into the dark corners of If You Watch It You Watch It. I went to my parents’ house and got up early on a Sunday morning to watch Max and Eugene break out of a prison barge live on TV, after countless months of leaving our characters stranded on a mysterious island with an uncomfortably realistic Idol of Addiction--crowned by a declaration of love from Rapunzel in a stunningly-animated sequence. I watched Cassandra murder two spirits when she thought Rapunzel was lost forever, I made gifs, gifs, and more gifs, I struggled to try and make music videos (thanks for nothing, software), and I speculated and debated in ways I hadn’t done since Korra. I waited with dread for the spoilers in certain scripts to be inflicted upon Cassandra, and felt my jaw drop as they played out an almost-romantic Cassunzel AU fanfic on the screen of canon. I cracked up at endless “Seal” puns, marveled at Eugene’s open shirt, found myself rooting for Lance and Adira, and realized with horror that my favorite character was going to turn to villainy--and when she did, it broke so much of the show.

I would be lying if I said that the third season is my favorite (right now). Honestly, it’s been my least favorite, but the reason why is because these characters became real to me...again, real in ways that I haven’t experienced in ages. This third season has been filled with so much hardship for them, and for the first time since Avatar: the Last Airbender, I’m truly dreading if my beloved protagonists are going to have a happy ending. Well, one in particular, because I know there’s a short (that I still haven’t watched!) where Rapunzel and Eugene tie the knot...but of course, Cassandra isn’t there. And I suppose we all know the reason for it.

But Cassandra deserves a life of happiness, and so that’s why I await tomorrow with dread and anxiety: because what if it’s not worth it?

But this show has done things that have surprised me and comforted me. Eden promised us at the end of Season Two to hold on and stay calm. Mandy’s final script teaser had some...very spoilerific dialogue, with some very interesting word choices.

And tomorrow, we’re going to see them play out.

So, bring it on, Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. I knew you before you bore that name, and hopefully, I’ll be purchasing your full boxset and lending it out to anyone who wants it, because you’ve been one of the Best Shows I’ve seen. Despite my worries, despite your missteps, despite the terrible word choice of certain episode titles and certain dialogue options because no that doesn’t make them that at all, you’ve delivered time and time again on mature and morally-grounded themes and speeches...whether it’s Rapunzel promising a frightened teen that he can do the right thing or yelling at spirits that she won’t let her fears hurt the people she loves, or Eugene assuring Rapunzel that she can make the right decisions and promising to be there for her, or Cassandra calling out class and privilege in an attention-grabbing speech, the show’s done its job.

So thank you to the cast and crew of this magnificent saga. Whatever happens next, however I feel tomorrow...you brought me joy and strength and passion and gave me strength through hard times.

Thank you.

#tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #tangled #swan watches tangled #for the last time #...well actually there's the short...#...but...#tangled spoilers #long post

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samwilsonshandsandass · 4 years ago

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So, I’m completely in love with @keanureevesisbae fanfic “Mr. Cavill your dog is kinda fat” and that’s why I just had to read it again (although it’s not finished yet and from the looks of it and her masterlist, she writes longer things) and this time I also needed to take all my fav bits and write something on some of them when they really hit home or touched me even more than all these bits do at minimum. And for context, I’m an outspoken childfree woman and at the very most I have auntie fever, baby fever doesn’t exist for me. So, here goes:

I sit up straight, looking at the drawing she made me today in school. She always makes drawings for me, but they are always the same. She draws a house, with me in it and herself. And outside she draws a dog and a man, with suitcases and moving boxes next to them. ‘Because,’ she explains every single time, ‘one day you meet a nice man who has a dog and he can become my new daddy. A daddy that does want me.’

You broke and mended my heart with this in one paragraph!

His mind keeps racing, constantly racing. The terrible reviews of his latest movie, the way how women kept saying how they want to have his kids, but none of them is good enough. He wants to fall in love with someone, someone who understands him, who loves him for who he is. A woman that he has an instant connection with. A woman where he can be himself.

This is so vulnerable omg

‘Hi Vanessa,’ Henry says in a soft voice, before holding onto her hand, that nearly disappears in his. ‘My name is Henry Cavill and this is Kal.’ Doctor Tran looks up from the bag of vomit. ‘Henry Cavill?’ she asks. ‘Isn’t there an actor whose name is Henry Cavill?’ ‘Yeah, there is.’ Henry chuckles, feeling a bit awkward, but also amused that she doesn’t recognize him. It’s nice to be unrecognizable, even if it’s for a short amount of time. ‘That actor would be me.’ Her eyes widen. ‘Oh,’ she says, but she can’t seem to find the right words to say. ‘Mommy, is this man famous?’ Vanessa asks, while not breaking eye contact with Henry. The little girl blinks her eyes, almost in disbelieve that someone famous is standing next to her. Doctor Tran pulls herself together. ‘Yes, sweetheart, he plays in some movies. He even played Superman.’ Vanessa widens her eyes as well and yet again she looks just like her mother. ‘Wow, Superman is here.’ She starts to giggle, a sound that Henry already adores. ‘So, if you are Superman, you are really strong.’ ‘He is,’ doctor Tran says, placing the vomit samples aside. ‘He carried his dog inside.’ Henry can’t help but beam with pride as he takes in the compliment from the doctor. ‘Wow,’ Vanessa says again. She holds out her arms and asks him if he can lift her up. Henry looks over at the doctor, who smiles and simply nods, a non verbal sign of consent. Henry lifts the little girl up in his arms and she wraps an arm around his neck. ‘I can’t wait to tell miss Sue that I met Superman.’

…

‘Doggy Herb,’ he answers, while Vanessa is tugging his curls, pulling on one strand until it’s straight, before letting it go and watching it curl together again. ‘Why?’

I wanna tug in his curls, probably everyone wants to tug on his curls

He shouldn’t feel this desperate need to impress the doctor. However, he can’t help but flex his muscles a little bit, as he carries the dog to the corner of the examination room.

Vanessa starts to frown and she takes a step to the side, so she’s standing in the doorway. ‘Mommy, can I tell Superman he is lying and that you’re not supposed to lie?’ He can hear doctor Tran laughing. ‘You can tell Superman that, sweetheart.’ Henry feels a little finger poking his thigh. ‘Superman, you are lying and you’re not supposed to lie. My mommy says that you should tell the truth, especially about your feelings.’

‘My mommy is also a superhero,’ Vanessa says. ‘Not like Superman of course, but she always saves animals.’ ‘Well,’ Henry says, unintentionally loud enough for doctor Tran to hear it, ‘your mom is an even better hero than Superman.’ That confuses her, because she frowns. ‘Why?’ ‘Because I play Superman. It’s pretending. Your mom is not pretending.’

Her mouth falls open. ‘Well, my mommy doesn’t have a husband. I’ve always wanted a daddy,’ she admits with bitter sweet honesty. ‘But my real daddy didn’t want me.’

Again, you broke my heart

‘Mister Cavill, your dog is kinda fat.’ She could’ve slapped in across his cheek and he wouldn’t be as surprised as he is now. Kal is fat? ‘Excuse me,’ he says in a defensive tone, crossing his arms in front of his buffed out chest. ‘My dog isn’t fat.’ Doctor Tran doesn’t seem impressed by his facade at all. ‘He is,’ she tells him. ‘An average American Akita weights between the forty and sixty kilos. Your dog weighs seventy kilos, while he should be between the fifty and sixty kilos.’ ‘It’s muscle.’ Geez, he never thought he could get this defensive.

I mean, same

Kal is finally feeling better and Vanessa has woken up again. She is hanging around Kal’s neck, giving him tons of kisses. Kal doesn’t seem to mind, because he continues to lick Vanessa’s face when he gets the chance. Henry knew that his loyal dog was good with children, but this is on another level.

I want to think about something else, but I can’t. I simply can’t stop thinking about Henry Cavill and his strong arms. I’m convinced I was hallucinating when I thought he was flexing his arm muscles, when he carried Kal.

I prepare myself for the well known drawing, that I can dream by now, but all the air is knocked out of my lungs when I see what she drew me today. I stop in the middle of the curb, earning me some annoyed groans from two old ladies who were apparently walking behind me, but I don’t care. I really couldn’t care less at the moment. Oh my God, what is it with this kid and desperately wanting a father? Okay, now I get that she wants a dad, I do, but did she honestly have to draw a Superman and a dog (where she wrote underneath KAL) inside of our house? Superman stands next to me and she tried to make it look like Superman and I are holding hands.

Excuse me while I’ll be screaming

A bark pulls me out of my thoughts and I look over my shoulder. I not only see the chubby American Akita, but also his owner. Henry looked handsome Saturday morning, but he looks even hotter today. He wears a dark blue jeans that shows the world how thick his thighs really are and a cosy sweater, but not a coat, since men are apparently too cool to wear coats in the beginnings of autumn.

Where is the lie?

‘I believe you,’ he laughs. ‘You just tell owners their pets are fat.’ I involuntarily let out a laugh. ‘You are the first one in two months with a fat pet, so I just save it for the famous actors with who can’t say no to their chubby dogs.’ Henry licks his lips, before he sinks in this top teeth in his bottom lip. Goodness gracious. Next time I run into Henry Cavill, I should bring some extra pair of panties.

This could be said in a church as a religious truth!

I want to tell her that she can’t just expect him to carry her, simply because he is strong and he is Superman, but without any difficulties he lifts her up with only one arm. If I tried that, I’d dislocate my shoulder, but obviously it’s a piece of cake for him. I spend my fair share on Pinterest and YouTube, admiring his arms. And that clip of him building that PC? That was the hottest thing on earth and is nearly illegal.

You’re preaching

‘He still believes in the Tooth Fairy.’ I bite my lips, to prevent myself from laughing out loud. ‘I think you should tell him.’ She nods and wraps an arm around Henry’s neck. ‘Mister Henry,’ she says, ‘the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist. Mommy just gives me money when I lose another tooth.’ Henry looks at me, also visibly holding in a laugh. ‘The Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist?’ he ask in almost believable disbelieve, but then I remember: this man is an actor. ‘Are you serious?’ ‘Mhm.’ ‘I need to call my mother, to ask her why she lied to me all those years?’ Vanessa shakes her head. ‘Well, lots of kids still believe in the Tooth Fairy, so it’s okay that you did too.’ ‘It was just time for you to know the truth,’ I add. ‘Well, thank you, miss Vanessa,’ Henry says. ‘Thank you for being honest with me.’

How cute can this be?!

I decide that I’m not ready for a head tilt by the one and only Henry Cavill. ‘Her biological father didn’t want her,’ I say. ‘He broke up with me and disappeared out of my life, if that’s what you wanted to know.’

No one is ever ready for the Henry-Cavill-Head-Tilt

I don’t think I can ever understand those kind men. Did he honestly just say that? My entire body temporarily forgot how to function. Henry Cavill out there trying to steal my heart and with the rate he is going at, I’m willing to hand it over to him without putting up a fight. Her biological father doesn’t know what he is missing out on. That one went straight to my soul.

‘I do have to tell you, he isn’t the greatest with needles,’ Henry warns her. She nods. ‘Aren’t you projecting your own fears on your dog?’ she jokingly asks him.

…

Olivia glances at him, before she sticks the needle into Kal’s thigh. He doesn’t even whine, but Henry rubs his own face. ‘Are you okay, Henry?’ she asks, but he doesn’t hear what she says anymore, because he passes out.

He tries to remember where he is and when he looks around, he sees he is at the animal clinic. The examination table, his own dog sitting next to doctor Olivia Tran, who walks up to him and crouches down in front of him. ‘You’re up,’ she says with a chuckle. ‘For such a big guy, I never assumed you’d pass out like that, simply because I was giving your dog a shot.’

…

‘No need to, it was kind of funny, especially when I had to drag you around this examination room and had to explain to the assistant that the loud thud she heard, was the owner that collapsed and not the overweight dog,’ she laughs, handing him a paper cup filled with some water. ‘Here, drink this.’

I was torn between laughing at that image of dragging Henry around but also, kinda, same?

‘Okay, mommy,’ Vanessa says. ‘Can Kal sleep in my room tonight?’ ‘He can,’ Olivia says. The little girl smiles and looks up at Henry. ‘Is that okay with you too, mister Henry?’ she asks. ‘Kal is your dog.’ ‘He can sleep in your room,’ Henry says, touched by the fact that she actually thought she should ask him about this. Olivia is raising such a lovely and polite girl. He truly admires her.

Henry gently holds my wrist. His hand nearly engulfs my wrist, only adding fuel to the fact that Henry is a lot bigger than me fact.

Size kink activated

Henry brings a hand to his lips, to suppress some laughter, but he fails miserably. ‘And yet you agreed on going on a date with me.’ ‘Guess I have a thing for handsome men with chubby dogs.’ He lets out a chuckle. ‘Good thing I have a thing for veterinarians who drag me across the examination room after I passed out.’

It’s impossible for me to keep my mouth shut now. ‘And you want to start a family of your own, right?’ His eyes widen. ‘How do you know about that?’ ‘You’re famous, Henry and I’m curious. Go figure.’

I walk back to the kitchen when the cries have turned a bit softer, to see Henry chopping up onions into tiny pieces. ‘How is she?’ Henry asks, blinking his eyes fast, because of the onions.

There’s no cuter mental image

‘I can look after her,’ he says. Excuse me, what? ‘Excuse me, what?’ I say out loud. ‘I can look after her,’ he repeats. ‘I have nothing to do, so you can go to sleep and then tomorrow, you’ll go to work.’ I blink away some tears in my eyes, that start to collect there at an admirably fast speed. ‘Henry, I can’t ask that from you.’ ‘Good thing I’m offering,’ he says with a soft smile. ‘Really, I don’t want you to get in trouble and besides, I don’t want to leave Vanessa when she’s feeling like this.’

He smiles. ‘Come here,’ he whispers, pulling me against his broad chest and when I feel his massive arms engulfing me in a hug, tension in my body that has been building up there for God knows how long, slowly seems to fade away. I wrap my arms around his waist and he places his chin on top of my head. Was a hug something I needed for all those years? Is that it?

Size kink activated and this also really hit home, because I also build up emotions/tears

‘What is that?’ Olivia asks. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Is that a carseat?’ He blushes, but realizes that she would find out about it sooner or later. Henry clears his throat, before he admits: ‘Yes, I bought it this morning. Figured if we’re going to make a habit out of this, I should be able to take Vanessa safely with me.’

…

‘Henry, really?’ she asks and he doesn’t know if it’s from disbelieve, gratefulness or annoyance. ‘You bought her a carseat…’ She places a hand on his arm. ‘That is so sweet, you keep amazing me, you know that?’ His blush is intensifying at an alarming speed. ‘It’s nothing, really.’

Excuse me while I scream

‘Don’t say something like that,’ she tells him. ‘It’s not nothing, this is everything. You are honestly the greatest guy to come across my path. In these past week you’ve done more for her than her real dad or family for that matter. This is really quite something.’

My desire to punch Wesley just got even stronger

‘Olivia,’ he says and she looks up. ‘Why are these women staring at us?’ She glances over her shoulder and growls something under her breath. ‘Those are the perfect housewives, with their perfect kids and perfect husbands,’ she says, her brows furrowing. ‘They are probably in shock that I brought some male company with me.’ Henry can’t help but chuckle, as he looks at the feisty woman next to him. He gently places a hand on her shoulder, maybe because he feels like he needs to physically restrain her, maybe because he wants those women to be extra jealous of her.

Henry sits behind the wheel and Vanessa says: ‘I made two drawings today. One for you and one for Henry.’ Henry waits with starting the car and just like Olivia, he turns around in his seat, so he can look at Vanessa. She hands them both a drawing and when the two of them look at the pieces of paper, it’s evident that she drew the exact same thing: All four of them, Henry, Olivia, Kal and Vanessa in one house. Olivia told him about the same drawings she has been making for such a long time and how after they met Henry, she drew Superman and Kal with them. Now he is not in Superman clothes, but in normal clothes. Now he is Henry.

This is like the “Being known is being loved post” but even better and more heart shattering in a good way

‘In that cafe, can I sit with Henry?’ Olivia smiles. ‘Of course.’ ‘You won’t jealous then?’ He notices out of the corners of his eyes that Olivia frowns. ‘Why would I be jealous?’ ‘Because he is your boyfriend.’

This kid I swear

‘You have baby pictures of Henry?’ Vanessa asks. They all start to laugh. ‘We have,’ his father says. ‘But be prepared, Henry was an ugly kid.’ Vanessa pulls her mother a little down and whisper shouts: ‘Is this a joke or is he serious?’ Olivia chuckles. ‘It’s a joke, sweetheart.’ ‘Good, because even if mister Colin is his dad, he shouldn’t be so mean to him, right?’ Henry pulls on one of her pigtails and she looks up at him. ‘Thank you, sunshine, for looking after me.’ She smiles. ‘No one should be mean to each other and if he does it more often, you should say something about him.’

Vanessa is the best and the cutest and just ahhhhhhhhhhh

Vanessa tilts her head. ‘Mommy, I think you should give Henry a kiss.’ ‘Why is that, sweetheart?’ Olivia asks. ‘He seems like he needs it. Your kisses always help.’ Olivia chuckles, before she leans in and presses a kiss on his cheek. And Vanessa was right, he did need that.

This is a question that I do understand. It happens all the time: man wants the woman, but not the kid and Vanessa is not stupid. She knows that stuff like that happens all the time. ‘Then I’m going to leave Henry,’ I say to her, before he can say something. ‘Because if that is the case, he is not the man I thought he would be. I don’t want someone who doesn’t want you, because you are my number one and you will always be my girl.’

This hits kinda home, because for my best friend it was the opposite. Man meets woman with daughter, man and daughter detest each other, woman still chooses (to this day) the man. And can and could see what that did with my best friend.

‘Mommy, are you okay?’ I hear Vanessa ask, nearly causing me to yelp. I quickly dry my tears. ‘I’m fine, sweetheart.’ She frowns. ‘You’re crying.’ ‘I’m not crying,’ I tell her, but lying to her feels so wrong. ‘Okay, I was, but—’ ‘Superman, mommy is crying,’ Vanessa yells and it takes about a second before Henry is in the kitchen. Maybe he really is Superman, moving around like lightening speed. ‘What’s wrong, love?’

…

‘They are. I kept thinking about how lucky I am to not only have the cutest daughter in the world, but that Superman is here as well.’

Catch me screaming again

I feel like I can handle a few nosey brothers, but hearing how he knows that Vanessa will be overwhelmed, nearly changes me into a puddle. We are important to him… I squeeze his hand. ‘You are the biggest sweetheart I have ever met.’

I see Henry send a picture of the four of us on the couch. He desperately wanted to take a picture of us in our matching pajamas and the fact that he decided that this would be the best one to share with his family, warms my heart.

#my things #keanureevesisbae #henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #mr cavill your dog is kinda fat

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yibodie · 5 years ago

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I've been thinking a lot about this old comic I came up with years ago called Miller the Killer.

It's about a mentally unstable serial killer cat who's owner gets blamed for the killings. I came across the comic script and fuck... Rereading it made me really proud of my past self. I thought I would share it here

So I present you, Miller the Killer

Issue One

Page 1

Panel 1: [ From behind we see a fair blond hair man, arm casually hanging on the bar, chatting with an attractive woman and enjoying themselves. They can not be heard. Comic title in the upper right-hand corner “Miller the Killer” ]

P2: [ Close up, we see the blond-haired man laughing with a suave demeanor ]

P3: [ We see the woman returning the same body language ]

P4: [ The woman's hand gently clasps the man's forearm ]

Page 2

P1: [ The woman whispers something inaudible in the man's ear ]

P2: [ The pair have left the bar. We see from behind them walking down a street. It's late, the only light is the street lights ]

P3: [ They then walk up to a small home with a camper parked on the side of the house. The reflection of the street light is barely visible]

P4: [ Keys unlocking the front door ]

Page 3

P1: [ The woman sits on the futon in the living area. It's covered in sweaters and blankets. The man walks towards the kitchen nearby ]

Man: “Would you like anything to drink?”

Woman: “A beer would be nice if you have any”

P2: [ The Man reaches out to a knife block on the counter. Looking towards the living room with a large smile ]

Man: “I have oranges if you'd like a slice in your beer.”

P3: [ The woman starts looking through the pile of photos and books on the coffee table. There are many books for learning several different languages. The photos show a variety of landscapes, the man himself, an elderly gentleman and a young blue-haired woman ]

Woman: “Oh. Yeah, that's sounds perfect. Thanks!”

P4: [ In the kitchen, we see the man is holding a large knife in a ready position, you can hear the woman from the other room ]

Woman: “Do you travel a lot? You have a pretty extensive library over here.”

Page 4

P1: [ The woman is reviewing the photos more closely while the man is audible in the kitchen ]

Man: “Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? I travel for work, I'm a professional travel photographer. It's mostly for travel catalogs and books.”

[ He starts reaching for something not viewable ]

P2: *Dramatic Black and white* CHOP

[ Knife hitting wood, we see the top of this action and the man ]

P3: [ Back in the living room ]

Woman: (suggestively) “I imagine that can get quite lonely"

P4: [ Repeat black and white shot] “CHOP”

Page 5

P1: [ In kitchen ]

Man: “It definitely can sometimes. I typically come back here a few times of the year for a break. Hopefully, I can stay longer this time.”

P2: [ Repeat black and white shot] CHOP

P3: [ Man walks back into the living room carrying two beers both with orange slices in them ]

Woman (off-screen): (suggestively) “I hope so too.”

P4: [ Both sitting on the couch, behind one arm of the couch we see a pair of cat ears and the top half of reflective eyes ]

Woman: “Cheers”

[ They clink their beers ]

P5: [ A cat pops over the couch arm and begins begging for attention ]

Woman: (smiling) “Aww! You have a cat?! What's this Cutie's name?”

Page 6

Full-page panel: [ Up close view of the woman holding the cat's name tag, it reads “Miller” ]

Man: “That's my buddy, Miller”

-End of Issue-

Issue 2

Page 1

P1: [Albin walks through the front door with a take out bag in hand]

P2: [Albin looks up and notices something)

Albin: “Oh, I didn’t think you’d be up yet. Did Marty give you an earlier shift?”

P3: [We see a young blue-haired woman lounging on the couch eating cereal and watching TV]

Woman: “Nah, Liz needed some extra hours, so I gave her my shift, *sarcastically* out of the goodness of my heart”

P4: [Albin begins to walk towards the couch and kick the woman’s legs off the couch to sit down and eat]

Albin: “Ha yeah and I’m sure the new Light Slayer game had no contributing factor to your generosity.”

P5: [The woman grabs something from the side of the couch and flashes the video game]

Woman: “That’s just an added bonus Pal. The pre-order came in today.”

Page 2

P1: [The pair continue to watch TV, chat, and eat their respective food]

Woman: “I saw you leave with that chick last night. How’d that play out?”

Albin: “Eh, we put on a movie. She must’ve been dead tired because she passed out pretty quick. I just ended up driving her home. She wasn’t all that interesting.”

P2: Woman: “Well what movie did you put on?”

Albin: “Does it really matter?”

Woman: “ Just tell me..”

Albin: “Fine, it was “The Last Breath”.”

Woman: “Hahaha, well that’s why you didn’t get lucky dude!”

P3: Woman: “Well if it helps at all, she was a terrible tipper. So you dodged one there”

[They hear a cat door swing open nearby]

P4: [Miller enters the room with something in his mouth, barely visible]

Albin: “Hey Buddy!”

Page 3

P1: Woman: *looking at Miller* “Oh come on Mil… AGAIN?! I got the last one!”

P2: Albin: “God damn it *sighs* Alright”

[Miller drops a dead bird at Albin’s feet, looking pleased with himself]

P3: [Miller begins walking down the hall to Albin’s room, blood on his face. We can hear Albin and the woman’s conversation continue]

Albin: “This is what like the 4th day in a row right?”

Woman: “5th if you count the lizard he brought in twice.”

P4: [We see Miller turning the corner into Albin’s room]

Albin: “I guess he’s just really happy I’m back home.”

Woman: “*sarcastically* Oh yes Albin, our lives revolve around you! You’re our light in the darkness, our warmth in the-”

Albin: “Alright Dylan, I get it. Soon your sarcastic tone will be intangible from your normal one”

Dylan: “That’s the goal.”

Page 4

P1: [Miller grabs a crumpled receipt that’s laying aside a pair of pants on the ground]

P2: [He walks into Albin’s closet and begins climbing the jackets in the closet]

P3: [He hops to the top shelf of the closet and crawls through a hole in the ceiling]

P4: [He enters a hidden room in the attic and walks towards the center of the area shown]

Page 5

P1: [Once he reaches the middle of the room he begins uncrumpling the receipt and extracts one claw]

P2: [The claw dips into a puddle of unknown liquid nearby]

P3: [Unseen by the reader Millers begins scratching and drawing the bird he had just brought in. We see from the view of the paper, looking up towards Miller’s face.]

P4: [He sticks the something on the wall, Miller’s body is blocking what it is]

Page 6

P1: [He backs away and we see the drawing, an almost unrecognizable drawing of the bird]

P2: [Further pan out to a larger view of the same scene. We can see Miller’s silhouette from behind]

P3: [the Same scene but from Miller’s POV the coloring goes to Sephia. His silhouette has changed to show him standing up like a biped and can make out the outline of a coat and hat. The crude drawings are now well-photographed pictures of a few dead animals. All the photos have numbers and names on them. Some of them have red slashes on them]

P4: [Upclose profile of Miller with a trench coat and hat. Looking down with a smug face]

Page 7

Full-page panel: [Same view, Miller’s face has changed to looking at the wall with a determined expression]

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thecartoonuniverse · 5 years ago

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The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Review

So I am uploading the script for the review here for everyone to see simply because I don't think I can get a video for this out before the show comes out. I spent all weekend at a convention and this is a huge script so I just haven't had the time/energy to make a full video. That being said, enjoy the review!

In 1982, audiences everywhere were introduced to the awe inspiring world of Thra in the Jim Henson film: The Dark Crystal. It was a beautiful tale of an alien world that begged for more development! Plans for a sequel were made, but ultimately it never got around to happening in movie form.

Now, after 37 long years, The Dark Crystal is finally returning in the form of a new series, albeit as a prequel called The Dark Crystal: Age of resistance, which is arriving on Netflix on August 30th.

I might say this a lot in this review, but I cannot believe that this show exists. I couldn’t even believe the original film existed when I first saw it. The Beauty of this world is really hard to summarize… so I won’t. You’re going to get the full story (and you’re gonna like it).

Imagine, if you will, 17-year-old me watching TV one day to see a show called Jim Henson’s creature shop challenge. Every week contestants had to face a different challenge where they made puppets based off of the given theme. The episode I happened to watch tasked the participants with making a skeksis. Of course I was like, what the heck is a skeksis? So, I googled it (not sponsored) and what I found blew. My. Mind.

The Skeksis were one of just many many many many many… many insane creatures that exist in the film ‘The Dark Crystal’. The film itself was an eerily dark children’s tale following two human-like creatures known as ‘Gelflings’ as they travel the lands of Thra with the hope of healing their world. From there I quickly invested in the expanded lore: books, comics, and pretty much anything else I could find.

The stories were amazing, but nothing ever came quite close to the beauty that the movies captured. You see, this stunning alien planet was brought to us using nothing but puppetry. From the smallest little buggy boy, to the tallest long-legged-larry, everything that dazzled our senses was done using ground breaking puppetry from the Master himself: Jim Henson.

While I enjoyed the outside material, comics and prose never quite captured the marvel of advanced puppetry. When the new show was announced, I was a bit worried. Practical effects have been replaced by Digital ones in almost every corner of the industry, and it seemed certain that a return to the screen would mean embracing 3D animation.

But then they showed us the trailer… (show flash of the amazing action in the trailer).

And I was stunned.

Everything looked so amazing. The Action was insane, the cinematography was beautiful, and the puppetry… oh my god they did the whole thing with puppets! I couldn’t wait to see it.

Literally. I couldn’t wait. But thankfully I was sent all the episodes before they aired and now, I get to tell you guys what to expect and why you should watch. Because trust me, for the sake of all things beautiful and good in this world, you need to watch this.

There is so much I want to say, but this WILL be a spoiler free review!

Now there is much more to the story of the Dark Crystal than just two little elves saving the world! The story at its core are about the Urskeks, a group of higher dimensional beings sent to thra through the power of the dark crystal. When trying to return home, the Urskeks accidentally divide themselves in half, with each one becoming two new creatures, the Skeksis, and the Mystics. The skeksis are essentially pure evil and want to live forever. They increase their lifespan by draining the Crystal of its power and then using it to drain the life essence of other creatures. When a prophecy foretells of their downfall at the hand of gelflings, they set out to annihilate the entire species, but miss two infant gelflings who manage to find safety. These two gelflings, Jen and Kira, grow up, discover one another, and heal the crystal, which allows for the skeksis and mytics to merge into their true forms once again, and bring peace to thra.

That was basically the Spark Notes version of the Dark Crystal, but Gizmodo has an article that does a good job of summarizing the rest of the lore… though you can also just watch the movie!

Now if you are wondering what happens next then this show… ISNT going to be helpful. Instead, the age of resistance is a ‘prequel’ which flashes back to the time when the Skeksis could no longer rely on the crystal alone for life energy, and turn to sucking the life out of other creatures instead. This prompts the gelflings to fight back against the skeksis, forming, as the title suggest, the resistance!

The choice to make to make this a prequel series is something I was always ecstatic about. Unlike with any sequels, a prequel would allow us to get a view into what Gelfling were actually like as a species, and let me tell you the show does not disappoint on this front.

As we learn, 7 different clans existed, each with their own customs and unique physical appearance. In particular, the Vapra, Stonewood, and Grottan clans are featured the most in the series, although we do meet members from the other clans as well.

our three main characters each hail from one of these clans. Brea is a Vapran princess, Rian is a Stonewood guard to the skeksis, and Deet is the most adorable Grottan to ever exist.

I learned about all the clans in the recent Dark Crystal novels, but it was still amazing to see what they officially looked like.

And as for the main characters themselves, they are all pretty great.

It is pretty clear that Rian is supposed to be our Jen stand-in, but his personality is very distinct, so I do not have a huge problem with this.

On the other hand we have Brea, who does have a resemblance to Kira but only because they likely hail from the same clan. Otherwise Brea is very studious and loves reading and drawing.

That brings me to the odd one out, Deet. She has never been on the surface of Thra before, meaning that her positive and cheerful way of thinking will be tested when she faces the challenges set before her.

However, there is one other character that has a huge role in the series that I have yet to mention. That is of course Aughra, who is more or less the personification of Thra. That being said, she is basically an old grumpy woman. Personally, I was not a huge fan of her in the original movie. She seemed very unhelpful and too cryptic in her responses. Yet, she is definitely a more proactive character in the series, and I actually really grew to like her. As a being born from the ground of Thra, she of course does not want to see the world become corrupted, so her actions in this season make sense.

But those are just the humanoid characters, which are really not what I’m here for.

Where the real excitement begins is looking at all the Skeksis. Look at them! They’re hideous! Just as they’re meant to be. And unlike in the movie they are younger and not quite on the edge of death. It’s just really nice to see the Emperor ruling the Skeksis as he was meant to. Chamerlain is up to no good as usual, and the rest of the skeksis are pretty terrible as well. I just need to take a moment to appreciate SkekMal. He is the only one who is not already decrepit, and he makes use of all four of his arms to hunt gelflings. He’s terrifying, but terrifyingly beautiful (don’t judge me).

Their counterparts the urRu don’t play the biggest part this time around, which is hard for me to forgive since they were my favorite creatures from the movie. But they have purposely hidden themselves from the outside world so their lack of presence makes sense.

And the rest of the animals in Thra are adorable. Llike with the original film, there are plenty of moments that will have you pausing your screen to get a better look at the amazing creatures inhabiting this world.

It really is indicative of the most important thing of all: The puppetry

For the most part, it is extremely well done. The Skeksis in particular have the best range of emotions, despite having just eyes and a beak to work with, and the other animals are really neat to look at, as I said.

I wish I could say the same for the gelfling, but the puppets are not quite there yet. In particular, their mouths just can’t provide the range of motion that human mouths can. This is due to their faces being made of latex, so their movement is limited. The eyes however are perfect.

That brings me to something many of you may be wondering about. Yes, CGI is used, and you can for the most part tell when it is because any of those elements move better than the rest of the world around them. For example, often the skeksis’s tongues were animated, and it is clear that some creatures are computer generated in their entirety. I mean I do understand, since making things fly or move in very precise ways is difficult with puppetry. Overall the show is beautiful and the CG is not that big of a deal.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about the story. While it was never like the reason to watch the Dark Crystal, the prequel really dives deep into the lore and expands on it. However, it also attempts to re-explain everything that was previously learned, meaning that there are occasionally long sequences of just explaining things. I enjoyed them, but this may not be the case for everyone.

With that there is also a boat load of characters. For more dedicated fans they may see a lot of familiar faces from the novels that have been releasing for the past few years. However I did feel like the introduction of some of these characters, such as Naia and Kylan, was rushed and kind of went unexplained as to how they got to meeting up with the main characters unless you have read the books. Not that they have the biggest roles in the show, I just feel like for more casual fans them being in the story will feel pointless.

But that being said, holy crap this show is dark. Ha ha, dark crystal, yeah of course it’s dark. But I mean this show is gruesome. Yes, the movie was pretty dark, but imagine that but brought to a whole new level. Both kids and adults alike are sure to get nightmares after this.

However, as someone who loves anything animated and hopes for more story-based shows, Age of Resistance is everything I could’ve hoped for and more. It doesn’t really pander to old fans in the way that some series revivals do. Some people may be mad at any small change, but I for one welcome them as they allow the new series to become something much greater than the movie could ever be.

And looking at the marketing for the show, it seems like both Netflix and the Jim Henson company want this to be a huge success. I’m talking funko pops, action figures, an extensive social media campaign, tie in books, a video game, a panel at the biggest stage at SDCC plus a whole booth, and even a comic which is a prequel to this prequel series.

And I don’t blame them. It took YEARS to get this made. There are so many different puppets that had to be made, I cannot believe this was actually pulled off. I’m talking dozens of gelflings, almost every skeksis, mystics, podling, other creatures, plus the environments had to be made by hand and be unique to each location.

Even if you aren’t a big fan of the story, I urge you to watch this show for the visuals alone. Trust me, it is worth it.

I also want to quickly mention, for the ten people that actually watch this that have gone head first into anything to do with the Dark Crystal, that I don’t really know if the books fit in perfectly with the series. This timeline released by Gizmodo does not include the novels at all despite what I heard about them being canon. Plus, from what I saw, unless I am totally wrong, certain things are retconned. This was kind of disappointing since I have been loving the novels, but it would definitely be hard to make everything work out since the main characters from the books are more like side characters in the series.

But still seriously read the books they’re amazing.

So that is pretty much what I thought about Age of Resistance without spoiling too much. I love this show a ton, so I hope everyone that watches this review gives it a chance, and then tells all their friends about it as well.

In an article, the creators said they have two more seasons planned, so we need to make sure they happen! I don’t want this to be another instance of a great show on Netflix being cancelled because not enough people watched it.

Do it for the puppets.

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #the dark crystal age of resistance #rian #deet #brea #dark crystal spoilers #tdc #skeksis #mystics #urru #gelfling #aughra #she ra netflix #puppetry #review

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anhed-nia · 5 years ago

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HER SMELL

This is awful.

I always bump things up to 2 stars on Letterboxd if they are technically competent, which is the nicest thing I can say about HER SMELL. When the trailers circulated for this movie, I was a little intrigued, if only because I couldn't imagine why anybody would make it. When is the last time grunge felt new and exciting to anybody? Who is demanding a revival of the exhausted (and exhausting) Courtney Love archetype? What has Elizabeth Moss, who I actually like, ever done to make anybody think that she's a good candidate for the role of a violently self-destructive rock star? Why would anybody ever, for any reason, name anything something as off-putting as HER SMELL?

While I was waiting for the movie to come out, I made up a bunch of answers in my mind. I can only assume that the persistence of the MeToo movement was enough to convince filmmaker Alex Ross Perry that riot grrrl was ready for reexamination. Elizabeth Moss has had so much success in various cramped, internalizing dramatic roles (indlucing in Perry's QUEEN OF EARTH) that it's easy to imagine her seeing the character of histrionic rock casualty Becky Something as a great opportunity to show her range. HER SMELL is a frankly terrible title, but if I stretch my mental muscles, I can sort of see it as evoking the experience of being so intimate with someone that even their animal emanations arouse feelings of love. So like, this is probably a movie that is not only about an artist's fall from grace, but also about their inner beauty, and the enduring memories that keep someone in your heart, no matter how badly they hurt you. Right?

If there is a reason that grunge goddess Becky Something, frontwoman of the fictional legendary girl band Something She (a name at least as bad as HER SMELL), has remained in the hearts of her bandmates, family, and producer, that reason remains a mystery by the end of the movie. The uninspired soundalike songs of Something She do nothing to convince the viewer of the band's unique place in music history, and Elizabeth Moss's anonymous vocals provide no further favorable evidence. This entire component of HER SMELL, which should be doing a lot of heavy lifting, seems to have been put together by someone from the "my kid could do that" school of punk appreciation: the less effort and ability, the better. (I don't know the modern rock band Bully, whose founder is responsible for this, and I don't care to learn more about them as of this viewing)

101 level musicianship and no-fucks-given singing work ok if they're supported by powerhouse personality, but Moss--who could NOT be more miscast--and the script, are not up to the task. HER SMELL is composed of four sustained acts: the series begins with 5 or 6 people slurring and screaming at each other indistinctly, and eventually distills out to the disastrously high singer delivering humiliatingly frothy monologues, which I had the perturbing sensation are supposed to sound Shakespearean. Psychological depth is substituted throughout by extreme closeups of the acne-ridden faces of our long suffering heroines, producing scenes that, without any dramatic substance, represent some of the most brutally and needlessly unflattering images of actors that I have ever seen in my life.

HER SMELL provided me with an interesting challenge only in the way that sometimes, it is hard to argue why some movies are "hypnotic tone poems" while others are "meandering and pointless"; some characters are "complex antiheroes" while others are simply "unsympathetic". Movies that have an unconventional structure, or that push boundaries of taste, can often land you in that unsatisfying "I know it when I see it" territory, when you argue for their artistic merits. I like, nay, LOVE a lot of movies about undesirable protagonists negotiating vague, tortured dramas. HER SMELL is not one of them. The condescending music and lack of support for Becky Something's importance are enough to kill the picture, but on top of that, there is no central metaphor. Toward the very end, Becky introduces her private fear that she would some day die on stage, which could provide a handy simile for the way that the rock'n'roll lifestyle often eats people alive. Unfortunately, in this case, it's too little too late, and honestly, nothing could justify the agonizing hours (it feels like) spent waiting to see if Becky will ever take the stage, if she will ever get back in the booth, if she will ever pick up an instrument, as we watch her flail around sweatily, spouting lines that are just reiterations of one another, rather than expansions on an idea.

As I suggested, the movie is sort-of stylishly shot, and sort-of interestingly produced. It's sort-of cool that Eric Stoltz and Virginia Madsen lend a touch of '90s B-movie royalty to this quintessentially '90s story. Also, I sort-of like Keegan DeWitt's weird ambient score, which sometimes seems non-diagetic, and sometimes sounds like rumbling of noise from a neighboring room. Thusly, HER SMELL has cornered me into a two star Letterboxd review. But only grudgingly.

#elizabeth moss #alex perry ross #her smell #blogtober #drama #riot grrrl #period piece #musical

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twin-images · 5 years ago

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The Thing About Fan Requests

In our ongoing quest to become video content creators, we regularly watch the producers who inspire us and who have helped shaped Twinsanity to being it is and soon will become: Phelan Porteous, Tony Goldmark, Charlie Callahan, Dave Ganselle, Allison Pregler, Greg Sepelak & Trent Troop, Lewis Lovhaug, Mathew Buck, Bob Chipman, Digi Valentine, etc. Whenever we make the mistake of reading the comment sections of their videos, one occurrence that we find curious is when viewers make the following request:

“Hey, content producer, could you review this thing/show/movie/game/franchise that I’m interested in??” “You should review this!” “Now do this!” “Review this thing that I’m into! Do it! Now!”

We’ve even gotten a few fan requests ourselves. Other creators can do what they choose, but my response whenever I see this question pop up is always the same:

Instead of asking Doug, Linkara, Phleous, Lupa, Bob, Erod or whoever to review this thing, why don’t YOU review it?

Sometimes when I’ve posted this, people take it OK, but more often I get met with responses like:

“What?? Me dare to dirty my precious little hands on actual work? Perish the thought!”

“HOW DARE YOU suggest that I get off my ass and do something for a subject I’M passionate about and might find to be a fun, challenging and interesting new experience! I’LL @#$%ING KILL YOU!!!!”

No, really. Some people honestly get offended when you suggest that maybe they should make their own videos about their favorite media instead of begging content producers to realize their visions for them. You just casually suggest that maybe they should make their own stuff and some folks act as though you just told them to go gargle with glue.

You clearly have a passion for this thing, and you clearly have a strong opinion on it, these content creators can’t be expected to look at everything on the planet, they aren’t going to be doing this forever and new talent has to come from somewhere, so why not do it yourself? These producers have schedules and lives of their own; why should they just drop whatever they’re working to fulfill your fanboy/fangirl requests? Especially when 9 times out 10, you’re not even offering up any money for their services?

Listen, folks, I’m gonna confide with y’all; we haven’t started making videos yet, but when we do, while we’ll appreciate any requests from fans, y’all should know this right now: we won’t be taking fan requests for free. We’ll likely be starting up a Patreon account, and then folks who want to float some cash our way might get a little somethin’-somethin’, but we primarily tackle the topics that we’re interested in; if you want us to talk about that you’re interested, you’re going to have to pay us. Content producers gotta eat too.

This “Review this for me!” mentality is something I’ve truly never understood. Jason and I have been blogging for 8 years now; we’ve never asked anyone else to write our blog for us. I just don’t get it.

Here are some actual fan requests that I’ve over the years:

“Since you referenced Totally Spies, now you have to review it!”

-No, I don’t. Where’s that carved in stone?

“Now that you’ve reviewed Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, now do Masked Rider and Big Bad Beetleborgs.”

-Are you telling me or asking me? ‘Cause I respond better when asked politely. But now that you’ve demanded I do those shows, I’m not going to as a deliberate act of protest; that’s just my nature as a rebellious Aquarius.

“So when can we expect a review of the new Friday the 13th movie??”

-I don’t know; it depends on how soon you make and upload one. Halloween’s just around the corner, get crackin’, Jack!

“You just did a video about ear-worms in cartoons. Could you do an anime one?”

-I could, but I won’t. I got stuff to do. Tell you what, you make an anime one and I’ll watch your video. Deal?

“You should make a video of the Top 11 Animaniacs songs. It should start with a shot of a sunrise; you get up, open the window and then call Malcolm, Tamara and Spoony on the phone, then it cuts to a stage where...”

-Are you giving me directions on how to do this? Seriously? What balls! If you have all these specifics on how this video should be done, then YOU’RE the one who should be doing it, Mr. Spielberg.

“Can you review the following before Christmas: The Pest, Little Miss Sunshine, Pitch Perfect, Misfits of Science, Forever Knight, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, The X-Men, Wolverine and Iron Man animes, Teen Wolf...”

-Do you really think I’m gonna go over all of that? For FREE, no less? You’ve got to give me the name of your dealer, ‘cause that’s some serious weed your smokin’!

“I really think you should review Gallivant. I really enjoyed it and would like to know your views on it.”

-OK, fair enough you just want to know what he thinks of it, but what if he hasn’t seen Gallivant? Or what if he has seen it but thought it was terrible? If he gave something you liked a negative review, then you’d be pissed off. This is why I think it’s best for folks to put out their own stuff instead of asking others to do it for them.

But by far one of THE stupidest responses I’ve ever heard when I suggested that maybe a fan should review a thing they like themselves is...

“I can’t, ‘cause I’m not a reviewer like he is.”

-Um, do you think dude was making videos and producing vlogs and reviews the second he came out of his mother’s womb? No offense, bruh, but that’s straight up stupid. NO ONE is born a reviewer. Making and producing content is a SKILL that people can learn. Reviewers aren’t a separate species; they’re just people with a passion for and an opinion on something who are willing to put in the necessary work to express their feelings, thoughts and ideas to others. If you don’t know how to make videos, then you can learn, just like they did. If you think that’s a too big a task, there are other ways to express yourself creatively, like starting a blog or something. It’s not complicated. In any event, stop making excuses, get off your ass and do something. Use your voice. Get your opinions out there. Stop making excuses.

We’re going to start making and uploading videos soon, and recently I’ve gotten the spark to do something else in addition to that: I had initially been thinking of starting a second blog for original fiction, but after joining Tumblr last year, I’ve decided to do online comics instead. I’ve always loved to draw and hope to make my own animated shorts one day, seeing some of the awesome comics and artwork here (particularly the strips Ohmygoles and What’s Up, Beanie? -shout-out to those lovely and funny ladies) has inspired me. Do I know all the ins and out of producing my own comics yet? No, but I can and will learn. Will my first attempts suck? Most likely, ‘cause first attempts usually do. But I’m still going to do it. I firmly believe that being proactive is better than just sitting on your duff bitching and moaning. You can’t hope to succeed if you don’t dare to fail.

#art #creativity #youtube #content creation #fans #internet drama

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babycharmander · 5 years ago

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I saw Toy Story 4. This isn’t a review post but it does contain spoilers, which I’ll keep beneath the cut.

If you want my brief, general thoughts on the movie: Forky was the best part (except for the VERY LAST scene he was in, c’mon man) but he’s barely there past the beginning. And the movie had some very good moments but it was... overall very muddy. But... a lot of people are really loving it, so maybe it’s just me?

(If you really like any of the original cast other than Woody and Buzz though, don’t get your hopes up because they’re barely in the movie.)

Also stay for ALL the credits.

Okay now I need to rant about this because it’s bothering me.

I did not like Gabby’s entire character and her part of the story.

This could just be me being too sensitive or something but the more I thought about it the more it really really bothered me...?

So like, when we first see Gabby, she very quickly notices Woody’s pullstring, so we immediately know--okay, she’s a talking doll and her voice box doesn’t work, and she clearly wants Woody’s. This is then confirmed like three minutes later, and she, of course, tries to steal Woody’s voice box. She fails, captures Forky, and holds him hostage.

She treats Forky nicely, however, and then... uses him to learn all about Woody, gets Forky to sympathize with her, and tricks him into helping her capture Woody again.

All very manipulative, underhanded, etc, right?

However... at the same time, she’s animated with a lot of emotion and sadness to her. But all part of the manipulative side to her, right?

Woody comes to the rescue. Gabby and her creepy henchmen try to capture Woody again, and nearly succeed in TEARING OUT HIS VOICE BOX. It’s admittedly a pretty suspenseful scene. They also wind up hurting a lot of the other characters who are helping Woody (partially inadvertently due to the cat, but even so), and once again, steal back Forky.

Woody of course goes back for Forky (even though no one else wants to... and they treat him like he’s doing the wrong thing by doing so ???? even though Forky is in danger like... what, uh... but that’s sorta another topic I guess), and is immediately cornered by Gabby and her henchmen.

Gabby again turns on her manipulative act, going on and on about everything she learned about Woody’s past, and how much it means to be there for a kid and how that’s the most important thing a toy can do (which just makes the ending even more “uh hey wait what” but again, different topic) until he finally agrees that he’ll sacrifice his voice box to get Forky back.

Okay, so Gabby used her manipulation and did a bunch of awful stuff to get what she wanted.

And then the kid she was hoping would want her when she got her voice box working... doesn’t want her.

Oh, okay! So she’s going to learn that being manipulative and terrible and hurting others to get what you want is wrong and doesn’t actually help--

haha no we’re supposed to feel sorry for her and act like she did nothing wrong because she’s sad and defective :)))))

NO.

I know stories don’t have to spell out when a character does something wrong, but--dslja;fs the story treats her like it was okay she did all this horrible stuff because she’s sad and defective. She never apologizes, and none of the other characters hold it against her. They sympathize with her.

Maybe this is me taking things too personally, but... okay, buddy, I know a person who was also sad and had problems and did a lot of really horrible things to people--me in particular--because of that, and instead of people, y’know, helping the people he was hurting, they sympathized with him instead because ohhh he had these problems, it’s so sad, we should really sympathize with him and not try to remove him from the people he’s hurting.

Okay, cool, leave me to my nightmares about getting chased and grabbed and hurt, and panicking every time I see his name and every time I think I see him.

I just... don’t appreciate them presenting Gabby as 100% sympathetic and excusing everything she did because she was sad. I’m not even asking for a character to just blatantly say “hey you were manipulative and awful and that was not okay” just at least give her consequences for doing horrible things like gosh dang please

tl;dr “i’m sad and lonely and broken" is not an excuse for being manipulative and hurting people

EDIT: ALSO WHAT THE CRAP okay so... we heard Lotso’s sob story in Toy Story 3 and that didn’t excuse ANTYHING he did. Also Stinky Pete’s backstory was very similar to Gabby’s, minus being defective, and nothing he did was excused AT ALL. I’m sorry WHAT THE ACTUAL CRAP?!?

#\#\\#\\\#\\\\#\\\\\#toy story 4 #toy story #toy story 4 spoilers

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mst3kproject · 5 years ago

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607: Bloodlust

Guys. For the sake of yourselves and everything you love, never look for material related to this movie by searching the tumblr tags for bloodlust. Just don’t. While you will find the odd bit that’s actually relevant, you will also find… look, I’m sure your imaginations are equal to the task. Some of the bonus material this week will be stuff from the episode, but there will also be a few things I found in the tag that just made me go whaaaaaat?. None of them are gross, I promise, they’re just… odd.

A couple of blond dumbasses, who I think are named Johnny and Betty, and a couple of brunet dumbasses, possibly Jeannie and Peter, decide to have a picnic on a tropical island. Unsurprisingly this turns out to be the home of a transparently evil Vincent-Price-looking asshole, whose hobby is murdering his guests and taxidermizing their corpses (apparently ‘taxidermize’ is a real word – my spellcheck doesn’t underline it). Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s drunk flunky and cheating wife have an escape plan, but once that’s been foiled it’s just these idiots against the world’s self-proclaimed greatest hunter.

I am apparently in a minority, but I think this episode’s host sketches are brilliant. Pearl’s first appearance is classic and Crow ruining Mystery Dinner Theatre is great, but my favourite part is when the SOL’s hoedown descends into anarchy. I can watch that over and over. If I ever witness a riot I’m going to be very tempted to just shout, “and now promenade!” and see what happens.

Anyway, The Most Dangerous Game is one of those things they make you read in English class, and like many things I had to read in English class it left me mildly traumatized. It’s a deeply distasteful story about man’s bloodthirsty nature and how the only way to overcome evil is to sink to its level, and every so often I’ll remember it, or Harrison Bergeron, or The Lottery, and it makes my day seem a little more dismal. I’m pretty sure nobody ever reads it except high school students and the Zodiac Killer.

So if you were wondering why it took me so long to get around to reviewing this one… well, I felt like I had to revisit the story in order to do justice to a review of this movie, and I really really really didn’t want to do that. Just thinking about it gives me flashbacks to things like Sonnet 116 and that horrible story in which the floor was both lava and snakes. But I said every episode and so here I fucking am.

Anyway, my return to The Most Dangerous Game, or at least to its Cole’s Notes, proved very educational – it taught me that not only is Bloodlust a lousy movie, it’s also one of those adaptations that completely misses the point of the work it’s attempting to adapt. The main theme of The Most Dangerous Game is how the only difference between the hunter and the hunted is which one is in a position of power. Rainsford is himself a big game hunter, and discusses this with his friend Whitney. Upon finding himself on Zaroff’s island, he becomes the prey, because Zaroff is the one with all the power. At the end, Zaroff had believed Rainsford is dead, which gives Rainsford the advantage of surprise and turns the tables again.

Bloodlust completely discards this theme. There’s never any real discussion of the power imbalance. Worse, while Rainsford was an experienced hunter and fighter himself, somebody Zaroff considered a worthy adversary, these four clowns are just young people who blundered into this situation and aren’t even Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s preferred prey. He doesn’t hunt them like he does his escaped criminals, because he thinks it’ll be a challenge, he does it because the only other alternatives are to straight-up murder them or to let them go, neither of which are acceptable to him.

Rainsford was an expert on traps and tracking, which meant he could offer Zaroff a meaningful challenge. Of the four young people in Bloodlust, only one of them is kind of barely competent, that being Betty the judo expert. She’s smart enough to figure out how to get away with breaking the window, and manages to keep her head and chuck the lackey into the vat of acid. When confronted with the John the Baptist dude, however, she freezes and screams along with Jeannie. The group survives through nothing but sheer luck.

It was luck that allowed them to get out of the house and then back into it without getting seen. It was lucky that Vincent-at-half-the-Price chose to go after the drunken sea captain first and the boys later. It was just good luck that Jondor survived the quicksand and showed up in the nick of time to take revenge on his master. The supposed heroes are barely involved in their own salvation. At the end of The Most Dangerous Game, Rainsford had to sink to Zaroff’s level and become a murderer. The four idiots in Bloodlust just stand and watch.

The one kind of interesting spin the movie tries to put on things is when it takes some time to explore why Vincent-at-half-the-Price is the way he is. He describes how war inured him to killing until he came to consider it a pleasure. This invites us to think about people who become murderers – prevailing opinion seems to be that people like the aforementioned Zodiac Killer are born without compassion, that their killing sprees are inevitable. Some killers, like BTK or the Green River Killer, have stated themselves that they need to kill and couldn’t put it off forever, even when they managed to take long breaks. It’s true that many of these murderers come from terrible backgrounds – but other people are abused as children and don’t grow up to kill people.

Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s killing spree is not inevitable. He claims to have found it distasteful at first but it later became a pleasure as repeated kills eroded the value of human lives in his eyes. This is actually a bit more thoughtful than Zaroff, who started out killing animals and moved up when it no longer offered him enough of a challenge. He kills people because he thinks if they can’t escape him then they don’t deserve to live. Once again, however, this change loses one of the points The Most Dangerous Game was trying to make, which is that killing animals for sport is brutal and pointless. At the beginning of the story Rainsford and Whitney were on their way to the Amazon to hunt jaguars – not for food, or because the jaguar offers any threat to them, but simply because they can.

So while the source material may have left stains on my young psyche, it at least had something to say. I will also say that it’s pretty suspenseful, and leaves you honestly worried for Rainsford as Zaroff evades his traps and closes in on him. Bloodlust, on the other hand, is mostly just boring. You know they’re not going to kill off any of the four protagonists, because the movie just doesn’t have the guts to do it. It can’t kill the girls because they’re girls, and it can’t kill the boys because then the girls would be sad. Sandra and the two drunks are nothing but sacrificial victims, because the writers think you can’t have a horror movie without a body count.

Even aside of that, though, this movie would still be boring. Sandra and Drunk #2 come to the girls’ room (not the boys’ room, because they couldn’t afford another set) to tell them a bunch of things we’ve already figured out for ourselves. Vincent-at-half-the-Price monologues endlessly as if one of his tactics is boring his guests to death. We never actually believe that Sandra and Drunk #2 mean to come back for the protagonists, so it doesn’t really matter to us when they’re killed.

I keep wanting to refer to the main characters as ‘the kids’ but I refuse to do so. They’re at least not as annoying as the cast of your average 80’s slasher film, but they accomplish that mainly by being very bland. Johnny is Brave, Peter is Nerdy, Betty is Tough, and Jeannie is Scared, and that’s it. It’s really hard to care about any of them except Betty, who earns a modicum of sympathy by being the only really proactive one (and from my longstanding crush on June Kenney). Once we realize the movie isn’t going to kill any of them we just stop caring.

I’m not sure what to make of Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s cheating. This seems like they’re trying to make some kind of point with it – he takes a crossbow with three bolts, one for each intended victim, and gives them a gun with one bullet. This is supposed to be sporting. But the gun has been disabled, and when he uses the bolts he pulls them out of the corpses, cleans them off, and recycles them. Since the ending has him just pulling out a gun to shoot his cornered victims at point blank range, I guess the point is that for all he justifies it as a form of sport, really he just likes killing people. The story managed to say that about Zaroff in other ways.

So yeah, this one really sucks. Even Mike and the bots couldn’t save it. There’s a few odd lines that are really funny but most of them are so-so, and there’s stretches when the movie just doesn’t offer them anything to riff. Watching it without the intermittent relief offered by the host sketches was a chore, and it forced me to re-visit a bad experience from my childhood. Fuck this movie.

#mst3k #reviews #bloodlust #fuck this movie #flagged as inappropriate #60s

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