cinenthusiast

[cinenthusiast]

Bloody Muscle: Body Builder in Hell | 地獄の血みどろマッスルビルダー (1995) dir. Fukazawa Shinichi

[cinenthusiast]

picking up a new (to me) Anna Kavan book. purposefully making my mental health worse.

[cinenthusiast]

my mantra at this point. serious leisure. the sensory. exploring and vibing. living in random corners of bygone media and old shit. finding value in slop. engaging with forms so consistently dismissed. thinking. expanding. following interests as best i can. the high and the low. the balance of getting high and turning off. listening to life. feeling it. creating. want to do the same for my body. my mind. & to give and to contribute.

[cinenthusiast]

aew dynamite spring break-thru

still can't believe the dynamite i saw live. recency bias is very real but goddamn if that wasn't the best 2 hours of weekly pro wrestling i've seen. extremely high ratio of in-ring work over promos. major matches that somehow overdelivered. we got an excellent debut with an angle that looks to the future. the death riders getting their first major blow, the beginning of the end. a molten hot crowd. just tremendous stuff.

mercedes is the most creative in-ring wrestler on the roster. her dedication to thinking outside the box is unmatched. so rarely does it get too cute. she's always trying to integrate ideas and make them emerge in a way that feels natural and circumstantial, like two opponents taking opportunities where they see them. the result is that both her and her opponent look smart and resourceful. knowing that athena matches her creativity and in-ring ability means you had two women who were clearly very excited to cook something up together because there was a wider of what they could do. & it was a bit messy!!!! which is my fucking favorite thing. more messiness in pro-wrestling is my mantra, my soapbox, the hill i will die on. make it feel more real, blur the performance line. reinsert that into modern pro-wrestling (esp North American) for the love of god. they did that. we will all be feasting when she makes the roster transition.

ospreay/takeshita, man. i've never gotten like that at a show before. i just lost my goddamn mind. i really did. there was a point where i was just completely overtaken by adrenaline and disbelief. they walked right up to the edge of things i have a lower threshold for (endless kickouts, lack of selling, spot-fests) & created pretty much my ideal match within that. and you know why????? it wasn't 30 minutes!!!!! they hit the early 20s sweet spot. and it makes sense that they'd have scouted each other's moves like this. and i'm a sucker for counter-heavy matches and a well-placed one count. the double one-counts from each other's moves????? chef's kiss.

don callis family feels more vital and important than they ever have right now. them scouting for new members feels like a great opportunity for anyone on the roster rather than a waste. so that seems like a good direction for alexander. and we got to hype up fletcher/page which i'm not remotely ready for

the death riders getting their first major blow was so smartly handled and paid off multiple dividends (furthering my case for the dynasty main event being Good, Actually while everyone Chicken Littled over it). putting it on swerve was not the move, thank you!!!! the match itself rocked, everyone looked great out there. the run-ins were a really wonderful flip-side parallel to dynasty. the way they used pac's injury as an advantage was great. samoa joe's dynamite-closing promo last week managed to give everything an urgency and fire that literally no opponent has been able to give it. he said what he was doing to do and then did the thing. because he is IT. felt very bad that hook could not be there for it. i hope he is ok. but hobbs was the perfect sub. the show ended with a joe speech and tons of adorable babyface champagne drinking, dancing, and joking. just adorable

hell, even mjf continuing to find ways to be ~weird about women couldn't put a dent in things

tk knows that getting boston a ppv is particularly difficult logistically because of sports scheduling/venue availability and he also knows he has done us dirty by not figuring out how to make it happen. so he gives us things like blood & guts, big business, and now spring break-thru, whenever he runs boston.

[cinenthusiast]

swerve v mox was good, actually (oh hey, it's me, the girl with the disposable camera)

so, in the building i really dug this match but hated the last stretch. between then and watching it back, wrestling discourse would have you believe this main event sucked from start to finish because their guy didn't win & everyone hates mox now. they would have you believe it was the worst ever aew main event. which is very funny because the entire match was actually... extremely fucking good. the level of backlash has been so hyperbolic, selective, and short-sighted that it had me going 'wait a minute, huh? did it play horribly on tv or something?' watching it back had me appreciating the whole thing, not just the initial 2/3rds.

i have two complaints about it. swerve ultimately being taken out by the worst finisher in wrestling just sucks. full-on sucks. the evp trigger is the absolute pits and "the most dangerous man in aew" being taken out by it sucksssss. 2. i wish swerve's blade job had been better because it would have given that initial lengthy mox control section an oomph that i think it needed. otherwise???

this was a very good main event. the whole thing. yes, the whole thing. at the end of the day, the thing i care about most is: was it a well-worked match. and this was a very well worked match, further bolstered by the crowd who gave a lot during it despite being at the end of an overlong, but overall really good, ppv. during this and the, also very underappreciated, mox/cope street fight (their revolution main event stunk tho lbr) mox has been locked in in a way i haven't seen for most of his title reign beyond that signature lived-in animalistic energy. they were really laying into each other. i dug the early focus on mat work and the way it returned back to that later on. it was high impact, with a measured pace that was really well modulated. yes, there were a ton of run-ins but they were all quick and smooth, never bringing the match to a halt the way i've seen so many other (death riders or otherwise) matches do. and it set up a lot of potentially really exciting stuff. there was a reason for all of it. maybe not reasons ppl dug or agreed with, but reasons. it seems clear to me (see below) that the bucks intervened because their elite takeover didn't end up doing much and they are shit-stirrers and like to disrupt top-level shit so they can force their way back into things because they are smug gremlins.

if i'm wrong, i'm wrong. but after the ppv went off the air, mox was pacing back and forth seething (more than normal), extremely pissed and trying to talk himself out of approaching the bucks. the bucks were confused and amused. clearly they need to start setting up larger group rivalries for both anarchy in the arena and blood and guts and however that those sides end up filling out, this starts that. beyond that, we got the start of a potential hangman/swerve alliance, united in being fucked over. and we're setting up the opps taking the trios belts. the owen gets to keep its high stakes. mox should simply not be dethroned at a b-ppv.

unfortunately, i have personal irl reasons that complicate my feelings for swerve (nothing criminal, but a constantly distracting bummer!) but the guy deserves to be *the plan*, not to be slated into a rushed placeholder reign. granted, he *could* be that guy if they needed him to step into that role, but call me crazy for thinking he deserves more than that.

a well-worked match with the right kind of chaos. it seems clear that people's (very valid) long-standing frustrations with the death riders and mox's title reign resulted in an all-eggs-in-swerve's-basket situation. everyone was primed for him to take it and end their world title suffering. the company made sure it felt he would take it too. we were worked. whether that ends up being the right call is yet to be seen. but swerve's loss and where it puts his character, especially in relation to hangman and everything that was set up here is, overall, wayyyyyy more interesting than what a swerve win following from a quick pivot and a merely fine build would have been. the internet would have you believe that mox is garbage and has been for years, that swerve losing is the biggest aew blunder to date and that this was the worst main event, or one of the worst, that aew has ever had. none of it is true. make no mistake, the death riders storyline has, overall, been a let-down and has not risen to the level that its beginnings promised or the company's recent highs elsewhere. but people are being so ridiculous about sunday's main event that they got me making a damn post about it.

[cinenthusiast]

been living in and studying in ~1930s animation for like 3 months now lol. a new passion.

THE MAD DOCTOR (1933)

[cinenthusiast]

Happy Birthday, Brad Dourif ❤️ (March 18th, 1950) 🎂

[cinenthusiast]

🥹❤️

[cinenthusiast]

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) dir. Lotte Reiniger

[cinenthusiast]

We can make it work, can't we? Can we make it work? 'Cause... God damn it. I just can't make it alone anymore.

GENE HACKMAN & AL PACINO as MAX & LION SCARECROW (1973) dir. Jerry Schatzberg

[cinenthusiast]

UFO 50 ▸ Party House 2024 - PC

[cinenthusiast]

1st video game of 2024, really loving it! trying to get to some shorter stuff like this and its sequel, hopefully obra dinner, firewatch finally etc

The Case of the Golden Idol

[cinenthusiast]

[cinenthusiast]

Murder in a Blue World | Eloy de la Iglesia | 1973

Sue Lyon and Alfredo Alba at the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar

[cinenthusiast]

my moviegoing repertory screenings log for 2024. 56 feature length films, 31 shorts, 87 total. 67 of them on film. 34 trips out to boston.

10 favorite screening experiences of the year were moonstruck, the lotr marathon, 9 1/2 weeks, bird, the searchers on 70mm, the films of margaret tait, "the tender game"/"date with dizzy"/"the hat", the coolidge horror marathon, matinee, & strange days.

also included a handful of more specific things that stuck out. thank you to the brattle, coolidge corner, somerville theatre, and the harvard film archive for such incredible programming. so much i missed, so much i planned to get to & didn't, but when i look at this i can only be grateful

[cinenthusiast]

Top 5 Revelatory Rewatches of 2024

[cinenthusiast]

50(ish) Favorite New-to-Me Viewings, 2024

#1-30 in very loose order

#31 on are in chronological order