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It Came from the Suburbs! | Renegade Cut –  What do Halloween, Ginger Snaps, Fright Night and A Nightmare on Elm Street all have in common? They all take place in the suburbs. Why is that scary? Find out in this video. Support Renegade Cut Media through Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/renegadecut

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Knowing your internet terms and when to let tropes die.

Was listening to the Script Notes Podcast (with John August & Craig Mazin) episode 357. In their listener feedback they addressed the term “fridging” and I did not care for their centrist take on the trope. John argues, “I’m not going to dismiss a movie just because it has this trope in it.” Craig adds sometimes we’re tired of hearing the same things (like “You and I are not so different”), but then goes on to suggest “every now and then something comes along and it sort of reinvigorates an old trope.” 

They ultimately agree that this is a conversation for another time and there’s much to talk about. Well, here are some thoughts. Megan, the listener who wrote in about fridging, is right to be tired of the cliche. It’s not that revenge is an overused motivator (though it is); its the use of women as mechanisms. Put a woman in a turtle neck, give her a respectable job, but no matter how much you do to show she isn’t meant as a sexual object if she’s only meant to die early on she belongs to the trope. Her demise shifts gears out of act one and into act two.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect John and Craig to know every movie term. I also don’t think they fully understand why this trope is so off putting. Women are the targets of violence in the workplace, on the street and at home. And genre films about sexy secret agents, horror and sci-fi heroes are usually meant to be escapist. Or at least I imagine defenders of the fridging trope would say so and ask we “not take everything so seriously”. 

For example, the horror genre has moved into a compelling new era of 21st century experimentation and ambiguity. Films like The Witch, It Follows, The Babadook, Creep & Creep 2, Green Room, and 10 Cloverfield Lane engage us without resorting to cheap tactics (the odd jump scare aside). 

Rejecting fridging isn’t radical or silencing filmmakers. Revenge films will always be. Even if a trope is as Craig puts it “thousands” of years old that doesn’t mean we have to revere it. 

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So I finally watched WIND RIVER

Taylor Sheridan’s stories include female leads for cheap woke points. These women are portrayed as naive and green and small under the shadow of grizzled manly men. In Sicario, Emily Blunt is also the audience surrogate. The result is she/we are talked down to as the plot grows in bitterness and nihilism. This is makes it my least favorite of the Frontier Trilogy.

When I was an intern, I read many scripts that echoed Sheridan’s bleak writing. Tough men, pushed to conquer a sliver of this damned world even if it changes little in the broad scope of things besides righting a singular egregious wrong. It’s machismo without the camp asking you instead to take the proceedings seriously and think about how ignorant you’ve been till Taylor Sheridan came along and shook you woke.

Not unlike the lost women of Juarez, Wind River wants  you to think about the missing girls of Indian reservations that often go unfound or even recorded. Thankfully, the locals have their idealized hero on the case: a white cowboy. Fucking really. There’s reservation police present and set up as challenged to solve this case, so we don’t need this tragic man-of-the-land unlikely hero nonsense since it’s already baked in. It takes the police, sheriff’s department, a local and a lone itty bitty girly FBI agent (for them to explain why this all be so tough) to crack it. Also, was adam Beach not available?

Maybe gender flip the convention (as Sheridan does like to toy with subversions like sidelining Sicario’s hero for the finale) of the grizzled hunter and cast Moon Bloodgood. Hell, having a true female lead could have offset the sickly familiar trope of man avenging an abused woman as if watching her suffer a little in the snow is all the victim’s side of the story we should have our faces pressed into.

The run time is instead filled with watery eyed men swearing, “I’ll get that SOB.” Yes, the ending is overall a killer and like the first two films in the trilogy. Sheridan makes space for a quiet and contemplative ending that’s refreshing. This however is slightly smudged by text on screen reminding you to feel bad about bad things, because the story, performances and on-screen rape weren’t enough.

In comparison, Hell or High Water works better than either of it’s sibling films by laying its effort into making layered, sympathetic pairs of men. Sure there’s the whole economic angle, but what brings us in and keeps us awake is the push and pull of the leads. We bounce between two men who can read the land and see the way forward and the two who belong to the land.

Understand, I like these films and I’m happy they make money and get awards. Thrillers can be quiet and small, and the American west is not as visited a location today as it should for all the talk of the heartland in the news. I just wish Sheridan would challenge himself to address these socio-political themes with more empathy and less Father Knows Best lecturing.

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The 13 Best New Indie Horror Movies In 2016

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Dr Did

your creature name

first letter of your first name

last two letters of your last name

last 2 letters of your first name

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Racist birthday card.

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Why I can't stand Lady Dynamite

I think I know why now. It's not just Maria Bamford's acquired taste, it's the presentation. Lady Dynamite's kitchen sink approach to story telling is a Herculean effort on the 2nd unit's part all for a misguided belief that anything will work with this much money on the screen. Sadly not unlike an Adam Sandler film.

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For your summer reading consideration.

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Whilst Overwatch does have some diversity in its female cast, I find myself incredulous that people can’t see the sexism in the predominant tropes: skin tight outfits; boob plates; and very skinny women are the most commonly occuring design choices. There are no conventionally unattractive female heroes, whereas there are male heroes like Winston, Junkrat, and Roadhog. There are good elements to Overwatch’s character design too, but plenty to critique.

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Some development work of my “film” (which can be viewed, for it’s smallness, here) (ง •̀_•́)ง

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Great stuff. Just read Sacred Heart this weekend and eager to recommend it.

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Ever since Demon’s Souls, I’ve really been pursuing making games that give players a sense of accomplishment by overcoming tremendous odds.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, Director of Dark Souls 3

The core of Miyazaki’s games is so people feel a sense of accomplishment when they beat enemies and bosses in the games. Making the game accessible for disabled individuals does not change this at all. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to deny someone the chance to experience it. The mentality of “git gud” is shows a lack of empathy for other players.

(via gamingfeminism)

Who with any power is opposed to this?

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It's like I'm looking at my wife's tumblr feed. Wasn't expecting sex positive hamadryad bondage.

Spring has sprung and I’m lamenting being cooped up inside all day drawing.

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It's an experiment I would be proud to be involved in and time will give infinite stories and discoveries from Rust.

Technically nothing has changed, since half the population was already living with those feelings. The only difference is that whether you feel like this is now decided by your SteamID instead of your real life gender.