#(tho seriously i am so sure i'm gonna fail today

[thekittenkait]

i had the clearest realisation of "did you ever think we'd get this far" i ever had

i was putting on my suit and just thought "hm, it might still be a bit too cold for this to be comfortable, but it should be fine for my final exams in april"

you mean the final exams you're putting the suit on for rn?? the final exams of which you already did 3?? the final exams that you're gonna get your grades for today??

it's already April, get a grip

[georgeinamerc]

ACCIDENTALLY SPENT MY LIFE MAKING SURE EVERYONE WAS COMFORTABLE AND IGNORING HOW I WASNT TWEET COMING FOR MY FUCKING THROAT HOLY SHIT VAS ARE YOU OKAY DO YOU NEED A HUG IM GONNA FLY TO GREECE TO VISIT YOU I STG BB i just got off with my therapist too sa;lfjasdl;kjfasdlk;j that tweet really making me stare at my computer like :( its CORRECT but DAMN

for reals tho bb are you okay im sending you all the hugs. Lmk if you wanna watch smthn today I've got 0 things on my schedule

wuv youuuuu sending you cool blankets on a hot day and soft forehead kisses

-JC

I wrote a reply to you 2 times and tumblr glitched in both so now i’m fucking drafting this on my google docs😭 I swear that was my last straw lmaooo

Anyways, i really am not doing good but i seriously can’t thank you enough for the kindness you always bring to my inbox!! It helps me so so much, you are an amazing human being❤️❤️

DUDE that tweet fucking destroyed meeee it’s really alarming how relatable my socials are getting atp… sorry for attacking you w it as well tho 😫 PLEASE you are welcome any time here hahah i could even take you to an island for vacation just sayingg 👁️👄👁️ Ahh i really do need a hug rn tho ngl, it’s been one of the worst periods of my life. We've had so many failed attempts at finding an apartment for me and the day we were supposed to go see one that looks really fitting for me, my brother had his medical exams. It’s been 2 weeks and they haven’t contacted since. Then as you’ve probably seen my therapist lowkey ghosted me jhbgjtbrjg and my dad is just being his usual self… There’s more but i wouldn’t want every thought of mine to be on the open for the whole tumblr to see, yk, i may be the queen of oversharing but even i have boundaries😭

Lmao we really should have a call and just complain about everything and everyone hahah pls feel free to let it all out here if u need to, i would never post any of it obviously but just know you have an ear that will listen<3 I would love it but i have SO much studying for my exams and i shouldn’t procrastinate more :( we’ll find a day for it tho!!

Love you sm and again thank you for everything, i'm so glad tumblr gave me an amazing person like you❤️❤️❤️❤️

[movienotesbyzawmer]

August 21: Mission: Impossible II

(previous notes: Mission: Impossible)

Not gonna lie, this is without question the Mission: Impossible movie that is remembered most unfavorably by me and, I'm pretty sure, everyone else. My recollection is that they tried SO SO SO SO HARD to make an action movie for Today's Kids; I'm typing this with the title screen of the 4K Blu-ray blasting its turn-of-the-millennium neo-metal version of the classic theme with Tom Cruise running in front of a wall of flame and it's just like come on. Is there even must fun spycraft in this? The first one promised lots of gravely furtive glancing, world-class makeup disguises, and dazzling gadgetry. Did this movie's director John Woo replace those with just way way way too much shooting and chasing and sexy vehicles? That's how I remember it but it's been a couple of decades.

I should probably address this series' exciting approach to director selection. The first one was directed by the legendary Brian De Palma, who brought us Carrie, The Untouchables, and Carlito's Way. Whether or not this one worked out, the trend here seemed to be to choose a respected director with a certain cred that could be imported into the franchise. More on that as this series unfolds. I am now to press play.

Opening scene is about a scientist who injects himself with something while a voiceover teases us with I-already-forget-what.

Oh, he's pals with Ethan; they're on a plane together out of Sydney when some bad-guy shenanigans totally thwart the whole fly-to-the-destination-safely thing. But! It wasn't even Ethan! It was good-ol' makeup fake-outery! It was a heist to take the warn leather pouch that the scientist had.

This I remember - during the opening credits, the REAL Ethan Hunt is climbing somewhere impressive, all freestyle like. All the related supplemental marketing materials never fail to talk up Tom Cruise's penchant for doing his own stunts, but these don't look real.

He then receives a fancy techno-message in a very, very dramatic and action-movie-ish fashion, which is that someone flies a helicopter by his climbing mountain and fires a rocket near him containing message-glasses tech! The voice in the message glasses sounds like Anthony Hopkins. Is it Anthony Hopkins?

Anyway now he has to go to Spain to recruit Thandie Newton and here is where it's already starting to get way too the-style-of-John-Woo. There is a flamenco show and Ethan and TN spot each other across the room. There is SLO MOTION and SPANISH STOMPING and ACOUSTIC GUITAR, and THOSE TWO GAZING AT EACH OTHER. I tell you I do not care for it.

What happens next is TN proceeds to use fancy technology and lockpicking skills to steal a well-concealed necklace. Ethan tags along flirtatiously. She still tries to steal the necklace even though this Lothario, this smarmy but irresistible cad, is trying to distract her with his testosterone.

Ugh, I was very right to remember not liking stuff about this movie. Ethan fails to recruit her at the jewel heist, so he car-chases at her the next day! He calls her during the car chase to irritate/seduce her, and she's all "you'll have to catch me ha ha", and it ends in a nearly fatal crash and then they KISS. The director worked very hard to ensure the kissing was HAWT, and Ethan has now successfully recruited TN for both spy work and boinkage.

Anthony Hopkins! He is in the next scene! That really was him! How did I forget that he is in this movie. This scene where he meets with Ethan and fills him in on everything is effectively expository. But then after he knows what he's gotta do, he walks with INTENSITY and it is in SLOW MOTION next to a BURNING EFFIGY THING with ELECTRIC GUITAR MUSIC GOING ON.

0:33:40 - Oh now it's a little more what I like, with a montage about using spy tech to get Ambrose, the bad guy who was pretending to be Ethan on the plane in the beginning, to track TN. And to further assure us that there is techie-fun to be had, Ving Rhames returns to be that guy for Ethan's team. But there is also time in this sequence for shots of TN walking slowly and looking super pretty. You know, so she can seduce Ambrose. A flowing scarf figures prominently in this imagery. A John Woo Film.

I like that they tricked Ambrose into thinking he is so damn smart for tracking her down. I also like Ambrose's compound on Sydney Harbour, it is a bitchin property.

Scene just happened where Ambrose seriously menaces his friend and uses a cigar-clipper on his finger. Ambrose is a bad friend.

But then they're all at the horse race game, even Ambrose's injured friend, who we learn is named Stemp and who is spying on TN, and Ethan and VR are spying on them all. There are shots of TN doing sleight of hand to steal a tape from Ambrose's pocket and it's pretty good spy-shot stuff.

I guess I should mention that there's one more guy on Ethan's team of four, an Australian guy. I haven't caught his name, so he is Australian Guy now, and he is pretending to be an employee of the horse race game venue. He gets bullied by Stemp! We don't like Stemp!

The tape she stole, they watch it right away and it shows footage of what the virus (there's a virus problem at the center of this) does. It is effective, and a little shocking.

But then, this is surprisingly actually kind of well-conveyed - they made it VERY clear that the tape was originally in Ambrose's left jacket pocket, and they showed very clearly that TN returned it to the wrong jacket pocket, AND it's obvious a moment later that Ambrose knows it has been replaced in the wrong jacket pocket. Don't know why, but at least it's keeping us on top of this situation.

Also not-too-shabby is how they're doing the consequences of Ethan and TN fancying each other, except then she has to go and seduce Ambrose and that's uncomfortable and drama-making. In Ethan's defense, as well as Ambrose's, I am also in love with TN right now.

1:02:12 - Ethan disguised himself as Scientist, the dead one from the beginning, and I'm just saying I'm glad this movie is embracing the disguise-craft theme that was established in the first movie. Ooh, is the show like that too?

And then just as I've typed that, it turns out that Ambrose did an Ethan disguise (it was established by Anthony Hopkins that Ambrose was an IMF agent so he can do that stuff too) to trick TN into outing her intentions. They make it very clear that there is voice-fake tech with their disguises that involves a wire mesh thing stuck to the throat.

Next up is a heist scheme to break into a skyscraper where they're growing stuff about the virus, and it's a little bit of that style I liked so much in the last movie, with the added twist that Ambrose is somewhere else anticipating what Ethan's planning, and, I think, plotting a separate, way-better heist. They're still talking about it and the heist is happening and it is suspenseful! I totally like this more than I remember.

1:13:30 - Ethan is at the part of the heist where he's at fancy lab facilities with robot arms and AI voices and oddly no people. VR and Australian Guy are observing everything that's happening using technology and Australian Guy's helicopter, making it more suspenseful, but I also don't know exactly what's going on? We appear to be where Scientist originally injected himself, and Ethan is I think killing the virus while also somehow visualizing Scientist injecting himself.

But then that all goes away because a platoon of thugs in black burst in and are shooting at Ethan. It all quickly became an action movie with blazing guns and VR's tech van getting bombed.

In the fracas it's clear that one of the injector guns contains the last of the virus, and also gunplay might shatter it and make them all infected, so that's decent suspense. But also, the lighting in this bio-lab is like a nightclub, with inexplicably roving spotlights and neon accents that pop in 4K.

TN is in the mix, and she decides to inject the last of the virus into herself, and there's a dumb moment where it's like ETHAN YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO SHOOT ME WITH YOUR GUN and Ethan, Man of Ethics, does not do that. Instead there is more gunplay and Ethan jumps out a hole he made in the wall.

1:28:45 - We've moved to new location, a new compound, and it's on a guard-patrolled island and Ethan sneaks up on a guard and does a totally unnecessary body-flip martial arts move to take him out. I think he needs to steal the antidote from this compound so that he can save TN, who is somewhere else. He is visually passionate about this mission.

Ethan got caught sneaking in to this new compound by Stemp, and he did a whole grenade blowup thing but he still got caught. It's a trick, right? Yup, he put an Ethan mask on Stemp and a Stemp mask on himself and got Ambrose to kill Stemp. He realizes he just killed Stemp because of the finger injury, good job with that.

I am reminded that this movie is from the director of Face/Off, so I needn't have feared that the mask/disguise conceit would be forsaken.

But did he get the antidote? He must have. Sometimes when I'm typing notes I miss stuff, but he's now motorcycling away while VR and Australian Guy are providing support from their chopper.

This is now the vehicle-chase opera that I remember ending the movie so terribly extendedly. Much gunplay. Vehicles pirouette with violent elegance. Ethan can do such exquisite dances with his motorcycle and firearm. This climaxes in the ridiculous feat of Ethan and Ambrose riding their cycles at each other and jumping at off them at each other to finish the job sans vehicle. It ends as a tussle on the beach, and Ambrose has a knife that almost gets in Ethan's eye. The visual on that is striking. But it's no good, Ethan is too Tom Cruise for him. He gets the knife from him and DISCARDS THE KNIFE, and punch-kick-fights him a lot instead. Ethics.

Turns out Ambrose has a gun after all oh no. But then it turns out Ethan is standing by a sand-obscured gun somehow also oh good. He does a thoroughly storyboarded sand-kick-body-twirl gun recovery that ends like you'd guess.

So although there are some dumb things about this movie, I think it's better than I remembered. And having just watched the first one, I think it actually did a good job of having a story where you don't have to ignore a lot of stupidness. It's not like it's an especially good plot, but it didn't try to make you forget its holes like the first one. I still like the first one better, though.

(next: Mission: Impossible III)