#And like oddly enough I can't understand the value of money. Like I have money but I can't get myself to use it.

[pigaletta]

Imagine going to one of the best colleges in the country for your course and you got so damaged from the experience that you need to take time to ACTUALLY HEAL FROM IT.

[scary-monsters]

Why do u like Diego so much. Like, what's the personal obsessive zeal for the feral rock-eating dinosaur man over any other fabulously bizzare jjba character

it's quite simple, really: he's hot

no, that's a joke, i genuinely have a lot of really Strong feelings about diego brando as a character, he rides that thin line between villain and "hey maybe this guy isn't so bad" (which is something i'm always a sucker for), his motivations are interesting, also i think his character design is SICK. i really will just sit here, ramble, and make zero sense, so i'm going to attempt to break him down in chunks AHEM (general warning for sbr spoilers!!!!)

so diego at face value is this pompous jerk who wants money and staus, and he's willing to do anything he has to in order to get what he wants. in his mind he's number one, he values himself over literally everybody else. all of this is great, i love characters that are unapologetic assholes, but what really gets me is what we can see if we dig a little deeper!!! he's constantly on the hunt for more, more, more; there's this ache inside him that he can't quite relieve. he wants revenge for the way his mother and him were treated when he was young, and he will stop at nothing to get that. (i have to wonder if he understands that there's probably nothing he can actually do to fix that deep-seated anger. i'm not sure that even killing his father would be enough, but that's purely me trying to burrow myself into diego's psyche LOL) he's just so HUNGRY and ugghhh i Love that, i love his determination and the way he will throw himself into really dangerous situations if it means he has the potential to benefit himself and move even a fraction closer to his goals. so that instantly earns him major points in my book.

the moment that i personally said "yep, he's The One" was of course the rattlesnake joke... i think i literally swooned irl.. not only is he very nice to look at, he's also FUNNY???? sold. instantly. i think at his core diego is a goofy lil guy (also childish and desperate for validation, but we'll touch on that later) who could potentially be such a good ally for so many characters if he'd simply get his head out of his ass and trust other people a reasonable amount. but he won't because he's diego and he's horribly misanthropic. (this kind of explains part of my fascination with dinopants: we finally see him alongside someone, strategizing, exhibiting some trust (even if just a little), and he actually treats hot pants with respect, like an equal!!! tune in next time for a dinopants analysis /hj) It's just so funny to watch him in the scary monsters arc, he feels very.. candid, i guess? in his interactions with johnny, the refined aura isn't really there and he looks a mess LMAO, i instantly took even more of a liking to him during this part!!! he just felt more human to me (which is ironic bc.. he very much wasn't for the majority of the arc fhdkjlghs) It's just like.. OH.. this seemingly perfect man is now acting absolutely feral and being so weird ?? i'm in love with the duality of him!!!! (and oddly enough, vaguely lizard-like person is a very specific trope that i Adore, my username isn't tendou-satori for nothin')

so far we've got: mean little motherfucker with a massive chip on his shoulder, at his most palatable he's silly and funny and appears to actually have some humanity even though it's stuffed beneath thick layers of self-importance and resentment. also: hot dinosaur eat rock. but i like to think my specialty is psychoanalyzing characters (to the point where it may or may not feel canon) so let's dig deeper :))))

there's this profound sadness in his character, i think? touched on it earlier, but his motivations are built on a desire for revenge, and i'm not sure if that hunger for revenge could ever be satisfied. it's a childish motive (imo) and i think it really showcases just how much growing up he needs to do. i think it's easy to forget he's just 20, because he acts so high and mighty and it seems he has a lot of enablers; he's probably had his ego blown to ridiculous amounts for almost the entirety of his life. i'm sure he had to work hard for his place in the world of horse racing but his celebrity status absolutely gets to his head, he eats it up. but with all that being said, without the influence of either of his parents he had to rely on himself, and with that i'm sure he had to grow up very fast. but there's still childish tendencies there, things he never unlearned, like his need for being the center of attention, being generally mean to people, putting himself first no matter what & to the point where it endangers others, etc etc etc. he's resentful and doesn't understand he has to let that go or else it will eat him alive. but i also think there's something so beautiful about how determined he is to get what he wants.

but the sadness doesn't end there; the part that absolutely rips me apart is the fact that he could have gotten so far if he hadn't been burdened by so many things during the race. scary monsters is fucking cool, yeah, but maybe if he hadn't gotten pulled into the whole corpse parts thing he could have gone all the way. his determination bit him in the ass, his need to be at the center of everything fucked him over. he couldn't let it go, he had to let his greed for higher status get in the middle of it. up until the end he was so hungry for what he wanted that he literally threw himself out a window for it. his last words were "the one who was victorious was me" because that's all he wanted, he just wanted to win and climb the social ladder and he threw everything else away just for that shot. and his need for validation was probably a part of that too. validation that he lacked as a young child after his mother's passing, i imagine. (this part of my love for him may very well be completely fabricated in my mind but i have a tendency to make characters sadder than they actually are, it's my bread and butter, so take all this with a grain of salt)

the need for validation thing kinda kills me too, i have to wonder if there's some deeply rooted insecurities in there (also probably a longshot, but please give me this) and he might not even be aware of them because he's not good at self-reflection. every time he's like "well?" in terms of asking others for praise or validation or confirmation or whatever it sort of feels like a faint "please tell me i'm good because i have to hear it".. he's grown up hearing this stuff about how gifted and amazing he is, so he hasn't had to supply that validation for himself, if that makes sense?? his self-worth has been built off other people's words and, yes, while he fully believes those things about himself and will flaunt his everything, i think there's still something Sad about that. idk man i'm verging on 100% headcanon at this point but these are still things that make me appreciate his character even more. either way, he has Depth. a lot of jjba characters do, but he specifically fascinates me. dio started out being my favorite character in the whole series (and i still love him) but diego is like... dio but with some Good in him, he's redeemable. he's only hostile towards others if they get too close to him or pose him a threat. but at his core he's just like "leave me alone and i will leave you alone" and he isolates from people. god idk i just think he's so interesting and sad and troubled and the way it's all hidden underneath this air of self-importance is So Fucking Good!!!! i think if anyone could get underneath that thick layer of safeguarding they'd find a man who needs genuine human connection so badly and could really flourish and emotionally mature if he had it (again, we are in headcanon territory)

SO, i don't claim any of this as canon, when i love a character like this it's typically because i like to psychoanalyze them (and maybe sometimes project on them), it's like they become my little puppets and i make them dance around in ways that really intrigue me. diego is my favorite favorite favorite subject right now. i cannot get enough of this dude... :'))) also he fucking eats rocks... you Cannot hate a guy who eats rocks, fumbles around trying to drink coffee, and can turn into a literal dinosaur.

also, he is sooooo fucking hot.. like Holy Shit.. araki really said "im gonna make diego brando the prettiest character in all of jojo" and then He Did That. personal opinion, ofc, but oof the things i would do .. ANYWAY....

if you read through this monster of a post then i hope i answered your question LOL... i love talking about him and i'd love to hear other people's thoughts and headcanons about him :')) he's such a great character, i love drawing him, i love writing him, i love having him as a muse, he fills my heart with so much joy!!!!!

[iamcinema]

IAC Reviews #19: Wishbone (2000)

Hey, is anyone still alive out there? I hope so.

Coming off of last year was a disaster, and well, we didn't enter 2021 on the highest of notes. I guess you could say I've been burned out and not having a ton of motivation to do a lot, even with how much I've been grinding on Letterboxd over the past few months. I think I'm ready to come back, and since there's a storm is brewing outside, let's make today a movie night...and boy, do I have a treat for you.

I think I've made it kind of apparent that I have a weakness for terrible, low-budget, trash fires. There's something oddly charming about them where they always find a way to lure me in, and given the scene on Letterboxd, there's a bunch of SOV masochists out there waiting to get their next fix. While digging around for material to cross off my lists on titles to find and add, I was reminded of a terrible, low-budget film that was shot in my hometown over 20 years ago. I'm full of fear for what's to come, and you should be too.

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Wishbone is a 2000 horror film directed by Timothy Gaer and co-created by Michael Fasciana, centering on a woman named Laurie who receives an unusual artifact from her eccentric aunt she acquired from a pawn dealer that causes those around her to disappear when they make wishes on it. Hmm, seems simple enough. Let's what we're in for, and I'm absolutely not ready because the IMDb page says this shit is over two hours long, despite a version on Youtube having it just a bit over 90 minutes. Let us pray.

Wishbone in One Gif:

This acting is might be the death of me, but I'm not sure what's going to be the catalyst that causes me to fall down the stairs and break my neck: the sound quality, the weird editing, or the music...oh, god what the fuck is the music doing? So much noise, noise noise!

Okay, so let's dig into this before I take too long of a break and I don't come back to this. I've already had to pause the movie a few times to catch my breath or just rewind and go back because there's a good amount that I keep missing because, apparently, the star of the film is the score and not Laurie. This is so, so slow. I've seen a lot of long horror movies, but at least with those, it feels like things are happening. Even Blood Lake had filler that did something to some degree, and with that, it was consistently bad. This movie doesn't even know what it wants to do. So, as a disclaimer, there's a good chance I'm probably missing some key details that I didn't hear because it seems that characterization isn't important if the music insists on talking over everyone.

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So, to date, this might be one of the worst horror movies (and movies in general) that I've ever seen and it might be one of the slowest things in the entire megaverse. This is over 90 minutes of, somehow, nothing and something happening simultaneously - if that makes any sense.

This takes its sweet ass time moving along and there's so little pay-off. The majority of the characters are either nameless or we aren't introduced to them in a way that matters enough for us to care about them. It's kind of like with Violent Shit and other low-budget slasher films where the majority of the characters serve no purpose but to be disposable. Next to the two main leads, Laurie and Joe, and maybe a few others, everyone is just forgettable and even then I couldn't honestly tell you anyone's name if it was explicitly brought up. IMDb isn't helpful either, and at this point it just makes me care even less. I'm not sure if my patience has been tested too much with this, but it's kind of sad that I'm more invested in seeing what the background characters are doing than Laurie and Joe - even though I can't really hear what the hell they're saying.

Yeah, I really can't move on without talking about the sound and the music. Why is it always the audio with these movies? This has an estimated budget of $100,000, or $154,779.43 today in August 2021. How do you have the ability to somehow not make this look like a potato for the most part, well for the day shots that is, but you don't have it in you to get a good mic and someone who knows how to mix and edit correctly? I would sort of understand if you spent the majority of the money on talent to cut corners, but this is just ridiculous. Did they use the cameras' built-in mics to catch the audio here?

I feel like I need to interrupt the movie constantly to tell them to speak up because if I turn up the volume, I'm just getting bombarded with this really weird soundtrack that doesn't fit. I shit you not, during one of the kill scenes, the music booming over it sounds like it was ripped from Kevin MacLeod's "lounge" library and then the reverse happens where ominous music is playing over a more touching scene - and that's not even a dig at Kevin as an artist. That's just how inappropriate and unfitting this editing is. The weird fucking thing about this specific kill scene is that it sounds like the audio is stacked, so there are two different instrumental tracks going on.

How do you fuck something as basic as tension up like that? The audio choices are so painfully inconsistent and it doesn't know what it wants to do. There are moments where you can hear the dialogue just fine, but then the music comes in out of nowhere to segway us into the next scene and it starts to muffle things out. If it isn't that, then the dialogue is just so soft that you'd think there was a pillow on the mic or we're hearing them from the opposite side of a sound-dampened room.

This is what I meant earlier when I said I apologize in advance if I miss anything crucial because I can't make out half of these conversations. So, I'm having to keep going back if I care enough or just having to pause and take breaks because there's only so much I can handle. This means that there's a good amount I'll blank on because I have to keep going back because I can't remember the majority of these no-named characters. Who the fuck are you people? Why am I supposed to care?

If I'm understanding the non-existent rules of the wishbone, you're connected to whoever dies in some way. So, why is any of this relevant to what's going on? If it's random, then it's another reason for me not to care just because some frat kids made a wish at some point. Again, who the hell are you and why am I supposed to lament over them? Why is there so much useless filler here? Did I mention that this is over 90 minutes long and there are *three* fucking party scenes? Party scenes are to Wishbone as ten-minute-long jetskiing and beer game scenes are to Blood Lake.

Oh, speaking of other shit that's annoying. Let's talk about general editing because the sound isn't the only thing that's a mess here.

I swear that almost every single scene in this ends with a fade-out/fade-in shot. Only one or two scenes come to mind where this doesn't happen, and the first time it did I thought my browser was freezing because it abruptly cut to black and then smash cuts to a party scene. I've never, ever seen a movie that abused this that much before and it's on par with something I would have seen made by a bunch of high school kids. So, when we have a moment where this doesn't happen and it plays out normally, it feels like a breath of fresh air. I'm sure this movie's run time could have been shaved down by at least a minute or two if this wasn't a problem, along with all the useless close-up shots that serve nothing to the plot.

It's such a waste of time. I'm so fucking tired. How was this movie's budget $100k? Did they spend most of it on renting the Scranton Police Department for a few shots or did it go towards their impromptu trip to Party City? I'm so tired and I don't care anymore.

Do you want to know what the real kicker is? With just barely twenty minutes left, the whole lore about the monkey's wishbone paw comes back and that's when Laurie and her friend Karen think something is weird. Isn't this whole realization trope that happens within the first or second act, not now with your Great Value brand version of the Dream Warriors?

Also, it's not specified how much time has gone by since the start, but it has to have been at least a week or two. It's incredibly weird how they paint the main characters and the unnamed background ones as such good friends that they don't think it's weird how almost all of them have disappeared - especially one girl who doesn't seem off-put that her boyfriend (or ex) disappeared after getting into an argument at one of the parties and none of his friends could reach him either at his own house.

The final showdown is an utter pain in the ass to get through because the conflict ends as abruptly as it starts and it's so unsatisfying. We get to see the face of our villain, I guess, and then more or less cut to our leads holding hands down the street set to the same looping lounge music we've been dealing with for over 90 damn minutes. Is everyone else who went with them dead? Did they live? Who cares! That's one thing the movie and I can agree on since we never see them again. We end on a shitty cliffhanger that's supposed to prepare us for a sequel, which thankfully never happened.

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And that was Wishbone. Holy fucking shit, I've never been so thankful for a movie to be over in my life. It's 11:07 PM as of tinkering with some minor revisions and I've been in purgatory with this for over five hours, and yet, it feels like an entire lifetime has gone by.

I've raved about how bad Blood Lake was with its incredibly bad pacing, but this is next level awful and a testament to bad filmmaking if I've ever seen it. I expect a lot of the things I complained about from super amateur filmmakers who are shooting on an actual shoestring budget, not people who had that much money to fuck around with. How did they have that kind of a budget, and the most they can give us is bad audio, Windows Movie Maker levels of basic editing, three wrap parties, and a few crumbs of gore that we could see?

This was physically painful to see and I'm in much worse shape having endured it than I would have been if I sat through something liked Boardinghouse, and that has a two-and-a-half-hour-long version tied to it. This is just a marvel and I mean that in a so-bad-it's-bad way, not like how SOV enthusiasts who love this stuff pine over. If I had to give one thing going for it, one single granule of gold that I enjoyed from this, it's the limited shots we get of the area so I could make a game out of seeing what local spots I recognized. If playing I Spy is the only way for someone to endure your movie, then I don't know what else to say.

Wishbone is a hot mess where shit's happening, but also nothing is happening at the same time. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. In fact, I wish this movie never existed or would die in the ether and never return to our mortal realm ever again. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go have a smoke and hope I don't get run over by a hearse tomorrow.

RATING: 0.5/10