#Critic reviews

[lestatthebrat]

About the Racists, Homophobes, and Purists Reviewing amc’s “Interview with the Vampire”

To put it bluntly: the people giving this show bad reviews are racists and homophobes. This is a damn good show that breathes new life into an old story, and the fan reviews claiming that this adaptation is “horrible” and a “disgrace” to Anne Rice’s work are simply bigots who cannot stand to see two men kissing on screen and/or who are ridiculously offended that Black actors are playing Louis and Claudia. 

Don’t believe me? Look at what fan reviewer joshua g had to say on Rotten Tomatoes: “Of course they would take a classic that does not need change, and turn it into a homosexual love story.” Obviously, his 0.5-star rating (the lowest rating possible on Rotten Tomatoes) was not motivated by the quality of the show but by his own homophobia. P W is another fan reviewer who gave the show a whopping 0.5 stars, because he has a problem with People of Color playing some of the leading characters. He says: “At some point, the intentional casting of minorities in reboots is going to end. History will look unfavorably at the practice.” Fan reviewer Rich G says it even more bluntly: “I dislike this show for one very specific reason. The race swapping of Louis and Claudie” (the misspelling of Claudia’s name is his mistake, not mine). Meanwhile, a fan reviewer on IMDb, GeorgeWHAMMYBush, gave the show a 1/10 (the lowest possible rating on IMDb) and this review: “They made the whole thing a dismally shot propaganda piece and it's painful to sit through… The plot gets obliterated completely in this and it's barely about vampirism at all and is now about race and sexual orientation. The whole thing is a waste of time. They then go after religion because while it was touched on as offensive to vampires in the books here it is clearly the target of the hacks who made this abomination. This could be studied in school as a part of a series on why American media failed when it had every chance to succeed. Whoever made this should be banned from the media industry entirely. Do not bother watching this. It will just aggravate you.” Most of the very low reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMBb are reminiscent of these examples, and it’s cringingly obvious these people just hate the show because they are racist and homophobic.  

It amuses me that some of these bigots are attempting to use their alleged “love” for the source material as a mask for their racism and homophobia. Like “HOW DARE THEY CHANGE ANNE RICE’S BOOK AND MAKE LOUIS A BLACK MAN INSTEAD OF A SLAVE OWNER!?” or “HOW DARE THEY MAKE LOUIS GAY JUST TO SEEM WOKE!?” But if these so called “avid fans” actually read any of Anne Rice’s books, they must have stopped after book one, because if they got even to book 2 they would have known that Louis and Lestat have ALWAYS been an LGBT couple. If you read book 1, “Interview with the Vampire,” and missed the pretty-hard-to-miss subtext, go re-read it. To recap: Louis talks about how Lestat “had me mesmerized, enchanted” (direct quote); Louis explicitly compares Lestat turning him into a vampire to sex; he and Lestat live together for over sixty year; and they adopt a child together. By book 2, “The Vampire Lestat,” Lestat has male lovers both before and after becoming a vampire, and he confirms that he and Louis were lovers. He and Louis also have a heartfelt reunion in the 80s, and they kiss multiple times on the mouth. (I know, too gay for people who didn’t get past the Neil Jordan film.) By the time we reach the final book in of series, “Blood Communion,” Louis and Lestat are again living together, and in the final chapter of the book, they dance together at a ball, embrace, kiss multiple times on the lips, and profess their undying love for one another. Sorry, homophobes, but these vampires ain’t never been straight, and you’d know that if you actually read the books.  

Aside from the raving racists and homophobes, there are some fan reviewers who seem to genuinely love Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” but have a problem with the amc series diverging from the source material. Again, the “race swapping” is commonly mentioned, so I wonder how many of these people are also motivated by prejudice, but they have other problems too, such as changes in the time period, the ages of the character’s, the dialog (come on, what tv show preserves all of the dialogue from the books?), and even tiny unimportant details like the vampires “spilling blood” when they kill people. I understand when you passionately love a book series (and I myself passionately love “The Vampire Chronicles”), you imagine the story and characters a certain way, but what these people need to realize is that it is not unusual, uncommon, unfair, or disrespectful for tv reboots or movies to make changes from the books. “Interview with the Vampire” was already made into a very successful and well-known movie in 1994, and most remakes/reboots that do NOT try anything new but simply repeat what has already been done fail miserably. “Psycho,” “Nightmare of Elm Street,” “Carrie”... these are all movies that took a classic and remade it more or less the same as the original, and all of these films were brushed off and forgotten because they offered nothing new and exciting, nothing updated and relevant, nothing thought-provoking that would allow the audience to think of things in a different way or see things in a new light. In simply repeating the original with different actors, they failed to live up to the original. The same thing has happened when books have been made into movies and then later into tv series: look at “The Shining.” Most people don’t even know the inferior miniseries exists, even though it is more accurate to the book and Stephen King wrote it himself. On the contrary, some of the most successful remakes, the kind of remakes that make people say, “This is better than the original!”—which, by the way, the majority of critics and fans ARE saying about amc’s “Interview with the Vampire”—are remembered and beloved because they do not just rehash the same old material but because they put a spin on old characters and content; they make changes and updates; they offer the audience something new, exciting, current, and relevant, something more and something deeper. Some examples: “The Fly,” “The Thing,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” This is what amc is doing with “Interview with the Vampire.” 

So, if you earnestly love the original books, that’s wonderful, but you have the books, and you can read them as many times as you want. You also have the Neil Jordan film which you can re-watch to your liking. Now, the amc series is remaking/rebooting this series, and it is not a crime for production teams to take creative liberties, and I honestly do not see this as a disrespect to Anne Rice’s work either. She SOLD the rights of her work for this television series, which means the production team can make whatever changes they want. That’s how it goes for any author whose book is being made into a movie: they sign the contract, they get paid (and Anne Rice most likely got paid millions of dollars for this series) and they don’t have any say over what changes are made to the production. Even most script writers who spend months or years creating characters and writing a story, if they are lucky enough to sell their script to a production company, they lose creative control over that story. That’s just the way it works. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing shocking. And it’s not a “disgrace.” This has been going on literally always since movies and television shows have been made based on books. Have you ever seen the “original” 1931 “Frankenstein” movie? Ever compare it to Mary Shelley’s book? So like I was saying, movies/tv shows departing from the source material is nothing new and nothing to be “furious” or “disgusted” about. 

Now, if you love the show, please go leave a review on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, because it’s being review-bombed by racists and homophobes and purists who want to see it tank! But we won’t let that happen because they dumbass bitches and love wins! ♥️ 

[ki11tr4p]

Like c’mon what were they expecting?

[teaandspite]

The Great Goodreads Diss List (Part 1)

Context: For many years now, I have been collecting funny lines from Goodreads reviews to share with my coworkers. (I do collection development, reader's advisory, and weeding at a public library, so I read a LOT of reviews)

Are some of these, perhaps, rather mean? Yes, but they are also very funny, and come from a place of honest frustration. In the tradition of Bargepole threads and lists everywhere, names and titles have been censored.

"First, I want to say that I understand how hard it is to write a book and how amazing it is when it is actually published. Congrats to the author for that accomplishment. That said--"

"Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred."

"I found myself feeling really, really annoyed with the world that this book is allowed to exist. We live in a universe where the passenger pigeon is extinct but this book goes along merrily being read by unsuspecting lovers of words and ideas and stories? It just seems like too much, you know?"

"Don't do it. Don't spring the cash for the hardcover. Instead, eat an entire bag of Twizzlers, spend some money you don't have at a high-end department store, look up on Facebook the shady college boyfriend that made you cry, research the current value of your home or 401K and then read all about how the big hedge fund managers are faring during the economic crisis. You'll feel about the same stomach pain if you waste your time reading this book."

"This wretched novel begins with the mugging of an old lady and it appears I may be in the process of repeating that loathsome crime as [author] was 78 when she wrote it. It is not nice to put the boot into such a poor defenseless old creature lying there with only a damehood, a Booker Prize and a few million quid. It’s a nasty job but somebody has to do it."

"I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could."

"I am considering setting up SPABB: Society for the Protection of Accurate Book Blurb. This blurb appears to have been written by someone from the publishers who met [the author] the night before, got very drunk, lost his notes and then constructed something in a fug of hangover the next morning."

"I congratulate [the author] on the early half of his book, which was thoroughly fun and made me laugh and think. I congratulate [the author] on the second half of his book, for finishing it. It reads like that was difficult."

"…a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League."

"The author is a pompous windbag."

"Recommends it for: No one. Recommended to me by: A friend who apparently wished to cause me great suffering."

"Makes me wonder: is it possible to obtain similes at a volume discount?"

"The repeated phrases made me want to mail a thesaurus to the author."

"I'm disappointed in myself for finishing this book."

"if the author described [character's] eyes as "obsidian" one more time I was tempted to write her and ask if her thesaurus broke."

"They say that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would, if given infinite time, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. [This book], on the other hand, would probably take the average monkey just under two hours."

"I can't imagine what the author had to do to get this nadir of Western literature printed on innocent trees, but he does seem to know a LOT about being well-connected in New York."

"This book is so bad it is almost worth reading just to make you appreciate the other books you are reading."

"Reads like it was written by a brilliant author, the night before it was due."

"raises interesting questions, like: can a book be so bad as to constitute an act of terrorism"

"has this author ever spoken to a human woman"

"This acorn has fallen so far from the tree that it can’t even see the forest."

"I’m guessing they are touted as ‘beach reads’ because no one will care if they get dropped into the ocean."

"This book begins with all the energy of a hand vacuum near the end of its battery life, and the pace doesn't quicken much from there."

"At least everybody’s eyes stayed the same color this time around.”

Part 2

[jadeluz-official]

The whole point of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that the film doesn't want you to take it seriously. 

I'd argue the most significant thing the whole film is Betelgeuse still pining for Lydia after all this time. And even then, the wedding only takes itself seriously when they waltz in the air. Go back and watch how Rory and BJ both call it a dream and nightmare, and we cut to Lydia waking up right at the end. 

"I love a good dream sequence." "You're that thing from my dream." "Really more nightmare material, but thanks." "I just had the strangest dream."

Everything is up to interpretation. Everything is possible. Lydia becomes undependable as a narrator once Rory throws the pills away. We don't know if we can trust with our own eyes if what we're seeing is real or not. 

This whole movie could be Beej having a "strange dream" where their marriage didn't work out. It could also be them having the same dream, as to quote BJ's "psychic connection" line where they both get revenge on their exes. Astrid might not even exist.

As @xxx-theartofsuicide-xxx put it, Lydia could've become this spinster in the attic. She's driving herself to madness.

Beej and Lydia could've been married this whole time and him disappearing from the bed was just to screw around with her for shits and giggles.

If you're looking at it from a linear narrative standpoint, you can't really place pieces together. Take it at face value or make it your own. Tim Burton is a fucking genius. 

[trashyshrew]

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

The Boy and the Heron How Do You Live? (2023) dir. Hayao Miyazaki

[softpng]

sometimes I think about that guy on amazon who reviewed pride and prejudice and did an entire angry, weirdly math focused rant about how awful darcy is and then ends it all with "I could carve a better man out of a banana"

[imagine-darksiders]

"Did you hear what the critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave Five Nights at-"

[currymanganese]

"Bold strategy cotton, let's see if it pays off!"

[itsawritblr]

"Sex is biological fact, NHS declares."

Fuckin FINALLY.

The article's behind a paywall, so I had to grab a screenshot fast. It's not the clearest picture, and I may have cut some off.

Here's the article, if you can get around the paywall.

From BBC News via Yahoo News:

NHS England charter to stress biological sex when placing patients in wards

Transgender women should not be put on single-sex female NHS wards, the government is proposing.

The measure is part of a raft of changes to the NHS Constitution for England, the charter of rights for patients.

The proposals stress the importance of biological sex for the first time when it comes to same-sex accommodation and intimate care.

In both cases, the rights are available only where possible.

For example, same-sex accommodation rights, which have existed for years, can and are breached where there is a clinically urgent need to admit and treat a patient and do not extend to areas such as critical care or accident and emergency.

The guidance also means that trans men should not be housed on single-sex male wards.

Under the proposals:

transgender people, whose gender identity differs from their biological sex, may be provided single rooms, where appropriate

patients will have the right to request a person of the same biological sex delivers any intimate care

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said it was about making it clear that "sex matters".

"We want to make it abundantly clear that if a patient wants same-sex care, they should have access to it wherever reasonably possible," she said.

"By putting this in the NHS Constitution, we're highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients, to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer to all."

'Trampled over'

Maya Forstater, of the Sex Matters campaign group, said the changes were "excellent news".

"The confusion between 'sex' and 'gender' in official policies like the NHS Constitution is what has enabled women's rights to be trampled over in the name of transgender identities," she said.

But Cleo Madeleine, of Gendered Intelligence, said robust policies were already in place and the government had its priorities wrong.

"After 14 years of austerity, medical professionals are crying out for more funding, more resources, and better conditions for staff and patients," she said.

"The government seems hell-bent on pursuing its obsession with the transgender community instead of addressing these longstanding needs."

'Martha's rule'

The changes are part of a wider review of the NHS Constitution, which the government must complete every 10 years.

They also include a plan to embed patients and their loved ones' right to access a rapid review from outside the care team if the patient is deteriorating.

This is the right behind "Martha's rule", which is being introduced in the NHS, to ensure patients know they can ask for a second opinion, with the government providing funding to hospitals for posters and leaflets informing patients and their families.

Martha Mills died aged 13, after being admitted to King's College Hospital, south London, in 2021, having injured her pancreas slipping on to the handlebars of her bike while cycling.

She later developed sepsis - but with better care, could have survived, an inquest found.

All the changes will be consulted on over the next eight weeks, before the constitution is updated later this year.

Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: "Rights on paper are worthless unless they are delivered in practice.

"The NHS constitution already pledges that no patient will have to share an overnight ward with patients of the opposite sex, but that is not the case for too many patients."

[robobee]

just watched saltburn

[wayward-delver]

I'd say let's agree to disagree, but insulting our intelligence/taste for liking it AND endorsing hatred to the fanbase is so uncalled for.

(I can respect your takes, even if I disagree with most of them, but why are you making it personal?)

[adm-starblitzsteel-4305]

So anyway, about the critics and the audience score...

[cadyrocks]

Play of the Week! A new play, performed live, every week, in front of a live studio audience. How wrong could it go?

Okay, I gotta talk about The Goes Wrong Show.

The Goes Wrong Show is something I'm surprised Tumblr hasn't been more up in arms about. This website is, after all, all about committing to the bit. A popular text post by @linecoveredinjellyfish proposed the school of media criticism called "Bitism". And buddy, lemme tell you, The Goes Wrong Show is the patron saint of Bitism. They commit to the bit harder than an alcoholic horse who recently found protestant Jesus.

And it is the funniest goddamn thing I have ever seen.

As is so often the case, writing a review of a very good comedy is hard - it's not easy to talk about it without taking some of the oomph out of the jokes. And, make no mistake, The Goes Wrong Show is an incredibly good comedy. I'll try my best anyways, because I cannot stop recommending it, but if you don't need more convincing, just go watch an episode. It's incredible.

Our framing device is a series of weekly plays put on by an unbelievably incompetent and eclectic drama society, where anything can and probably will fuck up horribly. Terrible acting? A horrific script? Broken props? A set mistakenly built at a 90-degree angle? You name it, they found a way to fuck it up.

But. And this is the key thing. They commit. The script calls for a scene involving pouring tea in a set that's oriented completely wrong? Commit to the bit.

The script demands a period piece family dinner, but something is very wrong with the ceiling fan?

Commit. To. The. Bit.

Major actor in the piece is completely incompetent?

Commit.

To.

The.

Bit.

It's an Airplane!-esque barrage of constant absurd gags, and I don't say that lightly. Each member of the cast is distinctly deranged in their own unique ways, the stage management is woefully incompetent, and the special effects are really just a special kind of fucked.

Really, the only complaint I can make of this show is that there isn't more of it, and frankly that's a good problem to have! If you're the kind of person who's not too busy to read a long Tumblr fandom post, but is too busy to binge a series you can get through in an evening, just give s1e3, "A Trial To Watch", a look - in my humble opinion, it is incredibly hard to top.

[leia-leek]

EA is a triple A gaming company worth billions. But BioWare? It's a subsidiary that is smaller than you think. (EA has about 13k employees, but BW has about 500).

Not pre-ordering or buying on the day of release isn't going to send a message to EA to improve its practices. It's only going to hurt BioWare and their remaining employees. (This isn't aimed at people who can't afford it, or don't like the game(s), or don't like what they've seen so far, or are very skeptical and want to hold off. I'm talking to people who are excited about the game and have the $60 to spare.)

Yes, there are things to criticize about BioWare and EA, I get it, I really do. What happened to Mary Kirby and those like her is awful. Fuck them for that, truly. The merchandise packages that don't include the game, kinda scummy. But if you don't take that as a sign that EA is pushing down, hard, on BioWare, then I don't know what to tell you. Do you think BioWare is somehow immune from EA's scrutiny? BioWare has two big misses in their recent history, after MEA and Anthem, they are on thin ice.

Will the game be buggy on release? Maybe. They do have a history of it. Hell, DAO is still buggy af, but we love it anyway. Will the game be bad? Possibly. There are story elements in each game that still piss me off to this day. It is a gamble, but if you like what you see and are excited, there is no reason not to support the franchise you love. Do you want more Dragon Age games? Do you want more Mass Effect games? If yes, then the best way to get more games is to buy this game.

The only thing that will happen if DATV sales suck, will be for EA to believe that Dragon Age games no longer sell and to nix or hold off on all future projects for it. By waiting for it to be on sale or pirating it, you could very well damn the future of BioWare and the DA franchise. You're not fucking up EA when you choose not to buy DATV, you are screwing BioWare, which is not the same as EA. BioWare can be dissolved, but EA won't. They won't care, EA will happily get rid of something that isn't making them money. EA is not gonna be hurt by DATV doing poorly in sales, they have their sports franchises that will always make them money. It will only hurt BioWare and the remaining developers. Do you like Weekes? Epler? Busche? Support them!

So if you are excited about Dragon Age: The Veilguard and want to see more Dragon Age games, don't let anyone convince you not to buy it, or pre-order it. Don't let anyone make you feel bad for doing so. If you have the money and like what you see, I encourage you to buy it and show support for your favorite franchise.

(Those worried about the SAG-AFTRA strike, don't be, DATV isn't included in the strike. More here.)

[the-land-of-women]

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