#and the auteurs that want to have sex with them

[cringelock]

every filmmaker these days (and also many before that) has a little waifish woman in their projects that i assume they carry around like a little purse dog

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Josephine Baker (The Siren of the Tropics, ZouZou)— Josephine Baker was an American born actress, singer, and utter icon of the period, creating the 1920s banana skirt look. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion film. She fought in the French resistance in WWII, given a Legion of Honour, as well as refusing to perform in segregated theatres in the US. She was bisexual, a fighter, and overall an absolutely incredible woman as well as being extremely attractive.

Joan Crawford (Dancing Lady, Mildred Pierce, The Women)— God, where do I start!!! Her face is so UNIQUE and compelling and stands out so much. I love her thick brows and high cheekbones. She has a school-marmy hardness too her that makes her a little scary and therefore sexy. Her low thick voice also does it for me. Despite being an unusual looking woman with an unusual face, she never loses her glamour. Just a gorgeous talented actress, AND she was some sort of gay!!!

This is round 5 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut. the famous banana skirt is mildly NSFW.]

Josephine Baker:

Black, American-born, French dancer and singer. Phenomenal sensation, took music-halls by storm. Famous in the silent film era.

Let's talk La Revue Negre, Shuffle Along. The iconique banana outfit? But also getting a Croix de Guerre and full military honors at burial in Paris due to working with the Resistance.

She exuded sex, was a beautiful dancer, vivacious, and her silliness and humor added to her attractiveness. She looked just as good in drag too.

So I know she was more famous for other stuff than movies and her movies weren’t Hollywood but my first exposure to her was in her films so I’ve always thought of her as a film actress first and foremost. Also she was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture so I think that warrants an entry

Iconic! Just look up anything about her life. She was a fascinating woman.

Joan Crawford:

I just love women that are very mean.

she was a smoke show in every decade, from the 20s to the 60s.

The classic matronly beauty with amazing eyebrows

of course there's a space for MILF joan but i want to just take a second and say she was so cute in her early movies (like grand hotel and the women)! those parts often get forgotten but her stardom shines in them just as much as in her older #queen #icon roles

Misremembered for wire hanger hatred, this original screen queen mastered the art of the comeback and refused to let Hollywood toss her aside as she aged. The term “auteur” is usually revered for directors or writer-directors, but most critics have one actor they’ll give that title to as well: Crawford—anyone who knows classic movies already has a “Crawford picture” in their head. She knew how to style herself and promote herself. She made herself a star and kept herself fixated in the Hollywood firmament. What’s hotter than knowing just how hot you are?

(don’t think about Mommie Dearest right now) Joan was known for being super nice to all the like crew of the movies she worked on and she’d get everyone gifts. Joan would hold movie nights at her house and knit at the back of her home theater. Joan was sooo obsessed with other women including Greta Garbo, whos dressing room she would obsessively and purposefully walk by. She said that while working on Grand Hotel, Garbo grabbed her face and “if there ever was a time in my life where I would’ve been a lesbian, that was it.” But like Joan also probably did sleep with women including Barbara Stanwyck. Joan was so obsessed with Bette Davis, screening multiple movies of hers in a day at her watch party, constantly trying to spend time with her or do a movie together, insisting on the dressing room next to hers at Warners and sending her daily gifts… etc. Once Bette said that sex was gods joke to humanity and Joan said “I think the joke is on her.” Joan fucked a lot. Joan got caught publicly fucking a man and sent a letter to the woman who saw them basically saying “I bet it excited you” and the woman was like you know what. It did. Joan was best friends with a gay man. Joan was an actually genuinely good actress even though people mocked her a lot for being like cheap and stupid (partially because she never finished school because her family was broke). Joan was so insane and so cool that’s all.

[steveyockey]

On-screen and in life, there’s a false narrative that trans women are tricking men into having sex with us. Watching Aysha and Sky aggressively pursue these boring men, I realized this is an offshoot of that same narrative.

Even the cis people who don’t see us as traps are still comforted by the idea that trans women are the ones doing the chasing. They can’t fathom the Lukes of the world choosing to watch a trans dancer. They can’t fathom the Dylans seeking us out on a queer commune. They imagine we are forcing ourselves on people when they themselves are proof of the opposite. To paraphrase Mariah Carey and Regina George, “Why are you so obsessed with us?”

Whether it’s to fuck or to make movies, cis people are the ones doing the chasing. Cis people might not share their lusts publicly; cis people who make movies about us might do a bad job. But there is no shortage of cis people who want to own a piece of us — our bodies, our stories, their idea of our stories.

The good news is we’re telling our stories too. I’ll say it again: we are in an abundant era for trans cinema. There are low-key indies like Mutt, Something You Said Last Night, and Summer Solstice. There are dreamy fantasias like L’immensita, Death and Bowling, and Playland. There are documentaries pushing the boundaries of non-fiction filmmaking like Framing Agnes, Kokomo City, Queenmaker, and The Stroll. There are auteurs who have broken into arthouse film culture like Isabel Sandoval and Jane Schoenbrun. There are trans filmmakers who have created incredible short form work who will continue to amaze in that medium and probably move on to features like Tourmaline, Rain Valdez, Nava Mau, and Nyala Moon. There are so many more trans filmmakers in features, in shorts, in television who are telling our stories and telling them well. And, just like there are cis people who do share their romantic desires publicly, there have been movies made by cis directors that are great like The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future, Dos Estaciones, Bad Things, and Alice Júnior. Some cis people actually can see our humanity.

We don’t have to settle for mediocrity. We don’t have to settle for being the catalyst in someone else’s story. I want nothing less than abundance. Let’s demand it.

Drew Gregory, “TIFF 2023: Trans People Deserve Better Than ‘Unicorns’ and ‘National Anthem’,” September 15, 2023.

[mitziholder]

what media would you actually recommend? you seem to have very discerning taste

geeeeee... I don’t know. there are multiple metrics by which a piece of media can have value to me... but maybe not to you.

1) sheer entertainment value (personal, subjective - in my case usually humor-oriented, less focused on action and explosions and violence and gore and hacking and slashing and sex meant to titillate ... but humor is subjective in its own right)

2) rhetorical value (based on the presence and effectiveness of conveying intent - a thesis, a point to make, something new and interesting to say unique to the creator’s perspective. also, prose/dialogue/text that sounds good, hits right, says exactly what it wants to say with brevity and precision)

2a) IMO, “objective” judgments of a piece of media’s quality should rest most strongly on this point. 2b) sometimes the meat of my analysis is based in an interpretation of how a creator failed to say something or what they unintentionally revealed about themselves and their views in the process. and that can be interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily make the work any less shit

3) informational value (for research purposes, which may not be relevant to anyone else. definitely a step down in importance because I can read something and find it informative without enjoying it or thinking it’s “good”)

it’s impossible for everything I consume to meet all of those standards all the time... and I like to have a diverse media diet. I enjoy plenty of things which don’t really affect me or make me think too deeply. but it’s hard to recommend anything because people’s priorities and tastes vary so much.

as far as what I’ve enjoyed and found value in? I’ve already gone over books, so let’s do movies. I love Bob Roberts; had a point to make and made it with aplomb. it was very funny - and useful as a point of reference for my own work(!) Dr. Strangelove was also great. I’m a big fan of satirical dark comedies that leave you with this sense of gruesome hilarity... beyond the funnies, I like things that are sort of distant from their subjects, inhuman and quirky, using them as tools to move us along on a painterly backdrop - A Zed & Two Noughts and other Greenaway fare + and arguably Kubrick as well - but I also enjoy studies that lavish attention on their subjects, like Girl, Interrupted. I still love that one. in spite of it all. and I liked One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest despite its treatment of Ratched/the vile protagonist lol. Network was “good” no matter how badly they fumbled Dunaway and how much that fucking pissed me off. oh and anything about Watergate... I love a good documentary

but anyway, I know saying any of this invites speculation about the Problematic or questionable elements present therein. why not more lesbian media? why not more woman directors? how could you enjoy x knowing what y did to z? I don’t know. I respect an auteur, a clear and defined vision. I have had fun with many things that are not that. but at the end of the day, regardless of content, it all serves to entertain me, to shape and inform my artistic endeavors writing about what I want to read and saying what I want to say. so, you know, your mileage may vary. also I like musicals

[margridarnauds]

Where can I get a full The Green Knight (2021) tirade?

Ohohohohohohohohoho.

Alright, so there are things I can discuss, things that I can't, because they're things I've either used before or might be using in the future.

Suffice it to say, I think that it's self-satisfied. There's this notion that the film is somehow both true to the tone of the original text while also being willing to deconstruct it, raising Hard Truths about Arthuriana.

The problem is that...it isn't. It's your typical Mediocre White Male Auteur Tries To Take On the Classics film. It doesn't do anything that authors in the middle ages weren't willing to do themselves.

"Oh, what if King Arthur was a dick?" Boy, I have some news about a little text...called Culhwch ac Olwen....and another text...called The Alliterative Mort d'Arthur....and another text....called Sir Gawain...and the Green Knight...

"We should discuss how the system of chivalry can be hypocritical!" I have some news for you...about the French tradition...and about a little book...called Le Mort d'Arthur.

"Arthurian...imperialism?" ...Peredur.

And it's presented in such a smug, self-satisfied way that it's not "look! Here's a part of the tradition that we don't talk about!" so much as "Hey. Hey. Guess what? Guess what? Did you know that like. Chivalry was mainly a thing for a bunch of bloodthirsty aristocrats?" NO I HAD NO IDEA. NEITHER DID ANYONE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. And it does it while relentlessly portraying the middle ages as this bleak, moody, colorless world, aka The Visual Cliche We Have Seen A Thousand Times Over Again. Wow, look, a brothel. Wow, look, sex. Wow, look, violence. I bet you watched Game of Thrones once.

I hold a certain belief that if you're going to deconstruct a text or a tradition...you've got to do it better than the originals. And I feel like it isn't willing to take tips from what people in the middle ages were actually willing to do.

The characters don't act like PEOPLE, they act like Lowery's obnoxious mouthpieces. "Make me your LADY, Gawain!" He will NOT make you his lady and you KNOW that. Essel is seemingly there to establish Gawain's heterosexuality and be Lowery's own moral mouthpiece and ask pithy questions that seem to be deep. "Why greatness? Why not GOODNESS?" No one would ever think about that, Essel. We definitely don't have people from the Middle Ages...asking these questions.

...Alicia Vikander, you were wasted on this film.

And she doesn't escape it as Lady Bertilak, either, giving that long, self-indulgent monologue about the color green. I've seen people say that it sounds like something that could have come out of a medieval text and, with respect to them...no. It doesn't. It sounds like something that someone wrote in an attempt to be deep. Vellum is precious in the Middle Ages and you're going to waste it on THAT? (Instead of a long, long listing of Arthur's court, looking at you Culhwch ac Olwen.) Like the rest of the film, it's pretty on the outside, stylized almost to perfection, and empty on the inside. And then you have the scene in the Lowery where she somewhat teasingly, somewhat smugly imo talks about how "sometimes...don't tell anyone...when I see room for improvements, I make them " the texts she transcribes. What if the text didn't need to be improved, Lowery? What if it was FINE as it is? Like, say that you made changes in order to better deliver on the themes you wanted to convey, sure -- I still think his vision is shitty, but at least I could accept it. But an improvement? No. That's just hubris. It's rancid. That isn't Lady Bertilak talking, that's Lowery's ego.

You have the treatment of Lord Bertilak, which is...also rancid imo. Like, I don't give a single fuck what Lowery says, the kisses should have been in there. If you could give us a green kirtle cumshot and an entire plotline of Essel sighing dreamily and Emoting, you could have given us two more kisses. Or made the one kiss we got...actually consensual. But we didn't get that. Why? Why did we highlight heteroeroticism and downplay the homosociality?

And what does it all lead to? Nothing. You introduce Arthur as an imperialist, you introduce Camelot as this world that's falling apart, you introduce, but there's nothing that you leave to remedy it. Lay down and die, that's what you do when the world sucks. Can't improve it, might as well die, surrender your neck to the axe.

It encapsulates the worst elements of bad arthouse films -- the surreal is mistaken for the substantial, it's all style, no substance, and what substance it does have is rotten. I see very little of the Green Knight there, it's all Lowery.

[spicybylerpolls]

giggling at 'would finn and noah practice kissing off set' anon.

i have wondered about this, less for fantasy's sake and more because i have intern experience on film sets and know how odd simulated sex scenes can be. but i've never worked with an intimacy co-ord, and i really wish i knew what that process was like. apparently it includes filling out forms literally naming which body parts you are comfortable with your scene partner touching, with which parts of THEIR body. film regulation means no genitals are allowed to touch each other, but im sure this rule was ignored in the olden days/depending on the director (no way can i see this happening on ST tho. it's got too high a profile and lets face it, the duffers arent exactly avant garde auteurs who push the boundaries of cinema.)

im fascinated by this discussion because theres really no way to know what a sex scene might be like until we see s5. sometimes the duffs knock it out the park with originality and vibes (s1, the van scene) and sometimes they're lazy and cheesy as hell (jopper's kiss? arms everywhere, terrible angles and lighting).

but anon's q is most interesting because of finn's anxiety. i am not even a huge st fan before s4, but even i noticed this in his body language. its also apparent in-show if you know what to look for - his little ticks even in s1.

so with a love scene, it's gonna be nerve-racking as hell. i love what prev anon said about him knowing noah well. hopefully that would help them in a hypothetical love scene. they'll have had meetings and discussions with the directors and intimacy co-ord. it'll be awkward but funny, and if theyre passionate about the scene, it could be fantastic. noah esp seems very invested in this storyline. this could calm finn and make him less self conscious.

i think to practice actual kissing off set could spark a lot of press if anyone found out, and it would also say a lot about the actors as people, esp because noah is out. theyre not really old enough yet to reallyyyyy know who they are, so that would probably cause some confusion. (sorry minors reading who think 21+ people have it all figured out, lol. especially artists/people in showbiz, theyre a mess lol)

that said, if they were super comfy with each other, trying special techniques to break the ice, or rehearsing officially (testing for lighting/camera etc on set), they may well kiss as practice. i just can't see this happening in someone's trailer or something. i mean, that's a great fic idea if you're into finn x noah. but scenes like these can really get under an actor's skin, even experienced ones. it all depends on their mental health and boundaries.

i will say that they would doubtless spend a lot of time blocking the scene, meaning getting in position for technical/camera reasons to make sure nudity is kept to the agreed rules. if scenes like this happen in s5, by the end of shooting, finn and noah will probably be closer than ever and well-acquainted with each other's bodies and selves. its very intimate, but when youre acting with someone you really understand and connect with, your job feels magic - it's amazing. its art.

great question anon! and sorry to burst anyones bubble who just wanted to imagine finn and noah getting it on in someone's trailer and it somehow ending up on noah's tik tok lmao

'guess he's more like mike than i thought'

very interesting points!

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week # 149 (Year 3/Week 45):

Between 'Mean Streets' and 'Alice doesn't live here anymore', Martin Scorsese made the documentary ItalianAmerican, which is basically a home movie. It features his parents bicker and talk at their apartment, remembering the old days of their families.

🍿

2 with teenager Scarlett Johansson:

🍿 Re-watch: Sofia Coppola's Lost in translation, while waiting for her latest 'Priscilla'. "Sleepless in Shinjuko". Sad and vulnerable 17-year-old Scarlett Johansson, a 'stranger in a strange land' is having a 'Brief Encounter' moment, with less-asshole-than-usual Bill Murray. (Photos Above).

Another melancholic exploration of a lonely young woman, who finds herself captured in a privileged gilded cage. An exceptional, subtle masterpiece. 10/10.

🍿 The horse whisperer starred 14-year-old Johansson as a horse-lover who becomes emotionally stunted after a riding accident that caused her to lose part of her leg (all in the first 10 minutes of the film). It's a sloooow, traditional 3-hour-long story about healing, told mostly in beautifully-cinematic Montana. But it worked for me, in spite of the well-shot sentimentality. 7/10.

🍿

My first 2 by German auteur Christian Petzold, both with Paula Beer:

🍿 Afire - a tremendous, complex drama about a vain, immature writer on a working vacation. The little summer cottage close to the Baltic sea, is soon encroached by a forest fire, as does his self-centered world view of himself and his art. It starts at one emotional point, and skillfully moves to a completely different, tense level. 9/10.

🍿 Petzold wanted to make a series of films about the 4 elements. Undine refers to the myth of 'water nymphs', so rivers, industrial diving, large aquariums, and drowning in a pool are all part of the story. It's a lovely, simple romance, which eventually turns into a dark fantasy. My 5th film with Franz Rogowski. 4/10.

🍿

3 More of Claude Chabrol’s Hitchcockian thrillers:

🍿 “… You like meat?…”

Le Boucher, a low-key, atmospheric thriller about a single woman who befriends a village butcher, who's also a serial killer. Fantastic snapshot of the people at 'the country' (Dordogne) at this time. 9/10.

🍿 The ceremony (La Cérémonie) is a similar dark story, set in a solid bourgeoisie family. Isabelle Huppert & Sandrine Bonnaire becomes friends and eventually decide kill them all. Like 'Stanley & Iris' from last week, the protagonist is illiterate. 6/10.

🍿 The Unfaithful Wife, another terrific, low-key, civilized study of a French bourgeois household. A loving husband discovers that his loving wife is having an affair, and ends up killing her lover. I liked it so much, and thought it would be a very good candidate for a modern remake. Then I remembered Adrian Lyne's 'Unfaithful' with the luminous Diane Lane in the Stéphane Audran role. Maybe I should watch it again! 8/10.

I discovered Chabrol late, and have only seen about 10% of his 74 movies. Now I have to see them all!

🍿

Milf, another film with Virginie Ledoyen, a soft-core sex comedy. Three older women looking to hook up with boys 20 years younger. A similar concept to the Naomi Watts film 'Adoration'. I only watched it because it is directed by a woman and had 13 on the Tomato score. Better than Zalman King.

🍿

Wow! After 4 months of anticipation, the venerable bio-pic Oppenheimer finally hit my free streamers. I watched all 3 hours of it but left completely underwhelmed. This is the seventh of Christopher Nolen's praised big-budget epic films that I saw, and so far none of them had floated my boat. Okay, so I'm not a big blockbusters fan.

It's not very hip to rail against McCarthyism in 2023. Twenty-twenty revisionist vision, mambo-jumbo pseudoscience, overwrought endless, loud soundtrack, and basically the usual biography of a "Great man", which is always a boring subject for a movie. 4/10.

🍿

3 by regular Fincher screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker:

🍿 On the other hand, David Fincher’s new thriller The killer was a thrill ride that was a joy to watch. A cold blooded professional assassin, laconic and super-human, flies around the world ruthlessly killing people. Mesmerizing (but predictable) suspense with an effective Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score. I could do without the inner monologue that replaced conversations in the story. Also, a great comic book knock-out fight after an hour and a half of deliberate, slow go. 7/10.

🍿 In 2001, BMW produced 8 short films by famous directors as "Branded Content", i.e. advertisements. Called 'The hire' they all featured Clive Owen driving Beamers around the world. AKW wrote two of them:

The Follow was directed by Wong Kar-wai, and was about an aborted diamond heist.

Ambush was directed by John Frankenheimer, and was about a woman being followed by her husband.

The other shorts were by John Woo, Tony Scott, Ang Lee, etc.

🍿

5 more Danish films, 3 with Henning Moritzen (The patriarch from ‘Celebration’) and 2 with Mads Mikkelsen:

🍿 Tænk på et tal (Think of a number), a 1969 old-fashion, enjoyable Danish 'Krimi' with an enduring theme song. A meek bank teller finds a discarded note from a bank robber, and gets involved in a lethal game.

This story was later remade into the Elliott Gould caper 'The silent partner'. I love such slow and delightful dramas, and I love Bibi Andersson.

it’s funny how movies that used to be throwaway entertainment products 60 years ago, gain completely different meaning today. I should start exploring the many Danish Noir from the 40's and 50's. 7/10.

🍿 50 years later, In the Oscar-nominated short The pig, Moritzen is old and fat, and is being hospitalised for some tests. There he lays and finds comfort in a simple picture of a pig jumping over a fence. Delightful!

🍿 On the other hand, Now is another Danish short (from 2003) starring Mads Mikkelsen. But it's an artsy-fartsy, humor-less, word-less "Art film", shot in black & white, with a constant baby crying. Like 'An Andalusian Dog' but without the charm and the magic… 1/10.

🍿 I was surprised to realize just now that my favorite Danish screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen directed only 5 features and 3 shorts. (but he wrote 59 scripts!). Wolfgang is an early short of his, and not his best. Now I've seen all the movies that he directed.

I can't wait for his upcoming 'Monster of Florence' with Antonio Banderas and 'Back to reality'. Yeah!

🍿 So I took in one more viewing of his sentimental After the wedding, maybe for the 10th time. So full of emotional twists, old-fashioned melodrama, Sigur Rós score and peak Sidse Babett Knudsen.

🍿

Budapest Noir, a Hungarian murder mystery, set up in anti-semitic 1936. A hard boiled crime reporter investigates a murder of a beautiful prostitute, like a Jake Gittes named Zsigmond. Very strong 'Chinatown' vibes, including a smokey jazz score that tries to recreate its haunting atmosphere, and even the final line of dialogue "This is Budapest". 5/10.

[This is the 115th woman-directed film I've seen so far this year!].

🍿

Dumb money, the first enjoyable Reddit movie, about the 2021 GameStop short squeeze. Compelling Class War rhetoric with Seth Rogen as the billionaire 'heavy'. Up-to-the-minute updated drama of the 1% Vs. the unwashed masses. I think it will endure as another worthy addition to the sub-genre of 'highly entertaining explanation to boring real-life financial story', just like 'The big short' and 'Margin call'.

However, it used an Artificial Intelligent editing model that color-corrected the whole movie into a weird, fake, washed up look. 8/10.

🍿

First watch: Kurosawa's bleak Drunken Angel, an early post-war Yakuza film, and the first of the 16 collaborations between him and Toshiro Mifume. An alcoholic doctor befriends a young hoodlum suffering from tuberculosis. Located around an open sewer in a seedy neighborhood, still suffering under the American occupation.

🍿

Ikarie XB 1 (Or 'Voyage to the End of the Universe' as it was called in American), an influential and ambitious 1963 Czechoslovakian science-fiction saga, based on a Stanisław Lem novel. "Futuristic" space decor and story, very much in the Star Trek style. Cultish 1960's popcorn philosophy, but nonsensical and not a serious world building. Not for me - 1/10.

🍿

Thank Dog that the third season of Tim Robinson’s 'I think you should leave' was so short. The first season was outrageously different. The second season was a 'repeat on a theme'. This one was just cringey irrelevant. Absurd, awkward, confusing situations, exploding rage at small mistakes. No!

🍿

My first (and last) stand-up by comedian Nate Bergatze, The greatest average American. Average stories of 'relatable' everyday nitty gritty were hardly worth a chuckle.

🍿  

(My complete movie list is here)

[cetaceanhandiwork]

Nonbinary Testament was an unambiguous poggers moment for me, but I'm finding that, despite also being broadly satisfied with the latest Bridget news, I'm processing it in a more contemplative rather than celebratory mood.

Because, okay. It feels like even classic Guilty Gear really wanted to play with weird gender stuff and gender nonconformity, but somehow became convinced that it had to bend over backwards justifying that it was doing so. Testament was always somewhat GNC, but they also got majorly surgically altered when the PWAB turned them into a Gear, which I recall being used as a hand-wave for their androgyny at the time. Meanwhile, Bridget was famous as being "a boy who looks like a girl", but that character design was backed by a dumpster fire of a backstory (tl;dr "raised as a girl" to avoid getting killed or exiled due to a hometown superstition about identical twins).

Revisiting your old story decisions, especially when they needlessly jump through imaginary hoops this way, and finding a better way to articulate them, is good, I think. That's part of why I liked the Testament stuff so much; it was always there (albeit apparently phrased in Japanese "third gender" terms that the US localizers could easily misunderstand or ignore), and the redesign and rearticulation and retranslation just turned the subtext into text.

But so much of the existing situation surrounding Bridget is not a matter of "things as they are" (the fictional historical facts within the story called Guilty Gear), but rather, "things as they have been made to be" (our world's creative decisions & cultural hangups that gave rise to & contextualize that fiction). In particular, at least on the English-speaking internet and as I remember it (and with the caveat that my memory is far from perfect), almost the entire reaction to Bridget as a character has been inextricably entangled with the "phobia" part of transphobia - the irrational, feverish fear of "what if I think I'm attracted to a woman but I'm 'really' attracted to a man 🙀" around which most transmisogynistic rhetoric ultimately accretes. Critically, this reaction was a product of the twenty years between Guilty Gear X2 and today when Bridget wasn't portrayed as trans; that simple fact is, I think, part of how "his" case got so many people saying the quiet part loud. For example, Bridget might not have been the first character to be called a "t--p" but was certainly (at least as I remember it) the most-publicized one, and that's a word that's become a slur for trans women broadly. Others, in response to their own reactions to Bridget, constructed elaborate theoretical models to redefine heterosexuality in a way so as to include same-sex attraction to a sufficiently feminine man, because it was the only to avoid the terror of thinking of themselves as even infinitesimally "gay" (there's that "phobia" bit again). And there were, admittedly, also a few folks who, having already begun to understand gender as something more complicated than a booean guy or gal, saw Bridget's situation as a liberating example that gender identity and gender expression don't actually have to align - that one can, for example, adopt femininity without needing to have femaleness as well.

But the sum of all this, I think, despite the things as they are handwave of Bridget's situation, is that we end up with a things as they have been made to be which brought to the surface pretty much the same reactions as a canonical trans girl would've, except without the option of describing the situation in "trans" terminology or bringing "pre-op/post-op" into the conversation (as, for example, discourse around Street Fighter's Poison was fixated upon in the same time period).

If you're the auteur here, what do you do with that? What does a revisit look like?

If the subtext out here in the real world is Bridget as a cipher for all the messy ways people think about trans women, then the advantage of making Bridget a trans woman is that it brings all the ugliness and confusion and self-reflection of that IRL discourse up to the surface for the discursers to see & consider more seriously. Yes, it makes "things as they are" a little less exotic, a little simpler; in theory, there's something interesting and valuable about a character that's GNC in the way a male Bridget was. But in practice, for most people, it was never able to really be about that, because it got caught up in this more general difficult topic. In which case, I think there's also a lot of value to going back and thinking about it, to asking "all those things you said about Bridget... are they any less valid if Bridget decides that she's a girl after all?"

...yeah, the answer is occasionally "yes", and the most unfortunate case there is that, for some folks, it was really valuable and inspiring to have a character with Bridget's old "male but feminine" thing going. That's the one real casualty of this twist in the story, I think.

But as for, for example, the arguments that Bridget's story plays into the whole idiotic talking point of "kids getting raised into thinking they're trans"... I don't think it applies. After all, Bridget wasn't raised as a girl, not really, but rather as a boy who needed to pretend to be a girl, having been (if I understand the backstory correctly) explicitly briefed on the topic by dear old Mom and Dad. It hurts to be denied something you've been told is good, that you've been told you should have had as your birthright... and this is a world where maleness and masculinity is sold as something both ultimately desireable and incredibly contingent (think of all the things that are said to disqualify a "real man"). I can see why it'd take decades for Bridget to even consider whether - given a truly unencumbered choice - maleness was actually what she wanted.

That's also an important thing to dig into, isn't it? The deferral of a trans arc because you've been made to think that your CAAB is what you should want, and that you need to fight to get it somehow.

So in short, yeah it's cool that a character's gender nonconformity is getting a respectful and supportive revisit by the narrative. But in this particular case, it's a revisit that gives us a lot to think about... and I think part of the benefit of Bridget's egg cracking after 20 years is precisely that it gives us a lot to think about. So that's the mood I seem to be in on the topic!

[denimbex1986]

'The new film from British auteur Andrew Haigh ("Weekend," "45 Years," "Looking"), "All of Us Strangers" (Searchlight Pictures), is not only timely, but a cause for celebration, because it examines the main character's queer identity in relation to his parents.

This cinematic achievement is even more remarkable because the movie deals with such dour topics as grief, loneliness, alienation, regret, abandonment, and emotional pain yet ultimately is heart-mending and healing by affirming the power of love.

Adam (Andrew Scott, the hot priest in "Fleabag" and Moriarity in "Sherlock Holmes") is a lonely, depressed, and creatively stunted screenwriter supposedly working on a new script, but is living and loafing in a near empty high-rise tower complex in London.

He's interrupted one night by a younger drunken resident, Harry (Paul Mescal, "Afternoon Sun," "Normal People") carrying a Japanese whiskey bottle (a sly allusion to the 1987 Japanese novel "Strangers" by Taichi Yamada, on which the film is based). He propositions Adam, "If not a drink, for whatever else you might want." Out of fear or shyness, Adam declines his offer.

The next day he visits his unoccupied childhood home in Croydon. He finds the ghosts of his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), who were killed in a Christmastime car crash when Adam was almost 12 years old in 1987, a life-altering loss for him. They are the age when they died, marooned in that era.

They ask him questions about his adult life. When Adam returns to London, he sees Harry again and they have sex, beginning an affair. Their almost 20-year generational divide is amusingly displayed by Adam's resistance to the use of queer, while Harry derides the gay term.

Family ties

Adam returns to his home (filmed at Haigh's actual boyhood house) and comes out to his mother as gay. She's rather shocked, wondering if he will lead a lonely life and/or get AIDS. Still he gets to reveal his life to her and she expresses regret, "I hate we weren't around when you needed us most."

On the next visit, he will meet his father, who is more accepting of his sexuality, apologizing for ignoring the crying in his room due to the bullying Adam faced as a child. Bell's willingness to show affection toward Adam is powerful.

It seems only when Adam getting to be a child again, has been embraced by his parents, relishing the acceptance he never found as a boy, and revealed his true self, can he be free to love another man. Having rid himself of any shame, humiliation, or hesitation, letting his guard down, Adam can commit more deeply into his relationship with Harry, to forge a connection in a cold and impersonal world (represented by the tower complex).

Harry admits his own family hasn't really embraced him, that he feels like a stranger to them, part of the reason he drinks and takes drugs to mask loneliness and hurt, hiding behind being sexy, flirtatious, and fun. Both men are wounded, unhappy, vulnerable, and emotionally damaged, but their relationship becomes a lifeline as they each process queer dislocation (the difficulty of still being gay and an outsider) and past trauma.

Adam will meet his parents once more in his favorite childhood restaurant, which will be consequential for all of them. There is a shocking, ambiguous, surreal ending involving Harry, which won't be spoiled here.

Ghost of a chance

We use the term ghost (and we refer not to scary specters but ghosts of memory) not mentioned in the film, but it is but one possible explanation. Adam's reunion could also be an exercise in the power of memory to trap us in its recesses but also help us overcome grief.

Perhaps it is the plot of the screenplay he's writing, a waking dream (or that liminal space before you fall asleep), an out-of-body experience occurring at a "thin" place, or, the Croydon train rides into another dimension through a magic portal or rabbit hole. One of the film's charms is to let audiences read into the film whatever they want, and like Adam commence the process of healing inner wounds.

Certainly the movie's biggest impact will be on those who lost a parent at a young age, but also if you were rejected by your parents for being LGBTQ, or it shut out any possibility of sharing any emotional intimacy with them.

This film is blessed with four fantastic performances, especially Andrew Scott. Scott is understated to the point of heartbreaking, where in the beginning of the movie he seems numb, stunted, too scared to let anyone into his life, not saying much because he has trouble expressing himself.

He then undergoes leaps of emotion as he feels accepted, liberated, and finally surrendering his isolation, yearns to connect with another person (in the E.M. Forster sense). Scott masterfully conveys the full range of emotions, especially sadness, torment, and loss, through his eyes.

Scott has the tricky task of revealing the character's internal psychology yet still maintaining Adam's role as an observer. If there's any justice, Scott will be nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor, though the competition is steep this year.

Affable passion

Mescal is open-hearted, able to project the pain underneath the fun, swagger, and camaraderie he emanates. There's an electric charge to their combustible yet warmly affirming passion, but it's totally believable, because Scott can relate as a gay man and can coax (or provide a safe space) the straight Mescal to indulge that eroticism so their connection seems authentic.

Foy is terrific in displaying concern tinged with some disappointment despite being governed by 1980s attitudes about gay men, but she ultimately expresses unwavering love and a willingness to meet Harry.

This is one of those movies that shouldn't be seen alone. Bring a family member or friend, since the film raises many issues as well as varying interpretations. "All of Us Strangers" invokes conversation and questions, almost forcing viewers to reflect on how the issues and emotions (particularly tears) invoked by the film impact on them.

"All of Us Strangers" is mesmerizing, evoking an ethereal (yet not spooky) quality. The film wants to show how you integrate emotional pain into your life, so you can move forward and relieve that sense of alienation most LGBTQ people experience.

The movie leaves it up to the audience to fill in any narrative gaps or provide explanations that square with their own experiences. Those uncomfortable with ambiguity will probably find the film a bit of a trial and the shocking ending will be disconcerting to some viewers.

Still, this is intelligent, punch-in-the-gut filmmaking at its finest. "All of Us Strangers" is easily one of the best films of 2023 and while you might feel emotionally devastated, such catharsis could be as healing as it is for the movie's characters. Despite challenging and disturbing audiences, missing "All of Us Strangers" would be a grave mistake.'

[inapat16]

All that Tunisian cinema has to offer

Tunisian cinema was a forerunner. It offered the world its originality thanks to the genius of its filmmakers (e.g. Nacer Khémir) and its contribution to cinematographic production (e.g. the JCC). Tunisian cinema was born in a particularly fertile soil, that of cinephilia and admiration for the great works of the 7th art worldwide, and it's thanks to him that I've opened up to this art. Also Film clubs and the JCC helped to shape both filmmakers and a demanding public, of which I think I am the product. 

From the outset, there was no question of aligning with the 'old' Arab cinema in existence (Egyptian commercial cinema), Tunisian cinema wanted to stand out from the melodramas and the musical films from which a few 'auteurs' were struggling to emerge. For the majority of Tunisian filmmakers, it was more a question of succeeding, each according to his or her own style, with original “expression” films (political, social, cultural, etc.) bearing the stamp of their director and aiming for the artistic quality already achieved at a world level.

This freedom of choice has been helped by the fact that Tunisia also doesn’t have film censorship (different from television censorship) which is undoubtedly one of the most flexible in the Arab world: scenes that are banned in other Arab countries like the celebration of female nudity (Halfaouine (1990)), homosexuality (L’Homme de cendre (1986)), political repression (Sabot en Or (1988)), sex tourism (Bezness (1992)), women's right to sexual fulfilment (Fatma (2001), Satin rouge (2002)) were finally accepted by Tunisian censors as long as they were expressed by artists and were necessary to the coherence of their work.

The miracle started with L'Homme de cendres (1986), unlike most countries of the South where arthouse films remain confined to the ghettos of arthouse cinemas or are exclusively destined for the 'prestige' of foreign festivals, Tunisian audiences gave national films an unprecedented triumph, (shattering by far all previous audience records for Hollywood or Egyptian films), even for "difficult" films such as Chich Khan (1991). Thus Tunisian cinema invented a new cinematographic category, that of "mass auteur films" ! Today, this type of cinema continues to shine, with films such as Enhebek, Ya Hedi (2016) and Ashkal (2022). These movies continue to delight a broad local audience while retaining their 'auteur' touch. Kaouther Ben Hania's next film, Les filles d'Ofla (2023), which was a hit at Cannes, also promises to be a mass success despite its offbeat subject and direction.

However, today, even if Tunisian cinema continues in its tradition to amaze, it is losing its stature because of politics and economic decisions. After the revolution, cinema was destabilised just like the rest of the country.

The Ministry of Culture now only funds three films a year and almost always turns its back on single-screen cinemas. Many of them are now turning to foreign institutional support, which is deplorable because it encourages neo-colonialism.

What's more, the cinema I always went to (Ciné Jamil) had to close its doors last year, despite having tried to obtain state subsidies. Meanwhile, a Pathé multiplex has opened in the country's two biggest cities. When I heard the news, my heart broke and the Tunisian cinema that had nurtured so many dreams is now in perdition.Today, a much more globalist, capitalist and neo-colonialist policy is taking hold, whereas for years Tunisia had managed to resist it.

In the meantime, all we can do is hope for an economic reorganisation and the awakening of a "young new wave" that will shake up the country's politics and ensure the success of tomorrow's Tunisian cinema.

Maya Labiadh

[yessadirichards]

Almodovar's 'queer' Western heats up rainy Cannes

CANNES

The premiere of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's queer western, with Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as tormented lovers, received rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday and left many wanting more.

The 31-minute "Strange Way of Life" was the hottest ticket in town on the French Riviera, with hundreds lining up huddled under umbrellas in the pouring rain, many of them left furious after being turned away at the last minute.

Those who got in were treated to the presence of Almodovar, 73, discussing only his second-ever English-language project -- following another short film with Tilda Swinton, "The Human Voice" -- as well as a flash of Pascal's backside onscreen -- the only nudity in a movie which chose dialogue and tender moments over explicit sex.

The Chilean-born Pascal, 48, who has become a global icon thanks to TV hit "The Last of Us", stars as former gunslinger Silva.

He travels to see an old acquaintance, Ethan Hawke as a raspy-voiced Sheriff Jake, and the two spend what Almodovar calls an "orgiastic" night.

The next morning, however, the tone changes, as it emerges "both of them have an ulterior motive," said Almodovar.

The two men grapple with their feelings for each other, duty, family, and what it would look like for two men to actually build a life together.

"I wanted to make a classic western where I talk about the desire between two cowboys," said Almodovar, an avowed fan of the genre.

He said "Brokeback Mountain" by Ang Lee has come the closest, but sees his film as the first "really queer western".

He compared his film to 2021's "Power of the Dog" starring Benedict Cumberbatch but said "the sexuality of (its) protagonist is very ambivalent. They never talk about desire, and of course they didn't" have sex, he said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Not that he is only interested in eroticism.

"My movies have had many scenes of explicit sex, but as time goes by, I want to show pleasure in another way," said Almodovar, a regular at Cannes, where he won best director in 1999 for "All About My Mother" and best screenplay for "Volver" in 2006.

He also highlighted the seemingly banal details of the film, saying "in no western have you seen two men making a bed."

Pascal, who is so popular he has been dubbed the "Internet's Daddy," did not attend the screening.

Hawke was present and hailed the chance to work on "a Western that wasn't pretending to be old... and to get a chance to work with Almodovar."

Asked about expressing desire with Pascal, he said: "I like to be wanted, I don't care and if it happens to be a very attractive, extremely talented man, all the better."

Variety magazine was among many to praise the film, saying: "In a world where auteurs are becoming increasingly entitled to overly long runtimes, 'Strange Way of Life' begs for more."

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Gale Sondergaard (The Cat and the Canary, The Mark of Zorro)—She is so deliciously sinister in the Cat and the Canary it’s hilarious and ridiculous and she’s so gorgeous too! Incredible performance

Joan Crawford (Dancing Lady, Mildred Pierce, The Women)— God, where do I start!!! Her face is so UNIQUE and compelling and stands out so much. I love her thick brows and high cheekbones. She has a school-marmy hardness too her that makes her a little scary and therefore sexy. Her low thick voice also does it for me. Despite being an unusual looking woman with an unusual face, she never loses her glamour. Just a gorgeous talented actress, AND she was some sort of gay!!!

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Joan Crawford propaganda:

I just love women that are very mean.

she was a smoke show in every decade, from the 20s to the 60s.

The classic matronly beauty with amazing eyebrows

of course there's a space for MILF joan but i want to just take a second and say she was so cute in her early movies (like grand hotel and the women)! those parts often get forgotten but her stardom shines in them just as much as in her older #queen #icon roles

Misremembered for wire hanger hatred, this original screen queen mastered the art of the comeback and refused to let Hollywood toss her aside as she aged. The term “auteur” is usually revered for directors or writer-directors, but most critics have one actor they’ll give that title to as well: Crawford—anyone who knows classic movies already has a “Crawford picture” in their head. She knew how to style herself and promote herself. She made herself a star and kept herself fixated in the Hollywood firmament. What’s hotter than knowing just how hot you are?

(don’t think about Mommie Dearest right now) Joan was known for being super nice to all the like crew of the movies she worked on and she’d get everyone gifts. Joan would hold movie nights at her house and knit at the back of her home theater. Joan was sooo obsessed with other women including Greta Garbo, whos dressing room she would obsessively and purposefully walk by. She said that while working on Grand Hotel, Garbo grabbed her face and “if there ever was a time in my life where I would’ve been a lesbian, that was it.” But like Joan also probably did sleep with women including Barbara Stanwyck. Joan was so obsessed with Bette Davis, screening multiple movies of hers in a day at her watch party, constantly trying to spend time with her or do a movie together, insisting on the dressing room next to hers at Warners and sending her daily gifts… etc. Once Bette said that sex was gods joke to humanity and Joan said “I think the joke is on her.” Joan fucked a lot. Joan got caught publicly fucking a man and sent a letter to the woman who saw them basically saying “I bet it excited you” and the woman was like you know what. It did. Joan was best friends with a gay man. Joan was an actually genuinely good actress even though people mocked her a lot for being like cheap and stupid (partially because she never finished school because her family was broke). Joan was so insane and so cool that’s all.

[samanthamulder]

hi again! I also love fox mulder and dale cooper a whole lot too. What are some of your favorite shows or movies? And what’s some of your favorite things or dynamics about xfiles (besides mulder of course lol). Have a good weekend!! -secret santa

oh that is good taste my friend! 🤝

I think my favourite shows are no secret but I honestly watch way too much tv it's a problem 🫠 my all time favs are gilmore girls, the x files and better call saul, as well as evil, twin peaks and breaking bad <3 (if u want to know more you can always look at my /nav page!)

For movies, my taste is pretty varied and a real mess of genres I'd say so I don't really wanna just list a bunch of titles here ...idk if this helps but right now here's what I have listed as my top 4 on letterboxd: wings of desire (1987), chungking express (1994), 2001: a space odyssey (1968), days of wine and roses (1962) - I also love studio ghibli movies, I'm a huge wong kar-wai fan and a wes anderson enjoyer (amongst many other auteurs :')) but I also won't say no to a silly fun romcom - basically anything except superhero/ action movies :)

My fav thing about the x files is honestly msr haha :') I love their slow burn and I love that they have a real connection that is so much deeper than simple attraction or romance. To dedicate your life to another person like that when you're not connected through family ties or sex but because they are your best friend, a part of your soul really, is so special?! and them getting together is just the cherry on top :) Other than that, the X-Files has such a specific vibe that I have genuinely never seen emulated anywhere; msr + the visual style + the cases that sound so dumb on paper but they still work on screen haha. I love the motw format but I'm also a mytharc enjoyer (sorry! :')) so really it's the mix of both that makes it so special to me! And a lot of it is about my memories of watching it for the first time, something I can't really put into words but it was magical <3

Sorry for writing this whole ass novel omg :') I would also love to hear about you! Do you feel the same way about txf? Because many of my friends have said the same thing, about the vibe being enhanced by the actual real life experience of watching the show! :)

Have a great weekend! 🥰

[official-alan-dabiri]

Was digging for Heroes of the Storm content to put my grubby little hands on, which is understandably challenging right now. Most Blizzard-adjacent blogs and tags are flooded with anger against Bobby Kotick and the abusers he protected, and support for the employee walkout. (And about half of the Overwatch community still being shitty about the Cole Cassidy rename.) And while I don’t want to talk about the issue - it’s been better covered by more dispassionate and informative people than me - I saw a tag that was definitely something worth drawing attention to:

Soak that up for a second. The Blizzard Of Yore. This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen this sentiment. People talk about Blizzard’s good old days. That the company went downhill, and that’s why these things happened. None of these abusers would have been allowed in the presence of the great Auteurs who brought us SC:BW, WC3, and that one good expansion for WoW. We all know which one, I don’t have to specify. But the guys who made those games were above this kind of behavior, and wouldn’t have tolerated it.

I don’t know why this needs to be said, but this is, obviously, bullshit.

Putting the rest under the cut for the benefit of those who might be particularly upset by what’s gone on at Blizzard.

These abuses happened because Blizzard had - since the beginning - a “frat boy culture.” Women employed at Blizzard in the early 2000s have come forward and said that they were treated as a sex object from the moment they were employed. This culture didn’t just start yesterday. Years of work was done at Blizzard to foster this environment, and those who didn’t work to build it chose to ignore it. Abusers spent years developing a workplace where they could have free reign. They made misogynist jokes to identify coworkers they could trust. They worked to inure HR to reports of little shitty behaviors to mask the big problems. They developed a pattern of behavior so that any women in the environment could be isolated, surrounded by like-minded assholes who would let the abusers have their way.

Yes! Even when they made that one game you like! This was happening then! Yes! Even when Dustin Browder and all the Dreamhaven people were still there! Yes! Even when Metzen was still there! This has been happening for as long as Blizzard has existed! In the Golden Age of Blizzard, Blizzard was full of shitty people, making a shitty environment so that they could be shitty to women. (And cowardly people who didn’t stop it.)

Alex Afrasiabi - one of the worst offenders - was hired at Blizzard in 2004. He was slotted into the WoW quest development team, and worked on the vanilla game along with all the expansions you love. He was, by all current accounts, a shitty fucking dude, and plenty of people knew it - whether or not they qualified his behavior as shitty. But no one in authority there saw any problem with naming numerous NPCs and items after him. The people he hurt were isolated, surrounded by people who thought his behavior was okay. And that environment was one that had been built from day one to accept him and his behavior. To give him access and control, and protect him from consequences.

This happened when Blizzard was still “Blizzard of Yore.”

There was no perfect iteration of Blizzard. Stop fucking talking like Blizzard 20 years ago was above this. It fucking wasn’t. Blizzard 20 years ago was the soil that nurtured all the shit you’re hearing about right now. Blizzard 20 years ago was where these events physically happened. Yes. It’s absolutely true that Blizzard made better games back in the old days. But just because they were making better games back then doesn’t mean no one was being harassed. When you talk about those games as some sort of golden age that Blizzard should return to, you’re not asking them to go back and be better.

You’re asking them to go back and be better at hiding it again.

[jechristine]

Icon SMG posted this photo on her birthday two days ago, and the caption seems to respond at least in part to Joss Whedon’s cringey Vulture interview from earlier this week:

Joss Whedon is pos predator and an idiot, as nearly everything out of his mouth in this interview confirms. He’s managed to erase the humanity of the people he’s abused and mistreated by finding a way to imagine himself as both subject and object of his lifelong victimizing. Here’s but one example:

On our second day of interviews, I asked Whedon about his affairs on the set of Buffy. He looked worse than he had the day before. His eyes were faintly bloodshot. He hadn’t slept well. “I feel fucking terrible about them,” he said. When I pressed him on why, he noted “it messes up the power dynamic,” but he didn’t expand on that thought. Instead, he quickly added that he had felt he “had” to sleep with them, that he was “powerless” to resist. I laughed. “I’m not actually joking,” he said. He had been surrounded by beautiful young women — the sort of women who had ignored him when he was younger — and he feared if he didn’t have sex with them, he would “always regret it.” Looking back, he feels shame and “horror,” he said. I thought of something he had told me earlier. A vampire, he’d said, is the “exalted outsider,” a creature that feels like “less than everybody else and also kind of more than everybody else. There’s this insecurity and arrogance. They do a little dance.”

What’s to say about this? And who wants to dwell in that man’s self-important brain anyway?

BUT another thing: the dual existence of Buffy and Joss is a great argument against the ~auteur~ theory of filmmaking that would assign one person only complete artistic control. Pretentious people sometimes yearn for auteurs as antidotes to the supposed theme park-ization of cinema in our era of comic book films. But who wants to lose Buffy just because Joss turned out to be an asshole?

And as SMG showed last year the two are indeed separable:

And shouldn’t she get to associate with Buffy and dissociate from Joss?

Here’s a passage from the interview that made me really angry:

[With the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, h]e wanted to tell a story about someone who turns out to be important despite the fact that no one takes that person seriously. “It took me a long time to realize I was writing about me,” he told me, “and that my feeling of powerlessness and constant anxiety was at the heart of everything.” His avatar was not a fearful young man, however, but a gorgeous girl with extraordinary courage. He wanted to be her, and he wanted to fuck her.

Buffy who is a hundred wonderful things is here in this dumb passage reduced to the object of Joss Whedon’s psychic needs and desires.

And that’s the problem with the auteur approach to filmmaking. JW doesn’t have the right or power to turn my favorite character into something I hardly recognize, to take her from me like that. She belongs to SMG as least as much as she belongs to JW, and she belongs to us fans, too.

JW is wrong about my Buffy, and so who cares what he thinks or whom he wants to fuck?

[thewench-and-thekingslayer]

[NEWS 📰] Gwendoline Christie in new film!

IFC Films, Bankside Films Backing Peter Strickland’s ‘Flux Gourmet’ Starring Asa Butterfield, Gwendoline Christie (EXCLUSIVE) 

“Flux Gourmet,” the new film from Peter Strickland, will be released by IFC Films in North America. The movie, which is backed by IFC Films, Bankside Films, and Head Gear/Metrol Technology, quietly wrapped production. The cast, which has not previously been announced, includes Asa Butterfield of “Sex Education” fame and “Game of Thrones” star Gwendoline Christie.

“Flux Gourmet” reunites IFC Films with Strickland — the indie studio previously collaborated with the auteur on his English-language debut “Berberian Sound System” and his follow-up feature “The Duke of Burgundy.” A24 released his most recent film 2018’s “In Fabric.”

IFC Films will release “Flux Gourmet” in 2022. The film is set at an institute devoted to culinary and alimentary performance, a collective finds themselves embroiled in power struggles, artistic vendettas and gastrointestinal disorders.

“‘Flux Gourmet’ came about through a personal frustration with how alimentary disorders or food allergies have been comically portrayed in some films, and without wanting to embark on a finger-wagging mission, I wanted to write something devoted to the disruptions of the stomach whilst attempting to maintain a degree of dignity to deeply private and embarrassing symptoms,” said Strickland in a statement. 

The film’s cast also include Ariane Labed (“Alps”), Fatma Mohamed (“Berberian Sound Studio”), and Makis Papadimitriou (“Chevalier”). Leo Bill and Richard Bremmer co-star. IFC Films doesn’t usually get involved in films this early in their production, so the move is a sign of the confidence it has in Strickland’s vision.

“Peter Strickland’s films are unmistakable in their visual style and brilliant narratives and he consistently confronts audiences in a way that challenges and rewards each time,” said IFC Films president Arianna Bocco in a statement. “We are thrilled to continue to work with such a singular talent as Peter, and to partner with Bankside Films and the incredible filmmaking team who worked so hard to get this film off the ground.”

IFC Films will be a major presence at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with three films in competition. They include Jacques Audiard’s black-and-white drama “Paris, 13th District,” Mia Hansen-Løve’s English-language melodrama “Bergman Island” and Paul Verhoeven’s period drama “Benedetta.”

“Flux Gourmet” was produced by Serena Armitage of Red Breast Productions and Pietro Greppi of Lunapark Pictures, and co-financed by IFC Films, Bankside Films, and Head Gear Films/Metrol Technology. Serving as executive producers are Arianna Bocco and Betsy Rodgers of IFC Films, Stephen Kelliher & Sophie Green of Bankside Films, Phil Hunt & Compton Ross of Head Gear Films/Metrol Technology, Ian Benson of Blue Bear. Bankside Films will handle international sales.

“Following ‘In Fabric,’ we are thrilled to be continuing our relationship with Peter Strickland, one of the most original and commanding voices in cinema today,” said Stephen Kelliher and Sophie Green of Bankside Films. “We couldn’t be happier to partner with IFC Films on this film from its very inception and to be working with them as financiers and executive producers on the project.”

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/peter-strickland-flux-gourmet-asa-butterfield-gwendoline-christie-1235014679/