#be kind rewind (2008)

[sesiondemadrugada]

Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008).

[60minutesin]

Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008)

[prokopetz]

It might still be too early for this kind of question, but what have been your favorite video games you've played in 2022? :3c

Given what the release schedule over the next three months looks like, yeah, it's probably jumping the gun, but what the hell. I'm going to arbitrarily restrict my consideration to games actually published in 2022, or else we'd be here all week, though.

(I make no apologies for the high concentration of sequels on this list. I know what I like!)

Amber City is a spiritual sequel to 2017's Flood of Light, and its gameplay is in much the same vein, being an atmospheric walking sim with light point-and-click puzzle elements. If you enjoyed the idea of The Witness but wish the puzzles didn't hate you personally, this might not be a bad one to check out.

Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince isn't going to break any new ground for those who’ve played its predecessor, though it's somewhat more adventurous in its dungeon design; if you enjoy casual 2D Zelda-likes, you'll probably enjoy this. Fans of 1980s fantasy media may also get a kick out of its pop culture pastiche elements – let’s just say the narrator is definitely taking advantage of the fact that his grandkids have never seen Labyrinth!

COGEN: Sword of Rewind is a Mega Man Zero style hack-and-slash platformer that does one of the first interesting things I've seen in years with the time manipulation formula, essentially merging your "mess with time" gauge with your health bar. The damage-boost routing in the speedrun is something you need to see to believe.

Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils is a retro platformer from the makers of 2020's Zelda-like dating sim Prodigal. Comparisons to Celeste are, perhaps, unwarranted, as the mechanics are very different, but I felt something familiar in the role of momentum in its flow of play. Visually, it's incredibly pink, which is something I always appreciate in a game.

Dungeons of Dreadrock is a short logic puzzler that one could be forgiven for mistaking for an old-school roguelike at first glance. Each level is a set-piece that borrows from the conventions of the grid-based roguelike genre to create situations where only one sequence of actions leads to survival, and challenges the player to find it..

FAR: Changing Tides swaps Lone Sails' landship for, well, an actual ship. The engineering sim gameplay remains largely unchanged in spite of that. Some of its elaborations on the previous game's formula don't work as well as they might have, being challenging more due to the limitations of the physics engine than anything else, but the frustration factor wasn't high enough to ruin my fun.

A Game with a Kitty 1 & Darkside Adventures is me flagrantly breaking my own rules, since everything in this anthology actually came out in 2005–2008 – it's just the anthology itself that's a 2022 release; I'm mostly throwing it in because this list was otherwise light on free-to-play titles. It all held up remarkably well on a replay earlier this year, though.

Gunborg: Dark Matters is a run-and-gun precision platformer that seems to have flown entirely under the radar, having just 11 reviews on Steam at the time of this posting. I'm not sure why – I mean, it's got a great soundtrack, and you play as a woman with a sword the size of a surfboard. What else do you want?

Jack Move is a JRPG-style title that blends self-consciously silly 1980s cyberpunk with contemporary anime aesthetics. I have to confess that I'm cheating a bit by including this one, as it's been out for all of three days at the time of this posting, and is the only game on this list I haven't played; I have, however, followed its development for some time, and I've had a lot of fun with the various demos the dev team has put out over the years, so I'm confident in plugging it here.

Recursive Ruin takes a page from 2019's Manifold Garden and basically asks "what if it was super fucked up?" The recursion here is fractal rather than directional, with progress "inward" eventually leading right back where you started. The story is naturally pretentious as hell; whether that's a criticism is a matter of taste.

RUN: The World In-Between wears it Celeste influence on its sleeve, but really takes more from classic endless runners like Canabalt. The "procedural generation" is just the same dozen or so puzzles for each zone being strung together in various orders, and the story is thinner than the trailer makes it look, but if you're a fan of the "running from left to right set to awesome music" genre, you could do a lot worse.

Submerged: Hidden Depths picks up where 2015's Submerged left off. The gameplay is substantially similar, though with a heavier focus on exploration puzzles and fewer linear set-pieces. Even so, it's not exactly what I'd call challenging – it's better approached as a pretty walking sim with light parkour-puzzler elements.

System Purge is about as basic as it gets for a precision platformer. No fancy moves here: you run; you jump; you get your face melted off by a laser. There's actually quite a bit of blood and gore, which is something I rarely have the stomach for, but the game is short enough that the lurid bits don't overstay their welcome. Fair warning!

Taiji is... well, remember when I said Amber City is a good one to check out if you like the idea of the Witness but wish the puzzles didn't hate you? This is one to check out if you do enjoy it when the puzzles hate you. There's a lot here that will be familiar to fans of the latter, though the puzzles are somewhat more varied owing to the fact that colouring grids is a more flexible game mechanic than drawing lines.

Vain Ascendance is a a roguelite precision platformer whose art style and mechanics put me strongly in mind of 2018's Overclocked, though the dev teams are unrelated. When I've plugged this game in the past I've been teased that my obsession with games about red haired women who can air dash is showing, but this I must protest: her hair is purple.

As for unreleased games available in demo or early access versions that I've tried out in 2022, I'll keep it brief, since these aren't proper recs, but you might have a look at any of Dormiveglia, Garbage Girl Louise, Gigasword, Keylocker, Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara, Little Witch in the Woods, Rebel Transmute, Rose & Locket, Ruin Valley, Shards of Gravity, Star Hearts: Launch Point, Undergrave, Venus Looks for Jupiter, Vermillion Descent or War Girl.

[cartermagazine]

Bismillah al rahman al rahim…

Happy Born Yasiin Bey @yasiinbey

Born December 11, 1973 in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn, Yasiin Bey is a renown MC.

Yasiin has been making hip-hop music since 1994, and first gained national attention in 1998 with the release of Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star, and his subsequent solo album, Black on Both Sides, in 1999.

Throughout his career, Bey has balanced music with acting, appearing in films such as Bamboozled (2000), Brown Sugar (2002), The Italian Job (2003), Something The Lord Made (2004), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005), 16 Blocks (2006), and Be Kind Rewind (2008) among others.

“This is business, no faces just lines and statistics… From your phone, your zip code, to SSI digits… The system break man, child and women into figures, two columns for who is and who ain’t niggas… Numbers is hard and real and they never have feelings, but you push too hard, even numbers got limits… Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret, the million other straws underneath it, it’s all mathematics.”

CARTER™️ Magazine

[silveragelovechild]

Actors in Blackface

I was recently reminded that Marvel Studio’s favorite Robert Downey Jr was even nominated for an Oscar for performing in Blackface for “Tropic Thunder” (2008).

White actors in Blackface (dark or black makeup, sometimes with exaggerated lips) was pretty common in the so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood. Singer Al Jolson even built his entire career in Blackface.

I am not African American so I can’t speak to how offensive Blackface is (but in the modern era, it’s seem pretty offensive).

I’m Mexican American and growing up I hated when I saw non-Hispanic actors portray Mexicans in movies or TV. Almost always they played the characters as lazy, or drunks, and often the bad guy. In particular I hated Eli Wallach (who is Polish) for his portrayal in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”.

Fred Astaire, in Swing Time (1936) and in Easter Parade (1948)

Dan Aykroyd, in Trading Places (1983

Jack Black, in Be Kind Rewind (2008

Bugs Bunny, 1942 cartoon Fresh Hare

Bing Crosby, in Dream House (1932)

Ted Danson, a 1993 Friars Club roast of his Whoopi Goldberg

Robert Downey Jr. in the 2008 film Tropic Thunder

Jimmy Fallon, impersonating Chris Rock on Saturday Night Live

Judy Garland in Babes in Arms

Al Jolson

Jane Krakowski twice on 30 Rock

Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel

[the-rewatch-rewind]

Yes, I've watched this full miniseries 37 times.

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be talking about number two on my list: BBC and A&E’s 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice, directed by Simon Langton, written by Andrew Davies, based on the novel by Jane Austen, and starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow and Alison Steadman) have five daughters: beautiful and kind Jane (Susannah Harker), witty and strong-willed Elizabeth (Jennifer Ehle), homely and puritanical Mary (Lucy Briers), well-meaning but naïve Kitty (Polly Maberly), and frivolous and spoiled Lydia (Julia Sawalha). Because there are no Bennet sons, Mr. Bennet’s estate is entailed upon his cousin Mr. Collins (David Bamber), and the daughters are aware that at least one of them must marry well to provide for the rest of the family after their father’s death. When wealthy and friendly Mr. Bingley (Crispin Bonham-Carter) moves into the neighborhood, he and Jane quickly hit it off, and the Bennets’ problems seem to be over. However, Mr. Bingley’s sisters, Caroline (Anna Chancellor) and Louisa (Lucy Robinson), along with his unpleasant, proud friend Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth) have strong objections to the Bennet family, who strike them as undignified gold-diggers, even though Mr. Darcy unwillingly finds himself strangely drawn to Elizabeth.

Okay so yes, this is technically a TV show rather than a movie, but even though it’s over five hours long, I still tend to watch it as a movie, and it felt right to count it as such, although when I first wrote it down in my movie notebook, I never anticipated that it would become my second most-frequently-rewatched. I remember that my parents were really into it, and at some point when it was on TV after we finally got a VCR, they had taped it. I tried to watch it with them a few times when I was younger, but I found the flowery language difficult to understand, and I typically fell asleep in the middle without knowing what was going on. The first time I watched it and actually paid attention was in 2005, and the main thing I remember was that my dad assumed I knew the story by then and kept making spoilery comments. I don’t think I fully appreciated it at that point, but I definitely enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. I ended up watching it twice in that year and then five times in 2006, which is when it became one of my favorite stories. I read the book and watched a few other adaptations that year. In 2007 I only watched this series once, but that was also the year that my family ended up getting two male puppies, and after much deliberation about what to name them, we determined that Bingley and Darcy were the best names that went together and represented something we all enjoyed. After that, I watched it three times in 2008, once in 2009, twice in 2010, four times in 2011, twice in 2012, twice in 2013, four times in 2014, once in 2015, once in 2016, twice in 2017, once in 2018, three times in 2020, once in 2021, and twice in 2022. I don’t remember exactly when, but somehow between my siblings, my parents, and I, we ended up with three copies of this on DVD in addition to the taped one. I should also mention that I only counted it when I watched the whole thing from start to finish within a few days, so I’ve watched it like that 37 times, but I’ve definitely seen pieces of it way more than that. I keep waiting to get tired of watching it, but every time I put it on, it remains delightfully enjoyable.

I know that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the most beloved stories in the English-speaking world, and probably beyond – although the number of people confused by my dogs’ names taught me that not everyone is particularly familiar with it – and that it has been adapted and retold dozens of times, and that fans of the story have very strong opinions about which is the “best” adaptation. The loudest debate is between this version and the 2005 film directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. The first time I watched that version was in 2006, in the midst of my mania for the 1995 version, and I thought it was terrible. I knew it had to be shorter for the feature film format, but they cut out so many of my favorite parts! It wasn’t until I rewatched the 2005 version in 2016 that I understood that the people who prefer that version love this story for very different reasons from me. If you’re mostly invested in the Elizabeth/Darcy romance, that’s the version for you. It’s all about the tension and chemistry between those two characters, and everyone else is kind of stuck in as an afterthought. But even though the Bennet daughters’ need to get married is central to the plot, I had never considered the main appeal of this story to be its romance. To 2023 me and you the listener, who know that I’m aromantic, that isn’t very surprising, but at the time it kind of blew my mind to learn that so many fans of the story are there for that slow burn. Even in 2012 to 2013, when The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was coming out, I figured the reason people were so obsessed with Darcy was because not seeing him until episode 60 added to his mystique. At the end of that show, I was way more concerned about Lydia’s story than Lizzie’s, and while I enjoyed seeing Lizzie and Darcy finally get together, it was more of a “yay, things are happy now” relief than squeeing over the adorable romance. Anyway, while I used to be one of those obnoxiously pretentious fans who maintained that the 1995 adaptation was way better than the 2005 one, now I’m more of the opinion that they’re both good, just different, and just because I prefer one over the other doesn’t actually make it better. So if you’re listening to this and are a huge fan of the 2005 version, or any other adaptation, know that I’m not trying to tell you you’re wrong. Ultimately, Pride and Prejudice is a great story with many layers, and I think it’s awesome that there have been so many different versions that emphasize different aspects.

Despite the fact that this version is quite long (although not nearly as long as the Lizzie Bennet Diaries), I personally love the pacing. The events of the story take place over about a year, and these six 55-minute episodes take their time bringing us through that year with the characters. Watching it now, I don’t understand how I ever fell asleep with it on as a child, because I am thoroughly engaged the whole way through. Sometimes I intend to only watch an episode or two at a time, but I end up sitting through the whole thing because I cannot tear myself away. These characters are just so fascinating, and the cast brings them to life so convincingly. In general, I try to separate actors from characters, but I will always associate this cast with this show. Part of that is because of how many times I’ve watched this, and another part is because most of these actors haven’t been in very many American films – with the major exception, of course, of Colin Firth, whose Hollywood career skyrocketed after the success of this series – so I haven’t seen them in many other things. But the main reason is because they all embody their characters so perfectly in this series that it’s hard to see them as actors. Every cast member fully committed to their character in a way that somehow makes them feel simultaneously larger than life and grounded in reality. Alison Steadman’s Mrs. Bennet in particular is over the top and ridiculous but manages to just barely remain believable. While the five Bennet sisters on the surface can be summarized by archetypes, they’re much deeper than they first appear, and I love the ways that both the writing and the performances gradually bring that out. Crispin Bonham-Carter perfectly embodies the puppy-dog friendliness and gullibility of Bingley, and Colin Firth nails Darcy’s transformation after Elizabeth calls him out. Benjamin Whitrow makes Mr. Bennet so likable that it took me a while to understand that part of the family’s plight is his fault. That kind of complexity is one of the major things that makes this movie so rewatchable. There are so many layers to every storyline and every character that you can’t possibly uncover them all in just a few views. There’s also a lot going on in the background – like, Mary doesn’t get very many lines, but I love watching her light up whenever Mr. Collins is around. The show is edited in such a way that the audience can see what every relevant character is thinking at all times, so that even when it’s difficult to understand the fancy dialogue, we still get what’s happening based on the characters’ reactions.

This adaptation receives a lot of praise for its faithfulness to the novel, but while it does follow the book quite closely, I don’t think it gets enough credit for the changes and additions it made that were still in the spirit of the original story. There is some dialogue that was taken word for word from the book, but Jane Austen tended to summarize conversations rather than transcribing them, so quite a bit of new dialogue needed to be added, and I personally find it difficult to tell where Jane Austen ends and Andrew Davies takes over. Austen didn’t write scenes that only featured male characters, claiming that she had no way of knowing how men spoke or behaved when there were no women present, but this show opens with a scene between Bingley and Darcy and focuses a bit more on their friendship than the book does. The change in this version that gets the most attention is when Darcy unexpectedly happens upon Elizabeth after having taken a swim in a lake on his property at Pemberley. I always just saw this as a silly way to add to the awkwardness of the situation, with Darcy trying to remain dignified in soaking, casual clothes, and it surprised me to learn that a lot of people love that scene because Colin Firth apparently looks very sexy in his wet shirt. The change that I personally find most interesting is in the letter that Darcy writes explaining himself to Elizabeth after she turns down his first proposal. In the book, he starts with the allegations about breaking up Jane and Bingley and then moves on to the more serious stuff about how Wickham (played by Adrian Lukis, who told Elizabeth that Darcy ruined his life) had tried to seduce Darcy’s younger sister. In this version, the letter starts with the Wickham stuff and ends with the Bingley stuff because we’re initially watching Darcy and flashbacks of his memories, and then halfway through revealing the letter to the audience, we see Darcy give it to Elizabeth, and then we see her reactions to reading his thoughts about her sister and the rest of her family, along with flashbacks of her memories. Darcy is rather arrogant when he talks about separating Bingley from Jane, so I feel like it makes a little more sense for him to start with that when he’s upset by Elizabeth’s rejection and then move on to the darker Wickham drama, but I really like the way this version shows their reactions to the part of the letter that’s most painful to each of them. And before he writes the letter, we see Darcy dwelling on Elizabeth’s words, and he reacts to what she said about Wickham by saying aloud to himself, “At least in that I may defend myself,” implying that the Wickham story is what prompted him to write the letter in the first place, explaining why he starts with that this time. So it’s true to the original without being constrained by the original, and I think that’s what makes it work so well as an adaptation.

As I said before, many people think of Pride and Prejudice as primarily a romantic story, and like, they’re not wrong, but there’s so much more to it than that. There’s a lot of focus on familial relationships, especially between the two eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, which I’ve always appreciated for its similarities to my relationship with my sister. It’s also worth noting that in this society, women in the Bennets’ station could not get a job, so they basically had two options: marry well, or depend on a male relative. Marriage was essentially a business arrangement, not necessarily a romantic one. In the first episode, Jane and Elizabeth have a conversation about their situation in which Elizabeth says that because Jane is the prettiest and sweetest of the sisters, she will need to be the one to marry very well, and Jane responds with, “But Lizzy, I would wish… I should so much like… to marry for love.” And then she makes this amazing face like she can hardly believe how unreasonable she’s being. Elizabeth assures her, “And so you shall, I’m sure. Only take care you fall in love with a man of good fortune.” But when Jane asks Elizabeth how she feels about marriage, she asserts, “I am determined that nothing but the very deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill!” And they laugh. But Elizabeth is completely serious, at least about the first part, as she demonstrates when she turns down two very lucrative marriage proposals that most sensible women in her position would have eagerly accepted. Both men – Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy – think they are doing her a great favor in offering their hand and are shocked by her refusal. Mr. Collins is a bit of a doofus, but he is also going to inherit her father’s house, and it would therefore be the honorable thing for him to marry one of the Bennet daughters so they could at least continue to live there after Mr. Bennet’s death. But Elizabeth knew he would make her miserable and was unwilling to put up with him merely for security. One could say she slapped amatonormativity in the face, and we love to see it. But interestingly, when Mr. Collins does get married, it’s to the very aro-coded Charlotte Lucas (played by Lucy Scott). Her good friend Elizabeth is utterly shocked that anyone, let alone someone she cares about, would agree to marry Mr. Collins. But Charlotte literally tells Lizzy, “I’m not romantic, you know. I never was.” Aromantic queen. And when Elizabeth vents to Jane about this, Jane has the great line, “You do not make allowances for differences of situation and temper.” Jane is the ally we all need. Later, when Elizabeth visits the Collinses, Charlotte makes it clear that she kind of just does her own thing and barely sees her husband, and Elizabeth feels bad for her friend, but honestly, Charlotte’s life doesn’t sound so bad to me. She has security, and her husband mostly leaves her alone. Things didn’t get much better for an introverted aroace woman in that society. Although part of me does still wish that Mary had ended up with Collins, since she also seems like an introvert on the aroace spectrum, but she actually likes him.

Elizabeth is the opposite of aroace, but the way she refuses to listen when society tells her she’s supposed to marry for money feels kind of similar to modern aroace people refusing to listen when society tells us we’re supposed to fall in romantic, sexual love. One of the things I appreciate most about this story is how it demonstrates that everyone and every relationship is different. Jane and Bingley immediately fall for each other and are perfectly compatible, but because they place so much trust in the people around them, it takes a while for them to officially get together. And I don’t just mean the way Bingley’s sisters and Darcy pulled him away – Elizabeth kept reassuring Jane that it was obvious how she felt about Bingley because it was obvious to her, and neither of them realized that a stranger would just see Jane’s kindness to Bingley as treating him like she treats everyone else. Elizabeth and Darcy are just as well suited for each other as Jane and Bingley are, but they both have some major growing to do – they need to overcome their pride and prejudice, if you will – before they can be together. And then there’s Lydia and Wickham, whose relationship is based mainly on lust. Neither of them seems to have learned anything between the beginning and end of their story, and it’s hard to imagine them being happy together. I used to think of Lydia as a spoiled brat who got what she deserved, but now I feel really bad for her. She was a 15-year-old child who was preyed upon by a grown man, and the best-case scenario was for her to marry him. Her plight demonstrates just how awful the societal rules regarding sex were for women, although the story barely seems aware of it. Her elopement is used as a plot device for Darcy to redeem himself, and the focus is all on how her sisters’ chances of good marriages have been damaged. It’s kind of odd that so many social norms are condemned in this story, and yet Lydia is portrayed as deserving of life-long punishment for daring to break one rule. Jane Austen was progressive, but not that progressive. So that’s the one part of this that bothers me. If you too want justice for Lydia, I highly recommend The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube, which does an excellent job of humanizing and redeeming her.

Anyway, back to this version, I love that it includes another couple that many adaptations leave out – Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Mrs. Hurst is Mr. Bingley’s sister Louisa, who, along with their sister Caroline, loves to make fun of and criticize the Bennets. Caroline is partly motivated in her criticism by jealousy, since she has her eye on Darcy and can tell that he’s interested in Elizabeth. But Louisa seems to be motivated by pure snobbery. Which is kind of hilarious because her husband is basically a loser. He doesn’t seem to have an estate or anything, since they’re always staying with her brother, and all he does is drink, hunt, play cards, and sleep. It’s just like, girl, you have no room to criticize anyone’s situation or decisions when you’re stuck with that guy. This just further helps demonstrate that nobody fits society’s ideal, so maybe we should all just live and let live. The characters who remain proud and prejudiced at the end of the story are mostly bitter and unhappy, while those who have learned to look at things from other people’s perspectives are the happiest. And I really like that message.

And aside from the fascinating social commentary, this series is a delightfully fun watch, full of great moments that I will never tire of revisiting. I love, or at least am intrigued by, all the characters, from the leads to the most obscure side characters. She’s barely in it, but one of my favorites is Mrs. Bennet’s sister, Mrs. Phillips, played by Lynn Farleigh. Between her interactions with Mr. Collins, who accidentally insults her and then frustrates her as a whist partner, and the way she consoles Mrs. Bennet after Lydia runs off with Wickham, her lines are some of my favorites to quote. And of course, there’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Collins’s benefactor and Mr. Darcy’s aunt, played by Barbara Leigh-Hunt, who is so impressed with herself that she can’t tell that she’s almost as ridiculous as Mrs. Bennet. I love Sir William Lucas’s “Capital, capital!” and Maria Lucas’s commitment to making haste. Even the characters I don’t like as people are interesting to watch. Wickham is the worst, but I’m almost impressed by his gall. Like, the fact that he can face the Bennets after seducing Lydia as if he’s done nothing wrong is astounding. That man truly has no shame.

While I enjoy pretty much every moment of this series, I have to say that my favorite episode is the fifth one. It really doesn’t seem like it should be, since that’s when the whole Wickham/Lydia stuff is going on and everybody is super stressed, but it has so many of my favorite moments. Like when Elizabeth is playing the pianoforte at Pemberley and a random servant feels the need to stand right in front of her, bow to no one in particular, and then walk offscreen. I don’t know who that bowing servant is or why he does that but I love him. And then there’s the part when Elizabeth returns home with her aunt and uncle, and her cousins are so excited to see their parents again that one of them tries to do a cartwheel and ends up just falling over. And in another wonderful deviation from the novel, Mr. Collins decides to visit the Bennets, ostensibly to console them, but really to gloat that their problems aren’t his problems because he didn’t marry one of them. In the book, he does this by writing a letter, but it’s way funnier to have him visit them, and get to see Mary be impressed with him again. But the best part of that scene is that when Kitty sees his carriage coming, she declares, “I’m not going to sit with him for anyone!” and runs off to hide in the yard. Later, when he’s talking to the other sisters, we can see Kitty peering through the window to see if he’s still there, and it makes me laugh every time.

This show is so good that I would still love watching and quoting it anyway, but I do think my enjoyment has been at least somewhat enhanced by having dogs named after two of the characters. The names really suited them, too – dog Darcy was standoffish toward strangers, but with the people he liked he could be very cuddly, whereas Bingley would pretty much follow anyone around to see what they were up to. Bingley absolutely loved to play fetch, while Darcy would just stare at him like, “What is wrong with you?” in the perfect dog version of how their namesakes felt about dancing. Sadly, Darcy got cancer and died in 2020. Bingley is still hanging in there, although at 16 years old he’s definitely declining, and his fetching days are long behind him. There are a lot of differences between me and Jane Bennet, as she is clearly not aroace, but since we share the same first name and are both the eldest sibling, I’ve always felt a kinship to her, and it makes me happy that presumably we each got to watch our own Mr. Bingley grow old. I think after he inevitably passes, watching this series will probably feel bittersweet for a while, although I don’t think that will make me love it any less. I anticipate continuing to watch it at least once a year on the 26th of November, in honor of the Netherfield Ball, while fondly reminiscing about fetching with Bingley and snuggling with Darcy.

I could go on and on about this movie for hours, but ultimately, what it all boils down to is I love the 1995 Pride and Prejudice because it is an excellent story told extraordinarily well, about characters who are exactly as ridiculous and flawed as real people. So if you’ve thought about watching this version but have been turned off by the length, I highly recommend giving it a chance anyway. Yes it’s almost six hours long, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend almost six hours. I was suffering from depression when I first got into this series, and it was one of the few things that made me feel good about life. And if I had not already been in love with this version, I probably wouldn’t have watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and therefore might never have gotten into Shipwrecked Comedy, and that would be very sad. So I have a lot to thank this miniseries for.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies. It’s a little hard for even me to believe that I’ve rewatched Pride and Prejudice more than any other movie besides one in the last 20 years, but I think it really is my second favorite movie, so it’s fitting that it ended up here. Now I only have one movie left, and it’s number one by a lot, with 51 views compared to P&P’s 37. So stay tuned for what is clearly my favorite film. And now, for the last time, as always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “My, she was yare.”

[zemfruit]

Jack Black pogging from Be Kind Rewind 2008

[bleachellie]

paramore’s “b-sides”

so, there’s this fan-made compilation of paramore’s rare songs, that originally came out in around 2008. it collects practically all of their hard to find non-album songs, and to this day is still one of the first things you’re gonna come across when you start looking into these songs, which i think is pretty impressive staying power for a fan-made compilation from nearly 15 years ago!! 😧

but the title “b-sides” is incredibly misleading, because it contains everything from actual b-sides, to hayley’s solo demos, to soundtrack and compilation album appearances and more?? and as i’ve looked into it, there’s very few sources that actually discuss the song’s origins, and some of the sources that do are from around the time it was first made, and are massively outdated and incorrect now.. so it could be pretty confusing for people trying to look up info about these songs 😵‍💫

so i thought i’d make my own post about it, partially cos i just like doing this sort of thing, but also for anyone who might be interested in learning some more about some of paramore’s more obscure songs!! ☺️

because this post ended up waaay longer than i thought it was gonna be, i’ve put it under a read more, and although this might be far more information than most people will ever need, i had fun doing this and even learnt some things i didn’t know before!! 😅

so to start.. as far as i can tell, this is the original tracklist for “b-sides,” when it was first released in 2008:

decoy

another day

oh star

stop this song (lovesick melody)

just like me

temporary

my hero

stuck on you

hello hello

when it rains (demo version)

emergency (crab mix)

rewind

this circle

adore

my number one

here we go again (live)

sunday bloody sunday

this is the version that my friend sent me song by song over msn in 2009 and was how i listened to these songs for years 😅 but the tracklist has been revised a lot over time, removing some songs and adding a tonne more, like for example, the version of the album on youtube (which has over 500k views, and is probably where most people will discover the album) also has:

decode (acoustic)

i caught myself

throwing punches

love’s not a competition (but i’m winning it)

swim in silence

stay away

native tongue

escape route

and according to the paramore wiki, the most recent version of the album (altho i have no idea where this is actually available for download??) removed some of those and added:

hallelujah (demo)

breathe (until tomorrow)

teenagers

oh star (demo)

in the mourning (demo)

which i’m pretty sure makes that the full list of songs that have been included in the compilation at one point or another 😧 and as you can see, there’s a tonne of different songs from all throughout their career.. but they’re all just lumped together with no differentiation, and in a kind of random order 😅

so, getting round to the song’s origins.. i’m gonna attempt to list them in chronological order, but might be hard for some of them, so it’s not gonna be absolutely perfect 😅

hayley williams’ 2003/2004 demos (adore, another day, breathe (until tomorrow), hello hello, just like me, my number one, stay away, swim in silence, throwing punches): these songs are not technically paramore songs, and were never intended to be. according to hayley herself, they were recorded between the original 2002 incarnation of paramore, and when they officially got together in 2004, and were used to get hayley signed to her first production deal

they’re often called the “2004 demos,” although seeing as hayley got signed in 2003, i don’t know how accurate that actually is and they could be from earlier?? i’m also not sure where the downloads for them originally appeared from or how they got leaked, and there’s downloads for these demos separate from the b-sides compilation that also include “temporary” ..but i’m fairly certain that wasn’t actually a 2004 demo as i’ll talk about later. these songs have never been officially released, which is a real shame because even as low quality demos, they’re really fucking good 🙁

i’m not sure why 4 of these (“breathe (until tomorrow),” “swim in silence,” “stay away” and “throwing punches”) weren’t included on the original version of the b-sides compilation, as they were available on the 2004 demos download from the same time, so people definitely had access to them, so i might have to try and do some more looking into that 🤔

hallelujah (demo): a version of hallelujah that was apparently recorded during the all we know is falling sessions in 2005, but has never been officially released

“sound of superman” soundtrack (my hero): for the soundtrack of the 2006 film “superman returns,” paramore recorded a cover of foo fighter’s song “my hero.” it’s a pretty good album and also has a great cover of r.e.m. by the academy is... too!! an “electronic mix” of this cover also appeared as a b-side on one of the misery business vinyl singles, but oddly enough it doesn’t look like that version was ever included on the b-sides compilation

the summer tic ep (emergency (crab mix), oh star, stuck on you, this circle): paramore released this ep for the 2006 warped tour, containing an alternate version of “emergency” and 3 other songs. “oh star” (or “o’ star”) was apparently one of the first paramore songs ever wrote, all the way back in 2003, and also appeared as a b-side on the “emergency” single in 2005. it also has a demo version, which i imagine was recorded some time in 2004/2005, and was never released officially.

“this circle” also appeared as a b-side on one of the other misery business vinyls, and both it and “o’ star” were included on the 10th anniversary edition of “all we know is falling”

“misery business” b-sides (stop this song (lovesick melody), sunday bloody sunday): as well as the previously mentioned songs, these 2 were also released as b-sides on different editions of the misery business singles. “stop this song” also appeared as a bonus track on a deluxe version of riot! which i’ll cover shortly

“hallelujah” b-sides (decoy, when it rains (demo version)): despite often being called a “demo” song and lumped in with the other demos, decoy is actually a proper studio track, that appeared on the hallelujah single, as well as a deluxe version of riot! along with the “when it rains” demo

riot! deluxe edition bonus tracks (rewind (demo), temporary (demo), here we go again (live)): there’s a tonne of different deluxe versions of riot! all with different bonus tracks, which apart from the ones i’d already mentioned also includes these ones. “temporary” appearing here is what makes me doubt it was a 2004 demo, because as hayley said, those songs weren’t paramore songs and weren’t intended to be, so i think it as well as “rewind” were just songs that never made the cut for either all we know is falling or riot! 🤔

the live version of “here we go again” is apparently from a 2006 performance in anaheim, and also later got included on a deluxe version of all we know is falling

radio 1’s live lounge - volume 3 (love’s not a competition (but i’m winning it): a kaiser chiefs’ cover paramore recorded for bbc’s live lounge in 2008. although this song is on the version of “the b-sides” on youtube, it’s been removed from the most recent version of the compilation, although i’m not sure why

“twilight” soundtrack (decode (acoustic), i caught myself): probably the 2 most well known songs from this list, “decode” and “i caught myself” were on the soundtrack for “twilight” in 2008. the acoustic version of “decode” is the b-side from the decode single released a couple of weeks before the soundtrack itself

it’s the fact that these 2 well known and popular songs were included on the b-sides album alongside the rare and obscure songs that made me want to write this list differentiating the songs in the first place, especially after i found a blog post from 2010 that called “i caught myself” a 2004 demo, like.. no.. it wasn’t.. 😑

“jennifer’s body” soundtrack (teenagers): a hayley williams’ solo song she did for the “jennifer’s body” soundtrack in 2009, i don’t know why this was included on the album because it’s definitely not a paramore song, but it’s a cool rarity at least??

in the mourning (demo): a video of a short performance of “in the mourning” was posted on paramore’s site and youtube in early 2011, about 11 months before the actual song came out. it’s more of an acoustic sneak peek than an actual demo, but i suppose it’s notable enough to include

self-titled bonus tracks (escape route, native tongue): originally released as bonus tracks on some limited editions versions, as well as the japanese version, of the self-titled album in 2013, they later got a wider release on the 2014 deluxe version of the album, which is why they’ve been removed from the most recent version of “the b-sides”

and there you have it!! there are actually even more paramore b-sides and bonus tracks than this, mostly either live or acoustic versions from various singles and deluxe editions, but i figured this post had got long enough already (and they’ve never appeared on any versions of the “b-sides” compilation) so i didn’t include them 😅

but thank you to anyone who reads this, especially considering how long it got, and i hope there was something interesting in here for you!! 🥰

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

2023 Movie Journey: Masterlist

if you’ve known me for any time at all, you should know by now that i will not watch very many movies this year. i’ll aspire to, i’ll think it’s a good idea, but it’s just not that likely to happen. however, that shouldn’t stop me from the fun of trying! 

my goal was to average one movie a week so by year’s end i’d have seen more than 50. that didn’t come close to happening, but i’ll keep reviewing them here and check them off my watchlist as i go. (this list just keeps getting longer but i enjoyed updating it for 2023.)

last year’s list is here, with every movie i reviewed linked now, in case anybody wants to read those and hasn’t before. 

4th man out (2015)

12 years a slave (2013)

80 for brady (2023)

a family man (2016)

a haunting in venice (2023)

a man called otto (2023)

a room with a view (1985)

a simple favor (2018)

a single man (2009)

a wrinkle in time (2018)

about time (2013)

admission (2013)

after yang (2021)

all the bright places (2020)

always be my maybe (2019)

american fiction (2023)

american gangster (2007)

ammonite (2020)

amsterdam (2022)

an education (2009)

ant man (2015)

ant man and the wasp (2018)

ant man and the wasp: quantumania (2023)

anyone but you (2023)

anything’s possible (2022)

aquaman (2018)

are you there god? it’s me margaret (2023)

arrival (2016)

atonement (2007)

august: osage county (2013)

babylon (2023)

bad education (2019)

barbie (2023)

be kind rewind (2008)

bedazzled (2000)

begin again (2013)

big eyes (2014)

billy elliot (2000)

blockers (2018)

bohemian rhapsody (2018)

bowfinger (1999)

boy erased (2018)

breaking (2022)

brideshead revisited (2008)

bright young things (2003)

burn burn burn (2015)

cairo time (2009)

call jane (2022)

can you ever forgive me? (2018)

catherine called birdy (2022)

chef (2014)

clemency (2019)

coco (2017)

colette (2018)

crazy rich asians (2018)

creed (2015)

creed 2 (2018)

creed 3 (2023)

crouching tiger, hidden dragon (2000)

crush (2022)

cyrano (2021)

damsel (2023)

daughter of the bride (2023)

dazed and confused (1993)

demolition man (1993)

devil’s knot (2013)

die hard 2 (1990)

die hard with a vengeance (1995)

dog day afternoon (1975)

dual (2022)

earth girls are easy (1988)

effie gray (2014)

ella mckay (?)

elvis (2022)

eurovision song contest: the story of fire saga (2020)

fast color (2018)

fighting with my family (2019)

fright night (2011)

galaxy quest (1999)

girls trip (2017)

glass onion: a knives out mystery (2022)

gone girl (2014)

good luck to you, leo grande (2022)

goodbye christopher robin (2017)

gosford park (2001)

gunpowder milkshake (2021)

happy death day (2017)

happy death day 2u (2019)

happy texas (1999)

heart of stone (2023)

her smell (2018)

holes (2003)

honk for jesus. save your soul. (2022)

honor society (2022)

how to talk to girls at parties (2017)

how to train your dragon (2010)

hysteria (2011)

i am not your negro (2017)

i don’t feel at home in this world anymore (2017)

i, tonya (2017)

if beale street could talk (2018)

inception (2010)

indiana jones and the dial of destiny (2023)

infinitely polar bear (2014)

jackie (2016)

jane got a gun (2015)

joyful noise (2012)

judas and the black messiah (2021)

judy blume forever (2023)

junebug (2005)

jupiter ascending (2015)

just mercy (2019)

kajillionaire (2020)

keeping mum (2005)

knife fight (2012)

kubo and the two strings (2016)

laggies (2014)

last holiday (2006)

late night (2019)

legally blonde (2001)

lemonade mouth (2011)

little (2019)

live free or die hard (2007)

logan lucky (2017)

love, simon (2018)

m3gan (2022)

ma rainey’s black bottom (2020)

magic mike xxl (2015)

magic mike: last dance (2023)

mansfield park (1999)

mars attacks! (1996)

mary queen of scots (2018)

master (2022)

master gardener (2022)

me and earl and the dying girl (2015)

meet the robinsons (2007)

megamind (2010)

memento (2000)

men in black international (2019)

mermaids (1990)

midsommar (2019)

migration (2023)

miss pettigrew lives for a day (2008)

miss sloane (2016)

missing (2023)

monkey business (1952)

monuments men (2014)

moonlight (2016)

moonrise kingdom (2012)

moonshot (2022)

moving on (2022)

mr. magorium’s wonder emporium (2007)

mr. mom (1983)

much ado about nothing (2011)

muriel’s wedding (1994)

nancy drew and the hidden staircase (2019)

nanny mcphee (2005)

nanny mcphee returns (2010)

never let me go (2010)

newsies (1992)

no time to die (2021)

nope (2022)

northanger abbey (2007)

not okay (2022)

obvious child (2014)

on the come up (2022)

oppenheimer (2023)

other people (2016)

overboard (2018)

pacific rim (2013)

palm springs (2020)

parasite (2019)

paris is burning (1990)

passing (2021)

penelope (2007)

pete’s dragon (2016)

pirate radio (2009)

please stand by (2017)

polite society (2023)

pride (2014)

pride and prejudice and zombies (2016)

professor marston and the wonder women (2016)

return to oz (1985)

rise of the guardians (2012)

rita moreno: just a girl who decided to go for it (2021)

rocketman (2019)

roll bounce (2005)

rosaline (2022)

saving face (2004)

say anything (1989)

scream (2022)

scream 6 (2023)

see how they run (2022)

seeking a friend for the end of the world (2012)

she said (2022)

shoplifters (2018)

short term 12 (2013)

sing street (2016)

sleeping with other people (2015)

someone great (2019)

sorry to bother you (2018)

soul (2020)

spiderman: far from home (2019)

spiderman: homecoming (2017)

spiderman: into the spiderverse (2018)

spiderman: no way home (2021)

spin me round (2022)

spotlight (2015)

spy kids (2001)

stage fright (2014)

step up (2006)

talk to me (2023)

teeth (2007)

the 355 (2022)

the age of innocence (1993)

the anniversary party (2001)

the batman (2022)

the best exotic marigold hotel (2012)

the breadwinner (2017)

the children act (2017)

the color purple (2023)

the craft: legacy (2020)

the disaster artist (2017)

the divine order (2017)

the emperor’s new groove (2000)

the eyes of tammy faye (2021)

the fall (2006)  

the fallout (2022)

the fighting temptations (2003)

the five year engagement (2012)

the gentlemen (2020)

the godfather (1972)

the godfather part 2 (1974)

the godfather part 3 (1990)

the great gatsby (2013)

the hunchback of notre dame (1996)

the hunger games: the ballad of songbirds and snakes (2023)

the hunt (2020)

the iron lady (2011)

the kill room (2023)

the legend of tarzan (2016)

the little mermaid (2023)

the lost city (2022)

the marvels (2023)

the master (2012)

the matrix resurrections (2021)

the menu (2022)

the notebook (2004)

the old guard (2020)

the outfit (2022)

the photograph (2020)

the prestige (2006)

the prince of egypt (1998)

the prom (2020)

the queen (2006)

the royal hotel (2023)

the second best exotic marigold hotel (2016)

the secret garden (2020)

the skeleton twins (2014)

the spy who dumped me (2018)

the suicide squad (2021)

the super mario bros. movie (2023)

the trial of the chicago 7 (2020)

the truman show (1998)

the unbearable weight of massive talent (2022)

the united states vs. billie holiday (2021)

the velocipastor (2018)

the way he looks (2014)

the woman king (2022)

the wonder (2022)

their finest (2016)

this means war (2012)

tootsie (1982)

treasure planet (2002)

troop zero (2019)

two lovers and a bear (2016)

us (2019)

valley girl (2020)

velvet goldmine (1998)

violent night (2022)

venom (2018)

venom: let there be carnage (2021)

victoria & abdul (2017)

walk the line (2005)

wet hot american summer (2001)

what happens later (2023)

what we do in the shadows (2014)

where’d you go, bernadette (2019)

widows (2018)

wild target (2010)

wish (2023)

women talking (2022)

wonka (2023)

yesterday (2019)

young adult (2011)

zombieland: double tap (2019)

[mylifeincinema]

My Week(s) in Reviews: August 27, 2022

Well, I should probably just go ahead and rebrand these to My Month in Reviews, now shouldn’t I? I’m not, but it’s an idea... a bad idea, but still an idea. Anyway, here are a few for you.

The Black Phone (Scott Derrickson, 2022)

I read Joe Hill’s short story after I saw this movie, so maybe I’d feel differently if it’d been the other way around, but I really liked the stuff they added for the film. It all fits without stripping any of what makes Hill’s story so effective in the first place. Ethan Hawke is great, but it might be the youngsters that steal the show, here. All are strong, and help make the parts that are painfully cliche bearable. And while it feels a bit too bloated in its second act, the entire third act really makes up for it. Straight-up stellar work by Derrickson in building up the tension to a wholly satisfying, unpredictable release. - 8/10

Timecrimes (Nacho Vigalondo, 2008)

A cool, little contained time travel thriller. I’d almost rented this dozens of times back when I worked at Blockbuster Video, but never pulled the trigger. It’s weird and twisty and surely ridden in plot-holes, but damn was it an enjoyable ride. - 7/10

Prey (Dan Trachtenberg, 2022)

Could’ve been slightly tighter, but this is an effective, interesting, and exciting rewind on the Predator formula. Amber Midthunder is great, as is her canine co-star, the design and ferocity of the Predator is quite badass, and Trachtenberg’s handling of the action is sharp and thrilling. - 8.5/10

Lightyear (Angus MacLane, 2022)

I get the outrage over Tim Allen not returning, but that doesn’t bother me. This is a completely different character, and Chris Evans does fine work with it. I don’t get the lukewarm response overall, though. This is a fun family film with likable characters, exciting sequences and plenty of heart. Sure, not quite as much heart as we’ve come to expect from Pixar, but still plenty of heart. That early montage that finds Buzz losing years and years in mere days tore my heart out, personally, though I’m a sucker for that kind of shit, so maybe it was just me. My one major issue is that Buzz wasn’t already familiar with time dilation. ::shrugs:: But, y’know, suspension of disbelief and shit, so I was able to get past that quickly enough. At the end of the day, I just really ended up enjoying the hell out of this one, which was especially nice seeing as all of the promotion for it left me feeling cold enough to skip it in cinemas. Also, I would kill for Sox. That is all. - 7.5/10

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[jimsmovieworld]

BE KIND REWIND- 2008 ⭐️⭐️

Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike are watching over a vhs video rental store while its owner Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) is away.

After some kind of supernatural occurrence Jerry becomes magnetised and accidentally wipes everything off of all the tapes.

They decide to replace all of the movies with remakes they film themself.

Not funny.

Directed by Michel Gondry.

[blazehedgehog]

Did you ever play Dirt 5? I know a lot of people were disappointed in it because they were expecting either "Dirt 2: 2" or a new Motorstorm given the pedigree of the team on it but I know a few people really dug it as a modern take on Sega Rally? Given the Sega comparisons, do you have any thoughts on it?

I played about an hour of Dirt 5 when I had the free trial of Stadia Pro. Since then, I realized I actually own Dirt 5 on Steam, and I think I may even have gotten it on PS4 through PS+.

I dunno if I'd call it a modern take on Sega Rally. It just seems like another Dirt game, though I get this weird vibe from Codemasters where it feels like their more recent output... I dunno.

Like, to me, Codemasters invented a lot of extremely smart things for racing games. Like, to my knowledge, they were the ones who introduced rewinds in to racing games with that very first Grid game in 2008. And for a hot minute, rewinds became, like, a cornerstone of accessibility in the racing genre!

But then you get to Dirt 5, and it doesn't have rewinds. Neither do either of the Dirt Rally games. They pioneered that system and decided they didn't want it anymore. They're just going to let Forza and whoever else have that, I guess. It's backwards.

And what I've played and what I've seen of Dirt 5 just feels a little odd in other ways, given their past games. The visuals don't feel as polished, the way the camera frames the action is a little weird (it makes the cars feel strangely small) and just in general it feels like Codemasters is losing their touch.

Because I've played the crap out of plenty of Codemasters racing games in my day. I put like 35 hours in to Dirt 2, probably like 20 hours in to Dirt 3, 10 hours in to Grid 2, probably at least 15 hours in to the Grid reboot, etc.

And I feel like they've been chasing certain ideas that never quite land, and I don't know if they know how to land them. It feels like they're always trying to find ways to weave narrative in to their games without it being overbearing, and I think that's what people liked the most about Dirt 2. Racers would banter during the race, and they were voiced by the real people. Combined with the race tour motif and it felt really cool.

And then they... ditched that for Dirt 3, instead shuttling you off to some cardboard race team with zero personality. It's extra annoying in Grid 2, where they lay it on super thick about how cool racing is and how cool the event sponsor is and how cool you are and they kind of never shut up in the worst ways possible. You're supposed to be this cool racing up-and-coming legend but the game has to pull you aside and be like "what you want to do here is drive faster than the other cars and win what is called a 'race', which is a type of competition that typically involves driving vehicles" in an unskippable cutscene.

In that regard, I think Dirt 5 is kind of smart because instead of telling a story they just kind of frame their "narrative" as two guys hosting a sports podcast that plays over montages of race footage. That's a fun idea, but I find myself not caring in the same way I don't care about real sports podcasts. There's a bit too much radio DJ smarm.

All that weirdness aside, the core gameplay still seems to be fine. When my Stadia Pro trial ran out, I started installing it on my PS4 before realizing I didn't have enough HDD space for it. Was going to install it here on the PC but I forgot about it until now.

I just don't get the Sega Rally comparisons. I mean, sure, Dirt 5 is a casual-ish rally game, but you gotta have more than that.

[gritboy]

You'll Like This Film Because You're in It: The Be Kind Rewind Protocol DVD Bundle

Michel Gondry’s debut book is a functional memoir of his quest to put the tools of filmmaking in the hands of as many people as possible. At Deitch Projects in 2008 Gondry emulated the heroic example of his characters, constructing a do-it-yourself film studio in which any visitor could assemble their own film from extant plot summaries and rent the results. This book chronicles Gondry’s journey…

[mineofilms]

End of the Beginning

“Is this the end of the beginning? Or the beginning of the end? Losing control or are you winning? Is your life real or just pretend?” "End of the Beginning"

Going through my writings for the past year when I kept coming across instances where things just do not make sense to me. Not the words I write or topics I talk about, but rather ‘some’ of the takes of these topics by the random minorities of INTERNET TROLLS, Internet Subcultures, and others. The problem in general with Internet Subcultures are Internet Subcultures. However, I have already written about that and those extremely short and not very well thought out opinions of said topics of mine.

This year was marked by life after Hurricane Ian, with damage to the house, only now being repaired. Due to inflation, rising insurance premiums and cost of living going up while monies coming in are either static or going slowly in reverse we had to make serious concessions as to what we wanted for our home. The house is forever changed. We won’t get the pool cage replaced. The insurance pay out was half of what it will cost for a new one and the insurance for it could buy a brand new pool cage every three years. We went over a year without one, adapted our lives and maintenance around that and it has worked out to a point where we had the time to think about what we actually wanted and how much we had to pay with for it. Now that we have a real concept of what we want we are slowly getting that done.

I started the year’s Blogging on my fitness history and journey over the years. I am still at it. I have learned to train smarter, around my current limitations and I feel I look good for what I have had to go through with my ability to still train at a high level. This past year I wrote about the Buffalo Bills more than I have in the past over a one year span. I am probably not done. With how Buffalo is these days, there is usually something worth discussing every few weeks, let alone months. I wrote a lot about redefining Woke-Culture as ‘(Whoa)ke Cult-Lure.’ I wrote about that subject enough to be a target of trolling then doxing by a very persistent but small group of 40+Don’t-Matter-Progressives on a stupid platform that no one really uses called SpaceHey. SpaceGhey, is what most that know the platform call it.

“Reanimation of the sequence Rewind the future to the past. To find the source of the solution; The system has to be recast.” ~BLACK SABBATH

I did more movie reviews this year than I have done in recent years. I think I will continue this trend in 2024. When I do a review I tend to write about movies that I knew nothing about going into it and being very surprised at how good it was. I will also write about movies I saw that I thought were going to be good from the trailer and/or the plot write-up and the movie being so terrible that I had to write about all the things I hated about it. In great detail, of course. I do not always review films that everyone else has seen or is popular. I go by what I want to watch, not what the mass media and YouTube reviewers say I should watch.

Movies I wrote about this year:

• Infinity Pool (2023) • You People (2023) • Knock at the Cabin (2023) • Nefarious (2023) • Choke (2008) • Oppenheimer (2023)

Movies I briefly talked about this year:

• The Elephant Man (1980) • The Thing (1982) • Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) • Altered States (1980) • Tightrope (1984) • Communion (1989) • The Fourth Kind (2009) • The Entity (1982) • Prince of Darkness (1987) • Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Along with my thoughts on politics and political ideologies I also dove more into religion/faith using Christianity as the main example. The only reason Christianity gets mentioned the most when I talk about religion is because it tends to be the most popular or most obvious. Most of everyone has heard of the rumored, “son-of-God,” Jesus Christ. We have all heard the stories and all that. It is the easiest one to prove wrong as well, but we’ll save that for 2024 and beyond. I spent just as much time writing about Social Media, Music and technical blogs with aspects of using smart devices and using older accounts with those devices. It is sort of pain in the butt when something newer comes out and it isn’t exactly compatible with your main accounts because your main accounts are now two decades old. I have newer accounts sure, but none of them are as used as my main INTERNET accounts that have most of everything signed into them. Sometimes the process is overly complicated and I will take detailed notes as to how I came up with the solutions. I will write out the notes in the form of a blog to tell the tale or just a backup for myself if I ever have to deal with the problem again. I prepared another medical update that handles the past/present of my medical conditions in a better, more thorough, breakdown. I had to take a break from everything during the months of June and July due to being sick. A combination of getting the flu and medications having adverse effects on my body for my diabetes. We still have yet to get a real handle on controlling my blood sugars. Granted we have made some strides in the right direction but my sugars continue to be higher, even with the medications they give me. At the beginning of June is when I started receiving harassment from that contingent of hypersensitive 40+Don’t-Matter-Progressives on the SpaceGhey. After I handled that, went on vacation, came back, got sick again, did I begin writing again. I was sent an open survey by my county’s Democratic Party and they made the mistake of allowing the survey takers a textbox for every question to give people a chance to say what they want to say. I will tell you; I wish ALL multiple choice tests or surveys did this. I have always had a problem with the multiple choice approach. It lacks contextual-value. Not all questions are written with context in mind and they should. Anyway; I sent them a very detailed survey back with why I would never register to vote or vote for a Democratic Party representative in any form of Government. This sparked a little bit of a debate, as most assume if one isn’t a Democrat then by default they must be a Right-Wing-Trump Supporter, which isn’t true either. I do not support either one of them as my main way to express how I feel about politics.

Both are poor choices for social societal evolution.

I took mid-October and the first part of November writing about the Israeli/Palestinian War. I wrote about 8,791 words on the subject. I studied the history. I looked at opinions on both sides and I fact-checked most of the things that are being spewed as semantics but really are just rhetoric, where semantics is the study of real and true meanings of words and phrases and are based on credible facts. Where rhetoric only has to appear it is based on credible facts, but doesn’t actually have to include anything real, true or fact, merely that it only sounds plausible. I take the same approach when talking about ALL forms of religion. That is why religion is such a tough sell and extremely easy to dismiss when looking really hard at the science, logic and common sense on the subject. If one is Pro-Palestinian they will be very triggered by what I got to say, but if one is Pro-Israeli they will be just as disappointed in my resolve or opinion on the matter.

I finally got around to defining what “Two-Step Flow Theory for Idiots” is…

One of the last big things I talked about this year are the Ten Things That Terrified Me in Film/TV. Things I remember that freaked me out in a Movie. I am 45 now and a lot of these were seen when I was a kid. So 80s baby all the way. I really harp on “conceptual horror” over just visuals. “Conceptual Horror” would be imagining you as a child, in bed, feeling this sense that you are being watched. You cannot see anything, but you look in the darkest corners of your room to see BLACK and feeling there is something there that wants you to be terrified of its presence upon you. You get the distinct feeling this thing, this entity, wants to do bad things to you or at the very least make you do bad things to others or yourself. That to me, this uncertainty, this distinct feeling of “a harmful force upon you,” is terrifying and really the only thing that truly haunts me. That unknown feeling of dread by something you cannot quantify, but is in your space that is supposed to be yours and safe.

2023 was a year where I looked into AI more than I ever have. Both with using ChatGPT, and writing prompts or, “cheat codes,” for ChatGPT. I wrote a few blogs about AI and I will continue to do that. I also listened to the audiobook versions of the “Remembrance of Earth's Past” or known as (The Three-Body Trilogy) by Liu Cixin. Three-Body is a mind-bending existentially terrifying sci-fi journey that explores humanity's encounter with an alien civilization. From the deep of cosmic concepts to intricate political and philosophical threads, Three-Body is an exploration of the unknown, challenging our understanding of the Universe, reality, perspective, perception, existence itself. Very few science fiction novels actually change how I think. This series absolutely did that with its concepts of first contact, the dark forest theory, game theory, nihilism, time, relativity, relativistic time, reality possibly being an infinitely long loop, love, death, infinity, multiple-dimensional realities, macro and micro quantum reality, religion not being real and existentialism. I will do a bigger BLOG-breakdown of the series with heavy spoilers at some point in the future.

For 2024, I currently have fourteen Blogs scheduled as of right now. This doesn’t mean I will be writing only fourteen Blogs but that those are the ones I have multiple pages of notes on the subject for and want to tackle. I wrote 30 Blogs in 2023. Where only half of them were planned in advance. I do plan to continue to work on Fiction this year. I am hoping to complete something this year for sure. There has been and will be many changes to my life and how my family carries on its wayward son… I tend to say this every year that the year before was the worse year of my life. The same can go for 2023 as well but I think of it in different terms now.

On 12/22/2023, after I had just came back from one of my deep thinking sessions on my walks around the wooded area in my neighborhood, my father passed away. Dad would have been 70 on the first day of 2024. As a family, we elected not to post this on the typical social media posts on subjects like this. Being Friday evening and all, with Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and my Nephew’s Birthday a day after that we did not want to ruin anyone’s holiday. We didn’t want our friends and family to have to stop their lives for our misfortunes. The truth is my father has been extremely ill since 2004, even before that. I started noticing my Father’s health change in and around 1995-1996. During that time, and years to come, my father did very little to help himself with his health. The Doctor would instruct him to do A, B, C and my father would take that and create his own sense of D, E, F of it. Health declined every few years. Every few years the cycle would repeat itself. Every time he’d go to the ER or stay in ICU, he’d come back, a little bit less of himself and more zombie-like. 2021 my father finally hit a wall that he couldn’t just walk through and his strength and awareness around him would dwindle. The last thing to go is a person’s sense of self. Towards the end he would stop communicating like a normal person. He would talk to us sporadically but be less and less coherent and more and more incoherent. Finally, my father’s body could no longer hold out and he passed peacefully in his sleep. One minute he was resting then next he was just a vacant vessel for a human soul.

I am not exactly sure how to word all this to sound as it should. As I have said, largely my father hasn’t been around in the way we know him and all you may remember him for a very very long time. It is hard to really understand how I feel and think at this moment. I do not feel that sense of sudden loss that most tend to go through. Actually ALL my brothers feel like this about this specific situation. When I think about this now, on the last day of 2023 and the day before his birthday, is I revert to when I was a kid and we lived in Tampa, Sarasota and right when we moved to North Port, from when that all started in 1984-1991. That is really how I think of my dad now. I cannot really think about him as my father, near and after 1997. 1997-2001, I was just graduating High School, trying to figure out adulating, finishing school, working dead end jobs, then going to college and not having a single clue as to what I was supposed to do. My brothers were all in High School doing their thing. My mother was dealing with my father, who started his descent into what we ALL had to go through for the last 20 years. Guidance for me was non-existent and with friends that are no longer here in my life anymore. I picked film in college because I loved movies. I wanted to work behind a camera from the time I left High School to now. I picked that because of the love but also because it would get me away from here and having to deal with all this stuff my dad was going through and watching my friends’ transition into their current lives, both for the best and not the best of circumstances.

I never actually got out of here and my degree is/was a complete waste of time, energy, money, resources and false-hope. Granted I love what I know but wish I could at least make a living doing it over just writing about it. Now with my own mortality showing these same signs; I am the same age now that my father was in and around when he began his issues. I think about how much quality time I have to work on projects like this. Both time and the roadblocks that were there, that are no longer there, but other roadblocks still exist. I feel like 2024 will be an end of a new beginning and the beginning actually begins, now…

Reflections of the self and redemptive nature of living life and then eventually time catches up. The ultimate fate of us ALL is death, the light, the love, the life, the emptiness and despair of it ALL. "It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. A far better resting place I go to, than I have ever known." ~1859 novel by Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities” reused in the final moments of the 1982 film: “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” The very first record/tape/music I ever purchased was Black Sabbath’s Paranoid per the recommendation of my father. I was 11…

Rest In Peace Dad… 1/1/1954-12/22/2023

“Release your mind. Fast forward to the secrets of your code. Your life's on overload. Delete or save…” "End of the Beginning" ~BLACK SABBATH Writer(s): John Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Terrence Butler

Finis Principia (Latin for; End of the Beginning) by David-Angelo Mineo 12/30/2023 2,737 Words

[cartermagazine]

Bismillah al rahman al rahim… Happy Born Yasiin Bey @yasiinbeyy Born December 11, 1973 in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Yasiin Bey is a renown MC. He has been making hip-hop music since 1994, and first gained national attention in 1998 with the release of Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star, and his subsequent solo album, Black on Both Sides, in 1999. Throughout his career, Bey has balanced music with acting, appearing in films such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005), 16 Blocks (2006), Be Kind Rewind (2008), and Bamboozled (2000), among others. “This is business, no faces just lines and statistics… From your phone, your zip code, to SSI digits… The system break man, child and women into figures, two columns for who is and who ain't niggas… Numbers is hard and real and they never have feelings, but you push too hard, even numbers got limits… Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret, the million other straws underneath it, it's all mathematics.” CARTER™️ Magazine carter-mag.com #wherehistoryandhiphopmeet #historyandhiphop365 #staywoke #carter #yasiinbey #blackhistorymonth #blackhistory #history #mosdefandtalibkweliareblackstar #blackonbothsides #blacktwitter https://www.instagram.com/p/CmBX8MkOYTP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[eyemad63andathird]

Be Kind Rewind (2008)