I saw the tv glow is crazy bc it’s a movie that genuinely makes you watch how your life could fall apart. Makes you watch how heavily repression can affect your life and how dangerous and sad it can be. But at the same time it’s like “hey, if you’re still alive there is still time, so keep going.”
I’ve genuinely never watched a movie that has given me so much sadness, but let’s me find a sense of hope, no matter how bittersweet, within that devastation.
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Hi hello I watched all of carmilla in a weekend when I was 17 because a student teacher who in retrospect I had a bit of a crush on mentioned that she knew one of the actresses. also I am pretty invested in all your recent vampire stuff because I watched iwtv in 2 days last week because your edit intrigued me
oh hiiii 🫶 thank you for indulging me. thats so cool that you watched iwtv! did it live up to the expectation?
i also watched carmilla at 17! or like, 17-19. i found it when s2 had just started and followed it to the end. did something permanent to my brain but i think it was a good thing. on rewatch now im like, i was right to like this. like it's a solid show, it's good. it has its flaws obviously but it's well written, the emotional moments still get me, i can see why i liked it and i still like it now even when it's not anymore, you know, meeting every need that baby gay me didnt even know they had
what it doesnt reaallyy do though - i dont remember if i posted abt this or if i left it in my drafts but - is explore vampirism as a concept. their subject matter is more lesbianism than vampirism. which is great! thats what they wanted to do and they did it and it's very good. but reading interview with the vampire the book rn im realising how much potential vampires have to be metaphors for like so many things and i started wondering like 'wait, did carmilla just not really engage with it or did it all go over my head'. but it just didnt really engage with it all that much. which again is fine bc that wasnt what they were doing. im glad they were more about the lesbianism than the vampirism
but there's this interesting difference in framing, because in iwtv they keep calling armand 'ancient' right? and emphasising how old he is. and he's like 500? and i was like 'wait isnt carmilla like 400?'. she isnt, shes 340, but still, thats getting there, you know? and we know quite a lot about her history, but kind of just the Big Events. when she was turned, the events of the novella, coffin of blood, silas. thats sort of what we know. but none of the long lonely slog of history day to day you know? with armand i feel like we can really feel how much time everything takes. how every one of those years is made up of single days. with carmilla i dont feel that as much. i keep kind of thinking about daniel, when louis calls him a boy in the first episode, saying "im an old man, with all the triggers that come with it"
because carmilla might look 18 (or mid twenties at this point) but she has lived all that time. shes also seen her native land be claimed by like a succession of ruling powers, right? like armand. shes been buried alive, like louis. when lestat is born, shes already 80 years old, shes lived a whole human lifetime, and the entire adult part of it shes been a vampire. shes lived through 1680-1870 being a lure. i compared her to abigail hobbs in some tags on a post, i dont know if youre familiar with hannibal the tv show, but i do also kinda keep thinking about that comparison
if youre not familiar, in the first episode of hannibal the murderer of the week is this guy garrett jacob hobbs who kills and cannibalises girls who resemble his daughter. and later on it turns out she was made to be his lure. like they'd go places and he'd sent her to the victims to make friends and maybe get them back to their home or smth. not sure if they specified all the details. but that's what carmilla did for mother. and in s2 we hear from mattie that while every couple of decades carmilla had to lure victims for the fish god, she also seemed to just enjoy humans between those times, right? like the doctor, gets lonely, gets a new companion. but we've only sort of got mattie's mocking word for it ("dont eat him, hes a poet! or her, shes got such a wonderful voice. or that one, shes just too pretty to ruin"), we don't know exactly from carmilla's point of view what she was doing or why. if mattie's talking about stuff that happened after the blood coffin, 1950-now, then i think it's a fair assumption based on what carmilla says in the s1 sock puppet show that after she'd figured out what the real situation was and what her role in it was, when she'd started trying to save girls from being sacrificed, that she mightve been doing the same trying to save people from becoming mattie's victims. it's probably more likely that she was just trying to find excuses to stop mattie from sucking someone dry rather than actually having like an aesthetic based morality. but it might be a bit of both. im still trying to figure out what her philosophy actually is, like i dont know what existentialism actually means ghkfjghkj but i will
i also found it pretty striking in the movie when shes turning back into a vampire she says like "this was supposed to be done, you know? the blood lust, the self-loathing, the sleeping tied to a chair in my own bedroom". thats what defines her vampirism, wanting blood and hating yourself for it (the third part is a joke/reference to s1 but also i think meaningful for how she sees her relationship with laura when she IS a vampire. little bit of that 'she will reject me for my monstrousness' shining through). and thats what defines vampirism for lots of vampires across the genre obviously, but i dont know, it struck me. we dont get a lot from carmilla's pov, we know a fair amount about her, but the story is always told through laura. we get laura's diaries, but just snippets here and there from carmilla, what shes thinking, how shes feeling
and i love that shes a philosopher. i love that thats how she seems to try and find something to hold onto, in a world that kind of moves around her, having been murdered, kidnapped, turned and groomed to be a lure on the cusp of adulthood, never having been properly loved (the relationship with her father wasnt good she says in s3, and her mortal mother i dont think has ever been mentioned (like laura's)). the only good relationship she seems to have had for the better part of 3 centuries seems to have been mattie, and mattie seems to love being a vampire. i can imagine carmilla just sort of going along with anything mattie wants to do just because shes so desperate for that friendship. not like, against her will necessarily really. but more like, she hasnt even had the space to develop her own will, you know? and philosophy lets you do that. philosophy gives you frameworks to understand the world and to develop your own opinions on it. and by the 21st century she seems to have developed those opinions, she has a sense of her own values, but shes also still stuck in that same situation. shes jaded and cynical in the face of laura's optimism and strong moral code a lot of the time in s1 because she feels probably pretty powerless. like she does what she can to save some girls but at the end of the day shes scared of her mother and she has nowhere else to go really, right?
i like how she grapples with that over the course of the series, in tandem with laura grappling with her black and white morality. she sort of jumps ship from her mother to laura bc theyve fallen in love, but then laura still stuck in her hero thinking refuses to see her monstrous side. not literally bc i think the biological vampirism never seemed to be a problem for laura, but morally. the having murdered. carmilla needs laura to see that and love her while seeing it bc the last girl she loved rejected her for being a vampire.
but you see her kind of swing back and forth in s2. she softens first with laura but then they break up and she leans back hard into the sarcastic cynic defense mechanisms, leans hard into "im a monster, dont expect heroism from me". but thats like, it's sort of learned helplessness i think. it's powerlessness, resignation. bc morally shes not a monster. maybe she doesnt have as strong a drive to help other people as laura does and is a little more selfishly hedonistic in that she just wants to enjoy her/their life, but she doesnt hurt people for fun, she never has. she just sort of didnt have another option for a Really long time. so she pretends she doesnt care. "im a vampire, this is what i do, this is who i am". but clearly from the way she talks about it when she turns back into one, she doesnt enjoy it
and i like how she goes even further in s3, where she starts swinging even more to the heroic side, bc she sees hope. shes like "wow if we kill my mother, i'd be free". theres hope and she becomes like a lot more active. and shes like that at the start of the movie too, a lot happier, a lot more relaxed, and then vampirism is back and bam depression gfhgkjh like shes immediately more gloomy, ashamed of her past and her self, retreats into herself
sorry i just took this as an opportunity to dump all the carmilla thoughts floating in my head on you. you didnt ask fhkghgjh consider this an open invitation to you or anyone else to come talk to me about carmilla
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Tell me about ghosted 2011 I keep seeing you mention it but I still don’t have any what it actually is about 🔫
OKAY to avoid spoilers and Rope You In ill give you a relatively simple rundown
Jack (played by john lynch) is a longtime inmate in a prison who, as the movie starts, has just been DUMPED by his wife on the anniversary of their son's death. Jack is distraught by this but his breakdown is interrupted by the arrival of a NEW inmate named Paul (played by martin compston) who was just moved here from a Young Offenders prison, making him like. barely in his 20s. after this, jack is looking harrowed and lost and his friend and cellmate ahmed (played by art malik) tells him that he should find something to put his mind to and be proud of to carry him through the rest of his sentence. this suggestion to jack is pointed in the direction of paul and that jack should try to get to know him, however Paul has inconveniently already been scooped up under the wing of Clay (played by craig parkinson) who is the notorious menace among this prison wing. The whole film is a process of jack being drawn to paul and trying to get him out of clays hands, while realizing slowly that paul in fact is. much more directly involved in jacks life than he first realized. and for the sake of keeping you interested im going to leave it at that but its a good gritty film and the twist surprised me more than i expected it to and the last scene of this film is what makes me love it so much and makes the relationship between jack and paul like a thousand layers deeper
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i'll be honest i didn't even process the homophobia in paprika as such bc all of it was expressed by a character who turned out to be the villain's henchman, & maybe that's on me but like, it really did not hit me like that at all.
it was a lot of background details, but it did hit me on the second rewatch that osanai doesn't yell at paprika for bringing up himuro bc he feels guilty about himuro's comatose-dead state but bc he's disgusted himuro liked him. osanai is not shown as a sympathetic character again from the moment you learn he's working against the protagonists, and frankly he's not too sympathetic either before then - at least if you don't trust him, everything he does & says comes across as him potentially becoming a problem later. again, on the second rewatch, i was able to retroactively notice another part that showcased that 'homophobia' mentioned by that person ; when they visit himuro's place & there are men's magazines all around his house, to which osanai makes a grossed out face (on first watch i thought it was more exasperation due to the previous fatphobia & general infantilisation of the fat characters).
the thing though, is that the messiness of the room, the 'gross' aspect, it doesn't hinge on the fact himuro is gay as much as it does on the fact he's fat. and it's weird to pinpoint homophobia without mentioning the glaring elephant in the room. they do the same shit to tokita! it's the exact same shit and tokita is straight as far as anyone's concerned! idk, tokita & himuro fit into a certain view of the 'nerd' that a lot of people hold, & the magazines are frankly the least of our problems with that view! if you want my opinion, the only reason tokita escaped the magazines treatment was that he was infantilised enough to not even be allowed the ability to be sexual. everyone constantly insists on how he's "a genius with the mind of a child". the fatphobia is absolutely paprika's biggest problem & it pisses me off someone would say the HOMOPHOBIA puts them off. like?! did we watch the same movie??
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Saw Wish (2023) recently and tbh it wasn’t as bad as ppl said it was, but it was pretty unbefitting for disney’s 100 anniversary movie. I feel like if it weren’t high stakes put on it and was just a regular disney film, it wouldve gotten average reviews. Tho i dont think it deserves to be nominated solely for the fact that a lot of better animated movies came out, i think it still had a lot of neat stuff in it (I mildly enjoyed the message and some of the songs). But even then, it still had many flaws, like the songs being all pop instead of a broadway-style and not rly memorable, as well as not developing the story more.
Another thing I would like to add is that it truly doesn’t appreciate the legacy it’s trying to showcase here. it only encapsulates what the company is to a marketable and modern audience, so it only includes relevant and recent disney pop culture references rather than include stuff from one of the older movies. it shows us what disney, the corporation, is; not disney, the animation studio, is.
I’m just gonna blurt out a list of things what I personally think would make the movie better since it had a lot of potential but wasn’t directed well. again this is my opinion so no need to get all defensive or aggressive:
• first of all, the music. they shouldve gotten either a.) a new and upstart musician from broadway since Ashman himself stated that most of the disney melodies we now know are pretty much a broadway musical but animated or b.) gather a band of all the musicians that wrote for disney and each of them contribute a song. Like in the beginning the songs could sound like golden age of disney songs and then it progresses until we get to the end where we get the modern taste of it.
• wouldve also been nice for the animation to also progress with the music. from 2d to 3d as the film goes on but that could translate poorly so I suggest just making it 2d since it’s the best way to incorporate the storybook style.
• next, the villains. i rly agree with the concept of a villain couple, not just because it would be really fun but also could comprise of characteristics from both past male and female villains of disney.
• random idea but these villains should have like henchmen/apprentices. I know asha’s there to be the apprentice but I think I wanna shift the plot a bit here. now all these apprentices reference a disney villain and agree with magnifico’s philosophy about wishes. at the end of the movie, when the big baddies are defeated, they hide and go out into the world where they become the true baddies we know them to be. Preventing dreamers from achieving their dreams.
• Asha as a character should have traits that resembles the majority of the disney princesses, not just the recent quirky trope. Should be somewhat naive but a dreamer and still kind but also misunderstood. idk just like a character that symbolizes the typical disney heroine. They also shouldve given her clothes that resemble more of a fairy godmother (specifically the one she wore during the climax) rather than her rapunzel-esque outfit to distinguish her more
• they shouldve made star have human-like qualities and included the romance with the star. i like how disney’s going with the no-romance thing but romance was a big part of the disney franchise for a long time, and it wouldve been nice to see that again, but with more modern romance tropes (e.g. black cat gf/golden retriever bf, etc) to appeal to modern audiences, so younger kids could understand what made the early films so dreamy and charming.
• flesh out the citizens!!! if the seven friends are the seven dwarves, add more to them. i was especially sad with grumpy since he was more annoying than grumpy. Justify his personality, as well as the others. give us a reason why the citizens need their wish back instead of just showing one character that without their wish, they are just boring. Show the entire population just being outright miserable and blank without their wishes.
• another thing to add to the point above is to establish the people of rosas’ dreams. Because we see in one scene with magnifico that each person dreams of becoming something magical (e.g. one person dreaming of being peter pan and another wanting to become mary poppins). wouldnt it be nice to establish that the people of rosas ARE the disney characters we love and know, which makes them getting back their wishes so important. without it, they wouldn’t be the childhood favorites we know and love today.
• it wouldve been really swell for the grandpa to be a walt disney adjacent character that dreams of learning how to draw. yes he’s a controversial figure nowadays but if ur gonna make a disney 100 celebration, at least make it a point to include the guy u named the company after.
• it also wouldve been really swell if the sidekick character wasn’t a goat but a mouse that resembles mickey in a way, plus a whole gang of other side characters that references mickey’s gang (a female mouse, two ducks, two dogs, etc). they are the official mascots of the company so it’d be really weird to not include or reference them.
• this is going into fanfiction territory but i want the ending scene to be about how the people of rosas finally achieving their wishes and setting forth out into the world to inspire others to follow their wishes (including the evil apprentices in the hopes of destroying those dreams). in the end, when nothing is left, asha just looks out into the distant and transforms into the fairy godmother and then the rosas castle kinda becomes the disney castle we see in the intro. ik this sounds bad on paper and it probably is but by adding stuff i think we could make it better.
I know all of this is bordering fanfiction but like it wouldve been nice for the disney creatives to just go all in. And as a viewer, i did see the potential this movie had, but it just wasn’t done right. And it rly did make me sad to see a good premise go to waste because the message of the movie is what captures that disney magic: the ability to make a wish and seeing that wish come true.
tl;dr: Wish, although one of the less better animated movies this year, really had the potential to be great but wasn’t done right due to pressure of it being the disney 100 celebration. Instead of showcasing the passion and heart that the Walt Disney animation studios did for 100 years, it only displayed the heartlessness of the corporation it has grown to be. And I for one, though I attempted to fix it, am still saddened to see that what was once (and should be) a celebration of creativity and passion got turned into a moneymaker that billionaires see only as products, not as art.
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