#seriously though I love masculine characters dressing up without it being made into a cheap joke aaaarrrggg

[toothhurty]

Old man experiences queer joy, more at 10

[mst3kproject]

108: Project Moon Base

Saying ‘fuck this movie’ doesn’t seem like enough, really.  Please take a moment and picture the full Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing it to the tune of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.  That should about do it.  I’m gonna say ‘fuck’ an awful lot in this review, like even more than I usually do. I really hate this movie.

This was a very moon episode.  After a couple of dull and suspenseless episodes of Radar Men from the Moon, we get on to Project Moon Base.  In the far future year of 1970, the Enemies of Freedom are working to destroy the UN’s space program.  To do this, they kidnap a Dr. Wernher and replace him with a lookalike, who is ordered to go to the atomic-armed space station and destroy it in a suicide mission. He’ll have crew-mates on his rocket, though – and Major Moore and space program legend Colonel Briteis aren’t going to let him complete his mission without a fight.

Wow, space spy capers and secret plots!  It sounds so exciting when I write it down!  Too bad this movie is actually so dismally fucking cheap and boring.  The KGB apparently works out of a nicely decorated living room somewhere, and the Spacom offices aren’t much better.  Everything is bare walls, clean tables and desks, and giant clocks on the walls, and none of it resembles a place people actually work in.  The actors all look like they’d really prefer to be anywhere else and recite their lines at a fast clip that suggests they’re just trying to get this ordeal over with. Given the characters they were being asked to play, I feel for them.

And then there’s the stuff that’s just fucking surreal, like the skullcaps or propane-tank-headed spacesuits that wouldn’t have been out of place in an episode of Rocky Jones: Space Ranger. Or the fact that the first ‘suspicious’ thing the fake Dr. Wernher does is support the wrong baseball team.  Or the annoying reporter whose name is Polly Prattles (I guess to imply that she endlessly ‘parrots’ everything she’s told?) and who dresses like a disco ball!

About the only thing that really earns any points is that the effects people made a commendable effort to be realistic.  Stuff like the lunar rocket and the frisbee-shaped space station are intended to look practical rather than future-y, and there’s a discussion of orbital mechanics (though it’s confusing and useless to the plot).  Navigation information refers to bright stars like Fomalhaut and Polaris.  Microgravity is mentioned and there’s even a pretty neat shot where characters walk on the ceilings with magnetic-soled boots!  I’m also impressed that they actually filmed some miniatures for their rocket takeoff scene, instead of using the same stock footage we’ve seen in fifty other films.

That’s only a fraction of the movie, though.  The other ninety-eight percent or so I absolutely despise from the very bottom of whatever twisted black abomination remains of my soul, and the reason why is the fucking characters.

The first characters we meet are the villains, although calling them ‘characters’ seems like a stretch.  I’m not entirely sure who any of these people are or who they’re working for… I’m gonna keep calling them the KGB for lack of a better descriptor.  They’re bland men in bland suits who behave as if destroying the capitalist west is just their day job – the bald bellhop guy may say it’s a twenty-four-hour job, but I bet these guys are out of that hotel room the moment the clock clicks to five pm.  Even the guy posing as Dr. Wernher isn’t very interesting.  Shouldn’t at least one of these people have some kind of motivation besides getting paid to do this?  What happened to revenge, or fanatical loyalty to an ideal, or desperation to protect a family who’ll be killed if you don’t comply?

Weirdly, it’s the fake Dr. Wernher who is the closest thing we’re given to a POV character!  We follow him into the hotel to take over from the real scientist, and them learn about the space program in tandem with him.  If not for the opening crawl I’d be wondering if we’re supposed to root for this guy.

Our so-called ‘heroes’ have some more personality, but those personalities are the furthest thing from likable. First there’s Major Moore, a big sulky baby whose masculinity is threatened by Briteis outranking him.  When he finds out he’s been cut from the mission in her favour he whines, and when he finds out he’s been assigned as her co-pilot he whines more because now he’s got to take orders from her.  At the end when they marry, he is promoted to Brigadier General mostly so that he’ll outrank his wife!

Briteis herself is no better – we see a few sides of her and they’re all terrible.  She pisses and moans about not wanting to interact with Moore, either, and then engages in passive-aggressive dick-measuring contests with him while the two of them are supposed to be flying a spacecraft and saving the free world.  You almost can’t blame him for his jealousy when she takes every possible opportunity to rub things in his face.  When things go wrong she manages to land on the moon, but then becomes a breathless damsel in distress, leaving Moore to make all the decisions… and then when they’re saved, she reverts right back to whining.

(Yes, by the way, the non-MST3K edit does show them actually landing, and no, it's not very exciting.)

The General in charge of these two is an ass, as well.  He basically guilts Moore into accepting an assignment he doesn’t want, and when Briteis protests it as well, he tells her to shut up and then threatens to spank her.  These people are supposed to be members of the military, an organization that is associated with rigid discipline, efficient organization, and a strict chain of command, and yet they display less professionalism than kids at a lemonade stand.  Jesus Christ, how about we just let the bad guys take over the world?  They at least have some fucking dignity.

The moment we discover Briteis is a woman is supposed to be a big surprise, since the characters have carefully avoided any gendered language so far – this seems to hint that we are looking at a future where equality of the sexes has been achieved, but what we see after that quickly disabuses us of the notion.  Not only is Colonel Briteis treated like a misbehaving child in spite of her rank, but we’re told that the only reason women are allowed in the space program is to save weight – though not in the case of Prattles, who is told to her face that she’s too fat to go!

In questioning Briteis about how she pilots the spacecraft, Wernher actually treats her with more respect in her expertise than any other character.  Are we sure we’re not rooting for this guy?

Of course the idea of Moore taking Briteis with him to set up the communications relay instead of Wernher never even comes up, despite the fact that she must be infinitely more qualified and much less likely to try to kill him.  This whole sequence is weirdly mis-used.  We’re expecting Wernher to either try to sabotage things somehow, or for Moore to believe he will do so and a fight to result.  I guess it’s more realistic, seeing as how the survival of both men depends on the relay, that they cooperate successfully – but if that were supposed to be the case, then why does Wernher die in a total accident, falling from a rock and cracking his helmet open?  It doesn’t resolve anything, it’s just a quick and lazy way of getting rid of the character so we can focus on Moore and Briteis and I don’t wanna focus on them.

Wernher’s death also leaves the audience sitting through the last part of the movie without any idea why we’re still watching this.  The villain’s dead, so why isn’t the movie over?  Even if we didn’t hate Moore and Briteis, we’ve actually known Wernher for longer and the movie was set up as if his mission and its defeat were the main storyline.  If he’d been dealt with in a more satisfying manner, either by changing loyalties, or by being killed or recaptured in a way that felt like a victory, it would be easier to move on with the rest of the story.

The final ‘fuck you’ from this movie’s sexual politics is the revelation at the end that the President of the United States is also a woman.  You know what that means?  That means the writers thought they really were showing us a gender-equal future!  They honestly believe that women in positions of power really will freak out and automatically turn to the men for help when things go wrong.  They seriously think that women holding high ranks in the military will be threatened with spankings by their superior officers and that’s completely okay.  And then when you watch the movie again, the scene where Briteis tells the General that the President has ordered Polly Prattles be admitted just looks like a bunch of girls ganging up on a boy they don't like.

Quite a bit of effort went into the effects in Project Moon Base and into its idea of the future (note how they predicted cordless phones!), but it was all wasted on bad actors, shitty sets, and a script that feels like a first draft.  Nothing in the film comes across as properly concluded – not the space mission, not Wernher, and certainly not the love story between Moore and Briteis.  Fuck this movie.  Fuck, fuck, fuck this fucking movie.  Fuck everyone who made it, fuck MST3K for bringing it to my attention, and fuck me for watching it again!  Fuck.

[thecorteztwins]

Sorry meant to do this on a Munday but you say OOC you like fashion and style do you have any advice?

Hey bae! Thanks for asking, that’s so flattering! I’m far from a style guru, but this has been my own journey/what works for me:- Fashion sense is something you can learn. I don’t have an innate fashion sense and I never did. I chose to deliberately try to learn, and I am still learning. There is a section of books on fashion guidelines and advice at my local public library, there probably is at yours too. That’s a good place to get started. I’d recommend starting with these rather than magazines, because magazines focus on trends and what’s the latest, whereas this how-to guidebooks tend to focus more on the foundations of fashion, which is a much better starting point and remain pretty stable from season to season, year to year. I also recommend the library since, obviously, you won’t have to huck out money for it. Websites are another free option.- These books will usually teach you about colors, shapes, and proportion in regards to clothing and how it looks on a body. These are really integral things to understand for how an outfit looks. Eventually, you’ll develop an eye for these things on your own, but understanding WHY something looks good or not is a good place to start.

- Color was a big obstacle for me. I have perfect color vision, but no real natural sense of what colors look good together at all. This really got in my way while drawing (a big reason I originally got into fashion was for reference with what my characters would wear >- Black/white is always a good combo in my opinion. Supposedly some seasons shouldn’t wear pure black or pure white (remember what I said about it just being guidelines, not rules?) but I think it looks good on everyone. A whole lot of my stuff and my outfits are black/white (which also spares me some color anxiety)- Owning things that look like they go to together is a good idea. It makes for a consistent style, and easy to mix and match pieces, instead of having a skirt that only goes with one of your tops, or a color that doesn’t work with anything else you own. To this, try to look at the pieces you like, and find what specifically it is that attracts you. Do you like things with lace? Decorative pockets? Minimalist, streamlined things?  Figure out the pattern(s) and start buying based on that, so a lot of your stuff looks like it all goes together. Also think of what you already have when you’re shopping, so you don’t buy anything that won’t look good with your stuff AND so you don’t buy something you already have (I tend to try to always buy the same pretty white blouse >- Just me personally, I don’t buy anything that I don’t try on first. I need see how it looks on me and how it feels. Not only can clothing look very different on you than it does on the hanger, the feel and fit is very important. Figuring out what you DON’T like and want to avoid is as important as what you like, so you don’t buy something you hate. I see a lots of tops I love, but if they have cap sleeves, it’s a NO, I fucking HATE those things. - Speaking of things you hate, don’t put up with wearing something uncomfortable. even a special occasion have something that looks nice that you can stand to be in at length. I don’t subscribe to the “beauty is pain” mentality, I think fashion should be enjoyable. I know I’ve really grown to love it and it makes me feel good. I think it should make you feel good. It should work for YOU, you should not be making sacrifices for IT. This also means don’t bother with trends you don’t like, or wear something you don’t like just because it looks good on you.- Another good reason not to buy before you try it on is that women’s sizes make no sense. They vary WILDLY from brand to brand and store to store. The numbers seriously mean nothing. Speaking of size, I hear some women saying they’ll start buying nice things and dressing nice when they lose weight. As someone who is not overweight, I know this is easy for me to say, especially with how cruel the world can be, but I think that you should dress for you NOW, not make nice clothes something you only “deserve” once you’re a certain size. - Learn the “rules” but use your judgement. For instance, supposedly kelly green goes with navy and with pink. I don’t think kelly green looks good with navy at all, and while it may not be terrible with pink but I’d rather put pink with a seafoam or mint or spring green. Maybe that’s just because I don’t have a natural sense of color (though I think I’ve learned a pretty good sense now?), but I just don’t like how it looks. So I don’t wear kelly green with my navy or pink stuff (or at all, actually—I don’t wear green, orange, red, yellow, or brown. Just doesn’t look good on me!!)- Accessories totally change an outfit’s vibe. A different jacket and jewelry can take you from dressy to casual, girly to tomboy to rocker. For instance, let’s say I’ve got a basic black tank, some tight charcoal pants, and tall boots. If I put on a flannel, a studded wristband, and my unisex black/silver necklace, I look a lot edgier/punkier. If I put on my flowy black cardigan, pearl cocktail ring, and layer some pearl necklaces, it’s a totally different vibe. But it’s the same basic pieces. This is why, if you like to do different looks like I do, having a wide range of accessories can let you do that without needing to buy lots of different styles of clothing. You can also get a lot of good-looking jewelry very cheap without it looking cheap; I got a couple of necklaces today from an antique mart that were five bucks each, but they don’t look like plastic junk or anything.- Purses are part of your outfit, so I recommend a plain one in black (or whatever neutral works best for the majority colors in your wardrobe) that you can just grab every day without having to think about it if you’re in a hurry, and then other ones in other styles and colors you can pair with your outfits based on style, color, and occasion. I’ve got a plain black one, but I’ve also got another black one that’s sleeker and has some edgy hardware on it (metal buckles, grommets, etc.) so it has a more punk look, a quilted pink one when I wear pink and purple and white stuff, a white wicker one, and a tan one to go with my navy dress and navy top. - Don’t go out and buy a bunch of new stuff at once. I accumulated my jewelry and purses and so on over literal YEARS as I developed my look and my eye for things. I think if you tried to build an entire new look all at once, you’d make a lot of mistakes and spend a lot of money for it, which would suck. I started with making small purchases from thrift stores, like buying one or two tops at a time from Goodwill for under $10, so the change was gradual and organic and I could get more confident about wearing pretty things before I spent oodles of money on them (because if you get something cute but still don’t have the guts to wear it, what’s the point?) You can experiment without breaking the bank, and learn what you like. I still try to avoid spending much money at a time on anything, really. If you’re going to invest in something though, I think it should be something you’re going to wear very often (like boots) instead of something you’re only going to wear like once, but unfortunately special occasions clothing does tend to be pricier, so I would get a couple Special Occasions dresses you can wear for Special Occasions repeatedly instead of getting a new one every time. For instance, my personal go-to for family gatherings is an Audrey Hepburn/Coco Chanel black dress with a white collar paired with a simple strand of pearls. It looks great, the aunts love it, and since they’re only seeing it once or twice a year, it doesn’t end up being a “oh she’s just wearing the same old thing again” situation.I hope this helped! I admit I kinda went with the assumption you’re a girl because…I don’t really know shit about men’s fashion or much care, because I find it really boring and limited >> And also have no experience dressing in men’s styles either. But I feel like a lot of this could apply for guys and/or people wearing masculine-coded things too!