#sick of all of these remakes not being IMAGINATIVE AND CREATIVE

[sapphicyanli]

ok but reimagining of the talented mr. ripley where themes of canibalism or the actual act of is being included

[neonriser]

For those who can't see the screenshot post, for whatever reason it may be:

@sillyrookie posted:

Ok, since @hairiclilred asked, I'll start my dumb rant.

Over here in the US, the videogame market fell off a cliff in 1983 due to a reckless oversaturated market flooded with low quality dreck that killed player interest. So many unsold Atari games ended up filling landfills.

Revenue dropped by 97%. It was catastrophic. Videogames died in America for a couple years due to short-sighted business decisions by major corporations.

The American market was revitalized when Nintendo came over and instituted limits to third parties to keep quality up, while also ensuring that quality was their brand. America only has a video game market today because of Nintendo.

I think the current environment of constant remakes, mergers, layoffs, diminishing returns on blockbuster products, and corps thinking they can use "AI" to regurgitate their once valuable IP will cause a similar crash.

What I find interesting is how many classic IP will end up dying in the wake of this.

At the moment so many distinguished studios with established IP are getting bought up by corps, only to lay off the workers and shutter the studios.

The workers don't just lose their jobs, they lose the IP they created. Even if the team can regroup, they can't use the stuff they made anymore. The IP dies with the studio.

So stuff like this makes me feel like we're right at the brink of a collapse that will kill ALOT of once profitable IP when audiences are made sick and tired of alot of stuff they used to love.

These IP owners don't understand the products they own, the workers that make it, and the audience that buy it; and many in the c-suite have actual contempt for all three things.

When an IP stops being profitable, corps shut it down, lock it away unless somebody has the capital to buy it from them.

The only thing they understand is that an old movie made by humans generated billions of profits for them because an audience enjoyed it, and instead of taking new risks it's "better" business short term to just rehash the stuff that made money before. And if they expect "generative AI" to make more content even faster, expect a sea of endless remakes, each shittier than the last one.

Things are bad now, and they're gonna get way worse real fast.

I expect a cultural massacre. What does that look like?

It's obviously a different world today than the 1980s, but Nintendo's core business ideology has stayed consistent, and they'll weather a AAA crash with no problem because they don't play the AAA space at all.

They make a sustainable lower-tech console that's sold at a profit (the traditional model before the Wii was to make a powerful console and sell it at a loss so that you made your money on software sales) and their brand still means quality even 40 years later. Not every game they do is amazing, but their batting average is high and they go out of their way to avoid dropping anything half-baked.

I think every other industry is gonna need their own Nintendos to rise from the ashes. The more I learned about the history of the industry, the more respect I have for them.

And they are NOT perfect. But it the broad strokes they're the example I think most should follow to have a sustainable industry that keeps everyone happy.

Heck, I'll define "everyone happy:"

Artists properly paid, having job security, and able to BE creative.

Players having quality games to enjoy.

Businesses being sustainable for the long term, properly using the revenue from successes to experiment with new ideas, and not screwing anyone over.

[Image: Sonic saying "I WANT SHORTER GAMES WITH WORSE GRAPHICS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PAID MORE TO WORK LESS AND I'M NOT KIDDING".]

If the collapse I'm imagining does actually happen, the only possible thing to grow out of it are new IP from all the artists that got laid off.

New stuff would be the only things coming out for a while and the only things people want if the big franchises burned them out.

Depending on how audience sentiment is by that point, public domain stuff might become suspect as well, which is also an interesting scenario to me.

I think about how the current remake ecosystem is targeted at millennials (which I am) while the pendulum is already set to swing in the other direction.

Sorry for not talking about this part first. 😂

74% of that survey wants new stuff. The major IP holders are about to commit suicide if they go through with the "AI will make us 30 remakes per second" scheme.

One thing I hope DOESN'T happen is a backlash against honesty in the creative process.

We were culturally at a point where the average joe could understand that new ideas don't come from nowhere and are all mutations of old ideas.

Game of Thrones exists because Lord of the Rings came first, which owes it's existence to Norse myth and Beowulf, ect ect.

We're at the point where youtubers make games out of seeing what a song sampled from, the references a movie made, on and on.

But right now a popular spiel from "AI" charlatans to justify IP theft is the assertion that there's no difference between stealing copyrighted media for an LLM to regurgitate and a human being inspired by the ideas and experience they felt from another creator's work and creating a new thing under the established rules of copyright. It's a lie, but it keeps getting repeated to justify theft.

As the scam cycle winds down, I think they might be poisoning the discourse in a lasting way. We could go back to people lying about how ideas work, and that has only negative effects on human expression as a whole.

I want a world where everyone understands the difference between inspiration and a ripoff and can appreciate human creation better than previous generations have. We were right there before the scammers showed up.

So yeah, another rant out of me. 😂

So when people want new IP, they also need to understand what it means that Dragonball was a goofy parody of Journey to the West.

Dragonball is alot of things, it's inspirations are loud and obvious (even the Terminator is in there), but it's also a unique work created through the mind of one talented individual that nobody else could have made, because nobody else was Akira Toriyama, and ALL the subsequent works inspired by Dragonball (One Piece, Naruto, Hero Academia, Sonic the Hedgehog, ect) are their own original works that stand on their own, but still owe their existence to Toriyama's work as much as he owes his work to the things that inspired him.

The best ecosystem is where everyone encourages new IP and also fully understands how they come into being.

(Using this example for obvious reasons.)

Discord Post Reaction: [☝️ 1]

To go back to the topic of videogames, Toys for Bob recently made themselves layoff proof by going full independent.

With the level and volume of world class talent being laid off in the industry, I think we'll see more and more indy teams pop up if they can organize the means to do so.

There is too much high pedigree talent out there right now to just disappear or eventually go back to the people that screwed them over. The current ecosystem allows smaller teams and projects to flourish.

I am 100% down for an industry with less games like Immortals of Aveum and WAY more games like Pizza Tower.

[mortallyclearwonderland]

Reasons not to watch Peter Pan and Wendy

1. It's another Disney ''live-action'' reboot. ''Live-action'' in air quotes because you just know a terrible CGI will show up eventually.

''It's not even out yet. Why are you hating it already? You HAVE to watch it first!''

No, I don't! Every single one of those remakes ranged from meh to terrible pieces of shit! The only ones I liked were the 101 Dalmatians movies from the 90s and early 2000s, before the dark times. All those remakes encouraged me to do is get myself physical copies of the original movies before the Chinese puppet censures them all.

''Stop comparing them to the originals! They're their own think.''

No, they're not! If they're supposed to be their own thing why do they go almost exactly the same as the original plot, why do they use the iconic imagery and music instead of creating their own (Why not change Belle's dress from golden to blue?)?

Just the idea of turning these beloved classics into live-action is an insult to animation and creativity. Imagine in place of every lazy remake there was an original animated movie. Not all of them would've been good. But people wouldn't hate them just for existing.

''But what about kids now? They deserve to see those classic stories.''

Yes, they do! So show them the originals, they still hold up! Are you worried about outdated stuff like language, stereotypes, smoking, etc? Then maybe explain this stuff. Or watch other live-action or animated versions. Disney isn't the only company that makes movies.

2. It looks like shit!

Disney remakes are notorious for being ugly and dark.

I don't mean dark as in dark themes, stories, and moments. They try but usually, they fall flat on their faces. Making awe-inspiring and funny moments creepy and ugly, and moments that are supposed to be scary and dramatic end up being funny. Mufasa's death original vs reboot, anyone?

When I say they're dark, as soon as a scene is at night or in a cave you can't see shit!

3. Race swaps.

''So, you're a racist !?!''

No! Shut up! To hell with this argument! I'm sick and tired of giving valid and logical criticism and Disney defenders brushing it off as people just being racist.

Don't you think people deserve their own characters instead of getting sloppy seconds?

''But there is so little representation! I just take what they give at this point. I don't care about the story as long as there are POCs on screen! - Insert iconic white character- is Black now, die mad about it racists!''

I'm sorry but you're part of the problem! If you're fine with race swaps of the white characters then companies have no reason to create original ones. If you will watch anything with anyone of the same race as you in it, producers will just put them in, without carrying about the story. That's how we end up with pointless token characters and bad stories.

There is not enough representation? Just google a movie, a show, a book, a comic, etc.

People aren't mad at the Black fairies and mermaids. They're mad because Disney's Tinkerbell is a white blond and Ariel is a white redhead. If they changed Tinkerbell into a redhead and Ariel into a blond people would still be mad. 

If someone race-swapped them or changed really anything about these characters in a way that fans don't like there would've been a backlash.

There are plenty of stories from all over the world! It's the 21st century! Just use the internet! Or make something up! But then it wouldn't have a brand recognition and making original scripts is hard and long work and Disney needs to make 10 movies and shows in a year!

People are trained like dogs at this point!

Disney puts out a trailer for their remake with all the race and sex changes front and center.

Some people love it. Some people hate it.

Controversy ensues!

The trailer is dunked on.

''Give it a chance!'' people start to defend the movie.

The movie comes out and is just as bad as every other remake. And it would've been bad with or without those pointless changes.

4. Lost boys are not all boys.

Some idiot tried to argue that because there are women in the x-men team there is no reason to be upset over the lost boys having girls in them.

First of all, ‘’men’’ can be used as a synonym for people, humankind.

The x-men had female characters from the beginning.

Peter Pan already has female representation! You have Tiger Lily, Wendy, and Tinkerbell.

There is a bunch of stories with all-female groups or at least one girl in a group but as soon as there is an all-male thing Twitter screams.

The explanation as to why all the lost boys were lost in the first plays is because they were stupid and hyperactive and fell off their prams.

Nice going Disney, all those diverse characters were morons as babies. And it's true, everybody can be stupid, especially when they're just babies. But I can guarantee they will never show them being immature and childlike like in the original.  

Also, the lost boys were inspired by real boys. And I can guarantee when people learn about their tragic backstories there will be a lot of angry people. Just like after they turned Peter Pan into a villain and everybody learned about the backstory of his voice actor.  

Let the shitstorm begin! I'll be watching from the sideline.  

[bonkusdonkus]

Video Games are still GOOD! Just look a little closer!

I feel like everywhere I go I see people bemoaning how games aren't fun anymore, or getting stuck in a rage loop about how their favorite game series have been turned into cash farms by big AAAs who don't understand what video games are. And like, I get it. A lot of the big online Live service franchises have just turned to mush at this point, trying to squeeze every last penny out of you, and using psychological tricks to get you hooked so you keep coming back for more. And some of the big AAA single player games really feal like they're either recycling the same formula over and over, or chasing every trend they can find in a desperate bid for relevance. The games we love get drained of all the passion, artistry, and love that made us fall in love with them in the first place, replaced with monetization and mediocrity to squeeze our nostalgia for all it's worth. The devs make big promises, then fail to deliver over and over, and we get phoned in apology after phoned in apology.

It's exhausting, infuriating, downright unacceptable. I totally get why people get so bent out of shape about it. But, I also get really upset when people say things like "There are no good games anymore!"

Because... Listen. Listen, listen, listen.

There are still incredible, mind-blowing games coming out all the time. Games made with love, passion, and with creativity unrestrained by incompetent corporate leadership who don't know their butt from a hole in the ground. This year alone has been a MASSIVE year for videogames!

We got a Deadspace remake that was actually good, a 3D kirby game, TOTK, Pikmin 4, Like a Dragon Ishin, Final Fantasy 16, a remake of Metroid Prime of all things, Baldur's Gate 3 is tearing up the internet as we speak and breaking record after record, Street Fighter 6, the Resident Evil 4 remake, Hi-Fi Rush, the list goes on and on! And that's not even all of them! MORE are coming! Armored Core 6 is right around the corner and I CAN'T WAIT!

And that's not even mentioning the endless tide of incredible Indie games! There's so many! Indie devs have been goin NUTS this year. We got Dredge, a fishing horror game of all things, games like Psuedoreglia reminding everyone why 3D Platformers once ruled gaming, Warhammer Boltgun is just a solid boomer shooter especially if you're a 40k fan, Sons of the Forest, Wildfrost, Darkest Dungeon 2 finally came to steam, Dave the Diver somehow made being a fishing roguelike super engaging, Blasphemous 2 is almost here and it looks sick, and those are just the ones off the top of my head. So. Many. GAMES. just from this year!

If you're one of those people struggling with modern gaming, I understand. It's rough out there. But I'm begging you, please, please! Don't give up on video games! If you're sick of watching Activision Blizard spiral their beloved franchises into oblivion in a conflagration of short sighted greed, or seeing Ubisoft release the same handful of games over and over again with a different coat of paint, try expanding your horizons a bit.

Maybe experiment with some genres you've never tried, or try some old classics that you never got around to playing! Look into some Indie games, there's like a thousand videos on you tube shouting out tons of good ones, or just look at some reviews! There are so many games, of any genre you can imagine, and even some that defy genre altogether.

There are just too many good games out there to throw up your hands and say "Nope! I'm done!" After a bad experience.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Whomp

Debut: Super Mario 64 

You know what I’ve been thinking about lately? Super Mario 64. Haven’t we all, really? Between all the recent datamines and general online discussion, I can’t help but wonder about Super Mario 64! 

Something I don’t think Mario 64 gets enough appreciation for, is being the birthplace of our beloved Whomps! At least, I certainly belove them. Don’t you? We’ve covered pretty much every “Thwomp” variant in the past, and sure, Whomps may be nowhere near the “obscure” side of enemies, but a splendid design is a good thing to appreciate anytime! 

Not only is this their debut, but they get a whole stage themed around them: the Whomp’s Fortress, if by “fortress” you mean a vague collection of scattered obstacles and platforms floating in the sky, like most 64 stages! That sure is a lot of... textures! My favorite part is the little paddling pool near the bottom.

And who could forget the Whomp in all their original polygonal glory? Clearly they just wanted to make an enemy who is just a rectangle with a texture on top, yet the design had all its charm even back then! The sunken eyes with glowing red pupils, the H-shaped mouth with the crooked teeth... it’s very cute, in an ugly way. And on the back, their weak spot is a crack with a bandage on top! Adorable!

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it- that’s why the Whomp has only really had a few subtle redesigns over the years! When they appeared in Mario 64 DS, they looked just a little bit nicer to look at. They were also in New Super Mario Bros. DS, using the same model- a 3D only enemy in a 2D game, how strange indeed! Their first appearance in a new mainline game in 10 whole years- and it probably just happened because they wanted to reuse assets.

Another redesign? Don’t mind if I do! The Whomp’s grand return to the third dimension happened in Mario Galaxy 2, really cementing them (hah) as a modern Mario classic. This time, they’re huge! And square-ish! And uh, their eyes aren’t wacky anymore. No longer having a band-aid, they instead have a big ground-pound symbol on their back now, which must be just awful, right? Can you imagine having a big logo emblazoned on your back which says “crush me with your butt here”?

This here is their artwork from Mario Party 9. It’s the same as the art from Galaxy 2, but their eyes are glowy now. I just thought this was funny.  But I’m getting ahead of myself here! Before I talk about Mario Party, I need to talk about...

Their monarch, the big bad Whomp King! He’s just... He’s just a big Whomp. He acts just like other Whomps, but he’s big and takes three hits. What’s totally memorable about this boss, though, is the villain monologue he gives before fighting! 

“It makes me so mad! We build your houses, your castles, we pave your roads, and still you walk all over us. Do you ever say thank you? No! Well, you're not going to wipe your feet on me. I think I'll crush you just for fun! Do you have a problem with that? Just try to pound me, wimp! Ha!” 

Uh oh! Looks like Mario’s world has a little problem with under-valuing essential workers! Good thing our world has nothing like that. Well, jokes aside, it’s a pretty cheeky nod at how the Whomps are made of stone- but one has to wonder much of this tragic backstory is serious! It must be a pretty nasty lot in life, huh? 

Don’t feel bad- in 64 DS and Mario Galaxy 2, the Whomp King got a snazzy new crown! At least someone appreciates him a bit!

Well, it wasn’t just him: Galaxy 2′s Throwback Galaxy was one big reimagining of Whomp’s Fortress, meaning this is probably the most Whomp-focused game released in the past decade. The music was remixed, the boss fight was revamped- all in all, a lovely throwback indeed!

And the Whomp has basically just... stuck around! You may have noticed the image at the top (from Super Mario Party) has a slightly different design, being a little more rectangular with smaller, thinner eyes and a more angular mouth! They definitely redesigned the Whomp again at some point, but I couldn’t tell you exactly when... Either way, I’m glad they’re here for good! 

Not that Whomps ever really went anywhere! In the years between Super Mario 64 and its remake, Whomps survived almost exclusively in Mario Party (and other spin-offs), functioning mainly as roadblocks that don’t allow the player to pass!

Which brings me to my final point- between their design and this function, the Whomp is most likely based on the mythological yōkai called... the Nurikabe! And since I’d love nothing more, I’ll now go into a long-winded tangent about what the Nurikabe is, and... Hey, wait!! Come back! It’ll be interesting, I swear! Don’t cut off the post! Hey-

Yeah, yeah. You’re all sick of my long-winded yōkai posts. But I’m happy you joined me here, even if it was out of pity. Let’s talk about the Nurikabe!

Look at this big guy! What a card! Nurikabe literally translates to plaster wall, and they take the form of a big invisible wall that blocks the way of travellers at night. Since they’re invisible, they naturally don’t have many illustrations- leave it to Shigeru Mizuki to depict them as a large, goofy-looking slab of stone! This Nurikabe joined the main cast of the GeGeGe no Kitaro manga, and thus quickly became a cornerstone (haha) of their popular depictions!

(To be fair, there does exist an old illustration of the Nurikabe as a strange, lumpy dog thing... but I’m not MUCH of a fan? I think a literal stone wall is so much more charming!)

Come on, look at this! What could be better? 

Ōkami has a rather lovely Nurikabe-looking guy! Though his design is splendid, if you’ve played Ōkami you likely remember him as “the extremely frustrating memory puzzle” or “the memory puzzle that is literally scientifically impossible for the human brain to solve”. Shame!

Yo-kai Watch has the Murikabe, a.k.a “Noway” in the English version! “Muri” means “no way”. So like, it’s a pun. Hoho.

Nioh’s Nurikabe is quite scary, but also rather cool! Don’t you think? I still know very little about Nioh, but whenever I look at its yōkai I think “Dang! That’s cool!”, and I’m right, and it is cool. 

The Super Sentai series has two whole Nurikabe monsters, each based on a different Nurikabe look! While the latter is quite cool, I’m in love with the former and its weird, grungy brick wall look! It’s like, the dictionary definition of Gnarly! Though I know very little about tokukatsu shows, I think its kind of fascinating how creative they can get with designing humanoid monsters suits!

You may be wondering: was this entire post just a thinly-veiled excuse for me to talk about the Nurikabe? And to that I say:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmaybe....???

[breadknight-likes-things]

Bread's Game Journal 01/18/21: Microsoft Is Buying Activision-Blizzard And I Am Very Happy.

To come out in front of this, let me just say, yes Monopolies are bad for any creative industry in which they're present. That said, I not only have no qualms with Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard for near 70 billion dollars, I am in fact completely ecstatic that it's happened. Let's not beat around the bush here, Activision-Blizzard has had a rough year, or so, in the news. Widespread abuse revelations, constant delays, Booby Kotick in general, it was pretty much one long downhill slope. Now though? Now I have some hope, and let me explain why. Activision in general holds, arguably, about 80% of the IP's that are important to me as someone who loves video games. A few years ago they actually started doing something with some of the bigger ones they held. Crash and Spyro got fantastic remakes, Crash got a new game, even Tony Hawk came back for a brief, but fantastic remake of the first two games. Then none of those games made a billion dollars, and Activision threw them all in the hottest pile of trash you've ever seen without a second thought. Activision is one of the most brutally stupid companies to ever exist. They're so obsessed with sure thing bets, that they've taken almost every studio they own, all of whom have shown great talent in the past, and place them all on one franchise, instead of growing any kind of diversity of output. But now, we might actually be free. You know what company of late has shown a fantastic willingness to use their IP to explore new and different genres? Microsoft. You know what company wants and needs smaller budget content that doesn't necessarily need to make a trillion dollars? Microsoft. And they're the ones who bought Activision! You see where I'm going with this?! None of this is even to mention the possibilities laid now in front of existing games. Could you imagine some kind of World of Warcraft subscription being added to PC Gamepass? It wouldn't just save some of us a lot of money, but could cause a large new base of people to discover the game! Overwatch could see an influx of players. Even just adding the back catalog of games from the Activision-Blizzard lineup could drive Game Pass numbers for a long time. Imagine a day when Call of Duty games, which are notorious for stubbornly keeping their full price even years after they're irrelevant, are all added to Game Pass for players to easily access whenever they wanted. Again, I know it's isn't super thrilling to see the makings of a monopoly form, but you know what? Right now I truly don't care. For me, this is indisputable good news. I truly cannot wait for this deal to go all the way through, and to finally feel excited about the future of these IP again. Because boy, do I gotta say, I'm sick as hell of just sort of shrugging and thinking "Well, at lest WoW still makes enough money for them to keep making more of it.".

[letterboxd]

Spectacular Spectacular!

On the twentieth anniversary of its explosion onto big screens, Ella Kemp high-kicks into the Moulin Rouge! once again, accompanied by screenwriter Craig Pearce and a chorus line of jukebox-musical academics and swoony Letterboxd fans.

“You’re always writing for yourself, for the film you want to see. I like all kinds of different films and I think teenage girls do too.” —Craig Pearce, Moulin Rouge! co-writer

This is a story about love. A love born at the turn of the twentieth century in an iconic Parisian cabaret and brought to life in 2001 on Australia’s most spectacular sound stage. A valentine to excess, greed, fantasy and, above all, to the fundamental Bohemian ideals: truth, beauty, freedom and love. This is the story of Moulin Rouge! and how it still burns bright, two decades on, in the hearts of romantics all over the world.

The film, a fateful love story between penniless writer Christian and dazzling courtesan Satine—played by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman—premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 9, 2001 and opened in New York and Los Angeles cinemas only weeks later, on May 18. Cast and crew fought hard to get it there: unimaginably, writer-director Baz Luhrmann’s father passed away on the first day of filming, and Kidman’s then-marriage was in turmoil. “There were times of beautiful moments, but there were times where we were like, ‘This is so hard’,” Luhrmann recently told an Australian journalist.

And, though this seems strange to say in a world that has since welcomed Mamma Mia!, Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, making a movie musical early in the millennium was a high-risk pursuit. Luhrmann again: “‘Musicals will never be popular again’ … I can’t tell you how many times I was told that.”

“It’s part of a cycle,” explains Dr. Eleonora Sammartino, an academic specializing in contemporary American film musicals. “It came after a period in the 1990s where musicals had disappeared from the big screen.” Lisa Duffy, Letterboxd member and Doctor of Hollywood Musicals, agrees: “Films coming out [that year] were a lot more dour, so this was a real gamble.”

Nobody understood this gamble better than the film’s co-writer, Craig Pearce, who has been Luhrmann’s close friend and professional partner since the pair were students together. Moulin Rouge! is the third and final entry in what we now know as their red-curtain trilogy, alongside Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Romeo + Juliet (1996).

“Baz had been thinking about the parallels between the Moulin Rouge and Andy Warhol’s Factory,” Pearce recalls. “Places where artists congregate, where it’s more than a place, it’s a petri dish of creativity. Like The Factory, and Studio 54, the Moulin Rouge was a place where the old and the wealthy pay a lot of money to hang out with the young and the sexy.”

At the end of the twentieth century, however, the Moulin Rouge wasn’t all that great (the original had burnt down in 1915). Pearce recalls: “We went to Paris in 1999 on a research trip and discovered, to our horror, that the Moulin Rouge now is just a hideous tourist trap. So we had to go on this journey to find out how this amazing creativity—artists and dancers and musicians—came out of what now feels like this tawdry girlie show.”

With the location and period locked in, Pearce and Luhrmann worked to find the story’s driving force. “This movie wouldn’t work without the exclamation point,” writes Adelaide. Pearce is the first to admit this: “It’s saying it’s Moulin Rouge, but it’s not that one. What we’re trying to do is heighten truth, but you have to start with that underlying truth,” he explains. “It’s not casting around for ‘what would be a cool idea’ because you never come up with one. It’s never as interesting as the truth. Like, there was an elephant in the garden of the Moulin Rouge. And why does that matter? It matters because there are certain inherent logics in the way human beings operate.”

“It's a musical of recycled parts. It’s a story which, beat for beat, has been told for centuries. It’s a staged show drawn from the lives of the characters themselves… This is a film [that] is bold enough not just to say that all art is about finding your own meanings behind someone else’s ideas, and that all art is just copying and stealing, but that this can be totally valid and authentic. When Nicole Kidman sings ‘Your Song’ to the Duke, she’s stealing from the writer, and Luhrmann is stealing from Elton John. But when Ewan McGregor is singing to Kidman, it’s the most magical moment you could possibly imagine. That’s what makes ‘Moulin Rouge!’ a true masterpiece. Cinema has never been more fake, and cinema has rarely been more real.” —Sam

Moulin Rouge! borrows from all over. There are hints of La Traviata, of Cabaret and of Émile Zola’s Nana. There were Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings (John Leguizamo tremendously embodies the painter in the film), Baudelaire and Verlaine’s literature, Jason and the Argonauts, Homer’s Odyssey, and the revues of the 1920s and ’30s. “Moulin Rouge! really embraces that vaudevillian component,” says Dr. Hannah Robbins, a Broadway and Hollywood musicals specialist.

Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann writing in Paris (1998) and New York (2019). / Photos from Luhrmann’s Twitter

“This genre lends itself to repetition and fragmentation,” Sammartino expands. “It’s part of the syntax of the musical and has always been, this idea of borrowing from other sources. This doesn’t take away from the daring postmodern approach Moulin Rouge! is defined by, it’s simply further proof that it’s, well, a very good musical.”

Above all else, the core of Moulin Rouge! is inspired by the myth of Orpheus of Thrace and his doomed love affair with the beautiful Eurydice, whom he followed into Hades after she died. “The show must go on, Satine,” the nightclub’s impresario Harold Zidler grimly tells his star, as their world begins to crumble. “We’re creatures of the underworld. We can’t afford to love.”

It wasn’t the first time Pearce and Luhrmann had looked to ancient mythology. Strictly Ballroom’s mantra, which tells us “a life lived in fear is a life half lived” owes everything to David and Goliath. But with the Orphean myth, the screenwriters were looking to dig deeper, to find something much darker. “The Orphean myth is a romantic tragedy in its essence,” Pearce explains. “David and Goliath is more youthful, and it’s about saying that belief can conquer anything. But as you get older people get sick, they die, and life is about resilience and finding ways to embrace the hard things in life and move forward.”

That might sound antithetical to the all-singing, all-dancing nature of the movie musical, but the genre has been trying to tell devastating stories like Moulin Rouge! for decades. “Hollywood is rarely interested in buying and remaking stories with devastating endings as much as stage musicals are,” Duffy explains. (See: Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera.)

This reluctance can be traced back to the classic era, during which there were rules about the ways a musical could end under the censorship laws of the Production Code. Simply put, they had to have a happy ending. (Which also led to a fair amount of bizarre deus ex machina to guarantee a nice, cheery final act).

But then in the 1960s the Code fades away, and Hollywood starts engaging with violence, sex and explicit trauma on-screen. “We have much more freedom in the contemporary era to have people die explicitly,” Duffy says. “And that’s why we keep returning to Moulin Rouge!: there’s the explicit negotiation of our entry into the fantasy world, and then we’re devastated, and the curtains close and we’re in reality again.”

“It’s one of the great 21st-century films. Baz Luhrmann is only good when figuring out how to make historical periods of excess into contemporary displays of grotesquerie, somehow turning great films (‘French Cancan’) or great literature (‘The Great Gatsby’) into tacky Technicolor vomit that somehow understands the underlying sorrow of the material better than any serious-minded adaptation.” —Jake

The red-curtain trilogy has a distinct set of rules: one, the viewer must know how the film ends from the start; two, the story must be set in a heightened world; and three, it must contain a device that keeps the audience awake at all times, whether that be ballroom dancing, scattershot Shakespearean dialogue, or pop songs.

“Part of the appeal of the artifice is that it gives the audience permission to say, ‘This isn’t real, you’re about to see a fantasy, and that’s okay,’” Duffy says. “The pleasure is the fantasy of it. The whole film is us seeing how Christian is imagining what happened—and the musical is the most extreme genre that allows such imagination.”

The point was never to temper the elaborate, hyper-aware fakeness of it all, but to really commit to it. Says Robbins, “Musicals are ultimately artificial and exclusively constructed. And that’s what Moulin Rouge! achieves and quite a lot of films don’t. It goes, ‘This is where the story is going, this is the energy, this will be played in the soundtrack.’ There’s a deliberate thought process there.”

Luhrmann recently said: “The way we made the movie is the way the movie is.” An under-explored aspect of Moulin Rouge! is how the whole affair, with its ‘Spectacular Spectacular’ musical-within-a-musical device, is an insider’s guide to the mechanics and politics of making ‘big art’. How money can control both the art (the dastardly Duke insisting on “his” ending), and the artists (Satine is never told she is dying, because she is the golden goose upon whose shoulders the success of the company rests; Christian is likewise left in the dark, because he is the scriptwriter who needs to finish writing the show. Both are wrung dry for their talents).

There are shades of Luhrmann in Zigler, the impresario juggling cast, crew, investors and opening dates (Moulin Rouge! was originally slated for December 2000). Christian and friends in playwriting mode are surely Pearce and Luhrmann themselves, searching for the most economical way to say “the hills are vital, intoning the descant”.

And, from the show-within-a-show rehearsals, to the bustle of the backstage, to the gun-chase through the wooden bones of the fly tower, the production details are Catherine Martin to the very last diamante. Nobody does daring bedazzlement quite like ‘CM’, Luhrmann’s fellow producer and life partner. Electricity was the new, exciting thing in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century and this film was lit.

A necklace worn by Satine as a gift from the Duke was made of real diamonds and platinum. Designed by Stefano Canturi, It was the most expensive piece of jewellery ever specifically made for a film, with 1,308 diamonds weighing 134 carats, and worth an estimated one million dollars. Needless to say, Martin won both costume and production design Oscars for the film.

Also among the film’s eight Academy Award nominees: editor Jill Bilcock, about whose singular craft there is a recent documentary. Her breathless, kaleidoscopic cutting (also deployed in Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet) dropped us right on the dance floor; one 65-second sequence contained a boggling 85 cuts. And this is on the back of her superbly judged opening, a scene that repeats itself as she places Christian at both the start of his love story, and its devastating aftermath—heartbroken, unshaven, self-medicating, reaching for the words to begin making sense of his loss.

“I wondered, for the first hour of this, how Baz Luhrmann had managed to balance such in-your-face stylistic audacity while maintaining a genuine feeling of care for the characters and their struggles—is it all down to Ewan McGregor’s wonderfully earnest face, or the way Nicole Kidman’s smouldering-temptress persona is worn down by one of the most charming cinematic uses of Elton John’s ‘Your Song’? But as the ‘Elephant Love Medley’ transformed into David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, I stopped caring, I just swooned.” —Kat

If electricity was the thing that drove the kids wild in the 1900s, the internet was on everyone’s minds in 2001. We were just figuring out how to juggle tabs and text people. The real magic dust sprinkled throughout Moulin Rouge! is, obviously, the cacophonous soundtrack, which made sense to our collective, fragmented consciousness.

“No other musical of the modern era has so perfectly captured the sense of spinning an iPod wheel every 45 seconds to play something else,” writes Jake of the medley of songs by David Bowie, Fat Boy Slim, Nirvana, Police, Elton John, Rufus Wainwright, Madonna and many others.

Luhrmann and Pearce stopped at nothing to get every single track from every single artist they wanted. The journey took more than two years, and some bodies were left at the side of the road. “You constantly have to kill your darlings,” Pearce sighs. RIP to Rod Stewart’s ‘Tonight’s the Night’, The Rolling Stones’ ‘Under My Thumb’, Prince’s ‘Raspberry Beret’ and Fifth Dimension’s ‘Up, Up and Away’. (Hot air balloons were big in 2001.)

"We wanted the music to be modern, because we didn’t want it to feel like a fusty, crusty world,” says Pearce. “We wanted to find the universal modern parallels that have existed since time immemorial.” But it wasn’t just about finding the most popular songs at the time. “The structure had to be driven by the needs of the story,” the screenwriter explains. “The musicals on film that tend to fail are the ones where the music feels like a film clip. If it’s not serving the emotional needs of the story, you very quickly check out and it becomes boring. With good musical storytelling, it builds and builds to a point where you can’t do anything but express yourself through song.”

Has there ever been a more desperately romantic promise than when Christian starts telling Satine he doesn’t have much to give her, before nailing that one perfect high note to reassure her that his gift is his song? Why, yes: when the mirrored love stories of Christian and Satine, and of the penniless sitar player and the courtesan in ‘Spectacular Spectacular’, meet at their dramatic peak, with ‘Come What May’. (The film’s only original song, it had been submitted for the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack by writers David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert.)

“Moulin Rouge! was successful because it was using songs from different ages and periods, appealing to different audiences with something they could have a connection to. So it wasn’t just boomers, not just millennial or Gen X,” says Sammartino. “Something like Rock of Ages, for example, was much more narrow in terms of the kind of music you needed to like.”

“This film is a dramatic bitch and I love her.” —Mulaney

‘Moulin Rouge!’ co-writer and director Baz Luhrmann.

There is a pattern to our most emphatic reviews for the film: they come from relatively young people, who mainly identify as women. It’s something critics anticipated back in 2001. The New York Times wrote, in a fairly ambivalent review, that “young audiences, especially girls, will feel as if they had found a movie that was calling them by name”. We don’t have time to fully dig into the antiquated notion that “low art” (the publication’s quippy headline for that review was “An Eyeful, an Earful, Anachronism”) is aimed specifically at women, but surely we have to ask the question twenty years on: does anyone still think this could possibly be true?

“You’re always writing for yourself, for the film you want to see,” says Pearce. “I like all kinds of different films and I think teenage girls do too.” And let’s remember, it was Harry Styles who said of the broad demographic of his fanbase back in 2017: “Teenage girls—they don’t lie. If they like you, they're there. They don’t act ‘too cool’. They like you, and they tell you.”

Robbins: “The rom-com has made the connection between song and emotional display about female pain. The Emma Thompson crying to Joni Mitchell kind of lineage has tempered musicals—people think that’s what Mamma Mia! is: women and mothers and daughters and feelings.” Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a lot of musical-related data suggesting a broader scope. “When I went to see Frozen on Broadway, kids of all genders were wearing Olaf costumes, much more than princess ones. That is not the narrative Disney would like. And when people gender musicals and think of the princesses franchises, they don’t look to the fact that The Lion King and Aladdin were more successful.”

There has been an undeniable effort to reel male audiences in to see 21st-century musicals. On Hugh Jackman’s welcome, flamboyant career pivot (surprising to anyone but Australians), Duffy says: “Casting Wolverine in Les Misérables and The Greatest Showman is very, ‘See, manly men can do it too!’” Let’s not forget that Ewan McGregor had gotten his big break as freewheeling heroin addict Mark Renton in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting just six years prior to playing Christian.

Indeed, says Duffy, “more of my male friends have seen Moulin Rouge! than other musicals. The MTV tone might have been significant, and there was the ‘Lady Marmalade’ music video—the fact you have all these beautiful pop stars writhing around in corsets. And just having David Bowie on the soundtrack is like, ‘Okay, this isn’t just girl music.’ Pop music offers an easier way to move past the stigma of show tunes.”

Crucially, Robbins notes that all of this prejudice, and the effort to tear it down, is speaking to, and about, a very specific—cisgender, heterosexual—subsection of audiences. “I always wonder where the critics think the queer audiences are. I do wonder if there’s a cis-het vibe going on that has even more to do with it, reinforcing that norm rather than actually focusing on young girls as an audience.”

I asked my interviewees whether they thought, twenty years on, that Moulin Rouge! would be better received today—and which parts of our contemporary cinematic and musical fabric owe a debt to Luhrmann’s jukebox wonder. “We’re more receptive but we have specific demands,” says Robbins. “And today’s musicals sink or swim on whether they meet those demands. So The Greatest Showman is the Moulin Rouge! of now. I think people would be lying if they didn’t say that the cinematography in Moulin Rouge! hasn’t affected almost every movie musical that has been made since. We wouldn’t have ‘Rewrite the Stars’ if we didn’t have ‘Sparkling Diamonds’.”

Duffy agrees: “So many things that come after you can draw a line directly to Moulin Rouge!—Pitch Perfect, Rock of Ages, Happy Feet… but most significantly, Glee would not exist without this movie. The jukebox musicals of the 21st century owe everything to Moulin Rouge! and the blueprint it lays down.”

Among the films that premiered at Cannes in 2001—David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher—was another kooky little number: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson’s animated Shrek. Two jukebox musicals in the same prestige film festival, at a moment when the genre was considered deeply uncool? What a time to be alive!

If the last eighteen months have taught us anything, it’s that we film lovers enjoy nothing more than a comfort rewatch of our favorites. Moulin Rouge! and Shrek (and French Shrek) delivered untold comfort in the pandemic—but they had also soothed us much earlier, in the months following the unspeakable tragedy of the 9/11 attacks.

“For me it was very much a comfort film,” recalls Duffy, who had discovered Moulin Rouge! as a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old, during her first year away from home, studying in New York. “Part of that was rooted in this really traumatic thing that had happened, and all of us wanting to escape into this fantasy world as much as possible.”

Luhrmann said, in his recent Australian interview, “I love to see people united and uplifted and exulted. It’s a privilege to be a part of helping people find that.” As life outside our homes resumes, Moulin Rouge! will very much be part of a return to exultant living. The live musical—interrupted by Covid—opens in Melbourne in August and on the West End and Broadway in the fall.

Pearce last saw the film on a large screen in a derelict warehouse in London, at Secret Cinema’s interactive, carnivalesque spectacular. “I have to say, I was really proud of the film,” the screenwriter says, finally letting himself speak fondly of his accomplishment well over an hour into our conversation.

“I mean, some people liked it back in the day, but you’re never really satisfied with your work. You just tend to see the things that could have been better. But seeing the love for the film was really, really emotional.”

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Craig Pearce is currently producing ‘Pistol’—a biopic miniseries on the Sex Pistols, directed by Danny Boyle—and his next film with Luhrmann is a biopic of Elvis Presley, with Austin Butler playing the king of rock and roll. Additional thanks to Dr. Eleonora Sammartino, Lisa Duffy and Dr. Hannah Robbins.

[tearasshouse]

Vidya ramblings pt 3B

Previous list here.

Onwards and upwards to the B-tier games. I guess its a good sign that we have so much to play, and that the general bar for quality has risen so much year on year, such that B-tier games would easily slot into my A-tier list in a slower year, or C-tier games slotting into B-tier for that matter. I have to deliberately go looking for chaff these days, is what I’m saying. “B-tier games” sound worse than what they actually mean on my list: those I had very few qualms about, or their strengths were enough to compensate for their shortcomings and I generally looked forward to firing them up instead of doing so out of my completionist’s sick, demented obligation. So! Pat yourselves on the back, game devs.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (N3DS)

I’m not an FE mark by any means, but when I’m looking for something to play on a Nintendo platform (3DS is the only one I own), FE games are invariably among the scant handful of their franchises I turn towards. Awakening was my first FE, so as a latter day entrant I have to judge all future games by that metric. I wouldn’t outright call Echoes the better game, although it is a better game in many aspects. The “feet on the ground” dungeon exploration is a nice addition; the art is absolutely gorgeous, the soundtrack is stellar, and despite not having the romances or pair-up feature, the combat was solid, even if the maps and objectives are very rote and frankly dull. The cast was very enjoyable, and plot well, it’s typical dragons and destiny and royalty will save the day, blah blah vanilla FE storytelling. It was a nice distraction in the early months of the pandemic, but I might have to give the edge to Awakening here. I am looking forward to playing all 3 routes of Fates sometime this year or the next though.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)

Finally, I hear you groan, an actual 2020 release. Certainly the most lavish remake I’ve played since... RE2? I should have more nostalgia for this game, as the OG was technically my first JRPG and I’d spent an entire summer on it, with my friend’s PSX copy and his strategy guide laid out in front of me. But, I went into this with hype in check and nostalgia completely dulled, maybe because I actually am just a dried up, withered out old fart with a prune for a heart? Anyway, game is pretty good, there isn’t much to say about it that others haven’t already gushed over or criticized to death. I will say though that it’s been a while since a game’s difficulty tuning and mechanics absolutely kicked my ass. You need to learn the combat system in this or you won’t get very far, certainly not on Hard Mode anyway. I’m a bit wary about the 2nd and 3rd (possibly 4th?) entries in this project. Just how will they re-interpret the world map? How are they possibly going to tie everything up? How much of the OG game will be cut or reconfigured, and how much will be filler? Will we have to sit through more of those interminable “slide through narrow crevices to mask our shit loading times” sections? Will the environment textures actually load up properly? 

Hades (EGS)

Yeah, it’s a Supergiant joint, and I’m a mark for Greek mythology, what more do you need? The only reason it’s on a lower rung here, and it’s not a fault of the game so much as what I look for in games. I’m just not much of an arcade-style, score attacker or rogue/rogue-lite player. If I wanted creative re-use of assets with super high replayability, I’ll go for a MP shooter, or an immersive sim. All that is to say that the game is rather short and repetitive (by design), and the drip-feed of story, character development, unlocks or trying out new builds and personal challenges just doesn’t do it for me. What is here is quality, through and through without a doubt and the whole 31 hours it took me to do my first clear (again, one and done - that’s all for me) were just good old fashion gaming fun.

Death Mark (PS Vita)

Vita means life! This game gets the dubious distinction of being the last physical Vita game I’ll ever buy (I was as surprised as you you must be, mhm!). The only reason it’s on the B-tier list and not the lower rung is a testament to its successfully creeping me out from beginning to end. Which is saying something, because it’s a typical horror story of urban legends manifest as hauntings and curses, done as a very low budget VN fashion. If you’re used to VNs with more QoL features like in ye olde Steins;Gates or some such, well, you’ll be quite disappointed here. No text logs, no touch controls, extreme reuse of very limited assets, etc. I understand that the dev, Experience are uhm, experienced DRPG makers, and that influence is certainly felt in the “boss battles” here, though they are somewhat clunky and use adventure game logic, which is to say not very logical or poorly explained. This is also on Steam, Switch and PS4 so... go forth and acquire.

Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4)

Unlike Tearaway Unfolded, I will say that the PS4 version is the way to go with superior controls, performance, visual fidelity, etc. You lose nothing by going to the big screen. Still one of the most charming things Sony has put out, and like it’s successor, it’s still a somewhat underbaked game. The definition of a cult classic or a B-tier perennial, simply swimming in well-earned 7s. This would rate higher (while still within the B-tier) had it not been my 3rd time going through this, but newcomers will be treated to something fresh and special. Anytime I get to shill for Gravity Rush is an opportunity I will gladly take.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (PS4)

The very definition of a B-tier game in my books! Well crafted and big budgeted enough by the task masters, technicians and actors at Naughty Dog to garner a guaranteed spot here. Again, I don’t mean to sound backhanded, but it’s really hard to truly love something this big, with this much broad appeal and craftsmanship. It really is everything that’s right (and wrong) with Sony’s (Western) first party output this past generation. I was slackjawed during the Madagascar car chase, touched during the dramatic moments between Nate and crew, the flashback sequences with Young Nathan were done really well (again, walking sim sections one and all), and UC4 reminded us about why pirate adventures are awesome (themes of obsession and seeking treasure at your own peril be damned). Crushing Mode in this one is truly diabolical (in the not satisfying, simply die-lots way), while the MP is... okay? Forgettable for the whole hour I devoted to it.

SOMA (Steam)

A downer of a sci-fi tale about post-humanism (or transhumanism?), deceptively snuck within a fairly spooky horror thriller. It’s made by the Swedes behind the Amnesia games, partly set in a curious recreation of my hometown of Toronto, about an average dude going through some pretty extraordinary circumstances, and none of it is treated with extraordinariness. It’s definitely a muted affair, and contributes to that grounded, depressing tone. Yeah the human race is long dead and the few consciousnesses left alive are going to live out the rest of their existences in virtual reality until the batteries run out, so what? Get to it, Simon. Smart and logical spatial puzzles underpin the walking sim aspect of the game, and though there’s the slight survival horror/stealth element, I played on Safe Mode cos I could only imagine how frustrating it would be to die to those things. Check it out, it’s great, but it’s not for everyone and in a pinch I wouldn’t want to play something like this, which is why it ends up here in the B-tier.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

Is it bad that I’m praying DreamWorks don’t try to remake the HTTYD movies? Not just because I’m sick of Hollywood live action remakes but also because I just feel it’s perfect as it is and doing a live action of it will be nowhere near as good as the animated movies are.

The storyline of the Dragon movies work better in animation because it allowed the filmmakers to be more creative about showing dragon flights and races as well as dragon behavior

I mean I can’t imagine a live action version of the Toothless/Night Fury mating dance, like it just works as an animation

The reason that the dragons can be both terrifying and cute is because of the animation style - trying to remake them in live action just wouldn’t have that same effect. Some of the dragons communicate with facial expressions as well, and we all know how terrible certain live action remakes have made animal facial expressions look (ie. They’re either TOO human and uncanny or they’re emotionless)

Frankly, I don’t think I could bear to see anyone else play Hiccup or Astrid. Even though they start off as 15 year olds and are voiced by adults throughout, their voices work as they are. I cannot imagine anyone other than Jay Baruchel as Hiccup or America Ferrera as Astrid because they’ve both voiced their characters constantly throughout the movies and the television shows, and they’ve both expressed how much the characters mean to them. Maybe it’s a bit silly on my part but for me, they ARE the characters and anyone else playing their parts would be too much for me. Jay especially because he’s even done a couple of the video games (well, I know he did the first one)

By extension, Christopher Mintz-Plasse has also voiced Fishlegs throughout the shows and movies, and I can’t help but think about Fishlegs whenever I hear his voice. I would also add TJ Miller as Tuffnut because, frankly, he was one of the best voices on the cast and also another one who voiced his character in the TV show (and his improv was fantastic too, he steals the show), but given the whole controversy about him, plus him being replaced in the Hidden World, I’m feeling that’s not as firm a point.

Honestly, I just REALLY do not want to see one of Twitter’s white boys of the month cast as Hiccup. They’ll cast someone like Noah Centipede or Timothee Chalamet whatever their names are and all the fangirls will lose it. That’s NOT Hiccup - the reason we love Hiccup is because he’s a skinny, runt-ish awkward bean of a boy who doesn’t fit in.

The colours of the movies would undoubtedly be dullened down to be more realistic (eg, The Lion King remake) - the locations of the series are bright and colorful and vibrant for good reason.

I can only imagine how they will butcher Astrid if they made a live action remake. They’ll add some bogus plot lines to be more feminist (and trust me, I’m a feminist myself) but it’ll change the plot/relationships. Like they’d probably have Astrid involved in the Red Death battle in the clouds or some shit. Like no, you don’t need to do that - Astrid is awesome and strong as a female character the way she is.

Look, I am all for not offending people and all that, but there’s a limit between “adding diversity/being less offensive” and “let’s be overly Politically Correct to the point where it’s not fun anymore”.

God knows how they would portray Ruffnut, I mean honestly, knowing the way Hollywood is going I wouldn’t shocked if they just cast Jake Paul and Logan Paul as Ruff and Tuff, making Ruff a boy or some shit. Or maybe they’d cast JoJo Siwa or whatever her name is, who even knows at this point.

To be quite honest, I feel that if DreamWorks wants to do more with the How To Train Your Dragon name, they should consider adapting the books into an animated television show. Granted, I know Hiccup would have to be voiced by a kid because he’s 10 in the books, and there’s the issue of how to show Hiccup speaking Dragonese whilst the others don’t understand it (would they speak English for the Dragonese parts and just act like the other humans can’t understand? Or would they actually have them speak actual Dragonese and then have subtitles?). I know that it didn’t work out as a film (the original film plot being much closer to the books) but perhaps as a television show on Netflix or something they could take their time with it. They could adapt like three or four of the books per season.

Better yet, if they did make it into a Netflix show, they could have David Tennant voice the prologue/epilogue parts where Hiccup is an old man and looking back at his life. I think that would be a beautiful way of linking the books and everything together.

But overall, I’m really hoping that DreamWorks doesn’t decide to jump on the live action remake bandwagon like Disney. I’d prefer that they left the movies as they are.

[candyredterezii]

valenwoke replied to your post “hi guys i finally saw the nightmare on elm street reboot i ranted and...”

Why were u mad?

OKAY LET ME GET INTO THIS AS BEST AS I CAN CUS IM SHIT AT EXPRESSING MY THOUGHTS

number one: wes craven wasn’t even asked about this film. they didnt tell him shit they just fucking went and made the movie with his character and his idea and was like byyyyyee which tbf the entire franchise rlly was wes having his like. child taken away from him and bastardized, only being able to reclaim it’s legacy in New Nightmare.

next, lets get into the character.

Freddy Krueger.

We all know Freddy as this really campy and jokey character. He’s a beloved slasher. He was funny and silly and his kills were creative and had funny one liners - robert englund brought to life this character and is one of the big reasons he was so beloved. He was a child murderer, yes, but a big thing along with it is we never actually saw him murder a child in the entire series. There was sexual undertones in subtext, and it was originally he was supposed to be a child predator as well, but they threw it out due to a real life scandal happening at the time and played it more subtext

Now. In the remake when they say they ham up the child predator shit they really, really do and it is NOT fucking pleasant at ALL.

But we will get more into that later.

Freddy in the remake, along with the entire thing tbh, is gritty. Edgy. Dark. He makes one liners and REPEATS OLD JOKES FROM THE SERIES, which throughout was liek. Haha that was in Nightmare (X), wish i was watching that one right now. His jokes were just. Flat. It wasn’t jokes it just made you kinda. Yikes. They weren’t delivered with the mirth and excitement like with Robert Englund.  His makeup made him look like a fish. He was absolutely disgusting. Making gross sexual assaults on Nancy on one point, granted nothing exactly major but enough to make ur skin crawl.

He was played to be just. Revolting.

Which isn’t a bad thing to do for a character - but not to one that has been well loved and rather like a ‘fun wacky uncle’ kinda guy. Not one with an existing legacy to be a wise cracker looney tunes kinda killer.

But let’s get more into the child predator aspect of it because holy fucking shit.

They literally show flashback scenes in the movie of Freddy playing with the kids and it was all like. Cute and sweet if you didn’t know context but seeing him interact with these kids is like. Revolting and makes your stomach churn. Especially them showing the little girl with her back scratched and a five year old nancy crying to her mom how “he takes us to his special cave” and burst into tears because she was fucking defiled constantly. 

Speaking of his special cave. Nancy and Quentin find it. And guess what they find? A bunch of photos of a naked five year old Nancy that Nancy sees and fucking has a break down over it because holy shit that’s fucking disgusting and heavy.

The movie is heavy. Very heavy and makes your stomach sick - and not in a like. Saw movie torture porn kinda way where you are like HAHA SIIICK. But in a fucking crushing reality and just makes you, the viewer, even feel utterly vile as you are watching this character be vulnerable and go through repressed trauma.

The whole movie deals with also Nancy and Quentin and the others apparently having repressed these memories and the parents trying to hide it by hiding their preschool photos and other things from their childhood.

It’s just utterly sickening and makes your skin crawl. Especially as much of Freddy goes after Nancy and speaks so vile to her about how she was his favorite, how beautiful the girl characters still are and how ‘grown up’ they are and just being a fucking creep.

Now that the story is pretty much fucking just. A fucking heap let’s get into the actual movie elements.

The one thing in the original Nightmares I absolutely LOVED was how dream like the dreams were. How they had this kinda dream like quality - it was whimsical! It was creepy and unsettling but also? Really fun? It was CREATIVE.  The deaths were fun and imaginative! The crew had so much fun coming up and creating these kinda deaths that you rlly couldnt get away with in normal stories cus its a DREAM where anything can happen.

Now in this movie? It was just. Oh. We’re in a creepy classroom. Oh looks like we are in silent fucking hill and then one flash of lights AA we are i nthe boiler room oh nooo. Oh nooo u got slashed by freddy and now you’re dead. Okay. Cool.

IT WAS BORING It was gritty dark and jsut snooze. it didnt even give any tension it was just. oh ur trying to be scary and thats it. ok.

Now this movie is also a reboot, meaning it’s a fresh start to the series. So someone who  hasn’t watched the original series should come in without having to watch the other films, right? Wrong. Now in the original movie, we followed the character Tina as a red herring to be the main character. The same thing happens in this movie, we do not follow Nancy (the one character whose name they kept. Which meaning if you have seen the original films, you know Kris is the Tina character and this twist is not gonna work on the previous fans who a MAJORITY IF NOT ALL this movie’s audience was. Even if you haven’t seen the first Nightmare most people know Nancy is the main heroine. I digress.) So we haven’t followed Nancy. At all. We see her once telling Kris she also saw something in her dreams and thats it.

Next we see her is when she comes to see Quentin. Sits down and just says, “Freddy” Where did she get this info? How is the audience supposed to know who tf that is or why or how or just. WHAT???

Okay. WHATEVER.

This movie also plays a lot on old gags, jokes, and visuals from the first movie as like. A homage. But they’re done.. So poorly. It just makes me go, “haha i remember that. wish I was watching that nightmare instead of this one.”

There’s also small plot elements that made me go ??? what. why?? like for example the mother of Kris apparently having kept one of her daughter’s dresses that was slashed when she was ASSAULTED AND DEFILED BY A MAN in a box upstairs with her preschool photos?? Like. Okay.

There is NO CHARM in this movie. No love. No passion. It’s just gritty and dark and just makes the audience feel utterly vile and absolutely tears apart the legacy of Freddy and NOES and everything Robert has done to the character. It has taken Wes’ original idea and story and just said Hey. What if we take this and just make it dark and edgier and SCARY OOOO. And then they tossed it in the trash compactor. 

I feel I’m missing even quite a fucking lot of shit too but. 

I fucking hate this movie so much dude.

[shark-myths]

Folie A Deux

I promised to write FAD meta like, forever ago. It took longer than I planned. Here it is, at last.

Folie is anthemic, artistic; it’s cynicism and heartbreak all layered up in failing hope. It’s Pete saying goodbye to his band and embarking on a new life as a husband and a father. It’s Patrick finding his confidence as a showman just in time for it to turn to ash on his tongue and prompt him to remake himself utterly. It’s Joe finally feeling like he has a role in FOB and creative ownership of his own band. It’s Andy, um, drumming. Super well. Without any particular emotional interpretation on my part because Andy’s, you know, pretty content to just play with his friends.

Without further blathering, allow me to present, at long last: a rambling, tear-filled, official Tryst Theory ™ interpretation of FOB’s fourth-and-almost-final studio album.

I am always struck most by the quality of obstruction in the albums produced during the Commercial Success/’Sell Out’ era. Pete begins obscuring himself for the first time during Infinity on High and especially Folie A Deux: the lyrics become increasingly senseless, more about cleverness and sound that saying things plainly. But he’s so honest during this era too. He tells us exactly what it feels like to be him, to be so pulled apart and scrutinized and sad, to be sick on his own hope. To be sick and fuzzy, made of stuffing, and far away on way-too-many anxiety meds. We get lines that don’t make much sense on the surface, like ‘I’m not a chance, put a heat wave in your pants,’ and we get the self-aware aggression of bops like I Don’t Care.

In the previous era, Pete didn’t really know what it meant, yet—being Pete Wentz. Being so public. Being the face of the band, being the bad guy and the heel. What it would cost. Now he understands that anything he touches, or looks at, or says at loud is going to change. Once he does it, says it, thinks it, feels it, it’s out of his control. It’s owned by someone else. Even his private body, his private phone. Even his decision to defend his friend from an aggressive bouncer onstage. The brand of phone he carries, the girls he texts, who he stands next to in photos, the cities where he plays shows and the cities he does not. Now he understands that his life is not his, but something the public will use to hurt him if we get bored. This is drugstore cowboy Pete. This is a Pete grown so heavy under the weight of his own misery and bullshit that he can barely go on. This is a Pete preparing to say goodbye.

Which is a long way of saying: Folie A Deux fucks me up.

 A little history (sourced heavily from Wikipedia):

The album was recorded from July-September 2008, beginning two months after Pete and Ashlee were married, and released in December 2008, shortly after Bronx was born. They started recording ahead of schedule, without telling the label, and deliberately limited their studio time. They wanted to recapture what they had felt during Grave, when they were racing against their drained back accounts to get the album set down. They wanted that simplicity and rawness, the feeling of being mixed-up kids half living out of a van and making music that felt vibrant and essential. Patrick told AP, “There was something really interesting about that creative process when we were starting out. The more time you have, the more potential you have for excess.” (He thought he dominated Infinity and wanted to pare himself back, reign himself in, for Folir.) They tried to emulate the process and feeling of Grave as much as possible: “first-thought, best-thought.” Joe pushed to be included more in collaboration and felt like he “owned the songs a lot more. It made me really excited about contributing to Fall Out Boy and made me find my role in the band.” Pete made an effort (this is him making an effort, okay) to keep his personal life more sequestered from the writing and use more metaphor and the conceit characters speaking lines, more like a stage musical. And, perhaps true to the feeling of Grave, Pete and Patrick fought painfully and violently over the record. It was personal and artistic for everyone. They felt it was their best work.

Fans tore them apart, of course. Booing anytime they played anything off the new record. The album undersold and public reception did not match the glowing critical reviews. They tried to say something important, to talk about society and convey real messages in their music. They were publicly rebuffed. Joe told Rolling Stone, “Some of us were miserable on stage. Others were just drunk.” The reception, the struggle, cemented what Pete had already decided to do: leave the band.

(Let’s not talk about the last song of what he thought would be their last show ever during which, instead of playing Saturday with his best friends and his me-and-Pat, he had the man who named the band in the first place shave off his signature Pete Wentz hair in a symbolic ritual of fucking morning, let’s not let’s not)

(but in case you want to)

 A little cover art:

I just want you to know that Pete Wentz has the original painting of that cover in his home. IN CASE YOU THINK THAT’S RELEVANT.

This image. With Pete’s furry history. With the costumes and feeling like a zoo animal and playing the role of the heel, with the way he said in the Folie Making Of video that being perceived in media is “like wearing a costume, you’re not who you are.” With his interest especially in bears, the talk of stitches and stuffing and seams, with the Lullabye track and ‘honey is for bees silly bear’ (and Black Cards’ ‘you’re my best friend, honeycomb head’) and the whole Winnie the Pooh vibe. With the devoted companionship and singular love exhibited by Winnie the Pooh and the way he turns back into inert, lifeless stuffing when you grow too old and you forget what he really is and see him as just a toy, empty and pliable, and the way only childhood wonder and innocence can return him to life. How the cover has not just one person on it, but a bear-boy plus one: a madness shared by two. A real bear, and someone who’s just pretending, or just trying to be. What a match, what a catch.

WHAT A PETERICK MASTERPIECE THIS FUCKING ALBUM IS

The liner notes are empty, by the way. For the physical CD. The liner notes are just pictures and names of band members, then production information and thanks to ‘fans, friends, and loves.’ Nothing else. No lyrics. No record. If that’s not foreshadowing—

 And now said masterpiece itself:

1. Disloyal Order of the Water Buffaloes

Okay, so let’s take a step back and imagine for a second the decision-making process that went into writing a magnum fucking opus Peterick anthem to open the album with. Are we all on the same page here? WHAT THE FUCK, were they TRYING to kill me

This album is the fucking Holy Grail of the drug use = Patrick metaphor, and we dive right into it with this one. Boycott love. Detox just to retox. DRAW YOUR OWN HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T PARALLELS. #trysttheory

For all that Pete tried to move away from autobiographical lyrics on this album, his view of himself is plain in this song: ‘perfect boys with their perfect lives, no one wants to hear you sing about tragedy.’

The line ‘fell out of bed, butterfly bandage, but don’t worry’ brings up my theories about what dreams mean. Falling out of bed and getting hurt is a clear consequence of dreaming so hard you forgot it was just a dream (or trysting with your best friend and forgetting there could be consequences, real people you can hurt and yourself included). ‘You’ll never remember, your head is far too blurry’ ties into w.a.m.s as well as Cooperstown and the idea of being blurry-headed, impaired because you’re fucked up on love or some other drug, and making choices you’d regret, if you could remember them. Making mistakes you’ll have to live with whether you remember them or not.

(Romantically speaking, water buffaloes are disloyal: Google suggests a single male water buffalo can sire as many as 100 baby buffs in a single mating season. It seems pretty obvious throughout this album that issues of infidelity were large in Pete’s mind while writing these lyrics.)

2. I Don’t Care

This song makes me think of Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) so much. Starting over again in Mexico, friends who don’t care about you, the blues-pop bounce to it and repeating riff? Sonically, they have a lot in common.

Pete may be playing on his previous reference to Closer (‘he tastes like you only sweeter’) with the opening line here—‘say my name and his in the same breath, I dare you to say they taste the same’—which is the saddest and most painful movie about heterosexuals you will ever watch, but writing that line and putting it on Patrick’s tongue? That may be the gayest thing that happens to me all night, guys, and I’m a queer girl with a bottle of wine and a long, long Friday evening ahead of me.

This song is so much a conversation Pete is having with the world about his fame and notoriety, imo. He calls it a narcissist’s anthem but I don’t think that’s it, exactly. I think—and the music video backs me up on this—it’s a coy wink at their own reputation, all the shit people are slinging about them and Pete specifically. We get a drug reference here, too: ‘take a chance, let your body get a tolerance.’

Also, Patrick is a nun in the video. Pete put Patrick in a literal fucking habit. What more do you need to me to say to prove definitely that Pete is desperately in love with him? This. Kid. In. A. Nun’s. Habit.

3. She’s My Winona

IF THIS SONG ISN’T A DISCUSSION OF HOW PETE HAD TO REVISE HIS PETERICK AMBITIONS WHEN HE FOUND OUT ASHLEE WAS PREGNANT

(There are so many suicide references in this song I want to join Pete and the band’s manager in cheering and celebrating all over again that our boy lived to 28. You can physically feel him resigning himself to living a long life in these verses.)

‘Hell or glory, I don’t want anything in between.’ I take this line as pretty directly about him and Patrick: he doesn’t care if they go to hell and it ruins the band, he wants to take the risk, because he thinks together they could be—glory. He wants to roll the dice. (Take a chance—I’m not a chance.) And ‘then came a baby boy with long eyelashes, and daddy said “you gotta show the world the thunder.”’ In other words, he wanted hell or glory, ruination or Patrick, but then along came his son. And his priorities changed. Of course they did. True love is one thing; raising your child is another.

‘We had a good run, even I have to admit.’

(And—here’s the thing—people ask me sometimes, what I think about Pete marrying Ashlee. “Do you think he married her just because it was the right thing to do?” No. I think he believed in love and family and forever. I think Pete believed it would work. I think he wanted it to. I think that’s why the trysting, and eventually the band, stopped: because Pete tried his fucking best. I think he loved her and loved the idea of a future for himself—the first time he’s ever really imagined that. The idea of somewhere to belong, a real family, one that he felt part of. I think he wanted more than anything for it to work precisely because it was so different from what he, or anyone else, ever expected for him. He said ‘I want to marry this girl’ and he meant it. He really did intend to love her forever, as best he could, and not love anyone else if he could help it.

But those aren’t good reasons to build a whole relationship on, a marriage on. And he was a mess, and in love with Patrick too, and hated and famous and fucked. He had no privacy, limited emotional maturity, a burgeoning substance problem and no sense of himself that wasn’t dependent on what the culture and the media and his fans and his friends reflected back to him and said was true. There was no way they could be happy together under those circumstances, and he’d have stayed forever anyway, I think. His interviews about that time—when he stopped shaving, then stopped showering; when he was a drugstore cowboy stay-at-home dad, depressed and giving up—he doesn’t blame Ashlee for wanting to leave. He hated himself enough to be miserable forever, but she didn’t. So of course it fell apart.)

4. America’s Suitehearts

This commercial headfuck of a song. Jerry christ, guys, someone throw me an anchor so I can drown myself. This caricature, the monstrosity and performance of celebrity, the way the band is reduced to wrestling alter egos, painted and pretend. No one’s being subtle with this song, this video. They are showing us exactly what they mean.

‘I must confess, I’m in love with my own sins.’

DO YOU MEAN LIKE BEING IN GAY LOVE WITH YOUR BEST FRIEND

DO YOU MEAN THAT SIN?

And this verse, though ostensibly about the vagaries of fame, sounds so much like him falling in love with Patrick while Patrick is oblivious:

‘You can bow and pretend you don’t know you’re a legend. Time just hasn’t told anyone else yet. I’m sorry, I just let my love loose again.’

For so many years, Pete believed his love was something he had to apologize for. 😭 😭 😭 😭

5. Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet

Okay, fuck this, I’m done

This fucking

This

UGH

Remember the paternity rumors at the time of Ashlee’s pregnancy? Look at this whole complicated, tangled-up song about infidelity and paternity and the idea of Ashlee cheating while Pete’s cheating too. ‘Keep a calendar, this way you will always know’ [who impregnated you]. ‘I will never end up like him. behind my back, I already am.’ I literally cannot

‘Does he know the way I worship our love’

6. The (Shipped) Gold Standard

do I even need to keep writing this or is the album now, itself, independently writing the tryst theory

my notes for this song just say ‘come the fuck on’

This song is about: living in LA and missing Chicago (and what it felt like in Chicago, who you were and who you were with); taking accountability for your own actions even when it does not satisfy your hedonistic urges (e.g., marrying your pregnant girlfriend and breaking off your illicit love affair with Patrick Stump), trying to remake your identity and change yourself like those are the same thing and you can get a new heart as easily as a new name; losing your luck and breaking up (‘tell that boy I’ll leave you alone now, like a stove, I’ll turn my love down); horseshoe crabs; and of course, that good ol’ famous-in-the-closet feel:

‘I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs, but I’m afraid that someone else will hear me.’

7. Coffee’s For Closers

I’m just crying by now I can’t type anymore

He’s using this whole album to break up with Patrick, to explain, to say goodbye

‘I want everything to change and stay the same. Time doesn’t care about anyone or anything. Come together, come apart.’

‘We will never believe again’

And: ‘kick drum beating in my chest again’ and that feeling, the one we’ve all felt in the pit at any show, any good one with that golden-vibe in the air, the one that makes your heart feel connected to the hearts of everyone around you, like you could be lifted on light and floating around the room, like the love is pouring out of you and rising like heat and linking up to the network of love flowing into and out of everyone else, when you feel it and know they do too and your whole body vibrates with the impossible imperceptible hum of your very atoms, your constituent fucking molecules lit up and stitched together by this, this, this. The feeling like you don’t need lungs because singing in breath and bellows enough, the feeling like the only reason you ever had a heart was so the drummer could pump it with their sticks. ‘Preach electric to the microphone stand,’ Patrick the conductor, Patrick the evangelist, Patrick the gospel of his fucking love. Pete’s saying goodbye to that feeling. Pete knows, he knows already, what he is planning to do.

Pete’s lying. Pete’s saying ‘I love the mayhem more than the love’ like all he’s really been out to do is make a mess, break hearts, take names. Like he is no more and no less than what all the tabloids say about him. (Never watch the Fresh Only Bakery videos on youtube. They are boring, for one, and also the saddest fucking Pete you will ever see.) Pete’s saying ‘I will never believe in anything again’ and he’s making Patrick say it too, because true-blue love was supposed to last forever, and then Pete got married to someone else.

‘Oh, change will come.’

8. What A Catch, Donnie

NO. NO

how the fuck dare this song even exist

So this is it. This is the goodbye. Pete has talked about how he wrote this song from Patrick’s perspective, and he recruited some of Patrick’s favorite artists and friends of the band to sing different lines in a medley of the band’s hits up to this point. This is like, the FOB song equivalent of a suicide note. (To follow this with a greatest hits album—! G O D)

The reference to Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway—their collaboration, his ultimate suicide, and the way Miss Flack looked on all his destruction and said ‘I still want you back’ is absolutely a testament to the way Patrick, and the rest of the band, forgave him and took him back in after the notorious Best Buy Incident. The gratitude for the whole band and what the band has done for Pete is tied up in this song. ‘You’ll never catch us’ smacks of trysting, and there’s something to the line ‘I’m the one who charmed the one who gave up on you,’ as the speaker in the sentence in meant to be Patrick and the ‘you’ is presumed to be Pete.

‘They say the captain goes down with the ship, so when the world ends, will God go down with it?’ is both Pete’s intention to go down with the band (which he’s planning to sink, or sees unraveling already in the painful writing process—we don’t know at what point he made his decision to destroy yet another thing he loved in penance for some deep, unknowable conviction of sin) and his gesture of setting them free. The Video of Which We Will Not Speak shows this pretty clearly. Pete saves everyone and everything he’s ever loved at the bargain price of drowning himself. He does it without ever even appearing in the aired version of the video. *broken sobbing*

(The links for the full version are not currently on Youtube, but you can read about it here: http://www.mtv.com/news/1618609/fall-out-boy-release-wrong-version-of-what-a-catch-donnie-video/)

What a match, what a catch. If I say anything else about this song, and how basically everyone who heard it knew it meant the band was going to break up, I will absolutely fall apart

9. 27

OH GOOD A SONG I CAN MAKE IT THROUGH WITHOUT CHOKING ON MY OWN TEARS

NOT

So here’s a lovely little ditty about how Pete Wentz did not kill himself and die at age 27 as he always thought he would! Hahahahahaha I’m fine it’s fine I’m so glad this album exists I’m so glad I’m TALKING ABOUT IT

‘If home is where the heart is, then we’re all just fucked.’ All three of them: Pete, Patrick, and Ashlee. And every FOB fan out there. Ahahaha. GUYS I’M NOT OKAY

We’ve got Peterick drug metaphors to rival the punch of Hold Me Tight Or Don’t: ‘I want it so bad, I’d shoot the sunshine into my veins… Doing lines of dust and sweat off of last’s night stage just to feel like you. Milligrams in my head, burning tobacco in my wind, chasing the direction you went.’

We’ve got desperation about growing and changing and losing that which they so valued in their sound and collaboration on Grave: ‘I can’t remember the good old days. Are all the good times getting gone? They come and go and come and go.’

We’ve got the pressure of keeping your love affair with your lead singer a secret lest you risk your fame, label representation, and fortune: ‘My mind is a safe, and if I keep it in we all get rich’ right next to the dirty, hollow feeling of having images of your body stolen and used to drag your name and reputation like you had no more heart than any other empty doll and losing the value of yourself in that process: ‘My body is an orphanage, we take everyone in.’

We’ve got the romantic comparison to cosmic entities, just like in Real Ones: ‘you’re a bottled star, the planets align. You’re just like Mars, you shine in the sky.’ And that tinge of disparagement and lonesomeness: ‘I’ve got a lot of friends who are stars but some are just black holes.’

10. Tiffany Blews

This song plays with a lot of fun moth/flame metaphors that I really enjoy, while also really amplifying the isolation and quick-burning nature of fame. I think that Pete gets a sick satisfaction from having Patrick sing out the worst things he thinks about himself, that he thinks everyone else thinks about him. (Pete, I think, is the little black dress that will be faded soon.)

Interestingly, we have ‘a roman candle heart keeps us far apart,’ which is a pretty direct link to the later Fourth of July. A heart that flares, explodes, and then burns out quickly certainly would be an obstacle to building a lasting relationship, no matter how much you loved someone…

‘Hate me, baby. Maybe I’m a piece of art.’

‘Dear gravity, you held me down in this starless city’ makes me think of the Moonrise Kingdom quote in Wilson (Expensive Mistakes): ‘I hope the roof flies off and we all get sucked into space.’ It’s the opposite, basically. Hoping to fall in love and get thrown up among the glittering cosmos rather than anchored someplace dark and starless. (Aside: I love how susceptible Pete is to grand, cheesy quotes? Like when, a few days after the release of The Last Jedi, he tweeted the heavy-handed noir line ‘I want to put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town.’ Like, look for that in a FOB song someday.)

11. w.a.m.s.

For the curious, Andy confirmed on Twitter that the title stands for waitress/actress/model/singer, a reference to the stereotype of people who run away to Hollywood to make it big but end up washing out and struggling as the starving artist/waitstaff type. If this idea of our boys citing bankrupt ambition does not make you emotional, you may not have a heart.

This song is incredibly relevant to the dreams meta linked earlier—‘when all the others were just stirring awake, I’m trying to trick myself to fall asleep again’ is very evocative of being in denial over the jarring reality of the end of the tryst. I think this song is about one of the last times Pete and Patrick slept together before breaking up.

‘My head’s in heaven, my soles are in hell’ again highlights that Pete’s wildest Patrick dreams are very different than where he actually finds himself; ‘let’s meet in the purgatory of my hips and get well’ is a pretty transparent request, isn’t it? Especially since pre-hiatus Pete really loved to use ‘hips’ as a signifier for sexual desire/activity. Let’s just fuck and pretend it’s all okay. Let’s lose ourselves in each other and pretend we can have it. Tell me I’m the only one, even if it’s not true. Let me get high on this memory one last time.

‘Hurry, hurry. You put my head in such a flurry, flurry’ is the urgency and compromised judgment of the tryst. ‘Oh freckle freckle’ can be read as Patrick’s forehead mole. ‘What makes you so special? I’m gonna leave you’ tells us what makes the last time so good: Pete knows it’s the last time. Pete knows he has to end it. But he’s so addicted-sick, ((stray-dog sick,)) he can’t stop. ‘I’m gonna teach you how we’re all alone’ doesn’t really sound like something a newlywed and soon-to-be-dad should be saying, does it? But there it is. How can he let go when he knows ‘how heartwarming it is inside your skin’?

The final nail in my coffin: ‘I’m a sunshine machine. I want to get stuck and be golden in your memory.’

We’ve talked about how Patrick = sunshine = gold, right. r i g h t

12. 20 Dollar Nose Bleed

Fun fact: this song is basically erotica to me ever since I wrote that recording booth smut about it! I can’t even listen to it without blushing and becoming uncomfortable. So there’s something you didn’t need to know about me that you… now know about me.

‘Permanent jet lag, please take me back. I’m stray dog sick, please let me in. The mad key’s tripping, singing vows before we exchange smoke rings.’ It is OBVIOUSLY my prerogative to interpret this as slightly depraved sexual longing, but I especially like the bit about singing vows without ever exchanging anything lasting or visible that implies commitment—this can be heard as a comment on the fickleness of commitment, or it can be heard as a comment about how deeply he is/was committed to Patrick even though they never had anything to show for it. Anything they could show for it. Even to each other.

Benzedrine is, of course, the very first pharmaceutical amphetamine (read about it here!). Many great artists and thinkers were influenced by the impossible energy it gives you, which is obviously relatable to someone who experiences natural mania, peddling his own prescription like a ‘medicine man’ (Wilson lyrics). I think the verse about Benzedrine and not letting the doctor in not-so-obliquely references the issue with medication compliance that Pete experienced and many people diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder also do: the meds for this disorder are really unpleasant. They dull you out, they give you tremors, they have really strong side effects, and they take away that amazing manic spark that so many artists credit with their success. Don’t let the doctor in. They’ll take away the only thing he really likes about being himself.

‘Have you ever wanted to disappear?’ is, I think, a glimpse of the unadorned real.

The spoken word bit at the end of this song really hammers together a lot of the themes of the whole album, the whole band, personal and political both. ‘You said you’re not listening and I said I’m wishing…’, only we don’t ever find out what’s really being said.

13. West Coast Smoker

I love the hell out of this song because there are few things in life that are hotter than Patrick singing the chorus. And fuck. Patrick saying curse words. I die every time. I think this is a kink I share with Pete Wentz. I think one day Pete Wentz and I will share a circle of hell. It will be called the ‘Underage Stump Mouth Rotunda,’ and we will all be very ashamed.

We’ve got a lot of the same themes: the ease of suicide and the conviction to live, the way shows feel and how it was when they were kids, drug use and overmedicated ennui. Pete was once the son, is becoming the father, is resolving not to become the holy ghost.

‘I’m the last of my kind’ and ‘when they made me they broke the mold’ and the finality of it all. (Contrasted with the modern era: ‘you’re the last of a dying breed.’ Pete has grown up and away from his recursive self-obsession, from his own myth. Pete learning to look inside others and stop dismissing himself, and everyone else, as fool’s gold.)

‘Your eyes are blocking my starlight’ to me really speaks to the person who is keeping him from Patrick, or the people—the fans, the Public, with their eyes on his every action.

14. Pavlove

I LOVE THIS SONG

Once again, we have a drug use metaphor: ‘she’s back to the bathroom for one more,’ ‘get addicted to this,’ and of course, the endless seeking for something to make ‘my chest stir/my head blur.’ And: ‘I’m not ready for a handshake with death, I’m just such a happy mess’ shows us, for once, what Pete has to live for—not just that he’s resigned to life, but the reason for it. This song is all tied up with the heady swell of live music and self-medication, and there’s no line more representative of my experience as a bisexual person than ‘I’m the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror.’

‘I want to make you as lonely as me so you can get addicted to this’ seems very directed at Patrick, doesn’t it? Because this is a Pete who needs Patrick too much, thinks Patrick doesn’t need him back, is terrified. Doesn’t know how to solve his problems except to flee them. So: he flees them.

 I MADE IT. I BARELY FUCKING MADE IT BUT I DID.

To sum up: Folie is an incredible, sweeping, beautiful album about the glory of Peterick and the band’s impending end, and it will break your heart. Hit me up with questions and requests, and as always, thank you for reading!

shark-myths out *mic drop*

[sterek-bingo]

Happy New Year everyone!! To celebrate the great occasion of a new year, we've come to present you with this year's theme description post!! Under the cut you'll find the official descriptions for 2018's Bingo themes, in case you were stuck or just needed a little more clarity!

Tattoos- From triskeles to burning flesh to pack symbols, tattoos have always played a very big role in Teen Wolf, and there’s no reason not to continue that trend! There are so many ways to use tattoos, so many styles and themes, from the classics to the more unique, let your creativity really shine with the most personal form of art there is!

Werewolves Are Known- What used to be one of the most popular AU tropes can easily be applied to canon now, but you can feel free to use whatever universe setting you’d like for your peice! Canon, AU, A/B/O, crossover, the only rule is that werewolves are known to exist by ATLEAST a portion of the general public- it doesn’t have to be the entire world, it can be as small as one town, just so long as a portion of the general public know werewolves exist, the choices are your’s!

Zombies- From The Walking Dead to iZombie, from Afterlife With Archie to Warm Bodies, it’s safe to say that zombies have taken over modern pop culture, now it’s time to let the dead invade the world of Teen Wolf as well! You can easily make a zombie crossover with HUNDREDS of different media sources, or you can create your own universe and mythology- you could even set it in the Teen Wolf universe! Be it due to science or magic or something in between, the dead are rising, now will Stiles and Derek defeat them? Or… are Stiles and Derek PART of them…?

Witch & Familiar- The theme of a witch and a werewolf working together as two halves of an unstoppable pair has been popular with the Sterek fandom since the beginning, and though it’s usually Emissary!Stiles lending his assistance to Alpha!Derek, it might be fun to switch things around with Derek as a familiar lending his assistance to witch!Stiles- or the reverse! Perhaps you’d like to mix things up and make it witch!Derek and familiar!Stiles, whatever inspires you, feel free to let it run wild!

Bodyguard- Bodyguards have always had a certain appeal to them, be they for a celebrity, a politician, a member of royalty, or- most recently- even for a hitman, there’s just something inherently romantic about a person putting your life before their own, and now it’s time to apply that to Sterek! Be it one protecting the other, both as bodyguards working together, rival bodyguards, it doesn’t matter really, just as long as there’s some life saving (or .. life protecting?) going on, it’s all good here!

Hospital (Hurt/Wounded)- As it turns out, people really love wump! We had so many similar themes that we sort of boiled them down into this- if it involves Derek or Stiles (or both) being injured, ill, in a hospital, or even just emotionally wounded, if there’s some sort of pain involved you’ve got the right theme! Bonus points if you can incorporate multiple styles of using this theme!

Fantasy/Fairytale- From Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella to Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard Of Oz, fantasy and fairytales have always been part of culture, and with the rise of live action remakes like Beauty And The Beast, retellings of old classics like Kubo And The Two Strings, and the creation of modern fairytales like Moana, they seem to be more popular than ever! Let yourself be inspired by the fantastic world around you and carve out a new- or old!- fairytale or fantasy world for Stiles and Derek to be part of!

Spies/Assassin- With Dylan O'Brien starring in American Assassin and Tyler Hoechlin as a leading role in Stratton, the Sterek fandom has certainly had assassins and spies on the brain lately, and Sterek Bingo is getting in on the trend! From legends that Derek is a killer by the name of La Lobo, to the fact that Mitch sounds suspiciously like a nickname for Miecyslaw, there’s certainly alot of in-universe references to work with, and plenty of Hobrien related projects to play with too, or- and ofcourse this is always encouraged- go with your own thing! Let these two cuties start putting the “Fun” back in funeral!

Roadtrip- Who doesn’t love a good roadtrip? Junk food, awesome tunes, stupid car games, the inevitable moment when someone stares at the trees too long and gets car sick.. roadtrips!! Time to let Derek and Stiles enjoy- er… “enjoy”?- all of the wonders of spending an obscene amount of time alone in a car together- or not alone, there’s always the possibility of a family trip or a pack trip too- where are they going? On vacation? Away from Beacon Hills? On a mission to stop a random villain? Or does the destination even matter at all if you have barbecue potato chips, coca cola, and The Eagles on a four-disc set?

Thunderstorm- To some, thunderstorms are soothing, to others, they’re terrifying, but one thing is universal about them- they make for GREAT fan tropes! Let your headcanons loose with this one, does Stiles find the pelting of the rain and soft rolling thunder to be soothing? Does Derek have to cover his sensitive werewolf ears each time he hears a storm approaching? Maybe after The Wild Hunt their perspectives have shifted, or maybe there’s no emotional or psychological attachment at all and they just get caught in the rain after their car breaks down, whatever it is, let the ideas pour down like rain!

The Bite- The Bite is a gift…. right? Well, it’s finally time to make that decision for yourself! Be it a gift, a curse, or something in-between, the point of this theme is all about the bite…. now, it doesn’t //have// to be a werewolf bite, it could be from a vampire, an incubus, or… er.. a human… not every bite has to be transformative, sometimes it’s just kinky, other times it’s about marking a mate or keeping a pack together or- .. really about anything you want it to be about! As long as there’s biting, it’s fine by us!

Monster Of The Week- Ahh the famous Monster Of The Week, popularized by shows like The X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, to those unfamiliar, the Monster Of The Week idea is about episodic storytelling rather than linear storytelling, one week Buffy fights a sea monster, the next she fights a goblin, and the creatures have no connection to eachother, in terms of fandom, it’s sort of the same idea, choose a monster- any monster!- and create a peice about Stiles and Derek… fighting it, helping it, creating it, heck maybe one of them even IS it, this would be a great chance to flex the Paranormal Investigator AU muscle, but it doesn’t matter what the monster is or how they relate to the story, as long as it’s got a random monster involved, it fits!

Vacation- I think it’s safe to say that Stiles and Derek deserve a vacation right about now, don’t you? They can go anywhere in the world! Hawaii, New York, Tokyo, Paris, even some random small town in Nebraska, all that matters is that they’re away from Beacon Hills and intend to have a break in life… now, if it happens to get interrupted or not, that’s entirely up to you, they can do anything and be anywhere as long as the intention is to have a break from the hell-town they were born in!

Magic Gone Wrong- Magic is an incredible and dangerous thing, for all of the advantages magic has, it certainly brings some disadvantages along with it as well, magic is not an exact science, and at times that’s great! At others… not so much, and for every instance of magic going RIGHT, there are surely atleast three others where it’s gone WRONG, your job is to create a peice about one of those very instances, the circumstances are completely up to you, as long as it involves magic that didn’t *QUITE* go the way it was intended to

Heartbeat- Hearbeats can oftentimes be the soothing reminder that someone is alive… or the cold shock that they aren’t, or, for werewolves, a very convenient tracking device, be it a tool for tracking, spying, or gaining some form of comfort, werewolf hearing has certainly made heartbeats an important tool in the Teen Wolf toolbag, and now it’s time for you to expand on that! Take any genre and any purpose you want to expand on this theme, the only point is that someone’s heartbeat is involved!

Mermaid- Ah mermaids, one of mythology’s most famous figures, they can be sweet and beautifull… or vicious and hideous, depending on your source, but every culture seems to have some variation on them, and the Sterek fandom has created an entire subculture involving mer!Sterek! Now it’s time to add to that! Be it with mermaids (or mermen!) who are, perhaps, involved in match-making Stiles and Derek (or fighting them) or be it Stiles or Derek (or both!) as a merman, one thing is for sure, something fishy is about to go on in the Sterek fandom (but bad puns aside are merfolk really fish? Discuss)

Yeti!Stiles- Ever since Stiles’ “Abominable Snowman” comment from season two, yeti!Stiles has… actually been shockingly small in fandom and I can’t imagine why! For such an easy trope-grab it seems to mostly swoop under the radar, now it’s time for you to change that! Create a peice involving Stiles as an abominable snowman (or “yeti”, as is probably more politically correct) it can be canon or AU or maybe a mix of the two, just as long as Stiles becomes Bigfoot’s colder-climate loving cousin, it’s all good here!

Dogs- Who doesn’t love dogs? From Yorkies to German Shepherds and everything in between, dogs are often thought of to be man’s best freind for a reason, but for Sterek? Mostly they’re just the source of unending werewolf puns! Be it that Stiles and Derek get a dog, or that Derek is, in his wolf form, MISTAKEN for a dog, the only important thing is that dogs- big or small- are in some way involved with Stiles, Derek, and the puppy love they have for eachother! (See, what did I say about the puns?)

Protective!Sterek- From episode 1 to episode 100, one thing has always been true of Sterek, it’s a relationship based not on arguing or banter or love/hate, it’s based on protecting eachother, keeping eachother safe, the first time they’re alone together Stiles tries to save Derek’s life, and ever since it’s been almost a game of who can protect the other next, who can save the other first, now it’s time to once again let that foundation shine in fandom! Create any peice featuring Stiles protecting Derek, Derek protecting Stiles, or even a combination of the two! These two are always trying to best eachother in the protection game after all, so why not feature both?

Dad!Sterek- I don’t know about you, but one of my all-time favorite things is Derek and Stiles as parents! Be they single parents, just meeting for the first time, have been married for twenty-five years and already seven kids, or fall somewhere in between, I just love these two as dads, and I hope you do too! The only requirement for this one is that one or both of the pair have atleast one child, let your imagination go all soft and fluffy for this adorable theme!

Fears/Phobias- A theme that, coincidentally, played a large part in the very last episode of Teen Wolf, playing with a charector’s fears or phobias can be great for both charector and plot building, and can without a doubt create some of the best peices fandom has to offer, be it with canonical phobias presented in the series, things you’ve headcanoned for them yourself, or an AU where everything is up for grabs, the goal here is to create fear for Stiles, Derek, or both- and hopefully, somehow, comfort those fears, though that part isn’t entirely necessary to fit to the theme

Amusement Park- And now for a break from the fear, it’s time to go someplace that’s (usually) considerably less terrifying- an amusement park! Disneyland, Six Flags, Universal Studios, as long as it’s an amusement park and Stiles and Derek are there, it works! It doesn’t even have to be a real-world place, there’s obviously nothing wrong with creating your own and running with it, one of the best things about amusement parks, after all, is the imagination the creators put into it

Celebrity/Famous- I’m sure at one point or another most of us have imagined what it might be like to be famous, now it’s time to put those imaginations to use and imagine what it would be like if Stiles, Derek, or both of them were famous instead! Actors, musicians, social media stars, even royalty, if the papparazzi is interested in them and they have a fanbase, they count!

Leaving Beacon Hills- Let’s be honest here, nothing good ever happens in Beacon Hills, and as the last two episodes of Teen Wolf proved, getting away from that place seems to do good for people’s health, now it’s time to treat Derek and Stiles to something other than horrors and traumas and get them out of there! It can be for good, or just on vacation, just on a work trip even, the point of this theme is to get them away from the town that wants to instill nothing but horror in these boys, and I think fandom can come up with plenty of ways to do that!

Christmas Baby!Derek- Here’s a fun fact, my first ever Sterek fic was written because I love Christmas Baby Derek THAT much, there’s just something about this soft little peach being born on Christmas that makes everything in the world a little cuter- and Stiles probably feels the same way, now it’s your turn to show some appreciation for one of the cutest Derek factoids around! No matter if Derek loves it, hates it, or feels indifferent towards it, we certainly know how WE feel about it, and we’d love to see how you feel about creating a Christmas Baby!Derek peice!

Flower Crowns- Is there anything fluffier and prettier than a flower crown? Probably not, so let’s celebrate them! There’s just something peacefull about seeing a charector with flowers in their hair, and now it’s your turn to add to the (surprisingly large) flower crown portion of the fandom! Be it fluff or humor or something softly somber, these boys deserve ALL of the flower crowns and it’s our intention to give them to them!

Bookstore- Ahh bookstores, the foundation of a large number of meet-cutes, meet-uglies, and things that have nothing to do with meeting at all, it’s pretty obvious that Stiles and Derek both love to read, so let’s put that love to use and introduce a bookstore into the mix! Chain store? Used store? Weird eccentric “This has been out of print for fifty years but we still have a copy” store? It doesn’t matter as long as it sells books and involves Sterek!

Hello Again- After spending time apart, it’s nice to say “Hello” again… be it a canonical separation, or something that happened in an AU, post-canon or canon-divergent, the goal of this theme is Stiles and Derek reuniting again after spending time apart, the reunion can be happy or sad, by chance or planned, it doesn’t matter in the end, all that matters is the two of them reconnecting after having spent time apart, and finally saying “Hello” again

Accidental Baby Acquisition- One of the oldest (and one of my favorite) fandom tropes there is, Accidental Baby Acquisition is much how it sounds, it’s about accidentally coming into possession of a baby! The means can be through magic, through stumbling upon a child in the woods, the classic “baby on a doorstep”, or any other situation you can possibly think of, all that matters is that Derek and Stiles accidentally find themselves caring for a baby!

Wild Card- This is the obligatory bingo square in the very middle where you can do absolutely anything you want! That’s right. There’s no restriction, no guideline, no THEME! It’s your freebie to do anything you may have been wanting to do, but haven’t really had the time or inspiration to do until now- here’s your chance. Now go forth and create Sterek!

[bibleteachingbyolga]

You shall not commit adultery. (Exodus 20:14)

The Ten Commandments are rules, but they are not arbitrary, man-made rules. God’s Ten Commandments are big, bold, bright signs guiding us away from the regions of darkness and death, and toward the upland plains of light and life in Christ.

The problem is, in our sin, we hate being told what to do. We think we know better. We look at temptations that cannot make our lives better, and we think, “That would make my life better.” The Ten Commandments point toward Sodom and Gomorrah and warn us, “You don’t want to go there.” Yet we look over at that barren wasteland and think, “That must be our garden of Eden.” And off we go.

This is true of us both as individuals and as the human race. It’s not as though, as the generations of history go by, the hard lessons of the past open our eyes more and more, and make us all wiser. The truth is, we keep stepping on the same landmines over and over again. Every generation tends to think, “The people before us were primitive. We’re smarter now.” Which proves we’re not smarter now. The Bible bluntly declares, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Obviously, we still don’t.

So, let’s look at the Ten Commandments with some openness. God wants to help us, by his grace, to die less and live more. Here then is the seventh commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” with three ways the commandment meets us.

1. The seventh commandment redefines sexual freedom.

The seventh commandment isn’t limited to adultery in a narrow sense — the violation of marriage vows. It’s about sexual integrity within a total way of being human. In their biblical context, all the Ten Commandments together dignify the people of God as the “treasured possession” of the Lord, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). In Christ, our God-given privilege is to be a culture of humaneness in a world of brutality, for the display of his glory.

God considers our sexuality a glorious gift. But this one bestowment cannot be the whole of our identity. God has been so good as to honor us with his all-encompassing purpose. Our sexuality, therefore, finds its fulfillment not in our momentary impulses but within all that God created us for: “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

Not many of us believe that anymore! The “truth” discovered by our generation is that freedom lies in remaking ourselves, including our sexuality, in any way we please. In the past — the story goes — we were held down by oppressive ideas of morality. But now we are finally breaking free, allowing our true innocence within, our creative individuality, to be expressed.

That message can sound good. But what if we choose an altered self only then to discover that both our original self and our altered self were dishonest? What if we make costly personal sacrifices to modify our sexuality, only to end up feeling betrayed? Did that “freedom” take us where we really want to go?

Real Sexual Freedom

Jesus understood us better than we understand ourselves. He said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him” (Mark 7:20). In other words, our inner selves are not bundles of wonderfulness just waiting to be let out. The truth is, our messy inner selves, when unleashed, spread more mess. It’s what Jesus came to forgive and clean up.

Real sexual freedom is not when we give free rein to our sexual feelings, but when we follow Jesus on his path of wisdom. He created us for purposes so lofty only he can take us there. The seventh commandment alerts us to the sexual dimension of our true glory.

And the New Testament tells us more. We are sexual beings, ultimately, to embody the gospel (Ephesians 5:32). But if we refuse to offer our sexuality to Jesus, we trivialize and abuse his gift. It’s like using a smartphone to hammer nails. That just isn’t what a smartphone is for, no matter what we might feel. Hammering nails can only damage a smartphone. And haven’t we all done some damage?

But when we turn to follow Jesus, dedicating all that we are to him, we start growing into a more settled, confident, careful sexuality, with fewer regrets. How could it be otherwise? Jesus was sexual. He obeyed the seventh commandment fully. And he was the most complete, life-giving man ever. Isn’t that the freedom we want? Aren’t we always better off following him?

2. The seventh commandment redirects sexual energy.

By confronting adultery, God blesses our sexual activity within marriage only. Elsewhere in the Bible, God makes his point with a question: “Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?” (Proverbs 5:16). In other words, “Do you really want to squander and waste your sexuality?”

The seventh commandment redirects and focuses our sexual energy as a positive force for living well, whether married or single. All of us, for Jesus’s sake, can consecrate every kind of intensity God built into us to serve his purposes in this world. We have intellectual powers, emotional capacities, volitional drives, creative imaginations, sexual energies, and more.

We are total human beings, with a lot invested in us. And we will give ourselves to something. If not to Jesus, then to what? And why that? But devoted to Jesus, seeking his kingdom and righteousness first (Matthew 6:33), our scattered lives converge on a worthy, inspiring focal point. We’re finally ready to start creating good in a sinful and suffering world.

For example, rather than merely avoiding porn, why not use all our powers to create, in our dorms and homes and churches, safe places where people addicted to porn can get their freedom back? We can stop playing defense only and start playing offense too. God will be with us. Why not go for it?

3. The seventh commandment redeems sexual folly.

The seventh commandment calls us to faithfulness. One reason we married people took vows is that temptations to unfaithfulness do come our way. But marriage vows are a man and a woman saying, “Before that moment even arrives, I am pre-committing to stay true to you, as long as we both shall live.”

But do we stay true to our vows? Outwardly, maybe — even hopefully. But if outward behavior alone told the truth about us, we might pat ourselves on the back. Jesus said, “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Who of us has stayed true at that deeper level?

The seventh commandment redeems us sexual fools by pointing us to Jesus, who is faithful. He fulfills his vows. He stays true. He pursues his bride, even when we wander from him. He says to us, “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:19–20). He doesn’t despise us sexual sinners. He draws near to us through Christ.

Every one of us can admit to thoughts, feelings, looks, words, and actions that violate — and vandalize — the glories of our God-given sexuality. But our sins do not defeat our Savior. They are the reason he came to us, and he isn’t sorry he got involved. He is glad to receive us again and to revive us with “newness of life” (Romans 6:4). And your newly redeemed sexuality isn’t thanks to your faithfulness but to his. “The Lord is faithful. He will establish you” (2 Thessalonians 3:3).

Sexual Safety for Others

When, trusting him, we step onto the path of Christ and walk there — daily, gently, without drawing attention to ourselves — then something wonderful happens. The seventh commandment within us creates a social environment around us, where no one in our presence has anything to fear. Everyone can relax, open up to Jesus, and grow and rejoice and flourish without distraction or pressure or weirdness.

That’s what it looks like when we become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” — including our sexuality.

[alishbakhanus]

Wedding Décor: major mistakes

This article is for brides who have decided to get serious about wedding decor, both independently and with the help of specialists. (For there are few good specialists with an ideal taste, but there are a lot of "stampers" of identical designs and outright copyists of Western weddings.)

I'll make a reservation right away: there will be no talk about simple and cheap decorating with balls. It's about DECOR, i.e. about the stylish and thoughtful design of the entire wedding space, which has a specific concept and color palette.

I think every bride will agree that the décor should be:

- beautiful (aesthetic)

- stylish (different from the decor of other weddings)

- economical

However, looking at wedding reports, I almost cannot distinguish them from each other (except by color). The decor is everywhere. But style and beauty are not.

How can you avoid this? How can you spend less on decor without sacrificing quality?

Here are the main mistakes that decorators and brides alike make:

1. Decorate what is already beautiful

This primarily applies to the chairs at the banquet. VERY often, on already beautiful and self-sufficient chairs, bows are knitted in the back, which look (and are) absolutely superfluous. "And a bow on the side." Well, you need to somehow decorate the chair)

It is no less a mistake to tighten beautiful chairs in white covers. Covers are needed in two cases: to comply with the color palette of the wedding, or to disguise ugly chairs. ALL. Otherwise, forget about them. Chairs in covers do not give any "solemnity" and "festivity", but only create the effect "everything is like everyone else" and pull extra money from the newlyweds (covers must be rented, who did not know, the cost is from 50 rubles per piece)

The same applies to the hall. If the hall itself is already heavily decorated (a bright carpet on the floor, paintings on the walls, chandeliers, columns, curtains, etc.), you can save a lot on its design and do only with floristry, for example. But how miserable it looks when brides, in an effort to save money on the decor of such a hall, "decorate" it with cheap paper hearts and rosettes! So, you think that it would be better to do without decor at all.

Finally - a wedding in nature. There are places so beautiful that it is completely unnecessary to decorate them additionally. Nature has already created something that no decorator can do for you! There is no need to “finish off” beautiful views with a huge amount of details and colors! This oil is oil. But the simplest decor looks really stylish, which only emphasizes the splendor of the surrounding nature.

Save your money! Don't waste them on decorating something that doesn't need any decorations!

2. "Fit" style or color in the wrong room

I understand that choosing a restaurant or other venue for a wedding is a very dreary and difficult business, and it is far from always possible to correlate desires and reality. But the fact is the fact: the room dictates the style and color of the wedding. And you can't do ANYTHING with it. If you really want a wedding in a certain style - get tired and find the appropriate room. But do not hope to remake the hall for yourself! This is not possible, and it will cost you a lot of money to try. A rustic wedding will not fit into a modern interior. Delicate blue will not fit into the room, the main color of which is red.

Take a look at this example. The decorators were forced to almost completely cover the room with white cloth (and it costs a lot of money!) In order to inscribe a delicate blue into it. However, a very "active" red floor is not going anywhere. As a result, we got an incomprehensible mess:

3. Lack of style integrity

I will explain this point with a very striking example. In part, it overlaps with item 2.

So, what we have: a wedding in a very pompous, arch-classical hall.

Floristics, images of the bride and groom - to match (heaps of pink flowers, pretentious outfits).

And here, out of nowhere - details in the style of Love is. Bright, cartoonish, funny and ... completely inappropriate! As if snatched from another wedding. Moreover, ALL small elements of the celebration are sustained in the Love is style. Incl. invitations (and invitations are an expression of the entire style of the wedding, the quintessence). Well, the bride wanted it so much.

Guys, if you want to make a creative style, be true to yourself. If this is Love is, then there should be bright, cool, cartoonish EVERYTHING, from the images of the bride and groom to the bouquet! Otherwise, it turns out a hellish incomprehensible mishmash, in which there is no style at all, but there is only bad taste and inability to see the picture WHOLE, from the side.

If you are afraid of "not being able to withstand creativity" - do not take it! A creative wedding is not for all couples, not everyone can understand and accept an unusual style. But to do a CLASSIC wedding with details clearly far from the classics is beyond good and evil. Do the classics - be inspired by the classics and what is close to it (this is bohemian and shabby chic, for example, styling for the 20s - but you never know what you can think of!) And if you are already doing a stylized, creative wedding - again, be consistent! A creative wedding is always a great courage and a flight of imagination, I personally adore such projects - when they are really done from and to, and not by some "pieces".

Here is a vivid example of a COOL, thought out to the smallest detail and at the same time exquisitely simple style (which is especially nice - our, Russian wedding!):

Amazing atmosphere at this wedding! At the same time, the decor is minimal, and this only emphasizes the surrounding beauty.

4. Follow stereotypes

I'll make a reservation: I believe that wedding decor and decoration are elements of individuality. Those. all this is done so that the wedding is somehow different from everyone else. If the design is template and does not in any way distinguish the wedding from the sea of others - why pay money for it?

Following stereotypes in decoration makes hundreds of weddings indistinguishable from each other. Many "specialists" simply do not know how to work outside the box. They have standard design techniques - they are followed. Is always. It's beautiful.

There are several main stereotypes, I will list them all with examples.

a) If the colors of the wedding are chosen - they should be EVERYWHERE and IN EVERYTHING and the SAME.

This rule can still be followed if the colors are pastel, or the contrast is black + white (no options here).

But if bright, saturated colors (especially red) are chosen as the main ones, the wedding turns into a "wry eye".

Moreover, if a sharply contrasting combination of bright colors (blue + yellow, orange + purple, yellow + fuchsia) is chosen.

Moreover, if a photographer with contrast processing of a photo is chosen - you get tired of viewing such photos after 5 frames.

There are many examples of overloading wedding decoration with color.

The most fatal mistake is the load of contrasting color combinations of the images of the bride and groom. It is simply impossible to watch.

The second mistake is the selection of all accessories, clothing items and decor "color in color", without the slightest deviation in shades. It looks boring and unnatural.

At the same time, what a shame - a lot of time was spent on the selection of things exactly in color (I know how it feels!)

My dears! Flowers have shades. And it looks MUCH more beautiful and interesting when the wedding decoration combines just a few similar shades and colors, and not one pure color + white.

If you choose contrasting color combinations, this is very bold and awesome. Only these colors should be present in "wide strokes", here and there, in details - but not in a continuous field in any case! And the main bright colors should be softened by complementary, less contrasting ones.

Like this:

b) The arch for exit registration must be like this!

Variations are possible: Go to foreign sites, look at wedding reports. You will not see such arches there. But you will see these:

And such:

And often - not arches at all:

But in every first Russian report on the field registration you will see just such an arch! For local organizers and decorators have endless love for such arches.

Honestly, I was sick of this construction of fabric and flowers, plus a table swaddled in fabric. For me personally, such an arch is a symbol of triviality. Moreover, there are not just hundreds of alternative options - there are an infinite number of them, there would be a desire. And these alternatives can be virtually FREE for you! The price of your favorite arch is from 5000 rubles. ad infinitum, depending on the number of flowers and your willingness to part with money.

Once again: the arch for registration, and in general the decor is elements of the individuality of your wedding, and not elements of "do it like everyone else"!

c) The backdrop for the newlyweds is sacred!

Well, be honest: there is no need for this backdrop! Unless he's covering the hole in the wall. In all other cases - a waste of money. Don't listen to conversations that this will "make your table stand out"! The place of the young is always special, even if it is not decorated with anything at all - all eyes will be turned to it. After all, there is the bride and groom, the main participants in the celebration, those for whom all the others have gathered!

The worst thing (and very often happens) is when the design of the backdrop is lower in height than the ceiling of the room, i.e. a "second horizon" is created. It looks terrible both in life and in the photo.

But these shots are from a chic restaurant with a panoramic view. What a collective farm and cheap stuff turned the table of the young, and the whole room, mediocre decor! You can compare: next to the photo of the same restaurant WITHOUT wedding decoration. Impressive, right?

And finally. When preparing the decor, I highly recommend to visit foreign sites with wedding reports - it greatly expands the horizons and improves the taste. Unfortunately, domestic reports suffer from extreme monotony and lack of creativity.

However, I urge you not to blindly copy Western weddings! Get inspired by great examples, but come up with your own, unique, something that will then be repeated!

Courtesy: Best event halls in Lahore.

[sandhyamodi]

The Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video in India

Amazon Prime Video's movie acquisitions might not have the same international depth as Netflix, but it's undoubtedly stronger and richer in its local variety, with its titles spanning the Tamil, Telugu, and the Malayalam world of filmmaking in addition to Bollywood. And that's matched with a powerful collection of American imports, to deliver a collection that can more than stand its ground against the world's biggest streaming service. It lacks with its original efforts — a few are present below, for what it's worth — but it's also a lot more affordable at Rs. 999 per year, versus Netflix's Rs. 650 a month. To pick the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, we relied on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb ratings to create a shortlist. The last of them was preferred for Indian films given the shortfalls of reviews aggregators in that department. Additionally, we used our own editorial judgement to add or remove a few. This list will be updated once every few months if there are any worthy additions or if some movies are removed from the service, so bookmark this page and keep checking in. Here are the best films currently available on Amazon Prime Video in India, sorted alphabetically. 12 Years a Slave (2013) Duped into slavery on the account of a job, Steve McQueen's adaptation of a free New York black man's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) 19th-century memoir is an incredible true story, and an important watch. 3 Idiots (2009) In this satire of the Indian education system's social pressures, two friends recount their college days and how their third long-lost musketeer (Aamir Khan) inspired them to think creatively and independently in a heavily-conformist world. Co-written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who stands accused in the #MeToo movement. Agantuk (1991) In Satyajit Ray's last film, a mysterious and world-weary explorer returns to India after 35 years to see his only surviving relative, his niece, but has trouble convincing the family who he claims to be. Aladdin (1992) Disney puts its animation flavour onto the famous folk tale of a street urchin who disguises himself as a wealthy prince after finding a genie in a magic lamp, in an attempt to impress the Sultan's daughter. Amal (2007) After a poor Delhi auto-rickshaw driver (Rupinder Nagra) is named as the sole inheritor by a local billionaire (Naseeruddin Shah) just before his death, he must decide whether to keep it. American Beauty (1999) A depressed advertising executive (Kevin Spacey) in the midst of a midlife crisis falls for his teenage daughter's best friend, in Sam Mendes' satire of American middle-class that ultimately won five Oscars including Best Picture. Anand (1971) Rajesh Khanna stars as the eponymous happy-go-lucky man, who doesn't let his diagnosis of a rare form of cancer get in the way of enjoying what's in front of him. Told from the viewpoint of his doctor friend (Amitabh Bachchan). Hrishikesh Mukherjee directs. Anbe Sivam (2003) Kamal Haasan and R. Madhavan star in this Tamil cult film, in which the two are stranded over a thousand kilometres from home after heavy rain cancels all flights and strike up an unlikely friendship on their way back. Haasan also wrote the script. Andaz Apna Apna (1994) Two slackers (Aamir Khan and Salman Khan) who belong to middle-class families vie for the affections of an heiress, and inadvertently become her protectors from a local gangster in Rajkumar Santoshi's cult comedy favourite.

Ankhon Dekhi (2014) After an eye-opening experience involving his daughter's marriage, a man in his late 50s (Sanjay Mishra) resolves that he won't believe anything he can't see, which naturally leads to some dramatic complications. Aruvi (2016) A social satire from a debutante writer-director, which follows an eponymous young woman (Aditi Balan), who going through a bout of existential crisis, decides to shine a light on the consumerist and misogynistic behaviours in her society. Back to the Future (1985) Not many films come close to the worldwide appeal and legacy left by this sci-fi entry featuring the iconic DeLorean that Michael J. Fox's character uses to (accidentally) time travel to when his parents were his age. Strange then that it didn't get the green light for years. Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) The heavily controversial Salman Khan stars as a devout Hindu Brahmin and an ardent devotee of Hanuman, who embarks on a journey to reunite a mute six-year-old Muslim girl, lost in India, with her parents in Pakistan. Kareena Kapoor co-stars. Salman is a convicted poacher, out on bail, and accused of culpable homicide, pending appeal. A Beautiful Mind (2001) The life of John Nash, a brilliant but asocial mathematician, from his spiral into paranoid schizophrenia and working on a secret project he made up, to regaining control over his life and becoming a Nobel Laureate. The Big Sick (2017) Kumail Nanjiani stars as himself in this rom-com loosely based on his romance with his wife, in which an aspiring comedian connects with his girlfriend's parents after she falls into a mysterious coma. Blood Diamond (2006) Set during the Sierra Leone Civil War at the turn of the century, an arms smuggler (Leonardo DiCaprio) promises to help a fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) find his family in exchange for a priceless diamond the latter found in a river. Bombay (1995) Set during the 1992–93 Bombay riots, writer-director Mani Ratnam offers a look at the communal tensions that cause a strain on the relationship between a Muslim woman (Manisha Koirala) and a Hindu man (Arvind Swamy). The Bourne trilogy (2002–07) Technically not a trilogy, but the first three chapters — Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum — starring Matt Damon in the lead as the titular CIA assassin suffering from amnesia were so good that they changed the longest-running spy franchise of all-time: James Bond. Brazil (1985) Terry Gilliam blends social satire with his signature visual inventiveness in this dystopian sci-fi set in a retro-future world, which follows a lowly clerk who becomes an enemy of the state after trying to correct an administrative error.

Captain Fantastic (2016) After his bipolar wife suddenly dies, a single father (Viggo Mortensen), who brought up his six children living off the grid and isolated from society, must introduce them to the real world for the first time. Carol (2015) Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara star in this intimate, thoughtful and gorgeous drama about two lesbians living in polar-opposite worlds in 1950s New York, as they navigate societal customs and their own wants. Based on Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Price of Salt. Cast Away (2000) After his plane crash-lands in the Pacific, a FedEx employee (Tom Hanks) wakes up on a deserted island and must use everything at his disposal and transform himself physically to survive living alone. Catch Me If You Can (2002) Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks star in Steven Spielberg's biopic of Frank Abagnale (DiCaprio), who forged millions of dollars' worth of cheques as a teenager, while being pursued by an FBI agent (Hanks). Chak De! India (2007) Ostracised and vilified by the press and public, a former Muslim men's hockey captain (Shah Rukh Khan) plans to redeem himself by coaching the unpolished Indian women's hockey team to glory. Charade (1963) After her husband is murdered while trying to leave Paris, a young woman (Audrey Hepburn) is pursued by three men, who want a fortune he had stolen, and seeks the help of a stranger (Cary Grant). Known as “the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made”. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) Frequent collaborators Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are behind this ‘remake' of the 1971 original based on Roald Dahl's 1964 book, in which the title character — a young boy (Freddie Highmore) — wins a tour of an imaginative chocolatier's chocolate factory with four other kids. Chhoti Si Baat (1976) This remake of the 1960 British film School for Scoundrels transports the story to then-Bombay, where a meek young man (Amol Palekar) turns to life-coach Colonel (Ashok Kumar) to battle a suave, bold man for the affections of a woman. Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, and Hema Malini cameo as themselves. Basu Chatterjee directs. Chupke Chupke (1975) Hrishikesh Mukherjee's remake of the Bengali film Chhadmabeshi, in which a newly-wedded husband (Dharmendra) decides to play pranks on his wife's (Sharmila Tagore) supposedly smart brother-in-law, released in the same year as Sholay. Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan also star. Collateral (2004) Tom Cruise plays a hitman who takes a taxi driver, played by Jamie Foxx, hostage in Michael Mann's neo-noir crime thriller, in which the latter must figure out how to stop the former. The Conjuring (2013) A pair of paranormal investigators (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are hired by a family who have been experiencing increasingly disturbing events at their farmhouse, in this effective horror from James Wan.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) Based on the novel of the same name, a Chinese-American professor travels halfway around the world to Singapore to meet her boyfriend's extremely-rich family, where she must contend with weird relatives, jealous socialites, and the boyfriend's disapproving mother (Michelle Yeoh). A Death in the Gunj (2016) In Konkona Sen Sharma's feature-length directorial debut, a shy and sensitive Indian student (Vikrant Massey) pays a heavy price for his gentleness, while on a road trip with his conceited relatives and family friends. Ranvir Shorey, Kalki Koechlin star alongside. The Death of Stalin (2017) Veep creator Armando Iannucci approaches this momentous occasion in the history of Russia through the lens of black comedy and political satire, depicting the power struggles that ensued following the titular dictator's death in 1953. Jeffrey Tambor, who stars, stands accused in the #MeToo movement. Dil Chahta Hai (2001) Farhan Akhtar's directorial debut about three inseparable childhood friends whose wildly different approach to relationships creates a strain on their friendship remains a cult favourite. Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, and Preity Zinta star. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol's characters fall in love during a trip to Europe with their friends in this now iconic film — which is still playing over two decades later in a single-screen Mumbai theatre — but face hurdles as the woman's conservative father has promised her hand in marriage to someone else. Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) After a court order mandates a video cassette store owner and an RSS volunteer (Ayushmann Khurrana) and a plus-sized teacher-in-training (Bhumi Pednekar) to salvage their failing marriage, the two begin to put themselves in each other's shoes, before deciding to take part in a piggyback race. Won a National Award. Ee. Ma. Yau (2018) A son struggles to organise the grand burial he promised his dad in this Malayalam-language black comedy that's largely shot in natural light. Lijo Jose Pellissery directs. The Exorcist (1973) One of the greatest horror films of all time, that has left a lasting influence on the genre and beyond, is about the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl and her mother's attempts to save her with the help of two priests who perform exorcisms. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) Roald Dahl's children's novel about a fox who steals food from three mean and wealthy farmers gets the stop-motion treatment from Wes Anderson, featuring the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, and Michael Gambon. Fight Club (1999) Brad Pitt and Edward Norton star in this cult hit from David Fincher, about a white-collared insomniac disappointed with his capitalistic lifestyle, who forms an underground fight club with a devil-may-care soapmaker, which evolves into something much more.

Forrest Gump (1994) A slow-witted but kind-hearted man (Tom Hanks) takes part in a series of defining events of the second half of the 20th century in the US, while pining for his childhood love. Forushande (2016) Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi uses Arthur Miller's play “Death of a Salesman” as his story within a story, to depict thematic parallels with the deteriorating relationship of an Iranian couple after an assault on the wife. The husband wants to find out who the attacker is against her wishes, while she deals with post-trauma stress. Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) Inspired by the 2008 Tamil-language film Subramaniapuram, Anurag Kashyap concocts a gangster epic that blends politics, vengeance, and romance as it looks at the power struggles between three crime families in and around the Jharkhand city of Dhanbad, the epicentre of the coal mafia. Ghare Baire (1984) Based on Rabindranath Tagore's novel of the same name, and set in the chaotic aftermath of the partition of Bengal, writer-director Satyajit Ray tells the story of a woman married to a forward-thinking man whose lives are upended by the appearance of the husband's radical friend. Ghostbusters (1984) A bunch of eccentric paranormal enthusiasts start a ghost-catching business in New York, and then stumble upon a plot to wreak havoc by summoning ghosts. Gave birth to one of the most iconic song lyrics in history. Gladiator (2000) Winner of five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe, this Ridley Scott-directed film tells a moving story of a Roman general (Crowe) who loses everything — his family and rank —to end up as a slave and then seeks vengeance on the perpetrator (Joaquin Phoenix). The Godfather (1972) In what is considered one of the greatest films of all-time, an aging leader (Marlon Brando) of a New York mafia transfers control of his empire to his youngest son (Al Pacino), who goes from a reluctant outsider to a ruthless boss. The Godfather Part II (1974) Francis Ford Coppola's follow-up to his original, centering on Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) at the top of the pecking order while offering a look back at his father's (Robert De Niro) past, is considered by some to be better than its predecessor. Gol Maal (1979) A chartered accountant (Amol Palekar), with a knack for singing and acting, falls deep down the rabbit hole after lying to his boss that he has a twin, in this Hrishikesh Mukherjee comedy. Gone Girl (2014) Based on Gillian Flynn's best-selling novel and directed by David Fincher, a confounded husband (Ben Affleck) becomes the primary suspect in the sudden mystery disappearance of his wife (Rosamund Pike).

Gravity (2013) Two US astronauts, a first-timer (Sandra Bullock) and another on his final mission (George Clooney), are stranded in space after their shuttle is destroyed, and then must battle debris and challenging conditions to return home. Gully Boy (2019) An aspiring, young street rapper (Ranveer Singh) from the slums of Mumbai sets out to realise his dream, while dealing with the complications that arise out of his personal life and the socioeconomic strata to which he belongs. Zoya Akhtar directs, and Alia Bhatt stars alongside. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) Alfonso Cuarón stepped behind the camera for what many consider to be the best Harry Potter film, as the boy who lived enters his third year at Hogwarts, and is told that Sirus Black, an escapee from the wizarding world prison Azkaban, is after his life. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) Working off the tone set by Alfonso Cuarón, the fourth entry in the series finds the titular chosen one pulled into an inter-school magical tournament, while battling the disturbing visions and the aching pain that stem from his forehead scar. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) In this final thrilling chapter, the famous trio — Harry, Ron, and Hermione — face a race against time to find and destroy Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes, while the students and teachers of Hogwarts unite to defend the school. Heat (1995) Al Pacino and Robert De Niro star on opposite sides of the law — the former a detective, the latter a thief — in Michael Mann's stylistic crime drama, with a group of bank robbers planning a heist unaware the police are onto them. Hera Pheri (2000) Unemployed and struggling with money, a landlord and his two tenants (Paresh Rawal, Akshay Kumar, and Sunil Shetty) chance on a ransom phone call and plan to collect the ransom for themselves in this remake of the 1989 Malayalam film Ramji Rao Speaking. How to Train Your Dragon (2010) Brought up in a world where Vikings have a tradition of being dragon slayers, a young teenager becomes an unlikely friend with a young dragon and learns there may be more to the creatures than everyone thinks. The Hurt Locker (2008) Best picture winner at the Oscars, a new leader (Jeremy Renner) of a bomb disposal squad surprises his subordinates with his views and reckless approach to the job in the Iraqi capital. Kathryn Bigelow became first woman to win best director. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Directed by Steven Spielberg off a story by George Lucas, an eponymous archaeologist (Harrison Ford) travels the world and battles a group of Nazis while looking for a mysterious artefact, in what is now often considered as one of the greatest films of all-time.

Into The Wild (2007) Based on Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book, Sean Penn goes behind the camera to direct the story of a top student and athlete who gives up all possessions and savings to charity, and hitchhikes across America to live in the Alaskan wilderness. Iruvar (1997) Aishwarya Rai made her acting debut with a dual supporting role in Mani Ratnam's biographical film, which is inspired by the real-life rivalry of 1980s Tamil Nadu political icons M.G. Ramachandran (Mohanlal) and M. Karunanidhi (Prakash Raj). Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) In this satire of politics, bureaucracy, and the media, two photographers (Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Baswani) inadvertently capture a murder while trying to expose the rich. A Mahabharata dramatisation in the third act is a renowned highlight. JFK (1991) When a New Orleans district attorney (Kevin Costner) tries to unearth the mystery and possibly conspiracy behind the assassination of former US President John Kennedy, he's faced with considerable pressure from the government. Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman co-star. Oliver Stone directs. Jurassic Park (1993) It might be over 25 years old at this point but watching the very first Jurassic film from Steven Spielberg — based on Michael Crichton's novel, which he co-adapted — is a great way to remind yourself why the new series, Jurassic World, has no idea why it's doing. Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) Guru Dutt directed and starred in what is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, about a famous director (Dutt) who casts an unknown woman (Waheeda Rehman) in his next film, and the opposing trajectories of their careers thereon. Kannathil Muthamittal (2002) Upon learning that she is adopted, a young girl embarks on a journey across civil war-ravaged Sri Lanka to find her biological mother who is part of the revolutionaries. Mani Ratnam directs. The King of Comedy (1982) In Martin Scorsese's overlooked satire of celebrity worship and media culture, an aspiring comic (Robert De Niro) stalks his late-night talk show idol to earn a big break, and then kidnaps him when things don't work out. Kumbalangi Nights (2019) Four brothers who share a love-hate relationship stand behind one of their own in matters of the heart in this Malayalam-language family drama that explores masculinity with nuance and in detail. Directorial debut of Madhu C. Narayanan. Kung Fu Panda (2008) After an obese kung fu enthusiast panda is supposedly mistakenly chosen as the Dragon Warrior to fight an impending threat, he is unwillingly taught by an elderly master and his students who have been training for years.

L.A. Confidential (1997) As corruption brews in post-war Los Angeles, three police officers — one sordid (Kevin Spacey), one brutal (Russell Crowe) and one moralistic (Guy Pearce) — investigate a series of murders in their own way, and form an uneasy alliance. Spacey stands accused in the #MeToo movement. Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006) In this sequel to the 2003 original (also on the list), the Mumbai underworld don (Sanjay Dutt) starts to live by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi to impress a radio jockey (Vidya Balan) he's smitten with. Some felt it dumbed down Gandhism. Co-written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who stands accused in the #MeToo movement. The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) Ajay Devgn plays the titular socialist revolutionary and freedom fighter in writer-director Rajkumar Santoshi's biopic, which follows Singh — and later his associates, Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar, and Chandra Shekhar Azad — from the Jallianwala Bagh massacre to the bombing of Parliament House. Some did not like its treatment of Gandhi. The Lego Movie (2014) An ordinary, rules-following Lego minifigure (Chris Pratt) is mistakenly identified as the most extraordinary person and the key to saving the world from an evil tyrant, for which he is hilariously underprepared. It spawned the hit single, "Everything Is Awesome". Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) Denied for a release for six months, this black comedy centres on four women in small town India who set out on a journey to discover freedom and happiness in a conservative society. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) Peter Jackson brought J.R.R. Tolkien's expansive Middle-Earth to life in these three three-hour epics, which charts the journey of a meek hobbit (Elijah Wood) and his various companions, as they try to stop the Dark Lord Sauron by destroying the source of his power, the One Ring. Maanagaram (2017) Crises befall a few youngsters — a cab driver, a BPO interviewee, and a hot-headed lover — whose lives are interlinked after they arrive in a big city in this Tamil-language thriller. Feature-length debut for writer-director Lokesh Kanagaraj. Manichitrathazhu (1993) In this Malayalam-language psychological thriller classic, a young wife (Shobana) is possessed by the spirit of a vengeful dancer after she opens a locked room in their new haunted mansion. To help get rid of it, the husband's psychiatrist friend (Mohanlal) suggests an unusual cure. Mean Girls (2004) Tina Fey's cult hit teen comedy follows a home-schooled 16-year-old (Lindsay Lohan) who's an instant hit with A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for the ex-boyfriend of the clique's alpha.

Men in Black (1997) Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones star as two agents of an eponymous secret organisation, whose job is to monitor extraterrestrial life on Earth and hide their presence from humans, using neuralysers to erase memories if need be. Mera Naam Joker (1970) By far the longest film on this list with a four-hour runtime, this semi-autobiographical take on director, producer, and lead star Raj Kapoor's own life is about a circus clown (Kapoor) who must make his audience laugh no matter how unhappy he is within. Told in three chapters, it features three women — Simi Garewal, Kseniya Ryabinkina, and Padmini — who shaped his world. Negatively received upon release, it later underwent a critical revaluation. Minority Report (2002) Steven Spielberg loosely adapts Philip K. Dick's short story of a future where a special police unit can catch criminals before a crime is committed thanks to a technology, and what happens when an officer from that unit (Tom Cruise) is himself accused of a murder. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) After the agency he works for is wrongly implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and a new team are forced to go rogue and clear their employer's name in this fourth entry of the franchise. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) With the organisation he works for disbanded and his country after him, Hunt (Cruise) races against time to prove the existence of the schemers pulling the strings in this fifth chapter. Introduced Rebecca Ferguson to the franchise. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) In what is arguably the best entry in the franchise yet — sixth, if you're counting — intelligence agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) & Co. set off on a globe-trotting adventure from Europe to Kashmir, to retrieve three plutonium cores from the hands of terrorists. Henry Cavill joins the fun. Moneyball (2011) Based on the true story of Oakland Athletics and manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), it follows the latter's attempts to build a competitive team by relying solely on statistical analysis, with help from a Yale graduate (Jonah Hill). Munich (2005) After a Palestinian terrorist group kills 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the latter's government launches a secret retaliation, tasking five men to hunt and kill those responsible for the massacre. Steven Spielberg directs, based on a true story. Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) After his parents find out he has been pretending to be a doctor, a good-natured Mumbai underworld don (Sanjay Dutt) tries to redeem himself by enrolling in a medical college, where his compassion brushes up against the authoritarian dean (Boman Irani). Co-written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who stands accused in the #MeToo movement. Mustang (2015) Set in a remote Turkish village, this debut feature by a Turkish-French director depicts the lives of five young orphaned sisters and the challenges they face growing up in a conservative society.

Nayakan (1987) Inspired by The Godfather — though good luck getting writer-director Mani Ratnam to admit it — and the life of Bombay (now Mumbai) crime boss Varadarajan Mudaliar, it depicts and the life and death of Velu (Kamal Haasan) who becomes a gangster and builds an empire. Newton (2017) Winner of the National Award for best Hindi film, in which Rajkummar Rao stars as a government clerk who tries to run a free and fair election in the Naxal-controlled conflict-ridden jungles of India. Once Upon A Time in America (1984) Spanning four decades, Sergio Leone's final sprawling film about a kid in a Jewish slum (Robert De Niro) who rises to prominence in New York's world of organised crime remains one of the greatest gangster films of all-time. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019) Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie lead the ensemble cast of Quentin Tarantino's “fairy tale tribute” to the waning days of Hollywood's golden age, which follows an ageing actor (DiCaprio) and his long-time friend and stunt double (Pitt) as they navigate a changing industry. Padosan (1968) Sunil Dutt, Saira Banu, Mehmood, and Kishore Kumar star in this remake of the 1952 Bengali film Pasher Bari, about a young man (Dutt) who falls in love with his new neighbour (Banu) and then enlists the help of his singer-actor friend (Kumar) to woo her away from her music teacher (Mehmood). Pariyerum Perumal (2018) An idealistic young man from a poor, oppressed caste family strikes a friendship with a much wealthier female classmate at law school in this Tamil-language film, earning him the wrath of her relatives and the society at large. Debut for writer-director Mari Selvaraj. Peranbu (2019) After his wife abandons him and their cerebral palsy daughter for another man, a single father (Mammooty) working as a cab driver in Dubai must return home and raise his only kid, while on the brink of homelessness. Pinjar (2003) Based on Amrita Pritam's Punjabi novel of the same name and set in the years before and after the Partition, a Hindu woman (Urmila Matondkar) returns to her Muslim kidnapper (Manoj Bajpayee) after she's disowned by her family upon escaping. Won a National Award. The Prestige (2006) After a tragic accident, two fellow magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) turn bitter enemies in this thriller from Christopher Nolan, and engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion, while sacrificing everything they have. Prisoners (2013) After his daughter and her friend are kidnapped, a father (Hugh Jackman) takes matters into his own hands while the police methodically track down multiple leads, getting himself into trouble. Jake Gyllenhaal co-stars. Pyaasa (1957) Guru Dutt directed and starred in this classic set in then-Calcutta which follows a struggling, anguished poet named Vijay (Dutt) who is unable to get recognition for his work until he meets Gulab (Waheeda Rehman), a prostitute with a heart of gold. Raazi (2018) Based on the real-life events depicted in Harinder Sikka's 2008 novel “Calling Sehmat”, Alia Bhatt stars as an undercover Kashmiri RAW agent who marries into a Pakistani military family to spy on the enemy prior to and during the 1971 Indo-Pak War. Some critics found it improbable.

The Report (2019) An idealistic government investigator (Adam Driver) uncovers shocking secrets as he dives into the CIA's post-9/11 use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” — in simpler words, torture — and faces severe pushback from those in the know. Roja (1992) Before Dil Se.. and Bombay, Mani Ratnam's exploration of human relationships against the backdrop of politics began with this Tamil-language film, about a newly-wed woman who moves to Kashmir and struggles to find her husband after he is kidnapped by Kashmiri separatists. Rosemary's Baby (1968) In this psychological horror based on Ira Levin's best-selling novel, a young pregnant woman (Mia Farrow) suspects an evil cult — involving her neighbours — wants to take her baby for use in their rituals. Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962) Based on Bimal Mitra's similarly-titled 1953 Bengali novel and set during the fall of British Raj feudalism, a part-time servant (Guru Dutt) develops a close, platonic bond with the ignored, lonely wife (Meena Kumari) of an aristocrat (Rehman). Waheeda Rehman also stars. Sankarabharanam (1980) Winner of four National Awards, a classical music legend faces ruin in this Telugu-language drama owing to changing music trends and the unexpected bond he forms with a prostitute's daughter, who is driven into exceptional circumstances. Saving Private Ryan (1998) In Steven Spielberg's World War II drama, while war rages on in Normandy, an army captain (Tom Hanks) is given the task of searching for a particular private (Matt Damon), whose three brothers have already been killed. Searching (2018) Told entirely through screens — computers and smartphones — a father (John Cho) breaks into his teenage daughter's laptop after she goes missing and detectives are unable to find a single lead. A Separation (2011) Asghar Farhadi's Oscar-winning drama follows an Iranian middle-class couple, whose 14-year-old marriage begins to dissolve after they reach a crossroads over the wife's wishes to leave the country and the husband's concerns for his elderly Alzheimer's father. Sholay (1975) Not many films have a level of prominence in popular Indian culture that is enjoyed by this fine example of “Curry Western”, which blends real-life elements with the works of Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone. Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar, and Jaya Bhaduri (now Bachchan) star. Shutter Island (2010) Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese collaborate for this adaptation of Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel, about two US Marshals (DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo) investigating the disappearance of a criminally-insane patient, who was imprisoned for drowning her three children. Siddharth (2013) After a poor Delhi man's (Rajesh Tailang) 12-year-old son goes missing while away on work hundreds of kilometres away in Punjab, he sets out across the country to find him, fearing he's been trafficked.

Spider-Man 2 (2004) In what many consider the best Spider-Man movie of all-time, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) can't catch a break. He loses his job, his powers, and the love of his life Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). And his best friend (James Franco) is out for Spider-Man's blood to avenge the death of his father. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) Drawn with a mix of computer-generated and hand-drawn art, Miles Morales is drawn into an inter-dimensional conflict soon after he's bit by a spider and gains superpowers, pushing him to team up to save the multiverse. Set for a 2022 sequel. A Star Is Born (2018) Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga star in this latest — fourth, if you're counting — remake of the 1937 classic tale, of an alcoholic fading star (Cooper) meeting and discovering a future star (Gaga). Cooper marks his directorial debut. Star Trek (2009) J.J. Abrams reboots the Trek film franchise by taking it into an alternate reality, where the young Kirk and Spock aboard USS Enterprise must combat a determined enemy from the future, who's creating black holes to destroy planets one by one. Sully (2016) The true story of the 2009 emergency plane landing on New York's Hudson River gets the everyday-hero treatment from Clint Eastwood, focusing on the pilot's (Tom Hanks) heroics and the subsequent investigation that tried to paint him otherwise. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as the android, now reprogrammed and sent back in time (again) to protect a younger version of a resistance leader, in James Cameron's sequel to the original that is considered one of the greatest films of all time. Thalapathi (1991) Mani Ratnam directs this Tamil-language crime drama loosely based on Karna and Duryodhana's friendship from Mahabharata, in which everything changes for a slum-dwelling orphan (Rajinikanth) who's taken under the wing of a local gang lord (Mammooty) with the arrival of a new district magistrate. Tumbbad (2018) While looking for a secret treasure in a village in 20th-century Maharashtra, a man and his son face the consequences of building a temple for a legendary demon who's not supposed to be worshipped in this psychological horror film. Unda (2019) Based on a true story, a nine-man Kerala police unit (Mammootty among them) must ensure peaceful elections in the Maoist-prone areas of Chhattisgarh with an insufficient number of bullets — unda is Malayalam for “bullet”. Vaastav: The Reality (1999) Loosely based on the life of Mumbai gangster Chhota Rajan, a young man (Sanjay Dutt) from the ghettos accidentally murders someone, which leads him into a life of crime where he swiftly climbs up the ladder — before launching into a spiral. Virus (2019) Set against the backdrop of the 2018 Nipah virus outbreak in the Indian state of Kerala, individuals from various walks of life come together to contain its spread in this gripping Malayalam-language thriller. Parvathy, Tovino Thomas, and Revathi star. Whiplash (2014) An ambitious young drummer (Miles Teller) is pushed to his limits and beyond by an abusive instructor (J.K. Simmons) in what became writer-director Damien Chazelle's breakthrough. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a real-life stockbroker who swindled over $100 million from buyers and scammed his way to the top, before he was caught and charged with fraud, corruption, and money laundering. Martin Scorsese directs, in ways that were accused of glorifying its protagonist's reprehensible actions. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, and Abhay Deol star as three childhood friends who set off on a bachelor trip across Spain, which becomes an opportunity to heal past wounds, combat their worst fears, and fall in love with life. Source link Read the full article

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The Kindergarten Teacher reviewed by Lakshmi Gandhi (@LakshmiGandhi) & Asha Sundararaman ‘04 (@mixedtck)

This review first appeared on Lakshmi and Asha’s weekly newsletter - sign up here to get these gems delivered straight to your inbox!

Maggie Gyllenhaal has always been drawn to stories about troubled, dissatisfied women, so we can understand why the script for "The Kindergarten Teacher"— her new film on Netflix — appealed to her.

In it, she plays Lisa Spinelli a teacher and mom of two kind of boring teens who lives on Staten Island. It's clear that Lisa yearns for something more and tries to channel her extra creative energy through the adult poetry classes that she takes at night. But it's only when she realizes that her young Indian-American student Jimmy Roy writes and recites his own poems that Lisa really seems to come alive. While the relationship between the middle aged teacher Gyllenhaal portrays and her tiny student is instantly troubling, what was even more troubling was that the film never dealt with the questions of race or jimmy's cultural identity. That lack of acknowledgement added an extra level of stress for as Indian-American viewers. (Readers can check out the trailer for “The Kindergarten Teacher” here.)

Editor’s note: We avoided major spoilers for “The Kindergarten Teacher” in this week’s chat, but some smaller plot points are revealed below. Proceed accordingly.

Lakshmi: I liked how we both watched this film independently and both independently stopped halfway through to take a breather because we were so creeped out! (We discovered this when we compared notes on Monday morning!)

Asha: I was struck by that too!

Lakshmi: Any film where an adult is so drawn to a child is creepy of course but Lisa's insistence that she was the only person who understood Jimmy's art and talent was so gross.

I should also note that most coverage of this film erased Jimmy's Indianness to such a degree that I actually had no idea that this was an Indian-American story until I read two reviews by the critics Candice Frederick and Constance Gibbs.

Both Candice Frederick and Constance Gibbs are black women critics and both have written and spoken extensively about the need for more diversity in film criticism. They just further proved that by their fantastic coverage of this film. The racial overtones are very, very clear for anyone who has been a small child of color surrounded by white teachers. It was their reviews that inspired me to write my own piece for The Teal Mango.

Asha: Indeed. It’s also significant that this is a remake of an Israeli film where the teacher and the student are the same race.

Lakshmi: Yes! So it's completely different if the pair are of the same race and culture. It's still creepy...; but the white savior "I'm the only person who gets it" aspect doesn't exist if they are both white jewish Israelis.

Asha: Exactly, it’s totally different. But i'm not sure white filmmakers really get that.

Lakshmi: Yes! remember when I told you about the new PBS “Little Women” series and how it randomly made a shopkeeper Black?

Asha: I do!

Lakshmi: (To recap: There’s a classic scene in “Little Women” in which Jo sells her hair in order to earn some money. The newest adaptation has Jo begging and arguing with the shopkeeper and it took on a completely different meaning because of the casting. Imagine being a white girl asking a Black man for money in 1863! I still shudder when I think about it!)

Anyway, back to this film…

So when Lisa discovers Jimmy saying poems to herself she flips out and starts interrogating Jimmy's babysitter. The babysitter (who is a college student and perfectly fine at her job) explains that Jimmy's uncle Sanjay often reads him poems. Lisa —despite just learning that the uncle reads to Jimmy and teaches him things — becomes convinced Jimmy is neglected and no one is nurturing his talent.

For a viewer it’s so confusing. You can’t help but think,  "Lisa, his uncle is teaching him poetry! His actual family has it under control!" But she goes wild anyway.

Asha: By that point she is just convinced she's the only one who sees him or who cares about him, which is bizarre.

Lakshmi: Also, that section also makes it particularly annoying that they gave Jimmy's character a Bengali surname, because there's a long tradition of Bengali poetry. I interpreted the knowledge that Sanjay was sharing poems with his nephew as a way of passing down those intellectual traditions. But it was very ‘white feminist’ (as they say on Twitter) of Lisa to never even consider that possibility.

Asha: Yes, it makes total sense. And since Sanjay's a writer as well, of course he's going to encourage that side of his nephew.

Lakshmi: And to me the most annoying scene was when the babysitter explains to Lisa, "oh, he does this all the time, he makes up little songs for himself.” In response, Lisa gets all indignant and says “THEY AREN'T SONGS, THEY ARE POEMS.”

In my head, I was like "Lisa you are a moron, they are ghazals." Jimmy is continuing Bengali poetic traditions and creating ghazals!

Asha: HA

Lakshmi: It's not out of the question that Sanjay taught him what a ghazal was!

Asha:  And who is she to say that they're not songs anyway? When she said that, i was like "you don't know that....they might by lyrics...."

Lakshmi: That’s true. If he really is a prodigy, it's not out of the question that he'd write his own music too

Asha: Exactly.

Lakshmi: But that tunnel vision was so, so creepy. We see that every time the film deals with Jimmy’s dad in particular. Even though the filmmaker and screenwriter was determined to paint Jimmy's father Nikhil as a bad guy, he actually seemed like a good parent to me.

Asha: I agree.

Lakshmi: I mean, he was always at work and a little narrow minded...but there was nothing about him that screamed bad dad or that he didn't ultimately have his child's interests at heart

Asha: When we finally meet him, he seems way more in touch with his son than the beginning of the film made it seem and, by that point, far more clear-eyed than she is.

Lakshmi: That was particularly striking because all we had heard prior to that was Lisa whining about how the dad works all the time. But we know 1) his wife left him 2) he's an immigrant. Therefore Nikhil is the sole breadwinner in a country where they may not have a ton of support. He has to work all the time to live! Sometimes the best way to be a parent to ensure financial stability for your child. Plus,  Jimmy has Sanjay and the babysitter! So he is being cared for! His care just doesn't meet Lisa's wacky standards.

Asha: i don't think anyone would meet her standards!

Lakshmi: Also, when you are dealing with people with delusions of grandeur (which I think we're supposed to believe Lisa is experiencing) if those differences didn't exist, she'd just latch onto something else

Asha: Yes, true.

Lakshmi: She does finally get to meet Nikhil at the club lounge he manages. She gives him a big speech about how "he's really talented." Nikhil, in turn, and he explains that he doesn't want him to be exactly like Sanjay and that he should be a little kid right now anyway. And... that's not totally unreasonable?

Asha: Yes! I loved that he exclaimed "he's five!" because really...he's five. So much can change.

Lakshmi: And she gets so upset when he won't let her take Jimmy to a fancy poetry reading in Manhattan (because, again, he's five!).

He explains that Jimmy plays baseball on that day of the week anyway. Lisa’s solution to this was… to kidnap him! She tells the person who is picking him up that's he's sick and just takes him onto the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan.

Asha:  IT WAS SO WEIRD! And inappropriate!

Lakshmi: In addition to the kidnapping, the reading she takes him to is so inappropriate for a child!  There's alcohol, the readings sometimes contain sexual references, it's at night when he should be in bed. When the dad chews her out for all of those things, Lisa gets mad at him! She literally says something like "well, you have the right to your opinion.”

It’s another weird moment for the viewer because (once again) you’re just yelling at the screen. “You took his child! You are lucky he didn't have you arrested!”

Asha: Right???!

Lakshmi: He was such a good dad after that. He takes action right away and pulls Jimmy out of school.

Asha: He's definitely a good dad. He immediately gets him out of that environment.

Lakshmi: And he has a point. Why should they be cultivating the talent of a five year old? If Jimmy decides later that he wants to pursue poetry, let him do so. But he can just play baseball now like an ordinary child!

Asha: I don't think cultivating talent at a young age is a bad thing, but it can't come at the expense of everything else.

Lakshmi: Yes, and Lisa’s approach didn’t serve anyone but herself. Exposing Jimmy to weird adult poets at the age of five can do more harm than good.

Asha: Yes. There’s a limit. Encourage the poetry, but don't let it define the kid. But that is  basically what she does.

Lakshmi: But not really! She uses his poems to define HER. So as we know, Lisa is taking this adult poetry class. All of the sudden her poems get really good. But It's not because she suddenly becomes talented! It's because she's passing off this child's work as her own

Asha: Honestly, as the teacher, i would have thought something was off because of the sudden shift in the quality of the work.

Lakshmi: I thought it was funny when during the critique section one of the students asked "why did you write this from the perspective of a little boy" and another person says "I thought this week's theme was realism" or something. So they are definitely confused!

Asha: Haha, yes. But it did also strike me that that's typical for a beginning class: taking everything literally.

Lakshmi: That's another funny thing about this movie: the poems are interesting, but they aren't Byron or anything.

Asha: Right.

Lakshmi: The "is he a prodigy?" issue is a very open question. Lisa could just be making it up, especially if -- as my new headcanon states-- he's just parroting his uncle Sanjay's writing

Asha: i definitely think she's making it up. I think what other people respond to, is the openness of the poetry.

Lakshmi: And if you believe that she's making it up, it’s easy to see why the dad is so dismissive. Lisa tells him that Jimmy should be treated like Mozart and he's like "ok, lady.” I also thought Jimmy's self-possession was a credit to his guardians.

Asha: Me too. They give him space to be who he wants to be.

Lakshmi: When Lisa essentially forces him to put her number in his phone (under his first name! Not under "Ms.Spinelli!") He let’s her add the number to the phone because she’s a grown up. BUT when she calls him he says "why are you calling me?" He is on alert.

Asha: He is. He knows something isn't right

Lakshmi: I'm not going to spoil it because the last 15 minutes are so good, but I want to say THE ENDING IS SO SATISFYING. It makes you sit up and say, “Go, Jimmy! Excellent job!”

Asha: Yep. He knows.

Lakshmi: Also, as we said in the intro, Maggie Gyllenhaal has a track record of being attracted to roles about messed up power dynamics. It’s clear though that she really didn't think this role through. Additionally, except for the two reviewers we mentioned earlier, no one else is really writing about the race aspect of this film. The race and culture gulf present in the film isn’t part about the critical conversation about it at all.

Asha: That doesn't surprise me at all

Lakshmi: Sigh. As an aside, the Los Angeles Times has done some really interesting pieces on the need for diversity in film criticism this year. This is worth a read.

OK, it's almost time for us to go! Did you have a final thought?

Asha: Honestly...I didn't need to watch this movie and i wouldn't recommend it

Lakshmi: I literally just laughed out loud when I read that, because I completely agree. As you (and longtime readers know) I don't like creepy things. In this case it was particularly painful to watch because  felt like this film wanted to emotionally manipulate viewers just for the sake of doing so.

Asha: Yes. I didn't come away with anything deep or interesting. The film had zero self-awareness.

(Also, we didn’t talk about this earlier, the intimate scene in the poetry teacher's office didn't feel earned.)

Lakshmi: Yeah, that was absurd! You gotta earn sexy times with Gael García Bernal! Lisa didn’t earn any of that.

Asha: HA. I honestly thought that was the only reason they put it in there, because it was Gael García Bernal. She didn’t deserve him at all.