#something something classical tragedy for the modern era

[tzviaariella]

@vashtijoy YOU. YOU GET IT.

[companion-showdown]

Who is your favourite companion?

TOURNAMENT MASTERPOST

propaganda under the cut

Ace McShane

She's brilliant. One of the best written and developed companions of the classic series, such a template for the modern era. So many different fates and stories across the different media. If you don't love her in one you're bound to in another. And then she got her return in the new era to boot. Oh yeah; and beating the crap out of a Dalek with a Gallifreyan enhanced baseball bat. What a legend. she's... ACE! (@seven-times-champion /@elden-12 )

Ace is the natural predecessor to modern female companions. She's a fighter, smart, caring, an explosives "expert", a match for the Doctor despite being so young. She follows her own morality, will smash a dalek with a baseball bat no problem, and has a banging wardrobe! (anonymous)

Donna Noble

you already know who she is bc she's the most iconic companion of all time. imagine teleporting into the tardis on the worst day of the doctor's life (so far) and not clocking any of his angst and SCREAMING at him to take you back to your wedding not only is this THE funniest introduction it's symbolizing how she saw the doctor at their worst, underneath the front that they put up, and due to this she understands them on a level like nothing else and changes their life forever. "you don't just need someone to stop you, you need someone to keep you going". AHHHHHH. she isn't in love with the doctor she calls them out whenever they're being awful and need to be whacked on the back of the head. she is filled with so much compassion for the smallest person she reminds ten of the kindness that was beaten out of him and she is so so loving to everyone except for herself. she loves her trans daughter so much. she changed the narrative of the doctor back from the tragedy it was into something hopeful. healing is real and possible through the power of queerplatonic relationships actually. donna sweep or i blow up the website (@aq2003 )

[the-english-student-studyblr]

Book Recommendations (from a lit grad student)

So, as I have come to the end of my MA in world lit, I thought I should give you a list of some of the best books I've read, or learnt from. I ignore established canon and give to you recommendations from across the globe and across all genres. Books that defined their genre, or made an impact, or are just really cool and enjoyable to read. This list is not all dead white men.

I have split the list by era/year of publication primarily for easy reading. A lot of the sections are arbitrary. Some of them are not.

Note: This list is not conclusive! This is based on my own readings, and my own, personal, opinions. You have the right to your own opinions and preferences. If you have any suggestions, add them on below.

Classic lit (pre-1700)

Aristole - Poetics (c. 335 BCE)

As much as I hate it...this one is actually pretty important. I know I said 'contributions to literary canon don't matter', and here I am, immediately doing the opposite. But! Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest treatise on literary theory that has survived to the modern day. You want to know where our ideas of comedy and tragedy come from? Poetics. Three act structure? Poetics. Plot and character? Poetics. Key terms like catharsis, hubris, hamartia? Poetics. We had to read this for creative writing, and did I hate it? Yes. Am I a better writer for having read it? Also yes

Plato - The Republic (c. 375 BCE)

Plato is quite easy to read, of the classical philosophers. His works are mostly dialogues between characters, which makes them more engaging that some other dry philosophy texts. I wrote out a longer post with an explanation of Plato's Republic specifically here.

Genji Monogatari (pre-1021)

The first novel ever! Originally written in Japanese, be careful of your translations because most are of questionable quality. I've only read the first one by Suematsu and that's uhhhhh Bad™ but I think the current waterstones edition is decent?

The Völsunga saga OR The Vinland sagas (early 13th century)

Ah, how to choose just one Norse saga? These are both pretty solid examples of their style, and short (always a plus). The Völsunga saga was the inspiration behind Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (famous for the piece The Valkyrie), and most likely Tolkien's works. The Vinland sagas supposedly have an anime/manga series inspired by them, though looking at the synopsis I cannot see where the inspiration was other than time period. Norse sagas - especially the Icelandic ones such as Vinland - are actually pretty good guides to real historic events, which is very cool. I could go on for hours about this, but I'll spare you the rambling.

Thomas More - Utopia (1516)

Lovely little sarcastic book about tudor politics and human nature all wrapped up in the original 'utopian text'. Surprisingly funny for something written so long ago, and very easy to read. I wrote a longer post about it here

Aphra Behn - Oroonoko (1688)

Hated it, but the themes are interesting and wow did the author lead an interesting life. Widely considered to be the first novel written in English, deals with colonialism, slavery, and honour, and Aphra Behn was a spy? I'm sure some of you will eat that up. Be warned, very 'noble savage'-y book, but less racist than it could've been so cool, I guess?

Early Modern Drama

Christopher Marlowe - Edward II (1592)

Gay. So gay. We're not supposed to call it gay (because of a whole host of reasons that I can and will explain if anyone shows up in my askbox complaining about academics) but it is a very very queer play and Kit Marlowe was too which is even better. Also our one and only history play on this list. Anyone who already knows how Edward II died (thanks horrible histories) do not spoil the ending.

Shakespeare - Twelfth Night (1602)

As with any Shakespeare, watch a performance if you can. I highly recommend the National Theatre version that was up on youtube in 2020. Very gay, no one is cishet. Lots of singing and dancing. Prime example of Shakespeare's comedies with added gender shenanigans.

Shakespeare - Hamlet (1609)

Yes I'm basic. Yes I like Hamlet. In the same way that Twelfth Night is a great example of Shakespeare's comedies, Hamlet is a good example of his tragedies. Mostly, though, I'm recommending this because the castle it's set in in Denmark (Elsinore) a) actually exists and b) does an amazing educational programme, with live actors performing scenes all across the castle! Watching the 'to be or not to be' soliloquy in the banquet hall just adds a whole other level to the experience of reading the play.

Shakespeare - Measure for Measure OR The Tempest

Shakespeare's problem plays. I couldn't pick just one, because they're both fantastic in different ways. Measure for Measure features what can only be described as the early-modern version of an ace protagonist - Isabella - who I adore. The Tempest has a really interesting portrayal of early colonialism and slavery. The reason they are 'problem plays' is they check all the boxes for a comedy...but they're not funny. At all. And they also check some of the boxes for a tragedy. They're certainly interesting reading

Ben Jonson - The Alchemist (1610)

Just a really good, solid play. Very funny. Bunch of con artists set up an elaborate scheme to rob rich people. Also very good for showing class structures of the time. Shakespeare gets all the recognition for this era but Jonson is just as good really, and definitely as clever.

Regency and Victorian lit (1700-1900)

Jane Austen

Literally anything by Austen. She is just so funny, so witty, and I wholeheartedly believe she'd be a feminist today. Master of the female gaze in literature, but beyond that she is basically credited with the invention of free indirect discourse, which is super cool. I have only read Pride and Prejudice, but I have heard good things about most of her books, so I don't feel bad recommending all of them.

William Blake

There's one poem by Blake about a London street urchin that breaks my heart every time I read it and that is the sole reason behind this recommendation I hate Romantic poets.

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (1818)

You knew it was coming. First sci-fi, gothic horror, teenage girl writer. Gotta love Shelley.

Frederik Douglass - Narrative of the Life of Frederik Douglass (1845)

You know those books that are horrifying because they're real? That's this book. Doesn't shy away from the horrors of slavery and for a reason. This is an autobiography. It is not fiction.

Gowongo Mohawk - Wep-ton-no-mah (1890s)

My favourite play of all time. You will need to do a trip to either the British Library or the Library of Congress to read it because there are no other copies, but I did do a whole podcast episode about it because I'm apparently the expert? You can find it here.

Bram Stoker - Dracula (1894)

I know here on tumblr we adore Dracula, and for good reason. It's horrifying, it's got a blorbo, if you haven't read it already, go with a dracula daily read-through or @re-dracula for the best experience. (Re:Dracula also has episodes where they get scholars on to talk about things like racism and gender and queer theory surrounding the text which is SO COOL as an ex-lit student I love listening to those episodes.

Post-1900

Oscar Wilde - De Profundis (1905)

We had to read a snippet of this for A-Level and I wish it had been more because wow. Most lists like this will recommend Dorian Gray because it's a novel, but De Prof is so heartfelt and beautiful and sad and deserves to be read.

Baroness Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)

First masked vigilante/superhero! If you like comic books or superhero media, this is where it all started (funny how all the firsts so far have been written by women 🤔)

Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

If you only read one book in your life about WW1 make it this one! It is heartbreaking and beautifully written and makes you feel so many things. It was banned in...a lot of places for being anti-war (especially as WW2 came closer) and also because it was written by a German who was anti-war which was apparently impossible to comprehend. The prose is truly something to behold.

Modern lit (Post-war era)

George Orwell - 1984 (1948) OR Animal Farm (1945)

Which one you should read depends a lot on how long your preferred book is and how metaphorical your tastes are. Both are very good explorations of corrupt governments. Animal Farm is an easier read and shorter and is much more allegorical. 1984 is very in-your-face about how much authoritarian governments suck. Do not discount 1984 just because Winston is a terrible person. Everyone knows he's terrible. That's the whole point. He is a normal terrible person, not a cartoonishly evil terrible person, or an angelically perfect revolutionary. All the characters are realistic for their situation.

Maya Angelou - I know why the caged bird sings (1969)

Another one with some beautiful prose. She's a poet and you can tell. It's an autobiography, plus there's a lot of clever stuff going on with how it's written. You could write an essay about this. I did.

Ghassan Khanafani - Return to Haifa (1969)

A short story by a Palestinian author - we were given this by our Palestinian lecturer as an intro to the conflict and the terrible things that colonialism has done to the region. Additionally, there are notes throughout that help explain the significance of things and background and all that jazz. There is a play version that is probably easier to find because it was published more recently but it's not as good.

Ben Okri - The Famished Road (1993)

I did not read this book for uni and I think that may have influenced my opinion of it slightly but I still credit it as one of the reasons I got interested in world lit and translation. It's a really beautiful exploration of Nigerian mythological tradition and its effect on family and politics in this kind of fascinatingly weird style that's both magical realism and modernist? I hate modernism but love magical realism more so.

Carmen Maria Machado - In the Dream House (2019)

What a book oh wow. It reads like poetry. I cannot think of anything coherent to say my brain is screaming. The novel explores abuse in queer relationships, which is something people don't normally talk about, through some very interesting motifs and I love it so much. It is hard to read, but very rewarding.

[alexilulu]

Books I Read in 2024 #4: The King In Yellow (Robert W. Chambers, Warbler Classics (originally F. Tennyson Neely), 1895)

The King In Yellow is a series of nine short stories and poems, linked primarily by the narrative device of The King In Yellow, a play and general text in the world of the story that is associated with madness and the forbidden.

It's fun to return to older modes of writing from time to time, especially the established classics. I've known about The King In Yellow for a fairly long time at this point as a touchstone of cosmic horror and an influence on H.P. Lovecraft, along with about a billion other people working in the horror space since the 1890s. My personal first experience with stories influenced by it is SCP-701, The Hanged King's Tragedy, which is an SCP object that manifests in the form of a Carolinean era English play that is associated with madness, suicide of its participants and the manifestation of a mysterious figure at productions of said play. It's a pretty direct reference point, but I did fall in love with the idea of a play founded on madness.

You see it referenced all over the place; Hastur (sometimes a place, sometimes a person), lost Carcosa, the Hyades, though these are actually borrowed from the stories An Inhabitant of Carcosa and Haita the Shepherd by Ambrose Bierce (but not linked directly, as the only thematic link is that the Carcosa of Bierce is that the city is a long-lost and destroyed city of antiquity), or most prominently after the King In Yellow's publishing, the Yellow Sign.

The fascinating thing to me is how broad the stories of The King in Yellow are. There are nine stories in The King In Yellow, but only 5 (or perhaps 6, if you consider the 6th story, The Street of the Four Winds, to be supernatural; it's mostly just eerie and affecting, to me) of them have clear or obvious influence of the supernatural. The final three stories of the book are simple romance narratives set against the backdrop of contemporary or recent (at the time) Paris and the French art industry, something Robert Chambers had long personal experience with as an American studying abroad in Parisian art schools in the years before.

This is the first novel in this list that I've gone back to read historiography about after finishing. Part of that is that there is not a great deal of reporting around modern novelists and their legacies for obvious reasons, but part of it is that this book was truly a baffling read for the final three stories.

I don't say this as a criticism, but it replicated a feeling I get reading some fandom zines of the last few years, especially ones that include fiction. There is sometimes a breakdown that happens in a themed project where one author or artist doesn't seem to be on the same page as the rest of the team on what is supposed to go in the zine, but was nevertheless accepted. It's just funny to read stories like the first couple, stories of madness and loss, and then have a Parisian story of romance in the city of lights amidst a siege or art-school intrigue.

Robert Chambers' work is extremely evocative in its work about place and dress, giving a great deal of attention to mood and scene. His dialogue is very much of it's era, sometimes sharply funny, sometimes eluding me until I've repeated it two or three times to myself to find the cadence of what it was attempting to convey. It's far from unreadable, and even when it dragged the most I kept myself in the game by the strength of his imagery, and it felt surprising to me to see critiques of Robert Chamber's work from his contemporaries.

H.P. Lovecraft was undoubtedly influenced by his work, but also described his work as such:

Chambers is like Rupert Hughes and a few other fallen Titans – equipped with the right brains and education but wholly out of the habit of using them.

It feels a bit mean, but it's definitely not wrong. I think the grandest part of this novel is its legacy and the elision of detail for its major thematic work, allowing a great deal of expansion for the myth over the century since its published debut. The King in Yellow can be many things; it's been the subject of podcasts, stories and movies and television all drawing upon its influence to greater and lesser extents.

[oliveroctavius]

It's the Harry Osborn fashion post nobody asked for!

I'm no expert in menswear (all info + photo examples come from VintageDancer) so take this as speculation and feel free to correct any terminology. Still, I wanted to ramble about his interesting progression of clothes choices through the classic comics.

Ditko era (1965)

An outdated look even for the time: the bowtie, brown/grey color scheme, and wide high-waisted pants with a skinny belt are all kind of 1940s/50s things. Not to mention the hair.

It seems Ditko's only vision for Harry was Norman Junior. You know those eerie photos of politicians' families where the kids are dressed identically to their parents? Yeah.

Of course, once characterization catches up, there's a lot to be said about Harry's relationship with imagined "good old days" and his father's self-image.

Characterization catches up (1966)

John Romita is here and we get a flashback to baby Harry, who in contrast to his dad looks like an easter egg.

On a practical level, bright colors (1) draw attention to Harry as a new main character and (2) convey time passing. But it also fits with the reveal that he's a mostly sweet kid trying too hard to conform to an aggressively traditionalist role model.

I like that the bow tie sticks around. It has old-fashioned, dweeby connotations (as probably originally intended) but it also has appropriate oddball performer connotations.

Roomates era (1966-69)

Big checkered patterns, vests, and expanded colors; a showy take on the Ivy League 50s/60s style, unless I miss my guess. A bit more modern, but still in the realm of uptight dweeb. I love how Romita made him friendly without making him less weird.

It's a rather slow makeover from monochrome to bright and patterned. On a Watsonian level, it's fun to imagine that living away from his dad lets him gradually rediscover a colorful fashion sense.

The less formal at-home version of this look is a sweater or sweatervest with a collared shirt, a la baby Osborn.

The New Osborn Image (1969. nice)

Eventually both Harry and the editors get self conscious about keeping up with the times, and...

This is so charmingly "repressed young adult finally has their awkward rebellious self-discovery phase halfway through college" to me. Artists love to call back to this look because lol, retro facial hair, but I think its status as a bona fide short-lived Embarrassing Phase makes it sacred.

The New(er) Osborn Image (1970-72)

Exploratory phase over, his new look is something between Mod and Peacock Revolution: long coats, double-breasted tailored jackets, colorful turtlenecks, neckerchiefs instead of ties.

In my totally unbiased opinion this is the pinnacle of Harry costuming. He's found a public-facing sense of style that's fun. It's formal, but not just in a Norman-impressing way—he got here via personal experimentation and peer inspiration. It's the most joyful sartorial self-expression he ever seems to get.

Sure hope he's not about to experience personal-identity-shattering amounts of stress and tragedy!

spice up your mental breakdown by raiding your father's closet (1973)

At least, I think that's Ross Andru's angle. Harry moves back into his dad's townhouse and his clothes are uncharacteristically oversized and formless.

Drop the metaphor, fill your father's shoes for real. The fur-lined coat + leather gloves in particular strike me as unnaturally Normanesque. Earlier periods illustrated his Garbage Mental Health Hygiene with untucked shirts and unfastened collars, though his hairdo is still perfectly in place because everyone knows it just grows in like that.

I think the shirt he's committed in is the first short-sleeved shirt we ever see him wear. Probably too early in history for him to be given a pair of those grippy socks.

back to basics/dadclothes (1975-on)

Harry comes back in ASM 151 with two outfits: a grey suit and tie and a plaid short sleeved shirt with jeans. This split between utilitarian business clothes/simple comfort clothes sticks around into Buscema and JMD's 90s run.

This was probably meant to signal that he's more "grown up" and stable, but after everything else it just feels like a very lonely return to form and a widening fracture between public presentation and personal identity—this time self-enforced.

JMD uses the goblin costume to talk about Harry's struggles with self-image and emotional compartmentalization, but I think it works because that theme was already there in a less dramatic way. Particularly once the colors went back in the closet.

The thing about toxic performative masculinity is that it hates to admit that it's just a performance. Showy fashion can be attractive to people who've been told they flunk out of gender for physical or mental reasons because it's entirely performance (hence the art of drag) (and hence transmascs who joke they dress like silver age Harry). Also, I think it's just a fun personality trait for him to enjoy bright and meticulous dress, dangit.

[cyarskj1899]

"I want to make a record where I don’t have to play by the rules or have any hit singles": Bruce Springsteen on his acoustic masterpiece The Ghost Of Tom Joad

Inspired by the classic novel The Grapes Of Wrath, The Ghost Of Tom Joad became a staple of Bruce Springsteen’s live shows, and led to The Boss teaming up with RATM’s Tom Morello

Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck’s classic 1939 American novel The Grapes Of Wrath, has had a pretty good life as an apparition, thanks to Bruce Springsteen and some of his friends.

Inspired by the book and John Ford’s 1940 film adaptation, as well as by Woody Guthrie’s The Ballad Of Tom Joad, Springsteen wrote The Ghost Of Tom Joad, a modern-day appropriation of the same Great Depression-era concerns, during the early 90s. 

It became the title track for his stripped-down 1995 acoustic album, and a staple – usually the opening number – for the live shows that supported it. The song was also rocked up, dramatically, two years later by Rage Against the Machine, and in 2014 Springsteen – with Rage guitarist Tom Morello in tow as part of his E Street Band – released yet another version for his latest album, High Hopes.

“I want to make a record where I don’t have to play by the rules… have any hit singles or none of that stuff,” Springsteen said of the Tom Joad album, backstage at an early stop on his solo acoustic tour to support it. “I can make whatever kind of music I want to make. I hadn’t done that in a real long time. I guess I wanted to see if I could do it again.”

Tom Joad was actually the latest in a series of curve balls Springsteen had thrown his audience since Born In The USA. There was the calculated come-down of Tunnel Of Love and the shocking subsequent dismissal of the E Street Band. The group’s reunion for the early 1996 Greatest Hits album was just as surprising, and The Ghost Of Tom Joad was one of the songs he worked on with the band at that time. “It started out as a rock song. But It didn’t feel right, so I set it aside,” Springsteen wrote in 1998 lyric book Songs.

He returned to the Los Angeles area, where he was living at the time, and began work on starker material, “just myself and my guitar”, and the new version of Tom Joad became a linchpin for his next project, a kind of musical sibling to ’82’s Nebraska.

“Once I cut Tom Joad, I had a feeling for the record I wanted to make,” Springsteen said. “It was an acoustic album where I picked up elements of the themes I had worked on in the past and set the stories in the mid-90s.”

That was certainly true of the set’s title track, which chronicled the other side of the Clinton era’s prosperity, using subtle and minimalist instrumentation and a mournful melody to deliver timeless images – ‘Families sleepin’ in their cars in the Southwest / No home, no job, no peace no rest’ – of ordinary Joes, along with migrants and a criminal or two, grasping desperately for an American Dream made elusive by class schisms and corporate greed.

But Springsteen rejected any notions of despair. “There’s always something being revealed – about them, about you. That’s always exciting,” he explained. “Even if the stuff is dark, even if there’s tragedy involved, it’s still exciting. The truth is always hopeful. It’s always inspiring, no matter what it is.”

It wasn’t an easy sell, however; Tom Joad was the first Springsteen album since 1973 to miss the top five, although it did win a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. “I knew [the album] wouldn’t attract my largest audience,” Springsteen wrote in Songs. “But I was sure the songs on it added up to a reaffirmation of the best of what I do.”

Rage Against The Machine certainly heard the truth of Tom Joad and found in it a firm fit with the group’s own populist, leftist leaning. “I was a huge fan of The Ghost Of Tom Joad,” Morello recalls. “It was my favourite record for a long time. I think I gave the CD to Zack [De La Rocha, Rage’s frontman] for Christmas that year. 

"We were about to set off with U2 on the PopMart tour, and we didn’t have any new material. I suggested that we do a Rage-ified cover of The Ghost Of Tom Joad. I think at first that suggestion was met with some scepticism, but then it came together and sounded great on the tour. The lyrics were certainly not out of context for Rage Against The Machine. And I brought a bulldozer riff or two to it that worked very well.”

It sounded so good that, during the tour, Rage ducked into the studio to record a version of Tom Joad for a CD single accompanying the group’s self-titled 1997 home video. Rage later re-cut it for a version that appeared on their 2001 covers set, Renegades, and later on the No Boundaries: A Benefit For The Kosovar Refugees benefit album. It became Rage’s second-highest charting song.

Morello first performed Tom Joad with Springsteen and the E Street Band in April 2008 in Anaheim, California, when Springsteen surprised the guitarist by asking him to sing some lead vocals as well as play on it. “That was the first time I ever sang with an electric guitar in my hands,” notes Morello.

Springsteen & co had already turned Tom Joad into a powerhouse electric showstopper inspired by the Rage version; when Morello stood in for Steve Van Zandt for Bruce and his band’s 2008 tour of Australia, it was a regular part of the set. It was also a logical inclusion for High Hopes when Springsteen decided to make Morello an integral part of the album.

“[Tom Joad] was the one I felt I really had to hit the nail on the head with,” Morello says. “It’s been such an exciting live moment and a great melding of the two worlds of the E Street Band and my playing on it. I was hopeful that we were going to be able to capture the spark of those live performances and I think, in my humble view, we may have surpassed it. It’s a really great recording of that song."

Gary Graff

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Gary Graff is an award-winning veteran music journalist based in metro Detroit, writing regularly for Billboard, Ultimate Classic Rock, Media News Group, Music Connection, United Stations Radio Networks and others. Graff’s work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Guitar World, Classic Rock, Revolver, the San Francisco Chronicle, AARP magazine, the Detroit Jewish News, The Forward and others. Graff has co-written and edited books about Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. A professional voter for the Grammy Awards and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Graff co-founded the Detroit Music Awards in 1989 and continues as the organisation’s chief producer.

[loemius]

Hiii!

I read a post of you talking about books and so on of the hellenic gods

Do you have a list or something?

I wanna connect more to this deities but lm really lost cuz the only thing people recommend it’s the Iliad

Only if you have time though

Thank you ♥️

hello! thank you for the ask :D

i'm not as in depth in my research yet as other recon practitioners as i'm still pretty new to the scene but here is what i would suggest as far as general information goes:

-Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod (primary source)

-Odyssey by Homer (primary source)

-Hellenic Polytheism; Household Worship by LABRYS Polytheist Community

-Greek Religion by Walter Burkert

-Fel the Blithe (youtube channel)

as always, i am going to suggest the websites theoi.com, labrys.gr/eng, and hellenicgods.org. these sites will have info about specific gods and general praxis. i will outright state this upfront: some of these sources will have differing perspectives. LABRYS is a hard recon organization and hellenicgods.org comes at it from an orphic perspective. fel the blithe is a modern practitioner who posts about her praxis and research on youtube. i think this is best for someone looking to connect to the theoi more. there's a lot of ways to worship out there. do research from a lot of different places, soak up the information, and figure out your path to the gods. the theoi are personal gods, after all, and your path will look different than another worshipper, and that is both okay and natural and also cool as shit imo. that's something i love about the theoi, personally.

i will also strongly suggest familiarizing yourself with the primary sources of hesiod and homer, then i suggest moving onto sappho and the comedies/tragedies. if you're interested in dionysus, i suggest the bacchae. interested in demeter? read about her mysteries. interested in aphrodite? read about her adonia festival. pick a god or two and get *deep*, find primary sources about it and look at cult worship in central areas. if the language is giving you a headache (no shame if it does! i'm a significantly slower reader when i read the classics because of the time it takes me to digest them and make sure i'm fully understanding) then i strongly suggest at least looking over the cliff's notes or a summary. even if you read the summary first then try to read the primary text itself, it helps to know what's going on. having an understanding of the remaining texts we have from the ancient era helps provide context to the theoi themselves and their domains. the gods arent the myths themselves, but the myths are a good place to start. if all else fails, hit up wikipedia and go to the bottom in the references section. they link all their sources, and you can just start diving into all their citations.

best wishes and honor to the theoi!

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #615

Top Ten Songs from Pixar Films

Disney is always associated with music. The very concept of a “Disney song” is so ingrained into our cultural perception of the company, that we even have multiple sub-genres within; the “villain song”, the “I Want song”, the “comedy song”, etc. Not all Disney animated films are musicals, and not all the musicals are the same, and if you go back earlier than the Renaissance the style itself hadn’t solidified in any way, but all the same; you say “Disney song”, chances are people know what kind of thing you mean.

The same is not true of Pixar. When the company first rose to prominence in the late nineties, they felt in opposition to the standard Disney formula (despite Disney releasing all their films and, eventually, buying them outright). Disney animation was just about starting the downswing towards the end of its Renaissance era; the standard pattern established by the groundbreaking likes of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast was, arguably, starting to wear a bit thin through repetition (although I’ll definitely go to bat for late-Renaissance-era bangers like Tarzan and The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Pixar films weren’t musicals, they weren’t fairy tales, they weren’t literary adaptations or allusions. They were modern, they were comedies, they were buddy movies; they had wit and verve and contemporary references. However, right from the start, they still had songs.

Because we think of the “Disney musical” versus the “Pixar comedy”, I think we tend to overlook just how excellent some of the music in these films was, right from the off. Toy Story was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song (although it did lose to Pocahontas), and it was an accolade the studio would receive a number of times, even winning on more than one occasion. But these songs weren’t the kind of breakout Broadway bangers Disney was producing; they were, more often than not, non-diegetic, songs that functioned the way a musical number might, but were merely “on the soundtrack”. Jessie doesn’t actually sing “When She Loved Me” in Toy Story 2; there’s no evidence the characters “hear” the song at all. But as a narrative device, it serves the same purpose; it imparts emotional information in the most powerful manner possible. Even when characters in Pixar movies do sing, it’s in a “realistic” manner – like, they pick up a guitar and sing – rather than the emotional explosion of a traditional musical number.

All this is to say that Pixar films have some tremendous songs and this is a list of them. It isn’t score, though; these are all proper songs with words and that. And I’m not allowing songs that were already written. These have to be new songs that debuted in the film. And that’s that!

No apologies if some of these make you cry, by the way.

When She Loved Me (Toy Story 2, 1999): I think this I the moment when the sophisticated, mature themes that underpin a lot of Pixar’s stories became very apparent. After what was essentially a knockabout buddy comedy in the first Toy Story, this really rammed home the subtext: the toys were us, parents, saying goodbye to children. There’s an inherent tragedy at the core of the Toy Story films because children will, inevitably, unthinkingly abandon their toys, but the toys will never truly abandon the children. This is heartbreakingly illustrated in this song, a tender ballad of loss that rings all too true.

Remember Me (Coco, 2017): oh Christ, here we go again; a song so good they feature it three times in three different ways. Presented initially as something of a love song, it is revealed to be an incredibly heartfelt lullaby to a child from a parent who has to go away. The simple refrain and Latin guitar helps make it feel like a classic song, something from our own childhoods. Its later use in the film is one of Pixar’s most eye-watering moments, and that’s saying something.

Lava (Lava, 2014): is it a cheat to have a song from a short? Hell no, it’s where Pixar began and it’s where they still love to shine. Lava was put out alongside Inside Out and I don’t think I’ve ever consistently cried more often in the cinema. A somewhat jaunty Hawaiian melody tells a story that feels like a creation myth, with two lovestruck volcanoes missing each other across millennia. The life-affirming triumph of love in the face of tragedy is a nice change of pace from the sadder songs we’ve had so far, but it’s no less tear-jerking.

Touch the Sky (Brave, 2012): ah, thank goodness – this isn’t sad at all! Probably one of the more under-sung songs on this list (no pun intended) it’s a stirring Celtic ballad about freedom. Whilst in some respects it’s a little on-the-nose, its evocative melody contains a lot of passion and also reminds me of the songs from Lord of the Rings, which in turn reminds of the Lord of the Rings movies, and that’s a good thing.

If I Didn’t Have You (Monsters, Inc., 2001): the first outright jaunty number on this list (and the first Pixar song to win an Oscar!), it’s a hoot as Billy Crystal and John Goodman do something of a riff on the old Frank ‘n’ Dean-style buddy-buddy duets. A beautiful pean to friendship, it’s funny and sweet and a minor bop, and is also one of the few songs here sung in-character.

Un Poco Loco (Coco, 2017): Coco is so great it’s the first film to pop up twice on this list (spoiler: it won’t be the last). This song is a blast, a really funny, silly love song about being besotted and willing to do anything despite it seeming crazy. It works so well in the film as a cathartic bonding moment for our two heroes.

Nobody Like U (Turning Red, 2022): amazingly – shockingly – this wasn’t nominated for Best Song at the Oscars. Turning Red – Pixar’s best film for maybe a decade – goes deep on the early-noughties nostalgia, no more so than in this absolutely pitch-perfect parody of a boy band. The central characters’ desire to see 4*Star sing this boppy number rings so true, and absolute top marks to Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell for making a song that really could have been sung at the MTV Awards in 2002.

You’ve Got a Friend in Me (Toy Story, 1995): the classic is here at last! With a kind of charming, louche swagger, Friend in Me is a delightfully plodding little ditty about, well, being a great friend. Randy Newman’s deep, dulcet tones are iconic (and, ahem, ripe for parody), but are also warm and – yes – friendly. There’s something about those opening bars that just makes you feel nice.

I Will Go Sailing No More (Toy Story, 1995): from triumph to tragedy with this, another oft-overlooked minor banger in the Pixar songbook. Telling the story of Buzz’s sad realisation of his own toyhood, it charts the quixotic attempts to achieve the impossible. The use of sailing as a metaphor – when obviously Buzz wants to fly – carries connotations of epic historic voyages, something melancholy and timeless; like Buzz will never board the grey ships to the west.

Le Festin (Ratatouille, 2007): a beautiful French ballad that perfectly recreates the sort of song you think of when you think of a film set in Paris. The lyrics obviously sound better in French, but they compare life and love to food, and celebrate the hero finally getting to enjoy a feast. It’s dead good.

Well, there you go – ten great tunes from, er, seven great films. Next week: Christmas!

[theliterarywolf]

Okay I’ve been doing some thinking, and I’ve concluded that the Chip and Dale Movie is hateful. The reason being, the union of Gadget and Zipper, the use of Ugly Sonic (even though Ugly Sonic has nothing to do with Disney), and the use of Peter Pan as a bad guy. I think this film is a message saying; “Fuck you, we’re holywood and we can do whatever we like to your childhood.”, am I wrong about this?

I wouldn't call it hateful because, at the end of the day, it's a Disney product and we're not in the WWII-era.

I ended up writing a lot and, while I still want people to read this, I'm not an asshole, so... 'Read More' break

It's more a case of Hollywood as a whole not hiring actual writers anymore. Look around at any big adaptation or reboot and the result is usually a mess because rather than hire an actual writer, all these big studios will go on nepotism instead.

At this point everyone knows that the 'twist villain is Peter Pan and we're going to have his motivation mock the tragedy of Bobby Driscoll's life' is the result test-audiences despising the original twist villain cut (which had Pluto as the twist villain, hence where that 4chan leak came from).

Typically, even in a case of 'oh, we only have a small window of time to fix this', an effective, competent writer will be able to take in all of the feedback and criticism, look at their notes and rough drafts, and come back with something competent. Combine that with how the people doing this movie apparently had access to EVERY FUCKING MEDIA PROPERTY made in the past thirty years so they could have still made something interesting and competent.

But, no, they rushed it and decided 'lol, let's turn Peter Pan into a grumpy manchild who's salty about getting old and losing his career'. Despite, again, not realizing the connotations of that considering what Peter Pan's original actor went through at the hands of Disney themselves.

It's funny, and I know I need to stop coming in to 'fix' bad mainstream media ideas because Lord knows none of these studios are going to offer me a gig, but I was talking to a friend and I pretty much came to the conclusion:

'You know what else sucks about this? If they really wanted to have Peter Pan be the villain here, there was an easy, BLATANT way to do this.

Mimic the story of Babydoll from Batman: The Animated Series.

Have it so that Peter Pan, after years of being known as 'the boy who never wanted to grow up', is sick and tired of it: sick and tired of being seen as nothing but a kid, of being typecast in children's media, as not even being able to go out for a drink with his old friends.

Make it so that, inspired by all these other classic characters getting CGI, edgy, modern reboots, he tried to get the 'CGI-surgery' but it didn't work because his character outline has been stuck as it is for so long, it doesn't transfer well over to CGI (in comparison to, say, Chip and Dale who, despite being cute chipmunks all these years, have at least been given different costumes and stories, etc.)

Have it so that Peter starts doing what he does to other characters in a childish fit of 'if I can't have it, no one can', as a symbolic sort of 'you want to be treated and seen as an adult... But you're still acting like a child'.

And, BOOM! There you go! Problem solved and you're not spitting on the corpse of a dead man.

[theharpermovieblog]

#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2024 MOVIE LIST

www.tumblr.com/theharpermovieblog

PERSONAL COLLECTION WEEK

I watched Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973)

Bought this on DVD recently, just because I wanted to see it for awhile now.

A mute young woman is tricked into heroin addiction and sex slavery. After being brutalized, the young woman eventually decides to get her revenge.

"Thriller: A Cruel Picture" has inspired endless other revenge films, including Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill". But, this isn't a fun action flick the likes of "Kill Bill". We are in darker territory here.

Swedish director, Bo Arne Vibenius, is a man who liked to push boundaries during his short but memorable film career, and "Thriller" definitely speaks to that.

This is the essence of exploitation filmmaking, while being so much more. Certainly, the film looks the part of most other genre pictures of the era, and the plot lends itself to that type of gritty and grimey storytelling, but "Thriller" feels more well crafted than it's contemporaries. It actually manages to evoke real emotion, sympathy and disgust.

Concerning a somewhat heightened, but ultimately realistic version of those stuck in sex slavery and heroin addiction, "Thriller" is an exploitation film that earns it's scenes of revenge. The beginning, in which a little girl is being abused by an older man, is done with a dark artistic flare which allows us to experience a little girl's confusion and horror, before having her innocence stripped away. It's a moment that sets the tone for the darkness to come.

"Thriller" includes full penetration hardcore pornography. (The kind of pornography that will not turn you on, but rather turn your stomach) It also features a woman's eye being gouged out. Something made worse by the fact that crew cut the eye out of an actual corpse to achieve this gruesome effect. (This was a rumor about the film for a long time, which has since been confirmed. Supposedly it was the corpse of a girl who had committed suicide, and the scene was shot in a hospital morgue. It does not get much darker than that in the filmmaking world, unless we go into actual film deaths and tragedies.)

I think people expect films like this, the 60's and 70's era exploitation films, to be unintentionally funny or less intense than modern day films. But, make no mistake, this is one of the darker things I've watched lately. If you're here for the revenge, you get that. There's tons of slow motion murder, car chase scenes and fake blood. But, you go through hell with the lead character before the relief of revenge comes.

Like Ken Russell's "The Devil's" I recently bought a physical copy of "Thriller: A Cruel Picture", because it's near impossible to see unedited on streaming. The American edit "They Call Her One Eye" removes a lot of the original film, and I personally don't approve of editing films for content. It's sad that films like this aren't consistently streaming and available, because they have their place in the history of filmmaking as an art form.

Now that I've seen this film, I'm glad I own it. I like this film. Well, "like" is a strong word for a movie as unpleasant as this, lol. I appreciate this film. I love the grindhouse era and I think this fully encapsulates what I love about it. The promise of seeing something wild, uncompromising and made quickly, cheaply and dirty. Sure, watching it can be trying, but it deserves to be seen. It's inspired so much in the film world and is no doubt a classic of a very special time in cinema.

[chaotic-neutral-ferret]

I might piss some people off with this, but I have incredibly strong feelings about modern interpretations of classical literature. Especially queer literature entirely told through subtext due to the era it was created in. (The Portrait of Dorian Grey is a fantastic example of what I’m getting at, but not what I’m going to be talking about in this post.) And I’m going to preface this by saying this is all my opinion and interpretation.

When you look at classic literature with a modern lens, you take away much of the nuance it comes with. It would be the same if you looked at modern lit with a historical lens. There’s a lack of nuance and ability to interpret that comes with looking at art like that.

Taking a classic and boiling it down to its bare bones by looking at it through a modern lens gives you nothing. You have taken away all the context, subtext, and meaning. When you do so, you’re left with a desecrated corpse of what was intended to be area of interpretation.

This is the part where I’m going to go off the rails a bit by talking about The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. Which, in my eyes, is in fact a piece of queer lit if you’re open to hearing me out.

The Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Andersen and published in the year 1837. Anderson was a very queer man if you know anything about him, and this book is potentially a love letter from him to a man he could not openly love (although that is just speculation).

The book thrives on, in my opinion, very queer themes. Hoping on the absolute most nonsense dream of love and going for it to catch even the slightest glimpse. The curiosity for new things outside of your sheltered life. Finding that your view of identity has changed with the new things you have found. Learning that despite your hoping upon hoping, that even in despair there can be a chance at a new good thing at the end of the tunnel, even if you have to go through hell to reach it. All of these things I find to be queer tropes and themes. (They can be and are used in non-queer media as well, but within the context of Hans Christian Andersens life I find it unlikely that he wasn’t aiming at some subtext.)

The Little Mermaid is a tragedy with some light at the end of the tunnel. She does reach a happy ending, even if it’s bittersweet and heart wrenching. She doesn’t get the guy, and by the end she knows she never truly had a chance. She is curious and bright, willing to risk it all to learn more. She is incredibly compassionate and self sacrificing, willing to do anything to make those she loves happy. She finds identity in this new, intriguing world. And in the end she gets a well deserved chance to get something she wanted, despite all the pain she has gone through.

The story on the surface is about a young woman experiencing first love, and going through an unreasonable amount of suffering for it. On the surface it’s about a young woman who is in a unrequited love with a man who loves another. I find it’s more than that though. It’s a story about finding oneself. About how love can prevail even if it’s not in the way you wanted or expected. It’s about sacrifice and what you get in return, good and bad.

The ending is what really hits home for me. The little mermaid sees the man she loves happy. And even when given the chance to live as a human, she decides that his life and happiness is more important than, what she views as, her own selfish desires. The opportunity her sisters handed to her at the expense of something of theirs, she denies in favor of moving on. And when she dives into the sea with the silver dagger and turns to sea foam on the waves, a door opens up and gives her a chance at a different but equally good life. A life she knows she would enjoy a million times more than a life where she killed someone she loves. She knows that nothing could have changed that the prince would never love her romantically, and decides to live what’s left of her life (in the weird inbetween land) in service of her wish for knowledge and her capacity for generosity.

All of this adds up, to me, to make a subtly queer story. Less about romance than about identity and exploration. While it is narratively about her relationship with the prince and what circles around it, the nuance of the little mermaids character is what makes it a great story. She gives me the vibes of a young queer person exploring themselves and the world around them, experiencing first love and first heartbreak, desperate to learn more and willing to give up everything in pursuit of knowledge. She reminds me, quite fondly, of many people i know, and I love everything about this story.

I am quite willing and open to hearing other interpretations and opinions on The Little Mermaid. This is just my own and I had too many brain worms to contain.

[coylerose89]

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[greentrickster]

The problem with Shakespeare in school is that it’s never presented in a way that shows how engaging or interesting it can be. Because there are interesting ways to introduce these plays, and there really is a little something for everyone.

You like broody anime guys? So did Shakespeare, go read Hamlet, be sure to make notes of what sort of tone you think a manga-ka or animator would use in the scenes you find significant.

How about historical fiction? Check out Julius Caesar or Anthony and Cleopatra - bonus points if you do some side research on the actual historical figures in the plays and make a list of inaccuracies or biases you spot in the play as a result.

Want to see a guy thoroughly ruin his own life, his family’s life, and his entire kingdom because he decided to retire? Because that’s King Lear in a nutshell - how many spots in the story can you spot where disaster could have been potentially averted?

You just here for some really, extremely messed up stuff and excessive gore? Titus Andronicus was probably written with you in mind. Please read a list of the trigger warnings before committing to this one, and then, as you read, consider how you would explain what you’re reading to a little kid without terrifying them, how this play would work as a tragedy, and how it would work as a horror movie.

Is romantic comedy more up your alley? Then take a look at a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and read it while remembering that this entire play is supposed to be set in era of ancient Greek mythology. How often do you have to remind yourself that the characters are Greek or in Greece? What are some ways that Shakespeare could have made this concept more apparent in the characters’ dialogue or with the supernatural elements he included?

You want to read a classic love story? There’s always Romeo and Juliet, and, as you go, make notes of how you think their relationship would develop over an extended period of time, given how they behave within the play.

Are you more of a psychological horror buff? Try reading Macbeth with the perspective that none of the supernatural elements exist outside the characters’ heads. How well does this work within the play? What elements could be enhanced in a production of the play to really push this idea?

And so on and so forth. All of these plays have a lot of meat on their bones, a lot of subjects they’d be good to read alongside, including history, mythology, anthropology, gender roles through the ages, and modern literature. There are ways to make these stories interesting and appealing to a wide variety of ages, and they can be great tools for teaching comparative thinking, analytics, healthy skepticism, and more.

The problem is, instead of doing something like that, it’s just a standard rote of, “Why is/isn’t Romeo and Juliet a love story?” “Memorize this monologue/scene.” “Why is Macbeth a tragic villain?” Never, “How many crude jokes did William sneak into this scene?” or “So this play is sexist and awful by our modern standards, but how did it hold up to the standards of the time it was written in? How much can we track how much society has/hasn’t changed in this one scene?” or “Guess which word Shakespeare made up and which got used for the first time ever in this line.” or “Which of the characters in this play, if put in a modern setting, would be the meme-lord of the group?”

[centrally-unplanned]

The Liminal 90's of River's Edge

River’s Edge, a 1993 josei manga by Kyoko Okazaki, is something I picked up primarily due to hearing through the ‘net-vine of its influence on FLCL. Which is clearly there – adrift teens smoking on a bridge?

A smog-belching factory defining the grim normality of the town they live in, whose purpose is commented on to be unknown to the characters?

FLCL is a hodgepodge of cultural symbols and River’s Edge certainly part of the, uh, hodge. The parallels end there though – River’s Edge is *peak* josei in that it is utterly engulfed in the edgy drama of its high school protagonists. There is no way around the fact that this just isn’t a very good story, when it has plotlines such as boyfriend of Haruna, the main character:

1: cheating on her with her close friend,

2: which they do while doing hard drugs together,

3: resulting her getting knocked up,

4: which her hikikomori sister finds out via reading her diary (the 90’s!)

5: prompting them to get into a *knife fight*, the wounds of which abort the baby

And that is the most tame of these plotlines, trust me. By the time the gay character’s fake-but-she-doesn’t-know-it girlfriend *immolates herself* for attention you are willing to flee to the nearest monastic order to just chill out for life. This manga is 14 chapters y’all, you can finish it in under an hour, there is not enough character screen time to justify this level of drama. Its a classic early-adolescent fiction problem; your first time hearing about sex and death is so cool! So *real*! But once the novelty wears off there are no characters underneath, the shock is a magician’s misdirect so you don’t notice the hollowness behind the curtain.

We also forget how much the digital revolution has changed art in fast-paced, low-cost genres like manga by allowing consistency and polish; Okazaki is an accomplished, well known mangaka and some of these panels are so messy and detail-less:

Which isn’t a criticism per se as this was what the genre looked like at the time, and much of the art is great, but it's just to say overall this isn't a visuals-first affair. It relies on writing that just doesn’t deliver.

------

At least most of the time, because in its overwhelmingly maudlin current are ripples of some really good moments. My standout is when the narrator voice goes poetic, setting up a repeated motif:

Even as it is a bit cheesy this motif still spoke to me, the “flat battlefield”, the power of that phrase the story imbued into it. A fight with no contours to its course, no metrics to measure victory by? You don’t need to experience a knife-fight abortion to get that struggle, my daily mundane life is that (obliquely, through a certain lens at a certain time when the mood is just right/wrong). That is the universal feeling of ennui and social displacement these kinds of stories aim to have empathy for, and that the rest of this story failed to achieve. And credit where it is due – main girl Haruna, who narrates this and through whose eyes most of this story happens, doesn’t really have much drama at all in comparison to her peers. While they do insane shit she just watches and helps where she can from the sidelines, defined by her listlessness as opposed to everyone else’s tragedy. The flat battlefield is exactly the kind of pain someone like Haruna would feel – this arc works.

From the social critic lens, what I think is more notable about this story is what it does not contain. Its universal aspirations are betrayed by how utterly of its time it is. River’s Edge falls into the edgy-punk sphere, but original punk was defined by its targets - The Man, The Establishment, the polluted cityscapes and imprisoned activists, Thatcher’s & Reagan’s right wing triumphalism, original punk knew what it stood against. In the post cold-war, mass-culture era of the 90’s, however, the appeal of those causes faded – how could things so distant and so temporal be the cause of such deep personal ills? It's often said that Japan predicts America’s cultural movements ten years out, but in this case it was right on time – 1993’s River’s Edge flows neatly alongside the 90’s American counterculture void.

But we no longer live in those liminal 90’s, that void between the intensity of the 60’s+ social revolution and today – we now have causes, but they are, ahem, as personal as they are political. Sad edgy teens are no longer sad or edgy – they instead fall somewhere on the Depressed/Oppressed axis, their condition diagnosed. Alienation is now a mental health issue (with treatments, certainly always effective yep yep, criminally underfunded and denied to those who need them), gay teens struggle for acceptance as a political cause. Even if the problems are inwardly focused, the solution can be translocated outward – change media, change language, change executive leadership, only then can the struggle be resolved. It’s the grand cycle of history – the teen edginess is activist again, even if the targets are wildly different.

River’s Edge never mentions the word ‘depression’. No one mentions therapy, or acceptance, or really any solution to their various problems - the problems are experienced internally but exist externally, a world broken only by a vague sense of ‘modernity’, if anything at all. The language in which this state of mind is discussed is now antiquated, a sort of radical acceptance of hopelessness as the natural state of man. Its aspirations to universalism have already been left in the dust of the changing times, an ill-fitting, out-of-fashion way of thinking even as Depression Fics dominates its former niche.

Which is why this otherwise-silly story still spoke to me, as I still resonate with that way of thinking more than anything else in vogue. I keep being told something is out there, but all I ever see is an endless horizon - and I am glad to once again share the view.

------

Anyway, happy 30th anniversary to Smells Like Teen Spirit!

[cyborg-squid]

I’m reading Nasu’s 4gamer interview and the reasons why Nrvnsqvr was cut are actually really interesting, he says that Nrvnsqvr was too powerful to essentially be the ‘first boss’, and that while Nrvnsqvr was a really unique vampire concept at the time he was released (and still is!), there have been more non-traditional vampires in the past 20 years, so he descided to go back to a more classic, traditional Dracula-type with Vlov (whose story apparently isn’t over quite yet).

This quote (machine translated, unfortunately), on the differences in the fights in the original and the remake, really stuck with me too. “I thought that the "unknown, dark fight that might have happened somewhere" like the doujin version is no longer an era. In modern times, tragedy that is difficult to see directly is occurring everywhere, and there are many opportunities to mention it in the news. A tragic event is not "maybe something is happening". It's "what's happening right now." That, of course, includes natural disasters. So even if it's fiction, it's not necessary to summarize the case in small pieces.”

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Retrospective Review: Casino Royale (2006)

So after thinking about it, I figured that with No Time to Die coming out soon, the Craig Bond era Bond movies deserve a post per film. Casino Royale is the film that got me into Bond. I had seen some of the Brosnan films by then, but they didn't really stick to me much. Perhaps also because I was reasonably young when the Brosnan films came out. But Casino Royale came out during my teen years, where I was starting to get into more dark and gritty movies. To me, this movie and Batman Begins, are cut from the same cloth. Both rebooting characters that had gotten too campy in previous iterations, both brilliant origin stories, and both grounded in reality and gritty. Its no wonder that both version of these characters ended up being my favorite versions. Casino Royale is still easily my favorite Bond film to date.

Truthfully, to me this film is near perfection as an action-thriller. For classic Bond fans who have grown up with the franchise and want specific things like Moneypenny and Q and various gadgets, this film may not be as endearing because it very specifically goes away from being gadget heavy and doesn't give Bond a support staff other than Mathis. I think the most high tech thing in the movie was a portable defibrillator. But this film had me from the very beginning in the black and white sequence and how it showed Bond's two kills to become 007 and how it reimagined the classic opening shot of Bond shooting and the blood red soaking over the screen. I just new we were in for something special from the very beginning. What's amazing is the pacing of this film. This was the longest Bond film since OHMSS at the time. I have watched all prior Bond films and I have felt restless at times while watching them, but not when watching Casino Royale. There is constantly something happening and it keeps you engaged. Not once was I bored in the movie.

The action in the film is absolutely high class. I think its the best Bond action that I have seen. The most classic scene of course is the incredible Parkour chase. Its incredibly exhilarating and major kudos to the guy who did the stunts for the bomb maker. You also get a real understanding of what a brute force this Bond is. While the Bomb maker chooses to jump through the window, Bond will burst through the wall. The Bomb maker will climb construction rods, Bond will just drive a bulldozer and destroy the construction and climb up. When the bomb maker throws the gun at him, Bond just catches it and throws it right back. Little things like that give Bond a personality that is different. But this is only the first great action sequence. There is the Miami airport truck sequence that is also brilliant. You have to love the smug smile on Bond's face when the bomber accidentally blows himself up. There is the staircase fight which is brutal and visceral. Then there is final fight scene in Venice which is emotional and tragic and is the true making of Bond. In between it all, there is the Poker game which is surprisingly entertaining given it takes up quite a chunk of time. There are also some incredibly tense sequences which are laced with humor, like the Bond poisoning scene where Bond almost gets killed and then returns with a classic one liner to leave Le Chiffre dumbfounded. There is the torture scene which is hilarious because of how Bond reacts to the torture and eggs him on in a way. The film never lets up in the action and the thrills.

An enormous part of the success of the film is the casting of Mads Mikkelson as Le Chiffre. I had not known Mads from anywhere before this, but he is immediately compelling and enigmatic. More importantly, rather than just being an all powerful villain to foil, he feels like a human. The tearing blood is a great, sinister gimmick, but you feel like he is on the edge when he loses money in the stock market due to Bond. You feel his desperation in some of the Poker scenes, as well as when the african fighters find him at the hotel, and then when he is torturing Bond to find the location of the money. I am not sure whether I like him more than Bardem's Silva or not, but its telling that the best Bond movies of Craig's era have the best villains. This film put him on the map for me and I loved him as Hannibal, saw him Dr. Strange, and I want see how he does as Grindelwald in the next Fantastic Beasts movie.

However, what elevates this film beyond any prior Bond movie is the casting of Eva Green as Vesper Lynd. She is the best Bond girl ever put to film and the romance between her and Bond is one of the most heartfelt and tragic romances that I have seen. The chemistry between the two actors/characters is electric from their very first scene in the train. The film gives them everything. There are deeply intimate scenes between the two which are not remotely sexual such as the tender shower scene where Bond comforts Vesper after the stairwell fight, many instances of witty repartee, scenes of romance, and then the bitter tragedy of her betrayal and her death. Even her death scene is picturized in a way where you really feel the connection as you can tell that Vesper can't bear to live with what she's done. The film doesn't flinch when showing her drown so it engulfs the audience in the same horror and sadness that Bond is feeling. In general, you experience the same emotions as Bond does as you can't help but fall in love with Vesper and just at the point of happily ever after, it all turns to ash. Its a phenomenal character arc and it also does a great job of establishing how Bond became so cold. Its a fantastic performance from Eva Green, and yet another instance of an actor who put herself on the map in my eyes.

And then there is the man himself. Yet another actor who I knew very little about. At that point everyone thought Craig wasn't good looking enough, not tall enough, not charismatic enough etc... to play Bond. But boy did he just blow expectations away. He is my Bond for sure because his performance is just exceptional in every way. He is built like a tank and is a force of nature, but Craig brings a tender vulnerability, perfectly suited for a young Bond. He looks dapper, is charismatic, is great in the fight scenes, and you genuinely feel he could beat the crap out of people. As I have already mentioned, there are so many touches to his performance that is unique to him. The brutality he brings in the fight scenes, the smirk at the end of the Miami scene, the heartfelt tenderness in the shower scene, the twinkly eyes humor, the rage when he is betrayed, the devastation at Vesper's death, and then the coldness that comes after that. He gets to show a full range, and he delivers every aspect with perfection.

One of the major carryovers from Brosnan era, was Jud Dench as M. And she gets a lot more to do during the Craig era. She is phenomenal as she always is. The dynamic between her and Bond is slightly more stern maternal in the Craig era compared to Brosnan and their interactions are great. Jeffrey Wright brings Felix Leiter back into the fold for the first time since License to Kill and he's a welcome presence as always. Giancarlo Giannini is also pretty great as Mathis and I'm glad he came back in QoS. Jesper Christensen has a quiet presence as Mr. White, who makes recurring appearances in the future.

I feel not enough people give Martin Cambell credit for what he has done. Twice he has launched Bonds successfully. GoldenEye was really good and Casino Royale is just outstanding. I have never paid much attention to the Bond song but the song for Casino Royale is pretty great. Again its telling that the two songs that I remember from Bond movies are from Casino Royale and Skyfall. Anyways, Casino Royale is a near perfect movie, especially for someone who is new to Bond. It really launched Bond into the modern world and got him away from the cold war era type plots. If I had to quibble about something, I would say some of the scenes in the Bahamas are a little slower and maybe 5-10 minutes can be edited down but even those scenes are great character scenes and we get a new origin of the DB5. A 9.5/10 for me.