#spaghetti junction

[rupertbbare]

The Huangjuewan Overpass, China

[deweydecimalchickens]

This goes out to whoever decided our inner-city industrial architecture looked better with black rectangles than ever-changing bright colours:

1: You're objectively wrong

2: Specifically, the fruits of your labour look like shit and I hope you're alienated from them

3. It is an isolated TUNNEL with CORNERS that people TRAVEL THROUGH AT NIGHT why are you making it DARKER? Are you part of the Muggers' Trade Union?

4: You're also tagging. It's just that your tag is a black rectangle. Which is ugly and stupid.

5. Your actions are bad and you should feel bad

As a palate-cleanser, here's one under Spaghetti Junction. More than one artist has used the tunnel skylight to place their manifesto; this is just the most recent. The picture doesn't really capture it well; it's a long and dark tunnel with one sudden square of light that grabs your attention.

[greensparty]

2023 BUFF - Dispatch #2

Green’s Party is proud to be covering the 2023 Boston Underground Film Festival, which kicked off Wednesday at the Brattle Theatre (Cambridge, MA).  I’ve been lucky enough to cover the festival since 2016 (the fest took off in 2020 and 2021, and I was unable to attend 2022).

Day 2 of BUFF continued with Spaghetti Junction. It’s about a teenage girl, who recently lost her foot in a car accident. She doesn’t have the best relationship with her single-dad alcoholic father or her older flighty sister, but one day she wanders into the woods, where she meets a mysterious man “The Traveler”. I thought the first two thirds were really well-done and really visually impressive. Without getting into spoilers, what the ending built to was not as fulfilling as the build up. But I’m not lying about how visually impressive it was!

the heroes of Smoking Causes Coughing

Then it was a later-night (not going to say late night, but 10:15 is later on) screening of Smoking Causes Coughing, from French director Quentin Dupieux. This is a wild off-the-wall crazy take on the super hero genre, that I am so happy I saw with an audience. This is a perfect example of a movie that would not work if I watched it alone at home, it needs to be seen with a BUFF audience of genre film fans! It’s like a 70s-style super-hero movie: After defeating a giant, evil, foaming turtle, the Tobacco Force consisting of Nicotine, Benzene, Methanol, Mercury, and Ammonia must take on the even more evil Lizardin. But first, they prepare by going on a retreat to reflect on existential quandaries such as the meaning of life and the importance of clear instructions and staying calm in difficult situations. This is full of so many WTF moments. It’s as if Michel Gondry tried to make a super hero movie but pushed the envelope of WTF-ery even more than he usually does. It was LOL funny with tons of comedic set pieces. See this with any audience if you can!

Today: Highlights include The Dunwich Horrors shorts program, Mister Organ, and Enys Men.

For info on this year’s #BUFF23: https://bostonunderground.org/

Stay tuned to Green’s Party for my coverage of this year’s fest!

[architectureforsuicides]

Ambulance (Michael Bay, 2022) I-10 & I-110 Interchange Los Angeles, California (USA) Harbor Fwy & Santa Monica Fwy Junction Type: beam bridge.

[sexhaver]

every time some smug yuropoor reblogs my post about Biblically Accurate Highways with some variation of "ummm haven't americans heard of ROUNDABOUTS?" i kill another hostage

[thetownsendsw]

So you’re telling me… Magic the Gathering… THE color=moral standing game… did a whole Western themed set… and nowhere at any point did they include any variation of White Hat/Black Hat cards?

[elmaestrostan]

Mostar looks really beautiful. I bet it will remind Unai of his beloved Stadium Gal with its mountainous backdrop 🥰

[existentialcrisistime]

dear google, do not threaten me with a good time

actually, if there's gonna be a concrete show anywhere, Birmingham seems apt considering it's the home of Spaghetti Junction

[thoughtsofthegirlwiththecurl]

Off to see my extended family for the first time in years. Not sure if you should pray for me or them as we navigate such conversational tidbits as "yes Aunt Fran, I did get a tattoo and cut off all my hair; I was afraid someone was going to mistake me for a heterosexual" and "well I had to quit my peds onc job a year and a half into the pandemic on account of all the preventable child death destroying my faith in humanity and will to live."

[thedreadedmobyduck]

i live in the arsehole of nowhere so the towns close to me and the occasional a-road or dual carriage way are as far as ive gone but yesterday i drove to the city with my best mate for a gig and it was my first motorway and my first city drive and i didn't kill us OR cry!

[dailyoverview]

The A-3 and M-50 motorways come together in an interwoven crossroads southeast of Madrid, Spain. Due to its complex and intertwined appearance, this type of interchange is commonly referred to as a “spaghetti junction.”

40.360563°, -3.564919°

Source imagery: Maxar

[greensparty]

Preview: 2023 Boston Underground Film Festival

From Wed. March 22 to Sun. March 26, the Boston Underground Film Festival takes over Harvard Square at The Brattle Theatre (Cambridge, MA). The fest is in its 23rd edition and it is a celebration of bizarre, weird and alt cinema!

Here at Green’s Party, I’ve been lucky enough to cover the festival since 2016 (the fest took off in 2020 and 2021, and I was unable to attend 2022). Here are some of the highlights of this year’s BUFF:

Wed. March 22:

Opening Night film is Jeffrey A. Brown’s The Unheard, which is going to be on Shudder later this month. The film finds a young deaf woman undergoing experimental treatment to regain her hearing. Recovering at her family’s beach home, she fears she is not alone - all while uncovering family secrets and experiencing psychological strife and auditory hallucinations. It was filmed in Massachusetts and it was written by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen (full disclosure: the writing duo are friends of mine). Then it’s Nightsiren from Slovakia. The trailer is pure WTFery!

Thurs. March 23:

BUFF doesn’t screen nearly as many documentaries as narrative films, but the ones they do are quite noteworthy. The doc Stand By For Failure: A Documentary about Negativeland looks at the experimental Bay area music group Negativeland. Then it’s back to narrative films with the sci-fi Spaghetti Junction, about a teen discovering a mysterious place in the woods. From France, the Canne Film Festival hit Smoking Causes Coughing is a wild bonkers super hero film about the dangers of smoking.

Fri. March 24:

First up is The Dunwich Horrors, a collection of short films about New England. Massachusetts certainly has its history with horror stories, but there’s other states like VT and ME represented here as well. This is usually one of my favorite short collections at the fest and among the shorts is Skin & Bone (full disclosure: director Eli Powers is a friend I worked with on a film previously). Then it’s another doc Mister Organ, the new one from David Farrier, director of Tickled. This one looks at the secrets behind a a man at a small antique shop in New Zealand. From U.K. Enys Men is a throwback to 70s horror on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast.

Sat. March 25:

A matinee screening of Moon Garden, about a little girl who falls into a coma and finds herself in a strange new world. One of my favorite shorts programs at BUFF is Sound + Vision, a collection of music videos that push the envelope. Then it’s Butter My Noodle, a collection of comedy short films. Among them is High Moon, directed by my buddy Kevin J. James (director of Not For Resale). From Germany, Piaffe is about a woman who fills in for her sister as a foley artist and grows a horse’s tail. Not a typo! Then it’s the Sundance hit Divinity, which boasts star power of Stephen Dorf and Scott Bakula as well as producer Steven Soderbergh.

Sun. March 26:

First up is Survival is Insufficient, a collection of shorts including CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man co-directed by BUFF alumni / my friend Brian Lonano (read my interview with him at BUFF 2018 here) and It Takes a Village co-written and co-starring SNL’s Sarah Sherman. Then it’s Destination, a collection of animated shorts that are not suitable for children. Then it’s the festival hit How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a crime thriller about a group of environmental activists who plan a disruption of an oil pipeline. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is about a brilliant teenage girl who tries to bring back her recently murdered brother from the dead. And finally the Closing Night Film is Rebel from Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the Belgium filmmakers known for Bad Boys for Life and Ms. Marvel. This film focuses on a Muslim family torn apart over the future of its youngest member in Belgium. 

For info on this year’s #BUFF23: https://bostonunderground.org/

Stay tuned to Green’s Party for my coverage of this year’s fest!

[cammcharg]

The director of SPAGHETTI JUNCTION wanted to make sure the makeup people made me extra sunburned and beat up and hungover.

I’m pretty sure they just walked over to him and said, “He’s good.”

[wifelinkmtg]

There's "spaghetti western" and then there's whatever the hell this Chef Boyardee shit is

Hello! and welcome back to Wifelink. We're talking about Outlaws of Thunder Junction today, Magic's second product in a row set in a version of Nevada, and let me tell you something: I am not impressed. The mechanics are uninspired, the setting is undercooked, the story is overstuffed, and to top it all off the whole thing smacks of settler-colonialism. AND they yassified Vraska, the monsters!

WE WILL GET TO THE HOT WOMEN, BELIEVE YOU ME, BUT FIRST I AM GOING TO COMPLAIN SOMEWHAT, AS IS MY RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN, AS A HUMAN BEING, AND AS A GAMER

The mechanics we've discussed elsewhere, and I will skim over the main storyline except to say that very few of this Big Villain Heist Team-Up gets enough spotlight to justify their inclusion here beyond getting recognizable names on cards, and that Rakdos' presence on the plane alone ought to be an apocalyptic calamity. I appreciate Jace & Vraska going full blackpilled accelerationist, stealing a baby, and aiming to destroy the multiverse & start over (a novel hybrid of Raising Arizona and Doctor Strangelove,) but I also know, sure as the sun rises, that whatever happens with their villain arc will be a underwhelming let-down.

What I actually want to complain about, though, is the setting. Thunder Junction ain't real, and I don't mean it's fictional, I mean it's plywood facades on a backlot. It's the set for a cowboy film. You feel me? This ain't a plane, it's a god damned sound stage.

Lemme go over the facts: we know Thunder Junction has been settled for a bit over a year. A year! - and yet there's multiple towns, multiple railways, and an honest-to-god metropolis. Less than two years and we already have ghost towns! This is not the product of a bunch of people on various planes all individually deciding to seek a new life in the off-world colonies. All of this represents a staggering quantity of people, material, wealth, and labor, being moved between planes, directed and organized - but by whom? For what reason? How, even? The story is totally uninterested in these questions.

One of the few silver linings to the way the Phyrexian invasion storyline ended was that the Omenpaths had a lot of interesting potential! Different planes would come into direct contact with each other for the first time ever! Different technologies, different philosophies and religions, different kinds of magic colliding, coming into conflict, adapting and adjusting to each other. And after a couple of sets where the interplanar contact was limited to one or two particularly adventurous individuals, we finally get to see what interplanar contact at scale looks like here in Thunder Junction... and it just looks like a John Wayne flick. Did people not bring their culture with them? Is there a big rack of hats and boots and dusters right where people step off the Omenpath? Shuck off those old Ravnican rags, kid, get changed. You'll spoil the aesthetic. I mean, it's baffling.

Luxurious Locomotive (art by Leon Tukker). This is one of the few man-made parts of this plane that I can look at and know where it came from: this is a Kaladeshi design. More of this sort of thing would have made Thunder Junction feel more like a real place and less like a Sergio Leone joint.

There's a side story, No Tells, by Isaac Fellman, which I quite like actually: it's about guilt and betrayal and the inevitable regrets of having moved into a queer housing co-op, and one of the things that makes it great is that we know where Yuma came from (New Capenna), we know why he left (the limitations of "be gay do crimes" as praxis under capitalism), and we know what he brought to Thunder Junction with him (cocktails, pool tables, and his co-op's emergency funds). Fellman has written nothing else for Wizards and doesn't play Magic, and even so he's done more to make Thunder Junction feel like a real place situated in a real history than the rest of the story team combined - which goes to show, one, that we should only let trans people write magic story for the next decade or so, and two, that what I'm asking for in terms of worldbuilding is not unattainable, or even that difficult.

And all of this ties into the colonialism, right? Thunder Junction is being colonized, and asking questions about who benefits, who's sponsoring this breakneck settlement of the plane, what they're after and so forth would require the story to take a good hard look at the process of colonization itself, and Wizards is flatly unwilling to engage with anything that thorny in their products. So, just as Ixalan involved a limp-wristed slant reenactment of the Spanish conquest of the Americas - but it's fine because they're the bad guys and they're technically not even trying to colonize Ixalan and they don't win anyway so no one gets hurt! - Thunder Junction is attempting to present a Disneyland version of Western colonialism. Untamed wilderness! Bringing civilization to uninhabited deserts! How cool and heroic these hard frontiersmen and -women are! I'm told they brought in Navajo cultural consultants for the Atiin, a fantasy equivalent, and I hope those folks were well compensated! The Atiin seem cool, and the one Atiin character we spend any time with is well-written, but the Atiin are not indigenous to Thunder Junction. They're not being colonized. And if there weren't anybody being colonized, I'd probably still dislike the colonial vision of a wild land inhabited only by animals, just waiting for us to shape it to our will with railways and violence, but there is in fact a native race of sapients on Thunder Junction, and these cactus folk get no voice in the story, so if they have some kind of opinion on the rapid colonization of their home and the clear-cutting of their cactus forests, we don't get to hear about it.

Prickly Pair (art by Brian Valeza) Too much of the extremely-limited presence Thunder Junction's only indigenous sapients have on the cards is devoted to cactus-based puns like this one, which is pretty distasteful given, you know, the colonialism.

I'm talking about colonialism not because I think that replicating colonial myths in fantasy fiction is an unethical thing to do - although it is - but because you can see, right, that Thunder Junction's lack of verisimilitude is intertwined with the colonial vision of the world at play here, yeah? The story wants to have cool cowboy shootouts and train robberies and it does not want its cowboy fantasy to be complicated by uncomfortable realities, so it has to avoid all of the basic worldbuilding questions that would tell us who the colonization benefits and how they're profiting off the plane, and in the end we're left with nothing but an empty aesthetic, like a duster hanging off a scarecrow, blowing in the wind.

ANYWAY SO WOMEN

To be honest, under the circumstances I'm not really feeling like giving the fine women of Thunder Junction my usual more elaborate treatment, so we're going to lightning-round this shit, which is at least thematic.

Blood Hustler (art by Anna Pavleeva)

Vampire MILF.

Rattleback Apothecary (art by Loïc Canavaggia)

Snake MILF.

Wrangler of the Damned (art by Michal Ivan)

Cis lesbian haircut, good with a rope.

Obeka, Splitter of Seconds (art by Ryan Pancoast)

BIG

[amtrak-official]

oh are we showing off funky roads? i call this spaghetti junction (it's in boston)

Swirly

[thedemon-crowley]

Welcome back, car abandoner.

Did you go on the big highways? Did you do the spaghetti junctions without me?

Whatever I don't even care.

From your car, I suppose

(... Did you bring me anything?)

I didn’t drive - I mostly slept in the back of cars until we arrived at various places. Besides, you wouldn’t want to be on the road with all those American cars.

Anyway, I thought you’d run away and joined a gang or some such nonsense?