#the opening sequences of this stupid film were so good

[the-travelling-witch]

𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐘 𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐍

summary: opening up about your insecurities is a daunting thing, but suna lets you know you’re in good hands

pairing: suna rintarou x afab! reader

warnings:  smut/ comfort, minors dni; skin-related insecurities (acne, scars, bumps, etc) with comfort, unprotected sex (use condoms, don’t get a kid or a std), pet names (doll, pretty), marking, very wholesome spice if you can say that jsjsh, also very self indulgent; i wanted to name it ‘under my skin’ first, so now i have mirotic stuck in my head

happy birthday, rin!! ♡

haikyuu masterlist

Flickering colours illuminated your dimly lit living room in arrhythmic sequences, the voices of actors paired with underlying music bouncing around the apartment. Next to you, snuggled up under a cosy blanket with you, was your boyfriend, his eyes fixed on the TV but keeping you close to his side with an arm curled around your middle. 

Leaning against his sturdy body, you sunk further into the hoodie you had stolen from his side of the closet earlier and you inhaled a noseful of the scent clinging to it, a familiar mixture of Suna’s body wash and cologne. Underneath you, you could feel his muscles flex and relax with every breath and every laugh and, inevitably, your mind drifted from the scenes on the screen to the man next to you.

There was no doubt about it, when it came to boyfriends, you somehow managed to snatch up the price catch all for yourself. Suna was attentive, caring and funny; he always checked in on you, brought food when he knew you hadn’t eaten, sent you photos, voice messages and even flowers when he was away for work and generally pestered you to take care of yourself. 

Besides all of that, he was also, of course, ridiculously beautiful. Be it his well-built body showing through every outfit he wore, whether it was loungewear, work out clothes or a suit, or the defined features of his face, the sharp slant of his olive eyes only being the highlight, he was sure to garner attention. And he did. Quite a lot, actually. The fantaken videos of him sighted on the streets or the edits you scrolled past on your timeline definitely proved your point.

Still, Rin never made you feel unwanted, the opposite, really. You could be lazing around on the couch when Rin made it seem as if you were posing for the cover of Vogue, bending down to shower you in kisses as his hands wandered like he had no control over them. Or the way he’d sidle up behind you, leaning his weight onto you like an overgrown cat just to show you dumb videos while you go about what you were doing.

Your own mind, however, was not always as kind to you as your boyfriend.

Case and point, as you looked up at him and studied his sharp jaw and smooth skin, your thoughts started heading to a darker place, one you normally kept under tight lock and seal. Certainly, no matter how genuine his compliments were, there was no way he actually meant any of them, only trying to make you feel better about yourself. After all, what would someone like him see in someone like you? 

A tap to the tip of your nose pulled you back into reality, blinking to see bright green eyes sparkling down at you. The arm around your waist adjusted its grip, allowing you to turn towards him better but holding you close again the second you had settled.

“What are you thinking about? The film’s not that deep of a thinkpiece.” The lighthearted tone and tiny smirk playing around his lips were contrasted by the inquisitive raise of a brow, letting you know he was quite serious about your answer. “And it’d better not be anything stupid.”

“Oh you know,” you vaguely gestured towards the screen as you avoided his gaze, “there’s just no way they could’ve made it out of that building before the bomb went up. That was so much longer than 30 seconds.”

There was a soft touch against your cheek where calloused fingertips tilted your head back towards him, not forcibly but determined. You were more starkly made aware of the heat radiating from his body as he leant further into you, the arm around your back giving you no chance to wind yourself out of his proximity. Under other circumstances there would absolutely be no way you’d want to in the first place. But you knew Rin was sharp enough to deduce exactly where your mind had gone if you gave him only the faintest of clues and you really didn’t want to disrupt your movie night with your insecurities.

“Very cute, doll, but you never pay attention to realism. Besides,” the ends of his hair tickled your face as his lips ghosted the shell of your ear, “do you really think I didn’t notice you burning holes into the side of my head? If there’s something you want, you only need to ask.”

“That’s what you got from that, Rin?” You laughed, pushing his head from the crook of your neck with the pad of your forefinger. “Could it be that you're projecting your own thoughts onto me?”

“What else could I be thinking about when someone this pretty has been clinging to my side the entire evening?” Your boyfriend hummed the question thoughtfully before your centre of gravity shifted. A surprised gasp later, you found yourself in his lap with your knees bracketing his hips, courtesy of the muscles flexing against the small of your back where he kept you pinned to his front. “You can’t blame a guy for getting ideas when you’re this cute.”

“You’re such a horndog, Rin,” you giggled, melting into his hold as his large palms smoothed out the material of his sweats covering your thighs, the repetitive motion relaxing as you lost yourself in each other’s eyes, despite having done so a million times before.

“It’s all your fault, doll,” Suna murmured and your gaze automatically tracked the movement of his mouth as it formed the words. Inspired by you, he mirrored the action and then his lips were on yours.

The kiss was slow and unhurried, your lips moving languidly against each other, giving you all the time in the world to bury your fingers in the hair of his nape. The swipe of his tongue asking for entry was accompanied by firm hands grabbing at your hips and pulling you so flush against him, it was like he wanted to become one entity altogether. You happily parted your lips for him so your tongues could tangle together in the same rhythm of his arms moving you to grind down on him.

When his warm hands explored the bare skin under his hoodie, however, it was like someone had sounded the alarm bells in your head. Sure, you’d been intimate with Suna plenty of times, that was nothing new, but so far, you’d avoided any positions where your back would be on display or his hands could roam too freely across it. Up until this point, you’d put up excuse after excuse and the brunet had respected your wishes but slowly you were running out of fronts to put up without addressing the real issue.

Over time, you’d gotten used to Suna seeing your face with all blemishes and impurities on display, more out of necessity than free will in the beginning. You couldn’t hide your face from him forever after all. In typical Rin fashion, he’d been so gentle and reassuring about it, thanking you for putting your trust in him and nearly making you cry in the process. 

Your back, however, was an area you could cover up way easier and that was how you kept it. The thought of him seeing the redness and scars littering the expanse of the skin there, running his hands over it and feeling the bumpy texture where other people’s would be smooth, it made you shrink in on yourself. As you wrecked your brain for a new excuse and got ready to push his hands down to your hips again, he withdrew them from the hoodie himself, making the garment feel much too big on you as he took his warmth with him.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now,” Suna began, his voice calm as one hand settled back against your hip and the other cradled your cheek. Your fidgeting must have conveyed your discomfort, because he started drawing tiny circles onto your cheek bone, the callouses from years of playing volleyball contrasting the softness of his touch, making you subconsciously lean into the movement. “I didn’t know how to bring it up but at this point I feel like I need to know… Is there a reason you’re so reluctant to show me your back? And don’t say you don’t know what I’m talking about, I know you better than that.”

“Ah, so you noticed,” you meekly replied, swallowing hard around the words stuck in your throat. “What gave it away?”

“You’re not the best at lying to me, you know. It was pretty obvious you were making excuses for something else.” You felt like a cartoon character getting hit with an arrow through the stomach. “I just want to understand what’s putting you so on edge, so I can fix it. Whatever it is, you can tell me and I’ll work hard so you can trust me. But I won’t know what I did if you won’t tell me.”

“What you did?” You echoed incredibly. “Rin, you’ve done nothing wrong, more like the opposite, honestly. You’re like the guy out of anybody’s dreams, of course I trust you.”

“Then what is it? I don’t want to pressure you but I hate to see you uncomfortable,” Suna’s voice was soothing like a fireplace in winter as his finger smoothed out the furrow of your brows, silently telling you to take all the time you needed, he wouldn’t judge.

“It’s just– My back it’s so ugly,” you weakly admitted, opting to hide your face in the crook of his neck when holding eye contact became too painful. For a split second, Suna went as rigid as you had earlier before gingerly setting his hand down on the top of your back and running it lightly up and down to test your reaction. “Everyone has this perfect, smooth skin but mine is full of scarring and blemishes and I… I don’t want you to see how hideous I– it is.”

“Oh baby, that’s not true,” he soothed. “You are so stunning, I could never think you’re ugly.”

“No, you would,” you disagreed, shaking your head. “I already don’t know how you can say that with so much confidence, I don’t want to ultimately prove you wrong.”“So instead you just made the decision for me?” Ah, his signature deadpan response.

“Huh?”

“You are so convinced of your own perception you won’t even entertain the thought I could see something else entirely. I’m a lot of things but not a liar, doll. When I tell you you’re beautiful, I mean it.” To show he wasn’t taking offence at your words, he tapped the tip of your nose again when you emerged from your hiding spot to peer up at him. Bouncing you in his lap as if to jostle the negative thoughts from the forefront of your mind, mischief gleamed in his eyes. “Do you really think I’d put myself into this position just to make someone feel better? Usually, I only try to fuck unbelievably attractive people on my couch.”

“Oh my god, Rin! You’re such an idiot!” You were well aware your boyfriend had the tendency to be shamelessly blunt and it still made you smack your palms against his chest, though your shoulders did feel lighter at his very characteristic way of encouraging you. “Also we bought this couch together, so it’s mine as much as it’s yours.”

“The point still stands,” he nonchalantly answered, trailing one finger down the dip of your neck as his half-lidded eyes tracked its path before finding yours again. You knew that look well and it made your earlier arousal flare up again. “You’ll give me a chance to prove you wrong, won’t you, pretty? I promise you won’t regret it.”

You hesitated for a moment before mustering up all your courage. Suna had never betrayed the trust you placed in him and he’d not given you any reason to doubt him this time either. “Alright, fine.”

“Thank you.” You could feel his smile against your temple when he leaned forward to place a small peck there. “Hmm now where were we? Oh, that’s right.”

Long fingers splayed over the back of your head to tilt your head up so he could reconnect your lips once more. Just like before, the kiss started off slow and built in intensity until you were gasping for breath, a thread of a saliva connecting you until it broke from the rocking of your hips. Having foregone a bra that night, your nipples rubbed against the soft lining of the sweater, perking up from the friction.

This time, when his hands snuck under your clothes, you didn’t move to stop him, instead letting the warmth of his palms spread across your back. Slowly but steadily his touch rose higher, his fingertips nearly massaging the skin with the light pressure he was exerting. At the same time, his mouth moved south as if he wanted to meet his hands in the middle, trailing a hot path of kisses from the corner of your mouth to your jaw to just below your ear.

“The calluses of my hands, do they bother you?” A little disoriented by the low timbre of his voice and confused by the sudden question, you quickly made it known you liked them quite a lot, to which he chuckled. “See, at first, I was really insecure about it. Such rough hands handling something so precious, that didn’t seem right. But I learnt pretty quickly I was fussing about nothing, considering how you seem to love holding my hands or cumming all over my fingers.”

“That’s not a fair comparison,” you nearly whined, both at his choice of example and the way he bucked his hips up into yours. Your face felt as if it was set ablaze as his hands roamed and kneaded whatever part of skin they could find and your hips kept up a steady rhythm. “You have such nice hands, Rin.”“Something you made me aware of,” he smiled. When his lips reached the point where the collar of the hoodie wouldn't allow him to go any further, his hot breath fanned the expanse of your throat and his fingers played with the hem of his piece of clothing. “Let me do the same for you, yeah? Are you comfortable with taking this off?”

“Yeah,” you quietly affirmed, nodding your head at his request. With his help, the soft material slipped over your head and arms before being tossed somewhere next to the two of you and you fought hard to return your hands to his shoulders in lieu of covering up your bare body. 

“Shit, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing these,” Suna groaned, cupping your breasts with appreciative hands, forefingers and thumbs immediately working on rolling your pert nipples between them as the other digits fondled the surrounding area. “Look how perfect these look in my hands, like they were made to be held by me.”

A soft sigh of his name escaped you as you tilted your head back at the sensation of his warm hands contrasting with the temperature of the living room. It drew his attention back to the exposed column of your neck, focusing on the task of sucking a pulsing bruise against the spot that he knew made you weak. 

However, what you didn’t expect was him reaching around you to ghost his finger up the length of your spine, sending electricity right through you. Combined, the actions effortlessly pulled a gasp from you as you arched your back against his chest, which resulted in you pressing down hard against his bulge. His groan reverberated against your chest, a beautiful and husky sound which made you crave to hear more.

“Did that feel good? I bet it did,” Suna whispered against your feverish skin, fingers splaying out in the dip oy your back to keep you steady. “I can make you feel so much better, you know that. Just say the word.”

By now, your panties were probably soaked through as your clit pulsed with need, hips rocking in search for more friction but not getting enough to satisfy that itch inside of you. With how your heart was hammering against your ribcage, you could’ve bet Rin was able to feel it too, even through the material of his shirt. Balling the material in your fists you whimpered, “Rin, I need more, please.”

He grinned against your shoulder, pressing your chest tighter against his and grabbing the fat of your thigh with his free hand. Without any strain, he flipped you over so your back hit the couch cushions and he towered over your form, your legs still spread around his waist.

Running his hands down and back up the length of your legs, squeezing your thighs and calves appreciatively, his touch made goosebumps spread all across your body, no matter how seating it was on you. When his fingers reached the waistband of your sweatpants, playing with it as he leaned into your space, his heavy gaze met yours once more.

“Can I take these off?” No matter how clear it was you wanted this too, Suna would always ask. This night too, you willingly lay yourself in his hands as you lifted your hips to help him shimmy your pants off you, tossing them in the vague direction of the hoodie without taking his eyes off of you. He especially didn’t want to miss the string of slick sticking to your panties as they followed suit.

Drinking in the sight of your nude form, he traced a reverent finger over the seam where your legs met your hips, purposefully applying only a hint of pressure, knowing the featherlight touch was driving you positively insane. Slowly circling further in, he then caressed your outer lips covered in soft pubes, collecting your arousal with an experimental stroke over your slit but intentionally missing where you wanted him most.

“Rin, don’t tease,” you whined, squirming against the couch cushions.

“Sorry, doll, but you just look so pretty like this,” he mused, bright eyes showing not a hint of remorse. “I just have to indulge a little.”

And indulge he did. When he finally grazed his thumb over your neglected clit, his touch seemed to scorch, which only served to fuel the desire inside of you and it inevitably coaxed a wanton moan from you. Incredibly adept at reading you and keen to hear more of your sweet noises, Suna easily slid his middle finger into your hole, that at this point had been clenching around nothing. With how wet you were, he was met with no resistance at all and soon complied with your pleas for more and added his ring finger to the first.

“Shit, baby, you’re clinging to my fingers,” Suna voiced his thoughts as he smoothed one hand down the length of your leg once more to grab your ankle. Keeping up the steady pumps of his hand, curling his digits right into the spot that had your leg spasming in his hold, he turned his head to kiss the joint in his hold. However, he didn’t stop there. 

As if your leg was a fuse and he was the fire, Suna leisurely crept his affections higher, over your calves and past your knees, until you really felt ready to explode. Dimpling the flesh under his fingertips, he tightened the hold on your thigh so he could suck a myriad of hickeys on its expanse, unbothered by your incessant writhing. 

His hot breath fanned your core as his plush lips mapped out the juncture of your leg, paying careful attention to the area littered with stretch marks and covering the cause of some of your insecurities with his own marks. Like he wanted to claim your body as his, not that of the doubts in your mind. When he was satisfied with the blotches of red forming on your skin, he finally pulled back to admire his work.

“Have I been neglecting you lately?” Suna whispered, almost drowned out by the squelches of your pussy as he scissored his fingers. Looking up at you over the length of your heated body, he replaced his thumb with his kiss-swollen lips, placing a sweet peck against your clit and teasing it with the tip of his tongue. “Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it. You should never feel like this about yourself.”

“It’s not your fault, Rin,” you breathily reassured him only to be shushed by idle fingers dancing across your lower stomach, then precisely pressing down where his other hand was crooking up into.

“What kind of boyfriend lets his baby feel anything less than gorgeous?” Snaking one arm around your arched back, his long fingers covered a large part of it and held you steady against his chest as the coils in your stomach wound tighter and your toes curled at his sides. “I wish I could show you what I see. But since I can’t, I’ll have to settle for conveying it like this.”

His thumb had taken up its former spot again, resumed drawing firm figure eights on your clit and your nipples rubbed against the front of his shirt where Suna curled over you to reach your lips with his. Under the influence of his messy kiss, you felt like you were set ablaze as your boyfriend encouraged you to let go for him.

Someone might as well have replaced your blood with molten lava as your orgasm washed over you with fiery intensity and sweat pearled on your temple. Your arms slung around his body as your hands searched for whatever they could grab to hold on, be it the muscles of his shoulder or his dishevelled dark locks. Your lungs were already burning with the need for air but if you stopped kissing him, stopped vocalising your pleasure right for him to swallow it up, you thought you might die.

Suna kept up his ministrations until you were trembling like a candle in the wind before he even considered pulling his fingers from you. With half lidded eyes you watched as he brought the digits up to his mouth, cleaning up your mess with slightly exaggerated lewdness and moaning at your taste.

As he sat back up, he kept you flush against him and returned you to the position that started this all. Only this time your heightened sensitivity made you hyper aware of his arousal underneath you. 

“How are you feeling, pretty?” Nosing the crook of your neck lovingly, Suna nibbled on your salty skin where your quickened pulse thrummed underneath. His strong hands massaged your sides as you caught your breath and willed your chest to stop heaving. “Do you want to keep going?”

“You can’t do all of that and then deny me this,” you laughed breathlessly as you rolled your hips into his prominent bulge which caused him to inhale sharply. On top of everything, your boyfriend was also fucking hung, something his sweats didn’t hide in the slightest. “But I need you to take this off first.”

“Your wish is my command,” he chuckled, shrugging the shirt over his head unceremoniously, his biceps and triceps flexing in the process. While he busied himself with untangling himself from his pants, you ran an appreciative hand over the firm planes of his abs and up his pectorals. “Like what you see?”

“You know I do,” you mused, pressing a kiss against his jaw. “Got so lucky with you.”

“Hey, that’s my line,” Suna smiled, letting his hands roam over every dip and curve of your body as he urged you to straddle him again. Wasting no time, you started rocking yourself over his length, gasping every time his head caught your clit while you covered him in your arousal. After starving himself of stimulation earlier to focus entirely on you, your boyfriend shuddered at the contact. “You already feel so good doll, how am I supposed to last like this?”

“It’s okay, I want you to feel good too, Rin,” you stated but your movement was promptly stopped by two heavy hands on your hips. There was a subtle flush decorating his complexion and your heart skipped a beat. Was he really this affected just because of you? “As tempting as that sounds, tonight is all about you. No room to argue.” There was a tender finality in his tone, one that made clear he really wouldn’t budge on the topic, so you relented and melted into his hold. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Yes, this wasn’t the first time you’d been intimate with Suna, but it still felt like it. Every time he sunk his cock into you the stretch had you tossing your head back. From the way his thick tip slowly breached the tight ring of muscle, to the pleasant friction of his veins sliding against your walls and the satisfying feeling of being stuffed full, you believed you’d never get used to it.

“You always take me so well,” Suna panted as he bottomed out, fingers flexing against the pudge of your ass as he willed himself to patience to let you adjust to his girth, no matter how heavenly your warm cunt felt enveloping him. 

“Fuck Rin, I need you to move. Please, I–” Your brows were furrowed and you supported yourself on his chest as you started circling your hips against his while his cock pressed against all your sensitive spots so nicely.

And who was he to deny you when you asked so sweetly? 

Starting with slow and deliberate thrusts, you both knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. While Suna normally prided himself on patience, even his was running thin by now and soon after, the rhythmic slapping of your thighs on his echoed around your apartment as he effortlessly moved you up and down on him, each thrust seemingly deeper as the previous one.

Not able to keep yourself upright for much longer, you slumped against his equally sweat-slicked chest and surrendered yourself completely to his actions, opting instead to claw at his back every time a particularly well aimed stroke had you clench your eyes shut. It was the best kind of torture and if you were exposed to it for too long you might actually go mad.

With your head nestled in the crook of his neck it gave Suna the perfect view down your back, admiring the way it bowed so graciously against his broad body or how your ass bounced with each slap of his thighs. How you were able to see anything but your beauty was something he just couldn't get behind; not because he was without insecurities but because no part of you could ever be a flaw in his eyes. Not when it made you who you were.

His fingers fluttered over the curve of your spine again, eliciting a more visceral reaction as your body shuddered and you pressed yourself tighter against him, trying to evade his searing touch while simultaneously craving more of it. Your whole body felt like you were boiling from the inside out, every part his scorching hands touched sizzling with nerves.

The constant grind of his pelvis against your clit had your walls gripping his length like a vice, making it increasingly harder for your boyfriend to pull out, let alone hold his own release back for much longer. Dipping his head down with a groan, his lips connected with your shoulder as his fingers kneaded and fondled wherever he could reach. Perhaps by the time you woke up tomorrow you wouldn’t see the blemishes you agonised over but the imprint of his fingers on your waist or the love bites littering your shoulder.

“If you don’t like these marks, I guess it’s on me to cover them with my own,” he mumbled lowly, perhaps more to himself than to you. Either way, the deep rumble of his voice so close to your ear followed by the sound of him reattaching his lips where he had left off shot down your spine like a lightning bolt. “You’re close, aren’t you? C’mon, you can do it. Show me how beautiful you are when you cream on my cock.”

The effect Suna’s voice and words had over you should maybe concern you. But you didn’t care as you came for the second time this night with a cry of his name on your lips, weightless as your boyfriend rode out your orgasm while chasing his own. Just as you came down from the aftershock of pleasure, Suna pushed inside of you as far as he could and painted your insides white.

For a few minutes, neither of you said anything, content to stay lost in the feeling of the other as two sets of hands explored the shared silhouette of your bodies. Kisses were exchanged or randomly placed wherever you could reach, Suna caressed your sides and you swept sweaty bangs out of his eyes.

“So,” Rin broke the comfortable silence, “are you still hellbent on arguing with me on this?”

Picking up his hint of playfulness, you decided to lean into it. “Hmm I dunno, the jury’s still out.”

“I thought you might say something like this,” he chuckled, pinching your side between his eyes, resulting in you yelping in surprise and sending him a half-hearted glare which was only returned in mischief. “Good thing I already planned to bend you over the back of the couch and paint your back. Bet you’d look lovely, even if you can’t get any more gorgeous than you already are. Same place and time tomorrow work for you?”

“You’re such an idiot, you know that?” You laughed at his shrugged ‘Might have mentioned it before’ before leaning up for a brief peck. “But sure, I’ll clear my schedule for you.”

After your movie night had effectively been rebranded into a shared bath Suna had drawn for you, you let the warm water rinse away most of the soreness you felt in the moment. Despite the tub being a rather snug fit with your professional athlete occupying a big chunk of it by himself, you let yourself relax against his chest.

Rin had taken it upon himself to gently scrub your body down for you, being extra careful with any of the spots he might have been a little rougher on. When it was time to dry off, he took his time to shower your back in kisses; every mark he left, every scar, every blemish, he covered them all equally in his affection and adoration. 

“I love you,” he murmured when his eyes met yours through the mirror and he tangled your fingers together. “I would never dream to change a single thing about you.”

“I love you too,” you whispered back, like it was a secret only meant for his ears. “Thank you for being so patient with me.”

“It’s nothing you have to thank me for.” Suna brought your hand up to his lips to leave a lingering kiss there too. “I’m just doing what any good boyfriend should.”

Later in bed:

“How much did you have to hold back from saying ‘I’ve got your back’?”

“You have no idea.”

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[disneyparksattractionstournament]

Extinct Disney Parks and Attractions tournament round 1: Group A1

Reminder, you don't have had to experience any of the attractions/experiences to vote! Just read in the info and/or watch the vid,then vote for which you wish you would have experienced more/which sounds cooler!

Videos and propaganda/info dumping under cut

Innoventions: WDW Epcot(1994-2019), Disneyland (1998-2015)

Propaganda: Epcot version, in its hay day, this place was so freaking cool and futuristic guys! It upheld and stood what Epcot was originally suppose to be and Walt's love of future and progress, but Disney is lazy and didn't wanna keep it up and it ahead over the years so they neglected it til it was almost an empty shell then destroyed it for a STUPID GARDEN, IN THIS ESSAY ILL.......but anyways, this place kinda went downhill in the 2010's, but it was so cool in the 90s and early 2000s! Truly made learning fun!

Unfortunately, there arent many videos of it in the early 2000s, but here are a few, and some of it in the 90s.

There is a little bit of good footage of it in this video:

Here is the later, lamer version, still better than a garden :

The Magic of Disney Animation: Hollywood Studios/MGM (1998-2015)

Propaganda: "In the 90s and early 2000s, this an actual Disney animation building where they worked on several films and sequences, including the ink and paint for Little Mermaid, Be Our Guest in Beauty and the Beast, I Just Cant Wait to be King in Lion King, all of Mulan, Lilo and Stitch, and Brother Bear! Though, most of it was done in a building behind this one(which I believed opened in 98)(and is actually still there and used for offices for other departments! Got to walk through it during cast member training in 2019!) Unfortunately they moved out in 2004, but the attraction remained for around a decade after. I actually have a vague memory of watching them working on Lilo and Stitch!

Taught you all about the process and behind the scenes of disney animation! Had a cute film with Mushu and a cast member 'interacting' and showing some of the process of animation. There were some observation areas where you could watch an animator actually working! There were several cute interactive games where you could do voiceovers for the disney characters and take a character quiz (like DCA's version), you could meet sorcerer mickey here for a while too. Over the years they added more character meet and greets, often promoting their new films. There was also a drawing class, that is now randomly at Animal Kingdom? There was also a little gallery/exhibit area where they had rotating exhibits of rough drafts, story boards, character concept art, and more!

This video is after it was a working studio in 2006:

Here is a clearer version of the little film:

Here is a little film they made about when it was a working studio!

[steampunkforever]

There's nothing explicitly wrong with an origin story. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that when adapting a character to the screen, the modernization involved in telling an origin story for the present day (even if the story is set in the past) can even be one of the main draws for an audience. It's what made that first wave of Marvel films fun, after all. 2010's The A-Team cinematic reboot, on the other hand, contains two origin stories. Neither of them are fun.

The key to a good origin, I find, is that your hero has to hit the groove by at least the middle of the film. Nobody wants to know the secret story of how Willy Wonka could afford a factory if they don't get to see him torturing children in it. This is a lesson The A-Team could have used while it managed to adapt a charmingly stupid television show into a forgettably stupid movie reboot.

The A-Team has always been about a team of mercenaries wanted by the government for breaking out of military prison and the wacky Macgyver-meets-Mission-Impossible adventures they find themselves in. Each episode contains a car chase and a helicopter stunt that's just as much a result of the Vietnam War as the themes behind the Team's court marshal. What this movie did was ignore all of that.

The film itself opens with a zany action sequence that brings together a group of ragtag fighters to form the A-Team. Origin story #1. It then shows them framed for a crime they didn't commit, has them escape from a high security government stockade, and live as fugitives. Origin #2. Then comes the rest of the movie, a needless slog that fades out on Bradley Cooper's attractive smirk and plays the TV shows opening synopsis read over the credits, proving to all of us that the entire film's substance could've been covered in 30 seconds.

Where a film like Miami Vice understands its subject matter, the A-Team does not. Just like attempts at launching the Dark Universe franchise, it presents what is essentially the boring intro to the show as the main event, giving us a government thriller where we wanted a soldier of fortune romp. This was always about fun mercenaries like the ones who were flooding into Rhodesia and Central America after adrenaline and amoral paychecks post-Vietnam. A movie about four guys trying to clear their criminal records just isn't the same.

Plus the movie gets rid of the van in the first 20 minutes. Simply not worth it.

[kimbap-r0ll]

Watching a Horror Film with the Dorm Leaders

It's spooky season, and a perfect date idea is to watch a scary film!

Riddle

He's a bit averse to it at first, but he caves in and agrees if you can convince him that the plot of the story is good

He'll watch the whole thing with you, only jumping a few times at a few scares. Most of the movie-viewing however is him criticizing the main character for their stupid choices

If you get scared and hold onto him, he will let you and tell you "there's nothing to worry about, it's not real" or some other realist sentiment like that

He won't love it but he won't hate it either. The storyline, if it was good, will be something he talks about with you after the movie. He'll let you cuddle up next to him if you want to, he might fix some warm tea as well

Leona

He was the one that suggested it, saying that you wouldn't be able to watch the whole thing without grabbing his arm. You took his bet

Of course, Leona was right. You ended having to reach out to him at some point and he was like "Oh? Herbivore? You see this?" He will tease you :/

He won't admit it, but there were times when he too jumped. If it was a jumpscare he wasn't anticipating for example, be sure to tease him about it as well for revenge!

After the movie, he might not say much but he might ask if you need to sleep with him because you're scared. You can tell him no, but why not use the movie to cuddle up with him? He won't say no to comforting you

Azul

Really didn't want to watch a horror film, but you convinced him it would be okay. The tweels also pressured him into it (the poor boy)

He's already on edge when the opening sequence to the film starts. He doesn't say he's scared, but he links arms with you "just in case you get scared"

Will squeak, and it's honestly adorable seeing the man who's usually calm and collected jump and grab your arm. But at the same time, you feel bad haha

The two of you end up getting spooked together, and now you guys can't go anywhere alone. You two end up staying together for the night, and Floyd and Jade use this opportunity to try scaring you guys (it works)

Kalim

He's totally hyped for it, mainly because he doesn't know what he's getting himself into. But not listening to Jamil, he agrees to watch the film with you

He brings a lot of snacks and pillows, so you guys are really comfortable watching the film together. It feels a bit safer this way too haha

You guys both scream or jump together whenever something scary happens. Then, you guys yell at the screen, then laugh about it. This goes on repeatedly

By the end of the film, though you guys are spooked, you guys are hugging each other and it's honestly kinda cute. You guys end up trying to watch funny videos on Magicam to not be scared anymore but it fails when Jamil (who was silently watching behind you guys) scares the two of you by saying "hi" out of nowhere

Vil

He's fine with it. Though he doesn't love horror, he does appreciate any form of film. He's an actor after all

He won't get scared at all. He knows every film tactic and he might even personally know some of the actors that are in the film. He'll point out each one of them so it's not that scary of a film by the end

If you ever jump, he does laugh softly to himself at how cute you are. He will then tell you that if you jumped, the directors of the film did a good job, since the film is supposed to scare you

Afterwards, if you are still frightened, he will stay with you and softly comb his fingers through your hair to calm you down. You guys end up talking about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the film for the entire night

Idia

He wanted to watch a horror film with you. Though he gets scared by a lot of things, he's never been scared by a horror movie

Idia lets you cling to him because he likes being close to you, it's honestly another reason why he suggested watching a movie with you in the first place haha

If you ever jump, he ends up jumping a bit too. You guys might laugh about it a bit since it's cute, but afterwards he'll ask if you're alright. He will stop the movie if it gets too much for you btw

After the film's done, you guys might watch a different movie to get the spooks out, or if you like horror, you guys play a horror game together

Malleus

He's never seen horror films before, he's only really read horror books. So, he's immediately interested in watching them with you!

He doesn't get scared at all, basically predicts every jumpscare, every scare tactic in the movie. You, on the other hand, find yourself clinging to him every now and then

Malleus won't tease you about how you get scared, but he will tell you that it's "cute to have you hugging his arm" and such. Honestly, he really thinks you're adorable

After the film, he'll tell you he really had a lot of fun watching it. If you happen to want to watch anymore with him in the future, please do!

[jodjuya]

Bryan Cranston is my favourite actor of all time.

I've never seen "Breaking Bad" and I likely never will.

But I'm up to season 4 of my "Malcolm in the Middle" rewatch, and my admiration for any other actor has never been higher.

Season 4, episode 18, "Boys at Ranch" puts Lois in the fridge for a whole episode, and without her antagonism we get a whole episode where all of the men and boys get to share the spotlight, and it's such a beautiful love letter to them all. So so so much wholesomeness and the payoff of four seasons' worth of character-growth, and it never stops being breathtakingly funny throughout.

AND THEN it ends on one of the best special effect sequences ever put to film.

Top! Tier! Television!

One of the show's strongest pre-opening gags too.

The absolute pinnacle of sitcom as an art form.

---------------

This episode REALLY drives home hard how Lois is *the* antagonizing force behind her entire family's dysfunction. It's really stark in a greek-tragedy kind of way. 😬

In two days under in the restorative influence of Otto und Gretchen away from Lois' presence, we see Hal, Francis, Piama, Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey instantly self-actualising into their best possible selves.

We see that Francis' season 3 spent at the isolated Alaskan logging camp was restoratively foundational to his growth as a person. He became a better person (a strict, disciplined, reliable, dependable, responsible, intelligent , resourceful (handsome👀) Capable Man) because ALL of his miserable conditions there were directly connected to personal accountability, rather than to abusive sadomasochistic discipline to force him to comply for the pure sake of authoritarianism.

(eg. Military school, and before/during/after that: his mother's parenting)

We see Dewey connect with his feelings, and actively being taught how to reconcile them, using Gretchen's amusing Germanic silliness to ritually link one's emotional healing to the physical pain of disciplined suffering—such that the energetic outburst from you being overwhelmed by your negative emotions is harnessed, instead, for productive pro-social behaviours of Cleaning The House So Hard It Hurts (In A Good Way 🥰) rather than by you merely lashing out in violent destructive behaviours

[¡and all of this initially triggered by an honest discussion about hurt feelings and accidental mistakes without appointing blame OR shame!]

AND then linking the positive endorphins from the physical pain of your frenzy:

bleeding knees, sore muscles, exhaustion, cramps, and so on; (including inhaling chemical fumes)

to conceptualising freeing yourself from your shame and guilt; explaining that hard work _causes_ you to feel better.

Show, don't tell, all the way to the motherfucking bank by the way.

Diagetically, as Gretchen to Dewey;

and also non-diagetically, as the show's writers to its audience; as all of this stuff just /happens/ without *any* of it being explained.

All this to say, is that after Dewey thoughtlessly broke Gretchen's

"this is VERY personally valuable to me, it's so special and important PLEASE do not touch it, but I have told you so, so now I blindly trust you completely okay byeeee"

Hand-Carved Cultural Artifact Doll;

that after that destructive, harmful, thoughtless act (after *explicitly* promising not to do) caused these two side-characters to become so deeply and lovingly connected to each other on their very first day of meeting each other that Dewey earnestly considers Gretchen to be his grandmother and now affectionately refers to her as such.

(to clarify their initial relationship: Dewey's eldest brother, Francis, is Gretchen's employee. She's his second-boss; co-owner of the dude ranch where Francis is foreman (because her Eccentricly German husband fell in love with the aesthetic of wild-west cowboys))

And because Dewey is a nine year old boy who put the doll into his pocket, and then his two malevolantly-stupid older teenage brothers maliciously conspired to defraud the ranch; where Francis is now Mr The-Capable-Man Foreman; to get Dewey to ride an ATV with no approval or supervision of any sane adult; the legs broke off the doll.

Gretchen was heartbroken by this when Dewey confessed (because he's fundamentally a very good little boy).

and so Dewey was feeling very hurt and miserable and ashamed without Gretchen needing to yell at him about it to cause that, because for Gretchen, her emotions aren't on her sleeve, they ARE the sleeve;

and seeing her hurt is like watching someone kick a puppy.

She is only consoled by Otto reassuring her that he will simply make new legs to replace the legs which got smashed off, "and then he'll be even better than he was before! …just like my eighth cousin!" 😂

[Early foreshadowing: you feel better when amends are made; positive action (in both senses of the words) for the sake of fixing things.]

Later, Dewey comes back to Gretchen. He's really upset by how bad he feels for what he did, and so this time he's coming back to her for comfort and reassurance.

She talks to him about what he's feeling, and gives Dewey the vocabulary to talk about what he's feeling and why, and how to talk about what those feelings feel like, without shame or blame or hostility; let alone whether or not he 'deserves' to feel so bad.

And then continues right along with "and THIS is how you make it feel better"—in the unarguable tone of voice an adult uses when they are imprinting some declaration or another about the definitive nature of reality directly into an impressionable young mind, along the lines of "that thing in front of us is called a tree"—with her little speech about how suffering by doing really REALLY hard work *causes* you to feel better!

AND THEN! she continues right along with "I still feel bad too, so this is a perfect time to teach you how to do this, come with me and we'll do it together!!"

And then she does. Lovely montage of Gretchen and Dewey side-by-side doing a sitcom-level of Cleaning So Hard It Becomes Transcendental; her teaching by example exactly what to clean and how, and giving Dewey excited encouragement the whole way.

"oh my god this is such good penance I'm unlocking and healing flashback trauma from when I was a nine year-old!' [AN: Gretchen is in her 50s??]

Like, "fuck yeah, my knees are bleeding! This is so fucking radical! look how fully sick it is that my knees are bleeding from how much I've been kneeling on them while we scrubbed the floor together! Feel the burn baby! 🤩"

Afterwards they're done and the ranchhouse is so spotless you can eat off the floor and they're surfing the endorphin rush together and talking about how amazing they felt after using self-directed scourging to purge their own sins. (people who like Spicy Sex know what I'm talking about 😏)

So that in the end, instead of screaming abuse and vitriol back and forth in *coercing* Dewey to injure himself cleaning too hard for the sheer purpose of corporal punishment for domination, shame, and humiliation;

After Dewey thoughtlessly smashed Gretchen's priceless and highly beloved doll, the two of them ended up with a MORE loving relationship than they started with!! They *both* feel AMAZING,

AND the entire ranch is SPOTLESS!

&&&&&&&&&

We see Malcolm and Reese further engaging in maliciously-stupid destruction, but this time for wholesome loving reconnection reasons.

They steal Hal's no-limit credit card to buy the sitcom-level of Too Many Fireworks, which they plan to set off in an alluded-to Sitcom Evil Prank Scheme to "get back at Francis" after he was Mr The-Capable-Man serious about how much they fucked up with the ATV thing. His brothers seriously endangered their own lives and the lives of other people, and they did so at the place where Francis is employed to literally live out the perfect life of his dreams, and to top it all off, his own dad was the one so stupidly reckless as to blindly sign paperwork without bothering to read what the fuck it actually was that he was signing; so Francis yelled at them all, taking the role their mother always takes, the role that Francis hated so much he literally had himself legally emancipated so that he could run away from school to an incredibly isolated Alaskan lumberjack camp.

Well anyway, the scheme plays out (which resolves Francis torment over escaping his mother only to become her), which also serves to reconnect Hal's independent plotline back to everyone else's.

&&&&&&&&&&

Hal lost in the desert with Otto, both of them INCREDIBLY drunk, having scared off their horses by Doing Stargazing via using their Authentic Cowboy Guns (Otto has the semi-automatic Luger he mentioned in passing in a previous episode) to point out stars; and with Otto bleeding out from a self-inflicted bullet wound in his butt cheeks. ("...I finally hit something! 🥴🥳🥴".

(Because Otto was like "how about a big bottle of scnapps??🎵? I know what's the nice sugar to get nice boys to take their nice medicine of taking about their 🎶~feel~ings~🎶??")

But all that aside, they had finished talking about Hal's feelings and his crisis of confidence in his fatherhood:

"You've only had him for two months! And he's... and he's a MODEL CITIZEN now! I had him for EIGHTEEN YEARS and it was nothing but horrible every single day for every single person!! What did you DO?! How bad of a father must *I* be?!?!"

Otto cuts through Hal's anguish by chiding him for not seeing that the acorn of Francis had NOT fallen far from Hal's tree; that Francis had ALWAYS been a good hardworking honest dependable reliable upstanding man all along, and that these traits came directly from Hal:

"What? You think he suddenly picked up these traits one day because he just found them lying on the side of the road? No! They came from you! And besides, I didn't do a single thing to teach Francis what wasn't already there inside him: I'm definitely no Super Male Role-Model Genius Guy, remember? I am is the guy who is incredibly drunk and lost in the desert dying because of my own bullet in my arse!"

So then Hal becomes bouyed right back up again, and very-drunkenly reassures Otto that there's nothing for them to worry about at all, because Francis is actually so amazing that he's about to rescue them RIGHT NOW!

Literally Cue The Fireworks

(because of Malcolm and Reese's evil scheme paying out: malicious Sitcom evil-genius prank involving Too Many Fireworks directly above the workplace of their has-legal-duty-of-care foreman brother who's personally responsible for the safety of many inexperienced tourists (including grandmas and preschoolers, and his own wife) who are surrounded by and interacting with many heads of livestock, horses, and Cosplay Cowboys); to "get back at him" lol)

And then yeah, one of the greatest special effects ever put to film; depicting the Too Many Fireworks.

Just a fucking masterpiece of television!

[katatonicimpression]

A Walk Through My Year in Media

This isn't necessarily things that came out this year, but rather things that I watched/read this year that I liked or compulsively consumed regardless of whether or not I liked them.

2023 in Films

Most of this post is going to be positivity; a sampling platter of things I've enjoyed this year. But also:

Salty Film Hot Takes:

The French Connection is uncomfortable to watch. I don't care about the racist, antisemitic, misogynist cop. He's objectively bad at his job make him go away.

None of the Next Generation era trek movies are good.

Guardians 4 would have been a better movie if Pratt wasn't in it. And I mean that in a "the script would be better structured" way.

Se7en is a really fun film and I'm not mad to have rewatched it recently but... it's undermined by 1) the writers not realising that John Doe's opinions are bog standard right wing talk radio shit, 2) the fact that they kind of agree with him and 3) they clearly, hilariously, don't know what lawyers do.

The Mummy (2017) is awful. I guess that's not controversial but still.

Robin Hood (2018) is also awful. Like, amazingly so. And, slightly warmer take, so is Prince of Thieves you guys.

I will not be answering questions on any of the above.

Positive Film Hot takes:

I went on a bit of an 80s dark fantasy kick this year. Out of films that I hadn't seen before, The Dark Crystal and The Last Unicorn really stood out. Especially the Dark Crystal. I ended up rewatching the show as well. Just so good. Bring it back. Justice for the gelflings.

I also watched a lot of Terry Gilliam this year - not all of his back catalogue but most of it. Obviously Jabberwocky is almost entirely bad, no one needs to be told, but overall yeah you get why he's beloved. The common vibe from his films is "wow there's so much to love here but it doesn't quite work". Brazil is an obvious standout - it's a classic for a reason. But I want to highlight The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Behind the scenes disaster and orientalist opening sequence aside, it really is spectatular. The sets, the details. It's so well crafted and just makes you wish they made films like this all the time. Damn you, Terry.

The 1938 Robin Hood film is the best Robin Hood film. Yes, congratulations, you noticed another theme in the shit I've watched this year. But yes, it's great, it's fun and well paced. It holds up staggeringly well. I also watched The Court Jester (1955 - with Danny Kaye and Angela Lansbury) - Also surprisingly great.

Finally, also feeling medieval, I watched Excalibur (1981). This is more "swords and sorcery" than "dark fantasy" (think: Conan the Barbarian vibes), but it's kinda great (most of the genre is not, lbr). It captures the logic of those stories, the vibes of the mythology very well, the mix of pagan and early christian beliefs, and the weird metaphysics that results. It's great. Way better than that dumb clive owen one. My lord that was bad.

2023 in Telly

Live Action Drama:

Succession

It's good. I don't think anyone needs me to tell them that. Still haven't finished it but enjoying it in a peaceful, fandom-free way.

Robin Hood (2006)

This was a terrible show, with an even worse third and final series. Did I rewatch the whole thing anyway? Yes I did. Should I have? No. (I love the first two so much though. Lily Allen's dad as the sheriff of Nottingham as tony blair? sign me up.)

Doctor Who

Am I a basic bitch who only came back to who because RTD did? Yes. But at least I'm not quite as basic as the ones who were only back for Tennant. The first one was good, if a little on the nose, the second was great, the third was good up until they get onto the stupid avengers platform for the showdown, from which point me and everyone in the room just got mad at it. The christmas special was fun though, excited for Gatwa and the new series.

Adult Animation:

Castlevania: Nocturne

assajhdaskjhfksjdfhlsdjaghljdsghaj

Genuinely so great. It's very clear that they're setting up a whole multi season arc with this first season, and the incompleteness that comes with that is probably its biggest flaw. But overall, fucking fabulous. The animation, fights, character design. Just a gorgeous show. Maybe not to everyone's taste; it's fantasy, but not escapist - its very much rooted in the historical injustices of the setting and has some heavy themes as a result. But if you liked the first Castlevania show, then you'll probably love this.

Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix

You might have noticed that there was a show out that featured "Rayman, but with drugs and cussing!" and, yes, this is that show. You might not have noticed that Rayman is only a small part of it, and it's actually about Dolph - a traumatised gay cyborg - and his no good, horrible, very bad breakup. Dolph is great.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

Do you like Star Trek? Do you like silly cartoons and workplace sitcoms? Then do I have the show for you. Real highlight of the year for me tbh. While the show is built on poking fun at trek canon, and can feel a little overly reliant on nostalgia sometimes, the latest season really pushed for more meaningful character moments in between the laughs. I like it. It's good.

Mononoke

This was the most mixed of mixed bags. Japanese horror with a really striking and confronting art style. At its best, it's got this visceral atmosphere that sucks you in and is genuinely fantastic. At its worst, it's got a whole storyline about "abortion ghosts", and features some art that comes across as racial caricature. Between this, and a few other things that felt uncomfortable in an unintentional way, I don't think I'd really recommend this, but it did stick with me, I'll give them that.

YA Animation:

The Dragon Prince

If you're into the whole YA fantasy adventure thing, this is an obvious rec. It's biggest flaw is how slow it's been to release, but if you're binging it for the first time, that's not a problem. It's heartfelt, it's pretty, it's clearly a kids show but is well crafted and has appeal beyond its core audience.

Star Trek: Prodigy

S1 actually originally aired like two years ago, but I only watched it this year after finding out that it was cancelled. But it was rescued! S1 is now on netflix, and s2 will air there next year. Genuinely a really fun contribution to the whole trek shebang, fitting into the universe well without ever feeling reliant on nostalgia.

I didn't include the two other treks that aired this year because s3 of Picard sucked balls (still not over it) and Strange New Worlds has stopped appealing to me... but that's a whole thing for the other blog. But the animated series are great! Also Disco. I still like Discovery.

Skull Island

This was better than it had any right to be. One season of a surprisingly funny King Kong show, also on Netflix.

Reality:

Rupaul's Drag Race UK Season 5

DRUK is good again, hooray. The dark times are over... for now.

Married at First Sight UK

Do not watch this. It will consume your entire life. Your brain will melt away as you watch someone fake cheat on their fake husband with someone else's fake husband just days into their fake marriage.

Taskmaster

It's good. It's been good. It continues to be good.

2023 in Gaming

Lol no. Can you imagine?

I did play the sims a lot. I had my guy cheat on his husband who then died.

2023 in Books

Fun fact: I only finished one of the books I intended to read this year. That's embarrassing. Anyway, it was "From Here to Eternity" by Caitlin Doughty (yes, the Ask a Mortician lady). It's great.

2023 in Comic Books

Orlando

This has really been Steve Orlando's year for me. I was thinking about what series I would include on a highlight list, and his Scarlet Witch was the only obvious answer for me. Sara Pichelli's art in that series is gorgeous - I love the way she draws Wanda. The writing is solid, compelling, tells a complete story. If I were to recommend any one series from this year, it would be this.

His Astonishing Iceman was also up there for me, and I will also repeat that the Mutant First Strike one shot he wrote was genuinely great. Kudos, Steve.

Gillen

Kieron Gillen's Immortal X-Men is easily one of the best to come out of the Krakoa era, and this year was no exception. I didn't really care about the Sins of Sinister event, and I care even less about the Fall of X event, so it really means something that I'm still including this series here despite it being dominated by these events. The issue with Piotr's narration has been my favourite, I think. But overall, still strong. I really hope he gets to continue writing these characters (especially Exodus and Sinister) in the future.

Other Positivity

Ewing's Black Panther series is really solid, Avengers (2023) has been pretty good. Dark X-Men was probably my actual favourite of the Fall of X titles.

Negativity

Lol I already said I didn't like the x-events. I also hated cold war. Such a waste of an opportunity. Speaking of, a lot of my comics-based salt and frustration this year has been about Sam. The way that he gets written out of things, ignored, then he turns up and his written badly and goes straight back to being ignored again. Then Marvel turns to the camera and is like "why would audiences do this?".

Put the fucking effort in and more people would show up for him. It's not that hard.

There's my overall annoyance with Duggan, which is a freebie, but one highlight of that has to be the bizarre direction they went with Kamala. No one wanted this, no one needed it, and certainly nobody needed the weird gleeful "killing" of this character just to launch a pointless plot beat that feels both offensive (see: Emma lecturing Kamala about not understanding real oppression) and is inexplicably happening during a whole massive event that feels like it should be about other characters.

The end...?

I don't want to keep listing things that annoyed me this year, because it'll just get repetative. If you follow me (which, if you don't, why are you reading this?), then you'll see me complaining about random crap all the time anyway.

Have a good NYE everyone!

[hippielovinlife-blog]

Howdy folks!! The MEG 2 review here!

Spoilers Ahead! I'm about to say a bunch of stuff that can be determined from the trailer and by...you know movies, if you watch them enough, but still I'm warning you for spoilers.

Point 1 - No children (that we are introduced too) or dogs are harmed in this film.

Ok, onwards!

So for a joint American/Chinese production this movie has everything you would expect including:

1. Passable SFX

2. Joint heroism and ingenuity from both the American and Chinese protagonists

3. Technology referenced that doesn't exist yet

4. A good amount of language mingling

5. American villains but no Chinese villains cause that's how we roll.

6. A truly international cast

For this type of action/monster film we get everything we would expect including the following:

1. Ridiculous action sequences

2. Comically evil bad guys delivering comically evil lines about ocean exploitation

3. Two comic relief characters, one of which is now a badass

4. Very bad decisions, all around

5. Animals not acting like animals

6. Joyously oblivious people getting tragically (but in the funniest way possible) eaten

7. The main cast survives!

Bonus extras:

The opening sequence is hilarious!

Girls, women and black folk being badasses

One male character is just a babygirl. He goes with the menfolk to do action and just doesn't action...at all, it's great!

Jason Statham always looks pretty good

The new guy,Juiming is very quippy and capable so that's fun and not bad looking either.

A giant squid on megalodon fight, I think it was a little late but fun when it happened.

Silliness!! So much silliness, you will laugh, have fun with the jump scares and be like "oh no" throughout.

Critiques:

I had tooooo many kids in my theater 😝. These kids were young too, like under 10, I don't know what that was about.

This movie was about 1/2 hour too long. Not in a "I couldn't wait for it to end" kind of way. But the mainish villain should have died or been severely incapacitated at these 3 times since these people aren't superhuman. And the killing the sharks sequence definitely could have been trimmed.

As usual for this type of hybrid film (I don't think China wants to engage in these types of romances, right now) there are no romantic interests, which I appreciate, but very little was explained about what happened to the romantic interest from the last film.

Ok, so are you looking for something stupid to watch that provides air conditioning and eye candy watch the MEG2. You'll laugh at least!

Peace!!

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT 02

✨GT Stands for Grabbin’ Twentysomethings.✨

So there’s basically three plot threads here, which I think I’d rather tackle one-by-one, instead of hopping back and forth chronologically. 

First, Bulma and Goku’s families are busy preparing the spaceship they’ll need to find the Black Star Dragon Balls and bring them back to Earth. Remember, according to King Kai, once you make a wish on the BS Dragon Balls, the planet will explode in one years’ time, unless the Balls are recollected. And according to Mr. Popo, the BS Balls scatter across all four galaxies of the universe.  I really need to write a separate post where I rant about how stupid the Black Star Dragon Ball concept is.  I already talked about this while covering the last episode, and I’m having to restrain myself from getting mad about it all over again.  Suffice to say, this is a stupid idea and now the plot of the entire show is being driven by it.

Anyway, the point is that Bulma designed the ship for a three-person crew, so they have to decide who’s going.  Goku seems to be a lock, and then Gohan volenteers to accompany him, but then later on Vegeta grabs Goten and Trunks and basically forces them to go with Goku, because it’ll be good training for them.  Somewhere during the episode, Gohan must have backed out, but I don’t remember that. 

Let me pause to discuss Goten a bit, because he doesn’t get a lot of screentime on this show, mainly because he missed his flight on the spaceship, and no one ever really figured out what to do with the guy.  He spends the entire episode talking to some girl on the phone, because Toei is just following the thread in the final chapters of Dragon Ball Z, where Goten didn’t want to go to the World Tournament because he had a date that day.  In GT, it’s five years later, and Goten’s priorities haven’t changed.  That’s not a bad thing in itself, but it is kind of dumb that they went to the trouble of putting him in this show but insisted on making him a one-note character.  He’s just the Guy Who’s Always On the Phone, so when he does interact with another character, it’s just to show us that he isn’t really listening or paying attention to what’s going on around him.  GT Goten feels like some guy just wandered onto the set while the actors were filming the show.

Trunks should get a lot more development in GT, since he actually does join the crew of the ship, and he does get a lot more screentime, but he’s essentially a cipher.  This episode opens with a long sequence of him returning to the Capsule Corp headquarters, where he serves as the president of the company.  He wears glasses and a suit and he’s popular and successful, but he’s also bored with the job, so he keeps sneaking outside to fly around. 

And sure, that seems like a decent start for a character arc, but it never goes anywhere.  Why did he take the President job if he doesn’t want to do it?  What is he sneaking out of the office for?   He’s not training or fighting, because Vegeta would have left him alone if that were so.  He’s not dating girls because he’d be on the phone all the time like Goten, and besides, there’s a hundred women in the office who are gaga over him.  I’ll have more to say about GT Trunks as we go, but for now I’ll just say this is easily the biggest wasted opportunity of the whole series.

The second plot thread is Pan feeling left out of the whole space mission business.  She offers to join Goku and Gohan on the trip, but they don’t want her going because she’s too young.  She tries to help her parents prepare the ship for launch, but they’re afraid she’ll break something, and they’re right.  So she goes to see her grandfather Mr. Satan and beats up his entire dojo to let off steam.

-----------✨POSITIVITY PAGE✨---------------

I hate GT, but I’m trying to find something good to say about each episode, because I need to stay positive, like Diamond Dallas Page taught me.  Self high-five.

For this episode, I’m going with my favorite gag from the series.  Pan and Satan go to a cafe, where Pan explains that she’s tired of being treated like a little kid.   She wants to be taken seriously.  As they talk, the waitress brings them their order and sets a cup of coffee in front of Mr. Satan, and an ice cream sundae in front of Pan.  Satan waits for her to leave, then he switches the cups around, because Pan ordered the coffee, and the ice cream is for him.  BANG!

---------------------------------

Also, Pan tries to be all sophisticated about drinking coffee, but she still can’t stand the bitter taste of it, so that sums up the character pretty well.  She demands to be taken seriously, which I think is something we can all relate to at some point, but she tends to take herself a little too seriously, which hurts her own case.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Pan takes matters into her own hands and sneaks on board the ship before the launch, and when Goku and Trunks find her, she hits the button to take off before anyone can stop her.  So now they’re committed.  So it’s Goku, Trunks, and Pan for the duration of this voyage. 

The third plot thread is about a pair of kidnappers who try to hold Goku for ransom, thinking he’s the secret love-child of Bulma.  Their original plan was to wait for Bulla to walk out of the Capsule Corp building and grab her, but they saw Pan first and thought she was Bulla, then they grabbed Goku by mistake and thought they could get money for ransoming him, except they don’t know he’s actually a 52-year old man, so Bulma and Vegeta don’t understand or care about their demands.  The kidnappers spend the whole day with Goku, taking him on roller coasters and feeding him junk food while they decide what to do with them, until finally he fetches them a telephone booth because they want to make a phone call, and this frightens them into abandoning their scheme. 

So this seems like as good a time as any to discuss the idea of Goku getting turned into a kid. 

---✨"GOOD” “IDEAS”, POORLY EXECUTED✨----

So in the first episode, Pilaf introduces the Black Star Dragon Balls, which are more powerful and dangerous than the Dragon Balls we’re used to, and he accidentally uses them to wish for Goku to be de-aged into a kid.  This is one of the central concepts of Dragon Ball GT, the thing that defines it and sets it apart from the rest of the franchise.  The Black Star Dragon Balls themselves get retired pretty early on, and Super Saiyan 4 doesn’t show up until about halfway into the series, but Old Goku in a kid body is consistent through the whole show. 

From what I gather, this was something Toei came up with to try to shake things up.  There was this emphasis on the younger generation in GT, so the thought was to turn Goku into a kid so he could be consistent with that theme.  I guess?  I mean, the show is basically Pan, an actual child, and Goku, who just looks like a child.

I’ve never really understood this, because while it’s clear that GT is trying to do something with the “next generation” of characters, they never actually manage to pull it off.  We see a lot of the classic characters showing their age.  Everybody has glasses and grey hair and wrinkles, or they’re wearing church clothes for no good reason, and I think it’s supposed to emphasize how young and hip all the kids are.  Vegeta and Bulla are a good example of this design strategy.

They cut off the top of Vegeta’s hair and gave him a Burt Renyolds mustache to make him even older and grumpier-looking than he already was.  He looks like he’s constantly worried about the thermostat.  Meanwhile Bulla looks like a cocktail waitress on The Jetsons. 

The problem is that most of these characters barely do anything on the show.  It’s all Goku and Pan, so redesigning Bulla with a chic outfit is kind of pointless.  Redesigning Vegeta to make Bulla look cooler is pointless, because he ends up doing more in this show than she does.

Making Goku into a kid might have been an attempt to recapture the old days of the franchise, when Goku was a precocious kid instead of the superheroic adult he became for most of the series.   There are fans who thought he never should have grown up.   But GT doesn’t actually solve this dilemma, because it’s still the adult version of Goku, older than ever, and he just happens to have a child body.  The character still thinks and acts and talks like he did in the Buu Saga.  It’s a cosmetic change at best.

From a storytelling perspective, I’m really frustrated with the idea, because it’s initially presented as a challenge for the hero to overcome.  Oh no, he’s been turned into a child!  How will he ever get back to normal?  King Kai told him that the only way he could reverse the wish would be to make a second wish on the Black Star Dragon Balls.  The implication is that the BS Balls are too powerful to be overridden by other means. So it seems like Goku has his work cut out for him, except he decides he doesn’t care.  He’s fine with being a kid again, and it’s not worth going out into space to fetch the BS Balls to make another wish to fix himself. 

Then it turns out he has to fetch the BS Balls or the world will explode, so he has no choice.  Except those stakes defeat any possibility of returning Goku to normal.  Because if he makes another wish to reverse the first wish, then he’ll be endangering the Earth again.  So he’s apparently stuck as a kid.

And that drives me nuts, because this show really makes it look like that should be the central objective of the story, and yet no one even tries to fix Goku.  Goku himself doesn’t care, but Chi-Chi and Pan care a whole lot, so you’d think he would make an effort just for them.  If the Black Star Dragon Balls aren’t an option, then why doesn’t he try the other Dragon Balls?  Why doesn’t he seek alternatives? 

I say this because Goku’s predicament reminds me of an episode of Star Trek where Captain Picard and three other characters got turned into children in a transporter accident, and that was treated like a problem to be solved.  At first, there didn’t seem to be an answer, so the four characters were left to struggle with the possibility that they might be stuck this way.  And it was a bad thing for them.  Picard worried about his career, Keiko O’Brien worried about her marriage, and Ro Laren had to deal with the reminder of her childhood traumas.  And then at the end they found a cure and everyone used it, because it was understood that being stuck as a child was A Bad Thing.

GT also reminds me of Case Closed aka Detective Conan, which also features a protagonist who gets turned into a child against his will.   I’ve never read Detective Conan, but I remember seeing ads for Case Closed that summarized the premise.  It’s a teenage detective who gets forced-fed a drug that somehow turns him into a little boy.  And I just assumed that the plot of the show was him trying to find a way to change back, because what else could he possibly want to do in that situation?  But no, he just keeps solving mysteries as a child, and the manga has apparently been running for the last 29 years? 

I don’t understand it.  I guess being de-aged is like some sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy for some people, but to me it sounds like a terrible thing to experience, and the only reason to do it to a character is so they can eventually undo it through some harrowing adventure.  In Goku’s case, it’s almost like they refuse to admit that this is a problem at all.  He accepts it, and then everyone else just takes it for granted that he’s stuck this way forever. 

The worst part about the whole thing is that it doesn’t actually add anything to the show.  In Episode 1, Roshi acts all surprised and bewildered when he finds out what happened to Goku, and it lasts a few minutes, but it doesn’t mean anything.  In Episode 2, Bulma reacts to the new Goku, but again, it doesn’t matter. The kidnappers become the butt of the joke because they kidnapped a grown man without realizing it, and their whole plan backfired.  But it’s a dumb gag that takes up about a third of the episode.  And once they get to outer space, it won’t matter that Goku looks like a kid because he’ll be surrounded by aliens who don’t care. 

And this is why I wanted to use this segment to poke holes in the defense of GT as having “good ideas” that didn’t get used properly.  Making Goku into a kid is not a good idea.  Maybe it could have been executed better than it was, but even if he found a magic potion to restore his body to normal, it’d still be a cheap nostalgia act.  And I’ll go a step further and say that de-aging Goku isn’t much of an “idea”, good or bad, because Detective Conan had already done it in 1994, two years before GT.

------------------

So is there anything left to go over?  Oh, yes.  I almost forgot.

--✨IS IT WORSE THAN THE ROAMING LAKE?✨--

I had to think hard about this one, because this episode does have a few things going for it.

On the other hand, all of the bland clothing worn by the characters is an immediate turn-off.  Whether it’s Trunks’ mustard yellow suit...

Or Videl’s one-woman tribute to denim...

Or Bulla’s Twizzler cosplay...

I really just hate the costumes in GT.  Factor that into the dull pacing of this episode, and that makes this episode

WORSE.

So it’s 0-2 for GT.

Bulma looks really cute in this episode, but she can’t save the whole thing by herself.

--✨ THE BLADE BRAXTON MEMORIAL HAIKU*✨ --

Blade Braxton (1975-2021) was a legend in the world of pro wrestling podcasts, and one of his signature skills was his ability to condense the myriad of wrestling news and discourse into a single, digestible poem.   I find that Dragon Ball GT is a huge timesink, and to spare others the hassle of watching every episode, I’ve decided to try to summarize each episode into a concise, soul-cleansing seventeen syllables.  I’ll never approach the sublime talent of Mr. Brakestown-sensei, but I strive to grow stronger in the attempt.  Here we go.

Vegeta’s moostache

Makes him look like a total geek?

I say: Mondo Cool.

[poems-of-a-lover]

nick watches spiderman. again.

i have done this so much. the first movie was so long. this ones even longer. by like ten minutes but still. ANYWAY LETS GET GOINGGGG IM SO EXCITED

it should be noted that i spent thirteen dollars on this film and its so worth it

the opening music is SOOOO GOOD

this little motif that plays here is played a few times thru the movie and i love when movies do that sjdhfksjd its so fun to have little music cues that carry over thru the film

i heard someone say this was their least favorite spiderman and it breaks my heart i love it sm

anyway. richards killing things.

so basically hes killing the little spiders they worked on and just kinda running off rn

this is a surprise scene thatll help us later

i know what hes doing and why hes doing it but its a secret so i wont say until it comes up

OMG HEYYYY SO REMEMBER IN THE FIRST FILM WHEN THEY WERE PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK. THAT COMES BACK NOW.

he was recording a little video diary thingy =]

okay droppin him off at mays weve seen this part already

i know its important but cmon. places to be.

yippee mary and richard on the plane!!!

DUDE. MARY DIDNT WANT THIS. "did you see his face? hes never gonna understand. hes just a little boy." SHE DIDNT WANT TO PACK UP AND LEAVE HER SON THIS ISNT HER FIGHT AJKGHKJAHGS JUSTICE FOR MARY PARKER

"we're going to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, never feeling safe. we cant do that to him." funny u say that richard

okay mary is off to the bathroom. in walks flight assistance guy.

i feel like i gotta explain every little detail of this film bc it means so much to me and i need u guys to understand KJGHSKJDGH

flight assistant guy is washing his hands off and theres a little bloodddd on himmmmm yikes

richard sees but doesnt say anything bc obv

oops flight assistant has a gun. and hes locked mary in the bathroom. and he has a parachute. and he stole richards laptop. AND HE HIT MARY WHEN SHE ESCAPED.

fight sceeeene marys down

this scene is fun but theres no way in hell richard parker would be able to fight AND WIN

the planes going down they shot out the window

flight assistant guy is now out of the plane JKGSKJHGJK richard and mary go down with it but marys already gone before they crash, richard dies in the crash as far as i know, like thats whats implied

parents dead. time for spiderman.

PETERRRRRR PETER PARKER GUYS LOOK ITS SPIDERMAN ITS PETER HES ON SCREEN GUYS GUYS LOOK ITS PETER

THIS OPENING SWINGING SEQUENCE. I WANNA BE HIM SOOOOOO BAD U GUYS HAVE NO CLUE.

FUN FACT the movie made a mistaaaake and i caught it like my first watch. so theres this truck carrying plutonium that was stolen from oscorp that peters abt to go catch, right? and they say that plutonium is highly explosive. WELL ITS NOT. PLUTONIUM 238 IS BARELY A DAMN FISSILE ISOTOPE. SPIDERMAN. ITS USED AS A SOURCE OF HEAT AND ALPHA EMITTERS FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. STUPID MOVIE. and look they couldve just taken the name or something bc it sounds cool but cmonnnn its wronggggg

yeahhh the driver of the stolen truck is aleksei sytsevitch. remember that itll come back later.

this chase music is so good i love the score for this film

another motif here while hes swinging that comes back later ehehe

we are nine minutes in. argh.

"hey, mr criminal? hey, my names spiderman, you can call me webhead, you can call me amazing, just dont call me late for dinner, you get it? not a shaker, areeee you a hugger?" "i am killer!" "woah, okay!"

makes me laugh every time its so dumb

peters banter is so fun in this movie i love it so much

omg max dillonnnnn okay so hes walking with all these blueprints and they fall into the street and no one helps him but peter. guess if thatll come back later.

peter catches all the vials of plutonium. except for one. hes a bit dumb.

okay so peters o the front of this cop car and he looks over into the cop car next to him and who does he see but mr stacy! from the first film! "nick thats impossible hes dead" oh just wait GKHSKJDGHDSKJ

HIS RING TONE IS THE "spiderman, spiderman, does whatever a spider can" AND I LOVE IT

HIIIII GWEN MY WIFE I ADOREEEEEE THIS WOMAN

oh yeah theyre graduating today and peters late bc hes in a high speed chase. if i was allowed to decorate my cap it wouldve been spiderman themed.

HER SPEECH AGH im not gonna quote t bc its so long but it means the world to me

oh yeah aleksei sprays peter with the windshield wiper water thing i love that

gwen stacy the woman u are

again i love how they did gwen like they didnt just make her a basic love interest like in tobys films they actually gave her depth

OKAY SO. PETER RUNS ON STAGE TO GET HIS DIPLOMA. AND HE DOES THE DRAMATIC DIP KISS THING TO GWEN. APPARENTLY THAT WASNT SCRIPTED. it couldve been but its so much funnier to think it wasnt

HIIII AUNT MAYYYYY

theres a deleted scene here where the graduates are with their families where flash runs up to them in his cap and gown all excited and he tells gwen like "i made it i knew i could bc u believed in me" and they shouldve kept it bc it makes me so happy

"i know the next thing your unvle ben would say, dont just follow the path, make your own trail" "ralph waldo emerson" "no" "what do you mean, no?" "ben told me he made it up!" I WISHHHH BEN WERE HERE

ugh the way they both laughed over ben i love these two

aunt may says that she wishes ben were here and peter goes "yeah, and my folks" and mays smile drops a bit, her demeanor changes ever so slightly and she just "...yeah" THIS DOESNT SEEM IMPORTANT AND ITS NOT BUT IT MAKES SENSE LATER

im gonna finish this scene then continue in a rb this is getting long

i love that may tries to take a photo of peter and gwen and gwens like "cheese!! =D!" and peter is so awkwardly stood there like "cheeeeeese 😐"

she invites him to dinner with her family and she says shes gonna do her speech for him "over and over again, all night long" bc he missed ittttt aghhhhhhh

THIS. THISSSSSS. he watches the stacys take their family photo and then mr stacy appears in the background, and we flash back to the first film, his death, where hes telling peter to leave gwen alone. i am soooooo sad.

okay this dinner scene is devastating so! next post! i love this movie i have so many thoughts and were only 17 minutes in

[montyterrible]

“(Beverly) Hillbillies, that is…”

The first DVD that my family owned was a collection of assorted Beverly Hillbillies episodes. While not as primordially formative for me as the re-runs of The Andy Griffith Show we watched even before we had such a modern convenience, it’s safe to say that this was yet another piece of media that shaped my… sensibilities. There are modern mega-hit songs I hear on the radio all the time that I don’t actually know the lyrics to, but I know the opening and closing themes of The Beverly Hillbillies. Of course, often, those old DVD collections didn’t have the actual themes and had some other lyric-less tunes in their place.

I wouldn’t call the series anything approaching “high art” or “essential viewing,” and it certainly trafficked in stereotypes: The Ignorant Yokel is still with us—often the go-to voice and posture when someone wants to indicate stupidity and backwards or conservative thinking—but The Beverly Hillbillies itself was just as much a send-up of the hill folks as it was a critique of the Beverly Hills culture they were dropped into after patriarch Jed Clampett was “shootin’ at some food” and unearthed a fortune in oil. A repeated early joke in the show is how some person will treat the Clampetts like dirt and then do an over-the-top 180 after discovering they’re wealthy. It’s just as much a joke directed at the supposed well-to-do and cultured rich and how completely and utterly their nose-in-the-air posturing gives way to obsequious hand-wringing and smiling as they try to stay close to the money, in the good graces of a particularly big new fish in a small pond. Even as the show devolves into sillier and sillier escapades (like Jed’s nephew Jethro buying a tank), this core element remains true as their banker, neighbor, and sort-of friend Milburn Drysdale tries to carefully placate the Clampetts so that they keep their money in his bank, with his greed arguably enabling their continued cultural rampage through the land of (not exactly) good taste.

Looking back at the TV series as an adult (watching some new-to-me re-runs), there is a cynical, mean core buried beneath the string twangin’ “Aw shucks!” fun of making jokes about “possum innards” and the “cement pond” (swimming pool) which I always took for warmth and sweetness and fun. And, as such, the 1993 Beverly Hillbillies film isn’t actually as far off the mark as I kind of thought it was for years…

Here’s another weird Monty quirk: I actually listened to the book on tape (literal tape, cassette) of the novelization of The Beverly Hillbillies film before I saw the movie. We probably got it because my parents recognized the brand, though the actual movie and its novelization are so much meaner and more sexual than the 60s TV series, which featured plenty of talk of courting and marriage, as well as the occasional schemer looking to get their hands on the Clampetts’ money, but was never so forthright and vulgar as this. There’s a particular line from the novelization that I’m not sure is even in the movie—something from Mr. Drysdale directed at his wife and about “getting her liposuction butt in gear” (or something like that). I remember that line because of how explicit it seemed to me as a child, when I heard it riding in our car, and because of how mean it was. I’m not sure if I had seen the original show at that point, but (even if I hadn’t) after I had, the movie still struck me as mean in contrast. Aggressive, tonally.

Here's a great, representative line from the movie: Gold-digging Laura Jackson in disguise as a French tutor says to Jed, “Happiness is hard to find.” But remember that she’s FRONCHE, so take away the “H”… There’s also a sequence of scenes early in the film as the Clampetts drive to their new home where they decide that giving someone the middle finger is the “Californy” way of saying “hello,” so they do it repeatedly. The aggression’s also there in how the character of Granny is treated. Jed uncharacteristically, meanly tells her to “hush up” when they’re tying her in her rocker to the top of the car to take her to Beverly Hills, and Laura calls her an “old hag” when she and her co-conspirator, sycophantic worm Rob Schneider (I mean “Woodrow Tyler”), are dragging the eldest member of the Clampett clan off to an abusive old folks’ home after she overhears their plans. The general state of the Granny Abuse—and the fact that we barely see her or the mansion’s kitchen during the plot—feels somewhat uncannily “off” given how central that location and the character are to so many of the original TV series episodes.

The casting conjures up similar uneasy vibes overall. While I don’t think Jim Varney really looks much like Buddy Ebsen’s original Jed, the others struck me as much closer. They’re still clearly not quite right, but they’re not quite right in ways that only stick out to me because the differences feel so slight and therefore more noticeable. I thought Lily Tomlin was excellent as Drysdale’s right-hand woman Jane Hathaway, and immediately fell for Diedrich Bader’s extremely toothy performance as Jethro, during this re-watch. Cloris Leachman was also a great, if somewhat under-utilized, Granny.

I would say that replacing refined grown adult mama’s boy Sonny Drysdale with the extremely 90s-coded teenager Morgan Drysdale was some kind of aesthetic crime against the original show, but the movie is generally visually coherent with the TV series, though the big-screen cinematography certainly adds to the feeling of uncanniness with how much more expressive and less static it all looks. You see the Clampett mansion from unusual angles that feel, in their own way, as obscene as when Laura is in her skimpy attire getting her legs waxed (while Tyler watches), a gif of which is labelled as potentially explicit in Google’s image search.

Honestly, I had a good time re-watching this movie! It definitely feels more aggressive and mean (or at least more honest about those feelings), but it’s genuinely well-paced, and the jokes are well-executed. There are some physical bits—like Jethro plowing a car into the outhouse Granny is using—that are filmed in a matter-of-fact way that really tickles me. And it’s not like the movie is un-reverential where the source material is concerned. There are jokes taken directly from the TV series (including the Clampetts’ struggle to connect their doorbell ringing with people appearing outside their front door). The opening and closing themes are both used, and Buddy Ebsen makes a brief late-game cameo appearance in his role as the detective Barnaby Jones, of the 70s TV series of the same name.

The 1993 Beverly Hillbillies doesn’t so much swerve from the source material or take it to truly radical new places, but it does enliven it, with the improved camerawork and a new pep (that same aggressiveness, in a way) adding what I found to be an infectious energy this time around.

It’s ultimately of a kind in my head with a whole line-up of similar films, like the 1991 Addams Family or the 1997 George of the Jungle or 99’s Dudley Do-Right, the 2000 The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, the 2004 Fat Albert film, and even Rob Zombie’s 2022 take on The Munsters. This line from the back-of-the-box description of The Beverly Hillbillies movie novelization audiobook kind of, sort of applies to them all if you squint a little: “But times are a-changin’, and corporate raiders circle their fortune like vultures.” These are, as a loose-knit collection, films about some sort of more innocent source material coming into conflict with a more “modern” and mean and greedy world (loosely speaking). I find the repeated premise charming, and I guess it just goes to show that the original Beverly Hillbillies is kind of timeless or prescient since they were already essentially sort of doing this back in the day, just with less obvious edginess and a lower budget.

[bucky-seifert]

The Rise of Skywalker came out 3 years ago today and it is a movie that still sometimes occupied my headspace. So, I felt the need to make a list compiling my thoughts about it.

My feelings are all over the place, but it's fitting because the movie is all over the place. I do ultimately like it despite it's problems, which I will mention below.

Things I like

The opening sequence is great. The way Kylo Ren approaches the Sith Citadel and Palpatine is seriously badass.

Exogol is an awesome planet in my opinion. I admit I'm a sucker for strong primary colors, though.

There is some really fun action sequences

The dynamic of the 3 leads is fun and they have good chemistry, especially between Poe and Finn.

Despite the lack of planning, the trilogy manages to have a thesis of “Where you come from does not define who you are”. Finn was a storm trooper for a fascist military junta, Poe was a spice runner for a crime lord, and Rey is descended from one of the most dreaded figures in galactic history. Despite this, they were all able to move past that, and become good people.

Rey Skywalker. It symbolizes how she truly found what she was looking for this whole time, a family, and she now has a found family.

Everything Kylo Ren

Lando. Just everything Lando. More Lando is only ever a good thing.

The moment of Poe expressing how he didn’t feel ready next to Leia’s body.

On an emotional level I found it satisfying.

The Han Solo cameo was a great and moving scene.

I think Sith Troopers just look cool

How in the final battle the skills of all 3 leads came into play.

Hey finally some Y-Wings and B-Wings.

Things I'm indifferent, come down the middle or am just iffy about

Reylo. It’s not that it didn’t feel built up, it’s just something I always found myself indifferent toward.

Rey Palpatine. While it serves the above mentioned thesis, I still have mixed feelings on her being a Palpatine. It does explain where her power comes from, but also it would have been interesting to just have her be a nobody.

Battle of Exogol. An awesome battle in concept, it just should have been longer in the movie with more shots of space combat so it really felt like a huge battle. What was there made it feel underwhelming.

Leia scenes felt awkward but that isn’t something you can really blame on the film makers, and they probably did the best you could ask for.

“Somehow Palpatine has returned”. It’s a terrible line but I kind of love it because it’s so terrible. Same applies to "They fly now"

Things I did not like

Xyston Class Star Destroyers. Especially after how awesome the Resugence class SD is, the Xyston feels lazy by comparison

All the stuff appealing to those that raged at The Last Jedi, which is what most of Beaumont’s dialog is

The insane pacing in the first half that didn’t give the big story beats enough time to land.

How it supposedly all takes place in the span of 16 hours. That is something my brain just can't accept unless it's not our standard measurement of an hour.

Lack of Rose.

Why couldn’t the Death Star II wreckage have just been on Endor?

Fake out deaths

That stupid freaking dagger.  Seriously that whole dagger was contrived as heck even by Star Wars standards and Star Wars is already very contrived.

The fact that the Disney execs were too cowardly to give us Finn/Poe

Ultimately tried to cram too much story into a single 2 and a half hour long  movie.

Why did they replace Kylo’s TIE Silencer with a TIE Whisper? The Silencer was so dang cool I don’t get it.

[naughtygirl286]

This week Everything was set, all who were going were ready and so we went to see Evil Dead Rise and boy were those Dead Evil lol

Now in all seriousness I personally am not a big fan of the Evil Dead franchise I have seen the original trilogy and have it on DVD. We went to see the 2013 remake, I read some of the comics and watched the first season of the TV show (I plan to watch the rest at some point) but anyway with all that its not really one of my favorite things. Its more of a "friends" thing like I know ppl who think its the greatest thing and I take part in it becasue they like it. I kinda see it like Zombie stuff I'm not a huge fan of Zombies and it takes alot for me to get interested in that but I'll watch Zombie stuff to make certain friends happy. So with that I wasn't really super interested in going to see this but I went anyway. and it was an alright movie I can say it was very wet and gooey and plenty of sticky bloody messes everywhere lol there was plenty of gore and and grossness but it was so over the top at times that it felt kinda silly in away

As for the story you kinda start at the end of the movie first like the opening sequence is kind of like an epilogue in the grand scheme of the entire story but after that it does a "the day before" type of thing so the entire movie takes place all in one night. It follows a Mother and her 3 kids as they are packing up and getting ready to move becasue the apartment building where they live s being torn down at the end of the month. During the night a storm is raining heavy as the Mother's Sister shows up for a visit. During this the Mother sends the kids out to get a Pizza and on their way back an earthquake happens which opens a hole in the parking garage to a hidden chamber where one of the kids goes in and finds a book "Bound in Human Flesh and penned in Blood" and of course does the stupid thing and takes it home along with some old vinyl records and then while home they are messing with it and open it and release the "Evil" turning their Mom into a Deadite and then she goes on to infect others turning them into one too and it is up to the the Aunt and the kids to stop it if they can..

Now I have to say The visuals and practical make-up and all that were all excellently done the production design on this was pretty amazing. The ripping of the girls scalp off around the first was kinda cool. and the weird monster things where all the Deadites merged into on creature was interesting also and that whole thing with the wood chipper was something.. lol and all the crazy stuff they had Alyssa Sutherland who plays the Mother Ellie do was pretty good but yeah It was all pretty crazy tho

Now I can say it wasn't really scary I didn't feel that it was I didn't jump at anything or feel scared at all it was all I just feel that it was all pretty wild and over the top. I did feel it was a little weird at times and like I said it was all very gooey and blood soaked I do feel that the acting was good and very intense and like I said Alyssa Sutherland who plays the Mother Ellie as soon as she get possessed she totally steals the show!! and everyone else did a great job too I think while filming this they probably had alot of laughs

but other then that it was an alright movie they did do some references to the original movies this one is suppose to have no ties to the originals but they do use some familiar lines and a chainsaw is involved lol but yeah like I said it was alright. If you like the Evil Dead series/franchise you might like this one.

[the-shared-brain-in-retrograde]

Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings

A joint review

Neither of us had watched this film since seeing it at the pictures, where we fucking loved it, so what a treat this is to watch and enjoy again! Cass likes the opening on account of there’s a bit of mythology and sort of dance-fight sequence with a sexy villain, and Becks got to feel cultured because of the subtitles and that. We should mention that neither of us are really au-fait with martial arts films (other than one involving Chuck Norris and a lot of cats in The Colosseum), so we don’t know how the fight scenes stack up on balance, but we enjoyed it.

We also think that Shaun’s mum’s lovely dragon mask would have been very useful in the past two years.

This film feels like quite a paint by numbers Marvel film in many respects, in that nothing particularly unexpected happens and it follows the formula of a reluctant hero rising after some questionable parenting. However, it’s a really good one. It serves as a great introduction to characters that you want to see more of, the rings themselves are a pretty cool weapon, and it’s much more fun and light hearted than some of the other movies we’ve had recently (all that trauma!) so it was a welcome breather. Also, there’s a big dragon. And Morris! A blatant to Disney to sell more merch, and one that I’m sure we’ll all fall for.

Let’s start with the hero of this fine piece of cinema. Trevor Slattery! hahaha no we joke, that was just a little joke. We will get to Trevor in our own good time. No, of course we mean to start with Shang-Chi himself aka Shaun. Which, Katy raises a good question, if you could pick any name to go into hiding with, would you prefer one similar to your name or totally different?

Becks: A man called me Becky the other day and I hated it. So I think I would prefer something totally different rather than a wrong version of my own name.

Cass: I just worry I wouldn’t answer quick enough to a completely different name and give the game away. My on the run self will probably have to be call Cathy. My normal self is called that a lot anyway, usually in Starbucks.

Becks, raging: This happens often when I try to call you hands-free in the car and I’m always like, ‘I didn’t say it with a lisp you DICKHEAD!’

Cass, whispers to camera: Road rage.

Nevertheless, we like Shaun whatever his name. Obviously he’s a trained killer, but quite a chill one, he seems fun to hang out with, handsome, and also caring. We love his relationship with Katy. When that man hit her and he went full blown street fighter, Cass’ notes went quite fluttery and read ‘Oh, he defended her honour!’ Becks agrees, however would like it to be noted that whilst we wouldn’t change him, she doesn’t really think Simu should be playing a 25 year old as he’s actually slightly older than us and she doesn’t think we could pass for it. The aging process is a source of great concern to her, and she keeps a tally of how many times she gets asked for her ID in the supermarket in the hopes that this might serve as some sort of witchcraft and stave it off.

We think Shaun is a welcome part of the MCU. He balances Doctor Strange’s air of twatishness, which is probably why Wong is so keen to have him.

Becks, muttering: I hate Doctor Strange. And that’s why I slept through his stupid movie!

But anyway, we think we’re going to be in for a good time with him in future movies. It’s nice to have a kind, competent character involved in things. Cass is looking forward to seeing him interact with Scott. Maybe in the next Antman film it will happen? We really enjoy the fight scene on the bus. Again it was really good fun. It was exciting, it was violent, and Becks got to lust over that man with the razor arm. She does this throughout her notes on the movie, so at least one of us was happy when he kept turning up and bothering folk.

Another person we like is Katy. Becks particularly likes that she doesn’t really have any clear goals, because she finds that relatable. Her actual words were ‘she has a relatable incompetence,’ but we won’t let that stand because Katy isn’t actually incompetent, she’s very good at what she does. She saves all of those lives on the bus with her excellent driving, she is very brave at a number of points and stands up for her friend even when she is extremely far out of her depth, and she is really good at archery. Hopefully she can get some training in with Clint, I reckon she’ll love them trick arrows. We think maybe what is relatable is just that she has no bigger end goal in mind, and maybe lacks a little self belief in being able to deliver one. And that’s fine, because as she proves it all comes good!

We really enjoy seeing Katy and Shaun’s friendship. They have great fun together, and that’s nice to see. We also enjoy how she utterly refuses to let him deal with all the crazy people trying to kill him alone, and insists on going with him. Nice to have your best friend with you when you go on a family reunion to meet you dad after he has sent people to kill you. We just like her a lot in general, she’s funny, snarky, and has a fun sense of style. Basically, we don’t have a bad word to say.

This family reunion means that we also get to meet Shaun’s sister, Xialing. Now there’s a capable woman! Not only is she a brilliant self-taught fighter, but she has built a successful underground fight club from scratch. It’s sad of course, because her father was far more absent with her than he was with Shang-Chi, who then of course ran away and left her, so she must have had a very lonely life. But even despite all of this, being let down and having to rely on herself, Xialing comes good, helping Shaun and Katy with barely a second thought and finding some of the family she deserves in Ta Lo. It’s nice to see that despite the traumatic upbringing, she still manages to be a good person. With hella style, because she made that compound super cool at the end. Frankly, she’s the only girl boss we care to discuss at this time.

Just as an aside, we would never like to fight on scaffolding. We don’t think it’s safe, especially not that high up. We are making a pact to avoid going on it at all, and especially not to fight on it. We will fight on the ground, as God intended. In the dirt. With the worms.

We are now reintroduced to Shaun’s father, whose name we cannot recall, possibly because goes by many names. One of which Cass thought he said was Mastercard, which seemed like a bit of blatant product placement even for these movies, but turned out not to be the case so that’s okay. Anyway, we’ve looked it up now and apparently it’s Wenwu, so there. We have a bit of a difference of opinion here. Becks thinks he’s a right dickhead. She is impressed by the horse riding with no hands skills (although seemed notably less impressed when she asked if Cass had ever done that and found out that she had), and obviously all for a bit of violence, but still doesn’t really take to him because he really was such a terribly shit dad. And he was, Cass agrees. But where Cass falls down in this is, he’s also terribly, terribly hot. I mean, he’s a lunatic. But in a way that makes it hotter. So it’s difficult to remain impartial about his bad fathering, and she thanks you all for your understanding at this difficult time.

What Wenwu does do however, is proves the need for a safe-word after death. We can’t tell you ours for obvious reasons, but we’ve now agreed it. So if we do hear any whisperings from beyond the grave that don’t include it, we will know it’s not actually one of us but a demonic entity intent on wrecking destruction on the planet, and will simply ignore it and go about our business. You would all do well to gather your loved ones and do the same. Do it now in fact, before you read on.

Have you got the beyond the veil safe-word? Okay good. We may continue.

Their mother seemed like a nice lady, taken too young. And that’s unfortunately all we have to say on the subject. His aunt also seems like a badass, however she also unfortunately goes by the name of Auntie Nan, which is coincidentally what Becks’ used to call a family friend from her childhood who ran a walking group called the Bog Hoppers. This send Cass so hysterical that we find it hard to discuss Auntie Nan much further.

Becks: Another thing about her, she had a Stannah Stairlift. And I used to sneak up to her room on it and rifle through her things.

Cass: (wheezes) That’s the most you thing to do, but also as if you were sneaking anywhere on a stairlift. You probably made a right bloody racket!

Becks: She also made Dead Fly Pie. And I loved her.

Right. Trevor Slattery. Another person that makes Cass feel mildly hysterical. It’s nice to get a little closure on the Ten Rings as mentioned in Iron Man, and of course it’s a treat to see Trevor again. What a tit. A very silly man really, but if there’s no room for Ben Kingsley to do a little thespian silliness in a Marvel film then what hope do we have left? We also like him playing dead at the end, it’s the only outcome we truly accept of that man being involved in a fight, and we enjoyed it immensely.

‘Stay in the pocket!’

We would like now to mention Ta Lo, because it’s just totally beautiful and it is very hard to see why you would ever leave. Not least because it’s so bloody difficult to get back again. Entering Ta Lo is like someone turning the high def on the film. Also, we get to meet the Great Protector, who turns out to be a lovely big dragon, and we love him. If you don’t love a dragon turning up in a movie, then get out of town frankly. We didn’t much like the soul sucking fella that came out of the gate (a dickhead released by another dickhead, is Becks’ commentary), but since he got defeated we thankfully don’t need to dwell on his darkness any longer.

All too soon we are turfed out of this beautiful place and Shaun and Katy are sent back to tell tall tales of their adventures to their friends in the pub, who of course don’t believe them. Doubting Thomas’! But then Wong turns up. Dear Wong, the only character in the MCU who has really got his priorities sorted in terms of the work-life balance. It’s all fight clubs and karaoke with him, and frankly after dealing with Doctor Strange he deserves it. We’re also grateful to see Bruce as Bruce. We hate Professor Hulk, it’s just all wrong, and so that little hologram gives us a hope that we won’t be stuck with him forever.

We just love this film as a whole. We like the friendships, the characters are interesting, the fight scenes are cracking, and we end the whole thing with a smile rather than in tears so that’s always a bonus. The end of the film promises that Shang-Chi will return, and we’re both looking forward to it.

But enough of these new people! Next time will see us revisiting some old friends, when we review The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. Is it the greatest TV show ever made? Well, maybe not. But has it unfortunately unleashed something in one of us? Maybe so! Brace yourselves, friends, for the full gamut of emotions that will come from The Shared Brain. Brace brace brace.

love Becks and Cass

[natehoodreviews]

Best Films of 2022

As some of you might have noticed, I didn’t publish many pieces or read many fiction books this past year. The reason for that was that 2022 was a particularly busy year for me in terms of schoolwork and regular old work, specifically my first unit of CPE residency to become a hospital chaplain. Still, though, I did manage to see around 50 movies released this past year. Here are my picks for the best of them.

15)  Armageddon Time – Dir. James Gray

If I had a nickel for every Jewish-American cinematic Künstlerroman released in 2022, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. Jokes aside, Armageddon Time is a fantastic coming-of-age story, and the specter of Anthony Hopkins really helps keep its head above the water of becoming excessively maudlin. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this material could've come across as excessively preachy, but Gray nails the correct tone for making it hit like a sledgehammer. That said, somehow in all the time before watching this movie I'd managed to avoid the news that the Trumps were in it. When I tell you that I felt ice water in my gut when they first appeared, I mean I felt like I cannonballed into the Arctic Ocean. I've said it before, but one of the most obnoxious things about Trump is that he's going to become as ubiquitous in future media as a metonym for everything that's corrupt and evil in the USA as Lincoln is for all that's good and noble. I just want Trump to GO AWAY.

14)  Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe – Dirs. John Rice and Albert Calleros

I cannot believe that this ended up being one of my favorite movies of the year. It begins with one of the cinema’s greatest nut-shots and only gets funnier. A bacchanalia of juvenile stupidity.

13)  Nope – Dir. Jordan Peele 

We as a society need to do whatever it takes to keep Jordan Peele making his intensely unique, intensely bizarre flights of cinematic fancy. This damn thing was a slow-burn horror film, a heist movie, a thriller, and a creature feature rolled into one.

12)  Top Gun: Maverick – Dir. Joseph Kosinski

The best male weepy since ONLY THE BRAVE (2017). Light years better than it had any right to be, and not really as toxic as I expected. Some of the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater all year. Not the MOST fun, but it’s definitely way, WAY up there.

11)  32 Sounds – Dir. Sam Green

I've been a fan of Sam Green and JD Samson after seeing one of their Live Cinema shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music several years ago. I am thrilled to report that Green's new film 32 SOUNDS is probably the best translation of their specifically mind-blowing, tender, and intimate live performances that we'll ever get. With only 32 sounds, Green captures a kaleidoscope of the human experience in ways at once amusing yet profound, devastating yet hopeful.

10)  The Batman – Dir. Matt Reeves

“I don't know if that was the BEST Batman movie, but it was definitely the MOST Batman movie. That said, it was refreshing to see a Batman film that remembers that he's a world-class detective. I have issues with this film, but almost all of them fall away when I think about how we finally got a superhero film that truly, deeply cares as much about images as it does the characters and stories. The Batmobile emerging from a wall of fire, muzzle flashes illuminating dark hallways like bolts of lightning, Batman leading a spiderweb of survivors through floodwaters while holding aloft a flare—these are IMAGES that are going to stick with me for a long time. Also, that opening sequence of petty criminals getting scared by the sight of the Bat-Signals leading up to Batman emerging from the subway tunnel... #chefskiss“”

[Full review at http://www.unseenfilms.net/2022/03/nate-hood-on-batman.html]

9)  The Fabelmans – Dir. Steven Spielberg

An extraordinary work of compassion, contrition, and grace. So much more than an autobiography—it's a Rosetta Stone for one of the cinema's greatest artists. I am have no idea how Spielberg and Kushner can explore feelings and emotions of such byzantine complexity while making it seem so effortless and natural. Pure wizardry.

8)  Elvis – Dir. Baz Luhrmann

The first half is pitch-perfect rhinestone gaudiness and the second half almost Shakespearean tragedy. It's equal parts pathos and bathos, wrapped in silk and slicked with pomade. Baz Luhrmann has been preparing his entire career for this one movie and it shows. I'm honestly mystified by people dunking on Tom Hanks' performance. Was it an accurate depiction of Colonel Tom Parker? Probably not, but Hanks created perhaps the greatest ghoul in popular American cinema since J. K. Simmons' Terence Fletcher. And finally, the early sequence juxtaposing a young Elvis spying on a blues joint and attending a gospel revival ranks up there Bheem attacking the British gala with his animal friends in RRR and the opening scene from THE BATMAN as my favorite so far of 2022.

7)  The Banshees of Inisherin – Dir. Martin McDonagh

This one absolutely gutted me. I spent the last forty minutes of that film scarcely breathing because I kept waiting for The Bad Thing to happen after the banshee made her prophecy. Also, this film was like watching an autistic person's worst nightmare made real. I'm serious. You want to know the one thing an autistic person fears the most? The people they love suddenly deciding one day for no apparent reason that they just don't like you anymore.

6)  RRR – Dir. S. S. Rajamouli

“After years of Hollywood franchise glut—of reboots and remakes, spin-off miniseries and bloated two-part finales—watching S. S. Rajamouli’s Telugu-language epic RRR is like taking that first breath of outside air after being cooped up all day in an office building with no air conditioning. It’s like taking a long, cool sip of ice water after days in the desert with nothing to drink but lukewarm Diet Coke. It’s like being reminded for the first time since you were a child amazed by the moving pictures on the television that movies can truly do anything, say anything, and be anything. It’s not just the most triumphant, crowd-pleasing blockbuster in years, it’s the best, most exhilarating action movie from any country since George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).”

[Full review at: http://www.unseenfilms.net/2022/06/nate-hood-on-epic-masterpiece-rrr-2022.html]

5)  ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS: Boku no Natsuyasumi – Dir. Tim Rogers (YouTube: Action Button)

The Ross McElwee/Lester Bangs of video game journalism returns with another 6+ hour opus on a video game most gamers outside of Japan may never have heard of before. Somehow, it’s his best yet. An exhaustive yet somehow never exhausting autobiographical examination of nostalgia, loss, and memory, Tim Rogers somehow finds in the act of playing a video game about a young boy’s summer vacation in the Japanese countryside a simulacrum for the universal human experience.

4)  We Met in Virtual Reality – Dir. Joe Hunting

Talk about a dark horse pick for one of the best movies of 2022. I've said it before and I'll say it again: my favorite kind of art is the art that makes me feel more human. WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY is a stunningly moving and sincere look at how humans have begun creating social ecosystems in virtual spaces. It would've been so easy for director Joe Hunting to play the things he found for laughs—and in fairness, it's easy to chortle at the idea of an anime couple proposing to each other after meeting in an exotic dancing class or a group of furry avatars talking about their sexual orientations around a campfire—but he looks for the human beneath and within his subjects.

3)  Mad God – Dir. Phil Tippett

A Voynich Manuscript of stop-motion blasphemies; a compendium of Švankmajer nightmares and H.R. Giger fever dreams. Hieronymus Bosch wept. If your reaction to this movie was that it didn't have enough plot, I hate you. If anything it had TOO MUCH plot. Don't be fooled by the stop-motion animation—there's more Stan Brakhage in this film's DNA than Hieronymus Bosch. I can say with no exaggeration that this film was one of the most overwhelming aesthetic experiences I've ever had in a movie theater. I could feel myself frozen to the seat for its entire runtime.

2)  Everything Everywhere All At Once – Dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

As a film critic, I've seen literally thousands of movies. But only a handful have ever given me an experience close to approximating Stendhal syndrome. I can say with some certainty that EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is the only one to involve a sex toy kung fu fight.

1)  Glass Onion – Dir. Rian Johnson

GLASS ONION left me in a near-constant state of shock and disbelief for its last hour. I have no idea how Rian Johnson was able to outdo KNIVES OUT, but here we are. It's smarter, funnier, nastier, and proves that the first film's populist overtones were no fluke. That it wrapped BEFORE Musk bought twitter is one of the greatest acts of cinematic prognostication maybe ever? But it's so much more than just a furious defenestration of billionaire tech bros, it's another condemnation on how the uber-rich close ranks to protect their own. That whole scene where Miles' "friends" joined in Janelle Monáe's destructive rampage—but only for a little bit!—is such a powerful statement on how celebrities will performatively ape leftist politics in between private jet flights to cross union picket lines. But my favorite part of the film was watching it with my mother. She originally had no interest in it when I chose it (it was my turn to pick the movie!). I LOVED watching it cast the same spell on her that it did on me until by the end she was LITERALLY on her feet cheering! I'm sorry, but I don't know how you could look at Rian Johnson's last three films and NOT consider him one of the best filmmakers working today. I don't know if any director since the heyday of Spielberg has more perfectly mastered the art of the crowd-pleasing genre film. THE LAST JEDI then KNIVES OUT then GLASS ONION back-to-back-to-back? Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is a friggin' cinematic pedigree.

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Retrospective Review - The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

The title of this film has always bugged me because it feels like it is inverted. This is the first Jurassic Park movie that I remember having seen in a movie theatre. At the time, I loved it but this was clearly a step down from the original classic. Upon rewatching it, my feelings are pretty much the same. This is a fun movie, but it is a relative disappointment when you compare it to the first, especially since it is made by Steven Spielberg, who was on fire in the 80's and 90's. He could virtually do no wrong, no matter what genre he tried. Upon rewatching it, this falls into the category of movies where the Dino action is tremendous but the characters, not so much.

The film's opening sequence is actually fairly horrifying. The little girl being attacked by Compies and the mother's scream leaves a lot to the imagination as to what happened. The film doesn't waste much time reintroducing Ian and Hammond and the new conflict with his nephew Ludlow, then shifting the action to a new Island. The concept of the story is interesting, with InGen wanting to take Dinosaurs off the island and profit off them on the mainland, while Hammond wants to keep the island separated and cut off from the human world. The film's strength is that it moves fast and we quickly get the InGen team, led by Roland, who are capturing Dinosaurs. Rewatching I forgot that actors like Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, and Richard Schiff were part of this movie.

Where the movie starts to really get fun is when the baby T-Rex is kidnapped and then its parents track down the baby and send Ian's trailer over the cliff. That entire sequence with the two Adult T-Rex's is gripping. The scene with Sarah on the cracking glass that is the only thing between her and plunge into the Ocean is a damn good scene. Eddie's death is also really gruesome. The Dino action throughout the film is pretty killer. Its obvious that the technology was refined some more and there was more fluid movement of the Dinosaurs, and the Stan Winston animatronics continued to be outstanding. The blend of CGI and Animatronics was superb. There is an entire sequence of Dieter getting pursued by and then eaten by dozens of Compies. We also get a full Velociraptor sequence towards the end of the second act. The last act of the movie, takes place in San Diego. Its a lot of fun to see the T-Rex create havoc in an urban environment. Its like a mini Godzilla movie in itself.

Where the film falls short is in the characters. While JP had a lot of likable characters and even villains who you really hate, the main characters of this film aren't particularly likable with Ian and Roland being the two exceptions. Both Sarah and Nick come off as stupid and incompetent with both making decisions that put people in severe danger and arguably indirectly cause the death of many. Sarah claims to be someone with expertise in dealing with Carnivores but is stupid enough to walk around in a blood soaked shirt that she knows is not drying. Also, Nick basically vanishes after being quite prominent in the first 2 acts. Given his role in the earlier part of the film, it doesn't make sense that he's not with Ian and Sarah in the last act. Roland is an interesting character but Ludlow is just a punchable wimp. Ian's daughter, Kelly, is also fairly annoying. The film has some weird narrative inconsistencies. Definitely the whole idea of their being a second island without fences is a bit contradictory to what we saw in JP, where were saw that the animals were being born in Nublar. Also, while quite entertaining, the last act feels a bit out of place in context to the rest of the film. The film never really explains what happens to the crew of the ship that crashes onto the dock. I know they got eaten but how, given the T-Rex was still trapped. Plus, how did the ship sail so far. Its all a bit lazy, which you don't expect from Spielberg.

The performances are fine. Jeff Goldblum ably slips back into Ian. Peter Postlewaite is excellent as the badass Roland. Julianne Moore and Vince Vaugh are solid enough. Richard Schiff is likable in his role. Its always great to see Richard Attenborough back, if only in a small role. Vanessa Lee Chester is ok as Kelly, as is Arliss Howard as Ludlow. Peter Stormare as Dieter is perfectly unlikable and you get a satisfaction when he gets killed.

All in all, this is still a fun film, especially for a Dinosaur fan. There is enough Dinosaur mayhem to enjoy and it never overstays its welcome. William's score is nowhere near as memorable this time around. For me, this ranks as a 7.5/10

[trulyinspiringmovies]

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

“The Lost World: Jurassic Park” loses all nuance and self-awareness to deliver a seriously unengaging movie.

Ian Malcolm is asked to travel to Isla Sorna to document the dinosaurs that were not part of the original theme park and have been living in isolation for four years. Malcolm refuses, stating John Hammond is just making another mistake, but is coaxed into returning after finding out that his girlfriend is there. When he gets there, he’s met with his new research team. What they find out is that they’re not the only humans on the island. Hammond’s old company is now trying to capture dinosaurs to open a new theme park. It quickly becomes apparent that everyone has bit off more than they can chew.

Finding out that Sam Neill wasn’t coming back for this movie as Alan Grant was disappointing, to say the least. I thought having Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm as the new main character was an interesting idea... until I realized how boring he is as a character. Don’t get me wrong. I like Jeff Goldblum. I just think that his character in this movie wasn’t all that interesting. In the original movie, Ian Malcolm was just that guy who warns everyone about the dangers of what they were doing. In this movie, he’s still doing that, but this time he does it constantly. He’s much less of a rock star in this movie too. He has a girlfriend and a daughter from a previous relationship. I get why the choice to give him this family was made. It’s so that he has something to potentially lose throughout the film, but it really went against his character in the first movie. Admittedly, I like how getting Ian Malcolm back on the island was handled. The movie does a good job at setting things up, but never really delivers further than that. The whole second act of this movie is just one long survival sequence. They get attacked by dinosaurs, the dinosaurs just leave, the crew rests, the dinosaurs come back to attack, and the cycle just continues. It’s seriously unengaging to just watch that happen over and over again, especially when the kills are tainted by weird or dumb choices. There’s a scene where Ian, his girlfriend, and Nick are hanging from a rope over a cliff. The person that’s supposed to save them is this bumbling idiot who makes all the wrong choices. I can’t tell you how many times I smacked the center of my forehead watching him try to tie cables around various objects. When he eventually gets ripped apart, I couldn’t help but feel glad that his stupid antics were finally over. There’s another scene with these baby Velociraptors that nibble a bit on the bad guy and then back off. They do this again and back off again. It’s only until he conveniently falls behind a log, obscured from the camera, that the tiny dinosaurs devour the man. I get it from a filmmaking standpoint. It’s to show a little taste of what the baby dinosaurs are capable of to then let the audience’s imagination do the rest of the work. It just doesn’t make a lot of narrative sense. At a certain point, the movie ditches the idea of the dinosaur attacks being thrilling and tries to opt for comedy. There’s a scene where Ian is double-backing between a door to avoid a Velociraptor. There’s also the infamous gymnastic scene that truly felt like a low point for this already frustrating movie. Finally, the movie rushes to get to something that thought would be cool without actually earning it. The Tyrannosaurus wreaking havoc in the city sounds cool, but if you don’t earn it, it doesn’t feel good. There’s a massive plot hole that allows for this to happen and it’s indicative of the mindset the filmmakers were in when coming up with the ending. Do anything to make sure the T-Rex is rampaging in the city by the end, even if it makes no sense. I’d be madder at this movie, but there are still good aspects sprinkled inside. The use of animatronics is still here, so it’s nice to still see impressive puppetry. The directing in this movie is still top-notch thanks to Steven Spielberg. I know that the next movie is commonly known as the worst movie in the franchise, so I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

★★★

Watched on June 7th, 2022