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kalied0skull · 2 months ago

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“ front and center, girly! ”

— “ yeah, I'm hearin'! ”

now playing: Hey Cowgirl — Mac Demarco ♪

★ ramble & extras under the cut !

it was only a matter of time until i got my grubby hands on cowgirl curtis, i have been running around grabbing EVERRYYY SINGLEEE trans headcanon and absolutely eating that shit UP!!!

shout out to @trevination & @broareweabouttoviberightnow because when scrambling around for ideas to draw her I've discovered that she is your guys' collective daughter and it feels only right to show her to you (so sorry for the @'s I'm not prone to tagging people but i take it you both wouldn't mind much 💀)

this is my little take on cowgirl! and AAAUGHHHH I LOVE HERRRRR I DOOOOO!!!! i am holding her so gently in my hands and brushing her hair with a tiny little comb ,, she's my gal. ..

soemthing about transfem curtis brothers makes my heart go wah, i love them really i do they're so lovely to me

I don't have many headcanons of cowgirl at the moment, but i am obsessed with the idea of calling her "girly" (thankyou to my memaw, who uses girly and inspired the idea) — like... pony / girly? the parallels... okay whatever I'm shutting up i promise /j+silly

anyways, whilst trying to make up a little design for her, i got a bit sidetracked and made this drawing of ponyboy and cowgirl sharing a cigarette and having a real short talk

the specific ponyboy i have there IS post-story, his bleached and overgrown hair making a weird appearance in the drawing. i dunno, i like to imagine post-canon pb would have a way more enamored response to cowgirl compared to pre or during.

he's really in love with the girl he becomes in another universe, even if it might not be him. he still loves her no matter what, and i think that's really neat :D

my favorite little detail of cowgirl has to be the little designs i put on her clothes, something tells me she is a girl who is in LOVE with embroidery. i think it might be one of the things she picked up when transitioning, because you always have to be a little punk in terms of being transgender in my opinion — and i take cowgirl to be quite crafty :3c

i just think she'd fawn over tiny flowers and spirals all over her stuff, because "they are so cute n' simple, right?! but they're so complex and cool!" and awawawahhh... she just likes her details in my eyes

anyways i really really REALLY enjoyed making this drawing, mostly digital though – the traditional sketch was a hit of a process, i accidentally made her too tall at some point and was like "??? nuh uh" 💀 but she's beautiful and she's such a doll and wahhh my babyy...

i hope all the transfem pb fans out there can appreciate another addition to the gallery, I'd also like to shout out GLORBIEZ' ART !!! who also inspired me very heavily to make my own version!

please please please go look at it glorbiez is an amazing artist and i really love their take on cowgirl /BEGGING, DESPERATE (/silly)

who am i if not to jump on a trend with a very niche headcanon amirite ;3

#yeehaw !!! :D #cowgirl curtis who goes full... cowgirl when transitioning you are very dear to me #not a lick of grease found on that girl #in this photo at least 💀 i imagine she still is quite the greaser gal #i am obsessed with this little doodle #maybe it's just the pose idk man it was just a lot of fun #peep the body hair which i thought was a nice addition because i often don't MAKE that detail in my art #but with a pose like that it felt necessary #anyways enough of me rambling #cowgirl curtis #transfem ponyboy #transfem headcanon #ponyboy curtis #the outsiders #the outsiders fanart #the outsiders headcanon

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lenalenouilleisblogging · 3 months ago

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2024 feminist movie retrospective ~ day 2

Thinking back on Anora was honestly just depressing. I wanted to talk about a good film for my second review, and La plus Précieuse des Marchandises (trad: The most Precious of Cargoes) was amongst my favourites of 2024. Graphic talk of WW2 tragedies ahead. Spoilers will be in red.

Watched : November 23rd at an independent theater. The showing was quite packed.

First things first : I think this film is a masterpiece. I strongly advise you just go watch it as soon as possible while knowing as little as possible about it. If you wanna know more before watching, well i'm here for that! I will try to not give too much away, even in the spoiler sections. (If you have no easy means of watching this movie legally, DM me 😉😉)

This movie was directed by Michel Hazanavicius, one of the most well known living french directors, who's famous outside of France for The Artist. I had only seen two movies of his before this one, but I need to catch up on the rest of his filmography. It's his first animated project and I definitely had to see it. If you know me you know how much animation means to me. The movie is adapted from the book of the same name, which is a fairy tale set during WW2.

The story follows an aging couple of childless, moneyless woodcutters who live in the woods. One winter day, the woman finds a baby that was dropped from one of the many cargo trains that cross the forest. As she always wanted a child, she sees this as a sign from god. She decides to keep the baby. Her husband recognizes the strange and unusual linen that the baby was enveloped in, and explains that they'll get the death penalty if anyone finds out they housed "one of the heartless". But he loves his wife very much, and her pleas end up working. The movie then follows this unusual family during 80 heartwarming minutes of tragedy, loss and hope.

When I tell you the plot like this, I wouldn't put it past you to think this is some sort of fantasy universe, or a nondescript imaginary country far away. But you know it's not that. As I implied earlier, this is a holocaust film.

And walking that fine line between being a universal, timeless tale and an accurate representation of an actual historical event is something the film does extremely well.

Like in a lot of old fairytales and traditional stories, no one is ever named. The two main characters are called "le Bûcheron" and "la Bûcheronne" which are just french male and female variants of the word "woodcutter". Since male and female variants of words don't really exist in english, the woman is instead called "the woodcutter's wife" in the translation which is a bummer... -_- Anyway, i'll just call them the husband and the wife. The child remains nameless as well, as do the few side characters. Some clues seem to point to the film taking place in Poland, but that's not explicit either. Words like "nazi" or "jew" also never appear anywhere.

The movie doesn't need to put words on these things, because well, it's obvious isn't it? These trains going to that place far away with these huge chimneys, there's only one thing this can be about. I remember reading a review complaining that this film "doesn't bring anything new to holocaust cinema". And. First of all. A movie should be judged by itself first and foremost. Being new/original/different doesn't equal being good. But also, an animated tale that graphically shows us the holocaust without ever breaking the spell and using explicit words? That's... Definitely a new take on Holocaust cinema.

When I say that the film is graphic, i don't mean that it's gory or violent for the sake of pathos, it isn't. It's very, very subtle. A little girl is thrown from a train by desperate parents who would rather she freezes to death rather than experience what's waiting for them. She's wrapped in a prayer shawl, and found by an illiterate woodcutter from the countryside who has no idea any of this is happening. She sincerely believes that the trains are cargo trains, just like she sincerely believes her baby girl is a divine gift to replace the one she lost. (it's unclear what happened to her biological child but I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a miscarriage?)

I wanna point out two things that the film does especially well. One, it shows the war from the point of view of uneducated, uninformed citizens very well, and that's rare. And two, it shows how hatred of Judaism in that context was/is rooted in christian beliefs. I point that out because if you've seen a debate about atheism before, you've probably seen nazism used as an argument against it, because Hitler was an atheist. Everything about that is false of course, even if Hitler wasn't a christian, he was a believer and the nazi party/movement is profoundly religious. (The party was explicitly ANTI atheism, because it was associated with communism and "jewish materialism") But that truth is often considered taboo, and it led to the "nazis were atheists/social darwinists" myth. So I appreciate that the film is explicit about this. The husband and wife don't know anything about the war, about what's happening to the "heartless ones". They've never even met any. The only thing they know about them is that they're the thieves who killed god. The way information is shown by the film to make us understand how these ideas enter people's heads and what it leads to is just masterful. Purely for the narrative, it's one of the best films of the year.

During the last 20 minutes, the film unexpectedly changes points of view. We stop following the mother and daughter, and instead go back to the father who threw the baby from the train. He is still alive, slaving away at a death camp. That last quarter of the movie is an absolutely brutal tone shift, and that's where you'll find most of the shocking imagery. If you're afraid of the movie just being a descent into hell with no light at the end of it, rest assured, it isn't. The emotional rollercoaster will bring you so low you'll want to get off, but it does go back up in the end, and the film's last moments are full of hope and love, as bittersweet as they are.

Quick spoiler note : there's a scene where the husband is confronted by 3 men who have figured out who he's been raising. The situation becomes very stressful, and I had a weird moment of thinking "damn, I know it's not that kind of movie at all but I just wish the dad would murder these assholes with his axe" well fuck me because he actually did ToT I almost cheered out loud in the theater. Thank glob I didn't, that's not the right movie for that 😬 but uh anyway LET'S GO DAD

Everything works great in La Plus Précieuse des Marchandises. The soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat is undoubtedly a new classic. The sound mixing/editing is downright masterful. I loved the baby noises the movie used and thought to myself that they don't sound like any stock baby sounds I've heard before, so I wasn't too surprised to learn they're old recordings of the audio engineer's own baby. The acting fits the film perfectly. The animation is absolutely stunning. The one aspect of the movie that I think is the most well executed and stayed with me after watching it is the rhythm. The way this film handles time is so effective and downright brutal.

When the wife hears a baby crying somewhere in the snowstorm, she drops her wood and runs towards the train tracks. The storm is so thick we see barely anything, and the snow piles off so high the woman has trouble moving her legs. And it's just. So. Long. It's anxiety inducing. You hear this baby wailing while the woman desperately searches for her, and you're thinking to yourself "how long until the cold does lasting damage to the baby? Will the woman even find her way back to the path in this storm?" And it's perfect. The film forces you to sit here for so long and feel this woman's panic in real time.

Then, when the child is finally secured and the woman runs back to her cabin with her, we also get an unusually long shot facing her as she runs. We get to see all her little expressions, her noises of happiness. I point these shots out because in the current film industry, movies very rarely take their time like that.

Later on in the film, we see two prisoners at the death camp being forced to bring cadavers to a burning pile. And once again there's this excruciatingly long shot, body after body after body, and you just want it to end, and the music's too loud, and it's so overwhelming. There are more long scenes like this that I won't spoil. But just thinking about some of them gives me chills.

Not only does this handling of time make the film more realistic, because it feels like watching these real, unscripted, uncut events, but it also makes it more empathetic. When happiness drags on, it fills you. And when misery drags on, it does too... It feels like the director holding your head, forcing your eyes open. Telling you "these are real stories that happened to real people and I'll be damned if I let you look away for a single second"

I have two tiny criticisms towards the film. The trains are animated in 3d which I expected, vehicles are notoriously hard to animate in 2d. It's been the norm to integrate 3d vehicles in 2d animation for decades now. Except there's one shot in this where it's really jarring and ugly. And it's a bummer because it's an intense, serious scene in a movie about a very serious subject. As a spectator I shouldn't stop and think to myself Ew what's up with that train. Especially if it's just one shot. What happened there?

My only other criticism is the cast. Now if you're foreign this won't matter to you anyway, but the main actors in this are very well known in France. And I just hate when animated movies do that, like I genuinely HATE it it's so annoying. JUST. HIRE. PROFESSIONAL VOICE ACTORS. Jean-Louis Trintignant as the narrator isn't too bad because it's a good casting for him, and it was a beautiful project for him to end his career/life on. Those last lines... Damn. But for the husband and wife, I'm sorry but this is so useless... Was the studio afraid MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS's new film wouldn't bring in the masses? Did the project really need that? Do people really pay to see history movies, holocaust movies, for the cast?? Who caaaares. Just save on money by hiring. voice. actors. It'll also make them more visible. Everybody wins. (I might just be salty. Maybe this was a passion project for the cast as well and/or they're close to the director or something... In which case forget my angry ramblings.)

I have purposefully kept this review very vague! My Anora review needed to go over the plot in detail because the plot was the problem, but here I wanted to make a more classic review that gives you a taste of what you can find in the film. I wanted to include it in this retrospective because it is at its core a female centric narrative, and not just incidentally! The fact that we follow the wife and not the husband is important, and the film has stuff to say about that, she's a great, meaningful character. Also the daughter is so cute 🥹

Final rating : PLEASEMICHELSTOPHOLDINGMYHEADINEEDTOREACHMYTISSUEBOXIMBOWLINGMYEYESOUT/10

This film gets the official Léna seal of approval! It's one of the best of 2024! Tomorrow's film will be more mainstream and fun, I think we all need that. See ya then! :)

#this ended up being as long as the first one 💀#whatever i'm giving up on short reviews #film yapping tag #review tag #Léna's originals and additions #radblr #radical feminism

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