#to musical scores in movies and shows and how they work with or against or over the story

[rapha-reads]

Hey. Has anyone noticed that Maestro and Ruby are similarly colour-coded? Black and white stripes. To go with both being musically-oriented and canonically queer for Maestro and pretty sure queer but as yet to be confirmed for Ruby? That's interesting. The way Maestro says Ruby is wrong and keeps looking at her like they're trying to look into her soul... I hope we see Maestro again.

Also, related but not directly, there's been an emphasis on music since the first episode of Fifteenth. Whether intra-diegetically or extra, music has been important for the past 3 episodes, 4 if we start with The Giggle. Between all the musical numbers (I haven't recovered from the goblins yet and now they hit us with the twist?), the Doctor breaking the 4th wall, Maestro themself, Ruby being a musician... It's not new of course, we remember Twelfth and his guitar, or Simm!Master's drums, but it is being put frontstage here. Is it because Murray Gold is back in charge of the music? Is it RTD's season-long narrative arc? There's something going on in regard to music in this series 14...

I wrote an essay last year (in Spanish and I haven't translated it yet otherwise I'd be posting it) comparing Segun Akinola's score with Murray Gold's and how both have their strength and serve their narrative purpose. Basically, Murray Gold's first score for DW (2005-2017) are orchestral compositions, full of easily recognisable leitmotivs and big instrumental scores that make you vibrate with all the instruments, the song itself sometimes being much more known, recognisable and popular than the work it was composed for (see Duel of the Fates and the likes). Meanwhile, Segun Akinola (2018-2022) pertains to the genre of ambient music, much more interested in the tone and the sonorous atmosphere, something that's very popular today (how many playlists on YouTube or Spotify, you know the ones).

Anyway, I'm not going to sum up my entire essay here, but basically the role of music in a cinematic work has changed over the past 20 years, and Doctor Who followed that change, and now with Gold back in the music booth, there's another change appearing, one where one aspect of this change could very well be the importance of lyrical songs. I'd need to research it more closely to be sure, but that's what it looks like at first glance. How interesting!

[charlessainzz]

A Maxie request where the wags take the guys on in paddle and actually win and they get all butt hurt ?

thank you for the request! hope it's similar to what you wanted :) also I've learned I really like writing for Max haha

Sore Losers

Max was a sore loser. He knew that and you knew that. So when he suggested you and Alex play against him and Charles at paddle, you had a feeling that it wouldn’t end well. When he suggested the “friendly” game of paddle, Max had no clue in his mind that he would lose. Both drivers thought this would be a fun game where they could show off their skills to their admiring girlfriends. Little did your boyfriend know, you were a childhood champion at tennis so this… it would be a cake walk.

“Prepare to face the master y/n!” Max shouted from across the court. He turns and gives Charles a high-five as he’s about to serve. You let out a breath, and knew it was time to get to work. As Charles served, you glided to the ball and hit it back over scoring a point. Both men froze in their tracks in disbelief. What had just happened! 

Blowing Max a kiss you shout, “Okay let’s do that again!”. Alex began laughing as both guys shook their heads and got back into position. Alex hardly had to put in any work except help keep an eye on the boys’ next move. You were a beast at paddle, and it was leaving the other three quite shocked. Each hit was precise and sent out like a shot. Point after point after point, you and Alex were about to beat two high performance athletes. They would never be able to live this down. 

You and Max were in a staring contest from across the court. Both with an intense gaze trying to intimidate the other. Sweat was trickling down your forehead, hands tightly gripping the handle, and your breath becoming erratic. There was one game point left to win. 

Alex serves the ball, and there is a brief back and forth with the ball. Max hits it back in your direction as you dive and whack it back. Just when you think Max is about to reach the ball, he trips and falls to the ground with a thud. The girls win!

“Oh shit! We did it!”, you scream as you throw Alex into a hug. You’re both hugging and celebrating that you just beat these idiots. As you turn back laughing, Max throws his racket on the court leaving it bent. Charles is seated on the bench with his head in his hands. What sore losers! 

“So what do the winners get?” Alex jokes with them. Both look up and roll their eyes as they walk back towards the locker rooms. You clean up your area, and say some awkward goodbyes. As you walk towards your car you try to grab your boyfriend's hand but he swats it away. 

The ride home was very silent. No music, no talking, and no touching. Every attempt you made at contact was ignored. It started to annoy you that he would get so butt hurt over a game of paddle. 

The rest of the night is silent. After an even quieter dinner, you thought maybe he’d watch that movie you had both been dying to see. However, Max retreats to his sim room to train. You decided you would not be the one to break. If he was going to be mad over something that was his idea, he was going to get himself out of it. 

After an hour or two alone in the living room you figured it was time to put yourself to bed. You change into Max’s tshirt and cuddle up into the covers. With your back turned towards the door, you can’t help but wish he was here with his arms around you. But you needed to be strong! It was his fault that you’re in this icy mood. 

Just when your eyes begin to shut, the door squeaks open. He shuffles around and slides into bed. You feel it dip and he moves towards you. Yet… he still doesn’t hold you like usual. You start to feel a lump in your throat, not sure how long you could go without his affection. When suddenly you feel his arms snake around your waist and he pulls you into his body. His hands slip under your shirt and you feel yourself relax. 

“Wearing my shirt huh?” he tries to joke. With no response from you he continues, “I’m sorry y/n”, he says muffled into your neck. A big smile appears on your face. 

“Ahhh the loser speaks”, you whispered. Max grunted pinching your side.

“Shut up… Charles and I already have plans to train for our rematch”, he boasted. You rolled your eyes and turned over to face him. 

“If you want to hang out with Charles that badly you don’t have to make up an excuse”, you giggle as you run your hands through his hair. Max wraps his arms around you as he rolls on top of you smothering his face into your chest. Both of you begin laughing. Gosh how you had missed that sound. 

Pulling his head up he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me how good you were at paddle?”. You begin tracing along his nose as you think. 

“Hmmm I can’t tell you everything about me… that's what keeps the relationship so interesting”, you say with a smirk. He shows you a big toothy grin and gives you a kiss. 

“What else don’t I know about you?” he says with narrowed eyes. He leans down and captures your lips in another kiss.

As the kiss ends you say, “Well… if you ever give me the silent treatment like that again, you’ll find out just how good I am at walking out that front door.”

Max’s eyes go wide and he takes a deep breath. “Noted”, he gulps. 

Satisfied you turn back over and lay into his embrace. Both of you cuddled up simultaneously thinking of how much training you’ll have to put in to beat each other at another game of paddle. You really were the perfect couple.

[upsidedownwithsteve]

hi love! for modern au could I please request modern!eddie dinner/movie date where r and eddie see a horror movie and r getting super scared and spending most of the movie hiding her face in eddies chest?

“This completely defeats the purpose, y’know,” Eddie whispered to you, his breath warm in your ear. You shivered despite the anxiety clawing at your chest, ‘cause the lights had lowered after the trailers had finished and an unsettling film score had started creeping through the speakers.

You’d immediately turned to the boy beside you, face in his chest as you took quick peeks at the screen, trying to work out if the opening credits were already too much for you to handle.

You frowned at him, pouting despite the mouthful of popcorn you’d shoved past your lips. “I told you,” you hissed back, wary of the surrounding audience already glaring at you. “I don’t mind a horror film, but this is like, big leagues.”

Eddie snorted, grinning at you when your grip on the front of his hoodie tightened as the title flashed across the screen, dripping and oozing red in a typical eighties horror tribute.

‘Evil Dead Rise.’

He managed to prise your fingers from the material, bringing your hand to his mouth to press a kiss over your knuckles. He kept it in his, his own fingers soothing over your own, pulling softly until he felt you wilt a little under his touch.

“What’s your level, babe? Gremlins? Scary Movie?”

Eddie was joking but you side eyed him, cheeks warming as you whispered, “look, the Exorcist scene in Scary Movie 2 was just as traumatising as the real thing, alright?”

Eddie smothered another laugh, rolling his eyes when someone in front of you both huffed in annoyance. He mined the threat of launching some popcorn at them, but he was distracted when a jarring screech from the movie made you jump. Your hand was a vice around his.

“Baby,” Eddie soothed. “You shouldn’t have said you’d come if you didn’t wanna see it.” He felt bad, taking in your stricken expression, eyes wide and now glued to the screen as if you couldn’t look away.

“I wanted to spend time with you,” you replied sweetly and well, didn’t that make Eddie feel even fucking worse? “You went to the cinema with the guys last week to see that Joe Quick thing-”

“John Wick,” Eddie corrected but he was smiling, amused.

“-so it’s my turn for date night,” you whispered and Eddie could hear the pout in your tone. “Not Steve’s. Or Dustin’s.”

“You get all my date nights, sweetheart,” the boy assured you and secretly, he was a little pleased at how you jumped when the theatre gasped, another shrill spike of music making you tug him closer. “You okay?”

Your face was against his neck, lips brushing the skin there when you hummed what he thought was a hesitant sound agreement.

In typical fashion, it didn’t take long for the movie to be kicked into high gear and by the end of the first hour, you’d never been more glad to be late to a showing, with the only seats left up the back. You were practically on your boyfriend's lap, back pressed to the cinema wall as you curled into him, feet pressed onto the seat between his thighs and your hands gripped his sweater, the collar of his denim jacket.

“Babe,” Eddie whispered, a fond smile on his lips. “Baby?”

You made a sound, questioning, but you didn’t move from where you’d tucked yourself into Eddie’s shoulder, eyes definitely not looking at the screen. There was a woman crawling along the ceiling and that shit just wasn’t for you.

“You wanna leave? We can leave, I don’t mind.”

And you knew Eddie was telling the truth. He truly wouldn’t have minded, seeing as it was you. But he’d been waiting an age for the film to release and he’d looked forward to it all week. So you shook your head and mumbled a small, “I’m fine.”

You weren’t fine, there was something going on with a cheese grater and a possessed woman and you weren’t down for that. Eddie waited a beat or two, bit down on his lip to hold back his laughter when someone on screen screeched and you wriggled your way even closer in response. He could feel your heartbeat against his chest, double the speed of his own.

“We can go home after and watch whatever you want, alright?” He promised, sneaking a hand up the back of your T-shirt, warm, wide circles drawn over your skin in an attempt at comfort.

He felt you nod. “We’re watching New Moon.” He groaned. “And Eclipse. With the lights on. All night,” you added for good measure.

And who was he to say no to you?

…

[dweemeister]

Instant reactions to the 96th Academy Awards

A rough night for me. But there have been rougher ones before. I imagine most of my comments put me in a very lonely minority, as has been apparent the last few months.

But here goes:

For all intents and purposes, yours truly was on the Killers of the Flower Moon train. An extraordinary crime epic from Scorsese, with astounding craftsmanship and fantastic performance from Lily Gladstone. More than what I previously believed possible, a major studio production went out of its way to make sure that its Indigenous American representation on-screen was as genuine as it could possibly be (still imperfect, as the film acknowledges, but what an effort). And yet, KOTFM goes 0/10. I've never had a favored Best Picture nominee be shut out in such a way before. And I'm not surprised at all by it. It was clear that non-American and non-Canadian audiences didn't get the context to the film (a criticism I understand, given the screenplay) and, in other quarters, folks thought it was too long (I admittedly have a higher tolerance for longer movies) and others have said something akin to the fact that they are getting tired over "racial guilt" movies from America. I'm not in the mood to respond to the last one. I think it deserved better tonight. I particularly think Lily Gladstone deserved better tonight.

Stat upheld: two non-white actresses have never won on the same night in Oscar history. History, in and of itself, was always against Gladstone.

Oppenheimer winning? Fine, I guess. It was my #4 choice of the ten Best Picture nominees. I guess Christopher Nolan was overdue, but I have always been a Nolan skeptic. The film certainly is his most humanistic, and I appreciate that. As for the narrative organization and editing trickery? It mostly serves to take me out of the movie. And I don't think Nolan truly understands what thematic film music can accomplish for his movies. I think RDJ should have had much more competition all season long, but he did not. Most people are gonna say this is the return of the Academy's favorite subgenre... the Great Man Biopic. But in composition and structure, Oppenheimer (and even Maestro) resembles very little of the past Great Man Biopics. It'll be interesting to see how history treats this movie.

I disliked Poor Things. I didn't care for its sense of humor, didn't agree with many folks' opinions that it was a magnum opus of female empowerment. I thought it was incredibly male gaze-y and troublingly sanitized its scenes of sex work. Jerskin Fendrix's score was unlistenable outside the context of the film and distracting within it. But it has four Academy Awards and people love this movie, so my opinion can go to heck?

Well done Da'Vine Joy Randolph for her win as Supporting Actress for The Holdovers. I truly hope this opens up a lot more new opportunities for her going for! Wonderful speech.

And speaking of wonderful speeches, both documentary winners got me very emotional. The Last Repair Shop is on YouTube for American and Canadian viewers, and it's simply wonderful. Perhaps the happiest I was all night long! And then came Mstyslav Chernov's speech after winning for 20 Days in Mariupol. Chernov had, arguably, the speech of the night. And I agree with him. I, too, wish he never had to make his film and that he never won this Oscar. But he did his job to document what happened in Mariupol. And for that he (and the Ukrainians suffering and dying in their war versus Russia) deserves our plaudits and support.

Once more, Hayao Miyazaki cannot be bothered to show up to an awards ceremony. It's hilarious! I would have voted Robot Dreams, but The Boy and the Heron is not a winner to sniff at. Spider-Verse will have one more shot.... whenever the third movie comes out?

Good lord, they selected the worst possible winner in Animated Short with War Is Over!. There's an unwritten rule that the Academy, among the fifteen nominated shorts, must select one which will piss me the hell off. And for the second straight year in Animated Short, they have done exactly that, choosing something akin to a soft drink commercial.

Billie Eilish and Finneas are now the youngest and second-youngest ever to win two Oscars, after Luise Rainer (Best Actress for 1936's The Great Ziegfeld and 1937's The Good Earth). That feels very, very weird. In both cases of this record.

The "I'm Just Ken" performance? Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Like Ken)??? Busby Berkeley choreography? What do the kids say? Inject that straight into my veins? It was wonderful.

And speaking of nods to cinema history, I'm so glad they led off the stunt performers tribute with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. :,)

And congratulations to Godzilla Minus One and its Best Visual Effects win! After seventy years, Godzilla is now an Oscar-winning franchise, and its win percentage is 100%! Simply wonderful!

I think the moral of the story is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has been gradually internationalizing over the last decade. And the results of that were very clear tonight. Does that mean I'm too provincial in my tastes? I don't know. But wins such as Emma Stone's, Anatomy of a Fall, The Boy and the Heron, and Godzilla are demonstrative of that.

I'm glad this season is over. I certainly hope that Killers of the Flower Moon will be looked upon more kindly by history and time, without the bells and whistles of awards campaigning and a fuller understanding of why it was made the way it was.

This month has been fun! But now it's time to see movies again without the lens of awards for a long, long while.

[lisaas2418]

Yuu: Now here we have club demonstration.

Deuce: Here in Track and Field, we run fast like lightning. Take a look at Jack, he is fast rather he is in UM or himself. We even won awards for the best.

Jack: Um...this is our award.

Ace: Deuce's club sounds buddy and disgusting or whatever. The basketball is cool as we throw a hoops and get the higher score and- *He was hit by a basketball by Floyd*

Floyd: Cool shot, Crabby!

Jamil: Sometimes I wonder why there's no sane clubmates.

Yuu: You're one to talk.

Epel: We may not win against our rival school but we are lucky to have Leona in our Spelldrive club. A best club leader we ever have.

Yuu: Didn't Leona and dorm cheated in the dorm spelldrive competition?

Ruggie: You know how OP the Draconia dorm is? There faults not ours.

Yuu: Still not right.

Leona: Just move on the next.

Kalim: Light Music Club is fun club where we practice and play wonderful music.

Cater: We work well in our performance, you should see us in our shows.

Yuu: Yeah but you all mostly just hangout and eat snacks.

Lilia: It is still a fun club.

Trey: Well people would see me in cooking club but I am fascinating with science especially learning about plants.

Rook: Yep, Science club is marvelous. I mean learning about different kinds of animals and plants made me intrigue more.

Scar: I rather been eaten than be in the same room as that guy.

Azul: In our board games club, it may seen just a past time but I like the idea of advancing our skills and improve the development. Like chess and monopoly.

Idia: Just don't be in same game as him, he is a sore winner.

Riddle: The Equesterian club is where we train ourselves to ride a horse and take on rides.

Sebek: As a aide to Lord Malleus, I must do my best to ride a horse.

Silver: And its not just riding, we must care for the horses like a friend.

Sebek: You see all animals as friends!

Vil: Well it is cliche but a celebrity like me takes on film club not just for entertainment but the experience taking on different roles.

Ortho: I'm able to learn emotions and take on roles. We should film a movie here.

Yuu: That's a great idea. Maybe a show called, House of Mouse.

Jade: Well the Mountain club is like camping and collecting wild items like mushrooms. But sadly I am only member.

Malleus: Shame as well, Gargoyles club is where I can give out facts about gargoyles but no seem to want to sign up.

Maleficent: How dare there! Those gargoyles what gives fear and protection.

(LMAO I love how Yuu's comments fit so well)

Anyway

Yuu: Well I think for one some people are just not interested in Gargoyles, for two they may truly are a bot afraid of them and third....yeah some if not most are intimdeted by Tsunutaro

Maleficent: I...suppose that would make sense

Mickey: In which club are you Yuu?

Grim: Ahem! 😠

Mickey: And you too Grim 😅

Yuu: We kinda switch everyday, since we can't really decide or we just don't show up. Doesnt exactly matter anyway. No offence to your clubs ofcourse

All: None taken

[cryptidvoidwritings]

Full text below.

A D.J. pawing through a carton of old LPs — Natalie Cole, Angela Bofill — comes upon a curiosity: the original cast album of “Cats.” When he opens the gatefold, glittery spangles fly everywhere.

That’s how “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” begins, and it’s basically what the Perelman Performing Arts Center’s drag remake of the Broadway behemoth does to the drab original. It sets the joy free.

Whether upper- or lowercase, cats never previously offered me much pleasure. The underlying T.S. Eliot poems, ad libbed for his godchildren, are agreeable piffle, hardly up there with “Prufrock” as fodder for the ages. The musical, instead of honoring the material’s delicacy, stomped all over it, leaving heavy mud prints. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, and especially the rigged-up story and original staging by Trevor Nunn, tried so hard to make big statements from little ditties and kitties that it wound up a perfect example of camp.

Camp, cleverly, is the new version’s base line, neutralizing that criticism. It turns out that the show once advertised vaguely (and threateningly) as “now and forever” — it ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000 — works far better in a specific past.

That past is the world of drag balls, which at the time of the original “Cats” was beginning to achieve mainstream awareness. Madonna’s appropriation of the participants’ style and dance moves in her videos and concerts, as well as Jennie Livingston’s celebration of them in her documentary “Paris Is Burning,” helped pave the way for the supremacy of RuPaul and dragmania today. But beneath that triumph lay a darker truth: that the thrill of ball culture depended on its drawing extravagance from destitution, meeting prejudice with bravery, and staring down death with style.

The key insight of this “Jellicle Ball,” which opened on Thursday at the new downtown arts cube, is that at least some of those themes could resonate with Eliot’s subtext and Lloyd Webber’s score. The directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch have thus transported Grizabella, Skimbleshanks, Rum Tum Tugger and the rest from a metaphysical junkyard to a hotel ballroom for a vogueing competition, accompanied by new versions of the songs that go heavier on the synthesizers, turn some lyrics into raps and add a distinctive house beat.

It’s often a good fit. The former felines — now fantastically attired humans — compete in traditional categories, like Opulence and Hair Affair, that are to some degree matched to Eliot’s descriptions. The song “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer,” for instance, pits those two “knockabout clowns” against the pairing of the balletic Victoria and the acrobatic Tumblebrutus in a showdown called Tag Team Performance.

Not that it is any easier to keep the cats straight just because they’re queer. The structure of the show doesn’t allow it. Hemmed in by the Eliot estate, Nunn could not add dialogue, making it difficult to flesh out any characters or encourage specific emotional investment. His solution was a bizarre framing device with late-1970s woo-woo overtones: The clan meets each year on the evening of the Jellicle moon so that their leader, Old Deuteronomy, can choose one lucky cat to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn.

That silliness didn’t help much. It remained difficult to keep Jellylorum and Sillabub apart or care about either. In revivals like the one on Broadway in 2016, let alone the dreadful 2019 movie, the material seemed fatally ludicrous.

And if “Jellicle Ball” doesn’t quite solve that problem, it succeeds in making it mostly irrelevant. The new frame allows you to feel something for the characters, at least as a group, even when you don’t know what’s going on, which is often. The design of the long, narrow room, with the audience surrounding a runway on three sides, is awkward in the way one imagines the balls were: You can’t see everything, you’re constantly craning, the sound (by Kai Harada) is blurry and some fuss or hilarity is always happening somewhere you missed.

Even so, we recognize Rum Tum Tugger (Sydney James Harcourt) far better now that he competes in the Realness and Body competitions. (He’s a smooth playah.) Gus, the theater cat, is a more instantly recognizable type as performed by Junior LaBeija, the M.C. of the “Paris Is Burning” ball, as a catty old queen who, though “no longer a terror” can still throw ample shade. And it takes little more than the arrival of André De Shields, with his unsurpassed ability to freeze attention onstage, to show us that Old Deuteronomy is a Moses.

It helps, too, that he’s given a glowing Ten Commandments-like set of tablets, and that he’s dressed (by Qween Jean) in royal purple topped by a gigantic matching lion’s mane (by Nikiya Mathis). Indeed, the wonderfully over-the-top design of the show is as important as the concept itself in filling out the vast blanks of the characters as written. Enjoyable as that is in itself, the chief benefit of the physical staging (on sets by Rachel Hauck, with lighting by Adam Honoré and projections by Brittany Bland) is that it grounds the performative mayhem on the runway in a real environment that suggests the struggles of real lives.

Among other things, this rescues the nominal star role, Grizabella, from bathos. A faded “glamour cat” seeking the reincarnation nod, she has no other function in the original story, not even suspense. (We know she’s going to be chosen because she keeps popping up to sing fragments of “Memory.”) But here, in smeary makeup, a ratty fur and carrying a tarnished old trophy, scrambling about the outskirts of the action, we see at a glance the pain of an outsider now exiled from the place she’d once been safe. Especially as played by Chasity Moore, known in the ball world as Tempress, that pain feels authentic.

That is not something that ever occurred to me in watching the old-school “Cats.” At best the Broadway show felt like a stoned oratorio about nothing, with a dog’s breakfast of song styles including ear-wormy music hall, grating electronica and the occasional Gilbert and Sullivan chorale. (The choral singing here, under the direction of William Waldrop, is gorgeous.) Likewise, the original choreography, by the Royal Ballet star Gillian Lynne, seemed totally random despite its supposedly catlike footwork. The athletic vogueing created for this production by Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles, sometimes blended with throwbacks to Lynne’s classical style, is instead perfectly tailored to its milieu, and thrilling besides.

I should say at this point that, no, I haven’t turned into a fan of the show itself, the one you can see at your community theater or license for your high school. I don’t believe musicals should need whisker consultants. But as happens occasionally, the right idea can transform the wrong material. If “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” has managed a Grizabella turn, reincarnating itself in fabulousness, do not expect an 18-year run or, pardon me, copycat productions. It’s a lightning strike: not now and forever but now and once.

(Honestly, I'd respect this guy more if he came out and said 'I'm taking money to pretend to review the new show but actually am just regurgitating 40 years of The Smart, Cultured Critics Hate CATS.')

[enchantedchocolatebars]

Gorillaz Teacher! AU Headcanons

🍎 Original headcanons ✏️

🏫 Ao3 version 🎒

Murdoc:

• Wait, how did he even get this job and why hasn't he been fired yet?

• Teaching is honestly just a shitty day job for him. Once he earns enough, he's quitting to become a famous rock star with his own band! He could see it now: fame, glory, girls. It sounds like a dream come true. But until he had the money to make that dream a reality, he was stuck as the school's social studies teacher.

• When he quits his job as an "educator", it's going to be very similar to the fuck you scene from the movie "Half Baked".

• He is disliked by the students in all of his classes.

• He has a habit of arriving 30 minutes late to class. Sometimes he'll show up completely sober, while other times he'll show up drunk.

• The pickle has WAY too many political views that he refuses to keep to himself.

• If Murdoc falls asleep at his desk, one of the kids might try to either draw a dick on his forehead and take a picture of it, or they might try to put a 'kick me' sign on his back. But they have to be EXTRA careful or they might wake up the grumpy goblin!

• If he does wake up, he'll be extremely mad and end up giving the whole class a pop quiz first thing tomorrow morning.

• He finds grading papers to be too difficult, so he doesn't bother doing it.

• The only time Murdoc actually teaches his class something about social studies is when the principal or some other important staff member walks into the room to see what's going on. Once they're gone, he goes straight back to sleep.

• He believes that Stuart Pot, the new music teacher at school, is an idiot. He decides to give him the nickname '2D' because he feels that the man is too dense. Murdoc has walked by Stuart's classroom a couple of times before and has overheard him and his students singing while he plays the piano. To hear more, he would usually place his ear against the door. He had to admit that the guy had some really nice vocals. Plus, he's tall, pretty, has blue hair, and both eyes! Murdoc makes a mental note to remember to make that Stu-Pot guy the front man of his future band once he gets the money he wants and decides to quit.

• Murdoc only tries to 'befriend" 2D because he's a music teacher and also because he wants him to be his future front man.

• When he learns that the teacher of the class with the highest test scores will receive a large bonus pay, he decides to change his style of "teaching", forcing the students in his class to study intensely for the upcoming test. However, the kids end up getting low scores.

• He has been embezzling money from the 9th grade bake sale.

2D/Stuart Pot:

• He is the new music teacher!

• He quickly becomes well-liked by students and co-workers.

• Stuart is a nice teacher who carries himself off as a goofy professional who knows what he's doing.

• Believes that every one of his students will become a great musician one day.

• At times, he enjoys teaching while music plays in the background.

• He may accidentally give students test answers when they ask for clarification on a question

• He will write original songs for his class to perform.

• Has an after-school club where he teaches students how to play piano, keyboards, and melodica.

• I can imagine him being an actual teacher in real life.

• Stuart is a bit terrified of Murdoc because one time, when the two were on lunch duty together, Murdoc was explaining to him a dream that he had last night where he launched his car through a music shop that Stu-Pot was apparently working at and had knocked one of his eyes out! “ Oh, uh, o-okay… W-Well, it’s a good thing you aren’t actually going to run me over with a real car, right?…RIGHT?!”

Noodle:

• She has a full real name, but prefers to be referred to as Noodle, which was a nickname she received in her childhood.

• The children generally call her Ms. Noodle.

• She's the teaching assistant for Stuart's class!

• She's kind because she helps everyone in the class who needs it, even the spoiled kids.

• She's in charge of the guitar club after-school!

• She really likes the guitar club since it provides a safe and fun environment for students to come together and enjoy music.

• She's a master at playing acoustic guitar and ukulele!

• You'll most likely find her in the teacher's lounge playing on her pink handheld game player while drinking tea and munching on the candy and snacks that they have in there.

• The teacher's lounge is her favorite room to be in for obvious reasons.

Russel:

• He's a no-nonsense math teacher who will joke around with his students from time to time, but then gets very serious with them when it comes to their grades.

• Mr. Hobbs is skilled at making math fun with a capital F!

• They didn’t do so well on a test? Not a problem! Russel will happily allow a student to retake it, as long as they go home and study.

• He will greet each student by their name when they enter his class.

• Russel has a general concern for his students and desires the best for all of them.

• His students can count on him being genuine

• Will bring treats for the class if they did really well on a quiz or test!

• Allows his students to use their phones once they have finished all their work.

• When his students throw him a surprise party in the classroom on his birthday, he breaks down in happy tears.

• Murdoc's classroom is situated across the hall from his own.

• Russel doesn't know why, but he feels that Mr. Niccals is teaching for all the wrong reasons.

• He really doesn't think Murdoc should be teaching teenagers, or really anyone. Russel couldn't think of anyone less qualified to be a teacher.

• Whenever he's in the teacher's lounge, he likes socializing with other teachers like 2D or Noodle, but never with Murdoc. Russel tries to avoid him.

[ben-the-hyena]

Ok so I did watch the Haunted Mansion movie the day before yesterday. I almost did before and as said chickened out because I was sure it was gonna be shit, but ended up going because "don't be stupid give it a chance, HM has a thousand canons, it's its own and won't affect the ones you love. If you don't like it, it will just be on it's own. And you did like the 2003 movie as flawed and not respectful of the ride's spirit as it is"

And... I apologize to this movie. It was very good !

Spoilers below

I feel bad to have chickened out before. It DID respect the spirit (the trailer and summary were misleading, they intended to exorcise them all AT FIRST and they were not all evil, a majority turns out good and lovable and goofy and mischievous when they follow you home and do know you enough and don't want innocent people to be killed, they act and chat casual to each other a "lively" natural way when seen through the lens of the ghost realm and in the end FUCKING FINALLY Disney UNDERSTOOD they are meant to STAY because it is their home and the humans and them coexist happily in the end !!! FINALLY NO MORE "they are sad and need to go to the Other Side" BYT AKNOWLEDGING THEY ARE THE 999 *HAPPY* HAUNTS WHO STAY HERE BECAUSE THEY CHOOSE TO) and there were so many good Easter eggs so I feel like it was made with love by peoole who do know the ride and its lore

I liked little details like how Master Gracey's (who for ONCE is cute to me ; I love moustaches ok) name was William like in the SLG comics (and the name I use in my headcanon), Constance even if evil (and psychotic as most adaptations make her, sigh) FOR ONCE is not the main villain and ends up fighting against the common enemy, the Ghost Host even if never named IS there instead of being fused with Master Gracey like he used to always be on adaptations (too bad he is evil and apparently supportive of Crump but oh well, he always was ambiguous and meant to be interpreted however we wanted), the old lady in the Stretching portraits NOT being Constance like she used to be before being retconned as her (and even being grey haired like she used to be), how "no flash pictures please" for the ride was incorporated as a genuine in-universe thing NOT to do or it will hurt YOU, how the professor's transparent coat and hat were hints at the old transparent plastix clothes the old animatronics wear for their effect to work, and how they all were terrified and most looked evil in the trailerd not out of evil but essentially like the ghost who hits the kid in the Sixth Sense to finally have the mortals do something and help them showing they are not pure forces of magic and supernatural and in fact start helping in return when the mortals finally understand and coexist happily like friends when all is good (like the same Knight who earlier had fun scaring them all giving Ben a slight little nod to tell him to hide under the table ; it was a serious dangerous moment, no time for scaring)

Also it was great to see all the rooms and recognize them. And I actually loved the music, not a fan of the Grim Grinning Ghosts party remix in the end but the New Orleans jazzy touches here and there did put me in the mood especially at the start. The CGI wasn't always great (GOSH IS ALISTAIR CRUMP UGLY... I STILL STAND BY IT, CGI WENT SO FAR ALL FOR HIM TO LOOK LIKE A POLE EXPRESS CHARACTER) but when it worked it SLAPPED (genuine scary moments like Travis seeing Constance for the first time, for a Disney movie it truly felt like a Conjuring scene, and all the ghosts hiding and running from Alistair the first scene we finally see him was BADASS and scary with the score helping), the pictures taken by the elaborate camera really felt like ghost pictures that are debatable as real or not with only the silhouette and details appearing and not a clear picture, and even if MANY things were predictable (I knew for the cat IMMEDIATELY, and Travis' dad being dead just the way he spoke of him, and it was so obvious Ben and Gabbie would end up together), many also caught me off guard (the fact it was not Travis' dad but Alistair Crump passing as him for one year holy SHIT talk about villainous patience and awfully deliciously evil to try to push a grieving lonely bullied child to suicide by passing as his dead dad "don't you love me?" and I did not expect Kent not to be a real priest that was a hilarious plot twist). The humans, even if I STILL want an adaptation that focuses on the ghosts as main characters one day and am a bit tired of real estate plots, were not insufferable and forgetable like I imagined they would be, they all had their motivations and interactions making them likable, Ben's arc to finally mourn his wife was touching, Travis felt like a real child and was not annoying on the contrary he makes you need to hug him for all the shit he goes through, the medium first passes as a bitch who ends up being actually nice and effective, Gabbie even if she is the one who marks the least is a good mom and doesn't take shit for granted (meanwhile the movers still didn't come lol), the professor is an eccentric grumpy old guy who finally knows childlike joy at the prospect of being there after having studied its cases without ever visiting it for 60 years despite having heart problems (which... went nowhere. Seriously ? At this point he could have been the 999th ghost, what was the point of hinting he will die of fright if he doesn't ?) and Kent is the kind of lovable scammer who speaks a lot who ends up becoming genuine

Not perfect tho. I did laugh at some humor like Kent's hints he is not a real priest by being questionable, the medium and the professor, and the Scooby Doo chase between Kent and the evil ghosts, but I am not fan of the other half (gosh do i hate Wellon speak anf quirky jokes Disney pulls these days in its Marvel movies and animated shows, that still made me cringe as shit) and I think some stuff are solved too easily (really Kent ? You managed to have the evil ghosts who knew they were doing evil be on your side just by telling them Alistair will do nothing for them ? As if after 150 years there they did not see by themselves he was evil and would never repay anyone !? Also WHY WERE THEY JUST STANDING THERE THE WHOLE TIME THE GOOD GUYS DISCUSS WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO SAVE THE HAT FROM BURNING AND PREVENT ALISTAIR FROM DOING HIS SCHEME WITHOUR STOPPING THEM OR INFORMING HIM ? THEY ARE SO FUCKING DUMB HOLY SHIT) and I thought some stuff were wasted potential (really ? The Hitchhiking Ghosts exist and it is hinted Ezra is the one who follows Gabbie and Travis to their hotel but never they are aknowledged as being the main ghosts to follow you home and the ghost who helps them outside of the Mansion is a sailor ? Are you kidding me ?) Also, a nitpick but the actress they took to play Leota really did not feel like Leota to me, she really did not look like her at all, I never thought I'd say it but Jennifer Tilly from the 2003 movie looked more like her. Also no Singing Busts ? Unless they were quick I did not see them. Oh come on, the theme song should have be sung by them !

NOW THE MAIN COURSE : I DID enjoy Alistair Crump. He was a very, very good villain. Ok I was not a fan of how the Crump manor scene was there to show you how eeeeevuuuul he is (his chair is higher than others at dinner to have them feel small ! He doesn't want people to sit anywhere else because sadism ! He openly shows his wife he cheats on her by hanging the portrait of his new mistress before her just to humiliate her ! He felt contempt for women especially if they can *gasp* read ! HE EVIL ZOMG *0* holy shit...) but like you all I def loved the scene about his backstory. All the animation budget went there, it really felt like the kind of urban legend/rumor turned into legend you can hear about a mysterious local historical figure, and even if it did not excuse his behavior it did explain how a traumatized unhelped child can become somber snd dangerous). Alistair Crump felt threatening, was manipulative, was omniscient and dangerous always there knowing even when the protagonists plot against him and is defeated only because one changes his mind at the last moment

But... note how I did not refer to him as the Hatbox Ghost once in that post. Ok I DO know the HBG can be evil and already was, like in the SLG comics (which I think it takes inspiration from. Evil Hatbox Ghost pushing William Gracey to suicide to join his dead bride/wife resulting in the mansion's curse). But to the extent of being a Satanist with more powerful powers than everyone else, terrorizing everyone even Constance just by his mere presence, only wanting sad/dark music to be played, omniscient of everything, manipulative mastermind who plans his plot one year in advance like a guess game, wants to keep the ghosts for himself to terrorize forever, laughs evilly and when you think you win happily breaks your hopes... that's not the Hatbox Ghost. That's the Phantom. He even looks like him at times, his clothes are more similar to his than Hattie's. It shoule have been the Phantom or gis own original character. Seriously Disney the Phantom was RIGHT THERE, why fusing them into one ? It really felt like, magnifying a silly ghost just because he is a famous character, he is seen like a demon not even as a ghost and it's just a guy with a hatbox, that felt kinda... not underwhelming becausd Alistair is badass and legetimately threatening, but it's like I made a reboot of the G3 MLP, had Kimono be feared and everyone fearing her because she is the most powerful and when you see her she is a normal purple pony with a Christmas tree decoratings cutie mark but who speaks evil snd laughs evilly, jusg because she is one of of the most known G3 ponies so was randomly picked instead of another more fitting character for such a role, you see what I mean ? Also like another post says... uh... Gracey died in 1788. So why does Alistair who is supposed to be already dead by the time the Graceys come dresses up like he's from the 1860's ? Does he die in the future but ghost summoning affects space and time !?

...without Crump anymore are they just 998 in the end ? Even less since a minority did go back to the Other Side when given the choice ?

Anyways it was a good movie. Much better than the 2003 one even if not perfect. I recommend

[mytastessuck]

Meet The Residents

Hey kids! The Residents first studio album!

...Yeah, I never really got through it before without tuning out.

It's as avant-garde as an art rock band gets. It just sounded like random noise to me every time I heard it. Coming back after getting older...yeah, still not my favorite. I'm glad I get to keep the blog name. I was surprised by the appearance of an old favorite though. We'll get to it on the track listing.

Boots

Sounds like pained yodeling while playing on kitchenware. Love it.

8/10

2. Numb Erone

No professional training, bitches! And they still keep a tune against their best efforts to avoid it. Gotta respect that.

7/10

3. Guylum Bardot

Bringing in the woodwinds so you motherfuckers best be scared now. You can actually relax to this track which creeps me out.

8/10

4. Breath and Length

Very ominous and creepy, especially with what sounds like a toy dog barking and those freaky ladies singing. This is what I'm hear for: audio assault.

9/10

5. Consuelo's Departure

Lookit, your TV's decided to join a band! And it's in a battle against the walls playing the trumpets! Most cool.

7/10

6. Smelly Tongues

They found the guitars again and they'll make you feel like how they smell. Good string work on this.

8/10

7. Rest Arja

Good piano work. Shows that just because they refused professional training, it doesn't mean they don't take their craft seriously. Like, this is something you can hear being played in a concert hall.

8/10

8. Skratz

Alright, done with the normie stuff. Back to noise. This feels like getting drunk on laced beer at a harsh noise concert. All in all, another Fourth of July for yours truly.

7/10

9. Spotted Pinto Bean

Getting into the longer stuff now. This one has a choir singing throughout it but then whimsical music! And back to creepy horror movie pacing. Wonderful.

8/10

10. Infant Tango

This is the song that surprised me. I've listened to it by itself so many times, I've forgotten it was on this album. I love Infant Tango so much, I sing it out loud to myself whenever I'm left by myself in a room for over 30 minutes. It's one of the more accessible songs, even with the breakdown, but don't let that stop you from enjoying the croaking.

10/10

11. Seasoned Greetings

Sounds like something from a Hammer Horror film. Good energy. Works for the album.

9/10

12. N-Er-Gee (Crisis Blues)

Speaking of energy...I'm getting a lot of Third Reich and Roll vibes from this track. Might explain why I like it so much. It's chaos distilled at the tail end of a crazy ass album. Good work.

9/10

Album Score: 81/100

Join me next week (or else!) for the review of The Third Reich n Roll. See what I did up there? That's called foreshadowing.

[denimbex1986]

'During Steven Zaillian’s Ripley, the viewer gleans a lot from things that aren’t said, whether that’s through telltale props, intricate sets or fabulous 1960s fashion. But it’s the show’s sound mixing that really becomes a key player in the Netflix series, adding tension and mystery to scenes with little dialogue or score.

“Steve clearly planned the show with sound in mind and really left room for the environments and ambiences to breathe and support a tone,” says sound designer and rerecording mixer Larry Zipf. “We had many long stretches with little dialogue or little music, and wherever there was opportunity for sound to give the impression of life outside the frame, whether it’s diegetic or in Tom’s mind, Steve was always looking for that.”

Ripley stars Andrew Scott as con man Tom Ripley and is based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, which spawned the 1999 movie with Matt Damon as the titular character. Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn and Eliot Sumner star alongside Scott in the series.

Zaillian, says Zipf, really used sounds as props, whether it’s through Ripley’s footsteps echoing in a church, the clacking of his typewriter, the waves crashing against the beach in Atrani, or the mechanical sound of the elevator moving up and down in Ripley’s Rome apartment building. Where sound really takes a front seat is during Dickie Greenleaf’s murder in episode three: the tail end of the scene is predominantly filled with Ripley’s labored breathing as he exerts himself physically to deal with the consequence of what he’s done — paired beautifully with the sound of the water hitting the hull of the boat and the motor whirring.

Zipf says that scene was actually one of the more difficult larger sequences that he worked on. “It was 25 minutes,” he explains. “That, for me, was certainly the biggest challenge because, particularly after Dickie has been murdered, we basically just have the picture and sound effects and Foley, and also efforts and breathing from Tom that was very important to keep us with him. We felt the responsibility to help make that work.”

Zipf, whose film credits include 21 Bridges, Halloween Ends and Don’t Worry Darling, worked on Ripley from November 2022 to March 2023 — much more time than he would usually spend on a project. Ripley was “constructed” in a different way than his previous TV projects, like The Gilded Age, The Deuce and Succession, had been. “There was a lot of revision of the work ahead of our final mix with Steve,” says Zipf. “It was a little unusual for a television show. Usually you’ll put an episode to bed and move on to another one, but with this show, every episode could potentially be tweaked at any time. There were always multiple plates spinning.”

For Zipf, that process took some time getting used to, but it did have one specific benefit: “It allows for a lot of continuity across the episodes, with the approach to specific sounds of objects,” he says. “You can develop them and refine them across episodes. We had the ability to be consistent.”'

[agentnico]

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024) review

Jack Black’s new version of “Hit Me Baby One More Time” is great. In all honestly all of Tenacious D’s covers are superb. Their take on “I Think I Love You” for Croods 2 slaps as hard as Will Smith’s palm against Chris Rock’s face. Apologies, I just watched the new Bad Boys trailer so that momentary awards moment has sprung back into my mind.

Plot: After Po is tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace, he needs to find and train a new Dragon Warrior, while a wicked sorceress plans to re-summon all the master villains whom Po has vanquished to the spirit realm.

For some reason I presumed Kung Fu Panda 3 was the ending to the trilogy and the story was over. Then again Hollywood wants to keep making more money and this animated franchise has been highly successful for DreamWorks till now, so of course it was only a matter of time. To give them props though, DreamWorks has been on a bit of a hot streak recently with The Bad Guys - a visually-pleasing heist flick; Croods 2 - hilarious riot; this year’s Orion and the Dark - a fun concept with a mind-bending ending; and of course Puss in Boots: The Last Wish which is an animated masterpiece. There, I said it. The Puss in Boots sequel is fantastic and I won’t hear otherwise! As such even though the trailers weren’t showing too much promise, I went into Kung Fu Panda 4 optimistically, hoping it’s not just a needless cash-grab.

Right, yep, it’s a cash-grab through and through. You can tell the writers were really trying to milk some kind of an idea for a plot, and all they could come up with is Po needing to find a new Dragon Warrior in his place. Not the most original concept as is, and one that in the end feels really rushed, and his choice for his replacement is one that feels unsatisfying. The main villain also is really weak. A chameleon voiced by Viola Davis, and though visually the shape-shifting gimmick works really well, narratively this character has hardly anything to do, let alone be in any way intimidating. I recall in one of the previous films the villain was Lord Shen, who was introduced as someone who has killed Dragon Warriors before. What’s the scariest thing this chameleon now does, you may ask? She lightly pushes someone down the stairs. That’s it.

Another rushed aspect of the movie is that many voice actors from the previous films are needlessly ditched either with a lame excuse for their absence, or not giving them any lines and the characters appearing in silence. Like a big selling point in the marketing is that we get to see all the villains from the previous entries come back. A fun idea, however aside from Ian McShane as Tai Lung the other villains only appear as if they’re in a silent movie. Are you telling me that DreamWorks really couldn’t afford to get Gary Oldman to record a couple of lines on his phone and send them over? It’s like if Spider-Man: No Way Home had all the old Spidey villains from previous films come back, but they just stand about silently doing nothing. How crap would that have been? So yes, this really cheapens the movie.

Visually the film looks great. It’s mad to see how the animation has progressed as this series of movies has gone further. Particular attention has been given to the background environments that look gorgeous! Great use of colours and detail. A chase sequence through a city of thieves is a particular eye-popping set piece, that even gives Hans Zimmer the small opportunity to have some fun with the music score during it.

As for the voice cast - Jack Black is a charisma machine! He’s an icon and of course Po is just Jack Black being himself, but he has so much energy in his line delivery that he carries this movie fully on his shoulders. Awkwafina is also in this movie. Look, the reason I’m pointing that out is that if one looks at her filmography since 2019 she’s voiced characters in Little Mermaid, Migration, Kung Fu Panda 4, Bad Guys, SpongeBob: The Movie, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Dark Crystal Netflix series, Angry Birds Movie 2…. That’s so much!! What does she have on these animation studios that they keep hiring her? She’s not the only female voice actor out there. And I’m sorry, she’s not even that great of a voice actress, and I wasn’t a fan of her here either. Dustin Hoffman kind of just lingers about questioning his life, Bryan Cranston and James Hong have some amusing co-dads banter, Ian McShane being back as Tai Lung was lovely, and Ke Huy Quan is the usual ball of excitable energy that he always is.

Unlike Puss in Boots where the wait for the sequel was more than worth it, Kung Fu Panda 4 feels as if the franchise may have run its course and the writers have simply ran out of ideas. There’s a “been there done that” aura surrounding this whole movie, and again it’s not terrible, but more so just passable. There’s nothing new here, simply retreading old territory. I’m sure if you take your kids with you to see it though they’ll probably have a good time. Probably. That “Hit Me Baby One More Time” cover though - hell yeah!

Overall score: 5/10

[canmom]

seasonal animes: Zom 100/Bucket List of the Dead

watched 5 of the current 6 episodes of Zom100 (I'm watching Zoombie's releases, which have Crunchyroll's translation with better typesetting).

tricky to know what I think...

visually there's nothing to fault - it's got energy and style all over and every episode brings a new crazy impressive sequence, with great choreography to music and inventive staging. that's why I'm watching it, and it consistently delivers! kVin has already written about the strength of the team behind it in great detail. the consistent bright colours of the zombie blood, the use of yellow, the seamless transition between real and abstract - all kick ass.

narratively... it's certainly direct with its themes, but not at all in a bad way, and it's a meaty subject matter for which the whole irreverent take on zombie movies is a fitting metaphor. it won't say it in so many words, but it's clearly about philosophy, finding the 'good life'.

As You Know, the zombies in Romero's movies stood for Consumerism(TM). if the modern world has a deadening, dissociative affect to it, we pull that further, and we get literal walking dead. alongside that is a huge element of wish fulfilment in zombie/post apoc stories: the idea of a reduction to a simpler world, where all the complications of society are stripped back. sure, everyone may die, it's tragic, but the protagonists are given a stage to come into their own as a badass hero type full of Machiavellian virtù.

zom100 doesn't bother with the smokescreen of tragedy, and indeed it uses the contrast between the feelings of of the protag who's getting to live his best life against the backdrop of collapse as a source of comedy. but then it's about poking and prodding at that wish fulfilment, trying to define it more sharply.

our protagonist wasted years at a hyper-exploitative 'black company' but now he's freed, he has to face existential aimlessness; his friend found material and social success but no personal fulfilment and had to conquer his fear to pursue his real dream; the blatant tsundere love-interest girl is too narrowly focused on survival to enjoy her life - each one seems set up to explore some facet of the human condition. the ED shows a fourth member of the MC group, who will presumably explore some other angle of 'how do you live'. if you know how much I like NieR Automata, you can probably imagine that's a theme that's up my street.

so what's the "but"? well it's just so much hetero guy pov lmao. I just... do not connect to the MC, and the show is very heavily structured around providing a stage for him to work out his shit.

for example, it's maybe a little too obvious in introducing characters to demonstrate the theme of the episode, then feeding them to zombies as soon as their purpose is served. the fate of the flight attendants in episode 4 especially bugged me: for our main two boys, the flight attendants are an opportunity to prove their masculinity and sexual prowess (the MC's ability to 'score' is questioned, while it comes effortlessly to his friend). so these girls show up and they hang out; one of the girls has sex with the friend and then promptly dies. the other refuses sex to our protagonist but she talks about her ambitions providing some insight to him and then gets chomped - don't you see, she was reminded of her childhood memories, she had one good day, ah, mono no aware! meanwhile the cynical and slightly arrogant leader of the flight attendant group is the most fun of them all, but she's just zombiebait. the protagonist grieves for all of one minute but then cheers himself up.

and of course you expect characters to die frequently in a zombie story; and the whole point of the show is that the MC's cheerful affect is completely inappropriate for a zombie apocalypse. but the effect of storylines like this is to that it's so manifestly a world of effectively invincible protagonists, where everyone else is basically an NPC. our protagonist will embarrass himself and suffer pratfalls for a joke, but ultimately this is a world that exists to serve him, and he acts like on some level he knows it!

all the same, I'm curious where it will go once it finishes establishing the main cast group.

on a more niche note, it's interesting observing that 'hypercompetent hacker girl in a big coat' is becoming fixated as a love interest pattern. the big coats are cool, so fair enough.

[pippin-katz]

Not me being ready to throw hands with Nicholas over his claim of Shrek 2 being the great animated film of all time.

Listen here, Mr. Galitzine, that movie is funny, I'll give you that, but the rest of it is a flaming dumpster fire. It also has to rely on fart/burp/snot/poop jokes and "adult jokes" so much that the actually clever jokes are lost. Also, it's a movie, you know, like, it's supposed to have a good story? And be well executed? If you want to laugh at gross and dark humor, go watch a comedy show!

Also, it's the exact same primary conflict of the first film, as is every Shrek film. Every single one is "Shrek's an ogre; he's grumpy and gross and doesn't like people" just in a new situation.

Movie 1: Ogre is grumpy/gross/ugly/doesn't like people and doesn't mix with princess. Movie 2: Ogre and princess don't mix, this time with parental baggage. Movie 3: Ogre can't be a father cause he's grumpy/gross/ugly/doesn't like people. Movie 4: Ogre wants to go back to being "ogre" all the time, aka grumpy/gross/ugly/doesn't like people.

And every time the ending is like "Oh he's actually got a heart" but goes right back to being an asshole in the next film so they can do it all over again!!

You wanna talk about being passionate about this, you haven't seen passionate, sir.

You're speaking to an autistic person who has been hyper-fixated on the original How To Train Your Dragon since it came out in 2010. I did a film scene analysis for a college class on the sequence that is referred to as "Forbidden Friendship" as that is the title of the track from the film score that plays during that scene. I could, and probably will, do an entire video essay on this film, because that is one of, if not the best animated films of all time, based on quality of storytelling, methods and execution, musical composition, shot composition, character work, etc. etc. etc.

You're speaking to an animation major who has a personal vendetta against the film industry for treating animation as a lesser form of medium because of movies like Shrek. I could debate you under the table on this subject.

You wanna say it's your favorite, and that you like it the most? Perfectly valid statement based entirely on your own personal enjoyment of the film. To claim it's the "greatest animated film of all time" is relating to the quality of the film.

Those are two entirely different things, and too many people consider them to have the same meaning. You can dislike something, and recognize its high quality, just as you can like something, and acknowledge its low quality.

I simply will not tolerate this slander.

Okay, I'm done, sorry lmfao I'm not genuinely attacking him for this btw, this is very light-hearted. Is it completely true? Yes, but I'm not actually upset with him or anything. Please don't react like I'm trying to cancel him lmfao

[berlinbabylon]

review of s4 (skip if you don’t want to read criticism)

SPOILER WARNING

so, i finished season 4 a couple of days ago and... i liked some parts of it and one episode was good (episode 8) but for the most part i really absolutely hated this season and i never thought i would say that. in my opinion, it actually got worse towards the end! i must be living in a different reality from everyone else.

i’m sorry. i really am. but i have to get this off my chest:

- charlotte double-wielding guns and shooting up those white hand idiots like she’s in a john woo movie? awesome! except... it was dumb af. this could have been so good, i’m a huge genre fan of this type of action, but not at the expense of a character’s intelligence. there was zero reason for her to barge in there when she did. at least make it seem like they’re just about to kill the good pathologist, have them string him up or whatever and she sees and has absolutely no alternative but to intervene. or have them conclude their meeting and start making for the door. please, i’m begging, just anything to make her desperate actions make sense.

- malu taking a shot for kiddie fiddler wendt? thanks, i fucking hate it. for that matter, i hate what they did to wendt’s character.

- for that matter, awesome lgbt+ rep or uhmm not. reinhold and fred don’t even get a kiss or any significant scene together (the couples date at the very end is cute but too little too late) although fred actually has a fairly important role to play this season. we never even really get to see them talk about his decision to work for that nazi paper. like, what. okay, fred quits at the end, good for him, but does this qualify as a character arc now?

- speaking of lgbt+ rep, them blowing up the esther/edgar/walter polycule only to have walter go “well whattaya gonna do. i loved him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” right as he croaks was the most ridiculous thing i’ve seen in a long while and didn’t land at all. i actually cackled. i can’t believe they turned the complex dynamic they had introduced in s3 into this clichéd jealousy mess that had no nuance whatsoever. i’m stunned people preferred their storyline this season. it didn’t track at all. neither did edgar showing up again (as i had predicted) and gereon believing him about wanting to broker peace in the underworld. el oh el.

- also edgar being like “oh btw we need to kill doktor schmidt, he’s an evil mastermind” was an absolutely ridiculous and lame way to try and advance that storyline. it also just got dumped in there and you don’t get any sense that it’s influencing gereon or his character actions at all. not that he has much of an arc or anything this season anyway but back when the show was still good (and by good i mean exceptional), his drug addiction and guilt complex was a major driving force behind much of what he did, how he behaved at work etc. here, in s4, you have to be grateful that they belatedly remember to send him to confession because he’s a catholic but that scene also just unceremoniously gets dumped in there. not to compare but since we have already seen an absolutely outstanding confession scene this tv season (in interview with the vampire, fabulously acted by jacob anderson), i couldn’t help but notice how the confession with gereon was neither written well, nor particularly acted well, nor integrated in its episode well, nor, in fact, scored well.

- max raabe’s ein tag wie gold is a bop but other than that, this season was not scored well and i say that as someone who owns the first two soundtrack releases on vinyl. there were many times when i noticed that something was off, where the music actively worked against the scene it was supposed to be enhancing. the song at the shabbat dinner was nice but as a jewish friend who i watched it with pointed out, them playing piano on shabbat is very sus, even if they’re a reform household. there was a woman with a wig which indicates (ultra) orthodox. not going to nitpick that scene any further though because the shabbat dinner and abe goldstein’s character in general were a highlight (although i loathed the storyline he was stuck in).

- tell me you don’t want to write actors out of the show without telling me. nyssen and helga have long overstayed their welcome. nyssen they could justify by having him pop up from time to time in connection to the rocket science “plot”. but he’s lars eidinger (who’s great), so. helga has just become whatever they needed her to be. anne marie’s actress had some extremely dodgy acting going on this season, sorry to say. i don’t even want to talk about the idiocy of how they wrote this storyline which could have been extremely good and important. i’ll just say that i laughed my ass off when anne marie clocked abe with her flute but generally it was not a good choice to play these kidnappings for laughs (and i guess these rich people just have no security whatsoever, even after the first kidnapping). there’s a time and a place and this storyline wasn’t it. but rich people, funny, or something. well, they are ridiculous.

- the whole story with the butler. talk about wasting screentime. his götz von berlichingen monologue was also really bad although i was delighted when i heard the verses. it just didn’t land. that goes for many scenes this season imo. i don’t know if it was the directing or what but even stuff that looks interesting on paper just does not come across well. it just comes across as ridiculous and manieriert. but not in the good way. (there is a way to do this well and the show used to walk that line very well. not anymore, it seems.)

- (side note: the frivolity of the movie industry provided the perfect pastiche for that sort of thing in s3. which is why i really vibe with it, as someone who’s a huge fan of 1930s movies. didn’t even mind that they relocated the apex of expressionism into the late 1920s when that’s very ahistorical. but anyway that’s a different topic.)

- actually as a last point on the nyssen storyline, abe goldstein shooting a hole in the ship instead of shooting anne marie in the head made me groan. it was so obviously written that way just to give her a chance to pop up later again. it made absolutely no sense, even if you try to handwave it as an attempt at poetic justice. neither did helga leaving her down there make any sense. she had no way of knowing that abe would kill her or make it seem like he killed her. at that point, helga still looked like she could think straight, she didn’t tumble around deliriously, she made a clear choice. and they just did it for the twist, not because it made sense for the character in that moment.

- the show was always very drunk on coincidences, twists of fate etc in that 19th century charles dickens / victor hugo way and i could dig that for the most part because they had this rich tapestry of social commentary going on. while i can still appreciate the breadth of society that they’re trying to show, it now comes across as shallow, there’s no immersion, i was extremely distanced from everything going on and couldn’t have cared less, which is a damn shame considering that this is where we should start feeling even more involved.

- as for one storyline that i couldn’t have cared less about: everything to do with toni. in fact, i think it would have been far more poignant if we hadn’t seen her for a season and hadn’t known what had become of her after running away and then when we least expect it, charlotte comes across her living on the streets, maybe while chasing a suspect or something. now that’s a coincidence i could buy. and such a scene would play like a gut punch. but they rob themselves of any dramatic impact by wanting to overexplain and overshow and being all pedagogical which is a huge problem in the writing of german tv shows and s4 of babylon berlin has started showing all the hallmarks of mediocre german tv and it makes me feel sick, considering how stylish and epic the previous seasons were.

- toni’s actress is not good. i’m sorry. i just have to say it. but also, they stuck her in a nothing storyline. moritz’ actor fares better but if they wanted to pair off the spares and get rid of them, they needed to do that in a way that would’ve left more screentime for the interesting and/or relevant stuff. like, uhm, everything to do with malu/litten/charlotte etc. it’s a damn crime that they didn’t do anything with lotte being fired from the police and then hired by litten. nothing. she gets to mope around at the bar a little bit and poor jacky gets to be her hapless sounding board (he deserves better, so many characters and actors in this cast deserve better). and then she gets to be gereon’s emotional support system. once again, charlotte is deprived of any and all agency and no, the double-wielding scene does not make up for it. the scenes in that haus sonneborn institution were well-shot, the horror film genre influence was clear, but unfortunately i don’t much care for horror films and i also, at that point, did not much care for toni or her friend or the pathologist (f*ck him for getting rudi killed in a very lame rip-off of stephan’s much superior exit) and we all knew lotte wasn’t going to die. that’s what i mean by immersiveness: where in previous seasons i’d have been on the edge of my seat with tension and dread, this didn’t elicit much emotion from me at all. except for the groan when lotte did her thing at the end there. the only good thing to come out of that was her conversation with gereon about her guilt which was the only time in the entire season where i believed a scene between them, emotionally, and was invested.

- i guess that, on the bright side, she got to be happy. i support that. even though i don’t believe it should have to come at the expense of the show being good. and she still had to go through that awful ordeal of the dance marathon. (one of the few memorable scenes of the season, at the very least.)

- random but i very much liked the actor playing oskar. and he was very much underutilized. really, don’t get me started on the entire debacle that was malu’s storyline. i think i’d rather have watched an entire season set on that zeppelin than what we ended up with.

- litten not even being in the finale should actually be considered a crime against humanity considering he’s literally the best character on the show at this point. for that matter, the trial against katelbach and the undermining of the legal system and the press should have been a much bigger arc and point. katelbach still being a comic relief character only used to bumble about not knowing whether he did propose to behnke or not is absolutely ridiculous. these are the characters we’ve come to know and care about and they were paid absolute dirt in s4. behnke’s best scene was the train heist and even that was not edited or scored well but hey, at least it was amusing and they did something with some sort of flair there.

- going back to lotte for a moment. i’m happy for the charlotte/gereon shippers that they got so much fucking out of them this season (to be crude, then again so is the show) but i can’t be the only one who thought they were awkward as all hell together. i never shipped them but i did always like their dynamic and i thought their kiss in s3 was magical. what they did with them here did absolutely nothing for me, i cringed when she visited him at the station and their idea of sexy talk in between kisses was discussing case-related work. none of it had the levity, flirtation or charm you’d see in a lubitsch film (one of the alleged inspos for this season) although liv lisa fries sold the hell out of her infatuated smiles and looks. volker bruch trying to smile was physically painful to me, however. sure, it could be charming that he’s an awkward turtle duck but considering everything we know about the bts issues, it really didn’t endear me any further. i dread having to watch them be awkward together in future seasons and i absolutely dread lotte’s only purpose being tied up in that. for that matter, how did she earn her badge back at the end? surely not with her double-wielding gun action? but it’s not like the show really cared to pursue this as a storyline or her as a character this season, so why should i care.

- the way they threw rukeli in there at the very end of the season was almost offensively bad. i was extremely excited for him to show up ever since they had insinuated that he’s her half-brother in s3. the actor here was fine (i wouldn’t count on him being accurately or sensitively cast bc german productions usually don’t do this, haven’t checked it, however) but you’re really going to do a whole season where boxing is at the very least on the periphery and you’re only going to throw him in at the end to make some sort of point? we didn’t even get to stay with him and lotte during their first meeting? we’re just supposed to believe they have some sort of relationship now after that camera shot panned out, showing them through the window of the café? i’m sorry but what?

- worst of all: them having him use chalk as white paint to mock the nazis in the audience to make a point. you can’t make a character we’ve barely even met the dramatic and emotional high point of the season. and i’m sorry but rukeli was a real person and in real life he was forced to present himself with bleached hair and white paint in an “aryanized” form, this was part of the abuse he suffered!!! it makes me absolutely mad to think about how they tried to turn this into some kind of empowerment thing here. nevermind that at this point in time, audiences were still overwhelmingly on his side and actually protested against fights being rigged against him. i just absolutely hate everything this scene chooses to be. i also hate how gereon walks up to that one guy who can command~ the crowd and we get a flashback to something that happened in the same episode, like, just 30 minutes earlier, to remind us that this is the guy he refused to shoot so they can defuse the situation in the dumbest most construed way possible. i feel like i’m losing my mind when i see people say that this is good writing. good writing would have involved audiences not needing a flashback to something that happened in the same episode, just because almost nothing in this season is giving anything resembling the appropriate weight and focus.

- speaking of which, the case of the season was so uninteresting and lame i even forgot to talk about it. and i still don’t have anything to say. except one thing: why did weintraub not immediately suspect that something was up with max (the henchman) when that car bomb went up killing the other henchman? because weintraub arrived in the car, went inside, came back outside and suddenly a bomb has been attached to his car in the meantime and max was standing there all the time? like, what?? this season is littered with this dumb shit and maybe it was prevalent in the other seasons as well and i just chose to overlook it because there was so much for me to love but i genuinely can’t believe five adults wrote this season and struggled so much with thinking any of it through. it feels like they just had little chess figures with pictures of the characters attached to them and tried moving them across a board.

- oh and one more thing about the flashback issue. böhm and his family being in that apartment at the very end was an absolutely ridiculous scene. his money issues were well-telegraphed, a little too well-telegraphed if you ask me, and his involvement in the shoot-up was already extremely obvious by the time his wife demands to know where he’s got his money from. that bit where he collapses against the wall and we get all these flashbacks to things an audience that’s half-way intelligent and half-way paying attention has already gotten long ago was just embarrassing for the show. the issue wasn’t just with the flashback, however, it was also with the way it was shot and edited. so many scenes this season really don’t land as intended. i feel bad for the actors because they’re doing their best and they’re also not at fault for this weird issue in german shows where they do really bad ADR (re-dubbing scenes when there were sound issues in the footage from set, it makes dialogue sound very unnatural and strange and the show always had this issue in certain scenes but in this season it’s amplified to the max, i almost couldn’t watch the edgar/gereon reunion because of the bad sound engineering). but woof that böhm family scene could have been a highlight but the way he creepily said something to the effect of them never being separated (probably telegraphing an eventual fate that we call “erweiterter suizid” in german where usually a man kills his family and then himself) and then the show just straight up cutting to the nyssen last will scene without giving any of it the time to sink in was absolutely comical. i’m sorry. but there are scenes this season that feel amateur and i don’t think you can blame it on covid when the editing is at issue.

- having said all of that, i was excited for gereon’s arc this season and imo they never did anything of note with him undercover in the SA. why not have him befriend stennes for real, become conflicted about what he’s trying to do (and, well, in fact him and the police president do want stennes to succeed so it wouldn’t even have been that outlandish). him talking to the police president about the mission at home while his very much indoctrinated nephew is in listening distance was so so dumb omg.

- the stennes putsch which i also was very much looking forward to was such a flop that fizzled out without any real spark. his confrontation with wendt was lame af. the actor is awesome, his interactions with wendt in s3 were intriguing and this what it all leads up to? gdi. i can’t believe they wasted so much time on that homophobic blackmail material plot when it was never even picked up again after it got stennes out of prison. he never should have gone to prison before the putsch, he already had his conflict with wendt from last season, they could have saved so much time on this and dedicated it to something actually interesting. and if you actually want to get into the messiness of homophobia and homosexuality in the SA, röhm and all, you better be prepared to bring on figures like magnus hirschfeld (it’s honestly ridiculous he hasn’t even been referenced on the show yet because he was super famous in berlin and germany in general and also a favorite target of the nazis). reference the harden-eulenburg affair. do something with this. not just have wendt buggering a kid in a park. i like that gräf was quietly pissed at gereon about the whole thing but this should never have been a storyline in the way it was implemented.

- it really ruined wendt on top of things. not that it made him worse as a person because he was already bad before (though lbr it did make him worse ofc) but it made him a whole lot more uninteresting as a villain (he only seemed to find his groove back in the last two episodes). the interesting part of his dynamic with malu in s3 was the intellectual clash of ideologies. while i did not and do not ship them, i was very intrigued to see where they would take that in s4. well, i have my answer. they skipped any and all interesting and relevant development and turned it into an extremely clichéd and lame honey trap plot because we all know communists loved honey traps. groan. (yes, i watched the americans.) also, rilke is my favourite poet and has been for many many years and wendt needs to keep his words out of his damn mouth. i can’t believe they revealed that wendt used to sexually abuse underaged boys and still wanted us to think that his relationship with malu is in any way romantic, cute or intriguing?

- i was so rooting for doktor völcker to get him and then malu just had to take a bullet for him. bruh. just when i thought i couldn’t hate this season more. i know i already mentioned it but still. at least she didn’t die from it, small blessings, but her getting shot straight through the chest and then being back to spy shenanigans on the zeppelin not much later was just the height of ridiculousness. i always hated the train confrontation between gereon and bruno and it seems that the show is very very determined to evermore move towards that pulpy comic book-y version of the show that i can barely tolerate in order to get to the good stuff. but when there’s barely any good stuff to get to, it gets tough.

- do i even want to talk about edgar? him taking the kids away from esther was lame. anything to do with esther was lame. i can’t even muster more to say and edgar/gereon was one of my absolute favourite dynamics in s1/2 so i should’ve been overjoyed to see it make a return here. but, in the eternal words of the matrix: not like this.

- finally, doktor schmidt, eh? well. where to begin. first of all, jens harzer is one of the best living german actors, he’s phenomenal, and the fact that he still gets so little development is a fucking joke, frankly speaking. i might have liked his scene with alfred lying on the floor best. at least it was funny. his sessions with gereon were hamfisted in their analogies. his last scene with gereon also didn’t land, it was just groan-worthy. gereon repeating back his words just made it all the more obvious how much of their luster they have lost at this point. i can’t believe someone spoke schmidt’s platitudes in a serious way like some sort of cool mic drop when the “quelle der angst” stuff only works in that hypnotic evil drugged out therapy session way jens harzer says it. the cgi was also bad but that’s neither here nor there (there was a surprising number of badly lit and framed scenes in this season, idk if they changed cinematographers but even the staple shot of following a centered gereon with his hat around became extremely overused). the thing is that i’ve long been convinced that doktor schmidt isn’t actually anno / gereon’s brother, so i should be happy that he seems to be finally be revealed as a svengali type which i also find very fitting for the movies and culture the show references as well as the history it tries to reflect (in fact, this season was as thematically rich as ever, with many metaphors and analogies for the rise of evil etc etc but what good is that if it’s all pedagogical and the actual character writing is either non-existent or utter bullshit?). they’ve dragged this out for too long now. they also, and this might be the worst offense, have completely lost the connection gereon is supposed to have to this plot. nevermind helga or moritz. have doktor schmidt be a svengali figure, fine, love that, i vibe with it, but that doesn’t mean this plot should have no advancement. it really feels like they treaded water for as long as they could because they only had a very vague idea of where they wanted to go with this and still needed to figure out the details. well, hire some fucking writers (and by that i don’t mean hire your wife, like one of the director/writers did for s4).

- i’ve really come to loathe this very german tradition of producers, directors and others thinking they can write scripts themselves and that there are barely any decent writers around who are just that, writers. we have some that are barely okay but the structural issues of underpayment etc ensure that the talent that exists can’t turn this into a job. instead you really just have nepotism and all those people who think they can write but where the wheels eventually come off. now i’ve loved babylon berlin for a very long time, i’ve been there since the beginning, i’ve actually been there since the first press announcement (the show spent a lot of time in production hell before s1/2 saw the light of day, the budget kept ballooning etc). and i will say that i think the first three seasons featured some of the best that german tv has to offer. (s3 slightly less so but it was still entertaining and i think they did a really good job introducing a number of great characters like malu and litten in it, plus sabin tambrea is always fun!) but i must now question whether i was not more so taken in by the direction, the music, the style, and some very expertly shot and executed scenes that the show either cannot or does not want to afford anymore. the type of scenes that are needed to let the wild and often nonsensical plotting breathe and give the characters a chance to shine, to give all of it depth and resonance. i’m really so profoundly sad by the direction this show’s quality has taken and i have no idea whether it’s because one of the directors did more this season than the others, whether it was because of the new writers (i hope not). whatever happened, they had enough prep time and this just ain’t it.

- last point: i know how annoying it is when a show that you love gets hated on by others, so this is the last thing i’ll say about that. but i really needed to get this off my chest because i’ve been loving the show for a very long time, i’ve been investing a lot of time (not so much in recent years but before that) into spreading the word, at least here on tumblr and irl where i got several people into the show who all disliked s4 as well btw, i loved making gifs (which is also why i’d say i have a very good eye for the cinematography and style of the show and all the finer details but gif-making isn’t a real credential ofc lol). and i’m usually quite chill about stuff, i’m neither a super stan even when i love something (which is also why i didn’t watch it first thing it came out) nor am i a hater when i don’t like something but a case like this, where i genuinely loved something and it turns sour, that hurts, man. i’ll probably watch the next season - if there’s a next season! - because i still hold out hope that it might be better, i think it’s an important history to tell and the show had everything set up in order to tell it. there are two gif sets i want to make of this season (which is also always a good gauge for me to tell how i feel about something, and even those sets aren’t sets i absolutely want to do but i’ll do them nonetheless at some point; probably). after that i don’t think i will use this blog much anymore but i’ll keep it online for as long as tumblr is online because i always find it annoying when other people delete their stuff.

so long und auf wiedersehen!

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Female Executioner (Caputo, 1986)

This plays like a movie that should star a grizzled, leathery older male actor like maybe Jean-Paul Belmondo, but instead stars Brigitte Lahaie, who is very much not a grizzled, leathery older male actor. And her gender complicates the material in pretty interesting ways. On one hand, Lahaie’s background in sex films explains her moody jacuzzi scenes or all the softcore, golden-lighting sex scenes that let us admire her form alongside whatever narrative justifications you can apply to them. But on the other hand, Lahaie in her day job as a cop has to navigate male-dominated environments like the police department and the streets full of lowlifes and scumbags. She’s streetwise, but not cruel, and her tactics are contrasted with the heavier hand deployed by a racist trigger-happy cop (who she becomes romantically involved with, although she offers some pushback to his tendencies) and the obviously crooked police chief. And going back to her personal life, she’s sexually active, but not a pure sex object, as the movie gives her a good deal of agency in her pursuit of men and shows her loving relationship with her very understanding and chill sister.

There’s a thoughtfulness about the way women have to navigate patriarchal spaces and the extent to which they can be feminine depending on the situation, and it extends to the other female characters as well, including the villain, the ruthless head of an illegal pornography operation and sex slavery ring, and a junkie informant. Including Lahaie, these characters all have somewhat masculine appearances (and at this point, I appreciated that the movie made the most of how cool Lahaie looks in a leather jacket) and all of whom to an extent are made vulnerable by the traces of humanity they still hold onto. Given the negative portrayal of the porno operation, it’s interesting that both Lahaie and director Michel Caputo have backgrounds in hardcore pornography, although you could argue they’re trying to differentiate the kind of work they did with the real scumbags. Anyway, there’s a scene depicting what can be best described as a balloon orgy, which you will find either bizarre or enticing depending on your proclivities.

So I think the movie is already worth watching for Lahaie’s magnetic performance and this gender element, but I found it a pretty involving thriller as well. Caputo has a good handle on the seediness of the material and while much of his direction can be described as unfussy, there’s some nice location work and lighting. The violence is pleasingly blunt when it arises, and while the movie seems to cut around Lahaie’s physical prowess during the action scenes, she more or less holds her own and I never found the editing got distracting or undermined the tension. The only real knock I have against this is the cheesy ‘70s cop show score, although the music in the club scenes is pretty groovy.

[supercantaloupe]

wait i need to hear your thoughts on titanic the musical bc while i’ve never seen it my friends say they think i would like it

titanic the musical is the most boring show i've ever seen LOL

generally i am of the opinion that, for a musical to be Good, it has to have at least some decent music -- something you can recall later after you've left the theater. (this is not the only determining factor of a show's quality of course but it does contribute.) i can't recall a SINGLE phrase of music from that show, and i couldn't years ago when it was actually closer to when i watched the thing. the music is so unmemorable that my mom, with whom i went to see it, literally forgot it was a musical and remembered it as a straight play.

titanic the musical very much runs into the issue of Trying To Do Too Much At Once, and resultingly none of the individual things they're trying to do get enough time to develop enough to be interesting or satisfying. in some shows this is different plot lines or whatever; in titanic, there are way too many fucking characters to keep track of, let alone care about any of them. the only character i can remotely remember enough to distinguish from the crowd is the telegraph operator -- i remember he had a decent number (not that i remember what it sounded like...) -- but he's like one of four or five different "main" characters or groups of main characters we're supposed to pay attention to and care about and it's just a confusing mess.

similarly, because it's about the sinking of the fucking titanic, you know that the boat is going to sink near the end and half the characters are probably gonna drown. so you really need to do something interesting with at least ONE of the characters/subplots to get us to care about them enough for the ending to mean something. i'm not gonna debate the ethics of writing a broadway show that capitalizes on a real world tragedy because i truly do not care to go down that rabbit hole (especially not for fucking titanic the musical...) BUT if you're going to do that you should actually use it to tell a meaningful story, which titanic the musical absolutely does not

like. just pick One Or Two Guys and make the story All About Them. make us care about them, give them more than a single song each, and when the boat sinks, make us hold our breath waiting to see if they live or die. i don't think the concept of "titanic the musical" is too fundamentally flawed to never work per se but gd this show missed the mark so badly

also the production i saw had some major sound issues but i'm not holding that against the show itself cause that's a tech thing. yeah it was technically a student production but it was also an allstate/honors theater group so the production quality was supposed to be (and usually was) pretty high. no points for the set which was easily the best thing about the show cause it was rented from a touring company.

anyway i truly do not know how this show won as many tonys as it did. i know the late 90s were a bit of a dry spell for broadway but tony award for best score are you FUCKING kidding me? BEST BOOK?

(*this rant is about the stone/yeston musical, not titanique, the celine dion jukebox musical based on the movie which i think is currently playing off broadway. i refuse to acknowledge the latter's existence)