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About me
It seems to be now that listal suppresses reviews that are ânot like the othersâ: and not just to remove reviews from a review page, but they will literally tamper with your list of watched movies if you post a review that the website decides to reject, right. Itâs like, the theory seems to be: âEveryone hates everyone else: but people HATE people who are not-like-everyone-else, rightâŚ.âIâm seriously reconsidering contributing to this secret-deletions-protocols website any more. What good is a site that lets you make lists of things, if they can delete whatever they want: basically because, God help us, you decided to write about something the way YOU thought was the right way. If you want to decrease the max character limit on a review, fine, if itâs fair for people in general, but if thereâs a secret tampering-deleting-your-stuff trip wire you can tripâŚ. Go fuck yourself, basically. Stew in your little pool of mandated similarity, without me, thanks.
Lists
Social (or Horror) Drama Films
(11 items)
Movie list by neotheognis Last updated 1 month, 2 weeks ago
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Recent reviews
Excuse MeâŚ. I Watched This?
Posted : 1 month, 2 weeks ago on 18 September 2024 03:21 (A review of The Proposal)0 comments, Reply to this entry
Ironic Mysterious Censoring (of Reviews)
Posted : 1 month, 2 weeks ago on 18 September 2024 03:11 (A review of Promising Young Woman)0 comments, Reply to this entry
Trashy Lies
Posted : 1 month, 2 weeks ago on 18 September 2024 03:01 (A review of The Craft (1996))âRules donât apply. I decide what the rules are.Â
âCowans seem to have delicate nerves, right. Normies, that isâŚ. The normies just getâŚ. TERRIFIEDâŚ. That someone, somewhere, is choosing not to believe their lies: and isnât shaming the people that the insiders or the backwards-looking people, or the passive, easily-drawn-to-mockery people, want to see shamed, rightâŚ. Such a danger, you know, that the 0.75% or whatever, poses to the 99.25%. We should really keep a tight lid on it, right. Emperor Palpatine would like to hear your report in fifteen, trooper.Â
And if you wanted more detail and ambiguity than thatâŚ. Well, donât tell obnoxious lies and censor the people who donât agree.Â
I donât need to tell the truth; Iâm creative. You do not tell the truth: you should stick to the facts.Â
~sincerely,Â
The Normal People (TM)Â
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Male Pride
Posted : 2 months, 4 weeks ago on 10 August 2024 05:43 (A review of Gentlemen Broncos)(10 minutes) Wow, I was expecting this to be a boy movie, rightâlike a movie about boy books, many lolsâbut WOW, this isâŚ. Phew. I mean, my premise to start watching was: maybe I went hard on âNapoleon Dynamiteâ, right: I watched so many âimportantâ movies, in that timeâŚ. Mostly, I read books: but I try not to join the academicist assault squads, you know: roving over the face of the post-apocalyptic, post-elite world, rightâŚ. But I mean: swear to God, this is no better than âThe Croodsâ, rightâjust that Croods was a male-centric womanâs film, right~it sounds weird and impossible because, it should beâŚ. But, itâs definitely a thing, rightâŚ. And this is like a boy-nerd pride, book, rightâŚ. Itâs not like, a ~real~ story, rightâŚ. Itâs like, a movieâŚ. Itâs a movie thatâs like a movie, right. Itâs not a movie thatâs like, reality, you knowâŚ.Â
Like, this is what nerd-pride male-pride boys, ~delude~ themselves into ~thinking~ that they believe the world is, right, (smirks), what kind of a agit-prop, domestic beat specialist would you have to be, to REALLY believe, rightâŚ.Â
WowâŚ.Â
(20 minutes in) WowâŚ. NoâŚ. Yeah, no.Â
I mean, I guess itâs supposed to be ironic, butâŚ. I mean, âNapoleon Dynamiteâ was actually better than this. I thought that after ND, they had hit rock-bottom, and were going to experiment with some likable characters, rightâŚ.Â
Males are just not okay, reallyâŚ. I feel like, after watching this, some male is going to decide to stop bathing and start addressing the Mexican maid in Latinââitâs practically the same language!ââand refer back to ~âGentlemen Broncosâ~ as his âjustificationâ, that heâs ânot really that badâ, rightâŚ.Â
This actually sinks below the standard-bad movie level, this is likeâŚ. I donât watch ~THAT~ many movies, but I donât know if Iâve watched a movie that I was this averse to like this, in this period of my life, that didnât have some sort of race issueâan explicit one, you know, where a POC person was being obviously replaced or perceptively slighted, you know: almost all movies have like race in the Anglo-centric wayâŚ. But yeah this is like, almost as bad, in its way: itâs like male prideâand itâs notably more extreme than âNapoleonâ as far as that goes, rightâŚ.
(30 min) Iâm sorry, but something has to be done about men making movies. This is unwatchable, you knowâŚ.Â
Iâm speechless.Â
âŚ. Itâs like Napoleon Dynamite the porn movie, rightâŚ. Like, what kind of porn would it BE, even, rightâŚ.? Iâm not sure I want to knowâŚ.Â
If the hurricane doesnât stop me from making it to the library tomorrow, Iâm seriously thinking of taking a break from this for my next sitting of a movie, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. And itâs not really a parody of maleness, in any meaningful way, right: because the woman characters are frightfully distorted, right: theyâre the sort of girl-children a man would give birth to, right; theyâre not the sort that a woman would give birth toâŚ.Â
A more accurate characterization than âparodyâ, would be the, admittedly longer phrase: âlook at what I can get away withâ, you know: with the âIâ beingâŚ. The master of the servants of men, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. (the next time) But yeah: through a ~strange~ sequence of events, I didnât make it to the library at all yesterday, which is just as well, because I didnât start another movieâŚ. But yeah: itâs always better for me when your expectations arenât irresponsibly toyed with, right: I really do think itâs better to take movies in stagesâŚ. Man, if they were really the brave-male-chauve-art-pornographers they present themselves as, right, theyâd put a testicle or two on the cover, noâŚ. (rolls eyes) So much for wholesome, yet independent and brave, right: literally none of those three things are true, right?âŚ.Â
But if you know what it is: itâs fine, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. (45 minutes) This isnât just Not Okay: itâs, Double Plus, Not OkayâŚ.Â
(rolls eyes) If not for its very disgustingly trivial nature: it would probably make me angry, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. (1 hr) Wow, this is really painful, to watch. Modestly painful, at least.Â
Itâs like: weâve created a wimpy white boy victim, whoâs made to suffer/is martyred, rightââIâm a weak wimpy white boy victim! The whole system is rigged against me: itâs the greatest secret of modern times~the ideas of weak wimpy white boys!ââwithout actually ever experiencing a ~genuine sense of vulnerability~, right.Â
Like: Iâm supposed to believe heâs numb/detached, yet also being burned at the stake as a witch, and screaming out in pain because heâs being martyred in the Crusades, right?Â
Itâs likeâŚ. What, you donât think Iâm intelligent? You think Iâll buy whatever youâre sellingâŚ. Just, because? Yeah, I love you tooâŚ. Jerk.Â
(shakes head in disbelief) Double plus not okay: totes.Â
âŚ. (coming back at 1hr, ready to finish off this monstrosity)Â
Itâs funny how, if you asked Jared Hess or whoever, rightâshould physical attractiveness matter: itâs be like, No, thatâs why we made this movie: to stick the system in the eye for making life hard on intellectually superior white males who donât brush their teeth or comb their hair, right. ~Itâs like: So thatâs why you made the unsympathetic Indian guy who hangs out with the white girl you want but feel ambivalent about, right: so repellent with the weird-fake smile and the weird-fake personal demeanor; and youâre supposed to like the wimpy white boy victim whoâs a passenger in life, right: heâs a little bit cool compared to the Indian kid, whoâs likeâŚ. Recovering from an illness, or something; maybe he had the flu: like, heâs smiling to get out of the hospital, rightâŚ. Right? Youâre setting the wimp up with that, so that he looks like the Denzel Washington we can actually approve of, right: the honest, likable, cool kid, right?Â
âI donât know what youâre talking about. I donât even like movies; I just did shit at random to spite the elites.Â
âNo agenda?Â
â(awkward beat) NopeâŚ.Â
Ironically, or else predictably, I donât know: but white male-woman of color romance is depicted as favorably as these freaks can pull it off, right, in âNapoleon Dynamiteâ, right: but stealing the white girl (that I donât even want!), from me: thatâs a big no no, you damn (slew of British Empire-era racial epithets)âŚ.Â
YeahâŚ. Hollywood is changing though. Not necessarily getting better, right: but itâs definitelyâŚ. Different, somehowâŚ. I mean, the style is different, right. The meansâŚ.Â
(1 hr 15 min) I mean, I realize that itâs about wimpy white boysâwho secretly want toâŚ. Yeah, I donât know howâŚ. I mean: legally, weâre looking atâŚ. But yeahâitâs about wimpy white boys who feel sorry for themselves, and how the world revolves around their little kingdoms of delusion, rightâŚ. But, I donât get it. Itâs not like, ârespectableâ propaganda, right: where you can easily watch it and be likeâwell, of course the B.S. agit-prop line of âreasoningâ Iâm being sold is, XYZ, right: but this, itâs likeâŚ. What lie am I being asked to believe, right? Thatâs itâs not even faintly true, in any way or mode of expression, is âwater is wetâ obvious, rightâŚ. (crazy hands) But what am I being asked to like about this kid?âŚ. What am I supposed to be feeling or thinking, if I ~wanted~ to go along with it, right?âŚ.Â
What am I looking at? Right? wtfâŚ.Â
(movie over) Two thoughts:Â
âAll you did was change the character names, and make Bronco a tranny!âÂ
No commentary necessaryâŚ. I hope.Â
And:Â
Unwritten rule: None of the woman characters can be as physically attractive as the heroâwith one, possible, exceptionâŚ. But I donât need her.Â
I have my mom. She sucks, butâŚ. Sheâs devoted to me, right: so I forgive her for being a woman, right.Â
Out of the kindness of my galactic heart, no?âŚ.Â
âŚ. (scene after the credits, omfg)Â
(turns to the girl heâs seeing the movie with) Now have sex with me.Â
âŚ. (trying to respond to this) Can men sue other men, for like, slander of likeâŚ. You know, mis-representation, rightâŚ.Â
I feel mis-represented. I really do. Like, eff, this guy, right. Eff Jared Hess, you know.Â
I canât even start with this guy.Â
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The Rose Garden
Posted : 3 months ago on 5 August 2024 09:43 (A review of The Croods)Everything just fits together so perfectly; it always makes me so happy.Â
But yeah: Chris Sanders is a middle-piss quality director, but I figured Iâd give him that third movie to watch like I always do, now: and also, I have a personal history reason for watching, right. I had my brother drive me to see this movie, during my florid-symptomatic era, and then I had him hustle me out of there when the sounds and images started to frighten my delicate nerves, right; (not a story youâd make up, LOL)âŚ. Itâs like that line from the Karate Kid, about the couple: itâs nice; same, but different. âNo: just differentâ, right. That one time, Mr. Miyagi was wrong: and when I was a young Millennial: I didnât get it, rightâŚ.Â
~It was a few years later, you showed up hereâŚ.Â
Yes, I live on land somewhere,Â
Yes, I chose the rose garden, over delusions fairâŚ.Â
And let me tell you now: Iâm the lucky one;Â
Yeah, let me tell you now: Iâm the lucky one;Â
Can I tell you now, Iâm the lucky one?Â
Oh; oh; ohâŚ.Â
~~Can you believeâI mean, of course you can believe it: but can you believe it, that when I started reading bloody Thomas Merton and the Buddhist books, right: that I blamed it all on her, more or less?Â
(shakes head) Craziness; crazy, right?âŚ.
âŚ. (10 minutes in, I finally have something to say) Yeah, Emma Stone as the daughterâliterally 25 fucking years old in 2013; she was YOUNG: you knowâRebellious Daughter in the Beginning of Time, right: and Nicholas Cage as the father: because heâsâŚ. A man, right. SUCH a man; male to the bone, right.Â
But yeah: it seems like thereâs a lot of action, and itâs hinting at a straight-forward plot/conflict: daughterâs self-actualization vs Dadâs Rules, rightâŚ. Iâm not sure Iâll have much to say. It works for me better than âHow To Train Your Dragonâ, though, right: lots of false ideology/chauvie pacifism in that movie, right. (beat) If they just run around like idiots for half the movie: thatâs fine. I think too much.Â
Maybe I just hate men, you know. I donât know. Men will weather the storm of my defection, right. And Nicholas Cage is a guy you can enjoy hating, rightâŚ. You can hate him and just be like: yeah, eff you: ok. No big deal. (nods) (smiles)Â
âŚ. (another 15 minutes) The action is okay: but hating Nicholas Cage is enjoyable. Thatâs the best part. (chuckles) And she has a love interest whose humanity/ability to talk is non-obviousâŚ. (smirks) This movie makes me feel better about myself. That makes it a good movieâŚ. Itâs not taking the âbest womanâs film directed by a guyâ from, I donât know, âThe Joy Luck Clubâ, or something, (they had us watch us that in program: and I cringed and blanked-out, like: an emotionally worthwhile film! This might bring me sadness!âŚ. âDamn It, Past Ted: we could have learned something!â)âŚ. But yeah: Iâm ok with this, fundamentally.Â
âŚ. (re-reads intro) Yeah: I mean, my associations are looser than most peopleâs, right: thatâs kinda my intentional modus operandiâI think most peopleâs associations are too tight, too rigid: and also I guess people are plagued by fear; but lol: I am afraid ofâŚ. I mean, itâs a low-level fear, now, but yeah: me and fear, rightâŚ. But yeah, the TS song was defs a loose association, right: but the comparison implied between the Edwardian rose garden or whatever, and the cave from The CroodsâŚ. Thatâs gold, right there, people.Â
Gold. (nods)Â
âŚ. (10 more minutes)Â
I hope my girl doesnât expect me to do that, lol.Â
But yeah: itâs not subtle grandeur like a baroque/spy type of movie director, right: but it is visually quite interesting, you know. It has a kind of colorful grandiosity, you knowâŚ.Â
(smiles) Perhaps, âhappyâ, is the word, right. Happiness is nothing but manifest disorder, rightâŚ. (closes eyes)Â
âŚ. (10 more minutes)Â
I guess that Ryan Reynolds will have to invent monasticism, instead. lol: I guess I should be flattered that male suffering is so central to the plot; itâs practically about me and not her, right.Â
âŚ. (10 more minutes: near the hour mark)Â
YeahâŚ. Well, I seem to be the smartest person to have ever lived: someone should send me a check in the mail. Organize a fan club, right. (smirks) I deserve it.Â
(embarrassed laugh) I mean, I did ruin the movie, practically: right? Who doesnât respect that shit, homies?Â
âŚ. (1 hr 5 min)Â
I canât deal with this shit. Good thing Iâm done. I never watch forty minutes in a sittingâŚ. And I literally cannot deal with this shit.Â
Plus I have to call my dad back; he just left me a message. Iâll have to tell him: silly fathers; patriarchy is for boyfriends!Â
I would make another joke if I werenât so disgusted with my appointed social role, rightâŚ. Iâm actually a little younger than Ryan Reynolds was; he was 37; what am I, 35âŚ. Yeah: 35. I donât like knowing that, anymore, how old I am.Â
But Iâll be ok. (chuckles)Â
âŚ. (Ryan Reynolds) Oh wow: and Iâm married to Serena van der Woodsen; I must be a good person.Â
(chuckles darkly) I am so not a good personâŚ.Â
AhâŚ. The Marxists wonât spare meâŚ. (laughs)Â
âŚ. (Dadâs visit)Â
Well, that was a weird experience. At least he took me to the vegan place. (I had the special, an elaborate salad; he had the hummus wrap, which is what he always has.) Itâs so weird: talking with someone so earnest, yet so low-key scary, rightâŚ. Like, we donât have to persecute Catholicsâor even Japanese Christians, you know. ~And itâs like, heâs not going to be going through my bag; heâs not that crazyâŚ. I still shouldnât have brought that pagan book to read later; the Morrigan wouldnât amuse him, rightâŚ.Â
And my dad got 95% of my attention: but itâs like, behind me I could have sworn that the restaurant girls were putting guys on the dock in absentia, right: and Iâm like, thatâs so interesting; I wish I knewâŚ. You know: not that it would be easier than talking to my father; but it would be so much moreâŚ. (shrugs) You know: unless itâs none of your businessâthen, itâs none of your businessâŚ. Gotta follow the planâŚ.Â
âThe Cylons are an important part of science fiction. They destroyed humanity. Theyâre banging.Â
And they have a plan.âÂ
(laughs) Although that makes it sound: maybe more impressive than, perhapsâŚ. I mean, it isnât sales, my plan, anymoreâŚ. lolâŚ. (laughs)Â
~But yeah: when you make a joke with dad; he always makes sure you lose, you know: even if you were trying to justâŚ. Be his affectionate son, or whatever. Heâs not angry, typically (in âapoliticalâ situations, lol); but heâs so insecureâŚ. And, ok: go ahead and laughâI walked right into it. I forgot that the Irish were associated with drinking, right, for a second. I didnât anticipate it was going to go there.Â
Because Iâm not Irish, rightâŚ. The Morrighan is just like Artemis, you know. One of the restaurant girls could have been Artemis; the other oneâŚ. Right?Â
You think Iâm crazy. Thatâs good. Stay firm in your beliefs. Really do what works for you. (nods)Â
âŚ. Letâs see: I think I was planning on finishing this today; anyway, I think itâs not a fit for me how people define womanâs film vs womenâs cinema; I guess I have a hierarchical male mind, but I donât think they should overlap: I think it should be, true womenâs film (woman director), and general womenâs film (male director, female focus/themes)âŚ. Itâs like, true cinnamon, vs just, cinnamon, rightâŚ. Anyway.Â
(the last 25 minutes before credits roll)Â
WowâŚ. No.Â
That, plus: pseudo-womanâs film, kinda covers it, rightâŚ.Â
Itâs like: woman has her own unique place in patriarchy, right: a special little place of inferiority, rightâŚ.Â
Until: something bad happens, so that she can be reminded of the truth: that she is not and cannot be capableâthat men, are everythingâŚ.Â
(snaps fingers) Iâll teach this to the children: Iâll call it, âfollowing the LightââŚ.
~Good thing weâve arrived in the future, rightâŚ. (rolls eyes) That, or this trainâs engine just blew out, rightâŚ. (chuckles)âŚ. No, really: weâve arrived in the futureâwhy, itâs 2013âŚ. Weâll look back, and say, Wow, that was the First Day of Tomorrow, rightâŚ.Â
(eyes flutter with contempt) Well, anyway.Â
Itâs wasnât awful-awful, I guess, but yeah. Forgettable in the extreme.Â
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The California Kid
Posted : 3 months, 1 week ago on 29 July 2024 11:46 (A review of The Karate Kid)So, yeah: I mean, it does promise to be a better movie than âRockyâ, right, (although that is how I found it: same director; Iâd hate to write somebody off after 90 minutes of exposure to them, right)ââRockyâ was some serious sucking up, rightâ[edit] and yeah: the title character kid, does seem like a bit less like the Generic White American, than I was expecting, right. He lives with a single mother; heâs sour; he isnât gleeful, just to be within the literal state borders of California, rightâŚ. I think Iâve seen worse than this, right. [edit ends]Â
[And yeah:] I know that people get tired of hearing me mouth off about a John Tolkien, right: (smiles) But [edits] Eh: Iâm in a good moodâforget about it. [edit ends].Â
âŚ. Yeah, better than âRockyâ, or the Peter Jackson Saga, you know: just like I thoughtâŚ. Better than I thought, actually. Itâs cute; itâs subtleâŚ. God, Iâm actually watching a movie: and I donât feel like Iâm being indoctrinated by the Fun-Loving SS, you knowâŚ. The fascist âpartyâ, you knowâŚ.Â
God, the karate guy is an Asian repairman, right! Gosh, why donât I learn how to repair things! Itâs a useful skill! Girls like it better than fucking military history trivia night, right?âŚ.Â
âŚ. You know, for a basic story, this is not a bad romance plot: pretty girl, of course; she likes how the guy looks, not that he fucking purchases her for sex slavery and drudgery, (1); thereâs light crudeness from the guys for realism, but the hero is relatively decent, âbecause guys should be decent, not âboysââ (2); they bond over soccer, a sport played by both boys and girls (3).Â
Itâs really fully non-terrible, right.Â
âŚ. And the antagonist is (a) a human being and not an âorcâ, right: âthis year Iâll behave right in school; Iâll changeâ; even though he immediately (b) embodies the fault of male possessiveness, an actual problem in the world, right.Â
âŚ. âThe call to adventure: a feud with somebodyâs bully ex-boyfriend, entirely competent.Â
âimplied that studying from books is possible, but personal instruction is preferable (+)Â
âthe hero tries to buy the girlâs affections, even though he has no money and she likes him, even when he appears foolish (-)Â
âa military veteran might be an antagonist (or your teen antagonistâs teacher) (+)Â
âyour mom, a woman, might become a manager, but that doesnât really do anything for you (-)Â
âyou can talk about girls with your mom, albeit in this absurd âblonde is beautifulâ kind of way (+)Â
Itâs funny how I feel like Iâm scoring a baseball game or something, but it is very simple, very cute, and very mixed: all three.Â
âŚ. âI donât understand the rules.âÂ
âGet off my case.âÂ
He does seem to blame the girls/women in his life, for getting beaten up by the other male, right. I wonder if the Mysterious Asian Man can help with that, right? (They can borrow the Time Machine from Back to the Future and watch âCrazy Rich Asiansâ, right, learn about gender issues.)Â
He is a bit like a typical whiny pop music male, almost: less tough than other males, whiny, demanding and/or avoidant with girls, right. (chuckles) And thatâs what makes him beautifulâhe doesnât know heâs beautiful. (winks) (laughs)Â
Iâm not sure what this tells about the director; I donât know how America wants us to see it, right.Â
âŚ. Visualization for Gardening as a Hobby by Mr. Miyagi (thumbs up)Â
âŚ. The Halloween Dance plus the fightÂ
That was all pretty weird, lolâŚ. Pretty, weirdâŚ. (laughs, shrugs) But Iâll allow it.Â
âŚ. This is actually a pretty good movie. Much better than those British Empire Hero movies, rightâŚ. Growing up, I didnât realize what an important supporting character the girl is, or how itâs actually a more-or-less credible look at American racism, right. (Which I guess tells you something about my life growing up, right?)
âŚ. And there is such a thing as physical learning, right. The way that the karate school teacher carries himself, right: that says a lot more about American racism than any crazy thing they can have him have them say, right: or any label you could put on him, or any way I could describe it with words. Itâs just sorta the way he carries himself. Itâs not the shape or color of his face: but itâs in his body, like some sort of toxin from processed meat or something, right.Â
âŚ. ~Itâs more about the fight than the victory, kid. The victory is giving it heart, giving it fight, not the result. ~translated into fluent vernacular English, lolÂ
Itâs too bad that the California Kid got three movies, and the girl, the so-called Next California Kid, right, (needs a girl singer-songwriter song about liars, lol), only got oneâŚ. Although a number of years later, they started making Karate Kid movies with prominent Black talent, rightâŚ.Â
But aside from that, itâs not a bad story. It really isnât, rightâŚ. (sighs) Life is strange. It really isnât about the result, you know.Â
âŚ. And now weâre into the âtraining scene(s) segment(s), just like âRockyâ, lolâŚ. Kinda better than Rocky, kinda the sameâŚ.Â
I like the idea of commitment being the âdealâ though, right. Karate-craft, if you will, any craftâŚ. You decide what you do in life: but you decide to do it well, right.Â
âŚ. (narrating to himself) I mean, sure, I coulda told her my mentor had my back, but I figure itâs more of a male thing to be a lying macho pig: and then smile, you know. Yeah, the Smiling AmericanâŚ.Â
And then, wow: 1980s white middle class parents; thatâs roughâŚ. Thatâs just a lot, right.Â
And yeah: itâs all fun and games, until someone makes a joke about money, right. âMake joke, money: no forgive. America. Hai!â (the other Japanese guy heâs gossiping with considers this carefully, while silently stirring tea, right)Â
âŚ. Itâs hilarious how learning Asian fighting culture is the same as learning to be a repairman, right.Â
(John G. Avildsen) Imagine what we could do if only we believed in ourselves, (accidentally says out loud) and all that other shit, people pretend to believe, etcetera, etceteraâŚ.Â
âWhat do you suppose the action step associated with that would be?â
(John A.) (writing check) (looks up) Iâm sorry, what was the question?Â
Although I have to admit, I do like them better when they pretend to try, right. âBalance good. Karate good. Everything good.â Everything good: thatâs a change of pace, right; not something Rocky would say, rightâŚ.Â
Although, yeah: itâs also hilarious that, even though there are occasionally movies about white guys beating the crap out of Black guys, rightâdid this guy ever make a boxing movie, right?âwhen white guys decide to become pacifists, itâs almost always because people of color have entered the chat, so to speak, omgâŚ.Â
~and omg: white middle class 1980s fathers, holyâŚ. Wow! (shakes head) We should call the United Nations, right? Being-rights have been violated; (Hollywood Japanese-English) Horse have right. Horse choose, right. Horse no want father, take mate away. Hai! (bows)Â
âŚ. (the cover) Did they really dress the protagonist in white, and the antagonist in black? Wow: anti-racism in 1984, right: anti-racism, with a winkâŚ.Â
I have kinda a long sitting, for me, if I were to finish it: but I feel like shit; maybe I could get it all inâŚ. I do, though: I feel almost physically ill, because I finally figured out the lies Iâve told about love: wow: figuring out your life = bad decision, lolâŚ. Yeah: when life is hard, entertainment-propaganda helps, omfgâŚ.Â
(starts sitting) (Mr. Miyagi: teaching/humiliating/laughing uproariously)Â
Bro: God is a karate teacher: I am not joking, right now. Okay.Â
âŚ. âIâll decide if we dance, thanks. Iâm bigger than you are.âÂ
If there were any justice in the world, it wouldnât have taken them ten years to make Karate Girl: the Movie, and there would have been a goddamn sequel, right.Â
âŚ. (Karate Kid: Stolen Date, Stolen Kiss)Â
That shouldnât have to happen, right. She wouldnât even have to win the fight with her ex-boyfriend, like in fucking boxing-match-scores terms, right. All she has to do is embarrass him until security arrives, and then, when security arrives, whatever happens: nobody is going to be bloody dancing, right.Â
But nobody teaches girls how to take up space, right.Â
âŚ. (drinking with his dead wife)Â
That was a great fucking scene. I know itâs only âThe Karate Kidâ: but that one sceneâwas outstanding. Film matters.Â
âŚ. And Daniel has a friend. Itâs good.Â
âŚ. (shaming the disloyal rich girl)Â
OMGâŚ. Just stopâŚ. (And on and on: the reconciliation) Just stop being, an American male, you knowâŚ. (shakes head) I just hate how thatâs what theyâre being told to acceptâyou know, by, (DVD), John G. Avildsen, right: why would anyone want to accept that, right? Wouldnât anybody in that situation want to have a little self-respect?âŚ. (he lets her drive: but he tells her how to drive) God, thatâs how my dad is with his second wife, right; it irritates the shit out of meâŚ. Itâs likeâŚ. Excuse me, I exist? Please act like people, both of you, thanks?âŚ. (chuckles) Itâs like, no one can take that forever, you know. Eventually you become a bad person, you know?Â
âŚ. Itâs like âThe Power of Oneâ book, right. I suck; Iâm crapâŚ. Just kidding: Iâm the god of war, (cranks music, fighting montage fast-forwards, right).Â
âŚ. (montage ends) Iâll admit it: fighting is amusingâŚ. The Morrigan (I asked her through tarot, lol) was right, that one time: it has its place, even in meâŚ. Itâs funny, American football is over the top, it doesnât seem real, so it doesnât bother me; but soccer itâs like, they really hurt each other, and it seems real, you knowâŚ. But itâs like: learning a lesson, rightâa physical lesson. This is how you survive, you knowâŚ. I donât know how to explain it.Â
âŚ. (the final part) Itâs a weird storyâŚ. Not a bad story, though. Better than the âPower of Oneâ, book, thoughâŚ. The internet rumors must have been right: there was a lot of illegal stuff about those fights at the endâŚ.Â
There is a lesson. I donât know that I know it in wordsâŚ. Itâs likeâŚ.
Itâs like, the lesson is, youâre still standing at the end of it, you know. You donât feel sorry for yourself. Pride, you know. Pride is a dangerous, necessary, thing, you knowâŚ.Â
âŚ. Although it is curious: how they showed you how it would have been if he had âlostâ, right: very much losing with an asterisk on his loss, and the other guyâs win, right; and no one even suggested, that there was any dishonor in it for Daniel, that being the âendâ, right. Itâs really not a bad movie: not uncommon, but nothing seriously dishonorable about it, in that sense. Very competent.Â
âŚ.. After-note: And I swear to god and Fate: when I was finishing editing the review for auto-mis-corrects, right: this was the song playing:Â
âAnd theyâll tell you now youâre the lucky one;Â
Yeah, theyâll tell you now youâre the lucky one:Â
Can you tell me now youâre the lucky one?Â
Oh, oh, ohâŚ.Â
It was a few years later, I showed up here,Â
And they still tell the legend of how you disappear:
How you took the money and your dignity and got the hell out!
They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere,Â
Chose the, rose garden over Madison Square:Â
And it took some time, but I understand it nowâŚ.Â
Cause now my name is up in lights:
But I think you got it rightâ
Let me tell you now, youâre the lucky one!Â
Let me tell you now, youâre the lucky one!Â
Let me tell you now youâre the lucky one: oh, oh, ohâŚ.â
And that is not from some bloody country album, rightâŚ. But yeah: for me, the gods are entirely worthy of worshipâbecause they explain things to me, right; a god is just like a director; the divine art is juxtaposition, right: it is just like making filmâŚ.Â
~But yeah, this movie is fine. Itâs not really a lie; what more do you rationally hope for, right?Â
âŚ. But yeah: itâs funny, the body is a lesson, right. Words have importance, butâŚ. I mean, it is true that the Cobra Kai head coachâs character is revealed at the end, through his behavior (speech), right. But itâs there in his kinda body-speech as soon as heâs introduced. Not his verbal speech, to the same extent. Some people say âno mercyâ, but they donât mean immorality by it. They mean no pity, no patronizing, no weakness: be strong, right. The presence of honor is often ambivalent from the analysis of rationality and words. But the way he holds himself: you know, on some level, even if you donât realize it consciously, that heâs saying, âI will break the rules, if itâs the only way to âwinââ, right. No one is really surprised by his behavior, and that is largely because of his body-speech, right.Â
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About A Girl
Posted : 3 months, 4 weeks ago on 10 July 2024 06:52 (A review of Hanna)(Two Towers Rohan King Guy) So, it has come to this. Jo March vs Galadriel, with the Time Travelerâs Wifeâs Husband guy: an epic space opera without singing, directed by ~Joe Wright~, Joe Wright. (shakes head, to facilitate thought, then continues) You have so much talent, JW: such a big, Big brainâŚ. You have shown that England can hide her tyranny, in the world of Gen Xâand, perhaps, beyondâŚ. (totally awesome delivery) But can you bring the people, justice, as well? (looks at the camera like heâs the King of Rohan, which, of course: he is!) Whatever happens: I will tell the people, the truth! (puts on helmet, mounts horse, etc.)Â
âŚ. (Jo March/Artemis vs the, reindeer, I guess)Â
That girl can run fast, bro.Â
âŚ. Father Mars is a tough guy.Â
âŚ. Such a quiet movie, right. Warriors need a lot of quiet time. Time to commune with the Spirit of Death and the Eternal. (nods)Â
âŚ. It is a sort of patriarchy, right. Woman is superior to wild beast; man is leader of (superior to) woman, right.Â
Although obviously itâs an unusual flavor of patriarchy. (Much like much of Greek mythology and all that.)Â
Of course, the actual learning is quite pedantic: it would be a lot better if they ~were~ musing on The Nature of Life and Death, thanâŚ. School-crap, you know. Which is the right answer to my meaningless question? A, B, C, D, or E? Iâm bigger than you, you know: you have to answer my ridiculous questions!Â
lol. Good timesâŚ. They say. âThese are the best years of your life.â ~(look of abject fear), lolÂ
âŚ. (deliberates) I donât know. I mean, she has the Grimmâs Fairy-Tales German picture-book, juxtaposed with, be prepared to wake up and fight your father play-acting the assassin, right, butâŚ. Why? Why be a spy? Why ~not~ just (carefully memorized details of non-spy cover life), right?Â
It seems like the earlier you introduce motive, the more time you leave yourself toâŚ. Twist it round and round, and be deceived, and reinvent it, right?âŚ. Nobody JUST practices thwarting assassination attempts, just for the hell of it, right. That would be crazy.Â
âŚ. (factoids vs the girl) OMG, did you seriously bring only a goddamn encyclopedia set, and not Shakespeare, or some real book, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. Sheâs very passive, in a certain, way, Artemis. Itâs like, she can will a death-battle with a woman, but she canât even get cross with her father, rightâŚ.Â
(patriarchs describing the movie over an expensive dinner, lol) âItâs brilliant!â âBravo!â, etcâŚ. ~lolÂ
âŚ. So Athena is going after ArtemisâŚ.Â
But yeah: Iâve heard about warrior stoicism, but this is cray cray, dog: battle of the statues, rightâŚ. (smirk) Course, thatâs what people think that the gods are, right. Statues for Lord Granthamâs estate, noâŚ.Â
âŚ. I donât understand why you would do that, if your idea was âstay and wait to get capturedâ, rightâŚ. VeryâŚ. Unlike Middle Earth (original sense: not the Upper or the Lower World), right, very teenager-y; it doesnât seemâŚ. Real.Â
(shrugs) Itâs better than Joeâs movies âPanâ and âCyranoââŚ. But not by much.Â
âŚ. Sheâs surprised that thatâs how it worked out. Is sheâŚ. Not well? Was there a triggering incident? It seems like there was no triggering incident.Â
(Joe Wright) (annoyed) Just wait: Iâm gonna wait until the last five minutesâthen I explain everything. Itâll be like a five minute movie, with an hour and a half plus set-up. Capisce?Â
~Iâm not one of your operatives; I donât speak French. (laughing)Â
âŚ. Itâs very, external, right; (external = male, lolâŚ. Joe!). Like, itâs âAbout a Girlâ, right; (is Hugh Grant in it?), but itâs likeâŚ. Like, itâs a guy, a very masc-y guyâŚ. Putting the girl through his corn grinder, rightâŚ.Â
Joe Wrightâs movies: I think a safe assumption might be: theyâre always interesting to watch, basically, but theyâre never good. Never THAT good, anywayâŚ.Â
This is like, Joe Wright being a man, basically: he needs this girl to put under a microscope, to do that, rightâŚ. And I love the man, sometimes; the man is like wind, and fireâŚ.Â
But the man also likes to run this computer program in his head, right, like: âWarning: danger. Do not become involved with lifeâ, basically.Â
âŚ. (running around with a gun) The story doesnât seem âcompellingâ to me, as the trite designation has it: (not for lack of trying to compel, right)âbut Joe Wright moviesâI donât know exactly who is responsible for these things, but I guess ultimately itâs him, in the visual sense, they are always very visually compelling, I thinkâŚ. Always like expensive decor, (that somehow is appropriate for a man, right)âŚ. Always very visually appealing: always in this, âJoe Wrightâ kind of way, right.Â
It has entertainment value, I would certainly say.Â
âŚ. Very visual movies. Like one of those masc-y people, who either silently dread or almost visually loathe chit-chat, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. (trying to sound like a trite reporter) Weâve never been this divided, as a gendered population, right. (beat) What I mean is, weâve always always been this dividedâŚ. (rambles on)Â
âŚ. Itâs like, this girl obviously had something psychiatric going on with her, (maybe she is German, right, and/or an encyclopedia, and/or mentally ill), and theyâre not even trying to get inside her head.Â
(Joe Wright) (shhh) Weâre gonna have some more aesthetic-type scenes: promise.Â
âŚ. (chuckles) Itâs like sheâs too masculine to be a spy; Iâm going to have to tell Hermes about this girl. OrâŚ. Well, I feel like the Morrigan wouldnât find her amusing. They find the whole thing a littleâŚ. Off. They donât have the same sense of humor, Hermes has about everything.Â
âŚ. Like, all the characters are too much, right. Thereâs like the mentally ill girl, the office bitch girl, and the teen idol fan girl, but theyâre allâŚ. Stretched, you know. Theyâre all, too much, you know. Theyâre not real people. Theyâre not real girls. Theyâre some manâs caricatures of what girls are, right.
âŚ. So many caricaturesâŚ. Itâs like: an endless juxtaposition of caricatures, rightâŚ. If it was ironic, it would be quite funny. I donât think it is funny, though: this movie really believes that this, is the way it is, rightâŚ. Thatâs the funny thing about propaganda: itâs only propaganda if you believe it. Stop believing it, you hit it big in comedy, rightâŚ. But then, you have to give up feeling serious, right. A sort of illness, seriousnessâŚ.Â
âŚ. Although the funny thing is: itâs not an adventure, because itâs not fun. Itâs a comedy-drama, an observational piece. Itâs like F. Scott Fitzgerald, as a movie, where people die, rightâŚ. Itâs not like The Ballad of Azog the Unlikely, right: THAT was an adventure; you were meant to have FUNâŚ. This is like, âOh, a girl; girls are weird/differentâŚ. Let me put my thinking cap on, so I can figure out this strange extraterrestrial being, rightâŚ.â (chuckles) So othering.Â
âŚ. (checks movie lists) Yes, itâs like âBy the Seaâ (2015), only people die and it doesnât make sense, as like, an othering-tactic, rightâŚ. Itâs not like LOTR, at all, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. Itâs like, I donât know if we were in the same class and I missed a day, or maybe this was somebody I knew from work, but one time when my middle name was Azog, (I was unlikely, right)âI think it was at work, at Pathmark, in like the late 2000s, I was, 20 maybeâwhen youâre 20 youâre unlikely, right, youâre Azog, right, (if male, lol)âand anyway I was talking to this girl in a good class at school what she was learning, and it was about âotheringâ: making someone else alien, ~other~, and not like, another actor, (in the non-movie/stage sense), right: not another one who doesâjust, ~other~, rightâŚ. And itâs funny: because thatâs Exactly how I treated her, right. You are so smart! So smart, so different! (I wonât tell you about your hair cut, but youâre sure not like me; right!)Â
Itâs like: wasnât I smart, tooâŚ.?âŚ. lol?âŚ.Â
I canât explain it.Â
âŚ. The soundtrack isnât bad, exactly, but itâs this one-trick stuff that only plays when shit is going down. If what passes for social interactions, (perhaps an important part of being a spy?) is happeningâŚ. Silence.Â
âŚ. âIâm going to go now.âÂ
âOkay.â
At least, one scene, in this damn movie, was almost well done, at least by the protocols of this mad dash theyâve set up, right.Â
âŚ. âThis is the sandman.âÂ
The German nightclub/assassin dude is a caricature, like all of the characters, rightâŚ. But he grows on you.Â
No doubt.Â
âŚ. (people speaking German)Â
(smirks) People shouldnât speak German; it makes them sound too educatedâŚ. Thatâs my considered opinion, hahaha.Â
âŚ. âDo you have any children, lady?Â
âNo, because Iâm a heartless bitch. Iâm an antagonistic character; the audience isnât supposed to like me. In these days, Man needs cautionary talesâŚ. To be toldâŚ.Â
âŚ. The reference to actually going to some kind of Grimmâs Fairy Tale House in Berlin seems extremely contrived and generic, forced, you knowââwe are girls, we like (strew of facts about Jakob Grimm or some crazy guy)ââbut 95% of that sceneââWe donât know who you are, Hanna! But we are both girls! We are friends!ââis SURPRISINGLY good, for this movie, and Joe Wright, you know.Â
âŚ. (lots of action later)Â
Well, next sitting itâll be over, right: time for a little re-cap. Life lessons:Â
âMen are bad.Â
âGenetic engineeringâŚ. Action scenesâŚ. Ah: go with the first one.Â
lol: and I donât mean that men are bad because they punch you in the face and shoot you with guns. Most men donât do that. (Although it can be a very useful device in a story, right.) But yeah: men are badâŚ. Because they donât see the truth, right.Â
(Joe Wright) I understand what girls are like!Â
~Where do you start with that, right?âŚ.
Still, it is amusing to see how something as contrived and irrational as an action scene can sortaâusually just, sorta, I feel likeâbe part of an entertaining and modestly not bullshit whole, rightâŚ. I mean, you come downstairs to eat Cheerios or whatever, and people are watching a movie, an action scene: itâs likeâŚ. What gods-forsaken bullshit is this, right.Â
(shrugs) I donât know. It is what it is. Which is full of lies, basically, about the human personality, butâŚ. But one of the things hoomi does, is lie, right?Â
âŚ. (walks by book of quotations) (opens) I hope itâs by a woman! (Itâs a quote by a famous male poet, about a fictional woman, and the quote is that her fathers from many generations back, or whatever: way on back, generation after generation, were all rich)
(nods) Men are bad, lolâŚ. I am not a loyalist, my friendsâŚ. Iâm a spy! A-hahahaâŚ.Â
âŚ. But yeah: the whole father-daughter thing is kinda weird. I mean, they donât even talk, practically, they just fight, theoretically together, so itâs like the maximum of masc-y emotional deadness, and not closeness, right. But Joe does want Hanna to be ~loyal~ to her father, right: even if she canât be close to himâŚ. I donât know. Iâll never have kids, but of course, who, what male, right, wouldnât want to have a lovely young female growing up, who has loved (and felt, loyal?) to him since the instant she came into existence, rightâŚ. But it isnât good for her, even though itâs a sweet deal for him, it seems like to me. In an age when female individuals and female culture is devalued and its contribution to human consciousness is minimized: hereâs Joe Wright saying, be loyal, little girl, to your father, the captain of the patriarchal familyâand feel utterly alienated from the evil bitch feminist who represents all powerful women, especially that you arenât connected to by the bands of âfamilyâ, that institution that everyone praises and no one thinks about critically, or asks to see a balance sheet about, right.Â
âŚ. The last sittingâ (Joe Wright) (looks at watch) I should explain what the movie is aboutâŚ.Â
I found the emotional content especially sparse and nonsensical in that last thirty minutes. Lots of actionâŚ. And I donât see the ending leading to what weâre implying that it means, right.Â
But yeah: I just kinda watched through: I waited until the very end of the sitting to write, because there was less, that merited discussionâŚ. And: to some extent, I was just kinda grateful, or, almost: itâs hard to say. Iâm glad, almost, that we made a movie about a girl, right. Women are beautifulâand theyâre beautiful all the timeâŚ. And believe it or not, theyâd be beautiful, even without kitschy anti-feminism, and weirdo hyper-masculinity, and weirdo anti-abortion conspiracy theories, rightâŚ. Deluded pro-family-ism, rightâŚ. Women would still be beautiful without all that: because women are beautiful, all the time, right.Â
They are even beautiful, when the men in the shadows, want them dead, right. Dead, like an animal. An inferior form of life, weâre told.Â
(I suppose the real kick in the head, is that women would be beautiful, would be womenâŚ. Without men, right. {smiles} We think that weâŚ. {shakes head} I donât know what we think.)Â
(shakes head) I take it back: itâs just as bad as âPanâ, right. We like white girls when weâre in Hawaii, or some crazy place like that. When we get to Fairy Tale Haus in Berlin, Germany, we tighten the screws, a little.Â
(shrugs) And, it was also, in addition to being a movie about What Men Think of Women, it was also, in a certain sense, if youâll forgive the deluded optimism, alsoâŚ. a movie about a woman, right.Â
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The Lies You Expect To Hear
Posted : 4 months, 1 week ago on 2 July 2024 03:34 (A review of Lilo & Stitch)Captain Gantu (Kevin Michael Richardson) has a great voice. Earth as a âwildlife preserveâ is very funny.Â
Yeah, itâs too bad that by 2002âwow, I was only 13, but I already would have been so deep in pseudo-Nordic myths and exxxtreme boy power stories, right: like, Iâm pretty sure I was done with âHarry Potterâ; I was done with being cute, right: I was a soldier; I was a âkillerâ, lolâŚ. And yeah: even earlier in childhood itâs scary-sad to think the subtle ways I was raised to be, ethnocentric, you know: you shy away from Hawaii, rightâthereâs so many heroes from Rome and Ireland and all those places, rightâŚ.Â
Yeah: itâs an extremely simple story, and they definitely EASE you into it, rightâŚ. But that time in my life would have been a lot better if I could have seen a brown girl on the cover of something, and watched the movie, you know.Â
âŚ. (Wikipedia) Wow, most of the aliens are white except for the cool-deep-voice CaptainâŚ. But Iâm sure the Hawaiian girl, herself, isâŚ. Up, nope, sheâs whiteâŚ. Wow, nobody caught, that, you know: âvoices have color, tooââGraham Greene knew that, and he was an entertainer, not a grey scholarâŚ. Like, according to Wikipedia, NONE of the vanilla critics, it seems, raised the issue of the White Lilo, rightâŚ. They only caught flack for the series continuations in the 2020s, and only because it was live action, rightâŚ. Like, there was very little, and very grey, stony sorta scholarship on white-washing re: Lilo & Stitch, and only if you look for it, and not much comes upâŚ. Like, somebody Should really do something about the racist conditioning of children, right: like, is it so COMPLICATED, that if your whole sell is a Hawaiian girl, you shouldnât be handing a lily-white girl the check, for bleaching the last corner of the imagination that wasnât already white?Â
I mean, why is that so ~hard~; thereâs SO much given to Anglos on the sly; it never even feigns a hard-take, on anything, rightâŚ. Why couldnât there be some sort of limit, you know: decency? Like, why is it so damn HARD to be kind to brown girls? They are literally just like white girls, only say from, the islandsâŚ. And yeah: they come with the baggage of being written out of history. We donât even just ask them to ignore it: we just write them out, right.Â
âŚ. (listens) Yeah, itâs really true: the little red-headâs voice is in the brown girlâs body, rightâŚ. OMGâŚ.Â
I mean, itâs not (subtly) hard-racism, like LOTR, right, but I meanâŚ. Fuck Chris Sanders, right: is everything he does soft racism?âŚ. Racism: for girls!âŚ. I thought we were past this shit, rightâŚ.Â
(chuckles) (shakes head) Iâm obviously not seeing the world the way it is, when I expect to see it healed already, right.Â
âŚ. Crazy superstitious brown girl, (who is actually a ~white~ girl!!), bludgeons the cute Irish chick, literally well within five minutes of being introduced.Â
Cool story, bro. (tries to come up with sarcastic comment, fails) Cool story.Â
âŚ. (the older sister who actually IS voiced by a Hawaiian) Yup, she is ~actually~ from the islands, by ancestry, just like sheâs animated as being, right.Â
Itâs like, before there were the âBridgertonâ-themed Regency romance movies: there wasâŚ. This, right.Â
Yeah.Â
Someone has to make a parody of this, you know; itâs soâŚ. âBut what if a white girl from LA or a white girl from Dallas who can ONLY identify with other white girls and likes LA, and also likes Hawaii, but it is worried aboutâŚ. Worried aboutâŚ.â (mouths, something or another, right).Â
Parody GOLD, just waiting to come into existence, right.Â
âŚ. Wow, letâs see:Â
âBrown girls are bad nurturers
âGovernment social workers, or whatever, are aggressive-looking Black menÂ
âYouâll be wanting to identify with the girl who looks brown, but sounds white, and loves Elvis.Â
(likeâŚ. wtf?) Does Elvis deserve this kind of treatment? Is this what we see in him?Â
âŚ. I canât quote some of these lines, omg.Â
But yeah: itâs certainly a more credible threat, than Thorin dreaming of putting a spear in the chest of Azog the Unlikely, you knowâŚ.Â
âŚ. Mocking âVoodooâ: like, they canât be bothered even to look up a term that actually applies to Hawaiian shamanism, right: all epithets are the same; theyâre not Italian, evenâŚ. Well, I guess weâll just have to ship her off to get indoctrinated by a nice white church: after all, itâd make them look good! 1 frightened Hawaiian girl (who isâŚ. White?), and 104 white people = a community open to all kinds, rightâŚ. As long as you know when to sit down, shut upâŚ. And be normal, rightâŚ. I mean: can you imagine being a social worker, of any demographic, right, watching this, and itâs likeâŚ. This is what they want me to do? They want me to beat people into line?âŚ. And then they can throw me under the bus, to cover it up! (chuckles) Itâs like Nixon shit, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. Yeah, I mean: this is why so many women of color work as maids, practically, you know: assisted living staffâŚ. Group home service coachesâŚ. God, I canât even IMAGINE what an actual cleaning service (havenât used one!) or freaking, an English country house in the 21st century would be like, rightâŚ. Itâs likeâŚ. I mean: and then you see them in that situation, people resent it, like: Iâm not getting good labor, Iâm not associating with a âgood populationâ, rightâŚ.Â
God, itâs just impossible to imagine what could feed into that, right?Â
âŚ. I just canât get over that voice, and that faceâŚ.Â
At least Peter Jackson is honest, right: justâŚ. Veiled.Â
Theyâre the same.Â
âŚ. Wow, Stitch sounds like, Japanese, even though I know heâs actually voiced by the white director, rightâŚ. Is there like a name for that? Yellow peril? Yellow facing? It has to be some kind of pattern, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. They even convinced me that their antipathy to the environmentalists/greens is real.Â
Now, itâs perfect.Â
There are no words.Â
âŚ. Iâm glad I donât watch movies all in one go: this is like, trying to eat uncooked tofu, you knowâŚ. Itâs like, just, white, and, inconsumable, you knowâŚ.Â
âLetâs experience a different culture!âÂ
Being a propagandist means never having to say what you really mean, right.Â
âŚ. Itâs like, I want to love this country: this is where Iâm from, right. Iâm not going to be working with bloody British or Irish or Italian fairies; Iâm going to working with the bloody fairies of the goddamn Jersey ShoreâŚ. But itâs like: is it really that hard, to understand that demeaning women of color is wrong?Â
(confused look) Itâs so complicated; I mean, I didnât like all that trigonometry stuff: I figure Iâll just stick with what I know, right.Â
(elderly man voice-over narrator) âAnd he almost despaired.âÂ
âŚ. Yeah: thatâs heavy. I mean, obviously, some it is explained by history, in the sense of elections/events in the news. This was 2002, the year before, 15 Saudis and 4 other Arab Muslims had committed a large-scale suicide attack in New York, (most memorably), right: so in a lot of peopleâs âmindsâ, the question loomed large: does this implicate the Hawaiian Voodoo community, right? (If there is such a thing, you know.) (Itâs like: how do you respond to that? Itâs like, the response should be, really: Whatâs your plan, Doctor?~RightâŚ.? I mean, how do you even startâŚ. âBut you donât understand, Dr. Italiano, another man of that, exact, same, height, raped my daughter and killed my wife!â (Dr. Italiano takes off his glasses, like, There are some rough things I go through in my life, listening to this.)). But âHow to Train Your Dragonâ, from the better part of a decade later, is recognizably similar, if less obviously pernicious: because after all, he likes white people, right; he can afford to portray more of them as good, basically. But itâs fundamentally the same stance towards life, right: âsoftâ oppressionâsoft ethnocentrism; soft sexism, you knowâŚ.Â
Itâs like: Iâm telling you how I feel, you know. When itâs OBVIOUS: like itâs, âThe Propagandistâ, right, (âThe Propagandist IV: Colonies in Unlikely Placesâ), you know: itâs pretty ~~easy~~, for me: at least; thereâs so much Capricorn on my chart, you knowâ I want to reconcile with people, and play soft ball, despite my fiery-Aries and weirdo-Aquarius elements, rightâŚ. And itâs not like the most militant aspects of it are directly are me, personally, just the overflow and universal/environmental effects: and of course, thereâs pride: I donât like that part of my success in whatever I end up being good at, is a result ofâŚ. You know, Chris fucking Sanders, rightâŚ.Â
But yeah: if the lie isnât ~~successful~~, right: it can be EASY to watch propaganda from an amused, detached place, and find it entertaining, in its own way, rightâŚ. But if they call it, you know, âThis Time Iâm Being Good: Promiseâ, and youâre stupid enough to, buy, that, rightâŚ. I mean, I feel rattled. Iâm gonna have to try and calm down, nowâŚ.Â
Because that was a lotâŚ. I mean, some of it just history in the sense, of âwhite supremacy: alive and well in the 21st centuryâ, rightâŚ. Like, âyou remind me of a white girl: that means you must be okâ, is like: like, the nicest thing, youâll ever hear, from someone not of your own kind, rightâŚ.
âŚ. You know: it even happens at the library, you knowâlike a white guy does something thatâs a little rude, and technically against the rules, and a Black guy gets visibly irritated by it, and asks him to stop: and the white guy just, I mean the attitude is, you know: Iâm white, youâre not really here for me, epithet. Itâs all me. And if you put it in print in a certain way, itâs like, the Black guy was more rude, from a certain interpretation, but the white guy was like: the calm, clinical contempt of like: Iâm white. Youâre not here for me, blackie. This is all me. ~And although I did not tell that guy, most of what I thought about him: I let him know that I was NOT on his side: and then I walked away.Â
You donât tell strangers what you really think of them, right: but you donât have toâŚ. Support them, and be on their team, right.Â
~Although the ironic thing is, back when I didnât say normal, supportive small talk things to strangers, the other 499/500 times, right, it just would have been like: fold, and support White America, you know.Â
âŚ. But yeah: when I said âuncooked tofuâ, my mind was on how literally unchewable it is without some kind of taste treatment, right: it would be like if mud was technically safe to eat, right. (Although youâd never know, after somethingâs been done to it. Some soy and tofu products even taste like dessert, often while being relatively nutritious.) But yeahâŚ. Itâs a curious intersection, how tofu would also be like the literally crazy-white thing, white in appearance, that âmost people in this countryâ, (wink) would reject out of hand as being foreign, weird, and not normal, right.Â
But for HawaiiansâŚ. I donât know, Iâm sure theyâre ok with it. Weâre not literally under orders to shoot them, soâŚ. I mean, yeah: the world is just so different, for us Anglos, you know. Weâre just so specialâŚ.Â
Itâs difficult to appreciate, really. You have to really, look a certain way, to appreciate it, fully.Â
We are literally, that special, no.Â
âŚ. I hate to talk about âartâ or whatever, right, but: we are all part of something bigger than ourselvesâitâs not the white race or colonialism or religious oppression, rightâŚ. But people look at you and see something when they look at you, (the ârelativeâ), and  they see and/or form an opinion of, what you came into this world to be (something âless relativeâ, right). And if you come and you go and it was enough to tell peopleânot even the worst lies, right: but the lies they expected to hear, you knowâthen, in so far as it lies with you, people consider what you came to provide: and they donât even think it can be done, because they have a counter example. So much of this is unconscious: itâs easy to get abstract about âthe way you treat peopleâ, but to such a large extent, the human world is a social world, and so little of what we give people, has to do with the conscious stated, or even explicitly owned, dogma, you know. The âlogicââŚ. But yeah: live your life, so that people think that what was yours to do, is at least, ~possible~, right. That matters, sometimes more than the literal and practical material effects of our actions: although I consider these more important than people sometimes assume, who dream of heavenly realms, right.Â
Just to rob someone of a possibility, as far as it lies with youâand the opposite of thatâthat is so much greaterâŚ. Certainly there are things no law observes, and no paymaster rewards, right: no one in the system, right.Â
Quite to the contrary, right.Â
âŚ. Although I will say: when I feel now a feeling of âracismââusually a feeling of inappropriate compromise, you know; helping the racists clean up their image, so that they can go on crushing people, with a song in their heartâthereâs less of a feeling of âguiltâ, you know: like I just feel âstupidâ, you knowâŚ. not doing what I set out to do, not acting smart. I donât have the same sense that I have been (or should be! Omg!) sacrificing myself, rightâŚ. Itâs more a matter of waste. Wasting my life-energy.Â
And then I can kinda come back, to the question of managing risk, if you follow.Â
âŚ. Ok, and Iâm backâhopefully this time itâs only the lies I expect to hearâŚ. Yup, brown people with an Elvis fetish; I remember thatâŚ.Â
âŚ. And Hawaiian culture can be entertaining: only not as muchâŚ. And the magical brown girl with a white voice, yup.Â
âŚ. Anyway, I canât remember exactly how I expected this to be: childrenâs comedy (keep the word princess out of it; lolâŚ. Actually there are probably some childrenâs comedy movies with zero girls, right), or childrenâs (action!) adventure, rightâŚ. I did think it was going to have some adventure in it, and it does, although itâs mostly over within the first ten minutes or whateverâŚ. They donât really make childrenâs dramas, right: children in a real drama means itâs just an adult movie with a cast below a certain age, right: not âchildrenâsâ: but comedy can be of the more âpureâ or more adventure varieties, right. All stories have setting and themes: although in more âpureâ comedies, it tends to be very much setting and culture-group commentary, than more abstract themes. (In this movie: constantly dragging Hawaii through the mud, right. Iâm not going to make too many more notes about that, unless itâs a real Goebbelsâ goblinsâ grand tour, you know.) But adventure leans more on plot, and âchildrenâs comedyâ more on character as revealed by the subtle. Neither is inherently good or bad. But it does seem like this movie dropped in significant âadventureâ elements: the rabid male alien-dog, or whatever, basicallyâwithout having a serious plot attached, right. I donât mean âdramaâ by seriousâbut like, there is a war in âHow To Train Your Dragonâ, right: itâs a no-holds barred adventureâŚ. Here, there is no plot, really: no strong, organized plot, really. JustâŚ. âWe want to kill your baby dog!â And then later: âokay: we let the baby dog live.â Itâs like a distracted comedy, right: the âaction adventureâ elements drain rather than add energy to the interpersonal volleys (and cultural commentary: althoughâŚ. Well, anyway). Itâs like a comedy that doesnât believe in itself, right. Itâs like: the movie is bleaching the brown girl: but since that doesnât matterâgirls. never. matterâyou knowâŚ. Throw in lasers. It doesnât matter that thereâs no leprechaun gold or dragon, that youâd need a laser. JustâŚ. Make It. Up. (hangs up 90s phone with slam).Â
Right?âŚ.Â
âŚ. Up, we learned a Hawaiian word: Ohana means familyâŚ. It is funny, how family literally is, something you use against your family, right: the concept against the individuals, and you can just throw that in their face, and the non-family stigma is just so overwhelming, that they just have to take it, right.Â
Although obviously individualist cultureâŚ. Itâs probably what gave us a white girl with brown skin, to begin with, right. In the context of our society, it very often acts as a bleaching agent.Â
(shrugs) So, thereâs that, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. So yeah: typical stuffâŚ. Donât give the crazy brown girl time off for her kid; her kid isnât worth it; I have my own kid. This is America. Tell her to get a jobâŚ. But donât hire her: I donât like epithets: I donât want them aroundâŚ. We should hire, Elvis, reincarnatedâŚ. (puts on Hawaiian pop song) But you know, one thing I like about the epithets, (dancing), is: theyâre happy. (song ends; finishes drink) But in the end: you have to punish them. (slams drink down) Life is about shame, not pleasure. Man makes his way through this world: by shameâŚ.Â
(Goebbelsâ goblinâs executive summary, right.)Â
~But if you want to make your own Happy American Family: you know, we expect that of you, of courseâŚ. You know, kinda.Â
What I expected. (nods)Â
âŚ. And back to âadventureââŚ. Although it is still essentially a comedy, since itâs such a Lost Baby Adventure, you know: and gratuitously poorly thought-out, rightâŚ. I mean, realism can be overratedâit can be the imperialism of the scientists, rightâbut to call this implausible, doesnât even begin to cover it, rightâŚ. Itâs just delusion territory, you know. Itâs like, âfeed the kids slop; they wonât know the differenceâ territory, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. Ok, itâs over: wow, that was garbage, lolâŚ. Just: wowâŚ.Â
But I mean: today the group home staff didnât bother to tell us to be sure to shower by X time: and then lo and behold: Hi name is so-and-so, Iâll be listening to masc-y talk radio while I spend an indeterminate long time in your bathroom, repairing the caulkingâŚ. Itâs like: wow, bonus: learned a new word; malus: had to wait until I got to the library to meditateâŚ. Also, hahaâŚ. People are very paranoid about groomingâand I get concern, if not paranoia; I actually read Esquire and fashion books from time to time; I recently discovered CVS sells grooming products and not just candy, nutritions bars, (medicine), books, and magazines, lolâŚ.âbut yeah, people can also  be very inconsiderate about grooming needs, rightâŚ.Â
But yeah: weird day, weird movie; that part was kinda niceâŚ. And eventually they tired of making Hawaii the butt of jokes, right; and we learned, well, not counting aloha, we learned, âohanaâ: âmeans familyâ, and, mahalo, can be used to mean, thank you, among other meaningsâŚ. And there was a very slight dip into Hawaiian pop, even though standard 50s oldies, certainly, and even standard film-classical, arguably, were more importantâŚ.Â
But yeah: (comic Russian accent) Feed child slop. They no notice, difference. (vigorous nodding)âŚ.Â
~ItâsâŚ. patriotic, right? (cynical little laugh)Â
âŚ. (end) And yeah: I hate to interpret my own work for you, like you were all still âbabesâ, as the charming preachers have it, butâŚ. Yeah: thereâs âthe lie you expect to hearâ, ~knowing that itâs a lie~, and âthe lie you expect to hearâ, ~believing it~, right.Â
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A Masculine Journey
Posted : 4 months, 2 weeks ago on 25 June 2024 07:20 (A review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)(Re: Tolkien, etc.)Â
This will probably be a lot of fun, right. Who says that we shouldnât tell twelve-year-old white boys, and people who are twelve year old white boys at heart, that they arenât far more important than they actually are, right?Â
(15 seconds of 3.5 minutes of female screen time in movie) (your mom) Even the smallest white boy can change the future.Â
Tolkien definitely isnât Wagner, right. With Wagner thereâs music, singing, love. In Tolkien a girl is either your weird girlfriend who brags that sheâs Better Than You every time she scores a point against you in basketball, even though she makes 1/5 of the money you doâbecause thatâs just your weird relationship dynamic, rightâor else sheâs your mom; or some kind of composite of the two: Protecter-Mom, right. (3 minutes of the 3.5 minutes of female screen time in the film, lol.)Â
Wagner thought that women were an important part of the reproduction of patriarchy, right; Tolkien just didnât have a use for them, basically. Didnât Tolkien write somewhere that the dwarf population was only 1/3 female, and that the women often didnât get married. âSlow population growth,â he notedâprobably around Valentinesâs Day, right.Â
âŚ. Wagner had forsaking love for the sake of power as a plot point: Tolkien just DID it, you knowâŚ. Although as soon as he married power, he started making noises about a divorce, rightâŚ.Â
But yeah: who says that masc-y white boys canât have fun. Answer: My mentally ill romantic former self of the early 2010s, ironically enough! Itâs ok, though: Iâve grown since then. I know you donât want me to ask for your take on me; I know you donât want me to not know what to say, yet to say it anyway.Â
Itâs ok.Â
But yeah: I agree with the concept of three âHobbitâ movies. Tolkien stories are long and complicated, and movies are short and simple; having three movies to a book like that is EQUITY, homies. Also might give Peter Jackson some leeway to play with it a bit, something that John R.R.T. wasnât known to do, right. âFirst name? Pah! In my day: a man didnât have a first name. Heâs a man, you see?âÂ
I donât, butâŚ. Thatâs ok. Feel no obligation to explain.Â
~But yeah, âThe Hobbitâ could easily be the better of the two stories, once you correct for the issue of length, right. Consider, first LOTR:Â
(Gandalf) Grandson, I want to write a story to make people feel sorry for themselves, maybe get them in church. Any ideas?Â
(Pippin) Grand-dad, just write about an evil magic artifact that âprovesâ that power is evil, and misery alone endureth. Thatâs a very depressing storyâmake lots of people feel sorry for themselves, right. (beat) Be sure to include lots of stuff about how the West is dying, and the East sure to conquer.Â
(Gandalf) (nods) Karate Kid bad; short kid good. (tries to get up, fails) (beat) Iâll just rest here, a while.Â
~There is something about England and littleness, right. When other countries go rogue, they become Greater: Greater Germany, Greater Whatever: and soon, you WILL be a part of it! But the more trad-style England is, the more itâs Little England, you know: does anyone really deserve to be part of England? Can anyone ever TRULY be worthy?âŚ. Like, the little trad English man: little, small, proud, but not too powerful, a little deceitful, and perhaps a little timid, butâŚ. Honest, you know. The honest weak man. Of England.Â
~And of course, much of that remains in âThe Hobbitâ, (or was foreshadowed), but itâs a fundamentally better story, less ruined by what Nietzsche might call âthe taint of moralismâ or something like that. (And yes, yes: I know, Wagner, Nietzsche: donât I know that Germans are a bad sort, that they got kicked out of the white race when they became Hitler, right? âHitler is bad for white supremacy, young man, bad businessâŚ.â Maybe Germans areâŚ. Egyptian, right. Maybe they, used to, walk like anâŚ. ~Iâm sorry. I know not everybody likes all that, you knowâŚ. (your mom) Many of the great songs were written before I gave birth to you. Much that was known of them is lost, for none now live, whoâŚ. (realizes that thereâs no way to end that sentence in a logical, correct way) (waves hands) AnywayâŚ. ~Yeah: âThe Hobbitââweâre literally just talking about killing a dragon and grabbing his stuff, rightâŚ.Â
And many a fine mansion in a magazine was built with dragon-bones, you know; many a wed couple was wed beneath the aegis of his wingsâŚ.Â
I speak of general verities.Â
âŚ. (reads back of DVD) Itâs like a covenâThorin Oakenshieldâs All-Male Coven, rightâŚ.Â
May the Straight White Boy-Straight White Boy Romance, commence. lol.Â
âŚ. And yeah: I donât know how I feel about the Great Enemy of England being the âNecromancerâ right: John T isnât exactly Sunday School education, or Edwardian mannersâwhich probably counts for at least as much in many churches as anything elseâbut yeah, we have Gandalf, the Odinic Christ, right: but thatâs âgoodâ because itâs like the power and nobility of our warrior tribe, and the mystique of primitive masculinity, rightâŚ. âNecromancerâ kinda implies, âpure paganismâ (whatever that means), and reflect the fear of psychic powersâŚ. (horror movie whisper) âhe talks to dead peopleâŚ.âÂ
Basically, it suggests the background essentially being a Folk Christian king, preserving runic lore, or whatever, but also sallying out into the heath to slay the âheathenâ, basicallyâŚ.Â
Iâm not going to go into this: but it is funny how well Marxist memes and Tolkien personnelâpeople, at leastâgo together online, right. Itâs like, would these two people, like each otherâŚ. Would embracing masculinity be enough to bring them together?Â
Yeah.Â
âŚ. OkâŚ.
Letâs see: Music by Howard ShoreârespectâŚ.Â
âŚ. âFrodo, I am a wise old maleâŚ.â Cool. âThe city was peaceful and prosperousâ Weâre taking bets on how long that keeps up, lolâŚ.Â
âAnd where sickness thrives, bad things will follow.â I agree, Socrates. ââŚ. People died.â Yup.Â
Why canât I have another dress, honey. âLong ago, in the dragon times, the dragon Smog came, andâŚ.â Ok, Iâm alive and thatâs enough. Ok. Great. (walks out as he tells the whole twelve hour story)Â
âŚ. Some of these lines are really funny, omgâŚ.Â
âŚ. Who wants to take bets there are no girls in this movie, lolâŚ. Omg, he hides the valuable stuff before parties: guess heâs not married, is heâŚ. Itâs like a trench, only turned into a manor house: no need for girls, thoughâŚ.Â
âŚ. Why Fehu: does he need money?âŚ.Â
But yeah: Iâm always struck my how weird âmy kindâ is, right: the Race of MarsâŚ.Â
âŚ. Life lessons: steal food, lolÂ
âŚ. Iâm glad Iâm not really a male anymore, so to speakâŚ. But yeah: thatâs exactly what happens to me in tarot/rune readings, a lotâŚ. Oh, Fehu means: lots of crap; come take itâŚ. Like, it definitely helps you make sense of the ~past~, rightâŚ. (laughing cat emoji)Â
âŚ. But yeah:Â
Odinic Christ: Do you want an adventure?Â
Bilbo: No.Â
Odinic Christ: Well, screw you; Iâm going to die for you, someday. (carves rune for âgood loot found hereâ) (wanders off, whistling suspiciously)Â
âŚ. Just trying to figure out: (a) why everyone is so pompous; Iâve been through bureaucracy meetings that were more exciting; (b) why this story makes sense: or is it just likeâŚ. âItâs impossibleâŚ. Hahaha, we did it: the writers were on our sideâ (back-clapping), and (c) why does anybody like Gandalf, and what does he do thatâs at all sympathetic; he seems to remind me a âtraitorâ Druid counseling a chieftain how to bring Saxon pagans into line, more than anything else.Â
âŚ. Yeah, I mean: the folk music was good; the idea of a quest that spans more than one lifetime is good; but I just donât like them, you knowâtheyâre just pompous malesâŚ. Up, female hobbit extra in non-speaking role around minute 40: was I wrong? LOLÂ
âŚ. The landscape shots are niceâŚ.Â
âŚ. âAnd then, Azog the AfriââÂ
(Peter Jackson) (waves, ânoâ)Â
âEr, Azog the, Funny-LookingâŚ.âÂ
(Peter Jackson) (gives thumbs up)Â
Or is he like, Irish, or something? Heâs a âpale orcâ, right? Irish people didnât used to be white; the St. Patrickâs Day revelers of today donât know, and donât experience, much either good or bad about any of itâŚ. But yeah, Tolkien didnât like the Irish, did he? He hated the sound of the language. He only liked Old English and Welsh, and most of the Germanic tongues, I guess; you can almost guess from what he thinks of Jane Austen clergyman manners what he thinks of Latin and Greek: although that at least shows bravery; I canât fault him for thatâŚ.Â
âŚ. But yeah: thereâs no political party for me, right, although I do vote. It is what it is. Tolkien-Jackson could be like a political ticket, you know, (if not for nationality, other things like that): although theyâd be about nine days in power, before their followers figured out they werenât BOTH going to get what they wanted, right. Nine days a president, right.Â
âŚ. Yeah, it is a feature you see in French politics, Iâm told: the alliance of the extreme left and extreme right. Maybe âTolkienâ could be president of France, or something.Â
Kink in the knot: death to dagos and frogs; theyâre just not ~moral~ like good old SAXON England, right. Wussy cowards, you know. (shrugs)Â
(pauses) What does the left see in Tolkien, again? This is so confusing, you guys.Â
âŚ. Or maybe Azog is âthe Hunâ, rightâin order to fight WWI Germany, England had to throw it out of the white race, right.Â
âŚ. The Radagast Interlude (although heâs coming back, I guess), is nice: not awful like a lot of it; recognizable as a sort of Druidâthe wizards of pop fiction, rightâand sorta nervous but not too terribly doneâŚ. I suppose that anyone can be nervous, rightâŚ. But yeah, itâs likeâŚ. (Sorting Hat) âSure you donât want your persecute Druids? Persecuting their wizardry would help you growâŚ. But if itâs not the Druids youâll be wanting to kill, I suppose itâll have to beâ (loud voice) WITCHES!âÂ
~Not that âHarry Potterâ isnât common food, you know: a common gulp; drossâŚ. But yeah: that would be like what fantasy stories Really are like, right: children, Christian children, get sorted into groups based on what kind of paganism they want to destroyâŚ. LOLâŚ.Â
âŚ. Yeah, the trolls were funny, rightâŚ. I donât know what itâs supposed to be based on: probably just other mainstream movies and/or bedtime stories, right: âGet the children to sleep! Tell them a story!â âIâve never been outside the village; whatâs ever happened to me?â âMake. Something. Up.ââŚ. Although it is amusing, not like some of itâŚ. I guess there could be creatures harmed by sunlight: there are different names that exist for things like thatâŚ. I donât know if it theyâre supposed to be highwaymen; but they seem tooâŚ. SomethingâŚ. To be anything but a Bed-time storyâŚ. Something, rightâŚ. Yeah, a lot of fantasy stories are B.S., lolâŚ. I wonât make comparisons: I know that the High Tolkien Fanboy Council is seriously considering assassinating me as it isâŚ. But yeah, the trolls are just kindaâŚ. A comedy sketch, almostâŚ. Not real.Â
âŚ. Almost anything is better than Gandalf and Thorin B.S.-ing thoughâŚ. The two big bosses at work, right, likeâŚ. Yeah, itâs like: I am INSPIREDâŚ. I want to work HARDER, rightâŚ. (lol.)Â
âŚ. Letâs see: they made some money; good for themâŚ.Â
Radagast came back; only now heâs more unambiguously a moron, plus also a plot-point dumper, itâs likeâŚ. ? ~I mean, I guess both of those things are inevitable, butâŚ.Â
And yeah: âAnd then, they attract, Negative-Spirit!âÂ
Whatâs the origin of the curse, Peter. Whatâs its nature. Whatâs going on.Â
(shrugs) âWell, you know: plot-points attract paychecksâŚ. All Things Come TogetherâŚ..!âÂ
Uh huh.Â
And yeah: action sequences. Well, that comes with the territory, right.Â
âŚ. Well, anyway: so now we get to see if Italians and Germans can get along: quick, nobody talk about their favorite operaâŚ.Â
âŚ. Yeah, âRivendellâ is pretty, for sureâŚ. Maybe I should go there, lolâŚ.Â
(They donât like the food) Hardcore German patriots, lol: all you need is steak and potatoes; and you donât have to cook the steak, OMGâŚ.Â
âMoon runesâÂ
I donât know if thatâsâŚ. But it is curiousâŚ. Oh, thatâs what I wanted to do: (internet) Letâs see: I was born under a waxing moon, the fourth day of the lunar month, not counting the dark moon; it was also a Friday.Â
âŚ. But yeah, certain things have to happen on certain times. Itâs not like, always just 9-5 Monday-Friday, like we imagine: doesnât matter, and all thatâŚÂ
âŚ. (Azog the Unlikely) what a propaganda villain, rightâŚ. So much, moreâŚ. Than is necessary.Â
âŚ. Up; I was wrong: 1 hr 34 min in: we have a real female character: the Moon-QueenâŚ. (I guess to Germans, Italian=Celtic?âŚ.). I wonder how long this will lastâŚ.Â
(Saruman) Up, well, that was a full minute, I guess, in which female authority matteredâŚ.Â
âŚ. Wow: that was boringâŚ.Â
âŚ. And Galadriel is like: donât forget about your mom, either. Sheâs sad that there isnât a girl whoâs important in this story. Try to play that part down, with the reporters, Gandalf.Â
âŚ. (Gandalf) Some people like, JS Bach, or Wagner, the best: I rather preferâŚ. Ralph Vaughan Williams, you knowâŚ.Â
âŚ. Yeah, although it is funny: thereâs âwarâ and thereâs, âunexplained killingsâ, basically: no need to confuse the two, friend.Â
âŚ. Although yeah: that is one way to deal with social entanglements: canât knock the hustleâŚ.Â
~And itâs like: I mess up the schedule, and then Iâm embarrassed and Iâm trying to figure out how Iâm going to play it right: as it gets worse and worseâŚ. And then itâs over and Iâm here with them and theyâre like, (shrugs), There are a lot of other people I have to kill before I get to you, right.Â
~It is funny how like, the whole diplomacy of everything is determined by how people look: itâs like Americaâyou donât want to look TOO good: but you do NOT want to be, Ugly, rightâŚ. But yeah: blowing a social entanglement could be like, an ~hour~ of âGossip Girlâ, easy: in this show, itâs likeâŚ. ~Hey we got away; itâs overâŚ. ~(shrugs) Sometimes theyâre right, you know.Â
âŚ. (Finally gets the words like the 100th sitting) (150th, lol) âThe pines were roaring, all along the height; trees blazed like torches, filled with light.â (I take it that, means something, lolâŚ.?)
Cool story, bro.Â
âŚ. Itâs interesting how the giants donât give a shit about them; theyâre just fighting each other, and being giants, and their Elemental madness/magic causes chaos for the brave little Vikings, right.Â
Iâll buy that.Â
âŚ. (generic hanging off a cliff/generic insults)Â
Yup. Playing to the base. Solid economics, lol.Â
âŚ. (Bilbo and the watchman) A unusually good scene. Not genius, but for a boysâ adventure story: pretty good.Â
âŚ. (action scenes) For action scenes, this is actually kinda interesting.Â
âŚ. Giving the Goblin Chief around 250 pounds of fat in his neck/chin is kindaâŚ. Itâs lame, you know. Like Peter Jackson is Australian, I think: but itâs like America gobbling up Aussie-dom, right: if heâs got that much fat in his chinâŚ. He should probably, DIE!!! lol.Â
âŚ. (playing mind games with schizophrenics lol)Â
Save yourself and others grief, and do not play mind games with schizophrenics in real life, lol.Â
You would never win at riddles with a schizophrenic, you know: although the two of you would never agree upon the rules.Â
The only thing that would really stand would be emotions, you knowâŚ. You could say, Blah blah blah, Fear!; or blah blah blah: youâre safe! And he might get thatâespecially the fear, maybe not the calm, rightâŚ.Â
But John flexing his Old English riddle-craft skills on the floridly mentally ill: itâs likeâŚ. WOW.Â
And, NO. Also: NO, rightâŚ. OmgâŚ. OmgâŚ. Ok.Â
âŚ. I mean, I realize I wasnât charming as a symptomatic person, right: but you couldnât see my backbone, rightâmy hair was actually rather too full (lazy) rather thanâŚ. Like, is Gollum bald?Â
Can you imagine being a diagnostician: a psychiatrist or psychologist or psychiatric social worker, if it was likeâŚ. âGiven that we can see your backbone, and that youâre not wearing any clothes: weâd like to put you onâŚ. (quickly Googles something)âÂ
Right?Â
âŚ. Odin-JesusâŚ. Is the LightâŚ.Â
~All right: Iâll admit, visually: it looks cool.Â
âŚ. Although there wasnât really an attempt to make it: you know, plausible.Â
(shrugs)Â
âŚ. âDo you think that the Ring is that story from Plato? Power to become invisible = the perils of power?Â
âVikings can do anything. I saw a movie once, that proves it. Itâs their blue eyes. They just gaze at their enemies with their blue eyes: and they justâŚ. Explode, you know. Their beauty alone destroys their enemies, right.Â
âŚ. âAnd then I decided: NOT, to kill the schizophrenic weirdo.âÂ
(makes clicking noise of approval) Classy.Â
âI am Radagast the Brown: and I approve this message.âÂ
âŚ. âEdwardian males are fundamentally good people, my Viking friendâ, seemed pretty repetitive.Â
And yeah: BTS should do a song like, âFake Magicâ, although I wonât know what theyâre saying, and wonât bother to look it up.Â
LOTR music does have a certain charm, but so much of it isnât new, rightâŚ. I feel likeâŚ. Omg, a father just walked by telling his 7 year old daughter in lecture voice that not everything in a book is true. OMG. (Thatâs so funny, bro.)Â
âŚ. And the action, I donât know: Iâm waiting for it to get good, rightâŚ. Yup, if you canât beat the Vietcong: just wait for the air support, brother. Thatâs what all the real heroes, doâŚ.Â
(Azog the Unlikely screaming in honor-pain because Chairman Mao didnât give HIM an air-force, rightâŚ. Oh well. He does seem like a jerk, lol.)Â
âŚ. Yeah: US Special Forces Strike Team Gandalf (15 men) nearing Baghdadâliberation is imminent, lolâŚ.Â
And yeah: modestly cringe-worthy, rightâŚ. The point of being a man is to tell the other guy that HE isnât a man: but it will NEVER happen to YOU, [random guy it will happen to, lol]Â
~Although Iâll probably watch the other five fucking movies, eventually: hopefully without paying for them, new, right.Â
âŚ. Oh wow: it was a boysâ choir, who did that Catholic-esque music, right. I thought that was their idea of the stereotypically feminine, lol.Â
âŚ.. But yeah: if I were a girl, I wouldnât have married Thorin or whoever, even if all that gold were his, OMGâŚ.
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Artsy Thug, Not Too Tall
Posted : 5 months ago on 9 June 2024 06:41 (A review of Cyrano)Wow, the library has THREE copies of this DVD: Iâll never have to push back a sitting in time because itâs checked outâŚ. I guess Joe Wright is a pretty prestigious filmmaker. Of course, that one attempt he made to make a movie with a mixed-race cast, âPanâ, (2015), was kinda a crash and burn failure, rightâŚ. But among historical-literary white stories, he does seem to have talent, right: more than averageâŚ. And here it does look like heâs following the new trend of introducing actors of color into trad âwhite storiesâ, or whatever, (although to not be in denial or over-state the positive: making exotic stories simultaneously white-centric probably hasnât mysteriously gone poof), and yeah: it can be a hard thing to do successfully, or whatever: just from the theatrical poster cover, it does seem as though thereâs the possibility of introducing racial tension into the story, to replace the 100% white-centric thing, if that makes sense. Weâll see if Joe can leap over the hurdles, right.Â
And as for romantic stories mostly about men: they can make sense and obviously they do exist, rightâbut I wonder how well he tells both the good and the bad in terms of men, or if it becomes kinda a romantic delusion about men, that conceals how unromantic men tend to be, rightâŚ. I wonderâŚ.Â
The singing I can take or leave, but some of the instrumental music is really pretty good.Â
The sniping between the penniless romantic girl and the shrewd maid is good: realistic, especially for a movie.Â
âChildren need love. Adults need money.âÂ
Especially given the casting, âSheâs well above your stationâ, was a great line. Who wouldnât like to prove That wrong, eh?Â
âA child with a full purse is an adult.âÂ
No commentary required.Â
âŚ. âFreedom at first sightâ, orâŚ. Third-party thieving at first sight? (Ok symbol emoji)Â
Itâs a good lyric: but we pay musicians to deceive us, lol.Â
âŚ. (baroque French theatre orâŚ. Something?)Â
What an odd cultureâŚ.
(enter Cyrano) Wow, what a turdâŚ. Iâm supposed to like this small-time thug? OMGâŚ. I wonder how many hundreds of pages of Victorian novel musing I would have had to suffer through to figure out I hate that diminutiveâŚ. Loser.Â
[Wikipedia: Actually, it was a play written in verse in 1897 by a French guy namedâ
Great. But I wasnât entirely wrong.]Â
âŚ. Anyway: superficially, at least, the level of artistry is very high. Visually and sonically the art is very pleasingâŚ. It just doesnât seem to have depthâŚ. Like, the first few minutes: I just loved how quotable it was. But unlike say in a Nietzsche (how do you get a name like that?) book: after a while I wanted it to be less quotable, since it was saying very common things, albeit, you know, in a way very flowery and shit, rightâŚ. I donât know if at least half of Joe Wright movies start out great to me, and then start kinda a descent into mediocrity: or whether a love story about a beautiful woman and an ugly man, is just too much, rightâtoo much of a challenge, and not the right one, for anyone to set themselves, basicallyâŚ.Â
I do think itâs interesting how itâs basically a thriller-romance, almost, although I donât really care for it, right. Iâll have to watch the âJason Bourneâ movie, and see which one I like better. I read the book JB, and in print it did seem like kinda a straight adventure story, right; but I have a feeling on the screen it will be similar to this, close to half-and-half, even if, if forced to choose, Iâll probably end up putting them on different sides of the fence, so to speak.Â
But I canât imagine liking this better, you know.Â
âŚ. But yeah: a play written in verse in the 1890s was never going to tell the most âbraveâ story about love, you knowâŚ. All the tropes; all the feelsâŚ. Itâs not Oscar Wilde: if it werenât for the 1918 pandemic, he could have lived to a ripe old age, untroubled by the literary police, rightâŚ. The literary police probably walked with the casket, at the ânormalâ-style funeral, after the pandemic was over, lolâŚ.Â
âŚ. (the actor with a French name) (crying) I had a successful career for decades, and I was still on top of my game, until some small-time thug threatened me off the stage with threat of violence, to impress a girl he didnât have the courage to talk to!Â
(Freud) (pushes tissue box closer, but) Donât say âsmall-time thugâ. Itâs an unhelpful label.Â
(the crying actor) He literally wasnât that tall, DoctorâŚ. (drowning in tissues) And I should be able to hold a job down without needed to knife hecklers with ulterior motives! Man, fuck that guy! (crying)Â
âŚ. I mean: I hate to make it sound like itâs antipathy to the actorâI really donât know much about himâand of course I donât want to alienate people who arenât tall, right: like, âyou should have to be ~Tall~, Mediterranean, and handsome!â (sometimes: obviously, though for anything to ever happen even once, to a propagandist, you have to call it eternal verity, rightâand obviously Hollywood doesnât like them too âdarkâ, lol: blaccskinnedgangstaohnoes, only if thereâs, like, no other option, right; which is why heâll be portrayed as a tough, lolâŚ. See the logic? (laugh emoji) âŚ. Although the Mediterranean or otherwise exotic look comes into season, now and againâŚ.). But yeah: I never understood the thing about height, right; one girl I knew obsessed about how she was âshortâ: like, not only do I not perceive these subtle things about height the way that I guess people do, but itâs like, Girl, youâve got goodâŚ. (Only I didnât, because she had no self-esteem. Somehow, she would have found a way to hate herself, right. Skip to the part where youâre not involved.)Â
But yeah: I mean, as much as you donât want to intentionally frame anybody (at all) as unattractive out of spite, I donât think that discouraging what we now call âbody shamingâ was what was going on for an 1890s writer, probably to the right of Dickens and his successors, right. Not even for a man, even though it is kinda like a Nickie Sparks novel, that old shit, old propaganda: âA love story about a manâŚ. In love, men have so much. But they shouldnât have toâŚ.â And yet, itâs not even quite that, reallyâŚ. Itâs more likeâŚ. An aggressive and insecure man? Why, thenâwhy not a short guy who stabs people to death! (OK sign emoji)Â
âŚ. Yeah, I donât believe that any girl is that stupid, basically.Â
Cyrano being that self-effacing is possible, I guessâ a sort of pride warring with pride, right; though it would be more swimming against the current than the story shows.Â
But yeah: mostly, just the girl in that scene (the âconfessionâ), is not a real girl in Middle Earth, rightâŚ. Media can be so deceptive.Â
At the same time, if you watched Many movies, this might strike you as being better than many, perhaps: it has potential; they donât always have thatâŚ. Itâs not gutter trash; a saying that wouldnât always be honest, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. It was briefly so cool to see the Black guy fighting white guys giving him a fraternity hazing in the 1600sâŚ. And then, I knew it was comingâŚ. But heâs like: Iâm a dummy! Iâm not smart enough to be a romantic, the way you are, Diminutive Soldier Shakespeare.Â
Ah, shit, rightâŚ. OMGâŚ. (facepalm)âŚ.Â
âŚ. âIâd sing pop songs; but Iâm smart enoughâŚ.âÂ
âŚ. But the choreographer deserves some award or something, rightâŚ.Â
It is surprising like Old Hollywood, right: lots of styleâŚ. RacistâŚ. Very fancy, thoughâŚ.
âŚ. And it is like that song by The Cars, right: Iâm suspicious of women; all women, pretty women; and I donât like other guys; they get in the way: to like your friends isnât the masculine wayâŚ. âAnd she used to be mine!ââŚ. (My Best Friendâs Girl)âŚ.Â
Like, the wounded little man: he should have been NapoleonâŚ. A sorta Black Snowball is on the looseâŚ. LOLâŚ.Â
âŚ. It reminds me of this novel about New Zealand, âIn the Land of the Long White Cloudâ, where the girl agrees to marry this guy based on letters âfrom himâ, whereas really he just had this Austen clergyman, you know, romantic-conventional-flowery-Victorian, write them, and then she shows up in New Zealand and finds out that sheâs married to a gruff laconic boar of the farmer, right.Â
Anyway.Â
âŚ. I donât like Cyrano-less Christian turning into a monkey with Roxanne. Even if there were no âcolorâ thing, itâs very bad about class. Watching that, I feel like Iâm being bullied by some Shakespeare professor. Maybe a philosophy teacherâŚ. And Iâve read once through Shakespeare, and more philosophy than most people read, by some margin, really.Â
Roxanne and the Duke is complicatedâŚ. âI love the man for whom I fearâ is a great line sociologically: I feel like it must have been spoken many, many times, with many, many meaningsâŚ.Â
But largely it is, not an obnoxious, but a familiar bad rich man-heroic beautiful woman cautionary tale, rightâŚ. It is hard to disentangle the idiocy and neurosis of the trad rich from kindaâŚ. Socialistic moralism, you know: lust and disgust; money is âfunnyâ stuff, rightâŚ.Â
It is kinda curious to think that an adventure storyâwith dragons and dragonâs blood, right: with probably 92% of the audience being males-running-from-romance, rightâis more the type of story where the man can start poor and end rich, rightâŚ. So that the beautiful woman can have her frills and thrills without the socialistic moralists leering and jeering, Lust and disgust! Money is funny stuff, I say!âŚ. ~Right?Â
âŚ. Anyway: halfway through, Iâm not sure whether Iâd call it straight mediocre, or just modestly bad, right. Iâm not sure that will ever be resolved, really, whatever number I end up having to pin on it, since on this site, things need numbers, right.Â
âŚ. But yeah: SO weird how similar it is to Old Hollywood, right: JUST as fancy; JUST as racistâŚ. Only itâs different, because now people have found the goodness in their hearts to explain, so that you can understand, just as they, in their great knowledges do, rightâwhich tropes apply to Blacks, right. It used to be that theyâd say, you know, But when is whitey going to ~actually meet~ a Black person in real life, rightâŚ. Weâve gotta keep our propaganda practical, knowâ(cynical laugh), Itâs gotta sell, you know!âŚ. And if the world changes, it wonât be because of meâprint that in my obituary: I wonât exist anymore! (cynical 20s laugh)Â
âŚ. Like, sometimes I wonder how much white ideology is behind so much quotidian punctilious asshat teachings, you knowâŚ. âStraighten out your carâŚ. You donât know me, but Iâll shoot! We have to do things the right way, if weâre to remain above the bugs and the ants and natives!â âGreat, fine. I hate you, but, Iâll forget you, I guess. Not worth dying over.â âThank you. I no longer seek your death.â âAsking nicely the first time would have been moreâŚ. Proper, asshat.âÂ
You know: but if the person who guards the parking space on the other side of the lot/houses, feels the same way: why, then theyâre right! Society can never be wrong! White Ideology tells me so!Â
You know, like: once thereâs hierarchy, it never ends, right. âI park my car better than you.â âI didnât even hit your car.â âThatâs not the issue here. The issue is, 1890s Lit Crit Man is superiorâŚ. But Iâm superior, too. Iâm sorry, Neotheognis, looks like this time: ~you~ are the sacrifice to White Ideology.âÂ
And God knows this movie is White Ideology, rightâŚ.Â
And like, I could almost understand them
standing around gossiping about the time the cops came, but what was it this time, right? Waiting to see if someone shows up who parks âthe wrong wayâ? âIt says right here in this information booklet that being 75% off to one side is against law and custom. You can only be 5% off to one side, even if you drive a CivicâŚ. After all, these spaces are tiny. You should look into that! Come to the meetings with the other gossips, right. Oh no wait; you donât have moneyâŚ. Never mind.âÂ
And I mean: god knows that even when Joe Wright makes a movie, heâs more interested in the Car Parking Gossip Market, than the Quixotic Dreamer Market, rightâŚ. But you gotta have good choreography, so you can disguise that fact to all the chess club robots who sold their soul to the Cylons, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. Yeah: Iâll probably give the movie one half-star less instead of one half-star more, because that lady really pissed me off, you know, and she wasnât unlike the movie, right.Â
Itâs also probably not going to get better, right. We havenât even reached the Wistful Regret Of the Big-Hearted White Man Over the Interracial Relationship, Which Owes Its Very Existence To His Own GOODNESS, Right: his sad, sad, pathetic white man goodness, rightâŚ.Â
We havenât even gotten to that part yet, lol.Â
So much to unpack, OMGâŚ.
At least Iâll have my revenge on slave market capitalism, thoughâŚ. Yes, I am a little quixoticâŚ. That windmill grinds the corn of Satan, sonâŚ. Donât buy from that miller. âAll the other millers are like him, only more cruel and violent.â HmmâŚ. (Don Quixote contemplates his symbolic revenge on the best of all Satanic millersâŚ. For some reason, he needs to chew on a straw of grass, to do thisâŚ. FinallyâŚ.) We wonât boycott the mill of Satan; but weâllâŚ. Make very subtle, complicated insults about it; yes, very ambivalent insults for the best of all Satanâs sonsâŚ. Yes, yesâŚ. I saw the answer, as though in a dreamâŚ.Â
âŚ. And it is kinda weird, right: I just started rereading this feminist book which, while ânegativeâ in the conventional sense, I think isnât actually asâŚ. Wrong, I guess: as I thought when I was very (happy-clappy Wisdom) Christian, and a little preciousâŚ. Yeah, and I know that itâs going to get into the idea of separatism, right: which is offensive to male pride, whether the desire to dominate or the idea that all women should be potential lays, or else just the kinda happy-clappy âMother loves me all people love me all girls and females are nice and should help me out, and we can be happy and clappy and learn about the happy clappy future together, rightâŚ.â But I mean, if some ill man abused you, it might be healing not to have to look at every guy and wonder, out of your own woundedness, whether this was going to be another cruel, forceful dominator, rightâŚ. It would also save you, in that instance, from being, you know: from sharing the hurtfulness of the hurt, rightâŚ.Â
But yeah: Roxanne went to a womenâs salon because it was like the one place where she could read a poem and not be looked at as both unintelligent and also a potential lay at the same time, rightâŚ. And so of course, her potential lover meets her there, right: he specifically goes out of his way to invade the womenâs salon so that he can get in the girlâs mind, rightâŚ. Like, âIf I let her have a momentâs peace: sheâll never want to touch another man for as long as she lives; men wonât be born anymore; and life will be shit!âÂ
~âBut by 2022, children, because of Me Too, all that sexism and illegitimate gender shit had pretty much blown overâŚ. Finally: women were safe, children. And they had flying cars, too! Have you seen (illusions and propaganda)?âÂ
âŚ. This is a while ago, but the âIâll pray for your sinsâ line is interesting. After the opening scene where the older woman is perhaps semi-sympathetic, she kinda gets disposed of as a forgettable drudge, right: like, I almost forgot there WAS an actual woman who wasnât dead by 42 or whatever, rightâŚ. But then she kinda has to signal her loyalty to the morality system, right: that sheâs the farthest thing from a rebel, right; and then so she stuffs that in the face of the young lovers or whatever she thinks they areâand theyâre only too happy for some crazy reason to dismiss her as part of the morality movement, since theyâre have no use for an older woman except as a drudge, so theyâre happy for an excuse not to respect herâŚ. So she drudges off to church, where the male leadership really also couldnât care less about the female rank and file and so on, right. I guess itâs hard to respect a âsacrificeâ that was practically wrested from your unwilling handsâŚ. Of course, since the 1970s, many Protestant churches have gone, Why not have a female clergy person defend male tradition and not care about the female rank and file. Itâs not like women care about each other! This could get us in newspapers! ~And meanwhile, itâs likeâŚ. Pope Francis, Defender of Liberalism, do you think we could have a little informal get-together today or tomorrow or something, to maybe have like a regular meeting, to decide on creating a special, formal, important meeting, to take a few months at least, to decide if maybe women are as smart as men and as able to be priests and religious leaders? (Skeletor) Iâm offended that you would even ask! Until next time! (runs away)Â
~Like, Iâm not gonna lie and say women never become less attractive physically, but itâs like: maybe their OPINION about love, as still being equally ~female~, as they always were, rightâŚ.? Society: No, their opinion on love counts for nothing, at any age. Also useless as experts on celibacy wisdom, although nobody wants them.Â
~Itâs likeâŚ. Waaat?Â
You know: at some point youâre likeâI mean, of course Joe Wright isnât Judd Apatow making Racy Madison crap (what was his nameâŚ. looks up: Adam Sandler; I used to really like him, lol: SCARY (laughing cat emoji)), but itâs like, We get very precious and credulous about our intellectuals, rightâŚ. Is there really much evidence that Joe Wright isnât essentially the same old English culture thinker thatâs always existed, along with whatever minor alterations and modifications are unavoidable and even desirable, in any age? Like, is it just the same old England, right? And you know that England isnât about being free, you know: thatâs like, civics class nonsense, rightâIâm talking about real lifeâŚ. England is about England, not freedom, you know. I suppose heâs not actually a âLittle Englanderâ, you know: like there are probably some English Rose Garden Champions who are afraid to read âRomeo & Julietâ because it happens ~Abroad~, in one of those Foreign Places, like France or Italy or Scotland or some such placeâwicked places!âŚ. Like, heâs obviously not a Little Englander, right, but kinda aâŚ. Pragmatic Englander: which if weâre to be honest, should be sharply distinguished from someone who just happens to live in England, and maybe wants to see their soccer team win the World Cup or something, right. Like, Oscar Wilde lived in England, technically he came from like, English Dublin, or whatever, but he was basically English like in aâŚ. Like if England was a normal country, he would be English, but itâs like he wasnât polite, so he was brought before the Crown Committee on Un-English Activities, rightâŚ. And basically killed off discreetly, right. The Little Englander would be the guy whoâŚ. Like, letâs not even talk about Little Englanders, right. But then the Pragmatic Englander is like, looking at Mr. Little from Roseshire, England, and kinda goes, WowâŚ. I donât want to be as easily made fun of, as thatâŚ. But a solid 80% of the time, give or take, itâs like: looking at Oscar Wilde and going: Right. That is NOT happening to me.Â
Because It COULD Happen To You, right. Brexit, British racism, the never-ending story of the snobbishness of the classical music communityâŚ. Like Joe is a Pragmatic Englander, so he puts in the pop songs, right: although itâs a very classic-style pop; you have a vague sense that the dancing isnât exactly the same as the 1640s dancing, but the more you forget that there was ever a band called The Rolling Stones, right: the better you like itâŚ. And although nobody actually ever shot Mick Jagger, the sorta project of Englishness is kinda based on forgetting that he was ever born 94% of the time, and pretending that he isnât who he is the remaining 6%, rightâŚ. But yeah, itâs meant to be a movie that a middling-aggressive classical music snob could sit through without pulling out a gun and seeking vengeance, and which a âWagner is Satan, however, opera is the only form of singing I listen to, hahahaâ classical music snob could probably really enjoy, you know. Itâs the new cultural imperialism, you knowâitâs flexible.Â
âŚ. (Christian striking out with Roxanne)Â
Tell me this is not some ethnocentristâs sick fantasy, omgâŚ.Â
âŚ. Itâs also curious how Roxanne is like a caricature of a woman, right: she just wants to be petted and flattered with dainty language, rightâŚ. She never has like, a plan for her life, rightâŚ. Itâs never like, If you lied about the Count de Crap-face, he would get arrested, and thenâŚ. (suggestive trail-off).Â
Itâs always like: you know, I hear that (big name pop act) is in town? Did you illegally download the lyrics? Ooo, music!âŚ.Â
But Joe Wright thought it was a good story, lol; he put his name to it, rightâŚ. Hate is too strong a word: but so is respectâŚ. For the Pragmatic Englander, you knowâŚ.Â
âŚ. (looking at credits on DVD) Like, which one of these titles is âchoreographerâ: like, that and maybe the music, definitely the danceâitâs the only good part of the film, you knowâŚ.Â
âŚ. (Sock-puppet Christian, or whatever the hell it is, right)Â
Wow, SO f-ing weird, OMGâŚ.Â
Like, imagine this on the Internet, right. Whoops! Just lost the opera freaksâŚ.!Â
Were they breaking any laws, or something?âŚ. It seems like there should be some kinda misdemeanor on the books for this sort of thing, rightâŚ. âMisdirection (27B)â, rightâsix monthsâ community serviceâŚ.Â
âŚ. (quoting self) âWistful Regret of the Big Hearted White Man Over Interracial RelationshipâÂ
Called it. (ok emoji)Â Â
âŚ. (letter) âThis is your Captain speaking. Marriage or rape, up to you, over. (beep)â.Â
Itâs like: weâre supposed to believe that Roxanne is such a caricature of a woman that she wanted the equivalent of a music concert and was obsessed by poetry, and took no thought to plotting against doofus until he was at her door, basically. (rolls eyes)Â
âŚ. Nothing an action sequence canât fix, thoughâŚ.Â
Moral of the story: men are important. They solve/create problems! Women just kindaâŚ. Marry people and, donât, solve problems, you know.Â
âŚ. Wow, it doesnât even work as entertainment: itâs like, we need to get the propaganda team in here, work this out, do an all-nighterâŚ. How boring was that, rightâŚ. Just humdrum disrespect agitprop, no blood-choreography, rightâŚ.Â
âŚ. Life lessons: men are importantâŚ.Â
As long as there are men, things will be ok: there will be, loveâŚ. lol.Â
âŚ. (5-part harmony) Men are, important, because weâre theâŚ. BeachâŚ. BoysâŚ.Â
~I agree, men are important. Without menâŚ. Destruction.Â
âŚ. Phoo, men sure love dying. Iâm glad, that Iâm Hermes, lol. Hermes-Thoth-Horus says that the Dying God should just take a nap, take it easy; you might want to be the Dying God nowâŚ. Maybe in twenty minutes, after your napâŚ. (shrugs), Who knows, right?Â
~God, what an immoral story, right. And so miserably unpleasant. What was that line of Dostoevsky, I guessâI mean, I read Tolstoy; I never got around to Doestie, but didnât he have a line, like: âThe worst thing is that you have betrayed and destroyed yourself, for Nothingâ?âŚ. Itâs like, you died, so you didnât have to admit you were a liar, right!Â
(Hermes Psychopomp) Surprise! (naughty cackle) Youâre dead! That means you gotta, esplain! (cackle)Â
~Right?Â
âŚ. But hey: at least the actress (thereâs really only one, lol: jealousy over feminism, LOL) had nice breasts; I guess if she were dying from tallness, it wouldnât be like that for her, rightâŚ. You know: just in terms of information. Information, right: he ~nurtures~; he ~loves~âŚ. Why not, love him, right? A-hahahaâŚ.Â
âŚ. Ironically given his chauvie it is, I donât think Iâve ever paid attention to this story before, watching it, since it didnât meet my earlier standards about bloodiness and asceticism, right. Like, I think I saw it once with my dad, early in childhood, but age was against me, and I was mostly just curious about his strange reaction to this strange shitâŚ. And then in high school or whatever we watched it in French class: but movies in French class, itâs likeâthey had subtitles, sure, but really: when did I ever REALLY decide to learn French, right?âŚ. I just tuned it out, for the most partâŚ. Itâs amazing, maybe, how few fucks us Honors students gave for the System, right; but then, the System didnât give an excessive amount of fucks about us, now did itâŚ. I mean, thatâs the explanation of girlsâ greater academic success: girls get told more often that theyâre not important, you knowâa âvaluableâ cultural background in school, where itâs likeâŚ. Itâs Not About You: Itâs About Me, The System!âŚ. Guys are just like: I donât ever remember saying that I liked youâŚ. ~Although obviously much female obedience is feigned, right. Female obedience is at least as likely to be an exercise in (cowardly) self-preservation as (delusional) âgoodnessâ, you knowâŚ.Â
But yeah: I think I know how it ends. It wouldnât be the first second-rate romance (prestige means NOTHING; it is a LIE), to end with someone dying so that people donât have to have difficult conversations about who lied how to whom, rightâŚ.Â
âOh! I thought we were going to have to talk to her!Â
âNo. She is quite dead, my friend. It was quite sudden. The doctors could do nothing.Â
âIâŚ. I thought Iâd have to tell her, thatâŚ. Oh, and yet it is SO, sadâŚ.Â
âYes. It is sad. But better that she should die, than she should make a female friend a little bit like me, and a little bit like you, and not date for a whileâŚ. It is better, this way.Â
A dream is a wish.Â
And yes: I realize that that is NOT LITERALLY where this is going, of courseâŚ. But the variations are but little differentâŚ. Men love to die; it is a hobby of ours. And, we hate telling the truth. ~The truth, yesâŚ. Iâd offer to tell you the truth next Tuesday: only Iâve somewhere to be. VERY unfortunate, Iâm afraidâŚ.Â
He dies; heâs a hero. She dies; sheâsâŚ. Well, dead, but, weâll miss herâŚ.Â
As long as she never learns the truth. Not while Iâm aliveâŚ.Â
âŚ. YeahâŚ.Â
Joe Wright certainly has the makings of a great guy, but he does kinda present as being garbage, quite often, doesnât he. Itâs like, propaganda, for the literate. And Iâm not being ironic about the word âliterateâ: thereâs nothing inherently wrong with filmâŚ. Though most films are either propaganda orâŚ. Well, this was propaganda, anyway. Agitprop for patriarchy, right.Â
Men certainly love death. Men love to die. Is there anything men love, like they love death? Deception, perhaps? Or distortion? Yes, perhaps telling lies that distort womanâs character, is something man loves, equal to death, perhaps.Â
Did I say men love death? I misspoke. Men are averse to life. But they do not know death, either. They have the two ideas conflated, entire.Â
âŚ. Itâs like a Christian romance, you know. The perfect trad Christian romance. Death makes everything clean. You give your love to a corpseâŚ.
âŚ. God, and that fucking âsongâ, rightâŚ. Like they were going to an execution!Â
âBat-tlesâŚ. Are a way to get, dead.âÂ
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“You can sorta understand a censor getting upset about your reaction to a movie you very much liked, or very much did not like, right. This movie was neither, but both my review, and literally the fact that I even watched it, were tampered with, quite frankly. Not even just the public review page, bu” read more
Ironic Mysterious Censoring (of Reviews)
“âI have an emotional response to a movie about rape being covered up. âRape? People censoring rape? You donât want to hand in a la-di-da doesnât matter response to something like that? Down the Memory Hole. (walks away, whistling).Â
Itâs likeâŚ. WowâŚ. Surely it isnât rape ” read more
“Wow. Talk about defending the liars, right.Â
âThis movie is full of lies. âThatâs ok. Creativity. âMy review explained how I felt about being lied about. âI deleted it. âIt was creative. â(dismissive hands) Rules donât apply. âYou actually deleted, not just my revi” read more
“(10 minutes) Wow, I was expecting this to be a boy movie, rightâlike a movie about boy books, many lolsâbut WOW, this isâŚ. Phew. I mean, my premise to start watching was: maybe I went hard on âNapoleon Dynamiteâ, right: I watched so many âimportantâ movies, in that timeâŚ. Mostly, I r” read more
“Everything just fits together so perfectly; it always makes me so happy.Â
But yeah: Chris Sanders is a middle-piss quality director, but I figured Iâd give him that third movie to watch like I always do, now: and also, I have a personal history reason for watching, right. I had my broth” read more
“So, yeah: I mean, it does promise to be a better movie than âRockyâ, right, (although that is how I found it: same director; Iâd hate to write somebody off after 90 minutes of exposure to them, right)ââRockyâ was some serious sucking up, rightâ[edit] and yeah: the title character kid, ” read more
“(Two Towers Rohan King Guy) So, it has come to this. Jo March vs Galadriel, with the Time Travelerâs Wifeâs Husband guy: an epic space opera without singing, directed by ~Joe Wright~, Joe Wright. (shakes head, to facilitate thought, then continues) You have so much talent, JW: such a big, Big br” read more
“So yeah: I guess the idea is itâs a person-of-color/alien (outer space) team, which is a nice idea; it used to be, say for the first Star Wars movie (1977), that âalienâ was like as close as you got to, haha, OMGâŚ. But yeah, itâs like: hey guys, compared to Space Goblin Stitchâwho does s” read more
“(Re: Tolkien, etc.)Â
This will probably be a lot of fun, right. Who says that we shouldnât tell twelve-year-old white boys, and people who are twelve year old white boys at heart, that they arenât far more important than they actually are, right?Â
(15 seconds of 3.5 minutes” read more
“Wow, the library has THREE copies of this DVD: Iâll never have to push back a sitting in time because itâs checked outâŚ. I guess Joe Wright is a pretty prestigious filmmaker. Of course, that one attempt he made to make a movie with a mixed-race cast, âPanâ, (2015), was kinda a crash and bu” read more
Alternative Propaganda (from the greatest country)
“I watched âItâs A Wonderful Lifeâ which was like a, curious example of how things used to be for some people, and I try to eventually watch three movies by the same director, and the library had this movie too. I feel like âArsenic and Old Laceâ will be like a better movie, rightâCary Gr” read more
When Eights Donât Hate (But Bar the Gate)
“Update: Events in my personal life have made me question whether perhaps my original title for this review, âWhen Eights Donât Hateâ was a little naive about the Classic American Enneagram Eight, you knowâlike, itâs natural, maybe, to want to let the âman of the peopleâ have his day in” read more
“I didnât enjoy this, although I expected to. I didnât like âEmmaâ, it was one of my less-liked Jane books, but I anticipated a modernization making it seem lessâŚ. Something. But, it certainly seemedâŚ. Something. I guess if youâre Knightley/Paul Rudd you donât really like Club Woodhou” read more
“N.B. Iâm against classifying made-for-TV movies as âTVââare there episodes? Whatâs going on in peopleâs heads that this is called âTVâ?Â
Okay.Â
âŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚWell, Iâm on the wrong side of the Ethnic Miracle for Irish nationalism in the USA, and the wro” read more
The Adventure of the Clueless Woman
“âI donât know.â (multiple times)Â
âIf youâre trying to frighten meâŚ. Youâre doing a very good job.âÂ
~ Audreyâs characterÂ
âIt doesnât sound like the sort of thing a young woman can handle by herself.âÂ
~ Caryâs characterÂ
read more
English Mythology (Becomes London Mythology)
“First, let me just say that Jane Austen is English mythology, so, I mean, the legalists, sorry the historians, sorry the literary critics, donât think that this is âaccurateâ (you donât even want to know what angry aristocrat nerds are likeâIâm telling you: you donât), but basically: t” read more