I don’t know if I even want to… which was my point…
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Ora, ora, ora…
If it isn’t the case of Netflix invoking the old adage of separating the author from the creation.
Speaking in Netflix…
It has a kind of Kricfalusi´s Ren&Stimpy vibe…
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Neil Gaiman already has practice separating creations from their authors
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Just saw the movie Sinners tonight with my partner. Directed by Ryan Coogler, it’s a vampire movie that takes place in the south around the 1930s i think. Overall impression is that the movie is great, really enjoyed the acting, the music, and the character development is pretty solid. I have a couple of nitpicks where i left the movie could’ve done more but i still came away really loving it.
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Finally I could watch Flow. It is a Nice Cartoon. It reminded me another Cartoon called “Raining Cats and Frogs”.
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Ok I am very sorry! I see how that post came across as flippant and probably man-splainy.
I meant that speaking strictly from a boycott perspective, there are hundreds of creative people who worked on the show and are not the asshole, so I think it’s ok to support that.
But if you personally can’t bear to watch anything NG related ever again I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND and I’m not telling you what to do or not do!
Personally, Sandman has always meant a lot to me so I’m still excited about the show, and I’m not going to burn my box set of the comics, or any of the other NG books on my shelf. I don’t know if I’ll be rereading them anytime soon though… and I noticed Pussycat put the Death tee shirt I bought her several years ago in the donation bin recently…
Look, it’s hard. I was a huge Jos Wheadon fan too. It sucks! But I think I can still be a huge Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dollhouse fan, because so many other creators helped make those shows.
I was so into The Nevers and the fact that they buried the second season is I think unfair to everyone involved in the production and everyone who loved it. I understand - it was toxic by association. But I still wanna see it because I was so in love with the characters and the world!
Which makes me think about this: These stories, these fictional people and places that we have loved all this time, they aren’t the guy who did or said or believed the terrible things. They exist only in our minds. If you find out later on the writer was a terrible person sure it’s disappointing, but the story in your heart isn’t him, and you don’t have to give that up if don’t want to.
Yeah I get that. It’s the whole death of the author thing. And it can be a very personal decision. Just to discuss the one most relevant to me, I will not, and cannot, watch or read any Harry Potter anything any more. JK Rowling is still alive. Her anti-trans beliefs have only gotten worse since she first started voicing them, and governments all over the world are passing, or at least trying to pass, all kinds of anti-trans legislation. And it’s made me take a good hard look at Harry Potter and notice a lot of problematic elements I missed or brushed off as no big deal before, like the goblin bankers and the enslaved elfs.
Now I’m not saying Sandman is in the same category, but this shit is complex, and people have to make their own decisions. And what’s right for you isn’t going to be the right decision for someone else.
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Agree 100%. And again I apologize for coming off like I was telling Mindysan what to do. I shouldn’t post so early in the morning before coffee. Guh.
And JKR can fuck right off.
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Sandman was one of my favorite works of fiction, too, and the guy who wrote it doesn’t see women as human beings (if you go by his actions, at least)…
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They make trailers for video essays now… apparently…
This should be interesting! That was an interesting movie, so I’m looking forward to how Lil Bill discusses it.
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Here is more discussion on the show Adolescence and how it relates to the 80s-90s skinhead films, specifically the film Made in Britain starring a young Tim Roth… spoilers for both… But I have to say, the best skinhead film is, I think, This is England, which Stephen Graham is in, specifically because it does a better job of showing the relationship between racist political parties and skinhead culture - which is one of appropriation, not of inevitability of the white working class being racist nobs.
We know that the BNP sought to weaponize the violence associated with skinhead culture, and that they tried to completely co-opt punk, too (which largely failed, and ended up with people with white supremacist leanings tending to associate with the newly racist skinhead movement instead)…
Either way the overlap in the skinhead films (and the themes of these films) and this show is intriguing and worth thinking about.
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I recently discovered Charité on PBS. Three of the four seasons (so far) are available in the States, and each season covers a particularly important historical period from the viewpoint of Berlin’s public city hospital (which is still very much a highly regarded medical center).
Season 1: Starts in 1888 (build up to WWI, shows baseline prejudice against Jews and women)
Season 2: 1943-45 (shows a lot of the ways people coped/rebelled/reveled)
Season 3: 1961 (the year the Berlin Wall was constructed…haven’t gotten this far yet)
Well written and acted, accurate portrayal of the culture and lifestyle of the time(s): worth watching.
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I’ve seen some of the original Suits tv show here and there. It’s not very good, especially on the legal accuracy, but the acting and writing seems ok. So I thought I’d check out the new Suits LA series starring Stephen Amell. And I liked Arrow, so I figured, “How bad could it be?” It’s bad. It’s soooooo bad. The legal stuff is 100 times worse than the original Suits, but the writing and acting also seems pretty bad. I watched one episode and that was more than enough. I’m glad to see that Legal Eagle agrees with my sentiment.
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“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” - The Demons series
In the mid-80s, Italian horror maestro Dario Argento began experimenting with hands-on production of films to be directed by others. The first and most successful of these films was Demons, which was followed by one official sequel, Demons 2, and at least three separate films all vying to be Demons 3. The Church, the only one of these semi-sequels to involve Argento, is considered to be the most legitimate.
Lamberto Bava, son of ‘60s and ‘70s legend Mario Bava, directed the two official films. Lamberto never became as esteemed a director as his father, although the decline in Italian film production during the ‘80s may have played a role in this perception. Michele Soavi, who played two roles within and assistant directed the original Demons, helmed The Church, which was originally planned as an official sequel until Soavi decided to elevate the material. Soavi was once considered a potential successor to Mario Bava and Dario Argento, but left the cinema for several years in the ‘90s to care for his ailing son and has yet to fully re-establish himself.
Demons (Lamberto Bava 1985)
A mute metal-masked man hands out invitations to a screening at a mysterious newly established movie theater in Berlin. At the screening, a movie about “the coming of the demons” is shown and these demons soon overrun the theatre, killing and possessing the patrons trapped within.
A giddy blend of neon lighting and technicolor gore, heavy metal from Motley Crue, Accept, Saxon et al., illogical plotting and senseless high energy spectacle, Demons resembles a random, meaningless mishmash on the surface, but underneath epitomizes the apocalyptic strain in ‘80s Italian horror. As Billy Idol croons, there’s nothing fair or safe or sure or pure in this world and Demons revels in this with nihilistic glee, offering us an empty projection booth as stand-in for an absent God and a copter full of corpses as deus ex machina. Highly recommended.
Demons 2 (Lamberto Bava 1986)
Various tenants of a high-rise apartment building watch a television program about the successfully quelled demonic infestation of the first film. Alas, history repeats as a demon climbs through the TV screen…
Plotwise, essentially the same film as the original, but the filmmakers keep things fresh by switching up the surface details. Besides having the menace Cronenbergianly emerge from a TV screen rather than a movie screen, the colors have been subdued, the gore has been toned down, the surrealism increased, and the heavy metal has been replaced with college rock from acts such as Love and Rockets, The Cult, and The Smiths. (Permission to use “Panic” was gained by telling Morrissey the film was “an artsy dissection of the influence of modern media.”) A worthy variant, which many prefer to the original.
The Church (Michele Soavi 1989)
Accused of being devil worshippers, a medieval German village is massacred by a band of Teutonic Knights and it is decreed that a cathedral be built upon their mass grave to keep the evil contained. In the modern day, blood is spilled in the basement of the cathedral, unleashing the demons anew…
Soavi spends the first half of the film gradually setting up the situation, which is not as successful as it might be as the characters, while the most developed so far, are still only two-dimensional at best. This delaying of the inevitable entrapment reduces the tension, but Soavi compensates with beautiful imagery, showing off some wonderful crane and Steadicam shots. In addition to references to M.R. James, Koyaanisqatsi, Boris Vallejo, and 20th century alchemist Fulcanelli, The Church makes the series’ Nazi subtext relatively explicit, although somewhat muddled. A good starter for those who think the Bava films seem too crass.
Trailers can be found below:
https://bbs.elsewhere.cafe/t/but-really-isnt-it-always-halloween-halloween-halloween/2858/394
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Thanks to a couple of Twitch streamers I follow, I got to revisit two flicks tonight: Dogma (in celebration for Easter) and Saving Grace, in honor of 4/20.
Dogma’s pretty well-known, so I’m not sure what more to say about it. It’s irreverent yet somehow reverent low-brow humor, and of course Alan Rickman is amazing, as usual.
The summary doesn’t quite do it justice:
A small-town English widow, facing financial troubles after her husband’s suicide, turns to agriculture of an illegal kind.
This has got to be one of the sweetest, most good-natured stoner films ever, and it’s funny, too. Brenda Blethyn is adorable as the scared-but-plucky Grace, and Craig Ferguson co-stars as her gardener who helps her with her, um, grow-rich-quick scheme. 
Even if you’re not into the green stuff, it’s still an enjoyable watch.
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Here is your occasional reminder that the only real antiwar film is Come and See…
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Fake news: totally ignored “I hate Illinois Nazis” and/or “it’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
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