Cleolinda everywhere

I kept trying to write ~companion posts~ to go with the podcasts, got too bogged down in rainy depression to manage it (THREE WEEKS OF STORMS AND MIGRAINES, Y'ALL), and so I am probably doing the Matter of Taste guys a disservice by dumping several hours of discussion on you all at once. Really, the episodes are kind of like movie-length commentaries, just totally out of order, whee! Point being, I had the best time guesting on their show and doing movie discussion episodes for Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal (which was really fun), and (coming out in a day or two) Red Dragon.

(They did a Manhunter episode prior to that, and will bravely go on to Hannibal Rising next week. The podcast is Hannibal-themed but discussing horror as well, so we specifically talk about horror and suspense as a genre; I think it's the SOTL episode where I bring up Ann Radcliffe's definition of terror vs. horror. They'll be moving on to other horror-related topics while we all wait for the TV show to come back. I have demanded promised to come back for a possible Alien(s)-themed episode.)

So I figure, let me at least link to those two episodes now if you're interested, with the third/final episode coming out late Wednesday or Thursday. On my part, there's some sound issues, a little alcohol, and a slight, partial change of heart about the controversial Hannibal ending. And of course we discuss the show in the context of the movies--differences, similarities, the way they actually enrich each other in retrospect, all kinds of things. The Podcast Gods have been cranky this month, however--a Made of Fail I was on got totally eaten, and last week's Red Dragon episode fell apart due to Skype being hateful and had to be rescheduled. So, for the latter, we started over from scratch last night, and I feel like it turned out really well--but Ian and Fio are going to post a few outtakes from the 30-45 minutes where Skype kept cutting out on me and I apparently, at one point, made the despairing noise of "a sad ghost cat." So I can't wait to find out what patchy, desperate transmissions from the ether the guys were hearing while I was wailing "Hellooooo?" into my headset.

I had paragraphs and paragraphs of follow-up thoughts that I don't know that I have the fortitude to finish writing up. Maybe someday. However, I did end up answering some questions on Tumblr that might partially serve that purpose:

What was the one Julianne Moore line that I never actually specified?

What would be my ideal ending to the book/movie Hannibal (with crackfic headcanon included)?

A follow-up to that question, re: brainwashing: "Clarice did not become what he wanted her to be"

What order should the movies be watched in?

I figure y'all will have your own thoughts on the subject. All I know is, it was a lot of fun.


Meanwhile, in TV news, the show's back in production and Will Graham has a lawyer! I feel like this character probably shouldn't bother saving for retirement.

I saw Star Trek Into Darkness Sunday afternoon but haven't said anything about it because... I just really had no urge to talk about it at all. This perplexes me. I've seen a few episodes of the original series and Next Generation, so I have a decent background on it without being married to canon. I loved the first new movie. I like J.J. Abrams movies generally, lens flares and all. I felt a reasonable amount of enjoyment while I was watching this one. All I could say when I walked out was, "That was... a whole lotta movie." I really cannot understand why.

( Spoilers )

Due to the computer trouble (see the previous entry) and also my general and regrettable allergy to deadlines, I haven't finished the Breaking Dawn thing yet. However, even if I do finish it this weekend… I'm not sure when it will be appropriate to post it, given the really, really awful events in Connecticut. Charlie's Over-Protective Father Shotgun is a running joke to bring it around full-circle to the first movie, but I'm not sure it's something people want to hear right now. I'm not saying the Fifteen Minutes is postponed indefinitely; I'm just saying that I'm going to take my time polishing it and maybe wait until the end of this week or the beginning of Christmas week to post it, when everyone's a little less emotionally raw. I think laughter can help people cope with terrible things or distract them in a way that helps them keep moving, but I'm not sure this particular thing is the answer to that right now.

However, we can talk about The Hobbit here if you want; I have many thoughts under the cut, and it can be a nice bit of fantasy escapism, since there are no really, really ill-timed elements involved.

( Major spoilers )

Given my computer issues, I may or may not be able to chat much in the comments, but I'll try. Therefore: go ye and discuss.

@cleolinda: #leavingthehouseomg #sparkledammerung

@cleolinda: These gifs express my feelings on the bittersweet ending of the Twilight movies.

@cleolinda: An hour early was not early enough. Line all the way through the building to the back door. Forgot one does not simply walk into Twilight.

@cleolinda: The line has now doubled all the way back around to the front. #sparkledammerung

@cleolinda: FRONT ROW RAILING SEAT ACHIEVED. ONLY MINOR CASUALTIES. IN TRENCHES WITH PRETEENS. #sparkledammerung

@osheamobile: RETURN WITH YOUR SCRAPBOOK OR ON IT

So I was actually planning to go see Skyfall with my mother Friday night (my grandmother had an unexpected surgery last week and we ended up not going last Friday), but then, on the spur of the moment, she decided that Skyfall was maybe too long for a 7:30 pm showing, so why don't we just go ahead and see Breaking Dawn, since it's only two hours, comes on half an hour earlier, and I have to write that thing anyway? Yeahhhhh the line was so long it went all the way to the back of the building, then snaked around and doubled back to the front. We happened to get there at six, when it was only at the back of the building still. My mother had never witnessed this kind of thing before (and this wasn't even a midnight showing, mind you), and immediately got Line Claustrophobic. Also, really pissed off at people breaking in and not respecting the lineness of the line. (I started telling her veteran war stories of the New Moon preview.)

( Mild spoilers )


SHORT VERSION:

@christylemire: My review of the shockingly entertaining TWILIGHT finale. We are all Renesmee Cullen:

This is by far the best film in the series. This does not necessarily mean it's good. But as it reaches its prolonged and wildly violent crescendo, it's at least entertaining in a totally nutso way.

That's about the way of it, yeah. I also chimed in for Christy's article on the lead actors' future (@AP: For Twilight actors, transition from beloved film series with fervent fan base can be tricky). The horse I chose to back should come as no surprise.

I want to leave my own share of discussion at that, but we usually have spoilers in the comments, so why the hell not: go for it. I don't want to talk very much about the movie myself, since I need to save it for That Of Which We Do Not Speak, which we will speak of because we all know I'm writing it. I actually knocked out a fairly solid outline at 3 am Saturday morning. (Also, we'll be recording a Made of Fail episode on Tuesday.) Don't know how long it'll take to write, but these things always take at least a few days, and both my grandmother and my sister are really, really sick; I know my immune system well enough to know that, particularly after going out and being around people omg, I am probably going to get sick (again) myself. I'm proactively warding it off the best I can, but I'm just saying: build some wait time into your expectations here. I don't think it'll take six weeks like The Avengers did, but bear with me here a while. Go ye and catch up on the first four Twilight in Fifteen Minuteses while you wait.


Meanwhile, this is going to be the Help I Cannot Remember Specifics thread, for all my HELP I CANNOT REMEMBER SPECIFICS needs.

I don't really know how to talk about this. I don't want to talk about--I don't have words for what this guy is, or what he did, to children. As a writer, I'm fascinated by the psychology of crime and why people do things--and how other people respond to that. However, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to feed this guy's fire. As far as I'm concerned, his name is July 20-2012 and he deserves nothing. Nothing but due process, and then a dark hole somewhere, whether that hole is a hospital or a prison--the darkness of being forgotten by history. If you want to know about it, as I want to know about it and try to not want to know about it, there's Wikipedia and cnn.com and pretty much every other news source in the world.

If this were almost any other movie, I would just quietly not talk about the film itself at all, I guess. I mean, I see movies now and then that I like well enough, but get too busy to ever really comment on or post a discussion entry for. But I hate that this had to be the movie haunted by this awfulness. This is a movie where the hero explicitly says "NO GUNS," takes guns away from people and takes them apart and throws the pieces away. These are movies about fighting crime and corruption, about believing in the good in people, about fighting fear, about hoping to set an example for others and then inspire them to continue that example, about hope itself. I don't say that as a starry-eyed fangirl; you could actually criticize the movies for being a little too on-the-nose about that, with all the Significant Thematic Dialogue that gets repeated over and over, if you wanted to. Sitting here today, I'm kind of glad now that the movies are so explicit with those themes. This is not "edgy" controversial cinema trying to glamorize nihilism. If you came out of any of these movies thinking that the villains are the way forward, you were not paying attention. Whether you think the movies do these themes well or not, they are pretty much about the EXACT OPPOSITE of what happened early Friday morning, and I hate that pundits are on the "news" sitting around talking about the Curse of the Dark Knight Movies and whether they're part of a CULTURE OF GRIMDARKNESS OMG that is bringing down American society. Because The Dark Knight Rises is pretty much the direct opposite of that.

( Mild not-really spoilers )

As uncomfortable as some of the scenes might be now, I recommend it anyway, if you go in thinking about everything I just told you--both the overall themes and the hints that won't make sense until it's over. If you don't want to see The Dark Knight Rises because, as superhero movies go, it's too realistic or too grim (you might be surprised by the time you leave), go see The Avengers again or The Amazing Spider-Man or any of the many, many movies about anything else out there. Don't go if you don't feel safe, of course. But July 20 is probably in a holding cell somewhere gloating that he's got the entire country's attention and he's got their fear and that makes him ~powerful,~ this ignominious waste of oxygen who apparently was so smart, and had so many gifts, and yet couldn't think of anything better in the world to do with them than this. If I can work it out with our collective schedule this weekend, since I can't drive, I'm going to see the movie again tomorrow. Police are watching various movie theaters across the country, and I hear that we've got them at Birmingham theaters, too. I wanted to see the movie twice anyway, but I'll be damned if I'll let this absolute stain think he's achieved anything as far as I have anything to say about it. There is an achievement here, the achievement of people who used their gifts and worked hard to create a story that could mean something good to people, and it's not his.

I know that people who did see the movie want to discuss it and maybe don't have anywhere else to--if you're up to it, you can here, and there will be spoilers running wild and free in the comments.

If there is the LEAST WHIFF of anyone being awful, either regarding what happened Friday or the fanboy ridiculousness earlier this week, I will freeze and/or ban whoever I have to and we will move on with discussion like you never even existed. My longtimers will tell you, I am extremely tolerant of good-faith critical discussion and I do not trifle with anything else. This time, you get one "everyone play nice" warning. If you raise my blood pressure in any way, you get a one-week cool-your-heels ban. If you talk shit like you think you're a big bad flame warrior, I will send you straight to the cornfield. As y'all have recently seen, my patience is substantial but not infinite, and we are not having that Rotten Tomatoes bullshit here. Not this weekend.

@cleolinda: TODAY \;;;/

@cleolinda: #leavingthehouseomg on the Good Ship Nobody Dies in ten minutes; have not figured out a Cthulhu Doing the Cabbage Patch emoticon

@cleolinda: IT HAS BEEN SEEN. FIVE TENTACLES UP. \;;;\ /;;;/ ~;;;~ \;;;\ /;;;/ #prometheus

@cleolinda: I have a few distinct thoughts about wtf the movie was trying to do, and as soon as I get home, I will explain. WOOOOOOOO

@cleolinda: We will go into the spoiler linkspam I have been saving sight unseen and my feels, as the kids say, about the overall series later.


I want to be as vague as possible with the spoilers, but--responses to this movie seem so violently mixed that, when I had a sudden epiphany as the movie ended, I felt like people might go into it with different expectations if they approached it a particular way. For one thing, none of the Alien movies are anything like the others, if you think about it. I always thought Alien itself was kind of slow until I read that Ridley Scott thought of it as "a haunted house movie," and then I got it. Whereas Aliens is kind of a war movie, by contrast. (I think I've only seen #3 and #4 once each, when they originally came out; I can't really say what "secret" genre they might be.) I like that they're all different. I didn't want this to be a remake of Alien; I wanted to see the filmmakers think of yet another take on the story. In fact, there is a movie I really love, in a wildly different genre, that Prometheus reminded me of:

MILD SPOILERS ( Read more... )


VAGUE BUT SIGNIFICANT ENDING SPOILERS ( Read more... )


Actually, you know why I was really open to whatever was going to happen in this movie, most likely? Because I had read THIS, this COMPLETELY WACKADOO alleged plot rundown, several months ago. These are, like, Alternate Universe Reverse Spoilers, in the sense that none of this happens at all: ( Read more... )


MORE SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE MOVIE, AND THUS A FEW SPOILERS ( Read more... )

BE WARNED THAT THE COMMENTS WILL BE A WILD FRONTIER OF SPOILERS, although I kind of hope people try to stay vague enough that others will still want to go see the movie so we have even more people to talk about it with. I'll post the spoiler linkspam on, I don't know, Monday? We can get into it then.

Okay, I'm having to explain a fragmented discussion to so many people that I want to recap it in one place. I am probably going to get my ass kicked for this. I am trying to convince myself that I regret nothing.

I liked The Avengers.

It's cool that you adored The Avengers.

I am not trying to rain on your parade. I am not trying to be that person who tells you that everything you love is bad and you should feel bad.

I don't actually feel the need to go on and on about this, but I'd rather have it all in one place and get it all out at once. If nothing else, this is a way to explain to people who are curious as to what the whole foofaraw is about. I will not bring it up again after this entry.

The Avengers was a great movie that had one sour note in it.

SPOILERS: ( Read more... )

That said: I really appreciate the incredibly civil discussion we've had here the last couple of days (and always). I will do whatever I have to do, as a moderator, to keep it that way. Let's continue to have nice things.


ETA on Thursday afternoon: I'm leaving comments open and will continue to read and moderate, but I won't be discussing anymore. I'm discussed out. We're at 353 comments as of this writing, and anything after that won't get a reply from me. If civility continues to hold, anyway.

ETA: Our very first nasty comment showed up sometime after 400! It is late Saturday night and I am tired and I don't want to deal with this entry ever again. Thank you for being 99% cool, and good night.

Short version: I liked it (my mother loved it), but (for me) it wasn't the hot fudge sundae of film, although I understand why it might have been for someone else.

SPOILERS:

( Read more... )

@christylemire: Greetings from the Academy. It's Hollywood's biggest morning. We are all very glamorous. And jacked up on caffeine.


@ropeofsilicon: Hugo leads the pack with 11 nominations followed by The Artist with 10.

( TWEETRAGE )

I was going to post a book discussion but then I was tired and also sick. But it is Halloween so I will share something with you, via The Hairpin, from the scariest movie I have ever seen in the theater:

( BEFORE YOU DIE, YOU SEE )

Obviously, this is your cue to share a movie that has scared you stupid. I want experiences of real, actual, physical terror if you've got it.


NOTE: ALSO: TCM is running The Innocents later tonight; don't miss that if you found the discussion interesting.


ETA: I have been reminded of Tiny Moist Hand!