A Fan's Playground

OKAY THERE I have now watched the original trilogy of star wars as well! I had a deadline for myself: I'm seeing The Force Awakens again on Monday (my dad wants to see it, and I was totally amenable to seeing it twice) so I wanted to see the originals before then, to be able to understand the new movie with the depth of context.

This meant I have watched a lot of movies in one week! Which is PRETTY WEIRD for me.

At any rate, I really did enjoy the original trilogy, and more than I expected to? There were some tedious bits (eg the entire opening sequence of Episode VI with Jabba the Hutt, and all the extended fighting sequences in the movies) but overall they were really enjoyable.

I came into these movies with a lot of pop culture informing me what to expect. But pop culture didn't tell me everything! The five things that surprised me most about the original trilogy:

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Yesterday I watched a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers picture - I don't think I've ever actually seen one of them before, though I've certainly watched clips of them dancing on youtube. The movie was called Swing Time and it was.....well, the dancing and singing was great.

I watched this movie with a friend who dances, and it was really cool to hear her rave over HOW GOOD Astaire and Rogers are. She knows enough about dancing to be able to see how hard they've worked to be really great at it, whereas I know nothing and am just like "yup, pretty" when I see their dancing. It rather makes me wish I knew more about dancing to be able to appreciate them the way they deserve!

The plot was rather less great. And there was surprise blackface urghhhhh. The character Astaire plays is a rather thorough asshole and I was really not a fan of him, and his friend Pop is even worse. Mabel Anderson was probably my fave character in the movie, except for how she kept on being randomly shoved together with Pop.

The one scene I genuinely enjoyed, other than the dancing/singing bits, was the one where ( brief spoilers )

At any rate: would definitely watch more dancing movies!

Last night I went to see The Martian and I was very favourably impressed! I had really liked the book when I read it ages ago, and it felt to me like the movie was everything I had liked about the book (competence porn and humour and nerdy science and space!) PLUS deeper characterisation, so pretty much I loved it.

And I think this is a story that really benefits from being told in a visual medium, for two reasons:

One, because all the vast sweeping landscapes of Mars that you see really drive home how alone Watney is in a desolate world. I really appreciated how this movie made Mars a main character.

And two, because it allows you to see all the emotions Watney's experiencing, even when he's not willing/able to admit these things out loud/on paper. I was very impressed with the acting skill of the dude who played Watney - it's a difficult role, I think, doing all that acting without there really ever being another human to act against. It's just him and his props and the green screen. And he did a great job of making Watney feel real and human.

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I'm sure you've seen all the rave reviews about Mad Max: Fury Road. The movie didn't originally sound like one I would be into, but the reviews convinced me. Last night I went to go see it and pretty much my entire reaction is "!!!!!"

Let me tell you that every single complimentary thing you have ever heard about that movie is completely true. I was absolutely blown away. What a quality movie. What a good everything. I think it's one of the genuinely best movies I have ever had the pleasure of seeing in theatre.

I don't even know where to start, because there's so much to say.

So I think I'm not even going to try to talk about ALL the things I appreciated because if I did that I'd be here all day and still have things I hadn't yet figured out how to say coherently. I will just write a list ten items long of some things I have to say about this movie and for everything else you can go google for other people's reviews.
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Recently I rewatched Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, with Mara and a few other people. And discovered that my aro/ace goggles are as strong as ever, despite all the strides I thought I was making in being able to read relationships as intended.

Throughout the movie we'd been doing some joking about how when I was younger I completely failed to notice the sexualized aspects of the Narrator, though I DID successfully notice this in Mrs. Potiphar.

And then we get to the final song, and the Narrator and Joseph are holding hands and singing as they do, and we have this exchange:

MARA: So when did you finally notice this?
ME: ....Notice what?
MARA: The Joseph/Narrator relationship?
ME: WHAT RELATIONSHIP

So uh turns out it was clear to everyone but me that the movie totally intends the watcher to understand Joseph and the Narrator to have a romance arc. WTFFFFFFF.

I have always conceptualized the Narrator as being essentially separate from all the other characters. Interested and engaged in their lives, sure, and interfering plenty, but still on a different plane of existence than the others, such that any kind of meaningful relationship between her and the other characters would be impossible. The idea of shipping Joseph/Narrator weirds me out completely, whether it's fandom doing it or THE MOVIE ITSELF.

So that was a deeply disconcerting note to end the movie on.

(otherwise the movie in general is just as charming to me as ever. I love this movie so much.)

It took me over a week to watch this damn movie but I'M FINALLY DONE! Totally worth it. What a good.

A chronological list of thoughts I had as I watched through Act Two of Lawrence of Arabia:

( relatively vague (I think?) spoilers follow )

The thing about long overseas flights is that they give you lots of time to watch movies, which is great when you're too tired to focus well on a book. So earlier this week I saw two entire movies in one day! ALMOST UNPRECEDENTED quantities of visual media for me!


First: BREAKING NEWS I finally saw X-Men: Days of Future Past after everyone else who cares saw it long ago. I'm quite sure I have zero new insights to share. Here were my main reactions (no particular spoilers):

1. Welp, that was definitely a very dude-focused movie, even beyond the fact that they gave Kitty's role to Wolverine.
2. What a silly, ridiculous, and somehow enjoyable movie - I had no emotional investment AND YET I had fun.
3. Yes it's true Quicksilver is the best part of the movie. Please tell me there is a cut somewhere of all the Quicksilver bits and nothing else.
4. Wow young Charles and young Erik are both terrible people in ways that do not interest me at all.


Second: I rewatched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and can I just say:

1. Wow I still have a million Narnia feels.
2. What a good.
3. (tho why must all the ugly and monstrous beings be the bad guys?)
4. So uh I believe in a free Narnia and all but also TILDA SWINTON QUEEN OF EVERYTHING.

Dude I have TOO MANY THINGS TO POST ABOUT and not enough time to write up all my thoughts/feels. So you get the abbreviated version now and may or may not get more later.

THINGS:

1. This weekend I visited Verity! And also got to hang out with Effableobject and with Aria! And it was an amazing A+ decision and I had a fabulous time and all of the above people are gr9

2. I watched Maleficent with Verity! (YES even though both of us are the not-good-at-watching-visual-media sort...) and I loved it to itty bits. Not a perfect movie but it did everything I could ever have wanted from this story so I AM HAPPY.

3. I read all of the Fraction Hawkeye that has come out yet! Which means through issue 18. And DAMMIT I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. I am terrible at reading WIPs, and I love this comic dearly and I WANT TO KEEP READING IT BUT I CAN'T TILL MORE COMES OUT.

4. Relatedly, I read all of the current Young Avengers, which means through issue 10. And once again DAMMIT WIP.

The other night I watched O Brother Where Art Thou for the first time in many many years. It mostly held up pretty well! Except I can't help but realize this time that black people are only in this movie to be Magical Negros or to otherwise support the story of the white men. And the only women, really, are the sirens (who are just there to be threateningly sexy and to lack any discernible motive for their behaviour) and Penny (who comes off pretty poorly in comparison with the original Penelope).

But the music was great, and Everett was an excellent character (of the would-hate-him-in-real-life variety).

Last night I started watching that new production of Coriolanus that Hadley Fraser’s in, because Coriolanus is one of those plays I don’t know enough about so I thought I should give it a try - and then I discovered I’d somehow missed that Tom Hiddleston’s in the lead role??? wow I’m really impressed that either a) the internet managed to keep this a secret for this long or b) I’m that oblivious. I was willing to bet it was the latter. (I was right.)

Tonight I finished watching! And then I was all HUH.

Going into this play the only thing I knew about it was that it had the gayest speech in the entirety of Shakespeare - and dudes, it's true, that speech is pretty damn gay. It's an odd experience, watching a shakespeare play that I don't actually know anything about. For the most part shakespeare is part of popular culture, such that you at least know SOMETHING of it when going in - and heck, when I saw Hamlet the first time I knew pretty much ALL of it already going in without ever having read it or studied it or seen a single bit of it before. But Coriolanus? Nothing. It's just...not a popular play.

And it's really frustrating! Because it means I don't have any previous knowledge of various interpretations to hang my understanding of the play on! I like knowing what other people think about things - because at the very least, even if I strenuously disagree, I at least know where I stand in relation to other interpretations. I have a lens through which to approach the work and say "yes" or "no" or "hmmm" to. But here? I am as a blank slate - and a bit of googling around has only turned up some shallow newspaper reviews, nothing really interesting or thoughtful.

and okay to start off with, for this particular production, I was really impressed - the acting was all excellent, the staging was really interesting, I liked how they did pretty much everything. Tom Hiddleston was magnetic as usual and Hadley Fraser was also fantastic. And I liked that this production cast some women and people of colour - including some cross-gender casting.

but the play itself...idk! I think most of my trouble is that I'm having trouble parsing the character of Aufidius. What are his motivations in everything he does? He's rather opaque! (unless I'm just being particularly slow in understanding.) Coriolanus himself is rather clearer - even though he doesn't ever have a proper soliloquy to explain his thoughts like most Shakespeare leads. But what the heck's going on with Aufidius?( cut for spoilers )

maybe I should just go read through the Aufidius/Martius tag on ao3. Gay fanfiction always has the best Shakespeare meta, right? Right. (OOH IS THERE ANY SLINGS & ARROWS FIC INVOLVING CORIOLANUS? RECS PLS IF YES)

(and if you have any other thoughts/meta/scholarly analysis to send my way on the subject of Coriolanus, please do!)