beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I had a very long conversation with my mum on the phone, starting I think around 7pm and then just going on for hours. We wandered around topics a lot and I ended up looking up Bible verses and reading them out in different translations. It's a source of some confusion to me that a lot of people I've met who call themselves Christian and make a bunch of judgements based on their religion don't know their own book as well as I do, when I had a think and decided I'm not Christian because of the whole thing with eternal hell not seeming right. My mum kind of agrees with me about the hell thing because she thinks God is a caring god, but she thinks it'll all work out in the end and she thinks she's Christian. I don't really see how that works but we had a good conversation. Also we talked some about Buddhism, though I only know small bits about that, and a bit of Hinduism that came up in passing, though that was like three sentences that covered everything I know about Hinduism, and some other stuff too. Lots about ethics and morality and what those words actually mean. Long, long, long conversation.

So I was thinking about Buddhism and ethics and compassion and trying to save people, so I watched a martial arts movie. Shaolin. It turned out to be exactly right for this mood. It's about good monks being good people, and a wicked warlord seeing the error of his ways, and lots of noble sacrifice. ( Read more... )

Still, I like the religion in this one. I'm sure it would seem a bit heavy handed to the wrong mood, but I like the whole story arc the Repentant Warrior lives.



Now I've got to decide if I should get on with something different or watch the many many hours of extras, which probably include a lot of How We Did That Cool Fight bits.
I think maybe I'll save them for later and stick with the fiction story for now. It was a good fiction world and a satisfying ending.

I'm beginning to think the boxes on these DVDs are written by people who never watch the film. Except to get the depth of misrepresentation present in this box they needed to put in a lot of work. I mean the box is all Epic Adventure!!! And it's about an army killing all the male children and one young man rising up to become a mighty emperor. The cover is all green and black and maybe a bit of blue. Everyone's making serious faces.

Except to get that cover they must have completely desaturated all the pictures, made silhouettes of the 'evil army', and had people specifically pose as serious faces, because the only person in this film who isn't making very silly faces throughout is Donnie Yen. It is a comedy, about the famous kingdom of the (Chinese) Amazon women ruled by an evil queen who hated men so much that the man who loved her castrated himself to be with her. There is no evil army, there's a lot of women wearing pinky purple armour who run around being ordered about by a very fat lady who is searching for her lost love. There's a slave trader, who wears very bright pink indeed, except not on the box cover because you might get the idea this isn't serious epic adventure at all. And there's someone hunting for the prophesied king, but they don't know which of the two guys it is, and one girl falls for one guy each, and they have the kind of Adventure where there's lots of falling on top of each other and grabbing the same thigns at the same time and making silly faces. Also sex pollen. Well, incense that makes people all googly eyes about each other. It gets used to distract Donnie Yen's character. It makes him all kissy faced about the bloke in very unconvincing bearded drag.

Donnie Yen spends the whole film treating it all like Serious Business and making Serious Faces and having Serious Martial Arts happen, though the reviews complain they're actually rip offs of other famous actually serious martial arts he's done before. But it's like he's wandered in from another film entirely. Which makes it all much, much funnier.

( Read more... )

I have a new second favourite thing: Emperor and the White Snake, a martial arts and magic film with Jet Li. It's second favourite after Woochi the Demon Slayer. Clearly I need to find more magic martial arts.

The title and the back of the box have very little resemblance to the actual film. There is a White Snake. There is no emperor. It's about monks fighting demons, ( Read more... )
Also there's lots of kicking and smashing things up and fighting with magic and also with monk things like cymbals. So it's a religious kissing and kicking movie. It's like all my favourite things.
( Read more... )


I watched a bunch of movies lately.

Mongol was about Genghis Khan before he was boss of huge empire. ( Read more... )

The Lost Bladesman is a Donnie Yen film. Awesome fight sequences. There's one guy trying to get the woman he loves back to her husband, and then there's Politics, and he keeps trying to be a hero by one set of rules but ending up with everyone opposing him because of practical politics rules. ( Read more... )

Divine Weapon is about a woman developing new weapons, rockets and missiles, ( Read more... )

Conan, the Jason Momoa one, was not ethically complex. ( Read more... )
... I'm not really planning on watching this film twice, but I was in a really stabby mood when I watched it once, so that worked out.


I also rewatched The Sorcerers Apprentice. It irritates me in the same ways as the first time I watched it. ( Read more... )
I liked the magic a lot, and also the tesla coils. It was a lot of fun.



So: more movies with more magic and more women kicking arse please.
... even the films where they're evil beat the ones where they're simply non existent.

So far today I have watched Spider-Man and Spider-man 2. 3 is in the machine doing the annoying DVD menu thing.

I am not much enthralled by Peter Parker's dilemmas. ( Read more... )

On the other hand in both movies there are moments that I really, really like, specifically the ones where Peter is not the only hero. The rest of the city is dealing with the same stuff, right alongside him. The firemen and police are responding, just his webs get him there faster or give him an edge against the stranger sorts. And there's the moments, like on the bridge with the cable car in the first movie or on the train in the second one, where the crowd just steps up and says you mess with him, you mess with all of us, or you want him, you go through us. And, yeah, the bad guy demonstrates the ability to go through all of them, but those ordinary people are right there trying. It doesn't make him uniquely heroic. And then Aunt May has a speech about how there's a hero in all of us. So that's solid, that's right, that's people working together and the only difference about this one guy is he's got more of a chance.

Back to things that irritate me: of all those background people, it's always guys having those moments. ( Read more... )

Screaming is annoying me lately. Not that women in movies do it, but that only women do it, and that it never, ever turns out well. ( Read more... ) There's a function and purpose to screaming, and it's not just about the one woman in danger doing the screaming. A scream is both a call for help and an alert system, an alarm. Social groups of animals have individuals who hang out around the edges and watch for bad things and then make a big noise. Valuable role, allows everyone else to react appropriately. But in humans the ones making the big noise are somehow inappropriate, even though it is clearly good for the survival of others if they notice if a supervillain is about to do their thing. It is never considered valuable to alert others, to call for help, to get in multiple witnesses, to avoid handling it yourself in the dark. The loner who ends up with his word against a dead guys on why someone died? That's a hero. The screamer who would have had all actions known to a group? Well that's just a damsel in distress. It's stupid, it's not functioning correctly, it's a wrong way to value things. Kicking all the arse might be the fun part, but people who make all the judgements alone are scary. So it should be of the good to make a big noise and get a crowd to react appropriately, be that run toward or run away.

( Read more... )


I know I forgot the story on the 3rd one after last time I watched it, and these characters don't live in my head between viewings. But they're okay films.



So now I'm trying to fit them all together with Avengers movies, even though I know they're slightly different 'verses. ( Read more... )

Next I shall watch all the X Men films. Except for First Class because the shop didn't have it.

Or possibly I shall sleep.

Okay, so I wrote a comment on someone's entry and then realised once again I'm so lurky on other people's blogs I'd just be popping up out of nowhere to tell them a really long comment on how, er, wrong they were, and so I hid again.

But I can post on my own place.

So: they couldn't think of a superhero plot because comics are just someone kicking someone else's arse.

Which strikes me as kind of like saying dance is just people moving their arms and legs around. I mean, yes, but...


I don't know as I think of comics plots being about the arse kicking.

They're sort of about a hero's relationship to power and to other powerful people.

( Read more... )

Movie plots are kind of about power, but really substantially about being a teenager and relationships to your parental types.

( Read more... )

I still haven't seen Avengers. I'm an essay, a research proposal, and an annotated bibliography away from seeing Avengers. I should be doing that instead of movie plots.

BUT anyways...

Saying the plot is all kicking someone is kind of missing the why of kicking, which is probably why boring. It's always about illuminating the hero, their moral choices, and their relationships.

( Read more... )

The fight sequence is how they work out their problems, but there's a really varied ton of problems they could have in the first place.



Also? See previous post Tell us not that monsters exist but that they can be beaten

It's not just why are they fighting, it's why do we need them to?
And why do we need to read it?


And there's a Joss interview that I'd go look for but I'd bump into a bunch of Avenger's spoilers
he says something about the moment, for him, is all about where someone stands up and realises they have power

Because we all need that one, that clear moment where you see the problem, see the solution, and see that you can actually get it done.

And, yes, as a genre feature, that involves kicking, usually while wearing spandex.
But that's what makes it mythology, and not a day at the office... though come to think a bunch of it makes mythology *of* the day at the office. See: Daily Planet, etc.

There's the moment we take the camouflage off and turn out to be something more, the moment we take a step and fly, the moment we face our fears.

On the outside, okay, someone kicks someone's arse... but the outside is not the story.

So there's a bazillion comics plots.

I watched Metropolis
Long film is looooong.
And slow. Very, very slow.
It had lots of excellent imagery that I recognise from, like, everything ever since.
The bit where the robot gets a face was cool.
It had one female character and her evil twin doing the virgin/whore dichotomy. With saint imagery and whore of babylon references. And quite a lot of dancing while wearing only tinsel.
Also, while it has all those images where the workers get ate by the machines, it is pretty heavily against doing anything about it. Like, if they stop work, or blow up the machines, all their children die.
The suggested solution is basically wait for an angsty middle class white boy to save you.
*facepalm*
dude falls for a worker girl, does part of one shift of work, and now he's the worker's hero?
Balls.
The city looked cool. It was all very huge and striking images. The robot rocked.
It just... wasn't very good, added together.

Then I watched Dirk Gently, recorded from last week.
... I very swiftly started fast forwarding through it, and then forwarding even faster.
Booooooooored now.

I think Bechdel fail was the only thing those two had in common.

It isn't like the Bechdel test is the be all and end all of textual quality, it's just that failing it correlates pretty strongly with things that will be at best blah.

Metropolis we will be studying in lessons this week.
I mentioned before about 'enthralled by her beauty'. All the films thus far have that in common. Dude is wandering along being evil, or at least capitalist in a conscience free way, and then Enthralled by Her Beauty he blah blah blah, and then quite often there's carrying her around fainted. Nosferatu involved her winning though, that was good. Metropolis was just Wait For A Man To Save You. Like, the city is flooding, the lifts are busted, and she sounds the alarm, but then she stands around next to the alarm surrounded by children. So then men turn up and suggest they use the stairs. She's the one that actually works there, she has to be told to use the stairs? :eyeroll:

I guess if you edit the hell out of Metropolis you'd get a story that was merely annoying rather than deathly slow and annoying. But apparently it used to take ten minutes of children being soaked and splashed and making wah face before the idea that children are in the flooding city is adequately conveyed.
Sometimes I wonder about the smarts of people from the past.

Other times I wonder what we've done to our brains that we can take stuff in all blinky now.

Possibly we swapped out the long term storage people used to keep, because we can't memorise epic poems now, or indeed phone numbers, we just use computers to look them up, even tiny ones in our phones.

Living in the future.

I nearly went to see this film for my birthday last year, until mum admitted she didn't actually want to see a film. I'm kind of glad we didn't go, it wasn't a birthday film.
Violent. Messy. Not much, because 12, but still, grimy beige with splashes of blood.

I nearly gave up on it at dead woman, because there's one woman and then dead, but there was another twist and it got interesting again.
Actually there were three women, but I don't count fridged motivation as characters really.
But all of them were basic types really. All the beats were therefore predictable, in the western story. The alien story... didn't add much.
So I wasn't impressed.

But I can watch Daniel Craig at length and so that works out.
(Though I can't figure out why he's attractive. It's not the face. I think it's something between the way he moves and the attitude.)
Also, I did not previously have a thing for those leather cowboy trouser thingies, but he do wear them well.

Yesterday I was doing character design and idly thinking on how to combine Han Solo and Indiana Jones.
I think you get the Cowboys and Aliens look, black waistcoat over off white shirt with brown hat and trousers.
I guess tough guys have a limited wardrobe.

Hmmm, that really is about all I have to say about this one.
Eh. Films rarely impress.

I just watched Monsters. The film four intro was most impressed with the low low budget and how he did the FX on his laptop. I was most impressed that the FX were really not the point, they served the story well, and were just one element in a well realised world.

I nearly didn't watch it through. By my usual standards it's a total fail. Woman dies before the credits. Bechdel fail at 'two named women', though to be fair there's only two named characters. The two Americans get names, all the others don't. Plus the intermittent use of subtitles to translate the Spanish frequently puts them at incomprehensible distance. I thought it was odd, but then I realised we're in the point of view of the guy, who has very little Spanish, so it makes sense to have some but not much translated. The woman speaks Spanish, but that's pretty much all we learn about her. We also learn about her fiance and her dad, and that her dad is rich. We never learn why she's in the country or why she isn't saving her own self.

The plot hinged early on them being complete bloody idiots, so again, I nearly turned it off. It should have ended much, much sooner but she gave someone else her passport and he got drunk and robbed. How stupid is she? So she's stupid, has no motivation, is relying on this guy she only just met because her dad sent him, does everything he says even when she thinks he's being stupid (and he usually is), and gives him her passport. I disliked the character very much. It's a total rescue the princess.

Only, slight twists involved. ( Read more... )

So there's feminism fail, big surprise. But there's science fiction win. There's a world sketched in that's grubby and poor and full of scavenged machinery, but not Mad Max, just one notch up on now. There's aliens arriving in a crashed space ship but not Aliens style. And it has something to say about the USA.

I'm not planning to watch it again, but it was pretty interesting the once.

I watched 'Captain America'. I think it's another film where all the good bits went in the trailers. I liked it okay, but the bits that were yaayness were all bits I'd seen before.
So I should go back to ignoring advertising and just watch films I've seen people talk about. Or, more usually, write fanfic about.
On the plus side I like him in the movie just as much as in the fanfic, so I can keep liking the fanfic no problem.

I think it bothered me a bit about the film that there were enough characters for a team movie but it was just about Steve Rogers and his ongoing awesome. Humble awesome. But it felt weird, like the speaking was about him being just another guy and a Captain as in leader of a bunch of soldiers, part of something larger, and respecting the other soldiers just as much, only the film was about him being The Hero with a bunch of... redshirts around him. I don't know. It's like what it said it was about and what it did weren't the same thing. And then there's the bits at the beginning and end that make it that the whole thing is just a prequel to Avengers, which also pushes every character not Captain America into the superfluous pile. I didn't like that so much.

I like teams. Teams are good.

Did it fail at 'two named female characters'? There were a handful of women but I can only think of one name.



Okay, I'm going back to inventing superheroes in my head.

But Steve Rogers is nice.

Today I watched the Sarah Jane Adventures, and also Thor. One of them I have been looking forward to a long time and I love it and hug it and wish to keep it always. The other was just vaguely disappointing. Guess which one has the big budget?

The Sarah Jane Adventures makes me sad also, because I keep remembering she's gone. Sad. But the story is happy making. ( Read more... )

I look forward to next week.


And then, Thor. *sigh* I know reading the fic first was not calculated to maximise my enjoyment, but Loki is so much more interesting than Thor. I kind of can't see the point of Thor. He was a big fighty shouty man at the start, and he was a big fighty shouty man at the end. When did he do any changing? ( Read more... )

I want to see a Wonder Woman film so it can be about mothers and daughters, trying to live up to the legacy of her mother the queen. ( Read more... )

Wonder Woman could go to America and fight... what specifically? Is always the problem. Easy to throw her at gorgons, not so simples to work her into this world.

But I like the mothers and daughters story. And then there's a third generation, or more, depending how many you import. And then it's like being big sister, or raising daughters. Mothers and daughters from both sides.

I looked at the deleted scenes on Thor and they seemed to get rid of his mother. Also Sif. Funny how that happens. *sigh*

The Sarah Jane Adventures has lots of women in now. I likes it.

You know how you watch things as a kid and certain scenes stay in you mind, and then sink in and become part of the structure?
And you know how rewatching things as an adult you get a whole different perspective on why?
I just rewatched Legend.

The bit of that film that stays with me is Lily and the dark dancer (link goes to YouTube; if the music isn't to your liking try one of the other links to roughly the same clip to get music from a different cut).
I loved that whole sequence, the dress and the sparkle and the dancing.
The thing I notice now?

Darkness is setting out to seduce her - that's the specific word. So there's food (in shades of red and black) and diamonds glittering and skulls and bones in silver and incredible goth dresses.

But mostly there's this glittering darkness, this beautiful dancer, this woman. She's sent to seduce the princess. She dances for her, flickering like the flames and with stars in her face. And first the princess is afraid, running, in rags and tatters, but then she's watching, the dancer cupping her face but not quite touching, watching her dance, and then she dances out with her. The dancer pulls her out, and they dance together, wild, then spin apart, and then the princess reaches out for her, welcoming, wanting her.
Then with a swirl of dress the princess is the dancer, dark and beautiful.

It's very gorgeous, very goth, and very very queer.

It has that tangle between wanting and wanting to be. It's not just about a good girl getting seduced to the dark side, and the power she finds in the darkness. When she embraces the dancer she still rejects the man that sent her. Well, great big horned beast, this not being a subtle film in any other respect. She rejects the stripped to the waist muscular man, and embraces the dark woman. ... so, not exactly subtle there either, except I somehow doubt it was intended.

I know there's a whole film around this scene, but it tends to fade out of my mind.
I just remember the dance.

... sometimes I look back at me as a kid and it makes a lot more sense from here...

Today is studying Jane Eyre day. ... the more I study it, the less interesting it gets. The more I read the arguments the less plausible they get. There's some utter bibbeldy gobbledygook said about this book. And it's all on our assigned reading list.

So I got fed up and watched a film version I recorded off the TV the other week. Or started to, at least. I was watching it applying the stuff from Textual Transformations class, fully aware they'd change things and tweak the ideology to suit themselves and all of that. But the specifics really annoyed me.

Starting with the first image of the film: They have a book with 'Jane Eyre' on the cover and they open the book to a printed page and read out stuff from it, but it's not from Jane Eyre. It's just stuff they made up. Which I guess is fair warning for the rest of the film.

( Read more... )

And then there's the characters they've taken out and added in. Basically they've taken out women and added in men. ( Read more... )



So... that was a very long set of notes and quotes there. Hopefully it was useful study time and not just extended growl time... Given that I started this at 11 and it's now nearly 4 I seem to have spent a bit of a long time on it.


Conclusion: The film strips Jane of personality, voice, her own words, her educational and vocational attainments, her financial independence, indeed any vestige of independent life.

In contrast Jane Eyre, the proper one in the book, has all of that. And a spiritual life, and multiple suitors, and political opinions, and options.

I thought I was bored with the book but I'm downright offended with what this stupid film did to it.



End of film I can see when it was: Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, 1944

:-p to that version.