Pirating movies is always morally correct

Rambling about fillums and sometimes the telly.

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New year, new pinned post time, right? Join me on Letterboxd or Patreon for alternate places to yell about films with me as I continue working through a to-watch list that possibly will take more time than exists in the universe

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Someone on the writing team for Supergirl (2026) really, really liked Mad Max: Fury Road, huh

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Attempts to remain unspoiled about One Piece now ending, I have clocked that Luffy has(had?) brothers (beloved) and Sanji has(had?) brothers (evil) and I am clinically unwell about siblings in fiction so I'm gone

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I think one of the reasons that the bananas costume and makeup choices from One Piece are working in the live action--beyond the fact that the crew are committing so thoroughly to the bit that it just sets a pretty wild standard for what clothing just looks like in this world--is that this seems to be a water world where we're heavily focusing on seafaring culture. The majority of the characters that we meet, and the ones with the wildest outfits, are nomadic, and regularly engaged in both crime and combat. Luffy is on and off of four different ships in the first four episodes, generally with nothing more than the clothes on his back, and we also see Nami regularly hopping ships and Zoro traveling without so much as a bag. Even if you're living on a ship long-term, there's not necessarily a lot of space for you to keep Stuff and spare clothes, and you could get sunk in a battle with Marines or other pirates any minute.

Humans are creative. We like to decorate. If you're living a life where you usually only own what you can keep physically attached to your body when you're in a fight or on the run, then yeah, you're gonna keep darning and patching up that one pair of trousers that you love, you're gonna tattoo your makeup on once you find a look you really like, you're gonna do funky shit with your hair, you're either gonna find that one pair of iconic earrings that you LOVE or you're gonna get fifteen piercings so you can keep wearing more cool earrings. You're gonna own two shirts at MOST and you're gonna patch them so many times they Shirt of Theseus their way into being really zany looking bits of cloth. If you find a weird coat and you like it you're gonna wear it forever because if you leave it on your bunk you might lose it when one of the zillion superpowered weirdos sailing around with you sets your ship on fire.

OPLA gives the cast loads of different outfits because that does look better in live-action but this is a setting where I would buy people wearing one outfit forever like a cartoon character, especially since the costumers are putting effort into making clothes look scuffed and stained and worn. And I will buy those outfits being utterly bizarre, because if the only thing you really own to decorate is yourself, go off.

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My first reaction to seeing Miss All Sunday was a child on her poster was "what the fuck who puts a bounty out on a CHILD" but then I remembered that we just met Miss Goldenweek, who is not being played by a kid but is being done up and framed and probably intended to be a kid, so yeah. I never considered that little girls can be serial killers too. Maybe I'm a bad person

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Theories about what the "Will of D."/the D. In Luffy, Garp and Roger's names means, from a viewer who is OPLA-only so far:

Death (the thing Luffy and Roger both laughed in the face of, and honestly I can see Garp doing that too)

Destruction (lot of that around these guys)

Obligatory Deez Nuts joke

Dreams (recurring theme for the show and fixation for Luffy)

It's just something normal like Dave but it turns out that a guy called Dave was once the equivalent of Hitler or something

Devil (as in fruit?)

It doesn't stand for anything these motherfuckers just smile so freaky that half an emoji got stuck in the middle of their names

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Is that guy's name Dragon or is he like, literally a dragon? Asian dragons often have storm/weather powers and there are already dinosaurs in this show so I'm ready for anything

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So I'm OPLA-only and trying to dodge spoilers but all the really obvious hint drops tying Luffy to Roger and implying that Luffy is Roger's son--they're red herrings, right? I say this purely because of math; Luffy said he's 17 in the first episode of season 1, the banners in Loguetown said it was 22 years since Roger's execution, and it has for sure not been five years between seasons 1 and 2. Unless Luffy's ma ate the Whale Pregnancy Fruit, I'm betting this is more about narrative parallels than blood ties.

...though that does make me think about the fact that the only Strawhat whose birth parents we know anything definitive about is Usopp. Like, Chopper's were probably just regular reindeer but the giants fighting on the dinosaur island have prepared me to expect kinda anything from this setting. Nami's are presumed dead in whatever massacre Bellemere rescued her from, but we don't know a thing about them. We know Sanji's mum was sick and then died, presumably sometime before he wound up shipwrecked with Zeff, and that's it (though I'm assuming there's more to come from the way AO3 tags don't seem to have a consensus about Sanji's full name.) Nothing from Luffy or Garp with any information about Luffy's parent/Garp's child, or what happened to them to leave Luffy to be sorta raised by Garp.

And on the one hand, I'm sure a lot of that info is just a wiki dive away, but I'm really enjoying watching this show deliver the story, and also I kinda don't want there to be a ton of Big Reveals bc I'd hate gor a show about freedom to be about a bunch of characters who are from special bloodlines or something, you know? Like I hate it when a character's skills and strengths are reduced to something they just inherited, not something they chose and worked for themselves. I think it's good and cool and important if the pirate show prizes the family you find and build, and if the pirates who are gonna declare war on the world government someday are nobody "special", just people who are making their own choices and taking control of their own lives.

...that said, this show's been nailing it so far and I feel like I understand better with each episode why folk have been frothing at the brain for this series for thirty years, so. Just wanna record my thoughts and predictions before I finally break and go on that wiki walk

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Week L: The Life of Chuck (2024)

I always assume that if Mike Flanagan is involved it’s going to be spectacular and make me cry, and I have never been wrong yet.

Is it good? What really strikes me is the emotional construction of this film. With its chronologically reversed structure, you’re seeing the emotional impact of events before you see why they’re happening, and the emotions are so beautifully and intensely depicted that it enhances the later explanations. Marty and Felicia might turn out to not strictly be real, their entire world a metaphor for the unfathomable vastness of the human experience, but their sorrow and fear as their world ends are intense and poignant enough that Chuck’s death feels like the end of a world. In the end, you find that, just as you’ve known from the end of the first/third segment that Chuck is going to die relatively young of a brain tumour, Chuck himself has also seen his own death coming, but instead of being crushed by grief and fear like his grandfather he’s chosen to find as much joy in his life as he can to make what time he has worth it. And as we find out at the end of the second segment, it was, for him; the pure joy he felt through dance and dancing with others was beautifully expressed. Stellar cast all doing fantastic jobs even when they were only briefly present, gorgeous looking film with vivid colours and a great score, just all around beautifully constructed and legitimately inspirational.

Is it fun? The tone varies between the three segments, but the dancing in the middle and last segments are truly joyous and delightful.

Is it queer? No.

Have you seen The Life Of Chuck? What did you think? If you’re struggling under a giant to-watch list, pick something beginning with L and tell me about it!

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The experience I had of watching Good Whale Hunting as an OPLA-only viewer was going

"Damn, violin man has drip"

"OH HE'S THE AFRO SKELETON???"

(Animanga enjoyers I respect you greatly please don't tell me anything I am looking forward to watching this story unfold as it will, and I am very much looking forward to understanding why the afro skeleton winds up on the ship)

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Erin Brokovich (2000)

I am always willing to kill for a woman with a good bra and the confidence to shittalk multibillion dollar corporations

Is it good? Generally, yeah—the horrifying mystery of what a medical record has to do with a property dispute unfolds really well, and Erin is a very appealing protagonist, not just for the wonderbra but for her sheer determination and straightforward sense of injustice. Her interactions with her kids are cute too, especially the baby, and the scene where her son reads her files and realizes that his mum’s trying to protect people (I feel like she could’ve explained that to him earlier, but people really just don’t talk to their kids). Things necessarily get streamlined and glamoured up a bit for a film, but it retains enough grit to not feel overly polished. I do enjoy the emphasis that law degrees exist for a reason and people do need training to progress legal action against powerful supercorps successfully, but engaging with people as people and not cases is an irreplaceably valuable skill. The outright evil conduct of a corporation putting profits over the lives and health of hundreds or thousands of people does not at all strain suspension of disbelief, they do that shit all the time, and drawing attention to that fact and also the fact that it’s possible to hold them to account and win is a vital service for any film to perform.

Is it fun? Pretty grim, a lot of it. I will not deny that it’s fun to look at Julia Roberts. Some of her shittalking is funny, but sometimes I want to yell at her to stop being so cruel to other women. We get it, you’re the most gorgeous woman alive in the year 2000, doesn’t mean you can keep calling other women fat and ugly when the actual problem is that they’re unhelpful and judgemental! Elle Woods would NOT approve

Is it queer? God I wish

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Week L: Little Monsters (2019)

Oh to be listening to Lupita Nyong’o as she plays the ukulele during a zombie invasion

Is it good? It takes way too long for the zombies to show up. I get that we need to lay some groundwork of David being a childish asshole so he can character develop later, but imo we spend way too long on that, especially the opening depiction of his trashfire relationship that really doesn’t end up being relevant to much? Also I don’t care about him. At any point in this film. Miss Caroline is significantly more interesting, with her past as a groupie who ended up stuck in a foreign country with a stack of medical and legal fees and found her calling in teaching when she realized just how much the kids trust her, and how much responsibility that lays on her. Placing her in a zombie invasion with the responsibility of protecting twelve children, therefore, is a super interesting premise, and David is kinda just a distraction from it? Yeah he develops by the end after seeing what a colossal douchebag Teddy McGiggle is and realizing that that’s how he comes off to others. I still kept hoping he’d die heroically to demonstrate that he’s learned to put others before himself. SHOW ME MORE OF LUPITA DECAPITATING ZOMBIES WITH A SHOVEL SO SHE CAN GET A KID’S EPIPEN TO HIM DAMMIT

Is it fun? Some parts are really, really fucking funny, especially the fuckin killshots taken at the US military and the shit they get up to at overseas bases. Miss Caroline pretending to hug McGiggles so she can threaten to gut him like a fish if he doesn’t calm down and stop scaring the kids was also fun, and the whole reveal of the zombies being calmed/entranced by music. My favourite zombie was def the puppet actor who kept entering scenes puppet first and grabbing folk with the puppet so it came off like the puppet was a zombie.

Is it queer? No but good god is this another film that would’ve REALLY benefited from being less painfully heterosexual

Have you seen Little Monsters? What did you think? If you’re struggling under a giant to-watch pile, pick something beginning with L and tell me about it!

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Week I: Idi I Smotri (Come And See) (1985)

To get the content warnings for this film you just read the Dirlewanger Brigade’s wikipedia page

is it good? It’s absolutely masterful at giving you the sensory experience of being a terrified child during the Nazi ethnic cleansing of Belarus, I’ll tell you THAT. While the camerawork is sometimes very focused, such as centering so thoroughly on Fiyora or Glasha’s faces that the background distorts and blurs, at other times it floats shakily through scenes of chaotic violence or skims past absolute atrocity quickly enough to give you no more than a glimpse, which honestly is more than enough when paired with this film’s sound design. Had the camera lingered on a heap of naked corpses it risks getting tasteless or gruesome, which is not the vibe aimed for here, but getting just a glimpse of the pile after several minutes of the sound of those fucking flies ovewhelming everything and knowing there are bodies nearby, but not expecting that many… it’s well done! Utterly fucking horrifying! My brain keeps chewing on the parallel at the end, too, between the Nazi officer who rants about his policy of killing children to make sure that they don’t grow up as inferior races who spread the disease of communism, and then, after, an utterly broken Fiyora shooting a poster of Hitler to pieces, mentally rewinding the horrors of WWII as if yearning to go back and do whatever it takes to stop it all before it begins… until he gets to a baby picture, and hesitates, because even if that’s baby Hitler, that’s a baby, drawing a line between humanity and monstrosity.

Is it fun? I mean the bit where a bunch of Nazis get shot to shit is kinda cathartic but fun is really not what we’re here for.

Is it queer? No.

Have you seen Come And See? How did you recover? What are you watching this week? If you’re struggling under a giant to-watch list, pick something beginning with I and tell me about it!

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The main characters of the last fanfic you read are now in the last show/movie you watched.

How do they fit in?

Perfectly. It's literally their show.

Not their show but they're great anyway.

I think they're okay in the end.

Not gonna lie, they're struggling.

Oh they're so dead.

Literally their show but the fic was so AU that it's gonna be tough.

Literally their show but they died in their show so rip i guess.

Voting ended onMar 4

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Well, I'm doing the thing I always told my students to do and started playing Pokemon in my target language after getting the hang of katakana and hiragana. My vocabulary is still dogshit but for some reason I find it very funny that the preselected names are Buruu, Tsunekazu... and Jan? Jan?

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Week H: The Happening (2008)

Oh No

Is it good? No. Not it very much is not. And whether that’s on purpose or not, it’s still just… so awkward. Nobody in this film speaks to each other like a human, with some “conversations” seeming more like random exchanges of non-sequiters than anything else. John Leguizamo is the only person here not made of wood—giving Zooey Deschanel the line “I don’t like to show my emotions” does NOT save that performance. The premise is a good horror premise but it loses the fear the more it gets over-explained and over-explicated—like, some of the extended shots of the wind blowing through grasses and trees could have been pretty and ominous if the idea of plants releasing neurotoxins was left as an implication and wasn’t over-discussed again and again by heavily concussed people. The horror of being one of the handful of random people who seem to be immune while everyone around them commits horrible suicide is a very compelling horror, but we get only brief moments with those people and then a lot more time watching Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel stagger around having a terrible relationship and having bizarre reactions to watching teenagers get shot in slow-mo

Is it fun? I mean it’s probably fun to watch with your friends while drinking but not generally no

Is it queer? No

Have you seen The Happening? What did you think/ If you’re struggling under a giant to-watch list, watch something beginning with H and tell me about it!

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Week G: Grand Theft Hamlet (2024)

(Ssh this isn't a week late don't worry about it)

Hey no hang on where’s the recording of the full performance? No seriously I want to see the full performance WHERE IS IT

Is it good? Mmmmmm… as a documentary, I don’t know. The recreations of some of the conversations and controversies between Sam, Pinny and Mark are extremely wooden in the voice acting, which is odd given that 2/3 of those are professional actors. Not great without a script, maybe? The argument between Sam and Pinny especially is obtrusively trite and boring, and that kind of rote “you care more about your job than your family” drama is not the INTERESTING drama here, the INTERESTING drama is the way complete randos in a hyper-violent open-world MMO interact with coming across characters performing Hamlet. You do get a glimpse of a broad spectrum of online behaviour—people shooting at/blowing up the actors just ‘cause, a guy walking up to watch and then calling Sam a bitch, ParTeb not really getting it because English is like his third language and he doesn’t know Shakespeare but giving a beautiful reading from the Qu’ran in Arabic and then hanging out just for the joy of hanging and running defence… Like legit I want to see more of how their rehearsals went and how often they had to fight off other GTA gamers! And I wanted to see more of the final performance! They went through a lot of work to put together what looks like an extremely creative performance and we hardly get to see any of it! The cinematography of how GTA Online looks is definitely gorgeous, I really enjoy how much calm beauty they found in a setting designed for explosions and violence, and they got some phenomenal performers, especially the woman who did a speech from Coriolanus for her audition and fuckin killed it, especially using knife emotes as body langauge. I also would’ve loved to see interviews or something with the other performers, because Sam and Mark mention that they’re thinking of Hamlet because of how violent it is and how it goes in a setting built for violence, and then that isn’t really explored in any way.

Is it funny? Extremely. Their first attempt at doing the two-man show is broken up by gunfire and explosions at hilariously appropriate times, and there’s just so much silliness possible in the game—ParTeb’s alien costume with the tight ass, Sam and Mark having calm and thoughtful conversations while fleeing the police, the way the performers will draw guns (or in one memorable case an RPG) and just straight up kill each other ingame, something you notably cannot do onstage. Also very funny to me that, while other player characters do disrupt the rehearsals and the performance, their biggest disruption actually seems to be the ingame police responding to everything with massively over-the-top violence.

Is it queer? Nope.

Have you seen Grand Theft Hamlet? What did you think? Do you know where to get a recording of the full performance? If you’re struggling under a giant to-watch list, watch something beginning with G and tell me about it!