It is an unpopular opinion, but it's war and dehumanising the aggressor is what will be done. Still seeing the narrative shifts from "there are people in Russia who are suffering under the regime but they are trying" to "merely saying 'not all russians' you are supporting Putin war directly" is very fascinating. And I am not talking about ukrainians, they have all the right in the world to say whatever they want (hoping on less mutilated bodies being posted in unrelated threads, but they see worse on daily basis). I am taking about westerners who seem to be so hungry for blood. The expectations of people living in democratic countries are hard to meet living in ageing dictatorship, especially when our state propaganda works on them too. Why else they keep showing the results of the polls while every political scientist will tell you that in Russia people see these as a test from a state and "refuse to tell on themselves"? To don't feel doubt rounding up 145mil people in us vs them mentality in a country that takes a week to cross? The time will show how well that "rally 'round the flag" will fair, but it is a talk for a peaceful time. The war is an atrocity and it needs to be stopped. (Meanwhile people started taking about the possibility of the state setting up some terracts to keep people's minds on war, it wouldn't surprise me, there is a shortage of sugar, if you know what I mean)
The fires in Siberia have burned down over 2 million acres of the forest and we need your help
I live in Yakutia, Russia, where most of the fires are taking place and I'm trying to raise awareness about the situation worldwide so we can get some external help.
Neither our federal nor local government is doing anything to put these fires out. They lie and say the situation is under control, when it certainly isn't.
Take a look at the current AQI of the city! We have been the most air polluted place in the WORLD for a few days now and the AQI used to be closer to 1300. It's still extremely dangerous to even open the windows or go outside.
This is a map of all the fire hotspots. Our nature, our life is burning alive.
Yakutia is the homeland of many Indigenous peoples and we are all suffering right now. The Russian government doesn't care about us, they only care about the money they can earn from mining our diamonds and precious metals but can't take care of our generous land. The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) has always prided itself on its nature and wildlife, since we were kids we've all been taught to preserve it and take care of it. Who are we without it?
Here's a thread from one of the people to volunteered to put out the fires. There's many pictures attached, and you should be able to read it through Twitter's built in translator. It gives a closer more intimate look at how things really are here: https://twitter.com/mienekiene/status/1415859223292899332
“Записался добровольцем на тушение пожаров в Горном. Сегодня уже выезжаем😶”
The situation is so bad news programs and newsletters in other countries are covering it. The Siberian fires were recently the main topic in New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/world/europe/siberia-fires.html
Northeastern Siberia is a place where people take Arctic temperatures in stride. But 100-degree days are another matter entirely.
So I urge you, PLEASE help us spread awareness about it so we can get some external help since out government doesn't give two shits about us.
Use the hashtag #SaveYakutia on social media to boost it up.
Read about it, talk about it, reblog, boost, anything is deeply appreciated by me personally and everyone here. I'm tired of Indigenous peoples being ignored and left to suffer alone.
Some of you might’ve heard about the situation with the government vs opposition that we’re dealing with right now, but I’m gonna give a brief explanation, how it started / how it’s going so to say.
In August 2020 Alexey Navalny, one of the leaders of the russian opposition, was poisoned with a nerve agent “Novichok”, which was a clear murder attempt. He was transported to Germany to get proper care and over there, while recovering, he and his team had a series of investigations of his murder attempt and basically they proved that it was all organised by the government / FSB (Federal Security Service of Russia / P*tin. He’s posted videos about his investigation, here’s the one of him exposing the whole killer team. He also made another video where he undercover called one of the killers and that dude basically confirmed it all, you can watch it here, english subtitles provided on both videos. I know it all feels like some crazy tv show, trust me i’m still speechless.
Anyway, last week he announced that he’s ready to go back home to Russia. Thousands of people came to the airport to show their support, but the bunker grandpa (our joke of a president) was not happy with that and police was everywhere at that airport taking people for doing nothing but standing there. Right when the plane was about to land, they changed the airports (*pretends to be shocked*). They landed and at the customs Alexey was detained by police. The reasons: something that they imagined themselves but also Alexey has a probation and he wasn’t checking at the Moscow police station twice a month….. since he was in Germany recovering from a murder attempt.
The next day they somehow held a court hearing right at the police station which is literally against the law and he’s being arresting for 30 days. And that gives everyone a push. In his videos he asks people not to protest for him but to protest for themselves and their right to have a voice and for that voice to be heard and not be murdered and, if you’re not dead, be jailed because you have a different opinion. For years our country has been literally degrading, swimming in the corruption and lies just so Mr. Poo has his throne. Elections are being forged, at this point everyone knows about it but they frightened people enough to not say a word. The whole world thinks so low of us or scared of us because of the power that the Tsar holds and smart, reasonable people here are so fed up with that.
And the final part and what was the last drop of patience for lost of people here, Navalny’s team posted a whole film-investigation about the palace P*tin owns on the coast of the Black sea which was built with the stolen money. Just a few highlights about that palace: the approximate cost of it is around 100 billion rubbles / $1,4 billion, the size of it is over 17,6k square meters, it has tea/wine houses, wine gardens, amphitheatre, a hockey rink, casino, furniture with millions on price tags, hookah bar, bedchambers with jacuzzis, and people’s personal faves, aqua disco, $2k toilet brushes with toilet paper holders, a pole at the hookah bar and a room for dirt. You can watch the whole video here, trust me you won’t regret it. It’s smashing all the views records.
Just in comparison to the cost of only that palace, our pensions for people of age are around 10k rubbles / $130, our standard salaries are around $300 a month and that if you’re lucky, in the regions it can be twice less. During the pandemic the government gave people n o t h i n g that could’ve helped even a tiny bit. But golden toilet brushes at the Black sea cost are always provided.
Tomorrow, January 23rd, there are going to be mass protests all across the country where people want to show their civil position, to scream for the rights that are being taken away from us with every day passing with more and more ridiculous laws, to show support to Alexey and his family and ask for his freedom, and just to show that people want to see their homeland get justice, respect and love it deserves. Chances of things getting messy are very high since the government doesn’t allow us to have peaceful protests (unless its allowed protests which like…they never allow them so here’s another way of silencing us). I’ll be posting things about it as soon as I know, the ways to help and just spread information about what we have to deal with.
For now I’m gonna leave a link to an FBK site / Anti-Corruption Foundation, which is a non profit organization that investigates corruption cases in Russia. They also have a donation page which could always use some help, especially on the eve of protests (e.g. provide free lawyers to help people get out of police in case of arrests on protests).
The protests are going on right now all around the country with thousands of protesters gathering on the streets even when it’s -50C° outside: from the Far East to Saint Petersburg. Navalny’s wife is arrested. Around 40 people has been arrested so far as well which may seem as a small amount but remember that protests are still going and no one knows if there will be riots going on. I don’t believe that they will cease next few days as well. I know y'all love to ignore everything outside the EU and the Yankee land, but at least don’t let the propaganda machine misinform you.
Day 31: When it’s the grand finale!
Thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments, tags and support! (especially @lieutenant-wubs, who was writing, to put it mildly, essays in the tags every day throughout the whole month. It means a lot!)
Also, if you liked this month and my art, please, consider supporting me through my ko-fi page! Also, i will be reopening commissions soon, so stay tuned!
-Child, imitating one of cinemas' most horiffic monsters, the literal Embodiment of nightmares, in the vast darkness of their father's study. circa 1979
“Outsiders: How to Adapt H.P. Lovecraft in the 21st Century” A wonderful video by one of my favorite youtubers, Harry Brewis (aka HBomberguy), who has a streak for covering a great deal of videogames, films and shows in a way that’s funny, thought-provoking, and very, Very long. To anyone who likes this, or wants to support his work, he has a Patreon which I’ll link below: https://www.patreon.com/Hbomb
I was thinking about a friend over the holidays, and thought of sharing a little story with some people.
Two years ago, from around New Years time, I commissioned to an artist here on this site for a sketch; I thought I was terrible going about it. I gave them an excessivly long description about what it was, how the artwork should be at ‘their’ work, and afterwards the work they spent so much time and effort on ended up being shown to noone, never got posted by either of us. It could have ended there, I paid an artist for their work and business was done, but after that we somehow talked about movies. Movies with plants in them, killer plants. “Triffids” and “The Ruins” and that sort. We talked about other things afterward, but I forgot what they were, and Tumblr memory doesn’t roll that far back.
It was a small conversation, but it was a small start to what I consider today to be a small friendship.
But at that time, I could only see myself as one thing: a worthless failure.
I had left my family to move with my grandparents, wound up living in the dining room. Two months from the day I arrived, without employment and refusing to change old habits for the better, I had to move back home. There was no bedroom for me this time, so the game room had to suffice. The only time I had privacy was when I went to the bathroom. And that’s how it was for over a year.
I was employed the first day I got back, but rather than out of passion or a real care for working, it was a job in retail I did not love and one I was hired for only out of mutual desperation. They needed a body to run and saw someone with no work history and signed me right up. Two years later, that’s still my only means of income.
Noone knows this but before I used to make the cheap little sketches you see at the bottom of my page, I made movies; they were short, shoddy stopmotion films on a digital camcorder, but that’s when my passion for filmmaking was actually being expressed. I haven’t made anything with a camera in almost half a decade. Those little sketches I did afterwards seemed to die down too, with not one being posted since last year. It’s as if my passion, my desire to create had faded since that time, that year of unaccomplishment.
I tell you all this, at the end of the year because: Yes. We fail. And it can be hard. So much so that it can seem like a whole year of mishaps, underachievments, and choices combined with things beyond your control, can all culminate down to the whole year just feeling worthless. That what’s the point of trying next year, or any year, if it’s going to fail just like the last one.
That year was one of the hardest I ever had, but I will never consider it worthless, nor will I ever see it as a failure. And here’s why:
This year I got my first apartment; I share it with a sibling but now I have a proper room to sleep and a place that I can truly call my own.
While my work hasn’t changed, and while I do wish to find one to be more passionate about, my stance in it has grown with the time I’ve been there, and my drive to work has been increased.
And even though I haven’t made movies in years, my passion to watch them, to understand their form and make has grown immensly; I bought over a hundred films with my own money this year alone, with many of them films I would have never expected myself to see half a decade before.
They always say that this is the time of the year to “be thankful for what we have”, and they’re right. This isn’t the time to give up and say “ hope next year won’t be as bad”, because that’s never a guarantee, and that’s not what it’s about.
It’s about finding, out of what may feel like a whole year of failure, worthlessness and just the worst, the best that came from it, no matter how grande, no matter how small. To collect every piece, put them together, and to admire and appreciate the good in it all.
Because what is at this point the worst year of my life started out with me talking with someone online about killer plant movies, and for what it gave me, for that alone, that whole year was worth it.
So maybe, no matter what, this year was worth something to you.
A few weeks ago (11/2/17 if Tumblr doesn’t time-stamp these posts) I saw the film Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to the 1982 ‘flawed masterpiece’ of the same name minus the date.
And much like it’s predecessor it’s a flawed film, however those flaws are much more present that I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece; but it isn’t bad, it’s actually quite good, so much so that it definitely sticks out when compared to many modern films based on pre-existing franchises or iconography.
This film is frustrating, to put it bluntly. Frustrating because it’s a mixture of being both excellent, alright, and at some parts bad.
I haven’t posted jack-squat on this blog in ages, and my ability to express and articulate viewpoints hasn’t had much opportunity to be refined well, so consider this a warning that this kind of opinionated, and I wouldn’t fully call it a critique. Also this will be riddled with spoilers, so if you plan on watching this film to make up your own mind (which I would highly encourage), please don’t read this until doing so.
Overall I thought the film was good, but there were so many flaws that I wouldn't call it great. Many of those flaws act more like trade-offs from the original film that were worked differently in the new one, which do and don't work.
Visually it's really impressive, with director Denis Villeneuve knowing what to focus on in each scene and how the lighting, color composition and blocking help establish tone and flow the film through. However the original film had so much visual detail in it that your eyes were allowed to wander wherever with what felt like a vast but cluttered, overused and believable world. The new film feels almost empty at times, crowd scenes don't feel crowded, and the lack of background detail and constraint the director puts on you don't allow you to wander that much; the camera confined, but only because it knows what to focus on.
The scene of them flying to Wallace's building as it towers over the pyramids of Tyrells' in a rainy fog while a Tibetan choir sings genuinely chilled me.
Which leads me to the music which was also great, when it's there. It's nice that the composer tried something close but also distinct from the original film's score, but most of the music is this loud thunk noise; it doesn't sound as varied as the originals, nor does it get baked into the film as well.
The plot was simple but well-defined, some of the characters were good and well-defined (some of them), and the actors who played them did a good job performance-wise. Deckard in the original only did one-bit of 'detective-work', but K is a genuine detective in this new film, doing a great deal of work to solve this mystery of sorts; it does bite him hard by the film's end, which was smart and to me unexpected.
And yeah, the way women were in this film was unusually distracting, namely because it had so much presence in the film's plot, and as consequence affected the overall feel of the film. I liked Robin Wright's character, and I kind of like Luv when she wasn't in the presence of Wallace Breen. And yes, the scene when we first see him felt almost unnecessary, like it told you that "here the bad guy does something bad to tell you he is bad guy", when his ambition and goal was enough already, we don't need to see him make out with a naked woman and then kill her right after; my mom described this part as "voyeurism", and my parents' dislike for this movie is far stronger than anything I can say.
As for Karen (I know it's Joi, but she condemned herself as Karen the moment she brought out the holographic meatloaf), this was the most distracting thing about this movie, namely because she had so much in it, yet gave so little outside of being a motive for the male leads actions. The scene where she melds with the prostitute to have a three-way, while visually cool my man-ass will admit, inappropriate story-wise. Like Ryan thinks he's a born replicant, fails his Voight-Kampff test, and then has sex? I couldn't believe that, as I watched this scene in the theater, I was preferring the grubby, uncomfortable love scene in the original Blade Runner; because unlike this one, that scene between Deckard and Rachael had some sort of an odd context in the film, and was also appropriately-timed as well.
The part where they brought back Rachael to torment Deckard, after parading her skull around was cruel, but it's placement in the film is interesting because it does address a question the Final Cut of Blade Runner brought up: Is Deckard a replicant or not? They don't answer it, they leave it, toss it around actually. And it gives a pausing moment where Deckard says only one line: "I know what's real.............."
In the ending of the 2007 Final Cut of Blade Runner, Deckard finds an origami unicorn in his apartment, an image he saw in a daydream earlier in the film. They don't give a direct answer as to what Deckard is, they only hint and prod but never define. This twist ending is hailed by so many people as for making up a great majority of the original film's unsatisfactory 1982 version; it's far better than any 'happy ending', that's for sure.
But here's the thing: this man, whose profession is hunting down and killing people who have been defined as not real, who has been nearly killed by those who know they are not real , and has fallen awkwardly in love with someone who he knows and who she now realizes is not real, has now come to possibility that he himself may not be real. What does he do?
He accepts it. We don't know what he accepts, but whatever it is, he simply moves on.
And while Blade Runner 2049 may not follow this theme of accepting ones' reality to its' exact beats, it does what this film does in a whole and takes parts of what the made the original film work and expands on them with some strengths and weaknesses everywhere.
K knows his implanted memories are fake, yet accepts them as the bedrock of his identity, regardless of the slave-like state he lives in society. It's only when he begins to question whether he was born or not that he becomes more erratic, until it eventually leads the great detective to assumes the role of somebody he is not. It's why the twist near the end when we realizes that the child was a girl and not a boy like he assumed is so effective; K did far great a deal of intuitive detective work in this film, and yet even he misses out on what were some vital clues to fit the possibility that he may be more than what he is, whether he likes it or not. And it's only when he's in-front of that gratuitous billboard, when not-his-Karen calls him something only his-Karen could, that he accepts what he is, and goes to save Deckard.
It's not just him, but alot of the other characters here display varying takes on this theme of acceptance. Joshi half-heartedly accepts her death along with the possibility that K lied to her, Luv without choice accepts her dual position as the high-end of a massive corporation while being a slave to that corporations' leader, and even Wallace, literally blind in his grasp for power cannot accept his nor humanity's limitations and thus seeks a born race of slaves to fulfill his desire. Even the underground revolution of replicants, who show up for only a few minutes of a near three hour movie, consist of those who cannot accept their place in society because it is that of a slave.
Blade Runner 2049 is a flawed film, but it's still a good one despite some shortcomings and frustrating choices throughout. It walks away from the long line of passable films modern Hollywood has been rolling out with an established franchise attached to it, but only a few feet. Overall, it's a short step in the right direction.
The little prologue clip for Alien Covenant honestly looks like it’ll be better than the rest of the movie. Scott needs to ditch the dozens of victims approach and have a smaller, more focused cast. Especially with a character as intriguing as David.
I really wish they had stuck with making Prometheus 2, because however flawed the first film may be, it opened some intriguing questions and ideas to a universe well-worth having them.
Hi everyone! I found myself in a not so fun situation when i need money and fast to feed my cat and myself. I’d really appreciate any help! If you’re interested, contact me via [email protected]
Due to my lack of time and strength i can’t draw big pieces, but i hope i will be more free in late June, so stay tuned!
amandla
pixelskylines
prguitarman
