#week a

[jaimewrong]

Along with many other artists, I have decided to try and commit myself to the #AlphabetSuperset project. With 19 minutes left to the week, here is my letter A: Abattoir

[donottouchtheclown]

genesis

today we did a bunch of admin but we also warmed up as a group and played soooo many fun games. I loved learning about everyone through the chair exercise and by playing floor is lava. we had a sunny lunch and then did a lot of admin as previously mentioned. i loved our discussion of reactionary politics and was surprised that we all seem to be on the same page. cool!

[chuthulhu-watches]

Week A: Amadeus (1984)

I am afflicted by a curse in which I cannot hear Eine Kleine Nachtmusik without remembering the Simpsons episode that retold this story with Bart as Mozart, in which the lyrics were "Beans! Oh, beans! Delicious in your mouth! But! Watch out! When beans come out down south! Tooting, some call it pooting, it's air polluting, the gas comes shooting, right from your but butt butt, butt butt butt, butt butt butt, butt!" Which I think Mozart would appreciate tbh.

Is it good? Oh yes, absolutely masterful, absolutely meticulous in the outfits and wigs of the period and just wonderful use of both Salieri and Mozart's music in the soundtrack. I especially love it when the music comes in when Salieri is reading Mozart's sheet music--he can perfectly and instantly understand Mozart's music and the beauty of it, but he's far too consumed with envy to truly ENJOY it. Like, the scene where they're working on the requiem together before Mozart's death is just so much more tragic because they are the only people in Vienna on each others' wavelength regarding music, and could've been friends the whole time, and Mozart has NO IDEA that they weren't. The trick to get around the historical inaccuracies is that this is a rivalry that exists only in Salieri's own mind, actions taken in the name of revenge were furtive or under false pretenses, and he's not even sharing any of this until he's under the seal of confession in an asylum. F Murray Abraham sells the FUCK out of Salieri's envy, pain, and absolute love of music, and Tom Hulce is doing a good job with the gifted kid who's been raised as a show animal used to getting away with a lot because of his absolute genius with music, which he clearly loves a lot.

Is it fun? Yes! There's a lot of black humour in Salieri's one-sided hatred, a lot of silly drunken rich people shenanigans at the parties Mozart attends and the way almost everyone becomes a yes-man in the Emperor's presence, and we get to see sizeable chunks of both comic and tragic operas. And of course, it's using famously beautiful music to the absolute utmost--even if you're not much into classical music, it's hard not to get swept away by the pieces being performed here.

Is it queer? No, though excising Salieri's wife from the story makes his obsession with Mozart come off with a whiff of repressed homosexuality.

[chuthulhu-watches]

Week A: Always Watching (A Marble Hornets Story) (2015)

Well, that sure was an attempt.

Is it good? God no. The three protagonists are profoundly charmless and uninteresting--there's an attempt to set up some character flaws that migh interact in some way, a token love triangle, but it's so patheticaly low effort that like, what was even the point? Kinda the story of the whole thing, really--there's a couple of nice ideas, like the projector image overlaid on Milo, but absolutely no effort is put into executing them. Marble Hornets had far better acting and atmosphere, not to mention special effects… how do you make a monster based mostly on visual glitching look this damn bland in a fully budgeted film? The worst mistake was probably showing Slenderman walking, as it was the moment that made it look the most like Just Some Guy. The whole asylum sequence was pretty gross, too, leaning into the worst stereotypes about Scary Crazy People and using a woman's burn scars as a jumpscare to make her look Scarier And Crazier.

Is it fun? I've had tooth extractions that were more entertaining

Is it queer? No.

[chuthulhu-watches]

Week A: Andrei Rublev (1966)

[ID: A small image of an old Russian poster for Andrei Rublev, stylized to look like it's been printed onto a wooden frame. Front and centre is a black-ink print of Anatoly Solonitsyn as Rublev, and behind him, entirely in red, are the silhouettes of an attacking Tartar horde. End ID.]

Absolutely captivated by how the Soviet Censorship bureau got this film about how suppression of art and artists is cruel, wrong, and actively degrades Russia and its people, and went "well we gotta suppress the hell outta this immediately" and then failed to do so because Cannes, one of the artsiest art festivals, loved it. Like the drama outside of this film is about as much a representation of the film's message as the film itself and I kinda love that

Is it good? I gotta watch something next that isn't three hours long and depressing. This one was pretty enthralling for all that, though, and kinda triumphant in the end. I think it helps that the film is really split up into multiple vignettes across 15th century Russia, with Rublev kinda Forrest Gumping his way through a selection of different ways art is repressed and destroyed by violence and the state. I was particularly transfixed by the longshot of the Archduke's soldier complaining about losing his whip and shouting at people to ask if they've seen it while surrounded by the guys whose eyeballs he just cut out lying on the ground, clutching the startlingly gory holes where their eyes used to be and screaming in horror and pain. Like this is a long shot predominantly focused on the guy yelling about his whip before he rides off and the camera just leaves you there for a minute with the horrible groans of the blinded artists before the youngest kid in the group rises up into the frame and you see from his shellshocked expression that he still has his eyes and kinda wishes he didn't because he cannot unsee this. I'm mixed on deliberately shooting films in black and white if you're not doing something distinctly stylish with it, but the only colour being the display of some of the real Rublev's paintings at the end really had an impact as a result.

Is it fun? Man being a peasant in 15th-century Russia fuckin SUCKED

Is it queer? The relationship between Andrei and Danila is VERY intense--"I see only with your eyes, feel only your heartbeat" as the subtitles I saw put it, just monks being monks amirite folks--and they do kiss on the lips a few times in what's probably supposed to be a "European greeting" kind of way but dang. Textually no it's not queer but I think these guys would be happier if they were

[chuthulhu-watches]

Apocalypse Now (1979) (2001 Redux)

[ID: The poster for Apocalypse Now. It shows a river in Vietnam windings its way through the jungle, the water reflecting the blood-red clouds in the air in front of a huge orange sunset. Silhouetted against the sun are a fleet of helicopters. The sky above is also blood-red. The only text on the poster, in white, is the title. End ID.]

I didn't actually know I was watching the longest possible version of the film until after I'd finished it, but I am somewhat relieved on behalf of the filmgoing audiences of 1979 that they weren't in for the full three hours of this. Much like its basis, The Heart Of Darkness, it's starkly anticolonialist and antiwar, and it's not really subtle about it--and yet from the way I've heard some folk talk about the film, it's still somehow too subtle? It's unfortunate that playing Wagner during the helicopter strike was meant to invoke the Nazis, but unfortunately the cinematography is just too damn good and not undercut by much visible civilian suffering. Like, it's kinda hollowly ironic that Kurtz' breaking point was the Viet Cong cutting off the arms of a bunch of children who'd just been inoculated against polio by American doctors, given that I can't find anything about this really happening but meanwhile the number of American landmines distributed across south asia have been keeping the average number of limbs per child under 3 for the last few decades. Like a lot of the bad shit about Vietnam was actually a lot worse than what's depicted in this film (much like the Belgian crimes in the Congo in THoD), and yet that one gets a lot of emphasis. Also, again like THoD, it's anticolonialist but is still really weird and patronizing about how it depicts the natives, especially the Cambodian tribe that... worships? Kurtz. Do enough of them speak English to get really into his warrior poet shit? Does he have more troops at hand than the ones we see, enough to keep the tribe under his control by force? Has he stumbled into a local prophecy, Road to El Dorado style, that members of the tribe are supporting for local political reasons? Do they just think keeping some stray Americans around will keep them from being bombed? Who knows! They're not people, just scary set dressing. The playboy bunnies get more characterization than the local Vietnamese or indigenous Colombians, and there's a whole scene where the joke is one of them pouring her heart out about feeling like she's not seen as a person while the camera is fixed squarely on her tits and the soldier "listening" to her is in fact having sex with her because their handler bartered their bodies for fuel for their helicopter to get the hell out of there.

Is it good? Look I may be bitching a lot but it is a good film. The cinematography is too good sometimes, but sometimes it's very effective at making the horrors as horrific as they should be, especially in the night scenes and ESPECIALLY especially at Do Long Bridge, a sequence that gives the strongest feeling yet of descending directly into Hell. The daylight scenes tend to be more washed out, colorwise, especially the meandering French plantation sequence that's in an odd sepia tone and kinda seems to be there so random Frenchmen can yell the themes of the film at you (or sexy French widows can seductively whisper the themes of the film at you). Some good acting performances turned in by the whole PBR Street Gang--I did NOT clock at all that Clean was a tiny baby version of Laurence Fishburne until I read the credits after because holy shit, he's an INFANT, which does help underline the pointless horror of the draft. Nobody wants to be there, everything is terrifying and damp, everything sucks and the war seems designed to invent whole new hellholes of PTSD. That's the message of the film and it conveys it pretty damn well.

Is it fun? No. It's the War Is Hell film. There are a couple funny wee moments between the guys, a good line or two--I'm quite partial to "Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500"--but OOFT it's a hard three hours.

Is it queer? No, which feels downright criminal in a film with so many sweaty, shirtless men losing their minds in the jungle. Leonard Matlovich didn't use his headstone to snipe at the US military for this.

[chuthulhu-watches]

Week A: Amélie (2001)

[ID: A poster for Amélie with the tagline "She'll change your life." It shows Amélie, a pale young woman with strikingly dark hair and eyes, her head tilted down but looking up at the camera with a wide smile, her red lipstick matching her red dress. The background is a rich green and patterned with stars. End ID.]

I put this film on my list because it’s fairly famous and I realized that all I knew about it was the MBMBAM bit, which is probably not an accurate depiction. What a weird, funky wee film. Outstandingly French. Kinda impressed by how much Audrey Tatou is making that Kubrick Stare work for her, honestly

Is it good? It’s charmingly stylish, depicting a Paris existing in the kind of oddball heightened reality that characterizes Moulin Rouge! or a Roald Dahl book (if there was ever a Roald Dahl book with an orgasm count). I do like a Trickster Hero aiming to use her sneakiness to make people happy, though girl that is a LOT of breaking and entering. I also really enjoyed the emphasis on enjoying small pleasures and odd hobbies. Quite an enthrallingly odd wee piece of art. Is it fun? A lot of it’s well worth a giggle, especially some of the pranks and reaction shots. Plus it’s just fun to look at.

Is it queer? Aside from that one Dominique who was an older woman probably hitting on Amélie, no. This is one of those films where rampant heterosexuality is the cause of a LOT of people’s problems, especially Gina and Georgette—Amélie’s attempts to get Georgette together with Gina’s stalker ex doesn’t fix him, instead just giving Georgette a couple good orgasms before transferring his stalking to her. Oooft.