An Important Perspective In Light Of Recent Events.

Could you maybe reblog this post if you think respecting trans peoples' names and identities is a basic right and not a political opinion?

No pressure. Just seeking some validation of my sentiment. Due to some. people

Everyone should know the international sign for Help Me. Let’s make this famous!!

The Right Stuff (1983, set from 1947-1963) - an epic about the test pilots who became the first astronauts (played by Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Lance Henrickson, Fred Ward) and Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepher), who didn't.

American Graffiti (1973, set in 1963)- George Lucas's mosaic of the last night of a group of teens before they go off to college or the military or whatnot, set in 1963.

Malcolm X (1992, set 1940s to 1960s)- Spike Lee's flamboyant, powerful masterpiece that remains the greatest biopic Hollywood ever produced.

The Godfather (1972, set 1947-1955) The Godfather Part II (1974- interleaves 1901-1920ish and 1958-1959) - classic crime dramas that transcend their pulpy origins with a vivid portrait of the experience of first and second generation immigrants, the bonds and foibles of family, and the endless yet evolving nature of the cycles of violence that define crime. (But they’re also pulpy fun.) Part III (1990, set in 1978) is also quite good; its only real flaw is not being as grand as I and II.

Forrest Gump (1994, set 1940s to 1980s) - the 1990s answer to Frank Capra, a corny, beautiful, funny, sentimental yarn. Very much an oddball nostalgia fest from Gen Xers about Boomers, and thus is a very strange point of view today, but it remains hugely entertaining.

LA Confidential (1997, set 1950s)- the ultimate modern Noir, a funny, atmospheric, violent tale of police corruption in 1950s LA, following three cops, from charming sleazbag Kevin Spacey, violent brute Russell Crowe, and seemingly incorruptible stick-up-his-butt Guy Pearce. Unsurprisingly, all three are terrific at those roles.

Carol (2015, set 1950s) - absolutely gorgeous romance about two women who fall in love and struggle to deal with what that means in that world.

Does anyone have any recommendations for colorful movies that take place in the past (preferably the ‘50s and ‘60s)? I love these kinds of movies and would love to watch some.

HOLY SHIT WHAT???

I’ve always had a fascination with early Antarctic Exploration. But I’ve mostly sidestepped the related early Arctic exploration except where the two directly intersect; now I’m reading Furthest North, which goes through the early exploration (from the 1500s to 1926), and focuses on telling the stories through eyewitness accounts. It's a great book, but man, arctic exploration is so much more depressing than Antarctic exploration.

Like, the usual Antarctic exploration story will be something like, “The 26-man expedition lost 1 man when he was driven mad by the sunless winter and died for no clear medical reason, and 1 man to scurvy because he refused to eat seal meat, but the other 24 safely returned home, having mapped huge previously unknown areas and achieved immense scientific research. And also there were several delightful stories of penguin encounters, and here's a photo of the most badass member of the crew adorably snuggling some puppies.”

And the usual Arctic story will be, “25 men laboriously dragged their ship across the endless fields of ice to find the legendary Open Arctic Ocean. At first, they somehow managed to make 15 miles a day, but due to the southward flow of the ice, they only gained a net 17 yards per day. As they one-by-one got scurvy, they started losing ground. Things took a turn for the worse when the captain suddenly died of a mysterious illness; a century later, his body was found buried in the ice, and the mass levels of arsenic suggests he may have been right when, in his dying words, he accused the expedition’s doctor of poisoning him because they were writing love letters to the same girl back home. Without their navigator, they finally gave up and attempted to drag the ship back to the open sea so they could get back to land. But just as they were approaching open water, the ice trapped the ship and crushed it. They reverted to their lifeboats, one of which disappeared in a light fog, never to be seen again. The exhausted, undernourished, fatally sick final survivors made it to a desolate island. There they all slowly starved to death while the one healthy man among them was three days’ travel away, trying and failing to communicate to the confused Siberians he’d found that there were people who urgently needed rescue. He finally moved onto a second village, where one guy spoke German for some reason, and he was able to mount a rescue party. They arrived two days after the last journal entry of the expedition leader:

“ ‘October 28 - Hungry. Ate last of the boots yesterday. Feet cold. Spirits high.’ “

Terminator 5 just keeps looking worse

The Terminator is having a bad day. It’s a muggy July afternoon in New Orleans—the temperature is loitering in the triple digits—and Arnold Schwarzenegger is...

Look, the title "Terminator: Genisys" actually getting through the sheer number of suits it had to have gone through for approval could just be a fluke. I mean, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" must have had to get through just as many intelligent and/or marketing-minded adults.

Sure, it's written by the writers of, respectively, Alexander and the Dracula 2000 Trilogy. Good writers get screwed over by the system all the time. Looking at Andrew Kevin Walker's resume, you wonder how he could possibly have written something as brilliant as Se7en until you realize all his other scripts were shredded, mulched, and fed to the rats in the basement before they were filmed.

Sure, it's about a T-800 time-traveling to protect a young Connor (Sarah this time), making this a rehash of Terminator 3, which was itself a rehash of Terminator 2, which, let's be honest, was just a particularly brilliant rehash of The Terminator. There are good part 5s out there - Fast Five rocks, You Only Live Twice is... the worst of the 1960s Bond movies, but it had Little Nellie and that Volcano base and Donald Pleasance, and then there's... um... ah... does Batman Begins count as Batman 5?

But now we have pictures. And now we know that title wasn't a fluke. It was a warning.

Jai Courtney's Kyle Reese looks like a constipated kid at a water gun fight. Jason Clarke's John Connor could not look more bored. Matt Smith looks less like a tough soldier from the future and more like a paintball player worried about whether or not the turkey was overcooked in his TARDIS.

Emilia seems to be in the general realm of an actual character, even if that character is "waitress dressing as a biker for Halloween on a bad hair day". But then, here's the description of what Sarah Connor's up to:

Sarah Connor isn’t the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton’s steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991’s T2. Rather, the mother of humanity’s messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion.

“Since she was 9 years old, she has been told everything that was supposed to happen,” says Ellison. “But Sarah fundamentally rejects that destiny.

So... they're not going with the compelling, relatable character from the first film, or the complex, unhinged badass from the second. Instead she's going to be emotionally distant like the second one but also not able to single-handedly take on an army (and with her combat skills apparently reduced to sniper instead of everything), so the worst of both worlds. And it looks like she'll have to be protected by both a Terminator and a buffer Kyle Reese. Hooray for feminism?

But hey, I was one of the poor unfortunate souls who liked Salvation and wanted a sequel to that, so maybe this just isn't directed at me.

On the other hand, they actually named it Terminator Genisys.

I should probably point out that I’m someone who likes the TV show, even if I think the books are largely superior, so we obviously don’t entirely agree on a lot of these points. (I do love your metas, Gotgifsandmusings, regardless of my enjoyment of the show; they’re consistently insightful and witty.)

As far as the Emmys go, a lot of it has to do with the nature of awards shows. Deserving winners get missed all the time because there’s competition that can’t be ignored. This is how you end up with awards that feel like “lifetime achievement awards” or whatnot.

So Game of Thrones Season 4, which (whatever its adaptational or sexism issues) really was spectacular television, lost all its awards to the final season of Breaking Bad, except for directing, which it lost to True Detective. Same thing for GOT Season 3, which, again, was terrific television. But it lost all of its nominations to other shows (including, again, Breaking Bad).

The thing is, no matter how great Game of Thrones was those years (and, again, as TV, it’s pretty great, and I think it improves on the books in a few areas, albeit definitely not in all areas), it was never going to beat Breaking Bad. There was just no possible way to ignore it.

And so when Season 5 rolled around, for all its flaws, it still tends to be entertaining and technically superb television when it wasn’t in Dorne or Winterfell (both plotlines were heavily criticized even among those who still love the show, and at least in the latter case, it’s certainly exceptionally well-made in a technical sense). And this time, there wasn’t a strong frontrunner to beat it (its competition is strong, but it’s not terribly obvious what the best choice there actually is), so it got all the awards it’s been nominated for all these years but never managed to actually win, even if it was the weakest season.

That’s just how these things work. Sometimes something wins that really deserves it -- Robert Donat won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1939 for Goodbye Mr. Chips. But he beat someone else who also really deserved it - Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. So the next year, Stewart won Actor for The Philadelphia Story, and while he’s great in that, should he really have beaten Chaplin, Fonda, and Olivier?

So this year, Game of Thrones took a couple of massive misteps, and badly exposed all its underlying flaws in really ugly ways. It’s also, often, compelling, complex, fun, and dazzling. So even if it isn’t those things to any consistent degree, it still represents enough of what’s loved about the show that it’s able to pull off a sweep when it’s not up against anything that can’t be beat.

And Winterhell helped win the show an Emmy... What a great message to send to viewers and creators... "If you want to make good TV and win what is considered the most prestigious television award, rape someone! Have shocking things that make no sense happen! Cynicism and everything sucks! DARKNESS! Oh and viewers who don't like this stuff and are triggered by it? FUCK THEM AM I RIGHT?" Ugh...

Is Winterhell what helped them win their Emmys? I mean it was just so, so, so bad.

I’m pretty sure everyone and their mothers got distracted by HARDHOME, the BEST HOUR OF TELEVISION (if we turn our brains off and don’t bother thinking about context or like…why are arrows stopping wights, or anything).

But like…I have to hope that’s what one them the votes. Because I think it is actually physically impossible to enjoy Winterhell. Then again, the finale won “best writing,” and the first 20 minutes centered on Satannis’s farcical defeat.

@itsalwayslydia said to gotgifsandmusings:Hey, so I just finished reading your post on Winterhell, which was so good it made me angry. (Not at you but at what’s happened to these characters for the purpose of TV ratings.) Anyways, I was wondering if you’d seen the Huffington post article where it’s pointed out that Theon is wearing Robb Stark’s outfit from the Red Wedding? Sophie Turner confirmed that was true on her Comic Con panel: “Just to make that a little more brutal.” Seven hells.

I had seen that, yeah. And like…that’s you know. Nifty that they wanted to use costuming to “make it more brutal.” But it also makes no fucking sense? Like, why in Seven Hells is he wearing Robb’s outfit? He’s not disguising himself as a Stark. Why isn’t that outfit full of arrow-holes? How did they even get that outfit? Was it when Sansa had passed out from the Xanax Batfinger gave her so she failed to notice them passing through the Twins?

But like, at least it wasn’t as horribly out of place as the sith lord and the dude with the conquistador helmet:

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings:What’s the proper way to compliment your Winterhell Retrospective? I enjoyed it? It made me angry about that whole plot line all over again? Anyway, it did make me angry again, but I also enjoyed it. I still fail to understand how professional writers of TV could put together such a stupid arc, they have huge books to help them!! Why do they think they are better at telling this story than GRRM? Why did they retcon the Others? Why can’t we call them the Others, instead of the white walkers? ???

Well one quick correction: they don’t think they are better at telling “this story,” because they have no interest in telling the same story. They think they are better storytellers.

That aside…

reblog to give your headache to elon musk instead