Jjgaut - Forever A Madman

An update to my blog, about my plans for it over the next few months.

Man, Clara is a terrible liar.

#i like to sit around thinking about what life would have been like in the naberrie-skywalker household#padme would have been amazing when the twins were just little kids but when they hit puberty she’d be like ???#padme was a queen when she was 14; she couldn’t afford temper tantrums; she doesn’t understand any of this#and anakin stands up and he’s like MY TIME HAS COME#he is the chosen one prophecied to bring balance to this household#leia is the best at everything until anakin starts seriously training them and luke is a natural at Meditation and Jedi Stuff#and leia gets SO PISSED and luke’s like WHY CAN’T I BE BETTER THAN YOU AT ONE THING#and leia’s like WHY CAN’T YOU STOP RUBBING IT IN MY FACE#and then they yell incoherently at each other and padme’s like ????????? STOP???????????#she can get the senate to shut the fuck up and listen but she can’t get her 13yo twins to do the same#and then anakin walks in and starts yelling just as incoherently and padme’s like i’m leaving#but it works. whatever strange terrifying things they were all yelling at dinner everyone’s happy again#and padme’s like oh my god if politics were like this i’d kill all my coworkers#and anakin’s like hahahahahhahahaha.#and in another universe darth vader stops and stares out a window and he’s like huh. that was weird#‘it’s as if i felt padme again and we were in complete agreement on something’#and then he continues choking out an admiral#STAR WARS COMEDY

Grim reaper comes at you with a weedwhacker

And you're like "ha, modern methods of plant cutting are so much less symbolic and also less deadly"

And then the other grim reaper gets you from behind with a combine harvester because that was just a distraction

Neurotypicals will be like “I know you have a disability that affects your ability to stay organized, manage your time properly, socialize, or control what you’re able to think about or focus on, but that’s not an excuse to have trouble staying organized, managing your time properly, socializing, or controlling what you need to think about or focus on.” And then demand that they aren’t ableist. I’m tired.

Source

Here’s the new 24 hour comic I drew this year!  This one is called THE KING’S FOREST.  cw: blood, violence

Hereditary [2018]

After the rather abysmal showing for the genre in the 'aughts, horror has made a major resurgence in the last decade. Part of the trend ...

My review of the well-made, exceedingly well-acted, but long and profoundly unpleasant Hereditary.

Real conversation I had last night:

Her: so my journalist character was tricked by someone posing as a person with big secret news to tell her

Me: Ah so she was taken in by the expectation of having a Deep Throat

Her:

Her: WHAT

Me: ... oh

Me: SO in 1972--

Independence Day Marathon Part 1: Maleficent

To honor my country's existence, I decided to spend the entire day in the theater.  I mapped out to spend a solid ten hours staring at just about everything Hollywood could throw at me, and came out mostly unscathed. I feel like it was a good way to celebrate Independence Day.

I started with Maleficent, a fairly shallow but enjoyable-enough Disney fantasy galvanized by Angelina Jolie's amazing performance. She's always had an otherworldly look about her, but nothing has taken advantage of it like this, and few roles have let her dig so far into such a fascinating character. Writer Linda Woolverton does a great job expanding on the character, giving Jolie a rich character arc to traverse, and building a lovely twist around the nature of True Love's Kiss. And with that to work with, Jolie ignites the screen every moment she's on it, and it's absolutely worth seeing just for her.

If she wasn't in it, though... it would be about like Snow White and the Huntsman - watchable and pretty, but there's not much else to it. No one can chew the scenery like Sharlto Copley, but his villain is pretty flat. His backstory has him go from a guy who gives up the only thing he has to be with his love, then show up years later totally evil. The narration suggests he was corrupted by the greed of mankind, which sounds fine, but burying it in the narration makes it abstract, and we never see any evidence of Man's Greed elsewhere in the film. Elle Fanning is perfectly likable as Aurora, but all she's asked to do is smile pleasantly.

And the three fairies are simply obnoxious. That's one of my favorite elements of the original Sleeping Beauty - the heroes are three bickering old ladies instead of the straight-arrow prince. But here, all they do is bicker endlessly, without ever accomplishing anything. I never thought I'd see Imelda Staunton or Juno Temple give performances I didn't enjoy, but I couldn't stand them here. (I'm not as familiar with Lesley Manville, but she was perfectly wonderful in An Adventure in Time And Space, so I'm disappointed there as well.) I really do blame the script here - making them incompetent and not giving them any non-bickering scenes really doesn't give the actors any room. And the hideous visual effects for the fairies are no help - they look like rubber masks of the actors pasted over awful CGI. (The effects are otherwise fine if overabundant - they're pretty to look at, but it feels like we're watching pretty special effects rather than a real, living world.)

I'm not really convinced the Mega-Happy Ending was earned, either. Maleficent's story is so laced with tragedy and Aurora is so underdeveloped that neither of their endings really worked for me.

But Jolie makes it all worthwhile, and Woolverton's take on the story is interesting enough to carry it through its weak spots.