I Saw A Post Saying That Boromir Looked Too Scruffy In FotR For A Captain Of Gondor, And I Tried To Move

This will explain some of Indian dance methodology.

i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken

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.

Tonight I am contemplating the intimacy of someone borrowing my headphones without asking

Like. In many cases that would be somewhat annoying. In this case I'm all 🥰 about it. I think it's for the same reason either way--there's this intimacy to borrowing something without asking

Unwelcome intimacy is uncomfortable, a violation even if minor, like someone asking a question you don't want to answer, but welcome intimacy is just a, like, look how close we are kind of thing

She borrowed my headphones because she knew I'd say yes if she asked (because I'd give her anything (because I love her))

Practical F/X vs. CGI in Willow

I finally caught up with the 1988 George Lucas / Ron Howard fantasy yarn Willow, and it's a blast. Not quite a classic, but spectacular, imaginative, thrilling, and charming in a way few blockbusters are.

The highlight for me - besides Val Kilmer's delightful rogue The Mad Martigan - is a battle sequence in a castle, where Martigan is basically taking on a few dozen villains on his own using a variety of tricks and tactics while Willow is busy trying to get his sorcery to work. There's a lot of other elements at play here - the villainous Princess Sorsha trying to figure out if she loves or hates Martigan, sorceress Raziel is stuck in a goat form, and trolls have encased all the inhabitants of the castle into stone and are still lurking around somewhere. It's a terrific scene as it is, but then Willow, trying to ward off a troll, accidentally turns it into a gigantic two-headed dragon known as the Eborsisk. And it's fantastic.

Later on, there's a scene widely praised at the time where Willow turns Raziel from a goat into an ostrich, a turtle, a tiger, and finally her own form in turn. It was the first CGI Morph in film, and led directly to The Abyss, which led to T2, which led to Jurassic Park, until now, when studios spend $250 million to make over-budgeted cartoons with live actors pasted in here and there.

Which got me thinking on the CGI vs. Practical Effects debate, since this is a nice example of the same effect being done both ways. Thinking about it, I think in both cases it was the right call.

The troll-to-dragon transformation is done with a combination of go-motion (an advanced version of stop-motion developed by Phil Tippett for the Hoth battle in The Empire Strikes Back) and animatronics. The effect is choppy and ugly, and the result is unsettling and creepy. It looks wrong, something that should not be.

It also necessitates cutting back to Willow's reaction shot. That's one of the things that makes the scene so good, really - Warwick Davis's look of "What the hell did I just do?" elevates both the horror and humor of the scene.

By contrast, the CGI morphing is smooth and fluid. It's no more or less realistic, but we're talking about magic here, so realism isn't exactly the goal. But this scene isn't Willow accidentally turning one monster into another, much more horrific monster; it's about Raziel becoming her own form again, and about the beauty and wonder of magic. It also allows the scene to take place in longer takes, but we don't especially need Willow's reaction until Raziel is herself.

Reversing the effects wouldn't have worked as well for the story - the smooth transformation would have looked like just a cool effect with the troll-to-dragon rather than horrifying (CGI can do a great many things well, but creepy just is not one of them), and Raziel's wouldn't have had the same sense of wonder and beauty with the grotesque look of go-motion. (The AT-ATs or ED-209 are exactly the sort of thing Go-Motion is good at)

Unfortunately, go-motion has largely gone extinct in the CGI era, as it's thought to be less "realistic", though I'm somewhat unconvinced given how cartoonish the effects look in mega-budget films like Days of Future Past (a phenomenal movie, by the way) or Amazing Spider-Man 2 (not a phenomenal film). Like makeup effects, bladders, models, matte paintings, and even celluloid film itself, go-motion is the older, harder method, but there are stories told better. Sometimes, like King Arthur in Excalibur, storytellers should charge into battle using the Old Ways.

On the other hand, sometimes you want a T-1000 to wreck up the place, and gotta bring in the computers.

Practical and digital are both tools, both with their function and form in stories. I hope going into the future, film makers remember the old methods and use them, and that cynical, f/x savvy viewers remember what beautiful things can be done with the new methods and don't dismiss them out of hand. (myself included)

please fucking vote

#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

An update to my blog, looking at the Eleventh Doctor's era.