'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

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jazzo
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4226 Post by jazzo » Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:46 am

I know that resident physician Svet is the go-to for insanity at Blu-ray.com, and I know that I shouldn't expect a ton of critical discourse on the actual films from the site's reviewers, but Neil Lumbard's overview of Imprint's Regarding Henry disc, which reads like a Fourth Grader's book report, had me shaking my head in disbelief:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Regardin ... 39/#Review
Regarding Henry is a compelling drama executive produced by Robert Greenhut (Big, Working Girl). Written by a young J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Super 8), Regarding Henry is an interesting (pre lens-flare!) cinematic effort. Starring Harrison Ford.

Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) is a hot-shot lawyer who will stop at nothing to win one of his cases. Then one day, Henry is shot while inside of a convenience store. Things would never be the same again. As Henry must re-learn mobility and how to talk, his spouse Sarah (Annette Bening) and daughter help him along the path to recovery. Can Henry discover himself?

The best element of Regarding Henry is the performance by Harrison Ford. The role was a perfect fit and he brings his best to the role. The performance has plenty of subtle nuance and depth. Exploring a broken man struggling to recover, Harrison Ford knocks it out of the park. Annette Bening is similarly impressive in her supporting role in the film. Bening provides the film with additional heart and unbridled pathos.

The production design by Tony Walton (Fahrenheit 451, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and art direction by Dan Davis (In Her Shoes, A Thousand Acres) and William A. Elliott (Ghosts of Mars, The Nutty Professor) are effective at enhancing Regarding Henry. The quality production values add to the experience. Walton and Davis did a commendable job here.

The costumes by Ann Roth (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient) are a compelling component of the production. The costumes fit the characters and tone of the story enormously well. A solid effort all around.

The cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno (Rocco and His Brothers, All That Jazz) is a decent effort that fits the dramatic storyline. While not as lush of a cinematic film as some dramas, the effort was certainly effective nonetheless. The lighting and tone of the visuals helps establish the mood of the work.

A great music score can go a long way to enhancing a film. The music by Hans Zimmer (Interstellar, The Dark Knight) is one such score. Zimmer is one of the best composers in the business. The score composed for Regarding Henry is serene and entertaining. A quality work by a great composer.

The screenplay by J.J. Abrams is a solid effort. The core story and characters are well written. Abrams is an enormously talented filmmaker. Even so, Regarding Henry seems a bit uneven (some dialogue is stilted and poorly written). Clearly, Regarding Henry is the work of a younger, inexperienced screenwriter still finding his voice. Nonetheless, a solid script.

Mike Nichols (Closer, The Graduate) is the MVP. Regarding Henry is well-directed and the film has considerable heart. The filmmaker explores the human condition in an interesting way. Nichols is a genuine auteur and fans of the filmmaker won't want to miss the film. Check it out.


It does make me curious on what he thought of God, Are You There? It's Me Margaret, though.

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The Curious Sofa
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2019 6:18 am

Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4227 Post by The Curious Sofa » Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:18 am

I've brought up Neil Lumbard on this thread before because I've never read reviews that poorly written. Unlike Svet, his view aren't offensive, just anodyne, his use of the English language is. He doesn't know a lot of adjectives, but is convinced using the few he has a handle on over and over, makes him sound like a writer. Oddly endearing, in an Ed Wood sort of way.

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Maltic
Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:36 am

Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4228 Post by Maltic » Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:36 pm

jazzo wrote:
Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:46 am
I know that resident physician Svet is the go-to for insanity at Blu-ray.com, and I know that I shouldn't expect a ton of critical discourse on the actual films from the site's reviewers, but Neil Lumbard's overview of Imprint's Regarding Henry disc, which reads like a Fourth Grader's book report, had me shaking my head in disbelief:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Regardin ... 39/#Review
Regarding Henry is a compelling drama executive produced by Robert Greenhut (Big, Working Girl). Written by a young J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Super 8), Regarding Henry is an interesting (pre lens-flare!) cinematic effort. Starring Harrison Ford.

Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) is a hot-shot lawyer who will stop at nothing to win one of his cases. Then one day, Henry is shot while inside of a convenience store. Things would never be the same again. As Henry must re-learn mobility and how to talk, his spouse Sarah (Annette Bening) and daughter help him along the path to recovery. Can Henry discover himself?

The best element of Regarding Henry is the performance by Harrison Ford. The role was a perfect fit and he brings his best to the role. The performance has plenty of subtle nuance and depth. Exploring a broken man struggling to recover, Harrison Ford knocks it out of the park. Annette Bening is similarly impressive in her supporting role in the film. Bening provides the film with additional heart and unbridled pathos.

The production design by Tony Walton (Fahrenheit 451, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and art direction by Dan Davis (In Her Shoes, A Thousand Acres) and William A. Elliott (Ghosts of Mars, The Nutty Professor) are effective at enhancing Regarding Henry. The quality production values add to the experience. Walton and Davis did a commendable job here.

The costumes by Ann Roth (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient) are a compelling component of the production. The costumes fit the characters and tone of the story enormously well. A solid effort all around.

The cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno (Rocco and His Brothers, All That Jazz) is a decent effort that fits the dramatic storyline. While not as lush of a cinematic film as some dramas, the effort was certainly effective nonetheless. The lighting and tone of the visuals helps establish the mood of the work.

A great music score can go a long way to enhancing a film. The music by Hans Zimmer (Interstellar, The Dark Knight) is one such score. Zimmer is one of the best composers in the business. The score composed for Regarding Henry is serene and entertaining. A quality work by a great composer.

The screenplay by J.J. Abrams is a solid effort. The core story and characters are well written. Abrams is an enormously talented filmmaker. Even so, Regarding Henry seems a bit uneven (some dialogue is stilted and poorly written). Clearly, Regarding Henry is the work of a younger, inexperienced screenwriter still finding his voice. Nonetheless, a solid script.

Mike Nichols (Closer, The Graduate) is the MVP. Regarding Henry is well-directed and the film has considerable heart. The filmmaker explores the human condition in an interesting way. Nichols is a genuine auteur and fans of the filmmaker won't want to miss the film. Check it out.


It does make me curious on what he thought of God, Are You There? It's Me Margaret, though.

You wonder what he thought of Peter Bucossi's stunt-coordination, Joseph Hartwick's production management, and Sam O'Steen's editing.

I've notice that usually the only part of a film this type of reviewer might consider "holistically" is the ending. "Camerawork good, acting ok, directing bad, ending ok "

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furbicide
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4229 Post by furbicide » Sun Jul 04, 2021 9:23 pm

Not a review, but I couldn't let this headline in The Guardian pass:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-patients
A psychiatrist’s life is nothing like a Woody Allen film. I treat cancer, trauma and stroke patients
Like, isn't one of the main tropes of Woody Allen films that everyone knows about that his characters see psychoanalysts?! I could be wrong, but I can't think of any psychiatric appointment scenes in his films (there might have been some characters who are psychiatrists, I don't recall).

I understand that the distinction might seem obscure or like splitting hairs to a lot of people, but I would have thought a psychiatrist of all people would appreciate (and in fact be at pains to point out) the difference …

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Brian C
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'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4230 Post by Brian C » Sun Jul 04, 2021 10:06 pm

That just makes her more right in saying that a psychiatrist’s life is nothing like a Woody Allen movie!

Not exactly a hard-hitting conclusion either way, true. But I mean, hey, I work as an office drone and my life is nothing like a Woody Allen movie either. Guardian columns here I come!

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ChunkyLover
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4231 Post by ChunkyLover » Sun Jul 04, 2021 11:12 pm

The Curious Sofa wrote:
Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:18 am
I've brought up Neil Lumbard on this thread before because I've never read reviews that poorly written. Unlike Svet, his view aren't offensive, just anodyne, his use of the English language is. He doesn't know a lot of adjectives, but is convinced using the few he has a handle on over and over, makes him sound like a writer. Oddly endearing, in an Ed Wood sort of way.
His reviews are complete garbage; he's taken over for a lot of anime reviews on the site and feels compelled to do a review for every individual volume/season for a "complete" series set review rather than just doing it in one singular review. Plus, the technical side of his reviews are DVDBeaver-level of bad/useless.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4232 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:22 am

Brian C wrote:That just makes her more right in saying that a psychiatrist’s life is nothing like a Woody Allen movie!

Not exactly a hard-hitting conclusion either way, true. But I mean, hey, I work as an office drone and my life is nothing like a Woody Allen movie either. Guardian columns here I come!
The Woody Allen reference is a totally throwaway aside in the actual article, but for some reason the headline writer (all but guaranteed to be someone other than the author) has decided to make it central.

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bottled spider
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4233 Post by bottled spider » Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:10 pm

...attempts to do for lunatics what movies like The Shawshank Redemption tried to do for convicts—that is to sanitize them and make them lovable victims of government and society instead of dangerous social malcontents.
So far the plot is at least comprehensible, though not very plausible. Anyone who has ever ridden in a New York cab knows that you are lucky these days if your driver can speak English...
SpoilerShow
James Bowman being adorable about Conspiracy Theory
Once when I remonstrated with a young man of my acquaintance about his laziness and want of industry, he replied: "But being lazy is who I am!" We live in the age of "who I am," sometimes varied as "the real me." The popularity of the conceit may owe something to the political awakening of homosexuals, who have been historically used to keeping quiet about their sexual orientation. As part of the process of nerving themselves to go public about it (or "come out of the closet"), the idea of "who I am" or "the real me" has been immensely useful to them. But the purpose of the conceit is in its essence no different than it was for my lazy young friend. That is, it is designed for self-justification.
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Bowman being helpful on homosexuals in his review of
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Young Adult
...this was, of course, the attitude adopted by those, many of them in the movie industry, who were later to mythologize their own persecution and black-listing under what was to become known as "McCarthyism."

Though some of them did suffer, they were believing communists or what was known as "fellow-travelers" with the communists whose first loyalty, as was well-understood by all party members at the time, was to the Soviet Union. The party discipline imposed by Moscow on American communists in those years was as rigid if not as lethally enforced as it was in the homeland of the Revolution. Yet when the hunters of subversion on the House Un-American Activities Committee or Senator McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee on Investigations came calling in the late 1940s and early 1950s, these Americans who had made a virtue of their disloyalty to their country saw the disloyalty to themselves of friends and former colleagues who, as the saying was in those days, "named names" to the official investigators as the blackest of evils, never to be forgiven or forgotten.

Communism would have been impossible without its success in first teaching its would-be adherents to minimize any lesser loyalties, including loyalty to country and friends, when these things interfered with their loyalty to the Revolution. The story of Comrade Pavlik, the 13-year-old child who supposedly informed on his father as a resister to collectivization in 1932, though almost certainly a fabrication, was meant to be paradigmatic for all good communists. Yet when threatened themselves with exposure, which at that time and particularly for those who worked in Hollywood meant loss of their livelihoods, they fell back on merely personal loyalties for their protection. Such people had an understandable interest in playing down the paradoxical nature of their own moral system...
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Guess who sets the record straight on Senator McCarthy in his review of
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The Third Man

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JSC
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4234 Post by JSC » Wed Jul 07, 2021 4:56 pm

A capsule review from Maltin on The Chosen (1980)
Nuclear power exec (Kirk Douglas) slowly realizes that his son (Simon Ward) is the Antichrist, who
plans to use nuclear power to bring on world destruction. There! We just saved you 105 minutes.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4235 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jul 07, 2021 10:41 pm

The American Expectorator is really something else (as are most of the folks who write for it)....

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4236 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:20 am

There's a new book out, "Norman Jewison: A Director's Life" by Ira Wells.
I ran across what I thought would be a normal review of the book. Instead I found myself with a conservative political screed trying to shoehorn libertarian economic dogma into the picture, while largely ignoring Jewison's films and the book itself. Some people just cannot be distracted from their agenda.

It's rather strident: "The movie industry is always and everywhere a thorough rejection of the dopey view ...". And naive: noting in passing that inequality is "a positive feature of free countries."
And stridently naive: "Only governments have immense power. Never businesses." The article is a paean to the rich: repeatedly declaring that the "unspent wealth of the rich" is what makes movies possible and even reduces poverty. Norman Jewison is useful because he went from poor to rich via hard work. Etc.
Last edited by Lemmy Caution on Wed Jul 21, 2021 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4237 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:46 am

That reminds me of this gloriously ideology-blinkered review of the BFI's great postwar British documentary project, or "cultural toxic waste" if you share the agenda of the author - who was so clearly determined to pursue a particular reading (a decision that I suspect he took before the review copy even arrived) that he simply ignored anything in the box set that didn't fit it, such as the films of ardent Communist Anthony Simmons.

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HJackson
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4238 Post by HJackson » Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:46 am

You can’t even go to a normal website like Real Clear Markets for book reviews nowadays without these people shoehorning their demented right wing politics into it. The world really has gone mad!

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4239 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:21 pm

First off, an economic analysis of anything let alone a director's biography doesn't need to be overtly political. Otherwise from old habit, I occasionally pop into Real Clear Politics which at one time was a very good clearinghouse of interesting links, but became heavily political sometime prior to the Trump Era. Taking on a "crossfire" style where almost every link is politicized propaganda alternating between right- and left wing, frequently paired as talking point rebuttals. I rarely read any of the politicized articles from either end of the spectrum. But sandwiched in among such partisanship are still some interesting non-politicized articles, especially those linking through to realclearhistory and realclearscience. A review of a Norman Jewison bio seemed like a safe neutral article which, if I thought about it or noticed, I would have assumed linked through to realclearbooks. I was amused to find it in fact was a political screed. And disappointed it was poorly written and thought out.

Too bad the "reviewer" doesn't seem to know much about film. It wasn't hard for me to immediately rattle off a number of Norman Jewison films, which he thinks is a tall task. And it's telling that he spends as much time irrelevantly talking about Tarantino as Jewison.
Last edited by Lemmy Caution on Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:03 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4240 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:36 pm

The Economist's arts section rarely adopts a particular political position. They don't often tackle film-related topics, but their relatively recent review (not sure if that's paywalled) of Edward White's The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock is a perfectly intelligent take (bearing in mind that it's for general readers rather than specialists) that sticks to the matter at hand and doesn't get sidetracked into soapbox preaching.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4241 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:07 pm

But they would probably get more clicks if they spent the first three paragraphs talking about Tarantino!

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bottled spider
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4242 Post by bottled spider » Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:15 pm

Which incel in excelsis wrote this imbecilic remark, about what movie?
...with Shepherd trying to assert the seriousness of her underwritten role by wearing no makeup and looking as bad (realistic?) as possible in every single shot.
SpoilerShow
That's right. It's Leonard fucking Maltin, on Texasville.
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- equating no makeup with looking as bad as possible makes him sound like some feminist-bating chauvinist from the 50s. Or a Mary Kay rep.
- he's completely wrong anyway: Shepherd is obviously wearing makeup in every scene. We even watch her applying it on screen, for crying out loud!
- granted her makeup is light, and she does look rather wan and careworn. That's because the character she's playing is forty-seven years old, divorced, and recently bereaved of her parents and one of her children.
- notwithstanding, she's well-dressed, well-coiffured, and well made-up in several scenes. She's positively radiant in her return as homecoming queen for the centennial pageant. Is Leonard some kind of eunuch?
- ascribing thespian pretentions to her supposed lack of makeup makes no sense anyway, since any decision to deglamorize Shepherd's looks would have been made by the director, not the actress herself. Does he not know how movies are made?

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furbicide
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4243 Post by furbicide » Mon Aug 02, 2021 8:58 pm

While I share your distaste for policing women's appearance and the sexist notion that any woman without makeup looks "bad", you do say yourself that
SpoilerShow
she looks "rather wan and careworn", and that this is a deliberate artistic choice as it's integral to her character
– so isn't he just making the same point in a less sophisticated way?

I only pick at this because I feel like there's a tendency, emerging most notably of late in the brouhaha over Dennis Harvey's critique of Promising Young Woman, for any comment on an actress's appearances in a film review to be considered taboo – which seems kind of absurd given the amount of 'lookism' that goes into casting and the many hours on set that are put into making an actor look a certain way, e.g. "conventionally sexy" or, y'know, not.

Of course there are comparatively more or less blunt or ungentlemanly ways of putting that, and we should be aware of double standards on how and on what terms male and female performers are discussed, but at the end of the day actor appearance is very much part of the mise en scène and a conscious artistic choice – so it seems odd to pretend otherwise.

Perhaps what I'd like to see is more critical attention given to films' gratuitous employment of hotties, and more questioning of what artistic purpose is being served by having a ten-out-of-ten smokeshow play a role that could have been inhabited by any competent actor. The real issue is that reviewers like the one quoted above only seem to notice (what they perceive to be) deviations from that norm.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4244 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Aug 02, 2021 9:31 pm

furbicide wrote:
Mon Aug 02, 2021 8:58 pm
I only pick at this because I feel like there's a tendency, emerging most notably of late in the brouhaha over Dennis Harvey's critique of Promising Young Woman, for any comment on an actress's appearances in a film review to be considered taboo – which seems kind of absurd given the amount of 'lookism' that goes into casting and the many hours on set that are put into making an actor look a certain way, e.g. "conventionally sexy" or, y'know, not.
I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure people are always responding appropriately within the contexts of these examples. For example, to build off of bottled spider's last point, Maltin's leap to believing Shepherd is trying to compensate for an underwritten role through deglamorizing her appearance isn't merely supporting 'lookism' but honing a male gaze onto a solitary tool of superficiality, and speculating that this is not only 'the' (non)skill actresses possess (but must be the one they're utilizing because I'm thinking about it) to accentuate their range of acting. The criticism of Promising Young Woman was idiotic not because the idea of a film about a woman attracting men should omit attractiveness in its casting, but because of its context, that is directly subverting that kind of rationalism. Harvey is using his own idea of "normal" courting processes and ignorantly projecting that men who are prone to sexually assault women go through a similar assessment process as non-rapists. The assumption that men who rape women would be 'put off' by overstated outfits is viewed through the eyes of a man who is extrapolating his own ideas of logic around sexual pursuit (regardless of his sexual orientation, I imagine that Dennis is not a rapist who- from his writeup- accounts fashion and layered details of a person's physical appearance into the equation of personal attraction in sexual encounters- which... same, but...), while the film makes clear that Cassie doesn't need to be "hot" to draw men in, she just needs to be "disempowered."

So Maltin's assumption for Shepherd's tactic being measured by his own magnetized focus, without awareness of that bias clouding out the rest of her talents, is the problem- not that her looks don't matter, or that casting isn't integral to making a picture work. Maltin could have said that Shepherd's character seems intentionally drawn to look decompensated, but that the appearance isn't aligning with the thin characterization- and pondered whether this was a cheap attempt at realism... that seems like an appropriate opinion to state. The problem is, as bottled spider indicates, that Maltin is putting the onus on Shepherd for casting a problematic performance through a specific, gendered strategy that is offensively offered as the only means she can utilize to posture at faux-realism. Phrasing and context matter, but your broader point is well-taken.

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bottled spider
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4245 Post by bottled spider » Fri Aug 13, 2021 9:26 pm

Sorry, I ought to have responded in turn to these responses, but I got caught up in other stuff. At this point I'll just add that perhaps one has to have seen Texasville to fully appreciate the silliness of Maltin's comments. The film reunites the cast of the Last Picture show, and Shepard's character is now about 8 years older than herself.
JUNO as reimagined by David Lynch, or a funnier, sunnier DONNIE DARKO.
-Variety on Daydream Nation

Oddly enough, whoever selected the pull quotes for the DVD cover mistook this for an endorsement rather than a dire warning. This stinker was on my watchlist partly because it would have been eligible for the first features list, partly because I like to throw an occasional bone to Canadian movies, and partly because of a very positive review from guess who. Not to beat up on the guy, but I'm now questioning not just his taste but his sanity. It's abysmal.

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bottled spider
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4246 Post by bottled spider » Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:52 am

That moment you unfurl upon a sun kissed meadow buried in warmth. God-lit pastures in sweeping valleys. Fires breathing. Smoke wafting. Darkness hanging upon the nooks and crannies of a loft. Spontaneity. The moment of unbridled passion. Timeless. Rolling upon the farm's heavenly pillow. Her soft skin dimly lit by a peaking moon. The sounds of crickets in the hollow. A cold, revivifying river sneaking by. The hot days of summer. The sun through a canopy of luscious green leaves. Your emotions engulfed. Overwhelmed. Unleashed by the gentle existence of some farm. Shaken. Fleeting. Gone. Free will or fate? The memory of Her. The disposition of guilt. Providence. The present swaying you from the past. What could have been? What happened? What is.

Piers Haggards' stunning period-romance is perhaps the least seen and heard of piece of cinema that gives all love stories a run for their money. Every. Single. One. Titanic? No chance. When Harry Met Sally? Hell naw. Pride and Prejudice? Getting warmer. Twilight? Never. The Notebook? Couldn't shake a stick. Moonlight, Wayne's World, Fifty Shades of Grey, La La Land, Her, Cast Away, 50 First Dates, Score, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Cinder-freaking-ella... Noble attempts, but not worthy. I'm sort of kidding but I'm on way too much of a high to not be just a little silly right now. The most relatable films to this are probably Linklater's Before Trilogy, but even then I'm not quite so sure. Everything is handled so eloquently. It's not over spoken. It never overstays its welcome. It makes you recall your past. At the risk of sounding too saccharine, it makes you summon that first taste of love; the heavy heart-beating your chest endured; the melancholy after it was suddenly over.
A Summer Story (Piers Haggard, 1988). A John Galsworthy short story adapted by Penelope Mortimer. Score by Georges Delerue. With Imogen Stubbs, James Wilby, and Susannah York. Haggard (new to me) did some popular looking horror and sci-fi stuff, and some BBC stuff, including Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven.

Needless to say, I had to check this out. I regret to report it isn't that good. I don't think the script, of itself, is much at fault, but it's been directed and scored for maximum sappiness. The director seems to have mistaken a story of class warfare for a romance. Imogen Stubbs isn't ideally cast as an earthy, uneducated farm girl. Judging from her performances elsewhere, she has a natural tendency toward winsomeness (sometimes exploited to good effect as a destructive personality trait), helped (or not helped) by features which, through no fault of her own, lend her a simpering expression.

I've never read Galsworthy, but I see from wiki that Welles adapted this same story first as a radio play and later as a stage play.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4247 Post by Monkey Ballz » Sun Oct 31, 2021 12:55 am

One small post for Man, one giant leap for...
Despite efforts to trouble and autocritique, Dune remains by definition an imperialist white cishet male savior narrative. I do not feel qualified to attempt a holistic analysis of the myriad ways Dune ultimately reinforces extant hegemony, so I offer a thread which hopefully will be illustrative. I cannot imagine that I am the only trans or nonbinary person who read the Dune Saga obsessively in their tweenhood as a vehicle for navigation of their own gender issues but that is the primary reason I read all of the books again and again because it affirmed a feeling I had inside of myself of my own gender even as it told me that it was impossible, that I had to be something else. The first and foremost reason I read and reread Dune and its sequels is pretty simple: Space Witches. The Bene Gesserit are an order of Space Witches who serve the Galactic Empire in roughly the same role that the Catholic Church did for the Holy Roman Empire. The power of the Space Witches lay in Gendered Magick. This Gendered Magick is Bioessentialist, being something that 'only women' can do, rooted in The Sight and The Voice, the ability to see fate, the ability to impose will through a word. In Dune, there are pretty much two genders, male and female, and they are different because their bodies are different. Women are magick users and men control armies. The Bene Gesserit control the Empire from behind the scenes, like women do, as well as engaging in busybody matchmaking a eugenics program designed to produce a messiah, here defined as a man who can do women's magick so well that he perfects it, he renders all of women's magick null, a prelude to his own achievement. There are no real androgynous or nonbinary identities in Dune, queerness/gayness is coded as morally degenerate, sex is gender, a man who can experience what women do inside is an anomaly, something uncanny, the messiah. I knew myself to be obv a space witch so i saw myself there, no matter how reductive and misogynist a portrayal of women it ended up being, I craved anything which spoke to me of my own power inside, a power that I felt as feminine, that I felt as inherently material, inherently biological, within myself, in my body, in the earth. Frank Herbert told me I could not be a woman but I could be a man with a terrible but glorious fate and that explained why I could be a woman inside. I did not want my experiences to supercede or erase that of women, I knew myself to be a woman, but Frank Herbert shook his head and said no. I listened to Frank Herbert. Frank Herbert also told me to watch out for androgyny that it probably wasn't real or if it was real it was a sign of something untrustworthy, ultimately an indicator of greater, more extreme gender binaries. I listened to that too. It isn't his fault that I listened so hard or I listened in that way, but it messed me up for years. Later Dune books would stress gender/sexual dimorphism even more, to a point where it did some real psychic damage to my developing sense of sexuality, having already messed up my sense of gender AND my feelings of confidence and self-expression. Dune taught me that if I had to live as a man with the interior life of a woman I would have awareness of that life as a living death, with every step plotted out before me, already taken, an arc that could only end in forseeable if not preventable death, a terrible, unavoidable fate made both obscene and bearable through watching vision and reality superimpose atop one another like a film projected upon a screen where the same film is playing, slightly out of phase, where everything is in the flow of now. when you realize who you are, when you are given that which you need to awaken to yourself, all of these things may be swept aside or left in place, immaterial either way. The anxiety of coercively imposed and maintained gender essentialism was the engine that drove my inner life, kept me imprisoned within false consciousness. It kept me from knowing myself truly, kept me from my own magick. After I read Dune for the nth time and figured that I guess I can't be a Space Witch even though I know myself to be one I joined the Catholic Church because it was the closest thing to the Bene Gesserit this world had to offer? I figured I could join the priesthood or a monastery which was the closest thing to being a nun in a mystical order or a beguine? This is a true story. If someone tells you you have to be a certain way that goes against the person you know yourself in your heart to be, no matter how persuasive or seductive or logical this vision of things may seem, if it is not you and you know it is not you, you do not have to listen, you do not have to make it a part of you and then spend years and years disentangling it from what you are and leaving intact and labeling the parts you cannot extract, you do not. Listen to the voice within you. Listen to the voice within you that is older than you, that is older than this world, that is older than time. Listen to what that voice says to you about you about this world about your place and your function within it. Be that person that the voice says that you are and that you know yourself to be. Don't listen to those who cannot see, who cannot hear, they will never understand. If you must, strike out on your own, into the farther distance, go far enough until you can hear unimpeded, until you can see enough to know. Throw away your books, lay your body down into the earth and feel how it is there how it is not different from the earth, how its shifts and fluxes and pulses are the shifts and fluxes and pulses of the Great Mother Herself, She who gives all, She who receives all. To be with Her, in Her, of Her, to see Her and be seen by Her, to speak to Her and be spoken to by Her, to be spoken by Her, She Who Is, She Who Is Not, She Who Is The Life In Death, She Who Is The Death In Life, All Hail Her As She Approaches Hail <3 <3 <3
But wait -- there's more:
What is Sovereignty? Sovereignty is Excess. How is Excess? Excess requires Hierarchy. There is no Excess Labor In Commonality. Command Economies Require Excess, Require A Theory Of Surplus, Of Surplus Inverted. if our labor is in common, and we make collective decisions in real time about the best praxis to solve individual problems, we formulate multivalent layered redundant processes which might seem classically 'inefficient', where everyone and no one is a leader, many slightly divergent points of view are announced at once and must be threaded and processed, ideas are not owned but once announced part of collective wisdom to be adapted and improved upon, resources are not owned but participated in as gifts of the ever-changing, ever-giving world as part of a dance, a procession through seasons, through living and dying along with all of what is. if this is how things are how do they not appear as such? there is a fall, even a creative fall as all falls must ultimately be even in a clearing or giving way a loosening of the passage the opening of the cave the breath of the corpse flower how does knowledge of good and evil enter the world? how does division? supra-addition/excess/over/above. don't let anyone tell you it isn't a horror movie. the birth of the witch queen who has inhaled the breath of the grave who knows both life and death in this life who has gone underground and awakened the dragon who lives in the earth and who has spoken with it in tongues of flame she who can reply in tongues of flame and beckon the dragon ancient of days to rise from his slumber, spread his mighty wings over all of the sky, and impart the ancient gnosis where zero becomes one where one becomes two where two becomes three and so forth and so on freedom overspill rings of concentric tiered champagne glasses an elaborate gesture at the wedding shatters all over the table all over the carpet ground into the fibers deadly corrosive shining something finally left over something forgotten something unaware of something hidden something withdrawn something set over and above a positive example of the good of the bright of the shining that holds more light without breaking set above us by us our queen who is us who we can never be our wealth is a reflection of her wealth her increase is our increase her will is our will what she wants we provide to her we are her body her kingdom is her body the very earth the very waters the very air the very fire is hers and to her we sacrifice ourselves we sacrifice the best of what we have the best of what we are which in turn she will consume she will absorb she will radiate back unto us a star giving heat giving light the gravitational center of the known world around which all being wheels she is nothing she is the void she is nonbeing she is a title conferred she is that through which we give name to the nameless she is a sacrifice to herself isolate buried alive in the tomb above ground the inverted cave the tower that ascends heavenward bedecked and garlanded with the first flowers of spring the first fruits of summer the first grain of fall the first barren branches of winter to know her is to know merciless fate to know her is to know cruelty to know her is to know suffering and death to know her is to know the blessed end to know her is to never know justice but always pray for hope, hope is what she gives, an illusion that things can be other than what they are, an illusion of transcendental unchanging order reflected in the basis for human law which is what the sovereign says it is reality spoken into being by the queen as she says it possibilities birthing and dying before you suspended or dashed she is the end she is that which you will never achieve, never become that which haunts you what could have been if only if my years hadn't been spent if i could have worked for myself if i could have known myself and this world sooner if i had not been bound by fear by custom by law by tradition by decree what would i have been what would have become of this world? what is this world for? it is for nothing and no one. if we are to ask this world to be for someone for a someone then it is no longer for everyone which is to say for no one at all but is along with, can be addressed personally, need not be parceled or drilled or sectioned or sold but is here now in becoming, even now, even after all this <3 <3 <3 gods = no masters <3 <3 <3 EVERY PONY IS A STAR
Not satisfied?
Joel Chandler Harris was a white author, journalist and folklorist in the American South operational in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is most famous for collecting and re-writing African American Folktales in his own made-up dialect which attempted to reproduce the speech patterns of the speakers themselves through a fictional framing character, Uncle Remus, a character adapted from Joel Chandler Harris's day job at the Atlanta Constitution, where he and other white authors would create fictional African American men to serve as a mouthpieces for white viewpoints written in fictional African American dialects. Joel Chandler Harris adapted this tactic so that the very real folktales, the oral tradition, what survived from Africa and was subsequently elaborated upon for generations, could serve as entertainment for white people within the ongoing holocaust that Joel Chandler Harris, his friends and white society at large directly/tacitly supported/perpetrated. As a moderate and a centrist, Joel Chandler Harris followed the lead of fellow Atlanta Constitution journalist Henry Grady (thanks Wikipedia!), who worked for the reintegration of the former Confederate States into The Union under paternalistic white leadership. This is a viewpoint of supposedly benevolent White Supremacy. That slavery was beneficial or neutral at best but now that it is gone, the structure that slavery provided for all parties must be reproduced and maintained for the common good. People of African descent are worthy of kindness and protection but they are inherently inferior and must be controlled and provided for. This man became a worldwide celebrity, an author with influence far beyond his own circles, an immediate and noted precursor to Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Beatrix Potter, William Faulkner. He made it more than acceptable, fashionable, avant-garde, even, to appropriate wholesale, invent from whole cloth, fake African American Personae, Masks, for white voices to speak through while strip-mining what hadn't already been stolen by the previous three hundred years of conquest and annihilation, turning it to white creativity, white purposes, for fame, for money, for the intentional perpetuation of global White Supremacy even as you can claim with a straight face that you are an ally. There is a direct line from Uncle Remus to the Vorticists to Post-War Confessional Poetry (Hi John Berryman!) to Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Blues Brothers. This is where you get to meet my dad. My father is a committed ideological White Supremacist and Neo-Confederate. He has been his entire life at least for as long as I have known him. He does not believe in a strictly White Ethnostate. Like many White Supremacists, he wants to return to the apartheid of the 1950's, his boomer childhood in florida, where categories were stable and people knew their places and everyday citizens were empowered to enforce this apartheid through violence if necessary. I know these things because he began inculcating White Supremacist Ideology into me as soon as possible. These were not offhand comments. He knew that I was smart and that I could understand history and biology so he presented his hypotheses to me in these terms. He would carefully introduce cultural items of importance to him and explain why they were important and why we should cherish and hold onto them in the face of mounting opposition. The culture that my father adored above all else, that he desired to hold onto, was the ability of white people to maintain an ongoing practice of colonial appropriation and distortion of African-diaspora art, turning it into White Culture, American Culture, Supremacist Propaganda. The concept goes that it requires a Joel Chandler Harris, a Mark Twain, an Elvis Presley, a Mick Jagger, a Robert Plant, an Eric Clapton, a John Belushi, to take the raw material produced by Black Labor, and refine it into something worthwhile, a finished product, able to serve the needs of White People, who would otherwise have no culture of their own, whose culture is appropriation, whose culture is genocide, whose culture is slavery. My father explained to me that African American People were biologically better at sports and entertainment than White Americans but that they were not fit for functions which required a higher intellect, like self-governance or philosophy or historiography, positions he still ofc holds. My father explained to me that there were forces at work within the culture, insidious Marxist forces, that wanted to control what we read, what we saw, what we heard, reducing our capacity to know the reality of things and that he was going to make sure that I received a proper transmission of traditional literature and values. This meant that he was going to read me Rudyard Kipling and Joel Chandler Harris in dialect every night before going to bed not because that is what I wanted to listen to, but because he was striking a blow against cancel culture. This was the 1970's and the early 1980's. In 1980 we moved to Hahn AFB in Germany for two years. The movie theatre on base was my favorite place to go and i went with my parents quite frequently. They showed a lot of older movies because first run stuff was harder to get. When my father became aware that they were going to show Song Of The South, a 1946 Disney live-action/animation adaptation of the Uncle Remus Tales, he became unduly excited and began hyping it up to me for weeks. I liked the Uncle Remus stories just fine. I liked hearing about Br'er Rabbit. I hated the voices my dad would do during story time i wished he would just read it like a normal person. I liked the illustrations in whatever edition we had, they were black-and-white crosshatched prints? I absolutely HATED Disney's efforts at superimposing animation atop live action because it meant i would never be able to achieve immersion, a purposefully alienating effect as far as i was concerned, but it was a day at the movies. What I remember is being bored by the animation, bored by the movie, totally confused why my dad was so hype about taking me to see this. I was uncomfortable and felt weird. Much of my childhood with my father was like this. I was never a person. I was a repository, a project. To him i looked like himself, a cishet white man, to be raised free of the ideological taint of liberalism, strong and proud and brave and true, able to parody black soul singers drunk at a party in front of strangers totally unashamed, unembarrassed, glorying in his mediocre Whiteness. White Appropriation/Erasure of Black Culture is so often a deliberate cruelty, an intentional violence, a way of saying that nothing is yours, that everything belongs to us, and we will take it and defile it, make it serve our purposes, enrich us and our families for generations, while you watch. The fact that it is a distorted caricature is the point. White Appropriation Culture serves to groteque apparent differences in a way that reinforces White Supremacy while presenting African American artistic innovation as 'naturally occurring' or 'accidental' 'found objects' just there for the taking, is the whole of the scam. I am not a blameless innocent in any of this. Despite early and constant critical rejection of these ideas, it is the truth that I grew up in White Supremacist Culture, participate in it, reproduce it every single day all day long. The fact that I am aware of this means that I can intervene within these processes, learn from them and adjust my behavior within myself and without towards others as best as I can, but i am a product of these processes, they are not distinct from me, they apply a filter to every appreciation, every interaction that i have to counter in real time. It is exhausting and I despise it. I cannot imagine the burden imposed by White Supremacy on people of color, I just can't. My imagination, my self, was formed, was molded on purpose to reflect and further White Supremacy. I will always be that person. I am of the opinion that movies like Song Of The South, which promote racist propaganda crafted to uphold an oppressive order, should always be available to watch, to study and to learn from. I feel that Disney should not be able to act as if it never made this or its films that say oh idk promote U.S. intervention in Latin America to stem the Communist Hordes? In the end that only serves the interests of White Supremacy. I believe in creating cultural and historical context around these items so that we can better understand their own history their own involvement in the furtherance of murderous ideologies, not hiding them away in a vault. My dad is still fighting against cancel culture! Every day i get emails about the threats posed by Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Cultural Marxism and Transgenderism. He was a pioneer in his chosen field and still going strong. This review is for you, dad. Thanks For Everything. You helped make me the person I am today. I am sure you are proud. Maybe I would know if you still spoke to me. I was a tool, a device, an instrument for the lost cause, to be discarded once found unusable for the desired ends. White Supremacy is nothing if not consistent in its inability to see being in any terms other than exploitative instrumentality. This review itself would not be possible for me to write without the centuries of African Diaspora art, thought and activism painstakingly built up into a canon of anti-imperial, decolonial theory granting us all the tools necessary to think beyond the present moment, beyond present circumstance, into a greater truth, a greater relation.
Thank you sir, may I have another?
Whenever u get super down or are having a difficult week, remember that in 1982, Disneycorp gave Wendy Carlos her very own 2-hr computer-generated cyberpunk resurrection antimatter lazer lightshow to peak and valley electroacoustic synthorg orchestral blurs and whonks and durrrrs within/without, and everyone went to see it at the movies because it was completely awesome and everyone played the hyperreal arcade game at the arcade and a trans woman got paid. What is messed up and what might make u down if u think about it too hard is that some film directors get second careers in their film retirement to go on tours and play synthesizers to sold-out stadiums and record blockbuster horror movie soundtracks and sell those soundtracks on vinyl and on bandcamp and spotify and on amazon but to listen to a complete Wendy Carlos album on the internet you have to either listen to the Tron soundtrack on youtube/spotify (both of which also have Wendy's Main Title and 'Rocky Mountains' tracks from The Shining OST) or watch Tron the movie on Disneyplus and imagine that you are at a Wendy Carlos concert, in a stadium, full of cats and marijuana smoke that no one is allergic to, the dry ice and energy beams refract each other and Tron's immortal opening motif rises from the amplifer stacks as the movie is broadcast overhead and Wendy Carlos plays along to Tron live in front of you that would be so rad!!! and u could buy Wendy Carlos t-shirts and posters and merch in the lobby where u would mill around uncomfortably with a lot of other Wendy Carlos fans looking at the carpet or ur phone until it is time to come or go? i mean it is entirely possible that Wendy Carlos has no interest in doing any of this but a girl can dream, can't she???!!! <3 <3 <3 digital astral = trans heaven <3 <3 <3
Don't let the door hit you you on the way out:
As like, a class, chaotic evil witches get almost zero positive representation in mainstream media, and, sure, i can hear you thinking now 'duh, yes, CHAOTIC EVIL hello?' and although, yes, we are capable of world-rending terror, panic, misery and destruction for no explicable reason or because SOMEONE woke up on the wrong side of the crypt or it is tuesday that is not all of what we are! we have interests and dreams and hobbies and friendships and complicated, dramatic love lives or we are desperately lonely when not encovened sometimes one might be able to hear us wailing from sadness from the sides of mountains or that one night where, remember, you cursed FIVE Supreme Court Justices in one evening, all at once? we love to party, to engage the fullness of life, to ride the night, to sleep peacefully in the fires of hell and listen: it is a witch's prerogative to change their mind about stuff even if they are in the midst of doing it or forgot what it was exactly that they were doing or where they were going and gosh darn it it was really important to remember and ok well too late for that i just LOVE this song that comes on the radio sixteen times a day i am going to turn it up very very loud now!!! OK!! THAT IS TOO LOUD!!! WHAT???!!!!???? I SAID THE MUSIC ITS TOO LOUD!!!!!! WHAT??? WAIT LET ME TURN DOWN THIS MUSIC!!!!! ok what were you saying? i'm sorry were we talking about something? is that your birthstone in the pendant around your neck? ooooohhhh!!!! pretty!!! that is a stone of great power and healing or is it the one that enhances creativity and intuition? wait i can look it up on my phone! i HATE this phone!!! i used to like my old provider but now they switched me to a new carrier and this phone totally sucks!!! its always doing stuff i am not asking it too!!! i cannot WAIT to get rid of this phone!!! why can't we just use telepathy??? oh, right! because of all the cell phone towers there's a lot more intereference, a problem which compounds with distance! it isn't as if we eat EVERYONE we met, right? i mean that would be STUPID!!! i would never get anywhere at all!!! i would just spend my time consuming humans and their souls and diposing of their remains and i would never be able to do anything else!!! have you SEEN how many humans there are??? so i would say that in reality i pose a vanishingly small threat to most humans. Most humans i only drink a little of your souls as a contact high sort of when i move through a crowd or have to use a public bathroom and i'm sure it feels weird but i don't THINK i'm doing any PERMANENT damage? and you'll get used to it whatever it is i'm sure? if i really drink your soul you will know!!! first off, we would probably be in hell, but not necessarily, and it is a really obvious process, like there is no mistaking it for anything else!!! you know when a demon witch has drank up your soul!!! if you remain sensate and holding together ok after that you feel both better and worse? like your soul got torn apart and partially eaten but now u don't have all that soul gunk clogging up your stuff? anyway when u see me in the store talking to myself or talking to the spirits muttering something you don't understand i'm probably trying to remember what i forgot to write down on my list and not so much casting baneful magicks in a three-mile radius, poisoning the earth, killing livestock, weird lights in the sky, voices in your head you don't remember hearing before, accelerating disease progression/severity, like i'm probably not doing that shit right there at the grocery store and even if i was on some darksider witch jag which, sure, has been known to happen from time to time, its usually me completely wigging out in the den or on the heath/moor with lightning strikes impacting earth, unseen constellations lit up in the sky, the wind speaking in voices humans can hear, you know the drill and if i was up to that in the grocery store bad stuff would go down like i would end up fighting cops and the cops would easily win, only to find a facefirst of witchcurse on the afterend? not worth it! this sounds like i am making rational arguments which might not seem in character for a chaotic evil witch and first off, you can't tell me what to do!!! and secondly, how much does this really mediate the underlying surge and flux of chaotic evil? i have to use boring stuff like executive function and advance planning when going to do errands at the grocery store and I RESENT IT!!! this means i have to go four and five times to the stupid grocery store BUT if u r there u will hear me improvise a song about what kind of olives i am purchasing! lucky you!!! The truth about chaotic evil witches, which is a descriptor of behavioral tendency, an abstraction in any case, is that we are the most fun of all witches to hang out with but also the most terrifying! also you feel the most tired but also the most energetic from being with us. it might kill you. it might corrupt your eternal soul (maybe???)! but it will not be boring and you won't get depressed! you'll be too anxious to be depressed! the goal is to have all the negative mental health stuff cancel each other out!!! magick at work!!! so, great talk!!! it's been soooooo much fun catching up with you!!! oh wait! i thought we had been introduced before? No? well allow me to make the introduction now!!! why HeLLO!!! <3 <3 <3

User avatar
Never Cursed
Such is life on board the Redoutable
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 12:22 am

Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4248 Post by Never Cursed » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:14 am

Ah yes, the same poster responsible for that one deranged Bone Tomahawk review - surely up there with vegan lady and SJB as the most frequently inscrutable users of that site

Robin Davies
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:00 am

Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4249 Post by Robin Davies » Sun Oct 31, 2021 5:11 am

Never Cursed wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:14 am
Ah yes, the same poster responsible for that one deranged Bone Tomahawk review - surely up there with vegan lady and SJB as the most frequently inscrutable users of that site
What site? I must have more!!!

Glowingwabbit
Joined: Wed May 01, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#4250 Post by Glowingwabbit » Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:38 am

Robin Davies wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 5:11 am
Never Cursed wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:14 am
Ah yes, the same poster responsible for that one deranged Bone Tomahawk review - surely up there with vegan lady and SJB as the most frequently inscrutable users of that site
What site? I must have more!!!
Letterboxd

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