I had a dream last night where I read the "original" version of Rumpelstiltskin...

( Cut for a creepy, rape-filled fairy tale )

No, I don't know why my subconscious thinks it's Angela Carter.  All I know is that I'll be seriously creeped out by that story from now on.

 So, an overly made up 19th century girl runs away to be with a rogueish looking guy who has less money than her and whom her parents won't let her marry.  She goes to wait for him to come for her, alone in the woods at night...

...this is the backstory to Corpse Bride, isn't it?  Get the hell out of there, Taylor, he's going to rape and murder you and leave you to be rejected by Johnny Depp.

(Seriously, watch this and tell me the scene in the woods doesn't come straight out of a Hammer Horror movie.)

So apparently, some lady threatened to kill Michelle Obama to protect Barack and left him rambling love letters.  And possibly kill him too- to protect him.  Or something.

I should be horrified.  Instead, I'm thinking that Sondheim will have to turn "Unworthy of Your Love" into a trio.

It's about time I organized all this. Here are links to my stories (or at least those I'm not ashamed of yet.)

Warning: Thanks in part to brain_asplode , I have many random crossovers and crack pairings.  I also have far too much Toby/Lovett, but that's my own fault.

( Walk this way )( Read more... )

I find it interesting that so many movies feel the need to ‘respond’ to High Noon. Well, maybe interesting is the wrong word- more like baffling. I read about the attacks when it came out, calling the hero unmanly for showing fear and appearing to almost cry, and my reaction is a stunned cry of "But it’s High Noon! How can anyone hate High Noon?"

Apparently, some people did- or even if they liked it, felt the need to make a movie showing what should have happened. Rio Bravo and High Plains Drifter are both in some ways responses to the movie, though the responses are not quite the same. Rio Bravo is the response of a swaggering father saying "Son, you should be ashamed of yourself- you don’t need to rely on the townsfolk! And don’t show no fear, neither!" High Plains Drifter is the response of a troubled younger brother going "No man, what you oughtta do is go back there and kill every last one of those ungrateful sons of bitches!"

Funnily enough, I love all three of these movies. Rio Bravo is a delightful ensemble adventure, and the romance between John Wayne and Angie Dickinson is appealing (even if it is cribbed almost line for line from the director’s earlier movie To Have and Have Not.) High Plains Drifter is a banquet of the bizarre, an epic, nihilistic horror movie masquerading as a western. I don’t even mind the rape scene- it certainly isn’t the most evil thing Clint Eastwood does over the course of the movie, which acknowledges that all those mysterious men with no names are scary for a damn good reason.

In the middle sits little old High Noon, an allegory for the Red Scare or Korea or urbanization or whatever us modern viewers like to attribute to it. It would be irritated by Rio Bravo’s response and horrified by High Plains Drifter, and would generally try to stay out of the conversation.

Why is it this movie provokes such strong reactions? There are many controversial movies and many ideas to be rebelled against, but why does the simple story of a man abandoned who sticks to his principles simply because it’s something he has to do (while being broken up inside that no one else seems to see it that way) upset people?

I don’t know. All I know is, while John Wayne looks on disgusted and Clint Eastwood paints the town red, tired and scared old Gary Cooper must stand by himself.

For High Noon, it’s a rather fitting position.

15 word fanfiction meme, because I don't want to do my homework.

1. Write down the names of 10 characters.

1. Sweeney Todd
2. Susan Sto Helit (Discworld)
3. Tamora (Titus Andronicus)
4. Toby (Sweeney Todd)
5. David (The Lost Boys)
6. Mina Harker (Dracula)
7. Ophelia (Hamlet)
8. Hayley (Hard Candy)
9. Brother Justin (Carnivale)
10. Steerpike (Gormenghast)

2. Write a fic of fifteen words or less for every prompt, using the characters determined by the numbers. Do NOT read the prompts before you do step 1.

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My school is having auditions for Songspiel Mahagonny.

Hell.  I know I shouldn't audition, since there are so many good people here and I'll be heartbroken if I don't get into a Brecht show.  And yet, I once again find my willpower fading.

I have to choose a song to sing.  I want to do Pirate Jenny, but I imagine everyone's doing that...

1.  Got the polyps removed from my nose- terrifying experience, but I can finally breathe.  I just wish I didn't have to deal with so much blood.

2.  Though I didn't make it into As You Like It in September's auditions, one of the kids in the directing classes liked my audition- I'll be performing in her scene from The Madwoman of Challiot.

3.  Never read Titus Andronicus and then watch Al Franken tearing apart the lawyers who wanted Jamie Leigh Jones to not be able to take her gang rape case to court.  Seriously.  Because I did, and now I'm trying not to write their exchange in iambic pentameter.

 I'm thinking of making a fanmix.  Does anyone know of a guide to making one/uploading playlists?

Since everyone and their goldfish has been coming down on one side or the other of this spectacle, I guess I should put my thoughts in print.

It breaks my heart because I love so many of his movies, but the man did a horrible thing and should serve his sentence.  That said, I'm not going to boycott his films or the films of people who have come out supporting him.  If anyone should feel guilty in this instance it should be him, and not me for loving Rosemary's Baby and finding him adorable in The Fearless Vampire Killers.

I refuse to limit myself to the art of people I admire, and I also refuse to say that great art puts someone above the law.

Now if only every political blog I read could go just one day without ten posts about him...

 Yom Kippur.  It's only 9:30 and I'm already hungry...

In other news, the Westboro Baptist Church (aka the "God Hates Fags" assholes) picketed my temple.  Because apparently God hates Jews, too.  At least they put me in the same company as Heath Ledger and George Carlin.  I'm special!

Stolen from firecracker_sj

 1. If you're on my friends list, I want to know 35 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine.

2. Comment here with your answers and repost the questionnaire on your own journal.

01) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
02) What was your dream growing up?
03) What talent do you wish you had?
04) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
05) Favorite vegetable?
06) What was the last book you read?
07) What zodiac sign are you?
08) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
09) Worst Habit?
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
11) What is your favorite sport?
12) Do you have a Pessimistic or Optimistic attitude?
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
16) Do you have any pets?
17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?
18) What was your first impression of me?
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22) What color eyes do you have?
23) Ever been arrested?
24) Bottle or can soda?
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
26) What's your favorite place to hang out at?
27) Do you believe in ghosts?
28) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
29) Do you swear a lot?
30) Biggest pet peeve?
31) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
32) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
33) Favorite and least favorite food?
34) Do you believe in God?
35) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

 It's not that it's a movie about robots from space- I like robots, and I don't mind if they're from space.  It's not that it's a dumb action movie, because I've enjoyed plenty of those.  If someone asked me what I wanted to watch, a dumb action movie about robots from space might not be my first choice, but I wouldn't be morally opposed to it.

 As a female fan of westerns, there’s a certain feeling you get while watching DVD special features.  Maybe it’s the bevy of film critics talking about how The Wild Bunch changed their life, or the directors who saw The Good, The Bad And The Ugly as children and so decided they wanted to make movies.  The feeling can be articulated in a simple sentence: “Where are all the girls?”

            And, you realize, the makers of such special features aren’t being sexist or exclusive in having only male speakers, you’re just not the target audience and never have been.  Sure, it’s great that you loved their movie, but you’re not really expected to- and if you do, there’s still a suspicion that you’re not fully getting it.  It can make you feel like Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon A Time In The West, all the male eyes on you as you ride into a town where your kind is rarely seen.
            
           Thus, I find it interesting when western movies try to change things up in this regard and put a female character in the lead.  Female supporting cast members have always been common enough, and some of them are great (I particularly love the women in High Noon and Montgomery Clift’s love interest in Red River), but giving them the bulk of the screen time is something different, and it seems to me that there are three main ways filmmakers go about it- gender can be irrelevant, it can be patronized, or they can try treat it “normally”.

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Oh dear.  On my own, I'd pick David from the Lost Boys...


But seeing who everybody shipped me with in that meme a while back, I think I know who I'd end up with.

One more year left as a teenager.  I don't know whether to be happy or scared out of my mind.

I'm not sure I really need to write a full review of this, but a few point about the movie are worth noting:

1. It's not a masterpiece, but if you like seeing pretty guys in pinstripes shooting tommy guns and driving thirties cars- as I do- you could do a lot worse.

2.  Dillinger did not kill people, for fuck's sake!  He prided himself on it!

3. The movie tries to make Dillinger into a doomed figure, but Johnny Depp just seems too put-together and confident for it to work.  Maybe I wouldn't have minded this if I hadn't seen High Sierra, where Bogart played a character based on Dillinger, and he got it right- there was this tragic sense about him, that no matter what choice he took it was heading for disaster, and he knew it.  High Sierra even quotes the real Dillinger, saying that he was "rushing toward death", and it's something that Depp just didn't show.

But then again, it does have pretty guys in pinstripes shooting tommy guns and driving thirties cars.

My thread

Come on, I dare you...

Yes, it's bad.  But you already knew that.

I'm not really here to review Batman and Robin, since it's pretty much universally agreed to be the worst superhero movie ever made, and I didn't see anything that would make me disagree.  I wouldn't have even seen it if not for the Rifftrax.  I'm also not going to talk about the homoeroticism, which would be like shooting fish in a barrel (the presence of Bruce Wayne's girlfriend in the movie actually makes him seem more gay.)  What interested me about this brightly colored camp festival was a single issue raised by Batgirl.

"Chicks like you give women a bad name."
( Spoilers and pointless rambling )