Films The Official bit-tech Movie Thread - What have you seen lately?

Well, that's great and all...

But it doesn't stop it being a not very good film that shouldn't have really been made.

 

As I said, representation is right and proper but making the dialogue point it out every 20mins can be jarring and isn't good storytelling. I like to use captain Holt in Brooklyn 99 as a great example of how a character is gay and not just a gay character

 

And that's a worthwhile point. Captain Holt is a great example of doing it right. But at the same time, even getting it wrong is still exposure. And someone out there needs to see that.

I don't know of a single asexual, trans Native American protagonist. So I'm working on writing one. But somebody out there wants to see it because they're in the same boat. And that matters. But when anything but cishet white male is "political," then we have to tear down old expectations if anyone else wants representation. Maybe that means clumsy adaptations at first. But it's an attempt.

 

This is one of the reasons that I stopped watching Netlix's Sabrina - the shoehorned trans male character (can't remember the name) was just ultra annoying and extremely poorly written. Not to mention the way that the character was able to match up to all the other males only when Sabrina used magic... it didn't look good at all.

Apparently the whole Matrix trilogy is some sort of allegory for trans experience - or so I've heard. There's definitely no shortage of LGBTQ+ representation nowadays, but it's not all favourable representation unfortunately (but that's for another thread, and it would surely result in some sort of schism, given how divisive the subject can be).

Back on topic... I watched Colombiana again, and I actually found it a lot weaker on the second viewing (perhaps because I was being more analytical this time). Still, I like the idea, and it has some nice sequences, so 6/10 from me.

 

I humbly disagree about representation in cinema, to be honest. I think fictional portrayals always have a higher probability to be pejorative than flattering, so if a group is already having an image and PR crisis, being depicted in fiction is more likely to harm than help them.

I don't think the trans subject has reached the point where people can just be reminded of its existence in order to accept it; I think they need to be introduced to it and helped to understand it, first. There still is simply not widespread understanding of trans, most people have no idea what it really is, how it works, what to expect from it or how to feel about it.

Films are dramatic and fictional and have a duty to be interesting and spicy first, which means most characters are amped up, weird, messy, unrealistic personalities that you'd never encounter in real life. This makes them a singularly bad vehicle for normalizing something currently poorly understood and already perceived as weird and messy. The weird messiness gets squared by the fiction's tendency towards melodrama and intrigue, and then when real trans and pro-trans people want to wade into the public sphere and start talking about it, straight out of the gate they're contending with bizarre stereotypes and misconceptions that have been reinforced by well-meaning writers and directors.

See also: the way a lot of representations of gay people in cinema were, and continue to be, pejorative. I don't really care about this personally - I think people have excessively thin skins when it comes to how their demographic is portrayed in fiction - but there's no denying that most gay characters lean into weird stereotypes and misconceptions. As mentioned already, Brooklyn 9-9 kind of proves this, because its normal, 3-dimensional, nuanced gay character felt like a shock to the system and redefined what was possible when writing gay characters.

I'm what could be delicately described as "pro-gay". I rather like gay people, I think they're aight. But I think the gay rights movement shot itself in the foot by cornering the market on writing and acting and presenting so many gay characters in film and TV. I can see why they assumed it could only help, but in most cases I think it set the understanding and acceptance of gay people back. Rare exceptions (like Philadelphia) are famous precisely because they are so exceptional to this rule.

 

Nobody
Fanflippin' tastic / 10, an F'in' masterpiece of blood, bullets and Nina Simone.
It's been many a year since a film this good was released.

 

I meant to watch this when it was free on Netflix (or Amazon Prime, can't remember which), but missed the boat, which I'm a bit annoyed about. Watched the rather excellent bus scene on Youtube...

 

Watched this last night too and concur wholeheartedly with the above. Some slight suspension of disbelief required (can't remember if it's based on a graphic novel?) but the main guy is believably imperfect and the plot is sound, if nothing surprising.

It's just really great entertainment with some funny bits! And proves that you need a solid plan if you're going to take on the Russian mob.

 

I passed my English O level in the eighties.
Never seen this word before. Is it made up like ASMR?

 

I suppose what I meant was that ASMR is an acronym for something that has been around since forever i.e. sounds of things
WOKEWORLD called it ASMR.

 

Starting to think that you don't actually know what auto sensory meridian response is...

 

Yep, sounds.

 

Cool, so using "ASMR" instead of "auto sensory meridian response" - which, by the way, actually means "the sound of things" - is "woke". Got it.

Just trying to further my understanding of the word "woke", because it almost seems like it can mean anything people want it to mean.

 

Silk Road.. About the drugs bloke selling on Tor.
Not too bad a 7/10

 

Righto but it doesn't mean that.
Wiki says no.

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), sometimes auto sensory meridian response,[2][3][4] is a tingling sensation that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. A pleasant form of paresthesia,[5] it has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia[6][7] and may overlap with frisson

 

The Silencing ft Jaime Lannister - 4/10
He can hear spears flying through the air in time to dodge them (although otherwise, his character was played quite well). There are so many "Really?" moments that it just became something we watched to the end for closure because we were already halfway in.

 

As someone with half of a third of an eye on some trans issues - I do loosely know that 'cis' is based in Latin. According to the intertubes, it was first used in a reference to gender in 1914, but only entered the English dictionary in 1994; https://public.oed.com/blog/december-2015-update-new-words-notes/

Sooo, while you got your O level in the 80's, the concept of Cisgender is not 'new' or 'woke' in that regard.

It's become prominent because the opposite side of it is transgender - And trans people are, rightly in my opinion, seeking equality in treatment and expectations - Something they don't seem to get as it stands. As evidenced by multimillionaires causing dogpiles on teenagers on the internet, and inadvertently or not causing people to get doxxed and suffering.. Well. Mild backlash might be the most aggressive way to describe it.

Ultimately, though.

Language changes. It's on us - all of us - to recognise that and not be snide about it because learning something as simple as 'cisgender' or someone's preferred pronouns is an arseache. Which, for the record, it's not.

Kind of OT.

The Sopranos

I can't rate this. I really can't. I hate everyone in this show. They're all repugnant in one way or another, and frankly I'm glad to see the back of this show.

The actors? Great. They did a great job making me hate their characters so much - The show itself? Also pretty well done, it doesn't feel like drama for drama's sake, everything feels like it leads to everything else.

But goddamn do I never want to see this show again, or think about any of these assholes again.

 

Hey, I got a medium amount of medias here !

... I'm gonna leg-it now