Dispatches from the Deep (October 7 - 13, 2024)
The Age of Compassion will be delayed indefinitely
It’s becoming abundantly clear to me that writing these in a hurry during the one or two hours on Sundays that I’m both motivated and not doing anything else has turned these posts into something they shouldn’t be: homework. I went back and looked at the last couple weeks, and the themes that keep coming up in the intros are “I’m tired” or “I don’t have time to write a lot.” Bad! I didn’t not go to grad school just so I could invent homework for myself. If the format changes next week, don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised if it doesn’t, either, since my solution might just be “don’t procrastinate.” No words this week.
I read an article about a few movies I didn’t see at NYFF, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest and Déa Kulumbegashvili’s April, both of which are about very bad weeks. They’re also both going on my watchlist. I read a good review of Intermezzo, but it’s on the Wall Street Journal website, which won’t let me read it again and the Internet Archive is down, so I can’t 100% recall what it was about. If you’re a subscriber to WSJ,1 I guess you can use this link to read it. Finally, I read a short statement by the filmmakers of No Other Land, a film about the West Bank occupation that has still not gotten distribution (likely for political reasons), regarding their choice to return to Palestine as the Israel has ramped up genocidal operations in recent weeks.
Elden Ring
I finished the Elden Ring DLC by glitching the final boss because I hated fighting it. Admitting this brings me no pleasure, but I really needed to close this chapter of my life. The DLC asked the big questions, like “would you help captain Ahab kill Moby Dick for $1 million and sex with a dragon lady?” and “would you stop a detransitioner from doing gay mind-control necrophiliac double-incest?”2 You have a choice for the first one,3 but the second one is non-optional. I’m glad of that, because I don’t really want to know who would’ve chosen to help Miquella usher in his so-called Age of Compassion.
It’s officially Spooks and Scares Season™! I have not always been a great fan of horror, instead opting to read Wikipedia summaries after getting scared by the trailers that played before, like, Skyfall or whatever. As I’ve gotten super into movies, I’ve learned that those trailers tend to compile only the scariest moments, and these movies are mainly about building tension and tone. Who knew! Some of the highlights for me last October were Suspiria, Eraserhead, The Exorcist, and Practical Magic. I remembered that I had fun watching those, so this week I started out on my SSS™ with an old classic and some new friends.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010, David Slade)
Natalya came over for the inaugural spooks and scares movie of the year. My favorite thing that Stephenie Meyer incorporated into the Twilight sequels was the Mormons vs. Catholics meta-narrative. On one side, we have a patriarch who looks exactly like Joseph Smith presiding over a clan of reformed sinners (was in a mixed race relationship;4 survived sexual assault; caught the flu; etc.), on the other, we have a bunch of gay Europeans who live in the Vatican. This is also the one with the cuck tent—where Edward and Jacob chit chat about their relationships to Bella while she pretends to be asleep in a sleeping bag with Jacob. The whole movie is an extension of this one scene, as Bella is forced to make a final decision between Jacob and Edward since keeping both is rapidly becoming untenable.
The Final Destination (2009, Eric Bress)
Kory and I spent most of this trying to figure out which entry into the series this one was.5 If you, like me, recall the trailer of this quite vividly, this is the one where some of the characters get trapped on a mall escalator that’s trying to eat them and a bunch of people get killed by flying car tires. It’s also the one in 3D! So there’s a lot of crap flying at the screen. It was really terrible, but there were many laughs and chuckles to be had.
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954, Jack Arnold)
Having watched a key entry in the late-2000s 3D wave, I watched one of the last entries in the early 50s 3D wave, Creature from the Black Lagoon. I didn’t actually mean for it to work out that way, I just let the Criterion Channel pick for me. They really used to make movies, huh? About a third of this is shot underwater, which is impressive for 1954. The creature is obviously a rubber suit, but it still looks pretty good. And it’s about something interesting! Men going into the jungle to touch each others muscular bodies, all while the imagined colonized subject is free to touch the feet of the delicate white woman they brought with them.
Godzilla (1954, Ishirō Honda)
The original, the one, the only, Godzilla. On a technical level, this was also an incredible feat in 1954. Just on the number of miniature sets, and the detail necessary to make and then destroy all of them, which you don’t get back if you mess up the shot? Wow. On an emotional level, this was devastating. As Alice pointed out, the stakes were just right, with the micro-scale drama of missing the opera, and the macro-scale drama of foreign relations and nuclear testing. Also, justice for Godzilla!
Night on Earth
Jim Jarmusch is a gap for me, and one that I’ve been grateful to start to close. There’s a Winona Ryder collection on the Criterion Channel right now, even though she’s not in this movie very much. The film is five vignettes that all take place in taxis in LA (the one with Ryder), New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. I liked the concept, but it did start to wear thin by the Rome entry, so Alice and I watched it in two sittings (the first four, then the Helsinki one the next day). I wanted more butch Winona Ryder, but alas, you can’t always get what you want.
Examen d’entrée INSAS (1967, Chantal Akerman)
I’ve been really into watching early works by great filmmakers, as avid readers of Dirt Blue will no doubt have noticed. It’s been really enlightening, as I obviously understood conceptually that everyone starts somewhere, but it’s another thing to actually see the very raw beginnings of an artist. I came across this site that has Chantal Akerman’s film school application shorts, for some reason. If you’re into this kind of thing, it’s very cool. If you’re not, it’s not even 10 minutes, so you might as well watch it anyway!
Sonatine (1993, Takeshi Kitano)
Recently, Joy lent me a bunch of DVDs of some of her favorite movies. I blogged about Ghost in the Shell back in August, and I finally got around to watching another (I tried to watch a third one, but it wasn’t working properly on my Xbox). Not sure why I waited, because this was great! A Yakuza member wants to retire, but his boss pulls out the Uno reverse card and sends him on a suicide mission to Okinawa. Being so burnt out that you’re unbothered by this obvious plot against you, by all your buddies getting knocked out one-by-one, is a brutal way to live. It was the perfect early fall weekend movie, as I’m feeling tired of my summer depression and ready for a change, even if that change will just be winter depression.
The Long Goodbye (1973, Robert Altman)
Eli introduced this to me while I was recovering in New York, which I was really grateful for, but clearly didn’t appreciate fully at the time because of all the painkillers I was on (only gave it four stars). I liked it enough to get the Blu-ray of it,6 which is good, because it’s actually one of the greatest movies ever. It’s like a 70s Michael Clayton with a young and very fuckable Elliott Gould as a PI whose cat has run away. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves neo-noir.
Thanks for reading!
xoxo,
Daniela
Why???
Miquella is using Mohg’s body (whoops) and Radahn’s soul (double whoops, though I only begrudgingly participated in that assisted suicide because Ranni needed me to make the stars move again and he was keeping them in place) as his consort doll. Mohg, from what I understand, is Miquella’s nephew or grandnephew, and Radahn is Miquella’s half brother.
I chose yes, because the Moby Dick in this game sucks. Everyone in the DLC sucks, I take back what I said at the end of the main game—I enjoyed killing most of these enemies.
Battle scars! Hilariously, Jasper’s sin is somehow not continuing to fight for the South post-Appomattox. Close readers of the text will see that his Confederate past is cast as a virtue.
It’s the fourth; taking its naming cues from The Fast and the Furious.
Incidentally it’s one of the ones I lent Joy. She told me she watched it five times!!
I'm glad you like sonatine :) and yesss I love butch cabbie winona ryder 🔥🔥