Welcome to Night Vale: Be Still My Beating Heart (and Don't Look at theDog Park)

Okay, so this is a review that actually doesn't involve me getting upset at problematic things in media -- I know, right?  It's a fucking Thermidor miracle.

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast, and the fandom for it consumed my dash about two or three weeks ago.  I held out until last Tuesday in terms of starting to listen to it myself, because it seemed almost too good to be true.  But, to paraphrase a post by a dear online friend -- this is what this podcast has on offer:

• An openly queer narrator/protagonist.  Cecil Baldwin, the radio announcer for Night Vale Community Radio, falls in love with another man literally during the first episode of the podcast.  He says it straight up -- I fell in love instantly.

• Satire on both government spying and censorship, and the NRA, spanning the whole of the political spectrum (nothing on the political spectrum is safe).

• Calling out a racist, culturally-appropriative asshole repeatedly on air.

• Gender-neutral language so subtle and natural you don't even realize Cecil's doing it.

• A slow-burn interracial queer romance between Cecil and the scientist he falls in love with, Carlos.

And that's just in the social and political spheres of this podcast's relevance.

The Horror of Self-Perpetuating Oppressive Systems

a.k.a. "A Letter to the Good and Frustrated Enjonine Shippers"

Dear Enjonine fandom:

Look, I get that it sucks to have stuff you don't want in your tag.  Seriously, I do -- I'm a Ghostfacers fan; the tracked tag is 1/3 hate, 1/3 "OMG Ed/Corbett I ship it!" and 1/3 "Gay love can pierce the veil of death and save the day."  I spend a truly egregious amount of time Ignoring or rebutting Problematic Shit in the #Ghostfacers tag, because I don't want to deal with bullshit.

So, Enjonine shippers at large, I beseech you -- please keep reading.  I don't want to be perceived as a dick, but I need to make point here, and your tag is probably the best place to do it.

See, some of you guys...have been kind of awful.  Like, acting in racist/homophobic/transmisogynist ways kind of awful.  And that's (rightfully) pissing off a lot of people.  So those people try and make the relevant people take responsibility for the bullshit they're spewing.

Queer E/R shippers who have been getting pissed over Enjonine are just trying to be heard and acknowledged, and are frustrated because in the real world they have so much shit to deal with, and they want to have one safe space left in the world, y'know?

But instead, the people doing the shitty stuff in the first place are whining about being called out on it, and Ignoring the people trying to call them out, and just generally not being cool about their being called out for ignorance or outright malice.

It's not that hard -- you fuck up, you apologize, you ask how you can behave better in the future, and then you do that.  I'm a white cis able-bodied upper-middle-class college student; I'm privileged in a shit ton of ways, and I've fucked up and been called out, and guess what?  

It's awkward and scary sometimes, yeah, because this is the culture I've been raised in, and evaluating the culture you're raised in can be really fucking frightening, because you always find it lacking, and find yourself lacking.  I know, it's happened to me.  But I sat down and made myself think about what I was saying and doing and assuming, and improved myself.  It wasn't that hard, once I made myself accept that society made me this way, but I can also change myself, and in so doing help change what society will be like in the future.  And that, coming to that realization?  Made it really important to me to change the behaviors in me that are gross.  It's an ongoing process, but I swear to you, you (general you) can do it, and it feels good, knowing that you can change.

So it's not impossible, far from it, for the folks who were doing Problematic Shit, to have sat down, thought about what they were saying, and apologized with the intent of fixing their behavior for the future.

But they haven't.

Instead, the shitty elements of your ship are claiming the E/R shippers are cyberbullying them, and that pisses off more people, and then it just becomes this massive self-perpetuating Gross Situation.

And it has the side effects of (a) making both ships look terrible and (b) preventing open and awesome discourse about canon and fandom and these characters we all love, no matter what exactly we ship.  And when we shut down discussion, especially discussion about problematic things, we're doing a massive disservice to Hugo's memory.

Victor Hugo wrote this book to remind the world of history that was already fading.  He wrote this book to prove points about the dispossessed and the way the system was still broken, hell, is still broken.  He created characters as both fully-formed people and as symbols -- of ideology, of ideal, of the effects of one oppression or another.  He talked extensively about the results of classism, of the prison system, of how poverty prevents so many people from achieving so much.

Like Eponine, for example.  Eponine is what happens when a child is trapped in an abusive, criminal family.  She's clever but not learned, harsh and happily cruel.  She's powerful, and terrible, and wonderful.  She deserves more than to die for Marius on that barricade.

Because Hugo was driving home the point that this is what the system does.

It ruins, it tarnishes, it destroys, and it self-perpetuates.

Just like racism, heterosexism, misogyny, transmisogyny, ableism -- any oppression codified by our cultures and societies at all -- they all self-perpetuate.

They self-perpetuate in major part because of two things:

A) They make it hard for the oppressed to individually climb to a higher social stratum, where they would have the voice and audience to decry the systems holding them back,

and

B) They've embedded and normalized themselves so deep into the culture that we have to actively analyze our behavior -- not even just privileged groups (you would not believe the internalized misogyny I still have to actively kick in the balls every day), either -- and fix it.

Resistance is scary.  Resistance means having to think.  Resistance means leaving your comfort zone far, far behind a lot of the time.

But resistance is the beginning of change.  Resistance is where it starts.

So please, I exhort you, from the bottom of my heart, resist with me.

When someone on your ship says something gross -- when they, intentionally or through ignorance, erase Enjolras's about-as-strongly-implied-as-historically-possible-queerness, or say that a POC Javert or Ami is too weird or unrealistic, or something else that's gross -- let them know you won't stand for it.  Tell them they're doing something gross that needs to stop.

Don't let them hide away behind the Ignore button, or in little private forums where the Big Scary Angry Queers can't touch them.  Don't let them keep perpetuating the cycle of oppressions of our era.

Because resisting here will give you the courage to resist elsewhere.  What starts here does not, will not, and cannot end here.  Teach, and resist, and learn to unlearn the behaviors you have that perpetuate oppressions.

Have heart, stand up, and don't be complicit in behavior that is symptomatic of and perpetuates societal oppressions.  Call out the filthy behavior -- be strong and stand with me.

Long live the future,

Shannen Murphy

American Gun, Bowling for Columbine, and a Reflection on the Complexity of Problems

Warning: Discussion of gun control, war, and violence in this post.

I went to a screening held by the Philosophy department of a movie called American Gun a few weeks ago, and this past week my Comm Theory class watched Bowling for Columbine.  So my mind has lately been on gun control, and the role of the media when we talk about it, and I decided that I would write up a brief post about it.

To be honest, I think part of our issue with gun violence is in the highly militarized and, yes, violent nature of our culture.  In the US, I don't believe there has ever been a year -- just a year -- where we weren't involved in some kind of armed conflict with someone.  Now, I could be wrong, but even if I'm exaggerating, for most of our history -- and currently -- the state has placed much of its worth on its military might.

Apocalypse Now: Colonel Kurtz, the Heart of Modernity, and What We MustLearn From It

I had to write a paper on Modernity as it related to what we were covering in my Western Civ class, and so had the opportunity to watch Apocalypse Now, in order to make comparisons between it and the book it's vaguely based on, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  

I have to say, the movie drags in the beginning.  And the middle.  There are some fantastic scenes -- particularly, the scene with the Playmates after they've gone upriver a ways.  The women are topless, but it's not remotely sexualized for the viewer; the scene is meant to highlight the way the soldiers objectify these women, and it's disturbing and brilliantly played.

But the movie doesn't come into its own until Marlon Brando's first appearance as Kurtz.  As soon as Kurtz becomes more than just a shadow that the protagonist is chasing, the movie becomes great.

Brando's performance is formidable -- Kurtz is a mysterious figure, and gives very little justification for himself beyond an empty, Modernist nihilism.  He says that he's deserted into the jungle of Cambodia and built this tiny dictatorship because the men in charge of the Vietnam war are "insane."

The narrative of the movie doesn't treat anyone in it as a hero, which is refreshing to see, and it forces us to examine our perceptions of right and wrong, and what we think we know about violence.

I think it should be required watching -- though I recommend not watching the extended cut that I sat through -- it was pretty dull at times.

Problematizing Supernatural: 8x21 "The Great Escapist" -- Metatron, Storytelling, Free Will, and Responsibility

This was overall a very, very good episode.  From the exceptionally clever social commentary of Castiel using fast-food corporate sameness to evade Naomi's minions to Osric Chau's fantastic portrayal of the different extremes of Kevin Tran's character, to the way Metatron talks about Free Will and storytelling being the crowning glory of it, the entire episode was brilliantly written and performed.

There is a discomfort I felt about the fact that Metatron is a middle-aged white guy who set up shop as the Messenger of God among Native Americans and expected tribute from them in the form of stories, but beyond that, the show even managed to be a lot less problematic that usual.

My favorite parts were Kevin Tran's scenes and the scene with Metatron.  Osric Chau sells it, as usual, with his anger and his smugness and the fact that there's just this understanding that this kid can't be broken.  Kevin Tran is a stronger man than many could ever hope to be, and he came by it by a way that's just as hard as the Winchesters' was.  I have always loved Kevin Tran, but I have never loved him as much as I do now.

Problematizing Supernatural: Special Edition -- NJCon and Why Fandom and Jensen Need to Stop Doing the Thing.

"Not being heard is no reason for silence."

-- Victor Hugo

So, today was the last day of NJCon, and it was the day that Jared and Jensen were at the con.  I had honestly forgotten -- it had nothing to do with the Ghostfacers, so my level of actual care was very low.

Until the wank started.

(for those reading my blog who don't know what wank is, it's basically this: someone does something somebody else doesn't like, and that winds up making certain people upset, and fighting breaks out fandomwide.  It's gross and awful and tends to wind up with everyone in the wrong, though not this time.)

Because, at a Jared and Jensen panel, a girl got up and did something super difficult for a lot of people -- she  opened up her question by saying she was bisexual.

And you know what the crowd did, before she could hardly get any further than that?

They boo'd her.

According to someone who wrote about it after having watched the video:

Problematizing Supernatural: 8x20 "Pac-Man Fever" -- In Defense of Charlie Bradbury and the Mary Sue.

You can be the King, but watch the Queen conquer.
-- "Monster" by Kanye West

I know, I usually don't open these reviews with song lyrics, but I feel like this quote is particularly apt for Charlie Bradbury, the central figure to last week's "Pac-Man Fever."

Charlie is, once again, everything I could ever want.  She's a queer female character treated with respect and dignity.  She's a strong female character whose moments of "weakness" are still utterly relatable.  She has her own demons to face, and they're all pretty much metaphorical, but they are in the end the center of the episode.

It's been a long time since SPN focused on people, in the sense that we dealt with humans and their human problems.

But in this episode, that's central to the plot's resolution.

Problematizing Supernatural: Roundup Edition!

8x13: "Everybody Hates Hitler"

This is a rather frustrating episode for me, because on the one hand: Dean gets hit on by a guy! And he doesn't shake the guy off with a pithy, slightly gross comment! But on the other hand: The guy isn't actually into him, and Dean also doesn't necessarily flirt back. I'll admit, my response to the scene at first was mostly, did that actually just happen? But it did, and it gave me just a dash of hope that the Show may actually out Dean as bi. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, though, because the Show has always been consistently gross about queerbaiting.

8x14: "Trial and Error"

This one is a little better, in that the main WOC in the episode is a powerful character who retains her agency, and, despite showing interest in Dean, doesn't become gross when he rejects her advances. Instead, we're treated to a metaphor of her masturbating -- dancing to "I Touch Myself," if I remember correctly. I'm quite pleased with this episode to be totally honest.

8x15: "Man's Best Friend With Benefits"

This episode seems to be intent on utterly negating the good things about "Trial and Error." Because this episode is all about a black woman who is the familiar to a white man. She literally wears a collar and turns into a dog. The Winchesters objectify her, and the climax of the episode is two white guys fighting over possession of her. She then proceeds to go off at the end of the episode with the winner -- her witch from the rest of the episode, of course. The hypersexualisation of Portia also means that she has a gratuitous near-sex scene with her witch while he is chained to a bed. A lot of the WOC I follow were grossed out by the portrayal, and I'm probably going to link to some posts in the next few days, so watch this space.

8x16: "Remember the Titans"

This episode...it was okay, except for one massive screwup with the Greek mythology they tried to use. They used a nonexistent relationship between Prometheus and Artemis in order to get Artemis to kill her father Zeus. They reduce the virgin hunter goddess to her relationships -- one sexual -- to men. Like, gross.

8x17: "Goodbye, Stranger"

I am still exceptionally bitter about this episode. Killing off Meg Masters is one of, narratively and representationally, one of the worst decisions the show has ever made. Meg was the longest-lived recurring character on the entire show. She'd been there from the beginning, was our first glimpse of what Hell was truly about. She was a mirror, first for Sam, and then for Dean and Castiel. She was the Old Guard of Hell, all about loyalty to the cause -- her father Azazel's cause, her lord Lucifer's cause. She believed in it wholeheartedly, only to have the mighty Plan fail, to lose her family and her God to the vagaries of Free Will. So, she adapted. She changed and grew. She was Crowley's opposition, the opposition to this new King who came from nowhere, who changed everything and inspired no loyalty and had no cause but his own increase in power. She fought him tooth and nail, and I had wanted her to bring him down. Killing her off, also, killed off the most developed female character we had. Once again, we have a victim shaped like Woman, and she's already a demon. I will likely always be bitter about this episode, to be honest.

8x18: "Freaks and Geeks"

This episode almost feels like an apology for "Goodbye, Stranger," in that we get the return of Krissy Chambers, the hunter's daughter from 7x12's "Adventures in Babysitting." In this episode, we see Krissy as the vanguard of the next generation of hunters -- a generation that doesn't have to devote their entire lives to vengeance. Krissy and her team have lives beyond the hunt in ways that the Winchesters never did. They're smart, they're fast, and they're up-to-date. Krissy is strong, and much more well-balanced than the Winchesters have ever been. She kills the man who had her father killed, but not with a gun or a knife or anything except her own mercy. And we don't see that, not in a culture of hypermasculine hunters.  In Sam and Dean's world, you need to be physically powerful and intimidating.  Not so in Krissy's world -- she's changing the story, and that?  That's brilliant.

8x19: "Taxi Driver"

This episode was kind of a problem for several reasons.  Reason #1, the first person to die is a POC.  He was also a monster, so yay, double-othering again.  Reason #2, Benny dies.  Again.  And he stays in Purgatory this time.  Which means that Dean is permanently down a friend now, instead of just being temporarily down a friend through his own (grossly self-sacrificial) actions.  Dean needs friends, needs people in a really consuming way, and so it's always bad if he loses one, especially one as good and uncomplicated at the core as Benny Lafitte.

So yeah, that's the roundup.  I'll be posting a post on Charlie Bradbury tonight as well, and then tomorrow I'll put up a post on tonight's episode.  I'm finally making headway on catching up with this project, which is excellent.

Sorry about the lengthy absence!

Things got hectic again -- I totally got lost in terms of the Problematizing SPN project, and I've got a movie or two still to write about, as well as a musical and two on-campus events.

But my intention is to catch up on the backlog of posts this weekend, along with the various projects I'm working on. My final project for Basic Media Production goes into filming its pivotal scenes on Tuesday, so I need to do some pickup shooting this weekend.

So the post schedule is going to be like so:

• Problematizing Supernatural: Catchup Roundup Edition containing blurbs on
-- 8x13 "Everybody Hates Hitler," and Dean's Gay Thing
-- 8x14 "Trial and Error," and how the WoC didn't get shafted
-- 8x15 "Man's Best Friend with Benefits" and how racism is still a Thing
-- 8x16 "Remember the Titans" and why you shouldn't fuck with virgin hunter goddesses
-- 8x17 "Goodbye Stranger," An Elegy for Meg, and What the Fuck Robbie Thompson?
-- 8x18 "Freaks and Geeks" and how Krissy Chambers kicks ass
-- 8x19 "Taxi Driver" and why Dean can't have friends
• Problematizing Supernatural: 8x20 "Pac-Man Fever" -- Charlie is the Queen, and a Defense of "Mary Sue."
• Apocalypse Now: Colonel Kurtz, the Heart of Modernity, and what we can learn from it.
• American Gun and the discussion I had after
• Jekyll and Hyde on Broadway: the Ramifications of Good and Evil
• Underground Poets and Learning How to Listen: a Reflection
• Take Back the Night 2013 -- Emily May and Taking My Values to the Trenches
• The Problem with Radical Twitter Accounts

Also, I would like to announce the creation of Damn Their Warnings, Damn Their Lies, my new blog for radically political poetry, Les Miserables analysis, and the upcoming Great Census. The blog is still empty, but I'm working on it. The Great Census is going to be a major part of my Honors thesis, for which I'm researching the correlation between fandom involvement (specifically to Les Mis and Tumblr) and political sentiments. I want to see if Les Mis attracts inherently political fans, or if interacting with this narrative and the fandom grown around it eventually makes someone more political, or at least more politically conscious.

Busy Day, Learning Experience -- Meeting Duchovny and Robinson

Also known as "Holy Respectful Portrayal of Epilepsy, Batman!"

About a week ago (sorry about the lag time, and the radio silence for the past couple of weeks; midterms are Hell), my university held a private screening of Todd Robinson's new movie Phantom. 

Before the movie, Robinson spent several hours talking to Comm. majors and Theatre majors about the film industry.  I missed his talk with the other communications majors because I had a history midterm, but I grabbed dinner quickly and managed to catch the last part of his talk with the theatre majors, which was pretty cool as well.

Seth MacFarlane, Get Off My Ship.

"The Oscars is basically the Kobayashi Maru test."

Yesterday afternoon, Seth MacFarlane spat this sentence into the Twittersphere, and the irony almost murdered me.

MacFarlane's Oscar performance Sunday night has sent ripples of conflict throughout the Internet. Feminist bloggers were sent into paroxysms of rage at his song about the breasts of actresses that have been exposed on screen, his comment sexualizing Quvenzhane Wallis, and other general moments of misogyny, and other people told said feminists to "take a joke" and to let it go because MacFarlane's style of humor is to be crude and offensive.


I fell firmly into the first camp, but I didn't say anything until now, because I found that other bloggers were handling the situation just fine, and signal boosting their work on my fandom blog seemed appropriate enough.

Then I heard about this tweet, and I'm sorry, but what?

MacFarlane's trying to cast himself as an underdog, a good guy up against impossible odds, a regular Captain Kirk.

I call bullshit.

The point of the Kobayashi Maru as a narrative device in Star Trek is that it can be beaten. But it requires self-sacrifice, compassion, and a sense of heroic duty to the larger whole. Spock's referencing the test when he dies makes this almost explicit. The test isn't a romantic notion of being the victim of unfair circumstance -- it's a story of overcoming through cleverness or through sacrifice.

There is no sacrifice in making "humor" at the expense of those already oppressed. There is no cleverness in the perpetuation and acceptance of the social norms that allow for that oppression to exist uncountered.

Beyond that, it's offensive to the idea of Roddenberry's heavily romanticized concept of the future to cast misogyny as the brave little Starfleet cadet up against the Big Bad Kobayashi Maru test. Roddenberry, while the depiction of his future needed work ("Mudd's Women" and "The Turnabout Intruder" in particular being problematic in regards to women), wanted a post-racism, post-sexism, post-classism future, and MacFarlane aping the language and devices of Roddenberry's ideal to cast himself and his sexism as the heroic underdog is fucking gross as hell.

That's all I really have to say on the matter. If I say much more, it'll just devolve into nerd-rage and expletives even more, and I've made my salient points.

-- Shannen

Vaginas and My Feminism -- Reflecting on 1 Billion Rising and the Power of Language

WARNING: Discussion of rape, assault, misogyny, misogynistic slurs, and other violence.

A week ago, my college campus participated in the 1 Billion Rising rally meant to raise awareness for women subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual violence.  I was invited to perform a monologue I had been cast in in a student production of the Vagina Monologues this coming April, and I had to get off book between the day I was asked and the day I was to perform -- about a week and a half's span of time.

Newsies -- Iconoclasm, Subtle Feminism, and a Musical for Our Era

So, I was in the city twice last week to go do some live entertainment -- which means there will be no movies for the next couple of weeks, since it's about fifty dollars a pop for me, as a broke college student, to do the city -- and, on my friend's insistence, one of the shows I went to see was the Disney musical Newsies.

She adores it beyond words, and, while my love of the show isn't as huge and all-encompassing, it's still an excellent show on pretty much every account.  Tony-winning choreography, awesome lyrics, a message I can totally get behind, and a love interest character who is much, much more than that.  I'd probably go see it again, if I had the opportunity to get equally good seats for equally cheap as I got through my university's Student Activities Board.

The Unexpected Movie Review Project, Pt. III: Gangster Squad

Overall: 3/4
          Acting: 3/4
          Cinematography: 4/4
          Production Design: 4/4
          Costume/Makeup: 4/4
          Tech: 2/4
          Music/Score: 3/4
          Pacing: 4/4
          Script: 3/4


I will admit that I had really low expectations going into this movie, since I'd heard that it was super, ultra violent, and I am not into violence for violence's sake -- okay, that's a lie, I'm not into gore for gore's sake -- when I go into a film. I'd originally wanted to do Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, but circumstance landed me at a theatre where that wasn't playing, so me and a couple of friends got tickets for Gangster Squad instead. I rationalized it as wanting a break from award-show-bait movies.

I have to say I was more than pleasantly surprised.

Announcement: Upcoming Posts

So very sorry about the absence in the past couple of weeks -- things in Real Life got hectic.

I have a pretty set schedule of posts coming up in the next few days/weeks, and here they are.

This Week
Today
• The Unexpected Movie Review Project Pt. III: Gangster Squad  Check!
Tomorrow
• Supernatural S08E13 "Everybody Hates Hitler" -- "He Was My Gay Thing."
• Newsies -- Iconoclasm, Subtle Feminism, and a Musical for Our Era Check!
• Vaginas and My Feminism -- reflecting on the One Billion Rising event.
Wednesday
• Reflecting on "Activistic" Foreign Policy -- Dinner with Professor R
• Supernatural S08E14 "Trial and Error"
Thursday
• Supernatural S08E15 "Man's Best Friend With Benefits"

Next Week
Monday
• Shannen Murphy Watches the Oscars
Tuesday
• The Unexpected Movie Review Project Pt. IV: Skyfall
Thursday
• Supernatural S08E16 "Remember the Titans"

Next week will probably wind up with more posts, but, as of right now, this is the plan.

Supernatural S08E12 "As Time Goes By" -- Daddy Issues and Legacies

My feelings are...complicated about this episode.  It's pretty clearly meant to advance the plot, and it does, and it gives us a really fascinating look into worldbuilding of the Supernatural universe and into the Winchester-Campbell history, but they...there are a lot of things that bother me on a consistency level, and this article with Robert Singer just makes me want to break things with the power of my still only vaguely coherent rage (an article on this will be forthcoming in the next couple of days, don't worry).

Spoilers and frank discussion of abuse, absence and neglect on the parts of fathers lay under the cut, so proceed with caution.

Supernatural S08E11 "LARP and the Real Girl" -- Interspecies Queernessand Not Othering the Nerd

I'm pretty sure that last week's "LARP and the Real Girl" was the first time in a long time that a massive majority of the fandom made it out of an episode happy and not emotionally destroyed. As a follow-up to the absolute clusterfuck that was "Torn and Frayed," it could scarce have been better to soothe our destroyed hearts and querulous minds.

As pure, beautiful filler, it doesn't speak to the overarching plot of the season except in parallelisms, which is entirely fine by me, especially when it's this gorgeously executed.

This episode brings back web geek icon Felicia Day (from Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, among other Internet phenomena) as lesbian hacker extraordinaire Charlie Bradbury from Season Seven's "The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo."  Charlie won the heart of a large part of the online fanbase, a heavily female, heavily geeky demographic, so there was a lot of excitement over her return.

And boy, did it not disappoint!

Supernatural S8E10 "Torn and Frayed" -- Holy Crap, What Happened?

WARNING: Spoilers, discussion of torture and brainwashing.

I should probably preface this whole review project by saying that I am a huge Supernatural fan. I'm unironically enthusiastic about the classic Hero's Journey of the first few seasons, and even more excited by the apocalypse plot (I did a Tumblr post on cataclysms, apocalypsoi, and Superstorm Sandy aboard inspiration) and what happened after.

I love the Winchesters in all their flawed and broken glory. I get that Sam will always come first for Dean, and killing off Dean hardens and breaks Sam every time it happens. I get that their love and codependency -- Wincest fan or no -- is legendary.

But that doesn't mean it's healthy.

The Unexpected Movie Review Project Pt. II: Les Miserables

Overall: 4/4
          Acting: 4/4
          Cinematography: 4/4
          Production Design: 4/4
          Costume/Makeup: 4/4
          Tech: 4/4
          Adherence to Source Text: 3.8/4
          Music/Score: 4/4
          Pacing: 4/4
          Script: 3.9/4

I'd been looking forward to this one almost as much as I'd been looking forward to the Hobbit, and I have to say, it did not disappoint.

I wasn't intimately familiar with the show before going to see the movie, only having the general gist (Valjean is running from Javert, adopts Fantine's daughter Cosette, and Cosette falls in love with Marius, a member of the revolutionary Les Amis.  At some point, everyone dies.) and a few of the songs ("On My Own," "I Dreamed a Dream," "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," and "A Little Fall of Rain") when I sat down in the theatre.

Two and a half hours later, I walked out of the theatre distinctly different -- almost renewed, in a sense.

Link to Part One of the Unexpected Movie Review Project

Movie Review for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Basically, The Hobbit was actually my favorite movie of 2012, with Skyfall ranking a close second (though I saw it before I started this project).  It was beautiful.  The link will lead you to my Tumblr and my in-depth review, as a little taste for what I plan on doing for Les Miserables later this evening and then hopefully Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters next Sunday.

Post the First: A Description and a Plan

Well, wouldja look at that!  Here I am, on Blogspot/Blogger.  Slowly working my way into the world of social media and such.

This blog is mainly going to revolve around my journey to becoming a filmmaker and, hopefully, worldshaker.  I've always dreamed of changing the world, but I never knew exactly how to go about it until I discovered two things: film, and a little thing called social justice.

A lot of people try to use the term social justice as a derogatory thing -- they try to paint people who're seeking actual equality for all as being "too sensitive" or "too naive."

I call bullshit.