merridia: by <user name=ancientgate> (Teething.)
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati ([personal profile] merridia) wrote2022-01-26 05:15 pm

Winter 2022 - Week 5

I am halfway through my first day back to work and I already want to murder everyone around me. Everyone? Yes, everyone. Still! My hand sanitizer is sparkly and clean smelling (in a nice way, not an antiseptic way), it is a balmy 1 degree outside (the roads are fucking TREACHEROUS as a result, but at least I'm not a motorist), movie tickets are extra cheap until February (presumably because nothing is fucking coming out again) so I may go for a rare cinema rewatch over the weekend, and Beach Break is tonight, so things aren't SO bad in the grand scheme. Still want to murder, though!

26. Do you play video games?

Not nearly as much as I wish I did! There just aren't enough hours to do all the things I want to, and video games always seem to be the first things to get the chop (maybe because I have such a hard time regulating my time playing them, so it's much more of a commitment?). Sad!

Speaking of not enough hours for all the stuff I want to take in, it was another movie-lite week off; I mostly just fit in a few old timey shorts from the Pioneers of African American Cinema collection.

FILMS

Belle (2021): IT'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, EXCEPT FILTERED THROUGH JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS AND THEN SET IN THE METAVERSE. This was about half an hour too long and I didn't even care, I'm so glad next to no movies came out this month so I got to see it in a theater, SO PRETTY.

The King's Daughter (2022): THIS TOOK EIGHT YEARS TO MAKE LOL, I particularly loved how they definitely cut like an hour of super boring shit at the beginning and just replaced it with a hacked-together 'storybook' voiceover.

SHORTS

By Right of Birth [fragment] (1921): Absolutely heartbreaking that more of this isn't extant, this might have really been magic.

Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940 (1940): LOUD NOISES. This feels just as unbearable as Catholic church to me, but in polar opposite ways.

The Darktown Revue (1931): A brief, vaudevillian portal to a past not made to be remembered. The skits have obviously aged... poorly, but surely everyone involved knew they sucked at the time, too, while giving it their all. Wish the audio wasn't quite so fried, but that it still exists at all is something. I want to know what's up with the lone white dude in the choir! What was his deal!

Escape the Undertaker (2021): Because my mom hasn't been able to do interactive Netflix stuff until she got a Roku stick for Christmas and she thought of me. :3

Heaven-Bound Travelers (1935): Evangelical tripe, given a slightly mysterious flavour due to its fragmentary form. Still tripe, though.

Hot Biskits (1931): High stakes mini-golf action.

Meet Marlon Brando (1966): It's just twenty-five minutes of him openly flirting with journalists and refusing to actually say anything at all about the movie he's there to talk about. Stan a horny king.

Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled (1918): I found this one super interesting, since it was the only one out of all these one-reel comedies I watched that weren't rooted in racist stereotypes? You could film this with an all-white cast and change absolutely nothing and no part of it would hit any differently (except for the part where they'd probably slap some brown face paint on the two actual Egyptian guys), which was neat. I think this could be a minor gem for the studio if not for how damaged it is, but the pure unhinged chaos of those last few minutes have their own kind of weird charm, too? I swear I can see faces in the nitrate degradation.

A Reckless Rover (1918): Found myself wishing more of this one was destroyed, tbh. The chase scene under and over the bed was pretty funny, and I don't think I've ever seen a black person in yellowface before? So that's something. Maybe an inadvertent bit of actual art in the shot of our hero walking past a poster for a D.W. Griffith film at the end.

Regeneration [fragment] (1923): The addition of the score turns what remains of this movie into a proper little short film in its own right, a tragic one about the importance of film preservation.

Rev. S.S. Jones Home Movies (1924-1928): Lovely slices of hundred-year-old rural life. The deacon and his Mrs. had it locked down good.

Two Knights of Vaudeville (1915): Maybe if that damn juggler hadn't taken so long to start juggling, they wouldn't have interrupted his set!

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (2020): Finally got the good ending!

Verdict: Not Guilty (1933): Pretty sure this was meant to be super preachy, but actually ended up just being metal as FUCK

Vive Le Tour! (1962): the past is a nightmare from which we are constantly waking

Zora Neale Hurston Fieldwork Footage (1928): What it says on the tin.

TELEVISION

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 7x01-7x07: Oh my god, I love it so much. Wacky time travel adventures! Fitz is MIA and Simmons is allowed to be a fun science badass again instead of a horrible self-centered cunt about it! Sousa! I didn't even know I missed him! COULSON HEADROOM. It's so nice to be enjoying this show unreservedly again before the end, it seems like it's been so long, and that '70s intro legit beats anything that WandaVision did with the conceit (which, to be clear, I also loved). I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY MADE THE GUY WHO GAVE UP HIS FAKE DAUGHTER WHEN HE REALIZED THE REAL ONE WAS DEAD KILL HIS FAKE PARENTS WHEN HE REALIZED THE REAL ONES WERE DEAD, HOLY HELL POOR MACK tg4d (thank god 4 deke)

Star Trek: Prodigy 1x08: Is it weird to anyone else that Jason Mantzoukas is so much older than the rest of the main kid cast? Just me? Okay, just checking.

Wrestling
AEW Dark 4x04
AEW Dark: Elevation 2x04
AEW Dynamite 4x03
AEW Rampage 2x03
Before the IMPACT 2x03
Gatoh Move ChocoProLIVE! 1x03-1x09
IMPACT! Wrestling 19x03
MLW Azteca 1x01-1x03
New Japan Pro-Wrestling 1x59
NJPW Strong 3x03
NJPW XTRA 1x12
NWA PowerrrSurge 7x02
NWA USA 1x03
ROH Wrestling 14x03
We are STARDOM!! 3x03

Maybe I will order pizza tonight for Beach Break. As a treat.

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