Barbie - I'm sorry, Greta. I don't like your movies.

I'm really hoping nobody asks me if I'm going to watch the Barbie movie because then I have to explain I don't like Greta Gerwig as a screenwriter. I don't think she writes bad movies, she co-wrote Barbie with her husband, he wrote Marriage Story (I thought they co-wrote it) and she wrote Lady-Bird. She is a good director, she's done a bunch of great stuff. I only disliked the monologue in Marriage Story from Laura Dern, but now I realise that was unfair because that was her husband Noah Baumbach. It seems like they've both made some kind of long needed cohesion in the gender war whereby they've subversively shown everyone both sides are wrong and need to work together.

Throw everything I was about to say in the fucking bin, I like them. It was more my bitterness towards Marriage Story's plot and characterisation, and that I didn't like Lady Bird because I didn't like the main character and her strained relationship with her mother. Which was what made me uncomfortable.

Trouble is, I saw the speech from Barbie, and the way it's even framed is like, Barbie's Scarlet Johansson sitting looking up at the domineering Laura Dern, this time played by America Ferrera, as her character rants about how hard it is to be a woman. I know people like to hear it, but it's been said. It was a lot of regurgitated talking points from before Hillary didn't get elected. I was ranting at being called brainwashed for supporting Bernie and asking women, okay do you want a woman in charge or the right woman? Because just wanting a woman in charge isn't enough for me. I want Bernie because he's right for the job, if AOC were running I'd be rooting for her, not Hillary. But the clip is out of context to the film itself, which may be suggesting this isn't right either. This is why I chose humanism instead of feminism. I've been sick of this war between the sexes which just got repackaged as the wage gap. I'm sick of seeing women telling men they need to get a vasectomy without general anesthetic because they suffered through a birth. You're both wrong and right. Men need to speak up when women are in pain and being ignored, women need to remember men still suffer pain. You're never looking for equal ground, you're always kicking men and not the patriarchy, who's fucking both of us. Attack Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, don't attack men in general. Attack the ideas not the people. Men need to do better, we all need to fucking do better.

Sorry, Greta, I take it back I do like you just your movies aren't for me. If you influenced Noah's speech written for Laura, that's great, it's just I don't need a lesson on the Madonna/Whore complex. If he's conversely influenced you to be so subversive you might have broken people's fucking brains with a Barbie movie (I hope so), that's a good thing. People allegedly don't know what to do or how to react to the Barbie Movie and it's a good thing. It might've brought this culture war to a head. Guys are leaving their girlfriends over it due to not coping with sexism as a concept, little girls are asking "what's a patriarchy?". Maybe we need this. It's drawn attention away from Oppenheimer's rhetoric. If you don't know how to respond to Barbie, that's okay. It's just, I don't need what it's selling, I was tuned in before. Nobody's right. We need to start over.

Everything I suspected from what I heard was confirmed, I read Gerwig's entire approach to this and she specifically stated she wanted to make a humanist narrative. I'm sorry. She is a genius. She did do something subversive and new and different and she broke people's brains as a result. I feel like this movie can only make sense to humanists. It can only exist in the context of actual humanism. She borrowed from so many texts and concepts, there's a huge amount of intellectualism involved while still being in the realm of bubblegum comedies like Legally Blonde, which is also an inadvertent masterpiece. She's finally done what nobody has done to this degree. Please let this movie make a billion dollars. Please let this be an actual turning point in our basic bitch mentality around who's the better sex and admit everyone has a place and a reason and a purpose, and between us we can fucking figure it out. Let this be the thing that finally makes right wing idiots afraid of wokeness look absolutely stupid to everyone else. Let this be the reason we don't bring gender into politics anymore. Fuck. Barbenheimer has its on Wikipedia entry. This is important. I'll watch the movie eventually I've gotten enough from the plot synopsis and Gerwig's approach. Thank fuck this fell out of Amy Schumer's hands, sincerely I'm so glad she left the whole thing her brand of feminism is dumb and toxic. This movie didn't actually need feminism to exist. It needed a married couple who understood humanism on a base level and could finally package it as something wholly benign and sensible. That you can have your feminism and eat it too, ladies. Come hang with the humanists. We can get this shit done. You'll see. I see now why Ken took such a central part in the marketing. Of course this is weird to people who put up with gender norms without realising gender is becoming redundant on many levels. The Barbies don't defeat the Kens, the Kens don't enslave the Barbies. They deconstruct the utopia Barbie exists in. Gerwig's a genius. Give this woman more money and awards and let her make these movies. Fuck everything I said, don't listen to me. I don't know shit. She's amazing.

Now there's a weird phenomenon where darling movies getting Oscar noms are now being torn down as "not as good as people said it was", Everything, Everywhere being one example. Barbie's now back in the spotlight because of its lack of accolades and Robbie being snubbed while Gosling wasn't. It managed to get a Golden Globe for making a shitload of money. And yeah, maybe that's all it really did. Gerwig isn't up for Best Director, she's got to share Best Adapted Screenplay with husband ("adapted" because it's about an existing product, not original for being an original story, even though Critics' Choice recognises it as Original). Meanwhile, it's still up for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, it has two fucking Best Original Songs, Best Production and Best Costume. All of which I can accept based on what I know. Soon as people were shitty about Oppenheimer getting Best Hair and Make Up while Barbie, it only made no sense to me for a second. Oppenheimer has to transform actors into historical figures, and it's a period piece. You can't just make a bunch of women look pretty with nice hair and make up despite that being a facet of Barbie as a doll. Sorry, again, it appears this is where the film is actually lacking. The costumes and production design do look deserving of acknowledgement, from what I saw, an immense amount of effort went into those aspects. I thought all the others made sense, but yeah, someone's pointed out how contradictory the screenplay is, and Gerwig failed to get her point across as a director, so I don't think these are bad decisions. I'm not sure about Best Supporting Actress for America Ferrera, from what I saw, she was just reading out Twitter rants in her speeches. I should watch the movie but the same time I can see myself just cringing at so many points I'm supposed to be uplifted by... kinda like when I watched fuckin' Wonder Woman. They probably are going to age poorly for all the hype they had about being feminist/female-centric productions. I don't think the Oscars have fucked up on this one. I don't think Billie Eilish needs another Oscar, so it will be funny if the Ken song wins, as it's also doing better awards-wise. Insanely, it's smacked the Grammys in the face with so many options it's kinda scary. It's doing well at feminist based awards ceremonies, it'd be kinda weird if it didn't. But this is where I rip my hair out over "feminist" movies doing "well", they just don't get picked apart the way they should be.

Having said this, the backlash is now apparent and I'm halfway through a video justifying why Barbie might actually be a mediocre movie. The person's made good points (I'm ignoring their pronunciation of a lot of words, people really are in their saying words how they sound era) and they've compared America Ferrera's monologue to other movies, I wish they'd also included Marriage Story as it proves they're into writing "mouthpiece" characters who are quite rounded and relatable but are still standing up making a huge, impassioned speech about how hard it is to be a woman. (I persistently forger Noah wrote and directed Marriage Story, reason being is that part feels like a Greta moment). The movie revolves around political talking points, there were other ways this movie could've been presented with more interesting ideas but I think if Greta had been too nuanced it wouldn't have been received that well. It was already contentious as to how good it was, people were lukewarm. So now I know I'd be going into a very predictable movie with a lot of talking points, I'm less inclined to see it now. I think I'd cringe because you're not selling me anything new, it was only new to women under 20. So I don't think she's this amazing writer that should get more awards. I think the awards shows are basing their decision on this not being a standout movie or script. It's a shame. I think having other people come out and argue it was snubbed for awards is also incredibly misguided when the only thing it has to boast about is box-office sales. And they made an award just to reward it for that so people wouldn't get mad. I can't see Gerwig and Baumbach becoming a powerhouse couple who can be relied upon to keep writing successes. It appears Greta can't world build because she's never had to create a new environment. That's not her fault it's not up to writers to write new worlds, but she's never worked in a new world so it seems like she could only base Barbie within a framework of reality alone. So they had to pull the "don't think about it too much" card once the world dynamics are brought into question. It's an existential movie that doesn't want the audience to "think too hard". That's so stupid. Especially when the writers admitted themselves said, there's no story here, there's no character. It's why it's been so difficult to get it off the ground. But there were stories to draw on, and it wasn't given to the right people, so Amy Schummer was probably just as bad but maybe she had a story. Gerwig and Baumbach are very specific directors and writers who write intimate movies and they foolishly used this as a vehicle for a message they've already explored mulitple times in other films. 

And it appears Gerwig signed her husband on for the whole thing, didn't tell him, left him to find it out from the press, then he couldn't fucking escape. Is it possible they could've been close to divorce over this? That's icky. That's such an icky concept roping your unwilling partner into a project without asking, or if they did ask and the partner said no and they still did it anyway, and clearly didn't ask because they were sure the answer would be no... you know, how MEN ROPE WOMEN INTO SHIT WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT BECAUSE MARRIAGE. WHAT THE FLYING FUCK? I really want to raise the role-reversal theory on that, like if James Cameron roped Katherine Bigalow into a whole ass, major production against her will and she'd tried to get out of it and couldn't, people would be fucking outraged. But when Greta does it, it's somehow cute and hilarious. Honestly, I know this sounds mean and I think they have a reasonably solid relationship, but I would still find it hilarious if that destroyed their marriage. They have a very obvious communication issue that was explored in Marriage Story, so was this a cry for help the way Angelina and Brad did a movie about a disintegrating relationship right before theirs disintegrated? It seems kind of subliminal that they can't communicate unless it's via creating a project and exploring the issues in a fictional arrangement. Now I'm just fascinated by them as a couple.

Nothing about this is actually humanistic. Not if the very concept and development of it wasn't even founded on a fair arrangement between a man and a woman who wanted to genuinely work on it. You had to drag a man kicking and screaming into its development, and then the only man who carried in terms of acting is the one getting rewarded directly. Congrats ladies, y'all done played yourselves again. (I know America Farrera has been nominated for supporting, and supporting categories are valid but it's not fair for Margot, according to everyone else. I'm more inclined to disagree than before. I don't think she deserves a nomination, and I don't think Gerwig should be given any best director nominations. Unless the competition was that much weaker, then it wouldn't have been earned). Anyway, I have flipflopped on my approval of Greta so hard during this whole thing and now I've gone back to not liking her. I don't think she's a genius for making a humanist movie because I don't think she's succeeded in bridging the ridiculous divide between the genders at all. It hasn't solved the wage gap, and I don't think she particularly cares if abortion rights exist or not. Best you could do was say women deserve better. Wow, big statement. Much progress.

Not in my country - The insanity of the Nanny State and rating systems

Australia is a more heavily policed country in terms of censorship. For all our "casual" racism and blatant disrespect of the English language, and our ability to use the C word in a myriad of situations both positive and negative, you would think we'd be chill about censorship.

We're not. I saw a movie that I shouldn't, that got a prominent reviewer arrested for trying to screen privately. We have video games missing scenes involving anal probing that had to be covered with a cartoon picture of a koala. We police a lot in terms of content for children that grown adults should have a right to see. We live in an actual Nanny State when it comes to being able to see what we want, it's so conservative, even with that government being ousted, that one department is still stuck in the 50s. We're lucky they don't police "socialist propaganda".

So, when I see someone erroneously claim a movie I saw frequently as a kid has swearing in it, and I know it doesn't, I get kinda mad.

Never-Ending Story has a cut where we see the janitor invade the attic and mutter some expletives after tripping over Bastian's mattress. I found it online as I knew for a fact this wasn't in the release I saw. I also watched it at five, and loved it by six or seven. I wouldn't mind if it was remade, I think it deserves a better version. I only recently bought the soundtrack, really this saves the movie in many regards. Artax's death is impactful but the reason I probably coped with death as a concept early on. I did wonder if it was appropriate for my sibkid to watch but when they saw my AURYN t-shirt they said "Why's everyone so obsessed with this movie?" and I was like, you go, kid. Assert your independence don't go with the group think. I don't know if they'd like Last Unicorn or Labyrinth or Dark Crystal (the last two were caked in nostalgia for me but not that great to watch as an adult, Dark Crystal is legit boring and Labyrinth is cringe). What I can remember is dialogue, so if you're telling me Bowie dropped a couple S bombs and I didn't hear it, I'll challenge you on it. I wanted to give feedback to this website (I thought the movie was G rated, it wasn't) that the scene they mentioned isn't in the US release so you can't just say that shit unless it's included with bonus features. Don't tell tales out of school about my movies. I kinda also hate parents who can spend time doing this but it's a tool for others, I don't know what's age appropriate anymore because the ratings system was gamed to sneak more shit into PG movies. It's also fair there are tits in this, and some gruesome imagery I did find questionable as an adult. I just looked at the page for Hocus Pocus and it bothers to mention product placement for a candy bar we don't even fucking sell here. Most of the humor in this is for adults anyway. I remember watching one of the lesser Addams Family sequels with some six or seven year olds and there was a ball and chain reference one girl asked me about. I don't remember what I said. It's such a parent nudge/wink joke. Pixar didn't invent movies with adult content for the grownups to enjoy. I'm thinking this website is borrowing from a US source anyway, you can't expect people to watch all these.

But Last Unicorn is NOWHERE on this site. Considering they had to rerelease it to replace where the word "damn" is used, (I had the US release as well as the region 4 one and we didn't censor it and it is G rated). The website also has shit I've never heard of or things like Boy in the Striped Pajamas which I'd never show to a kid anyway. But not this? Did it really fly that far under the radar over here you completely forgot to add it? It's a fucking cartoon. That was how you tricked parents into renting stuff like that for you, it's animated so it's for kids! It's also how we were tricked into watching Watership Down. It's animated! It's for KIDS!

I think it's also been set up by gen X parents and you're telling me none of them saw Last Unicorn? Wow. I'm astounded. Watership Down isn't on here either??? Were they like banned from video stores eventually?? I'm so confused.

Autistic Coding in Little Man Tate

The more that comes up about the true aspects of Autism, the more people start to view others, real or not, as being autistic. I don't tend to apply it to real people, I also don't tend to apply it to characters who were definitely not written as Autistic, if you wish to, go ahead. But be prepared for people who loved the character but hate ND kids to get mad.

I wish more people knew of Little Man Tate, which is such a sweet little gem of a 90's movie that was so original (Yes, there's a bunch of problematic language used, I won't deny). I've always loved it, always identified with Fred's isolation, only we differed by way of needing social acceptance.

Fred is gifted, which isn't a phrase kids get anymore. He can read before most kids, and remember being born. He has the intelligence of a grown adult, but as David Hyde Pierce's character says, "It's not so much what he knows, but what he understands." Fred can read adults better than they can themselves, he perceives dangers that are real but nothing he should be so worried about as a little kid. And while his mother Dede knows how special he is, she longs to give him a normal life. Nothing about the film glorifies intelligence, Fred is celebrated to the detriment of his own psyche. The more he's allowed access to the adult world, the less it seems to support him. He can't trust any adults to simply be there for him, aside from Dede.

Dianne Weist's Jane is Dede's polar opposite, and the two are at constant loggerheads on what's "best" for Fred. In the end, both of them are right, there's a happy medium where Fred can thrive but still foster his abilities and talents. It really ends with "all kids are valid and special in their own unique way".

But you can take all of Fred's attributes and explore it from the logic of Autism. Succinct memories of infancy, persistent inattentiveness and hyperfixation are all evident. Fred picks apart the world around him to make sense of it, mostly by trashing electrical appliances to see how they work. He finds himself immersed in paintings, more from the emotions evoked by the painter than the beauty of the painting itself, he understands Van Gough's loneliness by a white lily in a painting. He worries about becoming an old man by a hormonal imbalance. His nightmares are those of a grown man fearful of his own madness. His wisdom is a burden for him. He's also surrounded by supposedly neurotypical children, and he can't get by in class, he has pathological demand avoidance issues by way of playing the piano piece backwards for his imbecilic teacher and confuses her when he says all the numbers on the board from zero to ten are divisible by two. He's bored in class but he wants friends like the biggest bully in the class. He craves their simplicity but he still expresses himself through intricate art. He even parents Dede by telling her how to run the finances and writing her resume, as she's perpetually struggling to hold down a job, and she disappoints him by selling his piano when she's tight on money. 

All of these hallmarks are reported by Autistic adults when discussing their childhoods. There's isolation, or pretending to be someone else to fit in, or relentless bullying for being "different". But it's not like Fred finds solace by being with his peers. When he's finally in his supposed element, he's still ignored and isolated, stuck in perfect geometric spaces completely alone. He can't engage with the activities around him, he chooses to play by himself making an intricate toy from stolen resources, and Jane is responsive to this as it mirrors her lonely childhood. She thinks she can be the mother he should have had all along, but when she fails, Fred is more resentful. She's misunderstood his needs, that Dede is better aware of. Jane celebrates he's not a normal kid, Dede unable to share that, she sees the pressures he'll face in college and needs to support him realistically. The kids that go on Jane's trip make friends with Fred but don't really engage him one on one, aside from Damon, the Mathemagician, who offers Fred a better perspective on the world. I constantly quote the quote by Shaw he uses about unreasonable men. Damon doesn't care if he's hated, he doesn't respect Jane but puts up with her obsession with writing about him and making him a reflection of her brilliant school. Damon didn't get a normal childhood, now he wears a cape and recklessly rides horses and behaves like a combative brat, his demand avoidance much more advanced for how lenient people are towards him and his prodigious talent. He hates Fred presents a threat to his popularity, however. But Fred is so desperate to be friends with Damon because he's found a kindred spirit. His experiences of idolising another and vying for attention is another trait in some autistic kids. They crave resonance with others, they need connections but don't know how to read where someone might refuse it so they express devotion which is never returned. Damon coming to like Fred in the end is very sweet, he's at Fred's birthday party tricking the kids and being a mischief.

Fred doesn't belong in college either, here his isolation is much bigger, all the students treat him like a weirdo outcast but try to cheat off him when they realise he knows more. Eddie befriends him out of guilt for hitting Fred in the head with a globe (I saw the trailer before I saw the movie and the way it was cut seemed to suggest Fred suffers a severe head injury since he's hit with the globe, then later you see him fall to the floor in his chair after he's swinging on it and I thought he was having an epileptic fit), however this is a transactional friendship and Eddie feels like he's done enough giving Fred a fun day out. Once again Fred misreads this and expects Eddie to be there all the time, he's let down by Eddie castigating him for showing up at his place unannounced expecting they're going to play pool. Eddie means well, but Fred only needs to be stung once by people and he will walk away. Rejection sensitivity is a massive problem for autistic kids, it affects them on such a deep level it causes trauma-like responses they struggle to reconcile, where as most neurotypical kids would bounce back from the same rejection or at least have enough friends they can shrug it off.

I don't think you can even dispute Fred is Autistic, (likely with inattentive ADHD). Hyper-intelligence isn't predominant but Autistic kids tend to understand adult concepts well before their peers, they're above average but struggle in an environment from sensory overload and an impending sense of doom other kids just don't experience. You just want to hug Fred and tell him he's perfect the way he is, and he deserves to be happy, and things will be okay. He doesn't have to get a job by thirteen in the tech industry or be a Doogie Howser-type, he can play with trucks and it doesn't make him a dullard like other academics might suggest. He can write his wonderful poems and make his art and not be mocked. You don't see Fred engaged by TV unless it's an adult show. I tended to sit in front of university education shows because there was little to watch on TV and I wasn't on the commercial station. I absorbed a lot of things and said things that impressed people, I responded better to adult humor. I never fit in, I insisted on solo play to avoid sensory overload from bossy kids. I liked being left alone and playing by myself. And I'm still Autistic. It's not disingenuous to depict Fred as just wanting friends to play with. Eventually he gets his wish without sacrificing anything, and when he realises he's not the top kid at Jane's school anymore, he doesn't care. He's happy. It's such a triumphant ending for how much he goes through, it's a big journey for a little kid.

You don't diminish anything by saying Fred's Autistic, it's not a tragedy, it's not something that needs medicating or modifying. This movie is a celebration of autistic kids well before its time. I think people should watch it before they sit down to Rain Man or Music, both of which were made with good intentions and completely failed autistic people.

I hated it before you. I always have.

Remember when everyone loved Pixar? Remember everyone loving Up, and Finding Nemo, most of the Toy Stories, etc. You probably vaguely recall it wasn't always Disney's little slave. Some other mogul was helping them out of the muck and giving them tech and really investing in something quite special. They made their own stories and shunned the concept of sequels and were really mavericks in the animation sphere. I liked them initially, I appreciated the advancements they were making in animation physics and making shit look authentic, hair and water being major improvements.

Disney ruined them. But they still had a lot of love from "fans" who were just happy new Pixar movies were coming out, while Disney forced them to make sequels and their own adaptations of fairy tales that were so beyond bastardised I more or less refused to watch them for ages. I kind of liked Frozen but skipped most of the songs. I was annoyed by Tangled but I liked how it ended. For the record, Rapunzel is one of my favourite fairy tales, but I will admit there isn't a lot to the story itself. The Snow Queen wasn't that bad a story but apparently we had to have a good one not a bad one, fine.

But when Up and Soul and Inside Out were being hyped up I was just so over it. I didn't care. The shorts meant nothing, the Disney/Pixar colabs meant nothing. I did not care. And when I see anything remotely Pixarish now, I see the same character models, the same reused animations. Yes, they did that with 2D animation to save money. They have money and it's still lazy. I do not have time for any of it. I'm also sick of Disney just assuming they have shoe-ins  for the Oscars every fucking year that other better animated films just don't have a fucking chance.

And nobody is vibing with Elementals. Nobody. You can't even give them Up 2 as a short to get butts in seats. People are finally sick of Pixar. I beat you all to it. I just checked out of this and the Marvel franchise (and Star Wars when I never cared anyway) I was so sick of hearing about the new shit, Endgame was enough, I stuck with it to the least amount possible then you were forcing more streaming services on me and I went NOPE. DONE. But I was checked out of Pixar long ago, people telling me to watch it made me not watch it. You couldn't force me to. I did love the Disney classics in their second Golden Age. I've had a weird urge to rewatch Little Mermaid and Lion King and Aladdin, they were my childhood, I love a lot of the music, they're fun movies, they hold up. It makes sense for Pixar to dip finally but they were dipping for way longer than people are willing to admit and all the love has dried up. If the Disney adults can't even hold up the line and keep the train going, it's looking grim for Pixar, you can tell from the layoffs.

I just don't get how people have managed to defend Pixar's lack of real imagination since they were forced to make sequels. What else can they really do by now? Romeo and Juliet as pigs? Herman's Head but it's in a bunch of gnomes? It's bad enough Dreamworks has churned out barely passable budget versions and we have the Minions. It's also meant I'll never watch any of their movies, even Despicable Me or any of the others. I don't want to watch 3D animated movies from any studio because of Pixar. I watched Wolfwalkers out of fucking spite and I liked it and it deserved its nomination. But seeing a trailer for a new animated feature that's effectively 2.5D or whatever, just seeing the hints of Pixar and Disney fingerprints all over it despite it being dumped and rescued by Netflix (which is nice, I'm not mad about it) I can't watch it. It's the same animation style and borrowed movements. You've seen one, you've seen them all. They shoehorn in some gay shit you can cut for Chinese audiences, but it's not working on Western audiences anymore either. God, there's a Reddit post from 2020 and the guy's like, IDK guys do you think it's dying? No disrespect, I love Pixar yada yada. 

No, it is dying and I blame Disney. I didn't grow up with Pixar films, they were out when I was basically an adult and starting university, but I enjoyed them initially. Sorry, I don't like Wall-E that much. Nothing clicked or really charmed me. The problem with Disney is its failure to understand over-saturation, particularly when they've invested in a new company or IP, they never slow their fuckin' roll on this shit. Okay, the 2D animation renaissance saved the animation department from failure, but all that did was then make them too big for their boots. Other studios just didn't have the steam-power to compete. It's legitimately unfair that 2D fell by the wayside when Disney were really one of the best in that arena. As of this year, Pixar is worth 15 billion. One of the original people behind Pixar left the studio a while ago, that was possibly a death knell. I don't know if a movie about red panda TF being an allegory for periods really was going to be a big hit. Now there's a sequel for Inside Out, what the fuck else will you do with that outside of using the same character and the same construct? We didn't need FIVE Toy Stories so why are we getting 2 Inside Outs, other than they keep hoping for sequel bait to hook the kids in. And I didn't give credit to Sony animation kicking their ass or DreamWorks actually managing to semi-revive Shrek with another Puss in Boots movie that did well. Shrek was kinda my limit too. I did like Incredibles but never saw the sequel either, I never had much interest in anything after the original movies anyway, I think I saw Toy Story 2 but definitely not 3.

I didn't grow up with Pixar but I didn't exactly grow up with Disney either. My favourite animation's made by a defunct studio that has links to Ghibli and I'm not even that big a fan of those movies. I don't tend to rewatch a lot of films now unless I loved them, and I don't love any new animations. I don't even think I would rewatch Bug's Life and I do own it on BluRay. If I wanted any Disney movies I could just go buy them, nobody judges adults for buying Disney films or any animations. But their kids don't necessarily love the movies they did. I'm not forcing kids I know to love the Never Ending Story.

Incest as a plot device and such

I realised while I find certain aspects of this topic kind of whatever, I don't really understand the use of accidental incest in a story as a huge, shocking twist. I haven't seen either version of Old Boy, the good one or the bad one, I only know from a YouTuber's in depth comparative study what the storyline is and the conceit of the whole thing. The bad guy gets revenge on the good guy by tricking him into sleeping with his long lost, estranged daughter. All because the good guy outed the bad guy for sleeping with his sister who later killed herself. The remake was probably worse as it contained a lot more incest on top of the protagonist sleeping with his daughter.

Old Boy's (2003) supposed to be a great movie, and I don't doubt that, I just feel really weirded out about the whole whoops, slept with my kid/sibling thing, especially when it's implied they continue to have a relationship and don't stop there. It's also a conceit of a game called 12 Minutes, only the husband and wife turn out to be half-siblings, and she's due to have a kid. I don't like it as a twist. I don't know why, it creeps me out and I think it's stupid and over the top. And in both cases, hypnotism is used to trick people into forgetting the truth, which is even more fucked up and sad. Or they consider just... going on as usual... Okay.

Meanwhile, I sit on a Degrassi subreddit where people complain about two kids who aren't blood relatives continuing a relationship after their respective parents get married. That wasn't so shocking, not as much as when a pair of twins, Declan and Fiona, are seen kissing at a party. (She kisses him for attention and faints, it's too much). I hated it. It was when the show was falling off the realism rails. But I wasn't so bugged by step siblings still having a relationship that is only incestuous in terms of legalities. (Some places count fostered and adopted kids as legal siblings who can't have a relationship either). That just bummed me out in terms of the kids having a relationship first that gets railroaded by their own parents who have the control in the situation. When I heard about it happening in real life, I felt sorry for those kids. It would be worst to meet someone you don't know and discover you were related, and that happens more than it should. (Maybe if people calmed down on their rutting and stopped having so many unwanted kids this wouldn't be as big an issue). Plus, it's the only way people who watch incest porn can cope with it: step siblings/parents only. I get it, and I know some people really are there for the "real thing" so to speak, so this is a cop out to them.

In the interest of shit being taboo, this stuff still really upsets people even when it's entirely fictional. People finding out friends they respected wrote Supernatural slash fic of the two brothers were somehow so offended they had to ask Reddit if they were being too much by getting angry over it. If you're screwing around so to speak with fictional characters, that's whatever. I don't advise you play this game with actual people, which some people stupidly do to YouTubers, and I agree, if they find it offensive, don't put it out there. I'm already annoyed with you stealing fictional characters to smoosh together like GI Joe and Captain America dolls. Don't do it to real people, put it online and expect them to be totally cool with it. Please. I know some find it hilarious, but it's not. I more just find it so amusing it's frowned upon in fiction as being over the top when it's genuinely offensive in real life. Also, Jeremy Irons may be using the very old fashioned definition of incest that requires two blood relatives to have a kid, so if that doesn't happen, it's not incest. The law wouldn't be on his side.

I could go on about furries etc but I'm not one to judge on that. People don't get the idea of anthropomorphism, it's more to do with the human traits and animal traits blended together, it's not a gateway to bestiality or anything. If you're that dumb about it, you've missed the point, and it's not necessarily even a sexual thing either. I read somewhere Bjork found animal documentaries sexy, like she just loves nature on a different level, I don't see that as being a case for her having tendencies, but you can see people reading that into it, which they often do because nuance doesn't exist to them. Anime porn caters to a lot of tastes and that is what it is. It's the sex part, not the animal part. I don't openly advocate for the alternatives since nobody can agree on whether they mitigate certain offenses. I was more curious if certain men joined a clergy knowing they could get away with molesting children, and if becoming ordained was a way to facilitate that and get away with it within the institution's policy of covering it all up, if that explained why the church seemed to have way too many child molesters. The church has a lot to answer for, so if you're stressing over people getting off to furry porn, your priorities are out of whack, son.

I only put this here since it was about a movie.

Old movies...

I'm a traitor to my subcultures since I refuse to read older literature and watch older movies. I bothered to watch the Omen, which I hated, I also hated the Shining, the kid is annoying, it's all over the top and drawn out, I'm not a big fan of Kubrick's older films. I didn't like Rosemary's Baby either.

In terms of reading, I bothered to get through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and really hated it, the Zombie element didn't make the whole thing less boring. I also don't know a lot of Shakespeare (maybe due in part that people tried to give me that as a nickname based on my last name being an alternate spelling to a particular play), I only know what I do know from reading one play all the way through, and seeing a few others in various visual adaptations. I thought I liked Shakespeare in Love but the acting was too much.

I also won't watch Citizen Kane. I really didn't want to anyway, it looks overblown and uninteresting, I'm not shitting on older cinema it doesn't mesh with me. I don't feel like seeing it. And that's been reinforced after hearing there is a major plothole that people are so willing to disregard because the film itself is relatively flawless, even its storytelling. 

Yeah, of course. I agonised over a mild historical inaccuracy in a book I published after its release, I obsessively looked up whether it made sense a character would've been realistically alive during a particular part of history, I didn't do enough research since it wasn't a main character, she was a plot device. But I hated it and I panicked someone was going to point it out. Nobody did. A lot of what I found fault with, others didn't see.

But when something so revered cannot even see a blatant inaccuracy, that sounds like it would've been super easy to fix by just adding one character to a scene, I don't appreciate how much the praise remains intact, and even completely excused, because it's an overall masterpiece.

Plotholes are inevitability of convoluted stories, mostly in shows that go from season to season not knowing if the show will keep going, so certain rules have to be broken to keep a show going, it's probably why I don't invest time in new shows like this for them being at the mercy of streaming services who can pull them at a moment's notice, you can't project much. Of course this was true of normal TV when shows were picked up. I also avoided a lot of book adaptation shows for obvious reasons. I really hate a lot of their original adaptations finished in the last ten years and are already being considered for reboots purely from some misguided notion this will generate the same income as the original, or at least a substantial amount.

Knowing what I know about Citizen Kane, I'll never watch it now. I even thought the twist was kind of stupid anyway, and I suck at twists. 

This came off the back of a video review of the Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals, and looking at the aesthetic, it looks like Interview with the Vampire meets Melrose Place. The fake terrace look seems to be the same, only it's set in New Orleans not LA. So much of the old world look seems to be stolen from Interview, just the fact it's set in the same city and it's all about turf wars. It looks so derivative in its scenery and so prime time drama in the acting. I did try the Vampire Diaries, I have a copy of the first book, it wasn't for me, I only have a mild respect for it having to compete with the ignorance of what people thought was its predecessor and accusing it of ripping that off. Sorry, this show and its ilk is absolutely ripping off The Vampire Chronicles, not that other thing. Even them being super subtle with the fangs and appearance. There are shades of Buffy in terms of the over the top drama, and I hated that Buffy's vampires deliberately looked more ugly and menacing. I was loyal to my series and my favourite version. Everyone else's could get the fuck out.