Pretty? Woman?

I don't hate this movie for a 90s romcom, it's suitable. It has a bit more substance to it, I guess. I don't know My Fair Lady outside of a couple of songs. I don't know Pygmalion at all, just the premise. I don't hate Julia Roberts but I don't know about the idea of her being "pretty". She had a certain look about her that made her unique, I think she and Sarah Jessica Parker got some unfair flack for not being conventionally beautiful, they have teeth and mouths other women get shit for not fixing. Roberts was supposed to be Corey in Say Anything... she didn't fit the bill, she looks too mature, I think she's supposed to be pretty young in this movie. I kinda joked it should be "Moderately Attractive Lady", I think that was a Harmontown joke. She's more or less infantalised by the two men who are supporting her. Jason Alexander is actually really great in this even if he gets hella rapey later, he has to work as a bone of contention between the lovers and he knew better than to lean on what he was well known for. And Julia Roberts has wrinkly as fuck toes when they're in the bath, by the way. Not up to Tarantino Toe Standards. I also had a massive issue with "80s Brow" when I was a kid because I hated my thicker brows, I still do, but I think this was more a darker brow issue with the pencil and I don't own a pencil knowing people want to give me actual brows.

I didn't see this as a kid, it was another of those "adult" movies that were out and I was a kid, it was one of those movies where the soundtrack songs were charting when I was little so again it had music on those cheap-ass compilation tapes. I liked the song from Working Girl, I don't know the movie that well. I don't even know why I'm making this post, I noticed it looked like it relies heavily on ADR. It's not a shitty movie, I think it has a decent amount of drama, Richard Gere's character has some substance to him, he's not just the romantic lead, they play off one another well, there's sufficient chemistry. I like he doesn't try to hide Vivian's purpose, it's not up for debate, but she's rightfully shitty he lets it slip. He doesn't do a heck of a lot "grooming" her and giving her deportment lessons, or elocution lessons for that matter, she can get away with her melange of a lower-class accent. I think they thought there was being a respectful depiction being made of hookers but it's clearly not when she has to admit it's not really for her, she's still actively shamed about her profession, which wouldn't work. Having seen the last Magic Mike movie, which was a Pretty Woman rip off, and a hilarious one at that, I was still confused about Mike being an actual sex worker and not just a dancer. And that didn't exactly paint sex workers in a positive light either, which is absolutely shitty. Sex work in the 90s was obviously further demonised off the back of the AIDS epidemic, hooker with a heart of gold is a trope that doesn't work now, you can't get away with it but god forbid they tried to remake it with Vivian telling him to get bent and staying on Only Fans instead. She'll do better there, anyway.

Watching Fight Club in the early 2000s was the worst and best time...

Our home computer had a trailer my brother downloaded for Fight Club, he was aware of this before the general public got a hold of it. I think I saw it on VHS first, then for class I had to watch it at a local independent theatre. And while we had an operational IMAX theatre, I got to see it there too. I had the soundtrack, I knew most of Tyler's lines. I wrote about it in an essay after only seeing it once, I think, so my ability to retain a lot of detail about a film after one viewing is pretty impressive. (And yeah, bitch who told me to write 3000 words on three forms of orchestral music, I can write that much on fucking Fight Club, American Beauty and the depiction of men in media. I am capable of saying A LOT if I CARE about it).

I hung out with guys who threw shit off a tower in an act of defiance. I spent the night with a guy (nothing actually happened) and we watched it, and I knew it pretty well, so he thought I'd seen it a lot more than I had. But they also weren't complete incels (maybe they were I didn't see it) and I was still trying to be "that girl", the "one of the guys" girls, and I was hanging out with more guys than girls if I did hang with anyone. It was important (it still is) for me not to be the Yoko, or the Marla, so to speak. 

But Marla was cool, you're supposed to side with her, she's not the bad guy. If you see Tyler as the good guy, you've missed the point. And I kinda did, I kinda idolised the swagger and anti-capitalistic rhetoric, but then you grow up and find out Brad Pitt is a piece of shit human being with anger issues. He's never been "cool". (I'm also old enough to understand the concept of cigarette burns on a film and remember seeing them). I kinda drank the Kool-Aid but I'm not a fan of actual destruction as a form of protest. I'm okay with kids interrupting a pointless dinner or performance in protest of whatever economical/ecological disaster the rich are perpetuating that week, I wouldn't be that annoyed if they did it to me. I only don't agree with wanton destruction or getting in the way of your own people trying to get on with their lives. So I don't "believe" in Project Mayhem any more than I could believe in the tenets of Fight Club. (I can't recite the rules, by the way). And I'm pretty sure a chunk of the film's audience never bothered reading the book, which ends differently. China's not allowed to see the actual ending, by the way, it's been edited with a written epilogue. Which intimates that Tyler is either real or Edward Norton's character is the one sent to an asylum, he's not even "killed" by Norton's character. So that would suggest you're still supposed to think Tyler is real. That's bad, China. I want to know if the kiss is in that version too, since its subtext is homoerotic, and you're not supposed to have gay stuff in movies in China, so did they "fix" that too? The bass drop after the kiss even has a sexy feel to it, before it gets graphic. (This fake ending is kind of in line with the book's ending too, which makes it funnier and subversive if you think about the narrator leaving the hospital in 2012, when Project Mayhem's already taken over the world).

When Tyler's questioning the "point" of women, you're not supposed to take the red pill, boys. Or the black one. Nobody's asking you to take the blue one, either, btw. Maybe don't take any fucking pill and think for yourself (be a Sigma, man). Discern facts from fiction. None of the men in Fight Club are actively attacking women until Marla's an issue, and they're not entirely comfortable with it, really. They're trying to pick fights with a male stranger, they're not being told to go out and pick up women. They're recruiting men. They're supposed to lose. Acting like Tyler won't get you pussy. You're not supposed to like Marla so why would you agree with her sexual appetites? Wouldn't a woman saying she wants to have your abortion freak you out, anyway? That's an alternate cut, I know that. 

The music is amazing, it holds up even if some of the effects are outdated. It's okay for you not to subscribe to gym body worship, you can be you, that was also the point. If you have nothing to truly aspire to in terms of being a decent man, this movie isn't supposed to be your alternative. If Fight Club's the actual reason for the haircut and nice manicure, that's not cool either, bro. I want to be Marla for Halloween. You should love a girl like Marla, she's not making you clean anything in your piece of shit house, she lets you go through a box of condoms in a night and leave them in your clogged up toilet. She puts up with your shit, man. You should LOVE her. How is SHE the problem? She let you fuck her brains out ALL NIGHT. (The shot where Tyler walks in just as Marla mentions the death rattle, we saw the narrator leave at that point, so it's not a continuity error, Tyler's "there" the whole time). Tyler is effectively "hate fucking" Marla, so the narrator is participating in that without getting to enjoy it. She's also comically loud and Tyler sounds like it fucking hurts, it's quite funny. Because it's satire, dickhead. It's all satire. It's sad you couldn't enjoy this as a black comedy, really. It's sad you don't get irony the way you think you do. Find that robe Tyler wears, get it filthy and wear it unironically. Hell, Marla said you can borrow her shitty clothes. You don't get why she's singing the song from Valley of the Dolls. I have said "sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken", that's a Tylerism I live by. You're not willing to actually live in actual filth. You actually have standards, probably higher than mine. You can live a step above sin and be closer to godliness if you just tidy up your room once in a while. And if your father failed you, what does that really tell you about God? (You know there isn't one and you can be a better man than your deadbeat dad). I wanted to lose everything at some points and to know what it was to be free. I wasn't taking that big a risk walking away from my job. Providing you a clean slate isn't society's responsibility to fulfill for you. That also doesn't mean you get to hurt society in order to get it.

You don't want Marla but you should. She's not even trying to be the mother you never had. She's willing to put up with the abuse, to an extent. You don't spend a lot of time "analysing" film either, so if you had any clue about it you wouldn't have reached the exact opposite conclusion you came to. She gives a shit if someone's burning the shit out of you. She wants to know if you care. And you do fucking care. Or else, she'd be dead, right? You can't scare her off the way Tyler thinks. She'll stand beside you as the world fucking falls down. Isn't that what you want out of anybody, not just a woman?

I went to work with a shiner and said I'd joined a club I wasn't supposed to talk about. Only one guy got it, the other one had no fucking idea what I meant.*

 

*I wound up in a social scenario where nobody believed it was an accident and everyone talked about it like it was the biggest news in the office that morning. It was bizarre and unnecessary but said a lot to how seriously people took a perceived instance of violence. It's sad I had a physical indicator that had nothing to do with my depression at the time, but my actual emotions and problems went unregistered a lot longer. Plus, people knew me to be quite meek so I had to be lying about how it happened. Which is kind of insulting to suggest I would be such a wilting flower about it. I wouldn't put up with that shit, I put up with emotional abuse since it's never registered as damaging. Me being totally fine and joking about it wasn't the best way to deal with it but people wouldn't leave me alone.

6 Year Old Me would totally love me right now

I'm healing my inner child watching the Never Ending Story with my noise cancelling headphones the government let me buy with their money. The same way I wish I could tell kid me they would one day have all the music they needed, I wish I could say, hey, one day, you'll have your own TV with streaming, and a DVD player, and whatever movies you want, and you can lie on your own couch, in your own place where nobody can stop you and you don't have to worry about your parents being annoyed with that shit since you had it on repeat. It was probably just as well we didn't own these as kids, I'd have destroyed my copy anyway. 

I'm sure Falkore probably scared kids the way G'mork is supposed to. The puppetry in this isn't bad, it's on par for the most part with Jim Henson's work, and they did the third movie. This is now I'm finding out the girl who played the Empress was in a movie recently which included the Creature Shop team, and I don't remember hearing about it, it doesn't even have an RT score, it only has two reviews so clearly nobody bothered to market it well.

Also, using headphones makes the soundtrack a lot clearer, which I also recently bought (maybe a year ago nearly) when I was horribly depressed but needed to cry a lot. I can't not get choked up at this funeral dirge level shit when you're seeing a real horse drown in a swamp and a big rock puppet man lamenting the loss of his friends and being killed by the Nothing. I mean, this is how I got in touch with questionable people on the internet who pretended to be young gay boys in love with 80s movie stars. I was finding out their names then going on forums with perverts who'd then send me material that was highly illegal. Our innocence was so easily exploitable. But kid me didn't know that either, kid me grew up without the internet, so it left me longing for all the things that soothed me because they were never readily available. If I'd been a kid in the early 2000s it would've been easier, but I'd have also missed out on what I did like. I can't see myself being nostalgic for shit that was popular after I grew up. And I think the music played too big a part in the gutkicking moments, so if I'd had the soundtracks at the very least, I might've been okay. I got by with the Labyrinth soundtrack for most of high school, but yeah, not having the videos until my late teens was kinda sad.

I also had no idea Bastian yells "Moon Child" which is supposed to be his mother's name, so I'm going to say that was her flower child name she got from some beatnick before marrying Bastian's stuffy dad who likes egg yolks in OJ. Like, what chance did Bastian have, really? Jeez. And it's not like he gets it easy in the book, so a movie that dealt with that better than the second movie did could be kinda cool. The headphones work really well you can hear the people Falkore terrorises really well. Kid me really liked this bit.

Kid me had it rougher than they should have. They honestly just wanted everything I have right now. They had to tough out a lot to get it. But they got it.

I don't like the movie, but I know it very well - Hocus Pocus

I wouldn't know Hocus Pocus as well as I do had I not crushed on the male lead since I was 12. If I'd seen it once and Leo (who was supposed to be in it) or any other guy, I'd have gone home from that sleepover and never thought of it again. It's classic Disney cringe. Thora Birch is the best part, the witches are iconic, I love they made it into modern day culture for being so camp and hilarious. It was the closest thing you could get to a female Three Stooges routine. But I can't sit through it the way I did as a kid, it's so discomforting and weird and sexually driven for a Disney movie. It wasn't intended to become a cult classic.

I also had very dark versions of this, like on VHS where some scenes were practically impossible to see unless they were in the daylight. They keep dropping trivia even now, (around Halloween, usually) and I discovered the male lead was high during some of his scenes. I saw a clip of Kathy Najimy came out in defense of Wiccans and was concerned for any negative depiction of witchcraft. And it's a horny movie as well. It does really ratchet up the innuendo, perhaps for the sake of any adults in the audience taking their under 13 kid to see it or if they watched it at home while babysitting. Addams Family (from the 90s) did a much better job with the humour, I think this is trying really hard to go with that and failing a bit. But I'm watching someone's reaction video and enjoying the way they're enjoying it and giving it shit. It's very much a movie you can lampoon for fun, it's what people love it for. But I don't love it as it wasn't a childhood favourite. I was 13 going on 14, maybe if I'd picked up the video in a store and saw who was in it I'd have freaked out back then and asked to rent it. I own a copy of Matinee more because I like it overall, and the male lead I'm referring to has a supporting role, and I don't skip scenes to get to them. But if I'd not really liked it overall, I'd have not bought it. I should rewatch Eerie Indiana, again something about trying to see this makes me feel awkward and 13 again, and that is a genuinely good show that was clever and existed in that early 90s period where the humour could be subversive and "adult" for young adults and get away with it. I don't sit down and watch Hocus Pocus for fun or Halloween or nostalgia. It is one of my cassette tape movies but it was obviously edited, I know some scenes better than others. I own it on BluRay, if I had kids in my house, I'd put it on.

The Dissertation: In the Shadow of the Night: The Gendered Subtext of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicle And Birth of the Vampire

I found a 200 page dissertation on the gendering in the Vampire Chronicles, and the contents page alone sucked me in so to speak. And it starts with a quote from the X-Files. The abstract states the books could be more conservative than liberal, which is a really interesting thesis premise, and she's only looking at the "original trilogy" (I think that's a fair way to describe them because they were closely linked by chronology, and my editions "matched" in terms of cover art).

I'll try skimming this but I wanted to say how tantilised I am by the clever chapter headings referring to song lyrics in the 90s, and makes a point that there's a distinct lack of theory about her books. I am so upset I cannot find the documentary I watched to death as a kid. Scratch that, it was called Birth of The Vampire not The Vampire's Life, which is what I remembered it as. FFUUUUUUUUCK I am so 14 right now. I loved the narrator reading from the book. The whole presentation itself is as haunting as the content. It's very much a love letter to New Orleans and superstition, I was probably more obsessed with this than the movie. I sidetracked on the dissertation. There's syncing issues with this VHS rip but I'll take it. The music is incredible, it's such a well made documentary. I learnt more of New Orleans paranormal stories, and had such a very quiet, peaceful contemplation of death. I wanted to go there more back then, I wish I had when I wanted to. It's a very sensitive portrayal of supernatural belief given they speak to people channel the dead, there's no sensationalism or mockery involved as it's depicted as a culturally significant, as any culture can be examined. I swear the TV guide said it was on TV at 2.22 pm. I have so many vivid memories of this which have made me so desperate to find it. Rice taught me more about religion than I willfully would accept at the time. There was a marrying of Catholic mysticism and the supernatural that made it kinda cool to me. This was probably slightly before I got into witchcraft. (They've cut some of the narration, which sucks). 

Back to the dissertation, I see why I had many parallels with her, our aversion to fan fiction, our frustration over being misunderstood with our content. She was unfairly reviewed, so her responses to critics were really off-kilter. She felt off-kilter after Stan died. Losing your kid wouldn't be good for your mental psyche. Stan prophetically knew Michele had cancer. I was obsessed with Christopher's account of discovering his sister's existence. I argued Claudia was Michele (or Mouse). Any of the sexual subtext between Louis and Claudia was misconstrued. If it's read through the lens of a mother/daughter relationship it has more weight to it. So it's gross people harped on Kirsten Dunst kissing Brad Pitt as a child. (Goddamn the syncing gets so much worse on this. Such a shame. I wish I'd transferred my copy at some point, this has skips of dialogue and I can't say why). I didn't know she also had to deal with the vampire culture being attributed to her and having to distance herself from the real implications of blood drinking, why her books are considered satanic when they're probably the most biblical I've read. I don't think I would've known much of any history without them.

In the documentary there's something about the orphanage she saved which I think was cut from my broadcast. I think we got maybe half of it. I'm kinda smooshing these two documents together. The dolls reminded me of my obsession with ponies. How she lived in her head from childhood.

The dissertation mentions a psychotic Brisbane woman who was a supposed lesbian vampire murderer. And someone who believed Akasha herself (the movie version which he saw 1000 times) was telling him to kill his friend. Then they mention Rice's vampires likely bred the more humanistic counterparts in stuff like True Blood and the other thing. I don't entirely think that's true.

I don't think I'm going to read over all of this, but someone suggested exploring later books is pointless as they're repetitious. Telling the same story from other angles isn't necessarily bad, I liked having Armand, Marius and Pandora's stories expanded upon where they overlap. I'm skimming but I'm also glad this predates the AMC series since it debunks the actions of some of the characters so severely they may as well not even be related. Why does Daniel go from desperate for the Dark Gift to holding Louis in contempt? Why does Louis suddenly overindulge in decadence when he shunned it previously? They had to retcon core principles of the characters to justify them suddenly being actual assholes rather than deeply flawed, humanistic characters. According to this Anne wanted Louis to be a woman in Interview, so you could've gotten rid of all the pedophilic issues of Louis and Claudia's relationship by making Louis a mother figure in the more literal sense. If you're going to fuck with the original, do that. Be literal about their relationship as mother and daughter instead of father/daughter/lover/beloved and have everyone shit  on it. Then Kirsten Dunst can avoid having awkward questions raised. That would've been a conservative reading of the text. It takes great pains to mention Babette, there are big chunks of text missing from the movie the series could've easily expounded on.

At least the paper cleared up my recollection of Enkil's castration, I forgot they just assumed the roles of Osiris and Isis, it was this overlap with reality that stupidly led me to want to study Egyptian mythology to see if there was any basis of truth in the story of the twins. The paper rightfully points out of Anne white-washing the ancient vampires as being white and not coloured. I'm inclined to agree in her attempts to make a feminist statement with Queen of the Damned, she failed to really present feminism as necessarily good. I've always recognised Louis as Claudia's mother figure, again people ignoring that entirely because he's an older male is fundamentally irritating. Lestat doesn't shy from calling them a family. He doesn't demand Louis man up entirely, just make sure she doesn't misbehave. It seems progressive for its time but then adheres to normative gender roles anyway.

And Louis never has his own voice. Interview is third person narration, we're seeing a conversation between two people in a room primarily, it's not Louis's unique point of view. Lestat gets to speak for himself. Claudia also remains voiceless except through her diary entries. I don't know if Anne could inhabit Claudia's headspace adequately, I'm glad she didn't but someone made a graphic novel from Claudia's point of view instead. I wanted to like Merrick as it was "bringing back" Louis and Claudia but it's not entirely about them. It's a long-con for Merrick to become a vampire. I'd have rather Lestat turn Rowen and have her go nuts than Mona Mayfair. I'd still rather both "families" exist in the same universe independently than join up. It seemed like a weird combination to have the supposed heroes of both chronicles fall in love, and pointless as it goes nowhere and isn't brought up later. I still maintain it was a quick way of ending both series and just blew up because Amazon has no filter for reviews.

I figured out what was wrong about the documentary I saw. It was missing a very specific story from a man sitting by a camp fire about a local version of what we'd consider a vampire, and a week later it only occurred to me it was gone. There were two versions, the one I saw called the Vampire's Life (which Vimeo has and calls Birth of the Vampire) and the one I saw on Youtube. The Vimeo one is better synced as well, and a cleaner transfer, it's not missing bits, so now I know the YouTube one was cut down a decent six or seven minutes, which basically covers the native storyteller's sections, which is shitty because they were the best parts of the whole thing, and some other parts about Anne. I knew they cut some of the narration to so I'm bummed I didn't find this version first to watch the other day, but it's nice to know it's there. It's a shame the score doesn't exist anywhere for how haunting and beautiful it is.

After over 20 years of refusing to touch Vittorio, I bought it with the hope it'd be a kind of romance story of a younger vampire. I shunned it back in the day for being devoid of any attachment to the other books, there's a big point made about this, however it's already boring me and I doubt teenage me would read it. It's more a history lesson on Italy, and it's lifting a lot from the Lestat, Vittorio is from a wealthy family who owned a remote castle. This and Pandora were supposedly separate and possibly initial books in an offshoot series but I think they did so poorly by comparison she had to go back to the core characters. I'll probably take forever to read this, to be honest. If I do finish it at all.

I decided to do a tier list and I've already marked it as no. If I ever read the Atlantis book it'll be because I got too curious about it to ignore it. We didn't need the recent books but having read Prince Lestat, I had to give it an F. Some of the rankings are based on me remembering enjoying the book or not, so the top four were the ones I liked. I don't know if I read them now if it'd be the same. But it's looking bleak for Vittorio.