Not like that film was a one-off either.

I would like to add The Birdcage (1996) to this list of drag queen movies (mind you, it's based on a French stage play from 1973).

Which starred Nathan Lane as a drag queen just two years after he had voice Pumba in "The Lion King":

And we ESPECIALLY need to remember Victor Victoria from 1982 (during the REAGAN administration) which is SET IN THE 1930S and stars everyone's favorite curtain-sewing nanny as a struggling soprano who decides to pretend to be a boy doing drag (DOUBLE THE DRAG FOR YOUR MONEY). I mean look at this photo:

Count Victor Grazinski isn't putting up with your transphobia (or you being a dick to Robert Preston).

Unfortunately, the representation of drag and female impersonation (as it was often called pre-Stonewall) is scant in mainstream American cinema due to the Hayes Code. There are definitely more, but these are biggest, "family-friendly" names I can think who have starred in major motion pictures as drag performers.

It’s just me and this woman who collects “night lotion” scenes from movies/tv shows against the world.

There's a cinematic equivalent of "this meeting could have been an email" where you get about two hours into a feature-length blockbuster and it occurs to you that this would have lost nothing meaningful if it had been a ten-minute short film on YouTube.

I would also volunteer "this miniseries should have just been a movie".

See Kenobi. It's a good story ... that only really needed ninety minutes to two hours to tell. They had to really pad out the middle to stretch it out to a full season when it could have just been a movie.

Level 1: Miniseries that could have been a feature film.

Level 2: Feature film that could have been a short film.

Level 3: Short film that could have been a TikTok sketch.

Level 4: TikTok sketch that could have been a rage comic.

Level 5: Yeah, maybe just keep that one to yourself.

STOP no more live-action remakes. We're going the other way now. Animated Casablanca. Animated The Godfather. Animated Oppenheimer. Animated Fight Club.

I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that's true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn't happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.

J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He's also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that's better than presents you open--failing to see that there's a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.

You've got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with "trilogies" that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.

You've got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.

On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.

Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they're unwilling to form their own expectations of what's coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what's in front of them! The media they've been consuming has trained them well.

The thing where creators say "yeah, we know where this is going" and then it becomes patently obvious that they're just going by vibes broke my willingness to get on board with incomplete dramas on television. Lost wasn't even the first. There was once a show called Nowhere Man with an absolutely haunting premise and I was desperate to understand the why of it, but it was cancelled after 13 episodes, and the creators admitted years later that they had no clue, it was just vibes. Like, gross. Hate that. As a writer, it offends me.

[ID: a black cap with the words “make movies shorter” on the front in all caps. on the back in smaller text it reads “97 minutes (with credits)” /end ID.]

When Guillermo del Toro had a practical effect fish-man suit in The Shape of Water but used cgi to make the eyes look more real.... he had the right idea.

Practical effects are the meal and cgi is the spice. Both important. One sustains me, fulfills me. The other adds flavor and depth. But serve me a plate of spices and nothing else and I will revolt.

cgi should be used to enhance practical effects, not replace practical effects

Cannot Stress Enough how important it is to read Howl’s Moving Castle written by Diana Wynn Jones immediately after watching Howl’s Moving Castle directed by Hayao Miyazaki. When he made the movie he was of course upset with war and thus included it in the film, but you gotta understand. You really Gotta Understand. Every time in the movie where Howl turns the door dial black to travel to an absolutely hellish warscape? You know where that same dial takes him in the book? The Real World Country Of Wales

it's almost like... if you play a movie in 10 cinemas worldwide, it doesn't do as well as it could 🤯🤯

It's per theater numbers are great.

they set sapphic movies up to flop and then prop it up as evidence that movies about gay girls don’t matter

She (1935)

i'm curious

you can check which movie it was here!

pls reblog and put in the tags which movie it was :)

American movie be like

The producers of Aquaman 2 gave an interview, and while I really don’t want to go into the issue, I really like what they had to say about internet campaigns to get a star removed:

“I don’t think we’re ever going to react to, honestly, pure fan pressure,” said Safran. […] “You gotta do what’s best for the movie, [..] One is not unaware of what is going on in the Twitter-verse, but that doesn’t mean you have to react to it or take it as gospel or accede to their wishes,” said Safran, “You have to do what’s right for the film, and that’s really where we landed on it.”

No matter the issue. I think it is a very healthy take. Even if I might not agree in one case or another. I rather have a studio that says “Hey, we decided that for our movie this decision is the best.” than a studio that just gives into internet campaigns - which are often exaggerated and only show a small percentage of public opinion and can actually be targeted campaigns with little actual value. 

In my ideal world a studio would listen to a topic that is raised and then decide based on their own ideas. “Internet says that actor A is a horrible person” - then a studio should decide “Do we have reason to believe that and would we want to work with such person?”. Disregarding the smear campaign. Same with story-telling decisions. I mean, they come up with that for a reason, so they should follow through with it and not give into a perceived “popular” demand. Like not outright ignore it, but not give into demands either.

JURASSIC PARK vs JURASSIC WORLD trilogies 

why the original trilogy feels more mature and real than the new one, more cartoonish instead. 

Which style do you prefer?

http://jpnostalgia.tumblr.com/

We have the same problem in big budget Hollywood filmmaking nowadays that Hayao Miyazaki pointed out in anime a few years back, namely that films are being made by the fanboys that grew up idolizing the original movies, and worse still planned and budgeted by corporate lawyers and producers who use think tanks to identify what they think audiences want in films, and as a result you get overwrought and convoluted twaddle that makes us normal people pine for the old standard

There is also a really good analysis comparing the scale/framing of Jurassic Park with Jurassic World. If you have a 8-9 minutes to kill.

@glenny-boy

Something I realized recently is this:

The Jurassic Park movie(s) are, at their core, strong scenes and interesting characters that are structured around a well-written plot. They work for the most part because their big action sequences are warranted, and are built up to with an intriguing story, so that the audience gets the satisfaction of seeing the T-Rex reveal, and the raptors in the kitchen, and they’re actively invested in these characters and their fates.

Jurassic World, meanwhile, is essentially a plot wrapped around big, expensive action sequences. The creators and producers know that it’ll be a summer blockbuster regardless of quality, because it’s part of an already successful series. They know that if they put a bunch of cool-looking cgi dinos and big-name actors in the trailer, audiences will pretty much go “just shut up and take my money!!!”

And don’t get me wrong, the cgi IS really advanced, and I DO love seeing cool dinosaurs. But………isn’t that the exact point the original story was trying to make? That creation and innovation for the sake of profit is dangerous and immoral?

The original story had heart, it had good messages, and of course it had genuinely passionate writing and quality. I’m STILL seeing in-depth discussions about the OG Jurassic Park, with points brought up that I’ve never considered before, and it’s been almost 30 YEARS since its release. Jurassic World? Maybe I see a somewhat cool gifset once in a while.