MOOP!

So, last time he visited, Austin reminded me that he has never seen Mad Max: Fury Road.

If you haven't been here in a while, Fury Road ranks as "probably the best movie I've ever seen". I have joked about how, whenever I watch a movie, I rank it against "would my time have been better spent watching Fury Road instead" and honestly, most movies do not cross that threshold. I try not to do the "oh-em-gee you must watch my personally curated media list or your life is UNWORTHY" thing to people, because like...we all have different needs and wants and joys and it's okay to not like things, *but* I am down to rewatch this movie pretty much any time, and if you want to watch it with me, I will figure out how to arrange that.

So like, Austin is mostly not my media boyfriend, but still, I figured this could be a good thing to happen. It didn't wind up having time the last time, but we were in a good movie space this visit! I gave him a choice of three¹ movies that I like and would enjoy watching with him, this is the one that was picked.

Now, I love this movie, but the part I forgot to warn Austin about is that it is an *intense* movie. And in fact, I don't think I've actually watched it myself in at least a year, and maybe as many as two or three. So while I remembered the most of it, and there were a lot of moments and beats and scenes that were right where I'd left them, there were also parts that were fuzzier, and less present.

Having watched it for the first time in my thirties, I remain convinced that it is truly one of the most beautiful action movies ever made. One or the other of Austin-and-I were squeezing the blood out of the other one's hand for nearly the whole time, just from the sheer overwhelming tension of it all. We paused halfway through for a brief bathroom break, and he said something along the lines of "I didn't realize the movie would give me this much anxiety!" which, you know, fair.

The thing that still gets me about Fury Road, the thing that has gotten me from the start (the thing that got me to see it the first time²) remains that this is a movie which is a story about women, made like that's the norm. It's not a "feminist movie" in that it goes out of its way to be all about the Grrl Power, it is simply framed exactly the same way as every other action movie, except the main beats belong to the women, and the supporting beats to the men.

It is twenty-fucking-twenty, and I haven't seen or heard of another movie that does that, and especially not another movie that does that in as calmly blase a way as Fury Road does. Nothing in this movie feels forced. It is a poetic, explosive, exquisite cinematic experience, that squeezes your heart with emotion, and fills your brain with fire.

But with women.

And of course, I myself am not a woman, but I caucus with them for strategic reasons. I can see more of myself in every female character here than I can in basically any "canonically" nonbinary character. Because the women in this film are so varied, and whole, and real. Sometimes they fuck up, sometimes they succeed, always they exist and it is amazing.

If you haven't seen this movie, and like action movies, I suggest it. If you don't mind action movies, and like epic cinematography, or breathtaking stunts³, or narratives about redemption, I suggest it. If you love women, if you see them as whole and complete and complex, I suggest it.

Witness me.
We Are Not Things.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: The other two were George of the Jungle, which I described as "light hearted comedy/mild romance, with a happily ever after ending and generally super family friendly" and Into the Spiderverse -"still family friendly but less lighthearted and more actiony but still with some jokes". I described Fury Road as "nothing but an action movie, but sublimely done"

2: Oh sure, I saw a trailer and went "that looks like a pretty great Action Romp" but I didn't expect to actually get off my ass and go watch it in the theatre until all the men of twitter started to be Loudly Angry.

3: Real! Almost all of the stunts in the film are real, and live! Which, there was a very good article back when it came out that postulated that this is part of why the movie was such a success, because CGI is great but you can't fake physics all the way out of the uncanny valley yet, and so things that are real will still hit with more weight.

Okay, I'm at that point where I have sixty tabs open across seven browser windows, and that really means that I need to make a link post and get on with my life. So here, have some sundries!

*Boston folk, in last Saturday's flooding, Taza Chocolatier got hit hard. They are trying to convince people to buy their stock so they have money for repairs. Buy some chocolate for a worthy cause!!

*Also Boston Folk, today at seven PM there is going to be a recess in Davis Square. Bring your jump ropes and four square balls, and believe me, I would be there in a heartbeat if I was a few hundred miles north and east of here.

*Improv Everywhere's newest stunt: Recreating the beginning of "Star Wars: A New Hope" on the Subways!

*I'll be honest here: I really quite want this foldable bicycle. It's a neat design, and I emphatically want to have a bike to tool around with up in Boston, to the point where I'm gonna need to find a way to get mine up there *some*how. So yeah.

*"But then there are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning." (A hilarious review of that terribly unrealistic show on the History Channel --"World War II" (I mean, could you *get* more melodramatic?). Read the comments. Sporfle warning.)

*I will unfortunately not be able to post this Girls With Slingshots guest strip by Erika Moen in my future classrooms, but I want to so badly!

*Locked posts, so no links, but I'd like to extend appreciation to chickenhat for "LESS COWBELL!" and to ncarraway for giving an earworm trigger warning when he mentioned GaGa's Bad Romance.

*ms_hecubus continues to keep a fairly funny blog (seriously, I should make the list of people who's journals are fun to read even if you don't know them¹), this time ranting about how "Every time I use a plastic bag, the terrorists win". (And hopefully she will not mind me linking her, as I was impolite and didn't ask permission this time)

*Oh, and her followup letter to Sears.

*Speaking of Racheline (You do read the footnotes when they come up, and not at the end, right?), she went to a conference recently, and made this post about secrets and exile that talks about coming out about various things. ( And then I babble about this a lot more, because I find it important )

*Oh look, another ms_hecubus post, this time Sensibly pointing out that boobies are both sexual and practical items, and to try and define them as one hundred percent one or the other is useless

*yagathai came up with a fantastic new portmanteau: Voluntarting. Please go use in a sentence.

*Look! It is A map of the creative process!!

*So, I follow the davis_square community because I like knowing what's going on in my world --signal to noise is high enough to keep me coming back. Most of the posts seem to get between zero and fifty comments or so. So when I see one that gets _253_, I pay some small attention.

It is, of course, a post on how to have good bicycle/car relations.

I love my hippie city and miss it dearly.

*Mel Gibson Rant Quotes Presented by Kittens. I don't even know how to react to this. Trigger warning: severely abusive misogynistic language.

*Animation showing all the nuclear bombs that have gone off from 1945 to 1998, including test sites and the like. Long, but neat.

*Want respect for bicycles as transport? Use them that way!

*ratatosk talks about a recent court decision saying that the FCC's current indecency policy is unconstitutionally vague. Go censorship fighting!

And that seems to be everything. Now I can go clear the two hundred or so items out of my RSS reader. WOO!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Also on that list is:

rm, who writes about dancing and fandom and gender and the whole racism-misogony-homophobia-god-society-sucks-thing and doesn't really take shit, and writes just *fantastic* stories about a life that seems very much to be a part of a different world and time sometimes.

kittikattie, who writes about video games and American Girl dolls and ponies and art and the whole society sucks thing and takes even less shit than Rach and has a constantly amusing slice of life journal thing going on with lots of pictures of interesting stuff and is the one who coined the phrase "black day"² which I use sometimes.

And ShadowCaptain would be if he hadn't left elljay for the evil that is Facebook, and Ms_Hecubus like I said, and there are almost certainly other people who have interesting and entertaining journals, in case you need more to read, which I doubt. Dan4th and Heptadecagram, when they post. Others. Whatever, maybe I'll make this into a post of sorts sometime.

2: Black Day: A day in which you put on your gothy best, because sometimes it is nice to be all black-clad and take-no-shit. She always has one on the fourteenth of February, as well as two or three others across the year, mine show up sporadically, but seem to be reoccurring on the fourth of July.

3: In watching Clueless the other day, I remarked that "only to a sixteen year old would "and you're a virgin who can't drive" be seen as such a slur".

Hokay, so. Sweeney Todd.

I went to see it again last night, and dragged along my sketchbook. My original plan was to do some sketchies in the theatre, but this fell to pieces. Instead, I made a big long list of ( Things, scenes, and charecters I ought to draw from the Sweeney Todd movie. (Also, here be spoilers) )

***

These notes are, of course, mainly for my own use, but if you see something you desperately want me to do and soon, let me know.

~Sor
MOOP!