A very happy day to Amy&Rory, Quinn&Gary, Enjolras&Grantaire, Peter&Harry, Bubblegum&Marceline, Star-Lord&Gamora, Gail&Erica, Faramir&Eowyn, Finn&Poe, and Disneyverse Esmeralda&Phoebus.
Most of whom never celebrated or had any concept of a Valentine’s Day.
He was a present from my mother-in-law and he’s adorable.
Also that picture was taken at 4:20pm and it was still light outside! Hooray!
Earlier tonight James Gunn did one of his usual Instagram Q&As, and not long after it a fake image from it was being sent to websites claiming he said that he’s had conversations about Silver Surfer and Galactus in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3. The image doesn’t appear anywhere in his Instagram Q&A, but […]
Sorry, James Gunn Never Said He’s Considering Silver Surfer or Galactus in Guardians 3 — MCU Cosmic
I should have guessed really, I’ve never seen Gunn use a smiley-face emoji in my life.
Over the past few days I’ve been archiving lots of older stuff (from the bits of my old tumblr/twitter/facebook that the Internet Wayback Machine caught.) After all, the clue’s in the OVERLY DEVOTED Archivist name. So I thought I might post links to some choice older nonsense here, meticulously labelled, for your viewing pleasure.
Les Miserables
The saddest piecharts you will ever see (2013)
Long, rambling, very annoyed review of the BBC miniseries (2019)
Guardians of the Galaxy
Sean Gunn is the most underrated actor in the MCU! (2018)
A Theory about a GOTG scene (2018)
Ego and Yondu As Foils, Giffed (2017)
Snippets of interesting stuff from the GOTG Vol 2 commentary (2017)
The music of the GOTGs/Meredith Quill’s Subconscious (2017)
Yondu’s redemption arc (2017)
Spider-Man
Attn: MCU on Harry Osborn (2015)
On Parksborn (2014)
How The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did Harry dirty (2014)
Gwen Stacy’s actual personality (2014)
Old But Surprisingly Good Fanfiction
What’s Left Of You (GOTG)
Goodnight (GOTG)
The First Casualty (Star Wars)
Pretty Dresses (Star Wars)
Humanity in the Abstract (Adventure Time)
Don’t Ruin It (Steven Universe AND Les Miserables! Yes really.)
I wanted to draw something Marvel related today, and decided to quickly sketch Gamora. I love the background and the light in her eyes. This was very fun to illustrate! Uzuri
Gamora — Phantasy Studio
Oh this is so dang good. I love her expression.
Note that these are (mostly) not what I consider the BEST films of the decade. Honestly I don’t even get to go the movies all that much, so the best ones I might not have even seen. But they are the ones that made me the happiest.
Like my favourite TV shows of the decade list, this is in alphabetical order and packed with aesthetically pleasing gifs for your viewing pleasure.
My GOD this film. It was claustrophobic, creepy, gnaw-your-own-arm-off terrifying… and a FANTASTIC power fantasy. Michelle, the protagonist of this film, quickly became one of my favourite sci-fi heroines ever. She suffers a lot of trauma during the movie, unimaginable things (but nothing graphic/titillating/male-gazey) and comes out the other side swinging. Then she downs an entire alien spaceship using nothing but her wits. God I love her and this film so much. I could write essay after essay about female empowerment as portrayed in this flick.
When I was a child I dreamed they would one day make a Pokemon live-action film, and they DID, and it was better than I ever imagined. It was sweet, it was funny, it was packed with references to the Pokemon lore (Pokelore?) that would have gone over most people’s heads but was included anyway, and Bill Nighy was in it. I loved this film so much and I can’t wait to show it to my future children.
Okay here goes: I never saw the original Ghostbusters. I never saw the sequel movie either, or any of the cartoons. Why’d I like this so much then? Well… honestly… because it was all women. Funny, smart, main-character women, the mere existence of which apparently drove some people into teeth-gnashing mania. And that was it. That’s enough, right?
It stills surprises me that this film got such bad reviews on release. Audiences apparently disagreed because not only did it get really high audience ratings it ALSO made a ton of money AND everyone I’ve ever shown it to liked it! I know some of the songs within it ended up massively overplayed (especially This Is Me, thanks a bunch Simon Cowell) but when you see them being performed in the movie they really do seem raw and real and touching.
I have absolutely no idea if GOTG2 is a good movie or not and honestly, there’s a part of me that doesn’t even care. It fills me with such insane joy every time I watch it. I love the friendships between all the main characters, I love Yondu’s redemption, I love how the music ties into the story, I love Baby Groot. And I especially love how the film is mostly about different forms of abuse and how we all have it within ourselves to overcome them.
Les Mis is a very good movie, but it’s actually on this list not so much for itself but because its existence introduced me to the book, which transpired to shape my entire life. That being said I do really mean that it’s a very good movie (and quite faithful to the book as well it turns out), it thoroughly deserves to be on everyone’s Best of the Decade list. Don’t be put off by the fact that Tom Hooper’s next musical was Cats.
I wasn’t expecting much from The Lego Movie. Was anyone?! I thought it was a cheap, cynical cash grab. MAN was I wrong. Instead it was an amazing story about the power of imagination and the importance of childhood. The final speech (“You are the most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the universe…”) is one of my favourite speeches in any movie, ever. It makes me think of a parent talking to a child and it captures the spirit of Lego perfectly.
Is there anything to be said about Mad Max: Fury Road that hasn’t already been said? It’s been called the greatest action film of all time, a feminist masterpiece, one of the best movies of its era… and all the people claiming those things are 100% right. I don’t think it’s technically perfect but it’s damn close. And special-effects wise it’s a staggering achievement. (All those people REALLY WERE climbing poles on motorbikes, holy heck.) I hope it’s celebrated for years to come.
I love Pacific Rim not because it’s a bonkers, brightly-coloured monsters-vs-robots movie (though that definitely helps) but because how utterly adamant it was that teamwork, collaboration and in some cases love would help humanity save the world. God, the whole movie seems like a relic from a totally different time, doesn’t it? The less said about the sequel the better.
Apparently Paddington 2 is the highest-rated film ever on RottenTomatoes, and despite what you think of RottenTomatoes the site (I personally am not a fan) HOLY HECK IT DESERVES IT. This is a children’s film about a cute teddy bear who lives among humans and loves marmalade sandwiches and somehow it was more hard-hitting, beautiful and poignant than a lot of the “serious” movies released the same year. Hugh Grant deserved an Oscar for playing such a fantastic baddie/hilariously exaggerated version of himself. The whole damn film deserved an Oscar. (As it happened, The Shape of Water won that year. They got the wrong Sally Hawkins Forms A Relationship With A Non-Human Character Resulting In An Emotional Underwater Scene film.)
Honourable mentions: (my god there are a lot) Toy Story 3, Avengers: Endgame, Black Panther (most of the MCU honestly), The Rise of Skywalker, Belle, Their Finest, Big Hero 6, Frozen II, Aladdin, Batman vs Superman (yes really), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the entire Hunger Games series, SO MANY
I found this prompt meme at coffee, classics, & craziness and I’m joining in! Yay!
Rules:
#1 Use a different movie for each prompt
#2 Add photos and/or explanations of how your choices fit the prompts
#3 Tag a few friends to play along
Let’s see what we got.
OH NO. Okay… Hmm. WAIT! My husband just HANDED ME the most obvious answer. The Martian, a space movie which I love, all about a guy who survives on Mars by growing potatoes. (It’s much, much more interesting than I make it sound there.)
Home to a really good line about humanity and the world:
“Every human being has a basic instinct: to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do.”
Back in 2007 this movie ripped my heart out, stamped on it, put it back in, then kicked it upwards through my brain and out my head.
I speak of course of Atonement, the tale of a doomed romance and some beautiful, beautiful dresses. In the end, Robbie and Cecilia can’t survive World War II or the British class system. (Yeah, the British class system, not Briony, is the villain of this story.) But Briony ensures via her writing that they have a long-lasting relationship anyway, and I cry.
Okay, it’s a toss-up between two movies here, both based on works by Victor Hugo: Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables. And… despite the fact that it has virtually nothing at all to do with the book… I think Hunchback juuuust takes it, because it’s a gorgeous, interesting, progressive-for-Disney film, and I love it.
I can’t even choose one shot from this movie so just have the opening one. And hey! The titular church didn’t burn down this year! It’s still there!
Okay, I’m gonna stretch the definition of “phone” a bit here and show you something from The Phantom Menace:
Qui-Gon’s space phone (commlink, sorry) is actually a Gillette Ladies Sensor Excel Razor, or a close approximation of. THIS MOVIE COST 115 MILLION DOLLARS. I love it.
There could only ever be one choice here.
I’m sorry I knoooooow Love Actually probably isn’t really all that great as a movie and it’s so cheesy and corny and up-itself but I love it. It’s like a warm Christmas hug. (And I don’t even really like Christmas, so…)
So before there was Baby Yoda, there was this equally adorable fella:
And I think his presence is enough to qualify Guardians of the Galaxy 2 as a film that features babies. No births though, unless you count the birth of a god or the birthing chamber stuff on the gold planet or various “rebirths” of characters. Wait… GOTG2 is surprisingly birth-metaphors-heavy actually. Who knew.
Okay, so maybe this isn’t so much “someone goes swimming” as it is “someone tries to swim and nearly drowns” but…
I can still remember the music from that bit in Fellowship of the Ring after all this time. My god, the last quarter of that movie kicks all kind of ass and tramples on my feelings, I love it so.
“I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise. Don’t you leave him, Samwise Gamgee. And I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to.”
Okay, this can only be Children of Men. (A film that I very nearly put at #6.) Why? At the film’s pivotal moment we get this beautiful, striking scene featuring a whole lotta cows.
I think it’s meant to be reminiscent of Mary in the manger. And I love it so much. Please watch Children of Men, it’s so harrowing but so good, it’s amazing, I promise.
AM I GONNA DO IT? YEAH I’M GONNA DO IT. I’m gonna put Spider-Man 3 in here. Yes, that one.
But not for that dance scene… or even that one. You know the much-derided ones I mean. The one I like is this one:
Harry Osborn (in his various incarnations) is my Second Favourite Fictional Character Of All Time, and Mary Jane is pretty high up the list as well, so it was nice to see them have a moment of happiness before one of them dies. Honestly, that’s it. (I unapologetically love Spider-Man 3, even if only for Harry. I admit it. I’m sorry. No wait, no I’m not.)
Aw dang… I’m not good at this genre. But I do really like Noel Clarke’s Fast Girls and no-one else seems to have seen it, so I’m putting it here. I really need to watch it again actually. It suffers from Unnecessary Forced Heterosexual Romance In An Almost All-Woman Film Syndrome but eh, what doesn’t.
(Yeah, the Noel Clarke from Doctor Who. And yes, that is a pre-mega-fame Lily James.)
Wait, NOW I can get Les Miserables in here. During the very start of the “Drink With Me” scene Grantaire (my First Favourite Fictional Character of all time) starts running his hands over a broken piano.
It doesn’t make any sound of course, but that’s so much more poignant than if it had.
I don’t really get to go to the cinema much these days but one film I did see this year was Tolkien, which kinda delves in a little into how Tolkien’s experiences in the First World War inspired his writings.
It didn’t get very good reviews, to my surprise, and I suppose the dispute with Tolkien’s descendants definitely didn’t help, but I liked it. It definitely didn’t shy away when depicting the horrors of World War I.
And that’s that…
You should definitely do this meme if you want to! In fact, please do!
Disney+ released in the USA today, I hear! But not the UK, we don’t get it til March. And since Disney still does not comprehend how the non-corporate internet works or how fans will react upon deliberately being excluded, I have watched the Endgame deleted scenes on YouTube. Or the ones I’m interested in, anyway. (i.e. the Guardians ones)
It took me til now to realise that Peter and Rocket didn’t actually have a reunion scene in Endgame. Here they have… approx two lines. The fistbump is nice though, assuming that would’ve been CGIed in later.
This I like better, except that everything that’s happened to Gamora is written off and undermined once again. “This one?” Shouldn’t Peter be making somewhat more of a distinction between the Gamora who loved him and is dead and the past version of her? Y’know what I mean, right? Plus how does he even know why and how she’s alive? Is this meant to be before or after the bit where she kicks him in the balls? Oh, I don’t know, but I don’t like it.
I do like the rest of the scene, where everyone bands together. Well done for breaking up Tony’s fight and helping with the plan, Peter, you are treated with more respect in this deleted scene than you were in the whole rest of the movie.
Finally Okoye gets more lines. And Valkyrie seems to approve of Mantis, and I approve of that. (It’s all that confirmed that Valkyrie will shortly be the MCU’s first (finally) LGBT character but I really hope Mantis will be another one.)
Anyway! My problems with these scenes are the same ones I had about the whole of Endgame, a) things that should be serious are played for laughs b) Gamora’s arc is given absolutely no thought whatsoever when the whole story should have been about her and c) Honestly… this whole movie is basically just “Iron Man 4 feat. some other people”. Gah, I try not to be bitter about it, I did have an absolute blast watching Endgame, but MCU-wise the only movies I’m really interested in for the future are GOTG 3 (obviously), Black Widow, Black Panther 2, probably about half of Thor 4 and maybe the third Spider-Man, even though I still can’t connect with him because that particular spider-verse is so far from the one I intitially loved. (Far, far too much Iron Man, again, for starters.) But we’ll see.
God, Disney. I’m being left out of Disney+ and I’m still going to end up making you richer. You owe me.
Today’s #cosSLAYcrew feature is Bunny the Kid Cosplay Photo from Photografieke
#cosSLAYcrew: Wednesday 30th October 2019 — CosSLAY Cosplay
I frickin’ LOVE this cosplay. I cosplayed Gamora once but I only had a cheap licensed costume to work with. This one looks amazing!
Yondu, lone Ravager and all-around scoundrel is about to hit the biggest pay day of his life when he stumbles upon a dangerous new weapon!
Preview: Yondu #1 (of 5) — Graphic Policy
Okay this looks really interesting, especially since I gather it’s about Pirate Yondu meeting his ancestor Original Yondu, and that multi-universe relation fix was a lot of people’s headcanon back in the day. But on the other hand Kraglin appears to be dead in this one, so eep, and also there’s no Peter and honestly the thing I care about most re Yondu is his relationship with Peter. (And also Michael Rooker’s performance, which obviously cannot be contained in a comic.) So… we’ll see! There’s quite a few comics I want to pick up next time I get the chance.