A Shot in the Dark.
Devil's Backbone, Titans vs "monsters", a few thoughts on Dune and Midnight Mass
I haven’t updated in a while, truth is now that I work full-time and also attend night classes four days a week, my headspace for other things is quite limited. When I am not doing HW, grading, or catching up on sleep. I am doing things to avoid those issues, like watching TV, calculating how long I need to stay up for, or drinking (I do not mean this as a cry for help, just a way to blow off steam).
Some updates:
I wrote an article on Devil’s Backbone by Guillermo Del Toro
It was very rewarding to write this!
Somebody brought up a small “error” I made that I can justify which is I said Pacific Rim is not a “monster movie” and while that was a subconscious category error, I think I stand by it. Mentally although Kaiju and smaller monsters are in the same category, I mentally think of them as different. While they do have obvious features of shared qualities, the grotesque, the hybrid aspects, eluding categorization that is a component of monstrosity. I also think of them as different as I would propose Monsters in a “Titan” class can be thought of as something else as they are more often framed as forces of nature rather than intimate explorations of humanity. This might be my pride in attempting to justify a small error but it works.
I saw Dune.
I quite liked it, but not for the reasons many did. I think it worked very well as a sort of anti-epic film even though it clearly could’ve leaned into an epic feel. It also felt like its a refreshing shift from the MCU. The lighting was dark in this, it didn’t have this “shiny” quality, and nobody felt the need to explain and spell out everything. What worked best about the film was just it was a quietly solid film. I don’t think it’ll “radically shift” anything, but I don’t think it needs to. It just told a story, or at least part of one, and did so well.
Midnight Mass on the other hand…
Told a story well, but its preoccupation with “faith” was poorly done. It felt like an exploration of Catholicism done by somebody who left the church at age 16 and only recently looked back and was like what do I remember from back then? This isn’t necessarily a determination of poor quality itself but when a film pretends to be an examination of these things in horror trappings, it feels like it’s setting itself up to fail.
Here’s an article I enjoyed btw
HOW SCOOBY DOO REVIVED GOTHIC STORYTELLING FOR GENERATIONS OF KIDS
I keep saying I’m going to try to update this more regularly and I mean it every time. So I’m going to keep this one short and maybe try to do smaller “bursts” of thoughts when they come. I have thoughts on Eternals but haven’t seen it yet, and want to think on that a bit more, and am finishing Morrison’s Batman run…so expect thoughts on those (hopefully) next post. If people have other thoughts on things I should speak on feel free to comment or message me direct (you know where to find me!)